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From: goer@midway.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: Al-Jawzi's position on Jews
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.011643.5019@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 14 Dec 90 01:16:43 GMT
References: <1990Dec13.143336.22909@wpi.WPI.EDU>
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In article <1990Dec13.143336.22909@wpi.WPI.EDU>
gt8145a@prism.gatech.edu (FADEL,AYMAN HOSSAM) writes:
>
>Talbis> a few as evidence of this.  They include their finding similarities 
>Talbis> between the Creator and His creation.  If this was true, then He would
>Talbis> be exposed to the same things [creation] is exposed to.
>
>Moshe ben Maimun, in Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah, chapter 1, makes exactly
>the same point.  This is why Jews do not, in fact, make this claim.

In an offbeat way, the Muslim point is valid.  Jewish interpretation is
very concerned with explaining away obvious anthropomorphisms in the Torah
and Prophets.  In the Torah, God changes his mind (Gen 6:6; wayyinnaxem).
There's even a tradition that the scribes emended the sacred text in Gen
18:22 (one of the so-called tiqqune sophrim) to avoid the idea that God
'stood before' Abraham (as if to wait on him).  The text, though, as it
is has Abraham standing yet before God.  God also gets angry, is pleased,
and lets the great prophet see his back parts:

    wahasiroti et-kappi wra'ita et-'axoray  -  Exodus 33:23
    'and I shall remove my hand, and you will see my back'

I note, looking in Targum Ps. Jonathan to the Torah a valiant effort is
made to avoid the notion that God was actually letting anyone see body
parts.  No, in fact it was an angel "standing in."  To say it wasn't God
after all, though, defeats the whole point of the passage.

Whether or not modern folk will admit it, historically speaking it appears
that there is a problem.  All ancient peoples believed in concrete Gods,
and ancient Israelites were no different.  In fact, there has arisen a
big debate in recent centuries over whether Israelites were originally even
monotheists (theirs God was simply greatest - not the only God), and whe-
ther monotheism only developed later on in the course of history.  The
very amount of ink spilled in explaining away concrete references to God
as metaphorical, or as referring to "angels," implies that there was a need
for defense, and that there is, in fact, good reason to infer an anthro-
pormorphic view of God from the text.

In terms of modern Judaism, though, I think that the Muslim criticism may
be very off base.  No one thinks this way any more.  And probably few have
since the early Christian era (probably even since the dawn of Hellenism
in the Near East).  It's very important that, if you must criticize a per-
son of another faith, you understand what he or she believes.

-Richard (goer@sophist.uchicago.edu)