̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Judaism

New, handwritten Maimonides texts discovered at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

sjr81 — Thu, 11 May 2023 15:41:27 +0000

900-year-old paper fragment verified as the handwriting of legendary philosopher Maimonides.

Discarded History exhibition lifts the lid on 1,000 years of medieval history

sjr81 — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 06:07:10 +0000

Discarded History: ̽��ֱ��Genizah of Medieval Cairo opens to the public on April 27 and provides a unique and unparalleled window into the daily life of men, women and children at the centre of a thriving city over the course of a millennium.

From the 9th to the 19th century, the Jewish community of Fustat (Old Cairo) deposited more than 200,000 unwanted writings in a purpose-built storeroom in the Ben Ezra synagogue. This sacred storeroom was called the Genizah. A Genizah was a safe place to store away any old or unusable text that, because it contained the name of God, was considered too holy to simply throw out.

But when the room was opened in the late 19th century, alongside the expected Bibles, prayer books and works of Jewish law – scholars discovered the documents and detritus of everyday life: shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, a 1,000-year-old page of child’s doodles and alphabets, Arabic fables, works of Muslim philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters and accounts. Practically every kind of written text produced by the Jewish communities of the Near East throughout the Middle Ages had been preserved in that sacred storeroom.

Dr Ben Outhwaite, Head of the Genizah Research Unit and co-curator of the exhibition, said: “This colossal haul of writings reveals an intimate portrait of life in a Jewish community that was international in outlook, multicultural in make-up and devout to its core; a community concerned with the very things to which humanity has looked for much of its existence: love, sex and marriage, money and business, and ultimately death.

“ ̽��ֱ��Genizah collection is undeniably one of the greatest treasures among the world-class collections at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. We have translated most of these texts into English for the first time – and most are also going on display for the first time, too. With Discarded History we hope to make this medieval society accessible and recognisable to a modern audience.”

Among the highlights going on display in Cambridge are the earliest known example of a Jewish engagement deed (Shtar Shiddukhin, from 1119), showing the complex legal relations that existed around marriage, the oldest-dated medieval Hebrew manuscript (a Bible from 9th century Iran) and an 11th century pre-nuptial agreement where the groom, Toviyya – who clearly had a bad reputation – was forced to make a series of promises about his future behaviour.

In the presence of witnesses, he declares that he will avoid mixing with the wrong sort, for the purposes of ‘eating, drinking or anything else’. He also states that he will not spend one night away from Faiza, unless she wants him to, and that he will not buy himself a slave girl, unless Faiza agrees.

̽��ֱ��existence of the Cairo Genizah was first brought to the attention of Western scholars by the fearless and intrepid travellers Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson in 1896. ̽��ֱ��twin sisters, devout Presbyterians who had inherited a great fortune, returned to Cambridge from a research trip to Egypt and Palestine. They brought with them a treasure lost for a thousand years: a page from the original Hebrew book of Ben Sira, accumulated along with thousands of other documents in the Ben Ezra Synagogue.

Cambridge lecturer Solomon Schechter was so excited by the sisters’ remarkable discovery that he raised the money to travel to Old Cairo to see for himself what the Genizah held – although not before swearing the twins to secrecy about the nature of their discovery, lest a rival scholar from Oxford be alerted to their existence.

Upon arrival in Cairo, the Chief Rabbi of Egypt gave Schechter permission to take whatever he liked. Schechter declared that he ‘liked all’, and shipped almost 200,000 manuscripts back to Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��material that arrived in Cambridge, packed in wooden crates, dates from a period when 90 per cent of the world’s Jews lived in Islamic lands. ̽��ֱ��broadly tolerant regime under which they lived contrasted with the usually harsher treatment meted out to Jews in Western Europe. ̽��ֱ��documents paint a picture of economic stability and social growth. Cheques for goods ranging from wax candles to lemon sherbet pay testament to the variety and richness of the 200,000 documents in Cambridge’s possession – almost all of which have been conserved to avoid any further damage to the priceless collection.

“Women and children are invisible in most archives – especially those from medieval times,” added Outhwaite. “But through our collections, myriad individual voices can be heard through children’s copy books, prenuptial agreements and books of magic spells.

“A broad brush picture of the medieval Middle East as a crucible of cruel oppression or, conversely, an interfaith utopia does not do justice to the eye-level history recorded in these sources. Life, for the culturally rich and socially conscious citizens of the medieval Middle East, was more complicated, sophisticated and interesting than that.

“ ̽��ֱ��Cairo Genizah speaks vividly of the community’s links to other lands and other faiths. Its fragile contents, brown with age when Schechter acquired them, give us a picture of life that includes piracy and human trafficking to the intimate drama of domestic life. We can read about ancient cures for headaches and see school teachers complain bitterly about children’s unruly behaviour, just as they do today. It’s this richness that makes the Genizah unique.”

Discarded History: ̽��ֱ��Genizah of Medieval Cairo opens to the public on April 27, 2017 and runs until October 28, 2017. Entry is free.

Treasures from the world’s largest and most important collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts – chronicling 1,000 years of history in Old Cairo – have gone on display in Cambridge today for a six-month-long exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Myriad individual voices can be heard through children’s copy books, prenuptial agreements and books of magic spells.

Ben Outhwaite

A Brush With History

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Cambridge lecturer Solomon Schechter among thousands of Genizah fragments in his office after their transportation from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo.

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Lines of Thought: Communicating Faith

sjr81 — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:43:49 +0000

As part of its 600th celebrations, the ̽��ֱ�� Library has made a series of six films – one for each of the six themes explored in Lines of Thought – with the latest film: Communicating Faith taking a close look at some iconic religious treasures across all the major faiths including Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

̽��ֱ��oldest item in Communicating Faith is a text for prayer, the so-called Nash Papyrus. Dating from the second century before Christ, the fragments on display in Cambridge contain the Ten Commandments and until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was the oldest surviving manuscript of any part of the Hebrew Bible.

However, one of the oldest and perhaps the most valuable items in the Library’s collections – and perhaps one of the stars of Lines of Thought – is a recovered text called the Codex Zacynthius.

Codex Zacynthius is a parchment book where the leaves have been scraped and rewritten (a palimpsest). What they rewrote was an 11th or 12th century text from the gospels, but underneath it is a very early text of the gospel of St Luke. This very early undertext was first deciphered in the 19th century. It’s now possible, using modern imaging techniques, to get a much more precise image of what this book would have looked like when it was written in the 6th or 7th century. Work will continue on the codex when the exhibition comes to an end in September.

̽��ֱ��translation of religious texts has always been central to the transmission of faith across barriers of religion and culture, but could be a perilous activity. William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament ultimately cost him his life. His pioneering translation survived, however. In 1611, the team of Cambridge scholars and theologians tasked with helping to prepare the text of the authoritative King James Bible drew heavily on Tyndale’s work.

Will Hale, who curated Communicating Faith, said: “Our copy of Tyndale’s New Testament was printed in Antwerp in 1534. Translating the Bible was an act of heresy at the time according to the mainstream church who thought the one true translation was the Vulgate into Latin and only the church had the right to interpret it to the people. Tyndale felt that even the ploughboys at the plough should be able to recite scripture in their own language. And of course, for his pains, he was strangled and burnt as a heretic two years after this translation was published.

“Today’s academics are exploiting digital technology to unearth new secrets from documents penned in antiquity. Cutting-edge multispectral imaging allows us to read texts erased from a seventh-century manuscript of the Gospel of Saint Luke, whilst dispersed collections of fragments of manuscripts from a Cairo synagogue are being painstakingly reunited in the digital realm.”

Some of the world’s most important religious texts are currently on display in Cambridge as part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s 600th anniversary exhibition – Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World.

For his pains, Tyndale was strangled and burnt as a heretic two years after this translation was published.

Will Hale

Lines of Thought: Communicating Faith

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Detail from the Codex Zacynthius

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Solomon Schechter (1847-1915): a Jewish polymath with a gift for friendship

amb206 — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 09:49:12 +0000

Solomon Schechter was instantly recognisable in 1890s Cambridge. He was tall and untidily dressed, and he had an unruly red beard that matched his fiery personality. According to his friends, he seldom wore socks that matched in colour. People and conversations, Jewish history and books, were what mattered most to him.

In 1890 Schechter, a Romanian-born rabbi, became Lecturer in Talmudics at Cambridge. Together with his wife Mathilde he entertained a wide circle of people of different faiths. His Cambridge friends included the Presbyterian twin sisters, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, co-founders of Westminster College, William Robertson Smith of Christ’s, J Rendel Harris of Clare, and Charles Taylor of St John’s.

His closest friend was the reclusive James Frazer of Trinity, author of ̽��ֱ��Golden Bough, a monumental comparative study of folklore, magic and religion, who proof-read Schechter’s essays and with whom Schechter liked to take long walks.

To mark the centenary of Schechter’s death, scholars are looking afresh at his remarkable life and afterlife - in particular at the contribution to scholarship made by a man with an omnivorous hunger for learning that drove him from the traditional Jewish Eastern-European world into which he was born to Vienna, Berlin, London, Cambridge and finally New York.

When he collapsed (and later died) after giving a lecture on Jewish philanthropy, his wife recounted that he asked for a book to read, protesting that “I can’t just lie down here doing nothing”.

A conference in Cambridge on Sunday, November 22, will bring together scholars from the USA, the UK, Europe and Israel to examine many aspects of Schechter’s life – from his work on ancient, medieval and modern Jewish history to his close relationships with his Cambridge contemporaries.

“Solomon Schechter was only the second Jew to be appointed to a teaching position at Cambridge. He was the quintessential absent-minded but brilliant scholar,” says Dr Theodor Dunkelgrün of CRASSH and St John’s College, who is convening the conference.

“He possessed a phenomenal intellect and was passionately interested not just in Jewish theology and history generally, but in all manner of literary, social, and cultural issues, including the role of women in Judaism, in ways that were way ahead of his time. A dazzling intermediary between rabbinic and academic worlds, he wrote beautiful, pioneering essays for an appreciative Victorian readership.”

It was a meeting with two of his Cambridge friends that won Schechter a place in history. In May 1896, Schechter was walking along King’s Parade when he met Agnes Lewis who, with her sister Margaret Gibson, had recently returned from Cairo where they had purchased a bundle of interesting documents. Lewis and Gibson, whose remarkable lives are vividly documented in Janet Soskice’s Sisters of Sinai, were self-taught scholars who had learnt Syriac in order to be able to read the earliest known versions of the Christian gospels.

Among the documents that Lewis and Gibson had acquired from a dealer in Cairo was a grubby scrap of paper which looked, in Gibson’s words “as if a grocer had used it for something greasy”. Schechter identified this fragment as part of a medieval copy of a hitherto unknown Hebrew original of the apocryphal book known as Ecclesiasticus to Christians and the Wisdom of Ben Sira to Jews. ̽��ֱ��incredible discovery suggested to him the possibility that there might well be more where it came from.

In accordance with Jewish law, no document containing the Holy Name may be destroyed. Jewish communities collect old texts beyond use in a so-called Geniza, a tomb for texts. ̽��ֱ��precious fragment of text that had, according to Gibson, made Schechter’s eyes glitter with excitement came from such a Geniza, a vast repository of documents stored, in haphazard fashion, in the oldest of Cairo’s synagogues, the Ben Ezra.

̽��ֱ��discovery and importance for medieval history of this unique collection is told in riveting detail by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole’s book Sacred Trash and in Stefan Reif’s A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo.

Sponsored by his friend Professor Charles Taylor, Master of St John’s College, Schechter travelled from Cambridge to Cairo, where, after winning the trust of the chief rabbi, he entered a windowless room that contained several hundreds of thousands of documents and manuscripts accrued, layer by dusty layer over a period of nearly a thousand years.

“A battlefield of books” is how Schechter described the chaos of handwritten manuscripts mingled with later printed text. Extraordinary as it may now seem, the chief rabbi authorised Schechter to take as much as he liked to deposit in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Schechter famously commented that he liked it all.

After spending a month trying to separate out the early material which mattered to him most, Schechter packed a “whole mass of rugged, jumbled, dirty stuff into huge sacks” which were dispatched to Cambridge. A black-and-white photograph reproduced in Sisters of Sinai shows Schechter sitting in a room in the old ̽��ֱ�� Library surrounded by boxes brimming over with documents that range from love letters and children’s doodles to hymns and religious texts.

Today these 193,000 manuscript fragments make up the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection in the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library – a treasure trove that an ambitious digitisation project has recently made accessible to scholars worldwide.

Schechter is not surprisingly best remembered for his contribution to the preservation of an archive that offers a unique window onto daily life of the medieval Jewish past in the Islamic world. But his pioneering study of the Geniza was just one strand in a career that took him from the Hassidic milieu of the small Romanian town where he was born to the rarefied world of late-Victorian Cambridge, and eventually to America.

In 1902, Schechter left Cambridge to take up the chancellorship of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, where he helped shape a generation of scholars and communal leaders and became the unintentional founder of the movement now known as Conservative Judaism.

Dunkelgrün says: “Schechter’s name will always, and justly, be associated with the Geniza, but he was much more than a Geniza scholar – he was a polymath who cared passionately for the entirety of the Jewish tradition, mystical and rational, from antiquity to his own time and beyond, towards the future. He paired this panoramic vision both with the traditional rabbinical education he received at home, in Lemberg and in Vienna, and with the philological skills he acquired in Berlin to produce critical editions of several major Rabbinic texts.”

A postdoctoral research fellow at CRASSH, Dunkelgrün is contributing to a European Research Council-funded project on ̽��ֱ��Bible and Antiquity in 19^th-century culture. He insists that Schechter’s work in Cambridge over a period of 20 years was made possible in large part because of the fascination of Victorian England, and Cambridge in particular, for biblical antiquity.

“Schechter cut an exotic figure, but one that was strangely at home in academic circles already convinced about the importance of rabbinic studies for the early history of Christianity. Schechter was the second in a line of six teachers of Rabbinics at Cambridge, the last of whom was Professor Nicholas de Lange, now formally retired from his post. We hope very much that this conference will draw attention not only to Schechter but also to this unique and precious tradition of Cambridge scholarship, and the importance of keeping it alive.”

Attendance at Sunday’s conference, Solomon Schechter’s Life and Legacy, is free of charge. Particulars and a link to registration may be found here: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26067/

Inset images: Solomon Schechter, before his death in 1915 (Wikimedia Commons); Solomon Schechter at work in the old ̽��ֱ�� Library (Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library).

̽��ֱ��Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter is best remembered for his work on the Cairo Geniza. A conference this Sunday will explore the wider impact of a man with an unquenchable thirst for learning.

A dazzling intermediary between rabbinic and academic worlds, he wrote beautiful, pioneering essays for an appreciative Victorian readership

Theodor Dunkelgrün

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Solomon Schechter at work in the old ̽��ֱ�� Library

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Inter-faith summer schools train future leaders in art of “intelligent disagreement”

bjb42 — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:38:06 +0000

Each summer, the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, which is based at the ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Divinity, brings together an international group of students from Islamic, Christian and Jewish backgrounds, for a three-week programme of immersion in inter-faith education.

̽��ֱ��aim is to lay the ground for mutual understanding and friendship between them, while nevertheless acknowledging that the three “Abrahamic” religions, as they are known, are far from the same.

̽��ֱ��programme therefore tries to scrutinise what coexistence means in practice, by looking at what models each of the three religions offers the other for peaceful and serious engagement. Ultimately, the hope is that the participants will learn to turn their differences into fruitful faith leadership in a much wider sense as their careers progress.

“ ̽��ֱ��aim is to learn to live well with disagreement, or to disagree intelligently,” Dr Mike Higton, academic co-director with the programme, said. “Coming to an agreement on theology, politics or any other subject is not our aim, nor is the creation of some sort of neutral middle ground.”

“What we can do is explore each tradition, and look for the forms of coexistence and friendship that are possible between traditions that remain distinct and different.”

Over the course of the three weeks, the participants undertake an academic programme based at Madingley Hall, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. They not only study, but also live and dine together, according to the traditional Cambridge college model.

̽��ֱ��programme itself features lectures from academics and a range of guest speakers, including Professor David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge; the renowned Muslim scholar, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, and Middle East peacemaker Yehezkel Landau.

There are also sessions devoted to the practice of scriptural reasoning, in which the participants meet to read passages of their respective sacred texts, discuss the content, and explain how their various traditions have been shaped by them. Through this, they gain a deeper understanding of both their own sacred texts and those of others, as well as their possible interpretations.

̽��ֱ��programme also involves visits to religious communities around the UK including a weekend in Birmingham, and time in London’s East End.

This year’s cohort involves representatives from Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Tanzania, the UAE, Oman, Israel, the USA, France, Italy, Germany and the UK.

Emerging religious leaders from around the world have arrived in Cambridge for a programme which aims to build understanding between faiths and teach them to “live well with disagreement”.

We aim to explore each tradition, and look for the forms of coexistence and friendship that are possible between traditions that remain distinct and different.

Mike Higton

Cambridge Inter-faith Programme.

Summer school participants during a tour of the ̽��ֱ��.

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Literature and Religion in Cheltenham

bjb42 — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:12:26 +0000

How do three novelists deal with faith? How do you compare translating the Bible and translating the Qur'an? These were leading questions at two well-attended sessions of ̽��ֱ��Times Cheltenham Literature Festival earlier this week. They were the beginning of Pathways, a series running through the week, which include Rabbi Lionel Blue and Abbot Christopher Jamieson on being contemplative, Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks and Jim Al-Khalili on religion and science, Mary Warnock, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Lord Harries on religion and politics, a talk on the Hajj by Venetia Porter, and Simon Sebag Montefiore on Jerusalem.

̽��ֱ��sessions were conceived and sponsored by one of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��'s newest initiatives, the Cambridge Coexist Programme. This is a collaboration between the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and the Coexist Foundation (www.coexistfoundation.net), with an array of projects on leadership, religious literacy, grassroots inter-faith work, art, film and gardens. It is directed by Michael Wakelin, former head of religious broadcasting at the BBC.

"Pathways" is the first of its projects to launch, and it began with Pamela Armstrong chairing a discussion with the novelists Anne Rice, Natasha Solomons and Tahmima Anam. Rice, who has sold over 100 million books, gave a graphic account of her Roman Catholic upbringing, loss of faith as a teenager, re-entry into Catholicism in 1998 and then, last year, her well-publicized departure from organized religion - though not from faith in Jesus. A fascination with vampires, werewolves and angels (what she called 'speculative, supernatural fiction') has been her way of exploring questions of life and death. 'I'm still in a state of turmoil', she said, 'But yes, I trust we are in the hands of a loving God.'

By contrast, Natasha Solomons ( ̽��ֱ��Novel in the Viola) is definitely on the outside looking in at those who practice the religious side of her Judaism. But she described her irresistible attraction to the subject: 'In each of my novels I say to myself I will not write about Judaism, yet it happens again and again and when my characters have faith I am baffled by them'. So she 'writes religiously' but without faith in God.

Tahmima Anam's latest novel, ̽��ֱ��Good Muslim, explores the aftermath in one family of the Bangladeshi War of Independence. 'How do you make a Mullah believable?' she asked. She tries to do so through exploring the conflict between a young man, who becomes a charismatic preacher, and his secular, revolutionary sister. 'Spiritual issues are not confined to those who have faith: even the most areligious person can have a spiritual crisis confronting mortality.' Does she herself believe? - 'I still haven't found a vehicle for my belief or lack of belief.' And the future? - 'I am writing a novel about the end of the world brought about by climate change.'

̽��ֱ��second session in "Pathways", on 'Translating Holy Texts', was a conversation about the Qur'an and the King James Version of the Bible. ̽��ֱ��KJV was represented by Professor Stephen Prickett and the playright David Edgar (whose play on the KJV, 'Written on the Heart' has its premiere with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford at the end of this month), the Qur'an by Leila Aboulela, author of ̽��ֱ��Translator (and more recently of Lyrics Alley). ̽��ֱ��contrast was profound.

̽��ֱ��Christian Bible is a series of translations - first, Hebrew scriptures and Jesus' Aramaic into Greek, and thereafter continually translated, with no sacred language. ̽��ֱ��Bible Society was quoted: 'Not until the Bible is translated into every language on earth will it be fully understood.'

̽��ֱ��Arabic of the Qur'an is inseparable from its revelatory character: it is taken as the wording of God. 'If you move into human translation, it loses its power and strength, it is a faint reflection, more like a commentary', said Aboulela. Pickthall even calls his version ' ̽��ֱ��Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an', not a 'translation'. Yet the richness of meaning is not in doubt - some Sufis speak of twenty-four thousand meanings for every verse.

̽��ֱ��KJV and the Qur'an did come together to some extent under the heading of beauty. Even though the notes of the KJV translators show that 'beauty' was not a criterion they used - they were mainly after accuracy - in fact they wrote wonderfully well, and Edgar and Prickett poured out examples. Aboulela revelled in the rhythms and richness of the Qur'an's language. But the two books converged even more in their oral quality: the KJV process of translation by committee meant that every verse was read aloud for approval, making the auditory dimension intrinsic; and the very word 'Qur'an' means 'recitation', which is how most of the world's Muslims inhabit this text.

̽��ֱ��long drive back to Cambridge gave plenty of time for reflection. Here are three of my thoughts.

First, I found it impossible to place labels on the participants - each escaped the usual categories, though in different ways. Both the religious and the secular appeared in many forms, and the complexity of their interweavings cried out for the rich, nuanced description of a social anthropologist - or a novelist. Second, there was a vigorous combination of open-eyed (often penetrating) critique of the religions together with deep empathy and a recognition of the continuing generativity of the faiths and their classic texts. Third, and following on from the first two, I wondered what contribution such discussions might make to people who pray, study and practice in any of the traditions that had been under consideration. ̽��ֱ��hallmark of the sessions was a combination of acute observation (I particularly liked Natasha Solomon's description of her first Shabbat meal with fellow-Jews at university, and Anne Rice's evocation of an oyster-eating scene in Anna Karenina), imaginative perspective, and question after question. Faith that has engaged with such conversations has been given the chance not only to hold up a mirror to itself but also to be questioned and stretched by very different people and worlds of meaning - this is something that in our pluralist, complexly religious and secular society, we would be wise to encourage. I wonder how the other "Pathways" events will contribute to the debate....

Professor David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, reflects on the first project in an exciting new venture, the Cambridge Coexist Programme.

Faith that has engaged with such conversations has been given the chance not only to hold up a mirror to itself but also to be questioned and stretched by different worlds of meaning.

David Ford

Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme

David Ford

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All in the script

bjb42 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:34:36 +0000

Professor David Ford, who is also Director of the ̽��ֱ��’s Inter-Faith Programme, will give the Pope John Paul II Honorary Lecture today (Tuesday, 5 April). ̽��ֱ��highly prestigious annual lecture, which takes place at the Pontifical ̽��ֱ�� of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), examines interreligious understanding.

Scriptural reasoning brings together members of different religious traditions in small groups to read and discuss extracts from their sacred texts. Professor Ford will argue that the process can function as a bridge between Abrahamic faiths which, without necessarily leading to consensus, can result in mutual understanding and respect.

His lecture will begin by describing the 21^st century as a “kairos” – a particularly propitious moment – for engagement between faiths. Professor Ford himself was brought up as an Anglican in the Church of Ireland in Dublin (placing him in a 3% religious minority) and spent parts of his early academic career working in an inner city Anglican parish in Birmingham, which was both multi-ethnic and multi-faith.

“Scriptural Reasoning has transformed my understanding of both Judaism and Christianity,” he said.

“This is not about becoming clearer regarding any of the faiths – I was much clearer about Judaism and Islam before getting to know so many Jews and Muslims. To plunge into a sea of Talmud and Hadith while trying to interpret a scriptural text is often more bewildering than clarifying. To hear Jews or Muslims arguing among themselves subverts many textbook generalisations.”

̽��ֱ��presentation will advocate Scriptural Reasoning as one way in which it is possible to achieve “wise faith”; an understanding of faith as something which doesn’t necessarily always involve clear assertions or imperatives, but is instead about asking questions and exploring and seeking a relationship with God. This, Professor Ford suggests, has the potential to lead not just a deeper understanding of one’s own faith, but to a broader commitment between Christians, Muslims and Jews to the wider, common good.

“ ̽��ֱ��global inter-faith challenge we face requires institutional creativity, conversation, collaboration and thorough theological work and education – locally, nationally and internationally,” he concludes. “ ̽��ֱ��thinking required for this has, I think, hardly got going. As a catalyst for this I have not found anything as helpful as Scriptural Reasoning.”

̽��ֱ��lecture is a central event of the John Paul II Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, created through a partnership between the Russell Berrie Foundation and the Pontifical ̽��ֱ�� of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). ̽��ֱ��Centre aims to build bridges between Catholic, Jewish and other religious traditions by providing the next generation of religious leaders with a comprehensive understanding of and dedication to inter-faith issues.

Details of the event can be found at https://jp2center.org/, where a full copy of Professor Ford’s lecture will also be published.

̽��ֱ��power of “scriptural reasoning” to transform the way in which different faiths understand one another is to be the subject of a major lecture in Rome, by Cambridge’s Regius Professor of Divinity.

Scriptural Reasoning has transformed my understanding of both Judaism and Christianity.

Professor David Ford

Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme

Scriptural reasoning.

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