216 • chapter 5
by all three faiths. twice in the course of his introductory review of
the transmission of Jewish Oral Law, Moyal stresses that the individ-
uals mentioned are common to all three traditions. Of the biblical
prophet elijah, for instance, he explains that this “famous prophet,
who never died but ascended alive to the heavens in a chariot of
fire” is the “saint ilyās of the christians and a legendary figure for
Islam.”^116 the insertion of this line serves to provide both Christian
and Muslim readers a sense that this story is one that they share.
Similarly, Moyal identifies the biblical Jonah as the one “who is men-
tioned in the arabic translation of the Bible by the name Yūnān and
in the qurʾan by the name Yūnis.”^117 Once more, through these in-
sertions, Moyal attempts to convince his reader, whether Christian or
Muslim, that Judaism is not a foreign or shadowy religion. It actually
shares some of the same “saints” and “legendary figures” of chris-
tianity and Islam.
the three religions’ commonalities are not limited to biblical char-
acters. In his discussion of the book of the Zohar^118 (which Moyal
contends, contra one of his rabbinic advisors, is a medieval text, not
one written by the tannaitic rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai),^119 Moyal de-
fines Kabbalah, somewhat critically, as “inherited customs, that is, a
strange mixture of imaginary, hypothetical ideas concerning divinity
and the spirit and what lies beyond the grave.” It is akin, he explains,
to the ideas of the Christian “Mystics,” that is, “people of secrets,”
and the “teaching that is transmitted by the scholars known in Islam
as Sufis.”^120 In other words, not only are all three religions related
in their shared reverence for the same ancient prophets, but they
have also experienced comparable religious movements through
the course of their parallel histories (even if the rationalistically
inclined Moyal was not particularly sympathetic to such mystical
movements).^121
(^116) Mūyāl, at- Talmūd, 10.
(^117) Ibid., 18.
(^118) For a discussion of this passage of Moyal’s at- Talmūd, see Levy, “Jewish Writers in
the arab east,” 210– 12.
(^119) It seems likely that Moyal was informed here by the scholarship of the nineteenth-
century Jewish historian heinrich Graetz, whether by actually reading Graetz’s writings
or by learning of his conclusions indirectly. Graetz argued that the thirteenth- century
Moses de Leon “forged” the Zohar, claiming that it was the work of Shimon bar Yoḥai.
See Graetz, History of the Jews, 4:11ff. on the influence of Graetz’s scholarship on the
Jews of the Middle east, especially via curriculum of the alliance israélite universelle
schools, see rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, 83; rodrigue, Jews and Muslims, 110.
(^120) Mūyāl, at- Talmūd, 119.
(^121) On Moyal as a rationalist and participant in enlightenment discourse, see Levy,
“Jewish Writers in the arab east,” especially 210– 12.