New Books in Religion

The work of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), one of Judaism’s great philosophers and defenders, has nonetheless defied easy categorization or definitive depiction. While advocating for the granting of full rights to the Jews of Germany, Mendelssohn also was cast in the role of defender of the faith and advocate for continued obedience to what he termed “ceremonial law” or “divine legislation.” In his new book, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2016), Elias Sacks, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, delves into Mendelssohn’s Hebrew and German works to develop a comprehensive perspective on Jewish practice, Jewish citizenship, and Jewish history. Professor Sacks pays careful attention to Mendelssohn’s historical context and the influence on his work of late Enlightenment philosophy, Christian theology, and emerging scientific models of thought. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In the popular imagination, heresy belongs to the Christian Middle Ages in much the way that the Crusades or courtly culture do. Non-specialists in the medieval field may assume that the problem of heresy always existed, uniformly, throughout the period. But as Matthew Gillis shows in Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais (Oxford University Press, 2017), in the age of Charlemagne and his descendants, heretics were largely “seen as either distant foreign dangers or the legendary villains of ancient church lore.” That is, until around 840 CE, when one Gottschalk of Orbais began preaching what he called twin predestination. Gottschalk was heavily influenced by Augustine, who had argued that long before time began, God already ordained who would be among the elect and who among the damned. Gottschalk’s twin predestination theology made him into a figure Professor Gillis refers to as a “religious outlaw,” a “heretic in the flesh,” the Carolingian Empire’s foremost religious dissenter. Heresy & Dissent in the Carolingian Empire is a fascinating study of a figure whose meaning has been debated for centuries, but whose own moment in the 840s reveals a world beset with fears of sin and pollution. Matthew Gillis is Assistant Professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What does it mean to interpret the Qur’an? What kinds of literary genres have produced and continue to produce such inquiry? Is tafsir only a line-by-line commentary or could it be something broader, blended with genres of law, storytelling, or translation? Whose authority counts and why? Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre (Oxford University Press, 2015) aims to address these questions in its ambitious agenda. Johanna Pink and Andreas Gorke have provided a great service to the field of Qur’anic studies by compiling this fine volume, penned by fifteen established as well as rising scholars in the field. The book is conveniently organized according to five sections, which explore the challenges of Qur’anic exegesis in modern and premodern contexts. The authors also explore a number of languages and geographical regions, which showcases the diverse expressions of exegesis that Muslims have produced over the centuries. Pink’s own chapter in the volume, for example, analyzes the exegetical works of Yemeni scholar, Muhammad al-Shawkani (d. 1835) and provocatively argues that labels (e.g., modern or Salafi) have their uses but can nonetheless introduce other problematics, and readers should be careful before assuming an easy fit. In addition to appealing to Qur’anic studies scholars of many stripes the edited volume also presents itself as a reference work, given its broad scope, meticulous notes, and extensive bibliography and should appeal to diverse readers accordingly. Elliott Bazzano is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College. His research and teaching interests include theory and methodology in the study of religion, Islamic studies, Qur’anic studies, mysticism, religion and media, and religion and drugs. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at (bazzanea@lemoyne.edu). Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Mainstream readings of Numbers have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis—Leviticus with Deuteronomy and Joshua, composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, Pekka Pitkanen reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis—Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE—a document that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. On this show, we speak with Pekka Pitkanen about his new approach to Numbers in his recent book, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual and Colonialism (Routledge, 2017). Dr Pekka Pitkanen is a senior lecturer in the School of Liberal and Performing Arts at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He also has an MDiv in theology from Chongshin University, Seoul, Korea, and a PhD on Old Testament studies from University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of Central Sanctuary and Centralization of Worship in Ancient Israel (2003) and Joshua (2010). His main area of specialization is the study of the sacred texts of Christianity (OT/HB) in the context of the ancient world and from a number of perspectives including archaeology, sociology, and anthropology. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In the second podcast of Arguing History, historians Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie address the question of whether the Protestant Reformation, an event which transformed Christianity in the Western world, was an inevitable event. This they do by considering the origins of the Reformation within the context of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church, the role that personality (particularly that of Martin Luther) played in events, and the interaction between faith and politics. What they reveal is the complex matrix of factors involved in events, which included the technology of the printing press, the political makeup of the German empire, and the appeal of Luther’s evolving message all of which combined to take the Reformation in directions which the participants involved never intended. Peter Marshall is professor of history at the University of Warwick, and the author and editor of numerous works, including Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation(Yale University Press, 2017) and 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2017). Alec Ryrie is professor in the department of theology and religion at the University of Durham. Among his many works are The Age of Reformation: The Tudors and Stewart Realms, 1485-1603 (Routledge, 2009) and Protestants: The Radicals Who Made the Modern World (Viking, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Where Europeans have gone, so, too, have their ideas about religion. We know that this was no one-way street, that Christian missionaries have both changed and been changed by their interaction with nonwhite, non-Christian peoples, and that their experiences have had a profound impact on the development of religious and philosophical thinking in Europe itself, while Christianity has left an indelible imprint on the rest of the world. Albert Wu has written a book of great interest to scholars of Christian missionary work as well as those who study modern Germany and China. From Christ to Confucius: German Missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Globalization of Christianity, 1860-1950 (Yale University Press, 2016) explores the way that relationships between German missionaries and Chinese Christians spawned new missionary impulses among the Chinese, affected the course of Chinese modernization, and prompted German reconsideration of the very character of Christianity itself. Most fascinatingly to me was the way that Wu reveals that though German missionary efforts grew in part out of nationalist sentiment, the missionaries themselves were surprisingly receptive to, accommodating of, even interested in Chinese cultural differences, and understood that their own embrace of Confucian influence facilitated the spread of Christian belief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simḥah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015), Geoffrey D. Claussen provides a thorough study of the life and work of one of the most influential figures in the history of Musar, the Jewish discipline for ethical development. Simḥah Zissel (1824-1898), also known as the Alter of Kelm, uniquely combined traditional Talmud study, contemplative exercises, Musar, and general studies curricula at his Talmud Torah in the Lithuanian town of Kelm. Professor Claussen, Lori and Eric Sklut Emerging Scholar in Jewish Studies, and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, breaks new ground in tracing the development and legacy of one of Musar’s great masters. This book is a welcome and needed addition to the study of the Musar movement and its seminal figures. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Few images attached to Islam and to the Islamic legal tradition (the Sharia) in particular are more often and more disturbingly sensationalized than that of the stoning punishment. In her riveting new book Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution (University of California Press, 2017), Sarah Eltantawi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Religion at Evergreen State College, offers a dazzlingly nuanced and lucid account of the past and present of the stoning punishment in Northern Nigeria. Effortlessly moving between pre-modern and contemporary archives and contexts, Eltantawi traces the shifting meanings and political projects that have been invested into the stoning punishment over time. Historically grounded, theoretically exciting, and lucidly composed, this book is sure to spark important conversations and debates in multiple fields. It will also make a wonderful text for undergraduate and graduate seminars for courses on Islam, Islamic Law, Gender and Sexuality, and on Islam in Africa. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The idea that there is some unholy connection between Nazism and occultism has a lengthy history. It long predates 1933, when the National Socialist party took power in Germany. But what’s behind that idea? Some top-ranking members of the party were deeply engaged with the occult, perhaps most notably Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler. Was Nazi occultism just a predilection of a handful of Nazi elites, some weird novelty? No, in short, is the answer Professor Eric Kurlander gives in this astonishing history of occult ideas and their influence on National Socialism from its origins to the end of the Third Reich. The party drew upon border science, alternative religious traditions, mythologies, the paranormal, and all manner of esoteric ideas in ways that, Professor Kurlander argues, no other mass political party has ever done. What Kurlander calls a supernatural imaginary was in fact central to the entire project of National Socialism. Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (Yale University Press, 2017) deals soberly with a provocative topic that has often been sensationalized. Even for those very knowledgeable of the Third Reich, the book–the result of years of archival research by a judicious and prolific scholar–will likely be quite unexpected. Professor Eric Kurlander teaches history at Stetson University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Anita Hannig‘s first book, Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital (University of Chicago Press, 2017) is an in-depth, ethnography of two fistula repair and rehabilitation centers in northern Ethiopia. Focusing on the juxtaposition of culture, religion and medicine, Hannig turns the heroic narrative of surgery on its head to expose the realities of life for women treated in, and living at the centers. Utilizing first-person interviews, she show the human face to the surgery and its aftermath. Moving beyond the easy and cathartic narrative promulgated by the media and non-profit fundraisers, Hannig shows the complex reality of life post-surgery. Hannig’s book is a testament to the importance of good, long-term research in the arena of public health in the developing world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion