Tim Harlow. The Baggage Handler David Rawlings. Related Audiobooks Free with a 30 day trial from Scribd. Wholehearted Faith Rachel Held Evans. Happiness Becomes You Tina Turner. Views Total views. Actions Shares. No notes for slide. Azazeel 1. Youssef Ziedan ; tr. Jonathan Wright Brilliant but philosophically flawed C. But it is ambiguous: the scapegoat is simply sent into the wilderness according to the Leviticus text, but according to the commentary on the Mishnah Yoma the scapegoat is pushed off a precipice to its death at Mount Azazel 14 km SE of Jerusalem.
In Prof. Ziedan's book this ambiguity is maintained: the narrator identifies Azazeel with Satan, but almost always the reader is left with the impression that Azazeel's is a voice of sanity, or of honour; he seems to be the narrator's conscience more than anything else. This is a powerful and profound book, and one concerning issues of deep importance today: very interesting issues of how we read history, and how different readings affect our view of the current situation; also questions of how to treat fanaticism, and the struggle between truth and one's own false beliefs.
We always react in practical situations with a mixture of gut feeling and theory — how we understand the world must always condition our responses, and if we believe lies we may be persuaded to do bad things. And not only the Middle East is today riven with the consequences of false beliefs.
Can we correctly identify the devil? It seems to me that Prof. Ziedan is suggesting to us that we are often mistaken about what we think is certain, and equally, we often feel truly that which we think is false. And it is because this suggestion is well directed that Azazeel is so powerful.
Professor Ziedan is an Egyptian academic who has written a novel from an historical period predating Islam. The novel is distinctly uncomplimentary to Christianity, and the Coptic Church in particular; subsequent history has shown that these judgements are fair, broadly speaking.
Islam has always treated Christianity as a type of polytheism, on the grounds that God is One, not Three. The Qur'an is explicit about this: "how could He [Allah] have a son when He does not have a consort? The Muslims consider it absurd to say that Mary is "Mother of God" one of the central philosophical concepts driving the plot of Azazeel since God clearly has no wife! Christians and Muslims of course agree that God is One, and that the idea of God having a wife is blasphemous; the development of the cult of the Virgin Mary owes most to pagan ideas, as Marina Warner Alone of All Her Sex, has shown brilliantly.
The story purports to be an autobiography of an Egyptian-born monk from the fifth century, recently come to light in excavations in the Syrian desert. The monk's assumed name is Hypa, after the pagan mathematician Hypatia whom he witnessed murdered appallingly by a nominally Christian mob in Alexandria, inflamed by their bishop, Cyril. This is a well-documented event which occurred 8th March AD. In some ways Ziedan's treatment of Hypatia is similar to that of Charles Kingsley Hypatia, : both authors make their narrators fall platonically in love with her; both emphasise her virtue as well as her intellectual stature, and both books are very philosophical.
The book continues in the framework of the theological debate on the nature of Christ between the same Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople, culminating in the Council of Ephesus AD which condemned, deposed and excommunicated 2.
Cyril defended the doctrine of the Virgin Mary as "God-bearer" theotokos in Greek against Nestorius' doctrine of "Christ-bearer" christotokos. This seems very arcane to us, but the question of whether it is possible to speak coherently of God or of anything else!
Cyril's doctrine was confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon AD , and the Definition of Chalcedon describing the human and divine natures of Jesus is now taken by almost all Christian churches as authoritative and the grounds of the remaining dissent are mostly non-theological, as is also the case in the filioque controversy. So we see that the demagogic Cyril understands correctly, where the view of the godly and gentle Nestorius is heretical. Wicked Cyril is right, and good Nestorius is wrong!
Do we conclude that truth does not matter? Or do we conclude that virtue does not matter? I think it is fair to read Prof. Ziedan's subtext as being that Christian doctrine is incoherent or absurd , and the reader should be aware of this subtext. From a Christian point of view, how should we consider the status of the Church Councils, given that a fair description of them is possible in very modern power- politics terms?
However, just because Machiavelli would have recognised the process does not necessarily mean that the conclusion is invalidated. There are two things, and they are different: the argument itself, and the process by which the argument is accepted.
An argument may be true, but people still need to be persuaded of the truth of it! The truth and the persuasion are two different things, and both are necessary. Underpinning the truth of Chalcedon was an extended and profound debate by many authors whose spirituality and eloquence continues to impress us.
Ziedan naturally does not touch on any of this background — he is writing a novel after all, not a theological or philosophical thesis! But we need to be aware of the background since he is writing about real things, for all that they are clothed in fiction. This question — of the truth of the doctrine of the nature of Christ — is pointed, considering the Muslim context of Prof. Ziedan himself. From one point of view its portion of truth does not matter in view of the error clearly also present, an error which by the seventh century could have grown such that the perception by Mohammed was that the Christians thought that God had a wife!
This confusion persists today: how many Christians can you find willing and able! From another point of view its truth also does not matter, since it is the common understandings — or lack of them! In such a context the accepted error is more important than the obscured truth. On the other hand, the truth is manifestly important, since if the interpreter of history misunderstands the underlying situation then he will almost certainly misrepresent it too. I thought at first that the references to icons of the Virgin Mary Mary Theotokos was anachronistic since it was not until the eighth century that icons were authorised by the second Council of Nicaea, AD , but it turns out that Basil the Great c.
Nevertheless, a fundamental flaw in this book is the absence of any awareness that in fact there is good evidence that a high Christian view of women was widespread at that time see P. Misogyny was widespread, but it was not ubiquitous: the premise of the novel is that Hypa was unable to rationally harmonise the false but common doctrine of the evil of sex with the manifest virtue of the women he loved.
But it can be demonstrated that such a doctrine was not universally accepted at that time! Hypa was well-read, well-travelled and well-connected: he must have known this. In particular, for example, Basil the Great writes: the virtue of man and woman is one, since also the creation is of equal honour for both, and so the reward for both is the same.
Listen to Genesis. Editorial Reviews. An utterly absorbing read. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. The dissertation of Sahar Youssef El Zahed is approved. Michael G Morony Her peer review, insightful feedback, my chapter and giving me a detailed peer review.
He presented widely at and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. Global Analysis biannual, peer reviewed www. Azazeel, set in the 5th century, is an exquisitely. CIHRS annreport cover2.
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