The Disarming Word: Reading Scripture in the Boundary Zones.

LaHurd, Carol Schersten

In the countdown to January 1, 2000, National Public Radio's "This American Life" joined the media coverage of colorful end-time theorizing. For his April, 1999, show, host Ira Glass talked to a variety of Americans about the approach of a new millennium. Responses ranged from passionate anticipation of the rapture to scholarly analysis of the Branch Davidians, but the most intriguing reported on the quest for a totally red cow.

In Numbers 19, God instructs Moses about a purification ritual that requires the slaughter and burning of a perfectly red heifer without defect or blemish. Apparently, some people today believe that the appearance on the scene of such a cow will have great apocalyptic significance. The theory is that ashes from such a sacrificed animal could be used in a purification rite that would allow Jews to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Glass interviewed a conservative Christian farmer from a southern state who had offered his services to a group of rabbis in Israel. Having researched cattle breeds in Israel and the U.S., this farmer had determined that it was genetically impossible, or at least very unlikely, that existing Israeli breeds could produce such a cow. So, Glass reported, this American farmer, with some funding from the rabbis, was working diligently toward the birth of a purely red American heifer for ritual use in Israel.

What does this red cow have to do with reading scripture across interfaith boundaries? The National Public Radio segment illustrates the value, maybe even the necessity, of reading each other's scriptures as the adherents of the world's religions enter the third millennium. For his broadcast, Glass had consulted Jews and Christians and Israelis and Americans about the biblical significance of this red cow--and even about its political implications. Those are painfully obvious, since two major Islamic shrines, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, now stand on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Even with all the experts consulted, what the radio program did not ever mention was that there is a similar red-heifer passage in the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an. In fact, Surah 2 is the longest chapter of the Qur'an and one of immense theological importance. This chapter takes its title, translated from the Arabic as "The Cow," from a parable about God, Moses, the people, and a red heifer. (1) There is more than a little irony in the phenomenon of a public radio feature that considers how the dramatic birth of a red cow might affect the one city of crucial importance to Jews, Christians, and Muslims but that takes no account of this red cow's appearance in Islamic scriptures.

Obviously, Glass had not intended to prepare an academic study of the redheifer ritual but, rather, a somewhat playful treatment of popular apocalyptic viewpoints. Yet, behind this public radio segment lie real-world conflicts: historical conflicts that included the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, modem conflicts that, after Samuel P. Huntington's 1993 article in Foreign Affairs are being called "the clash of civilizations." (2) It is naive to assert that discussing each other's versions of the red-heifer text would lead Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims to a peaceful resolution of disputes over the holy city, or that reading sacred scripture together would have prevented the terrible disasters in New York City, Washington, DC, and western Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, it is certainly likely that such scripture reading could help move ecumenical dialogue to the interfaith level and, in the process, enrich the faith and lives of those involved.

My research into the role of scripture in interreligious dialogue and my own interfaith experience have yielded new insights about (1) the role of scripture in zones of interfaith engagement, (2) the hazards while reading with religious others, (3) the benefits of reading with religious others, and (4) concrete ways to begin the process of interfaith reading. Why the martial overtones in the title, "The Disarming Word: Reading Scripture in the Boundary Zones"? The ongoing tensions in Jerusalem, in Indonesia, and even in Great Britain remind us of the role religion has played in arming groups for conflict. Painfully much closer to home, the terrorist hijackings and attacks of September, 2001, forced the United States to rearm in totally new ways. Yet, the boundaries between religions, like the boundaries between countries or between eco-systems, can be zones of constructive as well as violent engagement. Credit for this positive "zone of engagement" metaphor goes to Gary Gunderson, Director of the Interfaith Program at the Carter Center in Atlanta. He has applied this imagery to a life of faith, where one operates in what he called "zones of engagement" at the borders between religions, cultures, and institutions, rather than in a "well-protected center." (3)

Evidence that people of faith exist in religious border zones is obvious from even a cursory reading of Hebrew scripture. The children of Israel were surrounded and often confronted by Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Medes, Greeks, Seleucids, and eventually Romans. Often these encounters with ethnic and religious others were hostile. The "us" against "them" language of many of the lament psalms reveals the emotional legacy of long centuries of subjugation and animosity. However, Hebrew scriptures also sometimes portray close interaction between worshippers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and other religious expressions in the Canaanite context. (4) There is literary evidence, at least, of motifs shared with Canaanite culture, such as the symbolic use of the number seven and of the long years of childlessness experienced by Abraham and Sarah. (5)

In the Christian New Testament the Letters of Paul, the Gospel of John, and the Acts of the Apostles reveal the writers' engagement with Hellenistic thought, as well as with Israelite religion. Despite the presence of anti-Jewish polemic in Gospels like Matthew's and John's, interfaith relations in the early Christian era were not always hostile. A glance at second- and third-century C.E. theologians, such as Justin Martyr (ca. 100-ca. 165) and Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-ca. 215), can uncover affirmation that God's grace does, in fact, function in other faiths. Then, with Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254) and Cyprian, came extra ecclesiam nulla salus, "outside the church, there is no salvation." (6)

Muslim Spain in the early Middle Ages was another boundary-zone time for the three Abrahamic traditions. The writings of Jewish theologian Maimonides and Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas show signs of their positive encounter with Islamic thought and with Arabic translations of Aristotle. Then came the Crusades, when European Christians slaughtered Jews, Muslims, and even Arab Christians. In the centuries of discord each side called the other "infidel." For 2,000 years there have been such boundary zones among Western monotheists, and there continue to be. Too seldom, however, have interfaith dialogue and the joint reading of scripture been used as means of achieving disarmament.

Present-day Tanzania offers a good example. For generations there existed peaceful relations among Muslims, Christians, and people following traditional African religion. Then in the 1990's Muslim revivalists came from outside Tanzania and began harassing Christians. Rather than seeking reconciliation, the subsequent Christian response has often been antagonistic. Many church leaders have viewed Islam solely as the adversary and have had as their goal conversion of, not dialogue with, Muslims. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is beginning to move in a different direction. Recognizing that peace is crucial for the development of Tanzania, E.L.C.T. leaders have initiated a Commission for Peace, Development, and Conflict Resolution. Muslim and Christian leaders have begun meeting together to strengthen the relationship between the two religious groups and to consider joint development efforts for the benefit of the nation. In addition, one of the E.L.C.T. bishops has completed a master's degree in Isl amic studies and plans to gather small groups of Muslims and Christians to work together on local problems. (7)

There are many situations where Jews, Christians, and Muslims look like enemies staring at each other across guarded borders. Metaphorically, they are like persons along the borders of countries about to enter war who know that they might become refugees at any moment. People living near such combat zones can usually afford to pack just one suitcase per person. Similarly, religious people in interfaith boundary zones can also get into a self-preservation mode. Since they may need to take their faith into verbal conflict at a moment's notice, they too often reduce the richness of their religious life to a single suitcase, a minimal core. This tendency was evident in the discord surrounding the recently forged full-communion agreement between the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In much of the debate the diversity and dynamism of each tradition was forgotten. Instead, reductionism threatened to transform the process into combat between a denomination characterized as a c hurch of confessions and doctrine and one characterized as a church of worship and structure.

Reading each others' scriptures can be one way to create a de-militarized zone within the Christian ecumenical community and between Christians and adherents of other faiths. In such a zone the dialogue partners, if able to overcome seeing each other as enemies, can bring more than the essential core of each faith to the conversation and to the relationship. Instead of packing one bag with only their nonnegotiables, each party can bring the richness of scripture and a long tradition of interpretation. In the mid-1990's there was just such an experiment in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) in Minnesota. About three times a year fifteen rabbis and Lutheran clergy and scholars gathered for a half-day of close reading and discussion of biblical texts. At the very first meeting we participants recognized the need to disarm, to create a positive zone of engagement, not an armed border zone. Hence, we agreed to bracket, at least for the first few years, topics that would likely create a feeling of armed camps. We vowed not to discuss anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospels, Martin Luther, the Holocaust, Christology and incarnation, Zionism, aid to Israel, and intermarriage. One is tempted to ask, "What's left?" For several years fruitful sessions explored the Ten Commandments, covenant, the law and its uses, and Genesis 1-4.

Similar conversations among Christians and Muslims can also include close reading of passages from the Bible and the Qur'an. For one reason, the narrative and metaphor of scripture can be directly experienced by dialogue partners. Christians make the claim to their Muslim brothers and sisters that Jesus be-friended the marginalized as well as the rich and powerful, but would it not mean more if Muslims read some relevant Gospel stories for themselves? An example of the power of narrative comes from my years of university teaching in Minnesota. Many of my students came from small towns and suburbs, where they had had little contact with African-Americans, and they knew little about the civil-rights struggles of the 1960's. These undergraduates found it hard to believe that conditions ever warranted the kind of rage against the white establishment that they found in a book like The Autobiography of Malcolm X. However, that all changed once they had read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel that allowed them to experience vicariously the impact of slavery and racism.

Similarly, scriptural narrative and poetry give dialogue partners something concrete with which to interact. Even reading each others' scriptures in translation offers a more direct engagement with our respective traditions than passively receiving each others' interpretations of those traditions. For example, a Christian understanding of God's law and its benefits can be enhanced by the positive testimonials of Jews and Muslims. Paul's words about the law in Galatians and Romans can be read in company with the beautiful hymns to the Torah as a gift from God in the Hebrew psalms.

Touting the benefits of interfaith reading also demands acknowledgment of a few of the hazards. Actually the term "mine fields" might be more consistent with the operative image of boundary zones. There are many obstacles to reading each others' scriptures, some of which could be as explosive as land mines. Yet, with careful preparation these mine fields can be defused so that at least some of the time we can safely cross religious borders. The first major hazard is our many conceptions of what counts as scripture. Wilfred Cautwell Smith reminded us that "it is not merely that in content the world's scriptures diverge among themselves radically.... They diverge also in the conception of what kind of thing is involved." There is not even agreement that scripture is something written down. In India, the Veda has been oral and aural, and there have been prohibitions against putting them into written form. (8)

For a window onto the difficulties of defining scripture across interfaith boundaries, one can read a heated interchange in The Atlantic Monthly. The January, 1999, cover story, "What Is the Koran?" opened with a potentially incendiary discovery in the 1970's during restoration of the Great Mosque in Sana'a, Yemen, of fragments of many different parchment codices of the Arabic Qur'an. These fragments dated back to Islam's first two centuries and appeared to contain deviations from today's standard Arabic text. (9) Thus, wrote Toby Lester, the article's author, they are a potential threat to the orthodox Muslim belief that the Qur'an as we have it today is "the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God." (10)

The responses to this article demonstrate the hazards of attempting to say anything at all about another's sacred text. The April, 1999, Atlantic issue contains six reaction letters and Lester's reply. One, from Prof. Raymond Scheindlin of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York), defended critical study of all scripture, including Hebrew scripture, since its message derives "from the complex interaction of traditional and critical-historical interpretation." (11) The most high-profile Muslim reaction was from Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University (Washington, DC), who said that "[t]he main issue" was "not how one looks at the Koran as a so-called historical text and ana-lyzes it according to the principles of textual or biblical criticism but, rather, how one conceives the very notion of revelation. What corresponds to Christ as the word of God in Christianity is not the Prophet Mohammad but the Koran in Islam." Nasr saw the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, as correspon ding to the Bible. He ended by making a distinction between reading the Qur'an "from a certain historical point of view without denying its sacred character" and seeing it "as a text devoid of any divine substance and written by human beings--in the way many modern Westerners claim the Bible was written." (12)

Not only did Nasr challenge Lester's conception of the Qur'an, but he also characterized the Western view of the Bible in a way that is difficult for many Christians to affirm, that is, of the Bible as a purely human cultural product. He was, nevertheless, correct in seeing that a major obstacle to reading with interfaith others lies in our very different theologies of revelation and scripture. A particular barrier with Muslims is the theory of tahrif, human alteration of the original revelation. Such biblically based beliefs as Jesus' divinity, the Trinity, and the reality of the crucifixion and resurrection are considered human distortions of the prophetic message that the historical Jesus brought from God. (13) Although Muslims thus avoid relying on the Bible for legal and theological questions, as early as the eighth century, Muslim scholars used biblical narrative to supplement that in the Qur'an. (14) Indeed, in my own experience, Muslims are very interested in biblical accounts of the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets.

Once dialogue partners have shared their varying understandings of how the Word of God is communicated to humans, there remains the matter of differing hermeneutical principles and approaches. Jane McAuliffe's excellent study of the history of qur'anic exegesis demonstrates the different underlying assumptions and methods used by qur'anic exegetes in comparison with those of biblical scholars. (15) Unlike biblical scholars, who in this century have focused on the historical sources and gradual composition of particular texts, Muslim scholars of the Qur'an analyze grammatical details and the specific occasions for revelations to the Prophet Muhammad. Until recently most analysis of the Qur'an available in Western languages was done not by Muslims but by Jewish, Christian, and secular scholars. Many, if not most, of these commentators start from the assumption that the Qur'an is not authentic scripture. Thus, they study it as any other book and treat Muhammad as the author, completely ignoring the Islamic convi ction that the Qur'an is the verbatim word of God. (16) For many the textual evidence of Muhammad's alleged "borrowing" of material from earlier Jewish and Christian scriptures served their purpose of discrediting the Qur'an as revelation from God. For example, some Jewish and Christian scholars have talked about Muhammad's "tampering" with Genesis 22 to make the son nearly sacrificed in the qur'anic version the older son Ishmael, the one from whom the Arabs in general and the Muslims in particular trace their lineage. Even such a classic work as Samuel Moffett's A History of Christianity in Asia assumed that Muhammad composed the Qur'an and so tried to reconstruct the Jewish and Christian influences on his written text. (17)

Different conceptions of scripture and vastly different methods of interpretation are two of the potential hazards in interfaith reading. However, there can also be benefits of walking through mine fields to read scripture in the boundary zones. In particular, such interfaith reading might help persons of faith understand their own traditions better, help them understand others' traditions better, and enlarge their conceptions of scripture and ways to interpret it. With regard to specific texts, reading with Jews and/or Muslims can enrich Christians' encounter with God's word. An Egyptian Muslim in my New Testament survey class one semester contributed a number of fresh observations on the question of Jesus' own sense of his identity and mission. This student was able to enhance the communal reading of the class because he noticed in the Synoptic Gospel accounts narrative details that were passed over by readers who had grown up assuming lifelong messianic consciousness on Jesus' part.

The second benefit, understanding better the faith tradition of another, has been repeatedly demonstrated in my undergraduate teaching experience. As a teacher of Islam, I often took groups of students to observe Friday prayers at one of the half-dozen mosques in the Twin Cities. Because of the diversity of languages represented among the worshippers, the sermons were usually delivered in English, with passages from the Qur'an read in Arabic and then repeated in English. On one such occasion the sermon topic was faithful child-rearing and especially fathers' care for their daughters. The speaker drew upon the Qur'an and a number of hadith, sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, to make a very strong case that fathers are expected to treat female children with just as much respect, love, and attention as male children. Since non-Muslims seldom have easy access to the hadith, this sermon was very enlightening. Instead of the stereotype that "sexist Muslim men" prefer sons to daughters, the students heard the Prophet' s teaching that "whoever befriends three daughters, or three sisters, and teaches them manners, and is affectionate to them, till they come of age, may God apportion Paradise for him." (18)

A much more dramatic example of the power of scripture to change attitudes across religious boundaries--indeed, to disarm hostile others--comes from Romesh Modayil, a Methodist minister in India, who has described the tense relations between the Christian minority and a particularly reactionary Hindu sect. Once he was asked to play a small part in a marriage ceremony between a Christian woman and a Hindu man. Clearly unwelcome in the eyes of the groom's Hindu family, he was told that his part, a Christian benediction, would take place at the end, after the Hindu priest and guests had left. He waited quietly in the background until ushered forward for his part. Then his actions and words drew unexpected attention. First, he invited the couple to sit with him on the platform, and then in Sanskrit he chanted Paul's hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13. Modayil reported that all were amazed, because they assumed the Bible was only in English. Next he explained the Christian concept of marriage and ended with the Aaro nic blessing in Hebrew, noting that Hebrew, not English, was the original language. This pastor's humble and authentic use of the Bible, and his demonstration that it could belong to the Indian and not just the English context, so impressed the Hindu leader that he invited Modayil to speak at a gathering of Hindu priests. This began an ongoing and positive rapport that replaced the ignorance and hostility that had been the rule before the shared wedding experience. (19)

Indeed, interfaith reading can teach much about one's own and others' religious traditions. It can also enlarge the conception of scripture and ways to interpret it. The introduction to an intriguing book on Adam and Eve describes the "freedom of expression and diversity of opinion characteristic of 'midrash,'" the Jewish rabbinic technique of drawing various meanings from biblical passages. (20) Talking specifically about Genesis 1-3, the editors explained that rabbinic treatments "reflect a willingness to hold conflicting interpretations in tension without needing to arrive at a 'correct' reading." For example, there is brisk debate about "whether Eve was created from Adam's rib, tail, face) or side." (21) Not any one commentator but the whole conversation among commentators is considered authoritative. (22)

This openness to several meanings of a text is not the same as an "anything goes" school of interpretation. The willingness to acknowledge ambiguity and multiple meanings in biblical texts is a great gift of Jewish interpreters to their Christian counterparts. For example, when the Minnesota Jewish-Lutheran text study explored Genesis 3, there was lively discussion about whether the account of Adam, Eve, and the serpent was in any sense a "fall" story. Reflecting on Genesis 3 and Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, one rabbi made the simple but profound observation that God's first questions in the Bible are "Where are you?" (meaning "in relation to me") and "Where is your brother?" On another occasion the Christian participants learned the Jewish principle that the Pentateuch informs interpretation of all other scriptures, an interesting parallel to the Christian tendency to read the whole Bible through the lens of the Gospel accounts of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. On another occasion the group d iscussed Matthew 5, the part of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus reinterprets the laws of Moses with such assertions as, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt. 5:27-28). Instead of being insulted by Jesus' audacity in this passage, several rabbis remarked, "This is midrash, pure and simple," that is, standard Jewish rabbinic commentary on the Torah.

Such interreligious exchanges about how to read scripture can be mutually enlightening. In a conversation at an academic conference, a respected Muslim scholar objected when I began to describe my own fruitful use of literary criticism to interpret the Christian scriptures. I explained that I was not talking about literary criticism as a way to uncover the sources for a particular passage so as to undermine its divinely inspired character, an older sense of the term "literary criticism" as "source criticism." Rather, I defined "literary criticism" as "the strategy of analyzing a text's literary features and of relating parts to the whole," for example, analyzing how the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5 fits into the whole of Mark's Gospel. After hearing this alternative understanding of literary criticism, my Muslim conversation partner commented that Muslims should be doing more of that kind of analysis of the Qur'an.

It is not only ways of reading scripture that interfaith partners can learn from each other. They can also gain enlarged and deepened understandings of what sacred scripture is and how it functions. Smith observed that Muslims see the Qur'an as God's speaking to humankind in all ages everywhere, so Muslims memorize and recite verses from the Qur'an as a way "to enter into some sort of communion with ultimate reality." (23) Smith compared this activity with the Christian eucharist. Oral recitation of scripture as a way of being in conversation with God is probably very familiar to Jews today and surely was familiar to the earliest Christians. Yet, reading the Bible aloud as a way to experience God's presence is a power of the Bible that is ineffectively practiced in many of today's Christian churches. On Sunday morning, too often, Christians hear only brief excerpts from larger biblical narratives, and even these can be poorly read and understood.

Twenty-first-century Christians living in the legacy of the Reformation can also be reminded by reading with Jewish and Muslim others that sacred texts contain more than theological meaning and competing truth-claims. Scripture offers multiple gifts. It supplies the words for worship: from Islamic ritual prayer, to the monastic divine office, to the liturgy of the Lord's Supper. While the Bible may not be an easy-to-follow ethical rule book, Stephen Fowl and L. Gregory Jones are correct to have asserted that the Bible is a source for "who God is and how we ought to love in relation to that God." (24) In this matter of faith lived in response to scripture, Christians can learn much from Jews and Muslims. In my interfaith experience, the single most serious critique of Christians has been the failure to exhibit Christian ideals in daily living. For years the Sri Lankan Muslim co-chair of the Minnesota Muslim-Christian dialogue was the imam or spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Minnesota, the spiritual ho me for over 1,000 families. He was also a business professional who mentioned often that his Christian co-workers modeled values antithetical to Christianity.

Mission theologian David Bosch said that the Christian church through history "may have been fairly good at orthodoxy, at 'faith'," but has "been poor in respect of orthopraxis, of love." Numerous councils have been held on correct belief but none on following the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. (25) The following example comes from the Hindu-Christian context, but it could have come just as easily from a Jewish-Christian or Muslim-Christian one. When Mohandas K. Gandhi was a young student in London, he read the Sermon on the Mount and "decided that Christianity was the most complete religion in the world. It was only later, when he lived with a Christian family in East India, that he changed his mind. In that household he discovered that the word rarely became flesh--that the teaching of Jesus rarely became the reality of Jesus." (26) Interfaith reading of scripture is one way Christians can be challenged to recover the first-century ideal of living each day in response to the Word of God. Faithfu l Jews and Muslims can help by holding Christians accountable for being trees that bear good fruit.

It is crucial to acknowledge both the hazards in and benefits of interfaith reading. What are some concrete steps in the process of reading scripture across boundaries, at least among the three Abrahamic faiths? For all types of interfaith dialogue, with or without scripture, an excellent starting point is Leonard Swidler's "Dialogue Decalogue." This list of ten "commandments" for dialogue first appeared in J.E.S. in 1983. It includes such wise principles as, "In ... dialogue we must not compare our ideals with our partner's practice, but rather our ideals with our partner's ideals, our practice with our partner's practice." (27)

My own rules for interfaith reading begin with humility about the Christian scriptures and about my understanding of God as revealed by them. Paul in the second letter to Corinth talks about the Christian Good News, what he there calls "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Paul then reminds his readers, "But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us" (2 Cor. 4:6-7). This notion of scripture derived from Paul separates many faithful Christian readers from faithful Muslim ones, as Muslims believe that the Qur'an is God's perfect revelation. In interfaith reading, therefore, representatives from each tradition should take responsibility only for their own scriptures and how to read them. By acknowledging with Isaiah that God's ways and thoughts are higher than humans' (Is. 55:9), persons can be open to God in the sacred texts of others. In the words of David Tracy, "To recognize t he other as other, the different as different is also to acknowledge that other world of meaning as, in some manner, a possible option for myself." (28)

A second ground rule developed through experience is authentic friendship. I have been in interfaith dialogue situations where persons attending the group for the first time have plunged right into critiquing the other's faith tradition and defending their own, as if they were soldiers armed for battle. Such persons show no regard for the group's carefully established demilitarized zone of respect and affection for each other as persons of faith. Sensitive shared reading of scripture happens best in small groups, where persons can learn to trust enough to share anger and humor and deep insight, without wanting "to score points, or to humiliate, or to condescend." (29)

Humility and friendship are just the beginning, of course. Some simple but profound suggestions for interfaith scriptural interpretation come from Mark Swanson, professor at Luther Seminary, who for years taught Egyptian Protestant and Coptic Christians in a largely Islamic country at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo. His advice for interfaith reading of scripture includes (1) suspending our own hermeneutical rules and letting the other teach us "how to read all over again," (2) being honest about differences of language and interpretive strategies, (3) accepting that misunderstanding is inevitable, and (4) trying to develop such shared rules as reading texts in context and "interpreting the book by the book." (30) This last principle of reading a particular passage in light of related passages and of the whole work in which it appears is central, whether one is reading within a single religious tradition or across interfaith boundaries.

Beyond the postures of humility and friendship and the reading strategies suggested by Swanson, there are at least four additional approaches that might help interfaith groups both to disarm and to read collaboratively: (1) reconsidering the matter of truth-claims within scripture, (2) learning to ask new questions of scriptural texts, (3) being willing to be disturbed by the interpretations of the religious other, and (4) entering into interfaith reading as pilgrims, not only as scholars.

First, interfaith partners can consider the differences between claims of truth and oaths of allegiance. Rabbi Harold Kushner has observed that, when a person asserts, "My church is the only path to salvation," these words represent more a pledge of loyalty than a statement of truth. (31) Wesley Ariarajah, Sri Lankan Methodist pastor, made a similar observation about "confessional statements uttered in the language of faith and love." He noted that in dialogue Christians must be careful to treat the Bible's language of faith and love as personal truth rather than as "absolute truth" by which to critique the faith-claims of others. (32)

My own interfaith experience has taught me that even if I as a Christian dialogue partner view particular biblical passages as absolute truth, my presenting them as such will likely block understanding and appreciation on the part of the religious other. Reflecting on this matter of truth-claims in the increasingly pluralistic modem context, Nasr asserted that

the choice is not only between a world with a single center which we identify as "ours" and one with no center where all is relative in a pluralism which would deny any reality to absolute values. There is also another possibility, which is to be able to live in a world with many centers while confirming the reality of the center of our own traditional universe.... We are challenged to live before the Face of the Absolute while acknowledging the many Faces the Absolute has presented to different cultures.

There may be many dialogue partners unwilling to make a distinction between claims of truths and oaths of allegiance. Few Muslims will wish to do so with the words of the Arabic Qur'an. Christians have greater latitude in biblical interpretation. Since dialogue is intended for mutual exploration rather than catechesis, I suggest that Christians consider being the ones to operate with this underlying distinction when participating in interfaith reading of scripture.

A second approach is to use reading with religious others as an opportunity to ask new questions of our own long-explicated scriptural passages. Martin Forward has noted that Jews and Christians have interpreted differently the question of the servant's identity in the "suffering servant" songs of Isaiah 52-53. Is the servant the people of Israel exiled in bondage or the foreshadowing of a crucified messiah? Forward suggests that in Jewish-Christian dialogue the central issue can instead be "not who is the servant, but rather how can a person or people of God obediently serve him." Thus, together Jews and Christians (and indeed Muslims) can explore "[t]he vocation of God's people." (34)

In a similar vein, Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer described the difficulties Jews, Christians, and Muslims face over the issue of their connection to Abraham. Rather than focusing on who is the favored child and thus who are the favored offspring, she imagined a new Genesis midrash that retells the story of Ishmael and Isaac from an angel's viewpoint and finds a "middle way" of blessing all of Abraham's offspring. (35)

A final example of asking new questions comes from my own experience of addressing an interreligious conference on the importance of Jesus' parables in the Christian tradition. The multifaith audience, over half from the Jewish tradition, included several dozen rabbis. The listeners had few questions about my explication of the parables in Matthew and Luke and their possible background in the Hebrew tradition. Instead, they wondered whether any of the Gospel parables served as support for a trinitarian view of God: a new and very challenging question for a Christian biblical scholar to attempt to answer in the brief moment of a conference session.

Being open to new questions is closely related to a third approach to interfaith reading: being willing to be disturbed by the interpretations of the religious other. Several years ago at a "great books" seminar my task was to facilitate discussion among a group of Christian and Jewish participants who had read excerpts from Augustine's Confessions. Most had found the rather stilted translation very arduous reading. Carefully, I led the group through Augustine's early education and exposure to the Manichees and neo-Platonists. Together we explicated the famous pear-free episode, and I did my best to explain Augustine's reflections on the nature of God, evil, and the divided human will. The session was nearly at an end and I was feeling very proud of myself for having illuminated this pivotal figure in the history of Christian systematic theology. Several people thanked me for helping them to understand the depths of Augustine's thought. Then a hand went up from a Jewish woman in her mideighties. "I can unders tand why Christians consider Augustine to be a brilliant thinker," she began. "But my question is, how did all this new insight change the way he lived? Did he serve the neighbor better as a result of being able to explain God?" Although the session was at an end and the group was thus not able to discuss her questions, those questions have continued to disturb me and to provoke reflection. Although this was Augustine and not the Bible we were reading, I learned the benefits of being open to instruction and even correction by our dialogue partners.

Such openness can well serve the fourth approach: entering into interfaith reading as "pilgrims," not only as scholars. "Our aim," wrote Forward, "is that God may speak to us through the Scriptures," and he acknowledges the prior need to grant that God "can reveal himself to us, within an alien Scripture." Forward then referred to Smith's insight that non-Muslim scholars who have been analyzing the Qur'an as an ancient document might understand Islamic history better if they tried reading the Qur'an from the perspective of one who believes it to be God's word. (36) This "pilgrim" posture served me well in the Minnesota discussions of Genesis as I strove to view the Torah through the eyes of Jewish dialogue partners. Similarly, reading the Qur'an during research for an essay on forgiveness in Islam and Christianity allowed me to appreciate the description of God as "All-Forgiving" (appearing over 100 times in the Qur'an) and the shared metaphor of repentance as "turning" in all three scriptural traditions: Heb rew, Greek, and Arabic. Especially meaningful to a Christian is the qur'anic image of God as "Oft-Returning," "expressing the Mu slim reassurance that no matter how often or how far the human turns away from God, God responds by turning toward the straying believer." (37)

Finally, can such interfaith reading of scripture, at least in the three traditions of Abraham, help dialogue partners to "disarm" and remove some of the boundaries that separate them? Rabbi Rami Mark Shapiro has retold a story from Douglas Steere, a leader of modem Quakerism, to make a point about interreligious dialogue. Steere described an American Quaker woman who worked among the poor in Poland in the 1920's and earned the love of those she had served for many years. Suddenly, she died from typhus. The Roman Catholic Church restrictions in Poland prohibited the burial of any non-Catholic in the church cemetery, and so she was laid to rest just outside the cemetery fence. During the night after her burial ceremony, the Catholic villagers she had served rebuilt the fence so that her grave was inside the cemetery. Shapiro concluded, "This is what genuine interreligious dialogue is all about. Without confrontation and ecumenical harangue, we build bridges and recover unity." (38)

(1.) A. Yusuf Ali, text, tr., and commentary, The Holy Qur'an (Brentwood, MD: Amana Corp., 1983). See Surah 2:67-71 (pp. 35-36).

(2.) Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer, 1993): 22-49. Huntington later published The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). An uncritical and problematic use of Huntington's polarizing terminology has been prevalent in the popular media following the terrorist events of September 11, 2001.

(3.) Gary Gunderson, chapel talk at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, on March 18, 1999.

(4.) Antonie Wessels, "Some Biblical Considerations Relevant to the Encounter between Traditions," in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Zaidan Haddad, eds., Christian-Muslim Encounters (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995), p. 61.

(5.) Anton Wessels, "Biblical Presuppositions for and against Syncretism," in Jerald Gort, Hendrik Vroom, Rein Fernhout, and Anton Wessels, eds., Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Currents of Encounter: Studies on the Contact between Christianity and Other Religions, Beliefs, and Cultures (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1989), p. 55.

(6.) Jerald D. Gort, "Syncretism and Dialogue: Christian Historical and Earlier Ecumenical Perceptions," in Gort, Vroom, Fernhout, and Wessels, Dialogue and Syncretisim, p. 37.

(7.) Lynda Tidemann, Area Program Director for Eastern Africa and South Pacific, Division for Global Mission, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in her report to the D.G.M. board, March, 1999, and internet messages of May 25, 1999, and September 3, 2001.

(8.) Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), P. 7.

(9.) Toby Lester, "What Is the Koran?" The Atlantic Monthly 283 (January, 1999): 43.

(10.) Ibid., p. 44.

(11.) Raymond P. Scheindlin, Letter to the Editor, The Atlantic Monthly 283 (April, 1999): 8.

(12.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Letter to the Editor, The Atlantic Monthly 283 (April, 1999): 6.

(13.) W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 30-33.

(14.) Andrew Rippin, "Interpreting the Bible through the Qur'an," in G. R. Hawting and AbdulKader A. Shareef, eds., Approaches to the Qur'an (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 252-253.

(15.) Jane D. McAuliffe, Qur'anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 13-29.

(16.) Smith What Is Scripture? pp. 69-78.

(17.) Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia. Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1500 (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1992), p. 330.

(18.) Allama Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Al-Suhrawardy, The Sayings of Muhammad (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990), p. 117.

(19.) Romesh Philip Modayil, "Experiential Moments of Interreligious Encounter from a Pastor's Diary," in Peter C. Phan, ed., Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, A New ERA Book (New York: Paragon House, 1990). pp. 249-252.

(20.) Kristen E. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 3 in the "General Introduction."

(21.) Ibid.

(22.) Ibid., referring to Gerald J. Burnes, "Midrash and Allegory: The Beginnings of Scriptural Interpretation," in Robed Alter and Frank Kermode, eds., The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 632.

(23.) Smith, What Is Scripture? p. 70.

(24.) Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), P. 20.

(25.) David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, American Society of Missiology Series 16 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 519.

(26.) Susan R. Andrews, "Holy Heartburn," The Christian Century 116 (April 7, 1999): 385.

(27.) Leonard Swidler, "The Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for Interreligious, Interideological Dialogue," J.E.S. 20 (Winter, 1983), as revised September, 1984, p.2 (emphasis in original).

(28.) David Tracy, Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-Religious Dialogue, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 1 (Louvain: Peeters Press; Grand Rapids, Ml: William B. Eerdmans, 1990), p. 41 (emphasis in original).

(29.) "Martin Forward, "How Do You Read? The Scriptures in Interfaith Dialogue," in Phan, Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, p. 106.

(30.) "Letter dated March 2, 1996.

(31.) Harold Kushner, "Who Needs God?" Proceedings of the Center for Jewish-Christian Learning, vol. 6 (St. Paul, MN: University of St. Thomas, 1991), p. 7.

(32.) As paraphrased by Charles Kimball in Striving Together: A Way Forward in Christian-Muslim Relations (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 65. Kimball further quoted from Ariarajah: "When my daughter tells me that I am the best daddy in the world, and there can be no other father like me, she is speaking the truth, for this comes out of her experience.... But of course it is not true in another sense....[O]ne should be aware that in the next house there is another little girl who also thinks her daddy is the best father in the world. And she too is right. In fact at the level of the way the two children relate to their fathers, no one can compare the truth content of the statements of the two girls. For here we are not dealing with absolute truths, but with the language of faith and love" (Wesley Ariarajah, The Bible and People of Other Faiths [Geneva: World Council of Churches; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989], pp. 25-26).

(33.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "To Live in a World with No Center--and Many," Cross Currents 46 (Fall, 1996): 321, 325.

(43.) Forward, "How Do You Read?" p. 109.

(35.) Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims Face Modernity Together," J.E.S. 30 (Summer-Fall, 1993): 438-441.

(36.) Forward, "How Do You Read?" p. 105. Wilfred Cantwell Smith's lecture, "Is the Qur'an the Word of God?" is included in Willard G. Oxtoby, ed,, Religious Diversity: Essays by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 22-40, esp. p. 31.

(37.) Carol S. LaHurd, "'So That the Sinner Will Repent': Forgiveness in Islam and Christianity," dialog 35 (Fall. 1996): 288.

(38.) Rami Mark Shapiro, "Moving the Fence: One Rabbi's View of Interreligious Dialogue," in M. Darrol Bryant and Frank Flinn, eds., Interreligious Dialogue: Voices from a New Frontier, A New ERA Book (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 40.

Carol Schersten LaHurd (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) has been visiting associate professor of religion at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, since 1999, following teaching positions at Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC, and Belmont (NC) Abbey College, 1997-99. She was a tenured associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, 1988-96, with part-time service at St. Olaf College, the College of St. Catherine, Macalester College, and United Theological Seminary (all in MN) in 1986-88. She has been an adjunct teacher at Thiel College, Greenville, PA (1982-85), in the British Language School in Damascus (1981-82), at United Wesleyan College, Allentown, PA (1976-77), and a high school English and religion teacher in Madison, WI (1969-73). She has occasionally written curriculum for Augsburg Fortress since 1979 and served as an educator in a local church and a Lutheran synod while holding her teaching positions. She has been active in the Society for Biblical Literatu re;, chaired the Committee on Ecumenical Affairs of the Minneapolis Area Synod, E.L.C.A., 1991-95, and was a member of the NC synod's committee (1995-); co-chaired the MN Council of Churches Muslim-Christian Relations Committee, 1990-95; served since 1997 on the E.L.C.A. Division for Global Mission Board; and has been appointed to the Lutheran-African Methodist Episcopal Dialogue. She has also served on the editorial board of dialog. She holds a B.A. from Augustana College, Rock Is., IL; an M.A. from the University of Chicago; and a Ph.D. in religious studies (1987) from the University of Pittsburgh (with the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). Her articles have appeared in academic journals and edited volumes, as have several scholarly reviews and editorials. She has made over thirty major scholarly presentations in North and South America and the Middle East.