Earth, Empire and Sacred Text - Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation - David L. Johnston

Earth, Empire and Sacred Text - Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation - David L. Johnston

Chapter 6 ADAM AS GOD’S KHALĪFA: QUR’ANIC DATA

Earth, Empire and Sacred Text - Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation - David L. Johnston

David L. Johnston [+-]
Saint Joseph’s University
David L. Johnston is Visiting Scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania and an adjunct lecturer at the Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. He lived for fifteen years in Algeria, Egypt and the West Bank, where he served as a pastor and teacher. He then completed his PhD work at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, California) in theology and Islamic Studies; continued his research and taught part-time at the Religious Studies Department at Yale University. His published articles and essays have mostly focused on the intersection of theology and law in contemporary Islam (Islamochristiana, Islamic Law and Society, The Maghreb Review, Die Welt des Islams and Journal of the American Academy of Religion). His blogs can be found on his website, www.humantrustees.org

Description

This chapter explores the use of khal ā fa as applied to Adam in the Qur’an, and, by extension, how it may apply to all his ancestors, the human race. Leaving aside for a time some of the hermeneutical insights of Chapters 4 and 5, I simply look at the qur’anic data and list the passages in which this word appears. I mostly leave the work of classical qur’anic commen- tators ( mufassir u n ) for the next two chapters. At first glance, this seems to be quite easy: there is only one verse in which khal ā fa in the singular is applied to Adam (sura 2, v. 30—from now on, Q. 2:30), and another in which it refers to David. My focus is on Adam, and therefore I will look at the contexts that contain material about creation, Adam’s disobedience, and his subsequent calling to make his home on this planet. This will also call for a brief look at some parallel passages. 

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Citation

Johnston, David L.. Chapter 6 ADAM AS GOD’S KHALĪFA: QUR’ANIC DATA. Earth, Empire and Sacred Text - Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 239 - 268 Apr 2010. ISBN 9781781790359. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=19289. Date accessed: 23 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.19289. Apr 2010

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