{"id":75678,"date":"2019-07-03T10:53:11","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=75678"},"modified":"2019-07-03T10:56:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:56:41","slug":"the-rivers-of-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/07\/the-rivers-of-paradise.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Rivers of Paradise”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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One of my more curious (and fruitful) academic experiences occurred many years ago, when I delivered a paper at a scholarly conference in which I tried to demonstrate a conceptual link between several passages in the Qur\u2019an and certain cosmological notions from ancient Canaanite mythology.<\/p>\n

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The keynote speaker at that conference was\u00a0Professor David Noel Freedman<\/a>\u00a0(1922-2008), who had spent many years at the University of Michigan and who then finished his career in the sunnier weather at the University of California at San Diego.<\/p>\n

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A distinguished scholar in his own right \u2014 prolific author of, among roughly three hundred and thirty other titles,\u00a0The Unity of the Hebrew Bible<\/i>\u00a0(1991),\u00a0Leningrad Codex: A Facsimile Edition<\/i>\u00a0(1998),\u00a0Psalm 119: The Exaltation of Torah<\/i>\u00a0(1999),\u00a0The Nine Commandments<\/i>\u00a0(2000), and\u00a0What are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter?<\/i>\u00a0(2007) \u2014 Professor Freedman was also famed as a scholarly editor. \u00a0For instance, he edited the multi-volume\u00a0Anchor Bible Commentary\u00a0(1956\u20132008), the Eerdmans Critical Commentaries (2000\u20132008),\u00a0The Bible in Its World<\/em> (2000\u20132008), and the\u00a0Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible<\/i>\u00a0(2000).<\/p>\n

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Anyway, before my session began, I noticed that Professor Freedman had taken a seat in the back of the room. \u00a0I was already somewhat nervous about my presentation, since I was venturing into the foreign waters of biblical studies and comparative ancient Semitic religion, and now, seeing David Noel Freedman there and knowing that these foreign waters were his local lake, I was even more<\/em> nervous.<\/p>\n

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As I delivered my paper, Professor Freedman\u2019s brow wrinkled and he seemed to scowl the whole time. \u00a0At the conclusion of the session, he made a beeline for me, looking grim. \u00a0I fully expected him to tell me to stick to my own area from now on, where I would seem less incompetent. \u00a0Instead, he said, without any other introduction, \u201cFor decades, I\u2019ve been looking for someone to do an \u2018Anchor Qur\u2019an Commentary.\u2019 \u00a0I\u2019ve just found him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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To say that I was caught off guard by that would be a huge understatement.<\/p>\n

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I might have more to say later about the idea of an \u201cAnchor Qur\u2019an Commentary,\u201d but it was that encounter with David Noel Freedman that ultimately led to his inviting me to contribute a (very lengthy) chapter on Muhammad to his projected anthology on the founders of the world\u2019s major religious traditions, which eventually appeared as\u00a0The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000). \u00a0Its unifying methodological principle was common attention in all of the included essays to the relevant work of the pioneering German sociological theorist Max Weber (1864-1920). \u00a0<\/span>At the time that the book was published, Mike McClymond, its co-editor, was teaching at Emory University in Atlanta. \u00a0(After a stint at Yale, he took up his current position at Saint Louis University.)<\/p>\n

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It was fun, in this connection, to have some slight contact with the internationally famous (and very controversial, even notorious) Swiss Catholic theologian Hans K\u00fcng<\/a>, who wrote the foreword to the book. \u00a0(I encountered him again later at the Parliament of the World\u2019s Religions in Melbourne, Australia.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it was my involvement in The Rivers of Paradise<\/em>\u00a0that eventuated in Eerdmans publication of my biography, Muhammad: Prophet of God<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> in 2007. \u00a0And, as I\u2019ve noted, that book will shortly appear in Turkish translation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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We never know when a chance encounter will entail, to some degree or other, life-changing consequences. \u00a0Life, as S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard is reported to have said, must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 One of my more curious (and fruitful) academic experiences occurred many years ago, when I delivered a paper at a scholarly conference in which I tried to demonstrate a conceptual link between several passages in the Qur\u2019an and certain cosmological notions from ancient Canaanite mythology. \u00a0 The keynote speaker at that conference was\u00a0Professor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Rivers of Paradise"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    One of my more curious (and fruitful) academic experiences occurred many years ago, when I delivered a paper at a scholarly conference in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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