Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

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rational, fully aware, and fulfilled all the religious and civil duties

required by the Torah.^135

For Moyal, the Jewish prophets would receive revelation from God in
an ecstatic, otherworldly state, but they would not wait until the ces-
sation of the revelation before expressing their prophecy in language;
this was done during the very moment of ecstatic revelation. Though
he read Moyal’s account of biblical prophecy, al- Khalidi apparently re-
jected it, preferring a view that imagines a delay between the prophetic
experience and the presentation of the prophecy in human terms. Moy-
al’s description of biblical prophecy^136 closely accords with al- Khalidi’s
account of Muhammad’s revelation— in both, the words of the prophet
are the revealed words, unfiltered and with no delay. To insist on the
superiority of Muhammad’s prophecy requires al- Khalidi to offer a
different view of pre- Islamic prophecy. Whether it was to please his
intended audience or to express his own beliefs and faith, al- Khalidi
wrote his work with clear Islamic sensibilities.
Al- Khalidi’s skepticism about the divinity of the words of the Torah
extends beyond the imagined experiences of the scriptural prophets. In
fact, following a long tradition of Islamic biblical criticism, al- Khalidi
suggests that the true author of the Torah in its present form was not
Moses, but rather ezra the Scribe.^137 Al- Khalidi inserts this view into
sections of his manuscript that are adapted from Moyal’s book. con-
sider, for instance, the way in which Moyal describes ezra: “ezra the
Priest and the Scribe, to whom is ascribed the script method known
as the square or Assyrian method, and he is called the elder of that
national renaissance [an-­nahḍa­al-­qawmiyya].”^138 A corresponding pas-
sage in al- Khalidi’s manuscript depicts ezra and his biblical counter-
part Nehemiah as follows:

They were the ones who undertook that Israelite national renais-

sance [an-­nahḍa­al-­qawmiyya­al-­isrāʾīlīyya] and rebuilt Jerusalem

and the Temple. They were the first to gather the books of the

Torah and the Prophets, and they recorded them for the first

time. The collection of the books of the Old Testament occurred

in the fifth century bc, that is, after the return of the children of

(^135) Mūyāl, at-­Talmūd, 14.
(^136) This view, it should be noted, might itself have been informed by Islamic perspec-
tives on prophecy, given Moyal’s upbringing in Muslim- dominated society and culture.
(^137) Jewish rabbinic literature sees ezra as having played the central role in restoring
the Bible after the Babylonian exile. certain early modern and modern european bib-
lical critics, most famously Benedict Spinoza, supported this view. See, e.g., Spinoza,
Theological-­Political­Treatise, 127– 28.
(^138) Mūyāl, at-­Talmūd, 26.