Miriam – An Encounter of the Jerusalem-Hebron Young Adults Group - 17th January 2008:

After a long break, due mainly to technical reasons, we renewed our activity and on January 17th the members of the group met for joint study. In previous encounters we dealt with the figure of Joseph, in the Torah and the Koran. This time we focused on another biblical figure – Miriam. We read the stories on Miriam who watched her little brother, Moses, on the bank of the Nile, and the short description of the singing and dancing she led after the ripping of the Red Sea. Then we moved to discuss the image of Miriam in the Koran. Here rose a difficult question that led to long debates – who is Miriam of the Koran? The Koran describes Miriam the mother of Jesus with the miracle of her becoming pregnant while still a virgin. Seemingly: there is no relation with the figure of Miriam, sister of Moses, who lived some 1,500 years before. But: the Koranic story we read describes Miriam as the sister of Aaron! Moreover, we understood from our Muslim friends that she is also described as the daughter of Amram etc. Did the Koran combine the two figures into one? It seems that in Christian eyes it is easier to solve this difficulty and see Miriam of Exodus as a pre-figuration of the later "Christian" Miriam, in the way Christians see, for example, Joshua or David figures that precede Jesus.

The Muslim friends asked to know what the Torah says about Miriam as they know here from the Koran, i.e. the mother of Jesus, and learned from the Jews that there is no reference to her, as she lived long time after the era of the Bible. But what does the Jewish tradition think about Miriam and her son Jesus? For the Muslims it was a real discovery to learn that Jesus, who is called in the Arabic tradition Nebi (=prophet) Issa, is not perceived positively at all. We tried to summarize the approaches of the three religions to Jesus: in the two ends stand Judaism and Christianity. On the one hand – Christianity sees Jesus as the son of God, and on the other hand Judaism, at least Talmudic Judaism, see him as an inciter and instigator (with Maimonides having a more moderate approach from the perspective that he sees Jesus as a person who contributed to the spreading of the Monotheistic faith in the world, even if in a disrupted way in Jewish eyes. An article on the issue – in Hebrew, Arabic and English – can be read in the website of our friend Yoav Frankel that deals with a vision for a solution on the Temple Mount). Between Christianity and Judaism stands Islam that negates the idea that Jesus is the son of God, with the Koran explicitly saying that God did not produce, but on the other hand holds Jesus as a positive figure and a full prophet.

We wishes ourselves that we will be privileged to reach the point when the only debates between Jews and Arabs will be theological and commentators' arguments as we had in our group and not the conflicts we see among us today.

Reported by Dotan Arad
Group's Coordinators: Dotan Arad and Imad Abu Hassan
 

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