Love, Sex and Marriage

Dan Cohn-Sherbok

Description

In all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, marriage is part of God's plan for humanity, as illustrated in the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the Koran as well as the religious literature of these three traditions

Sujets

• sexualité
• Sexualité
• Sexualité

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780334051527
• Langue: English

Extrait

Love, Sex and Marriage
Insights from Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Dan Cohn-Sherbok
George D. Chryssides
Dawoud El Alami






© Dan Cohn-Sherbok, George D. Chryssides and Dawoud El Alami 2013
Published in 2013 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
978-0-334-04405-5
Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon




Contents
The Authors
Introduction: The Historical Background
Part 1: Themes
1. Sex Law
2. Marriage
3. Family Life
4. Divorce
Part 2: Trialogue
5. Sex before Marriage
6. Marriage
7. Sex within Marriage
8. Homosexuality
9. Polygamy
10. Intermarriage
11. Abortion
12. Assisted Reproduction and Adoption
13. Family Life
14. Divorce

Glossary
Further Reading




For Kate, Lavinia and Margaret



The Authors
Dan Cohn-Sherbok
My great-grandfathers were immigrants to the United States from Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century. Initially the family lived on the East Side of New York City; one of my great-grandfathers was a kosher butcher, and I have a photograph of him standing in front of his shop. After my maternal grandmother married my grandfather, who worked initially as a cigar-roller, they moved to Denver, Colorado. My mother grew up in a modern Orthodox synagogue, where she was confirmed. My father, who was an orthopaedic surgeon, came to do medical research at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver and met and married my mother. They joined the large Reform Temple, where I had a bar mitzvah and was confirmed. I went to a typical American high school and then studied philosophy at a small all-male liberal arts college, Williams College in Massachusetts. From a young age I wanted to be a rabbi, and I subsequently was a student at the Hebrew Union College, the main American rabbinical seminary for Reform Judaism. During my studies I served as a Reform rabbi at various congregations in the United States. I then was a rabbi in Australia, England and South Africa. I came to realize that the rabbinate was not for me – some time ago I wrote an autobiographical memoir, Not a Job for a Nice Jewish Boy , explaining why. In 1971 I enrolled as a PhD student at Cambridge University, and several years later became a lecturer in theology at the University of Kent. Subsequently I became Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales, where I am now Emeritus Professor. I am also an Honorary Professor at Aberystwyth University and Visiting Professor at St Mary’s University College and York St John University. Over the years I have been particularly interested in interfaith dialogue and have published a number of books dealing with Judaism and other faiths.
George D. Chryssides
I was brought up in the Church of Scotland. The minister in the Glasgow congregation we attended was an evangelical fundamentalist, but although I came to believe in a much more liberal form of Christianity, he generated enthusiasm, inspiring me to train for the ministry in the Church of Scotland. In order to do this I completed philosophy and theology degrees at the University of Glasgow. Having gained a first-class honours in both subjects, I decided to embark on an academic career instead of a church one and went to the University of Oxford, where I completed my doctoral thesis in 1974.
My first teaching post was at Plymouth Polytechnic, later to become the University of Plymouth. Around that time the Open University was starting up, and I became a tutor on its pioneering Religious Quest course. Many of the tutors, myself included, had limited knowledge of other faiths in the late 1970s and had a steep learning curve ahead. The university encouraged taking students on visits, which brought me into contact with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, whom I came to know as people rather than ideas in books. Being in England, I joined a local United Reformed Church and came to serve on its national Other Faiths Committee, where interfaith dialogue was an important interest. My first book, The Path of Buddhism , was the result of some of these conversations and was the first of several single-authored and edited works.
In 1992 I moved to the University of Wolverhampton, becoming Head of Religious Studies in 2001. On taking early retirement in 2008, I joined the University of Birmingham as an honorary research fellow. Having married an Anglican, I subsequently joined the Church of England and currently attend Lichfield Cathedral. I have a son and a daughter, both of whom have long since become adults, and I have two grandchildren.
Dawoud El-Alami
My family are Palestinian but I was brought up in Egypt. I am the youngest of nine and the only one born after 1948. My father studied law at Montpellier in the 1920s but did not practise as a lawyer, devoting himself to managing his property. My parents were keen, however, that I should follow his profession.
My first degree was the Licence en Droit from the University of Cairo in 1978, and I started my career as a lawyer in Egypt. My particular interest was in family law, and in 1986 I commenced my doctoral studies at the University of Glasgow on the marriage contract in the Shari’a and the Personal Status laws of Egypt and Morocco. Over the next few years I worked at the University of Kent on a project analysing marriage and divorce records from a Libyan civil archive, and then in the early 1990s at Oxford University on a project investigating the way in which Arab Muslim communities in the UK apply Islamic family law within the framework of UK law. I was Chair of the Higher Studies Institute during the inaugural year of Al al-Bayt University in Jordan, and then moved to Wales in 1995, where for 16 years I taught Islamic Studies at the University of Wales Lampeter. This was a unique community of staff and students of all faiths, and it is where I met Dan Cohn-Sherbok. After a brief spell as Director of Research at Al Maktoum Institute in Dundee, I briefly took early retirement in 2012, but have now taken up a post as part-time Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen.
My wife is English. We have been married for 26 years and have three grown-up children, the eldest of whom is herself about to set out on the journey of marriage.




Introduction: The Historical Background
Judaism

BCE
1900–1600
Age of the Patriarchs
1250–1300
Exodus from Egypt
1030–930
United Monarchy
930
Division of the Kingdom
722
Destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians
586
Destruction of the Southern Kingdom by the Babylonians
538
Return of the Exiles
450
End of Prophecy
146–400 CE
Roman period
100–200 CE
Mishnaic period
CE
70
Conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans
200
Mishnah compiled
c .200–600
Talmudic period
Sixth century CE
Babylonian Talmud
900–1000
Golden Age of Spain
1096
First Crusade
1230
Establishment of the Inquisition
1492
Expulsion of the Jews from Spain
1700–1800
Rise of Hasidism
1750–1800
Beginning of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment)
c .1850
Reform Judaism founded
1897
First Zionist Congress
c .1905
Modern Orthodoxy Founded
1942–5
Holocaust
1948
Founding of the State of Israel
1967
Six Day War
1973
Yom Kippur War
1982
Israeli advance into Southern Lebanon
1992
Labour Party engages in dialogue with the PLO


Love, sex and marriage are key themes of Scripture at the beginning of the Genesis narrative. According to Genesis 1, God created Adam out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He was then placed in the Garden of Eden. Yet God declared that it was not good for him to be alone, and created Eve out of one of his ribs. Eventually they were expelled from the Garden because they broke God’s law about eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Recognizing they were naked, they covered themselves with garments made of fig leaves. Subsequently they produced two sons.
The biblical narrative continues with an account of the Flood and later with the patriarchal narratives. According to the book of Genesis, Abraham was the first Jew. Living in a polytheistic culture in Babylonia, Abraham was called by God to be his servant and promised that