Book Reviews

Zulfiqar Ali Shah's book is an extensive undertaking that is encyclopedic in its scope and ambitious in its aims.  Although written with a view to demonstrating the relative superiority of the Qur’anic and Muslim understanding of the transcendent God, the book's lengthy treatments of corresponding biblical, Jewish, and Christian understandings seem largely fair, balanced and thorough. Scholars dealing with concepts of God in the three traditions will have to come to terms with this work in the future.

William A. Graham

Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School,

Scripture and God in the Judeo Christian and Islamic Traditions: A Study of Anthropomorphism is a masterful, thought-provoking, and insightful study by Zulfiqar Ali Shah of anthropomorphism in the conceptions of God in the Bible and the Quran that will be welcomed by scholars and students and all who are interested in the Abrahamic traditions.

This book is an extremely important contribution to the comparative study of the attribution of anthropomorphic qualities and characteristics to God in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an as well as later thought in all three Abrahamic traditions.  The encyclopedic scope of this book reflects the impressive breadth and depth of the author’s scholarship.  Deserving special attention is the author’s comprehensive treatment of Islam’s theological safeguarding of the unity and transcendence of God that is clarifying, engaging and challenging.  Therefore, this comprehensive and sympathetic work adds a significant and welcome voice to both scholarship and interfaith dialogue. 

Donald W. Mitchell

Professor of Philosophy

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA 

Zulfiqar Ali Shah’s A Study of Anthropomorphism and Transcendence in the Bible and the Qur’an is an honest assessment of one of the most perplexing shadows of monotheism as it has expressed itself in the history of the three Abrahamic faiths. The author painstakingly examines the anthropomorphic depictions of God in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptural traditions. He correctly notes that at the textual level the Qur’an is the most consistently and severely anti-anthropomorphic, upholding a more rigorous notion of divine transcendence. Beyond the historical value of this book as an exegetical work of comparative religion, it can be read as an important theological composition. The tension between a God who is wholly other and thus resistant to any human characterization, on one hand, and the basic psychological need on the part of human beings to portray God anthropomorphically, on the other hand, continues to be at the heart of religious faith and devotion. God may be without image, but in the absence of image it is hard to imagine how to worship God. In that respect, if monotheism is to persist as a vibrant force, there must always be an idolatrous element expressed in the anthropomorphic representation of the deity. And yet precisely because this is so, we must always refine our beliefs so that we are not ensnared in representing the unrepresentable and imaging the imageless by the fabrication of images that, literally speaking, are false. Rather than expanding the analogical imagination in envisioning transcendence, the spiritual demand of the hour, the epochal duty, is the need to overcome it. Zulfiqar Ali Shah’s book has contributed significantly to this conversation.

Clearly the result of many years of reading, reflection and writing, Scripture and God in the Judeo Christian and Islamic Traditions goes to the heart of theological reflections on the nature of God. By elucidating the differences and the similarities in the way God is conceived, Zulfiqar Ali Shah has produced a perceptive study from which readers will benefit greatly. Extensively documented and lucidly written, the book provides a stimulating summary of theological articulations and controversies ranging from ancient times down to the present day.

Andrew Rippin
Former Dean of Humanities
Professor of Islamic History Specialist in the Qur'an and the History of Its Interpretation, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

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 “A valuable contribution to the comparative study of the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Zulfiqar Ali Shah has shed important light on the influence of text on respective believers’ perception of God.”

Jane I. Smith
Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
Harvard Divinity School
45 Francis Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138
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"Erudite, showing impressive mastery of the various sources used, very vast, comprehensive and promising academic discussions of the conclusions drawn".

Prof. Binyamin Abrahamov
Department of Arabic
Bar Ilan University
Ramat Gan 52900
Israel
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"Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah's monumental work, A Study of Anthropomorphism and Transcendence in the Bible and the Qur'an, reflects equally the deep erudition and profound humanity of its author. It is a work that beneficially could be read by people of all faiths, who will discover in this rich text not only what makes certain faiths distinct from one another, but just as importantly, what it is that binds people of different faiths together in their common quest for absolute meaning and purpose."

Mark E. Workman
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL