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Reviewed by:
  • Shared Stories, Rival Tellings: Early Encounters of Jews, Christians, and Muslims by Robert C. Gregg
  • David Bertaina
Robert C. Gregg
Shared Stories, Rival Tellings: Early Encounters of Jews, Christians, and Muslims
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015
Pp. 752. $39.95.

Robert Gregg's hefty book utilizes religious and cultural history to describe rivalries between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the late antique and medieval Mediterranean and Near East. He does this by comparing the religious and artistic interpretations of five sets of biblical figures in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Cain and Abel, Sarah and Hagar, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Jonah, and Mary. Gregg surveys 1) the scriptural text; 2) its religious interpretations; and 3) its artistic interpretations. Gregg's approach necessarily flattens out history for the purposes of comparison, with texts drawn from the first century through the thirteenth century and artwork as late as the sixteenth century.

Gregg analyzes how each tradition received a biblical story. He suggests that historical agency resides with the authors and artists who shaped sacred writings according to their time, place, and need. For Gregg each story merits its [End Page 477] own special status as an original retelling. Gregg's initial chapters (One through Three) examine Genesis 4's account of Cain killing Abel. Jewish pieces (Chapter One: "Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis Rabbah, Philo") filled in the gaps on questions such as divine justice, fratricide, and virtue and vice. Christian authors (Chapter Two) retold the story of Abel as a model of martyrdom and made Cain a symbol of the church's enemies. Muslim accounts (Chapter Three) explored matters such as the legal implications of murder and whether Abel's death was predetermined. Chapters Four through Six examine Sarah and Hagar as rival wives of Abraham. Jewish texts (Chapter Four) emphasized themes like Isaac as a guarantee of God's covenant for Israel, while Christians (Chapter Five) saw in the covenant a promise of eternal life extended to them. Muslim accounts (Chapter Six) embellished the story to justify their worship of God at Mecca, among other stories related to Hagar and Ishmael. Chapters Seven through Nine analyze Joseph being put to the test by Potiphar's wife in Genesis 39. Some Jews (Chapter Seven) questioned whether Joseph was tempted by the encounter, while later works (4 Maccabees, Philo) rejected the notion. The early church fathers (Chapter Eight) agreed by idealizing Joseph as a model of sexual chastity for monastic and priestly life. Muslim portraits (Chapter Nine) of the wife (Zulaykha in Islamic tradition) were used to explore the sexual temptation of men by women, among other insights.

Chapters Ten through Twelve survey Jonah's encounter with the Great Fish and his prophetic status after God spares Nineveh. The Jonah of Jewish lore (Chapter Ten) was transformed from an aggrieved failure into a redeemed prophet. Christians (Chapter Eleven) saw in Jonah's saga in the fish a prototype for Christ's entombment and resurrection, and the Ninevites represented God's mercy for the Gentile Church. Muslim retellings (Chapter Twelve) shaped Jonah (Yunus) into a penitent mystical prophet. The final three chapters (Thirteen through Fifteen) on Mary examine her birth-giving and her Dormition/Assumption. Mary does not fit Gregg's paradigm as neatly given her absence from Jewish scripture and art. Instead, the section (Chapter Thirteen) begins with Mary's virginity, life, dormition, and her status as the immaculately conceived Mother of God in the Christian tradition (e.g., the Proto-Gospel of James). In contrast, Jewish counter-stories (Chapter Fourteen) ridiculed notions such as her virginity and its connection with the prophecy of Isaiah. Islamic tales saw Mary as a sign of Jesus's prophethood—but not a prophet herself (Chapter Fifteen).

One of Gregg's main arguments is that interpreters' objectives usually transformed the meanings of the earlier "tellings" of each account. The commentators protected their own stories, filled the gaps in scripture by answering new questions, and revised their meanings to emphasize that God has chosen their religion. Reinterpretation preserved each community's distinctiveness and reaffirmed their religo-cultural identity against any rivals. Thus, scriptural retellings were more engagements with one's own community than meeting points with...

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