a:56:{s:14:"comment_author";s:18:"Rabbi Allen Maller";s:20:"comment_author_email";s:26:"maller.allen1948@gmail.com";s:18:"comment_author_url";s:22:"http://rabbimaller.com";s:20:"contact_form_subject";s:44:"Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive";s:17:"comment_author_IP";s:13:"99.60.176.208";s:15:"comment_content";s:8421:"Pharaoh's Wife or Pharaoh's Daughter

                                                 Rabbi Allen S. Maller

What does one do when two Sacred Scriptures have some verses that are in direct opposition to each other? 

The easy answer is to claim that 'my' Holy Book is true and the other person's Holy Book is false or corrupted. After all, if there is only one God, then there can only be one true revelation. 

The problem with this easy answer is that every Sacred Scripture contains some verses that even true believers in that Holy Book think contradict other verses in the same Holy Book. 

Sometimes believers maintain that such conflicting verses are not contradictions between two eternal truths but simply an indication of one verse abrogating another. 

Most often the commentaries maintain that the two verses' differences are only apparent, and can be easily harmonized in various ways. 

Although I am a Rabbi, I follow the words of the Qur'an that direct Muslims to say, "We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him." (3:84) 

Thus I believe we should always try to harmonize differences between the Sacred Scriptures of Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, and avoid claiming that only one Holy Book (ours) can be true. 

But some people might object that the very next ayah contradicts the previous ayah when it states:“And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.” (3:85)  

There is no abrogation here. The word Muslim in the Qur'an sometimes refers to a member of the Muslim religious community, and sometimes refers to all those who believe in one God; and strive to live faithfully according to teachings of their prophet and their Scripture. 

Thus, the Qur'an states that: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [a person who submits to Allah ]. He was not of the polytheists.” (3:67) Only polytheists are excluded from the truth of monotheism.

This is why I think of myself as a Reform Rabbi and a Muslim Jew. Actually I am a Muslim Jew i.e. a faithful Jew submitting to the will of God, because I am a Reform Rabbi. As a Rabbi I am faithful to the covenant that God made with Abraham – the first Muslim Jew, and I submit to the commandments that God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. 

I think the Qur'an refers to people like me when it states: "They are not all alike. Some of the People of the Book are (also) firmly committed to the truth. They recite the Verses of Allah during the hours of night, and remain in the state of [prayer] prostration before their Lord." (3:113 – Qadri)

But what about a Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari that once when he was sitting with the Apostle of Allah, and a Jew was also with him, when a funeral passed by him. He (the Jew) asked (Him): Muhammad, “Does this funeral speak? The Prophet said: “Allah has more knowledge (only Allah knows)”. The Jew said: “It speaks.”

The Apostle of Allah said: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify them, nor falsify them, but say: We believe in Allah and His Apostle. If it is false, do not confirm it, and if it is right, do not falsify it.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 25, Number 3637) 

Doesn't this mean Muslims are not to look to the earlier Holy Books of Moses, David and Jesus for knowledge about their own religion?

It seems to me that the general principle is that all of us need to “make no distinction between any of them," (3:84) provided they (the other religions' believers) show equal respect for our prophet and Holy Book. 

In the Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari, this Jewish man sitting with Muhammad claims he knows more about the dead or the afterlife than Prophet Muhammad, so with people like him: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify (believe) them, nor falsify (disbelieve) them,”

This is made clear in another Hadith narrated by Ubaidullah: "Ibn 'Abbas who said, 'Why do you ask the people of the scripture about anything while your Book (Quran) which has been revealed to Allah's Apostle is newer and the latest? You read it pure, undistorted and unchanged, and Allah has told you that the people of the scripture (Jews and Christians) changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, 'It is from Allah,' to sell it for a little gain. 

“Does not the knowledge which has come to you prevent you from asking them about anything? No, by Allah, (you are not prevented from asking but) we have never seen any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!' ( Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 461)"

Here it is clear that until Jews and Christians respect the Qur'an as much as they respect their own Sacred Scripture, and seek guidance from the Qur'an, Muslims should not seek guidance and knowledge from them. But from “any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!' you may ask of him and learn. 

Mutual respect is the key. There are people in all three Abrahamic religions who distort the meaning of some verses in order to denigrate and abuse other 'enemy' religions. 

This intolerance come about through the influence of Greek philosophy, with its requirement that truth must be unchanging and universal. This influenced many teachers of sacred scripture during Medieval times to believe that religion was a zero sum game; the more truth I find in your scripture the less truth there is in mine. 

Instead of understanding differing texts as complementary, they made them contradictory and declared the other religion's sacred text to be false.

If religion is to promote peace in our pluralistic world we must reject the zero sum game ideology and develop the pluralistic teachings that already exist within our sacred scriptures. After all “all prophets are brothers. They have the same father (God) but different mothers (mother tongues, motherlands and unique historical circumstances that account for all the differences in their scriptures).  

We should not believe in the two other religions, but we should not disbelieve and denigrate God's other Prophets and Sacred Scriptures. As Abu Huraira narrated: 

"The people of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and then explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. Allah's Apostle said (to the Muslims). 'Do not believe the people of the Book, nor disbelieve them, but say, 'We believe in Allah and whatever is revealed to us, and whatever is revealed to you.' “(Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 460)

Let me share a simple example of anti zero sum thinking. The Torah says that Moses was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. The Qur'an says Musa was rescued by Pharaoh's wife. 

For almost fourteen centuries religious scholars have argued over wife vs. daughter; and therefore who “changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, 'It is from Allah,' to sell it for a little gain.” 

Today we know that both the Torah and the Qur'an are right because Pharaoh's Wife was Pharaoh's Daughter. 

The Pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramses II (1303 BCE-1213 BCE). He reigned from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE (66 years). Ramses married three of his daughters, who eventually became principal wives along with Nefertari his first principal wife. 

Debating about which Sacred Scripture is the most accurate or true is pointless because only God knows the ultimate answers and we will only find out what they are  at final judgement time. The real test is how well each religious community lives up to its religious commitments to do good deeds. 

As the Qur’an teaches: “For every one of you did We appoint a law and a way. If God had pleased He would have made you one people, but [He didn’t] that He might test you in what He gave you. Therefore compete with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; for all return to God, so He will let you know [at Judgment Day] that in which you differed.” (5:48)";s:12:"comment_type";s:12:"contact_form";s:7:"user_ip";s:13:"99.60.176.208";s:10:"user_agent";s:120:"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36";s:8:"referrer";s:47:"http://provoketive.com/writing-for-provoketive/";s:4:"blog";s:22:"http://provoketive.com";s:15:"SERVER_SOFTWARE";s:6:"Apache";s:11:"REQUEST_URI";s:25:"/writing-for-provoketive/";s:14:"CONTENT_LENGTH";s:4:"9635";s:12:"CONTENT_TYPE";s:33:"application/x-www-form-urlencoded";s:13:"DOCUMENT_ROOT";s:38:"/home/content/j/o/n/jonathanbrink/html";s:17:"GATEWAY_INTERFACE";s:7:"CGI/1.1";s:11:"HTTP_ACCEPT";s:74:"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8";s:20:"HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING";s:17:"gzip,deflate,sdch";s:20:"HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE";s:14:"en-US,en;q=0.8";s:18:"HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL";s:9:"max-age=0";s:15:"HTTP_CONNECTION";s:10:"keep-alive";s:9:"HTTP_HOST";s:15:"provoketive.com";s:11:"HTTP_ORIGIN";s:22:"http://provoketive.com";s:12:"HTTP_REFERER";s:47:"http://provoketive.com/writing-for-provoketive/";s:15:"HTTP_USER_AGENT";s:120:"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36";s:4:"PATH";s:28:"/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin";s:5:"PHPRC";s:38:"/home/content/j/o/n/jonathanbrink/html";s:12:"QUERY_STRING";s:0:"";s:9:"RAILS_ENV";s:10:"production";s:18:"REDIRECT_RAILS_ENV";s:10:"production";s:19:"REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URI";s:47:"http://provoketive.com/writing-for-provoketive/";s:19:"REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL";s:25:"/writing-for-provoketive/";s:15:"REDIRECT_STATUS";s:3:"200";s:32:"REDIRECT_SUBDOMAIN_DOCUMENT_ROOT";s:50:"/home/content/j/o/n/jonathanbrink/html/provoketive";s:18:"REDIRECT_UNIQUE_ID";s:24:"U4Ia7WFK17oAAHhBLO8AAAAl";s:12:"REDIRECT_URL";s:25:"/writing-for-provoketive/";s:11:"REMOTE_ADDR";s:13:"99.60.176.208";s:11:"REMOTE_PORT";s:5:"49654";s:14:"REQUEST_METHOD";s:4:"POST";s:15:"SCRIPT_FILENAME";s:60:"/home/content/j/o/n/jonathanbrink/html/provoketive/index.php";s:11:"SCRIPT_NAME";s:10:"/index.php";s:10:"SCRIPT_URI";s:47:"http://provoketive.com/writing-for-provoketive/";s:10:"SCRIPT_URL";s:25:"/writing-for-provoketive/";s:11:"SERVER_ADDR";s:13:"97.74.215.186";s:12:"SERVER_ADMIN";s:26:"support@supportwebsite.com";s:11:"SERVER_NAME";s:15:"provoketive.com";s:11:"SERVER_PORT";s:2:"80";s:15:"SERVER_PROTOCOL";s:8:"HTTP/1.1";s:16:"SERVER_SIGNATURE";s:41:"Apache Server at provoketive.com Port 80
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