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Because scripture represents the direct word of God, it is the most sacred source for authority in the scriptural monotheisms. Scripture is conveyed to humanity through extraordinary individuals known as prophets. But if the purported prophet is a false prophet, then the conveyed message is false, resulting in the collapse of the structure upon which religious authority rests. This problem was recognized in the Hebrew Bible, and accusations of flawed prophecy and deceitful prophets figure prominently in relations between the scriptural monotheisms. Jews do not accept the authenticity of Jesus' role as messiah (and prophet) in the NT, and Jews and Christians do not accept the authenticity of Muhammad's role as prophet in the Qur'an. But the rejection is unidirectional. As a rule, established religions cannot accept new prophets, while new religions accept the prophets that lived before, though with certain qualifications. Each of the three classic scriptural monotheisms also declares an "end" to prophecy after the canonization of its scripture. Yet despite these deadlines, each acknowledges that God could nevertheless send another prophet, leaving open the wild card for new prophecy, new revelation, and even new religion; within each of the classic scriptural monotheisms, individuals arose after the canonization of scripture who were deemed by many to be prophets or something "like" prophets. This essay presents a preliminary phenomenology of prophethood, around which much of the religious polemics between the scriptural monotheisms are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deccan in the first half of the second millennium is marked by political and religious ferment. The Cōḻas, Gaṅgas, Rāṣṭrakūṭas, and Cāḷukyas are contesting its mundane territory, while the Śaivas, Jainas, and Vaiṣṇavas are contesting its spiritual geography. Unlike the interactions of the earthly rulers which spill real blood, the bloodshed of the spiritual gurus is merely metaphorical. But, the animosity driving their interactions is no less intense, for survival is at stake for them just as it is for their secular counterparts. In this essay, I explore the Jaina point of view in sectarian contestations between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries through the texts of three Kannada authors: Dharmāṁṛtam of Nayasēna (1112CE), Samayaparīkṣe of Brahmaśiva (c.1200CE), and Dharmaparīkṣe of Vṛttavilāsa (c.1360CE). My objective is to identify the sectarian 'other' that these authors address, dispute with and vilify, and to explore the changing nature of this sectarian 'other' and the shifting attitudes of these authors towards their opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the polemical exchange between the 19th-century Ottoman scholar Harputlu İshak Hoca (d. 1892) and the protestant missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander (d. 1865). By examining the historical context surrounding their controversy, this research sheds light on the interaction between the Ottoman state and British and American missionaries, particularly during the expansion of missionary activities in Anatolia. This paper also explores the responses of the Ottoman authorities to the missionary printing activities and the impact of the Church Missionary Society's work on societal and governmental levels. Furthermore, it provides an analysis of Pfander's Mizan ul-haqq (The Balance of Truth) and Harputlu's Şemsü'l-hakîkat (The Sun of Truth) and Ziyâü'l-kulûb (The Light of Hearts), portraying them as not only engaging in interreligious polemics but also as creators of textual products that reflect the complex historical realities of their time. This research underscores the Ottoman scholars' close attention and prompt responses to missionary literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay primarily consists of an interpretation of The Anti-Christ, arguably Nietzsche's most abrasive and overall least appreciated book. By treating this late work as what it in fact is, on the other hand, namely, the culmination of Nietzsche's lifelong polemic against Christianity and the source of many of his most explicit and revealing pronouncements on what a "revaluation of all values" ultimately means, this essay argues that this work presents us not only with the philosopher's definitive position on Christianity, but with the real meaning of his thought as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though women and questions of gender difference are not a core issue in medieval Eastern Christian–Muslim polemic, there are numerous arguments that go back and forth between Muslims and Christians that revolve around women. In the large corpus of polemical texts from the Middle East between the 8th and the 13th centuries, it can be noted that criticism of the other religion involves pointing out illogicalities and absurdities in each other's doctrines and rituals. Carefully constructed arguments against the claim to Divine endorsement of the faith of the other party are frequently interlaced with criticism of their alleged immoral behavior. Although women feature mostly in the emotive sections of the polemical compositions, there are also reasoned debates about the issue of gender equality in the eyes of God. The discussion of these texts here brings out a range of diverse ideas about women that function primarily as sources for subsidiary arguments against the religious other. At the same time, this study reveals that these arguments were not invented ad hoc. They show the interconnectedness of works within a corpus of polemical texts that spans five centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong case can be made that the concept of naskh, "abrogation" or "annulment", was the most potent weapon in the arsenal of Muslim polemicists seeking to convert Jews (Burton's Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is highly informative but deals almost exclusively with naskh in its internal Islamic contexts, e.g., hermeneutics and legal theory). Naskh did not necessarily involve any rejection of Jewish scripture or tradition as fraudulent or corrupt. It rested on the simple premise, explicitly confirmed by the Qur'an, that the deity may alter or replace His legislation over the course of time. In the first part of this paper, I will briefly review the topic, adding some texts and observations that, to the best of my knowledge, have not appeared in the academic literature (comprehensively surveyed in Adang's Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, 1996; also in Adang and Schmidtke's Polemics (Muslim-Jewish) in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 2010). The bulk of this paper will consist of a fairly detailed summary of an unpublished tract on naskh written by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī (RD) (1247–1318), himself a Jewish convert to Islam and a monumental politician, cultural broker, historian, and author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article promotes the theorizing of myth in ways that facilitate comparison and re-description of data within Biblical Studies. After addressing background categorical issues within Religious Studies and Biblical Studies, I chart the old model of contrasting Bible as Truth with myth, including Eusebius's antique articulation as well as Romantic notions of myth. Challenging outmoded theories, I identify scholarship that works towards rectification of the category myth, with the aim of bolstering scholarly conversations beyond disciplinary boundaries. Finally, the article suggests rectification of multiple Biblical Studies categories related to myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have made contesting claims about the nature and scale of works on religions by Muslim scholars before modern times. The present paper explores various primary and secondary sources, especially the classical bibliographical indexes that the scholarly tradition under scrutiny itself produced, and classifies these works into three types: (a) polemics, (b) works that present authentic knowledge about various faith traditions or introduce methodological novelties but carry some degree of apologetic undertone, and (c) descriptive writings on religions which resemble the modern-day academic study of religion. Based on these distinctions and an assessment of the number of works in each type, the paper maintains that a sprouting tradition of descriptive studies of religions existed in the pre-modern Muslim societies, which introduced certain methodical novelties such as comparative method, historiography, and, last but not least, textual criticism, which seems to have heralded the modern biblical studies in some respects. However, this tradition could not mature into a full-fledged discipline at par with many other branches of knowledge that flourished in the heyday of Muslim civilization. These findings imply that the descriptive study of religions other than one’s own is not necessarily a modern Western phenomenon. It can take root in multiple cultural settings.

This article examines the relationship between the practice and theory of medicine and Buddhism in premodern Tibet. It considers a polemical text composed by the 16th−17th-century Tibetan physician and tantric Buddhist expert Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, intending to prove the Buddhist canonical status of the Four Medical Tantras, the foundational text of the Tibetan medical tradition. While presenting and analyzing Sokdokpa’s polemical writing in the context of the broader debate over the Buddhist pedigree of the Four Tantras that took place during his time, this discussion situates Sokdokpa’s reflections on the topic in terms of his broader career as both a practicing physician and a tantric Buddhist ritual and contemplative specialist. It suggests that by virtue of Sokdokpa’s tightly interwoven activities in the spheres of medicine and Buddhism, his contribution to this debate gives voice to a sensibility in which empiricist, historicist, and Buddhist ritual and contemplative inflections intermingle in ways that resist easy disentanglement and classification. In this it argues that Sokdokpa’s reflections form an important counterpoint to the perspectives considered thus far in the scholarly study of this debate. It also questions if Sokdokpa’s style of argumentation might call for a recalibration of how scholars currently construe the roles of tantric Buddhist practice in the appeal by premodern Tibetan physicians to critical and probative criteria.

According to Islamic religious teachings, some Jews confirmed the authenticity of Muhammad’s prophethood and joined him. Most Jews, however, are condemned for both rejecting the Prophet and failing to live up to their own religious imperatives. Medieval polemics tended to be harsh and belligerent, but while Muslims and Christians produced polemics under the protection and encouragement of their own religious and political authorities, Jews lived everywhere as minority communities and therefore lacked such protection. In order to maintain their own sense of dignity Jews polemicized as well, but they had to be subtle in argument. One form of polemic produced by Jews and other subalterns is “counter-history,” which retells well-known narratives in a manner that questions or undermines their message. One such counter-history is an ancient Jewish re-telling of the traditional Muslim narrative of divine revelation.

This article focuses on the controversy and theological polemics advanced by the Jewish-Karaite movement against one of the central concepts of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism—the Oral Torah and the legitimacy of its transmission ("Chain of Tradition"). This process passed through a series of formative stages of Karaism: from radical scripturalism fundamentally rejecting any transmitted tradition to the gradual development of alternative "authentic" Chain of Tradition, adjusting its principles to vital social and intellectual needs. This case of intra-confessional Judaic debate is presented here in the wider context of comparative religious phenomena. In fact, this paradigm present in different forms in the other Abrahamic religions can be viewed as a search for balance between the oral and written traditions. In spite of numerous differences between religions, this paradigm explains to some extent the similarity in arguments of the intra-confessional polemics in Abrahamic religions, as well as the similarity in the argumentation of Muslim, Christian, and Karaite polemicists against the Talmud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Maimonides' explanation of the Bible's rationale behind the ritual sacrifices, namely to help wean the Jews away from idolatrous rites. After clearly elucidating Maimonides' stance on the topic, this essay examines his view from different angles with various possible precedents in earlier rabbinic literature for such an understanding. The essay also shows why various other Jewish commentators objected to Maimonides' understanding and how Maimonides might respond to those critiques. Additionally, this essay also situates Maimonides' view on sacrifices within his broader worldview of the Bible's commandments in general as serving as a counterweight to idolatrous rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have made contesting claims about the nature and scale of works on religions by Muslim scholars before modern times. The present paper explores various primary and secondary sources, especially the classical bibliographical indexes that the scholarly tradition under scrutiny itself produced, and classifies these works into three types: (a) polemics, (b) works that present authentic knowledge about various faith traditions or introduce methodological novelties but carry some degree of apologetic undertone, and (c) descriptive writings on religions which resemble the modern-day academic study of religion. Based on these distinctions and an assessment of the number of works in each type, the paper maintains that a sprouting tradition of descriptive studies of religions existed in the pre-modern Muslim societies, which introduced certain methodical novelties such as comparative method, historiography, and, last but not least, textual criticism, which seems to have heralded the modern biblical studies in some respects. However, this tradition could not mature into a full-fledged discipline at par with many other branches of knowledge that flourished in the heyday of Muslim civilization. These findings imply that the descriptive study of religions other than one's own is not necessarily a modern Western phenomenon. It can take root in multiple cultural settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In western public discourse, as well as in parts of academia, Sufism and Salafism are sometimes portrayed as arch enemies in Islam. However, so far, very few studies have analyzed in detail the polemics between Sufis and Salafis in a western setting. This article tries to fill this gap by providing a snapshot of the critique of Salafism by the Sufi Nāẓimiyya order, as well as the response from the British Salafi spectrum. It will argue that although both protagonists would perceive themselves in the same way as outlined above, in fact both groups are influenced by each other with regard to the benchmark of what constitutes "authentic Islam", as well as the ways in which arguments are portrayed as legitimately grounded in Islamic thought. These insights may help in better understanding the complexities of contemporary intra-Muslim debates and representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between the practice and theory of medicine and Buddhism in premodern Tibet. It considers a polemical text composed by the 16th–17th-century Tibetan physician and tantric Buddhist expert Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, intending to prove the Buddhist canonical status of the Four Medical Tantras, the foundational text of the Tibetan medical tradition. While presenting and analyzing Sokdokpa's polemical writing in the context of the broader debate over the Buddhist pedigree of the Four Tantras that took place during his time, this discussion situates Sokdokpa's reflections on the topic in terms of his broader career as both a practicing physician and a tantric Buddhist ritual and contemplative specialist. It suggests that by virtue of Sokdokpa's tightly interwoven activities in the spheres of medicine and Buddhism, his contribution to this debate gives voice to a sensibility in which empiricist, historicist, and Buddhist ritual and contemplative inflections intermingle in ways that resist easy disentanglement and classification. In this it argues that Sokdokpa's reflections form an important counterpoint to the perspectives considered thus far in the scholarly study of this debate. It also questions if Sokdokpa's style of argumentation might call for a recalibration of how scholars currently construe the roles of tantric Buddhist practice in the appeal by premodern Tibetan physicians to critical and probative criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Islamic religious teachings, some Jews confirmed the authenticity of Muhammad's prophethood and joined him. Most Jews, however, are condemned for both rejecting the Prophet and failing to live up to their own religious imperatives. Medieval polemics tended to be harsh and belligerent, but while Muslims and Christians produced polemics under the protection and encouragement of their own religious and political authorities, Jews lived everywhere as minority communities and therefore lacked such protection. In order to maintain their own sense of dignity Jews polemicized as well, but they had to be subtle in argument. One form of polemic produced by Jews and other subalterns is "counter-history," which retells well-known narratives in a manner that questions or undermines their message. One such counter-history is an ancient Jewish re-telling of the traditional Muslim narrative of divine revelation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]