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    Tajallï Wa Ru'ya - W. Wesley Williams

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    Gafar Gafare
    This dissertation argues that early Islam, like Judaism and other Semitic religions, had a tradition of believing God could be seen, known as transcendent anthropomorphism. While the Quran is often read as stating God's invisibility, the passages could also be qualifying divine visibility and theophany when read in their proper historical context. However, Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophy later influenced Islamic theology to reject anthropomorphism and affirm God's complete invisibility and transcendence from the world. Despite this influence, the author argues the early Sunni Islamic creed still affirmed Muhammad's visual encounter with God for the first four centuries.

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    Tajallï Wa Ru'ya - W. Wesley Williams

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    Gafar Gafare
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    This dissertation argues that early Islam, like Judaism and other Semitic religions, had a tradition of believing God could be seen, known as transcendent anthropomorphism. While the Quran is often read as stating God's invisibility, the passages could also be qualifying divine visibility and theophany when read in their proper historical context. However, Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophy later influenced Islamic theology to reject anthropomorphism and affirm God's complete invisibility and transcendence from the world. Despite this influence, the author argues the early Sunni Islamic creed still affirmed Muhammad's visual encounter with God for the first four centuries.

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    This dissertation argues that early Islam, like Judaism and other Semitic religions, had a tradition of believing God could be seen, known as transcendent anthropomorphism. While the Quran is often read as stating God's invisibility, the passages could also be qualifying divine visibility and theophany when read in their proper historical context. However, Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophy later influenced Islamic theology to reject anthropomorphism and affirm God's complete invisibility and transcendence from the world. Despite this influence, the author argues the early Sunni Islamic creed still affirmed Muhammad's visual encounter with God for the first four centuries.

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    72 views2 pages

    Tajallï Wa Ru'ya - W. Wesley Williams

    Uploaded by

    Gafar Gafare
    This dissertation argues that early Islam, like Judaism and other Semitic religions, had a tradition of believing God could be seen, known as transcendent anthropomorphism. While the Quran is often read as stating God's invisibility, the passages could also be qualifying divine visibility and theophany when read in their proper historical context. However, Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophy later influenced Islamic theology to reject anthropomorphism and affirm God's complete invisibility and transcendence from the world. Despite this influence, the author argues the early Sunni Islamic creed still affirmed Muhammad's visual encounter with God for the first four centuries.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Tajall wa

    Ru'ya - W.
    Wesley
    Williams
    Islam is often viewed as the religion par excellence of divine
    transcendence. God is khilf al-'lam, the absolute divergence
    from the world and this characteristically Islamic doctrine of
    mukhlafa (divine) otherness precludes divine corporeality. In
    as much as this latter is conditio sine qua non of visibility, it is
    axiomatic that the God of Islam in invisible and therefore non-
    theophanous.

    This tradition of divine invisibility and incorporeal
    transcendence is in radical discontinuity with the
    Biblical/Semitic and ancient Near Eastern tradition of
    transcendent anthropomorphism and perilous visio Dei,
    according to which God/the gods has/have bodies human of
    shape but transcendent in substance, manner of being, and
    effect. Seeing this transcendently anthropomorphic deity is
    possible but dangerous for mortal onlookers.

    The profound disparity between Islamic and Biblical/ancient
    Near Eastern articulations of divine transcendence raises
    questions regarding Islams place among the Semitic religions.

    This dissertation argues that as a member of the Semitic
    religions Islam too possessed a tradition of transcendent
    anthropomorphism, theophany and visio Dei, which tradition
    likely originated with the Prophet Muhammad. When read in the
    context of possible Biblical and ancient Near Eastern
    narrative/mythological subtexts, rather than affirming divine
    invisibility the relevant Qur'nic passages seem to qualify divine
    visibility and theophany.

    It is argued here that despite the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
    critique of anthropomorphism by rationalist groups such as the
    Mu'tazila a defining aspect of the traditionalist Sunn 'aqda or
    creed for the first four centuries (9th-12th CE) was the
    affirmation of Muhammads visual encounter with God.

    As in post-Maimonidean Judaism, however, the Aristotelian-
    Neoplatonic revision of the Sunn creed will eventually be so
    successful that it has resulted in the near-total forgetting of this
    earlier Islamic tradition of anthropomorphic theophany and
    Visio Dei.

    http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/60748?mode=full

    Dr. Wesley Williams

    Ph.D., Near Eastern Studies (Islamic Studies), University of
    Michigan, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Ann Arbor,
    2002-2008.

    Attained candidacy in 2003 with examinations in Hanbalism,
    Islamic Theology, Islamic Law, Islamic Intellectual History, and
    Classical Arabic Texts. Defended April 2, 2008, dissertation
    entitled Tajalli wa Ruya: A Study of Anthropomorphic
    Theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Qurn and
    Early Sunn Islam.

    M.A., Near Eastern Studies (Islamic Studies), University of
    Michigan, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Ann Arbor,
    1999-2002

    B.A., cum laude, major in Religious Studies,Morehouse
    College, Atlanta, GA, 1990-1994

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