>Dear Ottfried,
>
>The CFP described Judaism as one of the "three most apocalyptic religions."
>It is not at all apparent from the CFP that the conference was interested
>in apocalyptic themes as they developed within Judaism. There certainly
>were apocalyptic movements within Judaism, but none of them became the main
>stream, as the CFP seems to suggest. From a scholarly perspective, a
>presupposition is dangerous because it tends to be accepted without
>argument, when it may actually turn out to be false. I suggest that the
>wording of the CFP creates just such a presupposition which I believe is
>demonstrably false. I confess to poor scholarship in my assumption as to
>the cause.
Dear Laurie,
I myself am no expert for the problem in question, but even from my frog's
perspective I know Prof. Landes and his scholarship well enough to be sure
that there is little to be feared and usually much to be learned from his
presuppositions, which does not mean that one shouldn't happily disagree
with him where it seems necessary. He will no less happily disagree with
himself if told convincingly, or if he finds out by himself, why it should
be necessary. In the given case, notwithstanding my lack of expertise, I
would say that you yourself have pointed out with sufficient clarity that
the term Judaism comprises a multiplicity of diachronically distinct and
also of synchronically divergent or conflicting Judaisms. For this same
reason it seems unpromising to me to ask whether a given movement was or is
"the mainstream" or was or is not.
>
>My irritation stems from participation in the Medieval Studies Program at
>the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) and the Medieval and
>Renaissance forum here at NYU. Unlike your list, which defines its area of
>interest as European, the UTK and NYU programs purport to include the
>medieval period generally. At the UTK Medieval Studies Program, only one
>evening each semester was devoted to the Muslim world. My area of interest
>is medieval Judaeo-Arabic philosophy. When I asked why more time was not
>devoted to the area south and east of the Mediterranean, I was told there
>was "no interest." [The topic for the program one semester was "Saints and
>Sinners." The Professor of Islamic Studies was asked to speak on saints in
>Islam without bothering to ask whether Islam had such a concept. (A sufi is
>hardly comparable to a Roman Catholic saint.)]
>
>In my limited experience, there seems to be a gulf between scholars of
>European Medieval Studies and Islamic Medieval Studies that has persisted
>even after the academy in the West had identified Eurocentrism as one of
>its problems. [My attempts to involve the Near Eastern Studies Department
>here at NYU in the medieval studies forum have not been successful,
>either.] The problem goes far beyond parochial sensitivities, and I am very
>sorry that I worded my original objection in a way that dragged the ensuing
>discussion in that direction.
It seems to me that most of us are aware of the fact and many share your
irritation about it that medieval studies with their traditionally
predominant focus on (West-) European and Christian middle ages have
problems to get relations to Judaic and Islamic (and other) cultures into
the right perspective. In my own more narrow field of interest, Dante
studies, the problem with regard to Islamic culture has been pointed out and
discussed repeatedly (and often polemically) since the beginning of our
century (one of the noteworthy dates was M. Asi/n Palacios book _La
escatologi/a musulmana en la Divina Comedia_, 1919), and a lot certainly
remains still to be done. But what has been reached in the meantime seems to
have been reached rather by good scholarship moving into the right direction
than by meta-discussions where the conflicting parties investigated each
other's ideological barriers, although discussions of this kind may be good
from time to time to stir things up and to give the good scholarship new
ideas where to move.
Otfried
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Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin
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Homepage for Dante Studies:
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ORB Dante Alighieri - A Guide to Online Resources:
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