Hadith, Maskh (Metamorphosis), and Cultural Context: A Study of a Ṣaḥīḥayn Report on the Transformation of Jews into Mice
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2018, Vol 59, Issue 2
Abstract
This article deals with a hadith report about a Jewish community metamorphosed and turned into mice in ancient times, and aims at contributing to studies as to how to evaluate religious texts by taking into consideration the cultural context in which they came into being. Firstly, I attempt to make an assesment of the report both from the point of the classical hadith literature and the cultural/environmental codes of the early period. Then I examine the place of maskh (metamorphosis), as a universal belief and a mode of imagination, in the Islamic thought and describe the cultural atmosphere surrounding the report in question. I also touch upon the criticisms directed against and the comments on this report that has a rather odd yet fascinating content. The positive and negative discourses developed concerning the subject makes one think that there might be a dialogue problem between researchers and the hadith literature. For this reason, I suggest a reevaluation of the approaches towards hadith and its literature, and, in this regard, I offer a way of reading the narratives which were not part and parcel of the apostolic duty of the Prophet and which reflected the socio-cultural beliefs and assents of the time from a wider and more comprehensive perspective and as an original segment of the long human history.
Authors and Affiliations
Suat Koca
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP602667
- DOI 10.1501/Ilhfak_0000001498
- Views 60
- Downloads 0
The Impact of Indian Culture on Ismāʿīlī Khojas in India and Its Reflections in the Ginān Literature
Ginān Literature The Shīʿa population in India is estimated at around forty million; most of them are followers of the Ithnā ʿAsharī and Ismāʿīlī schools. Even though the vast majority of the Shīʿīs in India belong to It...
God and Ultimateness in al-Fārābī
God and Ultimateness in al-Fārābī One of our basic ontological/metaphysical intuitions about God is the idea that God is the ultimate ground and ultimate causal explanation of all reality. However the idea of ultimatenes...
A Critical Overview of Religious Market Theory
The secularization thesis expects the decline of religion as a result of the modernization process. However, with modernization the effect of religion is not diminished in many societies and in some modern societies such...
The Jewish Scholar Sa d b. Manṣūr Ibn Kammūna’s Thoughts on Bashā ir al-nubuwwah
nubuwwah In medieval times, the Middle East region, where the believers of different religions, Judaism Christianity, and Islam, lived together, also prepared a setting for the education and training of scholars actively...
The Problem of the Identity of Jesus as “Son of God” in the New Testament
One of the most important christological epithets for Jesus in the New Testament and in traditional Christianity is “Son of God” (ό υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ). The epithet “Son of God” is seen in the pre-Christ period very commonly...