![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
While a systematic comparison of the similarities and differences between Jewish and Muslim approaches to evolution is beyond the scope of this study, it is possible to note some of the most striking observations. Among the key differences highlighted by an historical perspective on Jewish approaches in the late-nineteenth to present day are the phenomenon of panentheistic tendences among Jewish commentators and the practice of defining the position of Judaism against that of Christianity. In response to Malik’s theological approach, which attempted to identify medieval traditions as potential resources for contemporary Muslim evolutionists, it proved to be an interesting counter-factual exercise to generate a comparable list of pre-modern theological resources for Jewish evolutionists.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Shoaib Ahmed Malik, Islam and Evolution (Oxford, New York: Routledge, 2021), 1, 6, 8, 13.
2 Malik, Islam and Evolution, 22–23.
3 Ibid., 5–6, 66ff.
4 My studies of Jewish engagement with evolutionary theory include: Daniel R. Langton, Reform Judaism and Darwin: How Engaging with Evolutionary Theory Shaped American Jewish Religion (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). Daniel R. Langton, “Elijah Benamozegh and Evolutionary Theory: A Nineteenth Century Italian Kabbalist’s Panentheistic Response to Darwin,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 10:2 (2016). Daniel R. Langton, “Jewish Evolutionary Perspectives on Judaism, Anti-Semitism, and Race Science in Late Nineteenth Century England: A Comparative Study of Lucien Wolf and Joseph Jacobs,” Jewish Historical Studies 46 (2014). Daniel R. Langton, “Jewish Religious Thought, The Holocaust, and Darwinism: A Comparison of Hans Jonas and Mordecai Kaplan,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 13:2 (2013); Daniel R. Langton, “Abraham Isaac Kook’s Account of ‘Creative Evolution’: A Response to Modernity for the Sake of Zion,” Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (2013). See also Daniel R. Langton, “Naphtali Levy’s Divine World: Jewish Tradition, Panentheism and Darwinism,” Theology and Science 21:3 (2023 forthcoming).
5 Malik draws on the work of 20 Muslim scholars, prioritizing contemporaries who offered both a significant contribution and a distinctive perspective. Malik, Islam and Evolution, 106–154.
6 For treatments of Jewish engagement with evolution and creationism in general, see the short survey Marc Swetlitz, “Jews, Judaism and Evolution,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, ed. Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); the collection of studies by Geoffrey N. Cantor and Marc Swetlitz, eds., Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); (in Hebrew) Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit, Darwin and Some of his Kind: Evolution, Environment and Culture: Jews Read Darwin, Spencer, Buckle and Renan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2009); and Michael Shai Cherry, “Creation, Evolution and Jewish Thought” (PhD Doctoral thesis, Brandeis University, 2001). For the case of Reform Jews in the US, see Marc Swetlitz, “American Jewish Responses to Darwin and Evolutionary Theory, 1860–1890,” in Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For the experiences of Orthodox Jews in the US, see Rachel S.A. Pear, “The Kiss and the Slap: Modern Orthodox Ambivalence Towards Evolution 1980s–2010s,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 21:3 (2021); Rachel. S.A. Pear, “Agreeing to Disagree: American Orthodox Jewish Scientists’ Confrontation with Evolution in the 1960s,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 8:2 (2018). Rachel S.A. Pear, “Differences Over Darwinism: American Orthodox Jewish Responses to Evolution in the 1920s,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 15:2 (2015); Rachel S.A. Pear, “Arguing about Evolution for the Sake of Heaven: American Orthodox Rabbis in the 1930s–50s Dispute Darwinism’s Merit and Meaning,” Fides et Historia 46:1 (2014). Insofar as biblical criticism and evolution were related challenges for North American Jews, see Naomi W. Cohen, “The Challenges of Darwinism and Biblical Criticism to American Judaism,” Modern Judaism 4:2 (1984). Another specialist survey, which is focused on a discourse analysis of the Russian press, includes Joakim Philipson, “The Purpose of Evolution: The ‘Struggle for Existence’ in the Russian-Jewish Press, 1860–1910” (PhD Stockholm University, 2008).
7 A case has been made for Sunni Muslim modernists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries following a similar approach with regard to Islamic rationality and compatibility with the empirical sciences, although this changed in the twentieth century when Darwinism came to be regarded increasingly as a Christian aberration and fabrication. Uriya Shavit, “The Evolution of Darwin to a ‘Unique Christian Species’ in Modernist-Apologetic Arab-Islamic Thought,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 26:1 (2015).
8 Arguably, there is an overlap between panentheistic and neo-platonic tendencies, which has some relevance for the Islamic context and Al-Ghazali. Malik, Islam and Evolution, 10. Malik addresses theistic evolution directly in Malik, Islam and Evolution, 76–77, 78, 109.
9 Michael W. Brierley, “Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Pantheistic Turn in Modern Theology,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2004).
10 Malik, Islam and Evolution, 12, 45, 54, 111, 13, 31, 237–264.
11 Ibid., 12, 45, 54, 237–264.
12 Ibid., 73–75, 78, 212–236.
13 For example, Malik dedicates a chapter to Christian responses to evolution as a back-drop to the Muslim experience. Malik, Islam and Evolution, 66–84.
14 Malik, Islam and Evolution, 22–23, 29–30.
15 Ibid., 53–54, 194–197.
16 Ibid., 5.
17 Ibid., 43, 197–199, 200–203.
18 Ibid., 27, 52–53, 197.
19 Ibid., 52.
20 Ibid., 50–51. Malik addresses the related ideology of scientism in Malik, Islam and Evolution, 3–4, 192, 204, 97, 300, 6.
21 ibid., 89.
22 Ibid., 51–52, 91.
23 Ibid., 7, 112, 88, 94–99, 12–13, 301–325, 17.
24 Ibid., 100.
25 Ibid., 100–101.
26 Ibid., 102.
27 Ibid., 56.
28 Ibid., 79.
29 Ibid., 39, 155–173.
30 This section draws primarily from Daniel R. Langton, “Evolution,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. AJ. and P. Schäfer Levine (De Gruyter, 2023), and Swetlitz, “Jews, Judaism and Evolution.”
31 St. George Mivart, The Genesis of the Species (London: Macmillan, 1871).
32 For the classic study, see James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
33 Henry Ward Beecher, Evolution and Religion, 2 vols. (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1885).
34 Nathan Adler, The Jewish Chronicle, November 21, 1872, 167.
35 The letter, translated by a Cambridge University librarian, Henry Bradshaw, is reproduced in Francis Darwin, ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1903), 365–366.
36 Naphtali Lewy, Toldot Adam [The Origins of Man] (Vienna: Spitzer & Holzwarth, 1874), 36.
37 Lewy, Toldot Adam, 30.
38 Samson Raphael Hirsch, “The Educational Value of Judaism (1873),” in The Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, ed. Elliott Bondi and David Bechhofer (New York: Feldheim, 1992), 264.
39 Michael Friedlander, Textbook of the Jewish Religion (London: Kegan Paul, 1890), 30–39.
40 Joseph Krauskopf, Evolution and Judaism (Kansas City: Berkowitz, 1887).
41 Langton, Reform Judaism and Darwin.
42 Kaufmann Kohler, “Evolution and Morality,” Temple Beth-El Lectures (New York), December 4, 1887.
43 Emil G. Hirsch, The Doctrine of Evolution and Judaism, 1903, Reform Advocate library (Chicago: Bloch & Newman).
44 Raphael Meldola, “On a Certain Class of Cases of Variable Protective Colouring in InsectsProceedings of the Zoological Society,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society 2 (1873).
45 For an excellent overview, see Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). For the references to Jews: Jerome Mark, Reminiscences of the Scopes Trial, Dayton, 1925, 1959, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, SC-14940. Ben R. Winick, Correspondence to fiance, c1925, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, SC-14820.
46 Pear, “Differences over Darwinism.”
47 For an overview of Kook’s position as derived from many of his writings, see Langton, “Abraham Isaac Kook’s Account of ‘Creative Evolution’.”
48 Wallace discussed this failure of Darwinism in Albert Dawson, “A Visit to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace,” The Christian Commonwealth, December 10, 1903.
49 Isaac Mayer Wise, The Cosmic God: A Fundamental Philosophy in Popular Lectures (Cincinnati: Office American Israelite and Deborah, 1876).
50 Elia Benamozegh, Teologia dogmatica e apologetica, per Elia Benamozegh (Livorno: Tipografia di F. Vigo, 1877). Elie Benamozegh, Israël et l’humanité. Etude sur le problème de la religion universelle et sa solution (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1914).
51 Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and the Haftorahs: Genesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1929).
52 For an overview of Kaplan’s position as derived from many of his writings, see Langton, “Jewish Religious Thought, The Holocaust, and Darwinism.”
53 Abraham Matmon, Hashbachat ha-Gez’a shel ha-Min ha-Enoshi ve-A’rachav le-Ma’an A’menu [The Racial Improvement of the Human Species and Its Value for Our Nation] (Tel Aviv: 1933). Abraham Matmon, “Hashbachat ha-Gez’a ve-Piku’ach a’l Nisu’im [Racial Improvement and Control of Marriage],” Briut 1 (1933).
54 Y. Rubin, “Kibbutz Galuyot mi-Bechinah E’ugenit [The Ingathering of the Exiles from a Eugenic Point of View],” Moznayim 1:4 (1934).
55 Henry Morris and John Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1961).
56 W. Gunther Plaut, Judaism and the Scientific Spirit, Issues of faith (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1962).
57 Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God After Auschwitz,” in Out of the Whirlwind: A Reader of Holocaust Literature, ed. Albert H. Friedlander (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1968).
58 Aryeh Carmell and Cyril Domb, Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems, 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem; New York: Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists Feldheim, 1988). Cantor and Swetlitz, Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism. R.L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). Pear, “Agreeing to Disagree.”
59 Jennie Rothenberg, “The Heresy of Nosson Slifkin: A Young Orthodox Rabbi is Banned for His Views on Evolution,” Moment (2005).
60 He includes chapters on Islamic Scriptures and Evolution, Muslim Opinions on Evolution, and Old Texts, New Masks: Misreading Evolution onto Historical Islamic Texts. Malik, Islam and Evolution, 85–176.
61 This section draws primarily from P.S. Alexander and D.R. Langton, “Protology/Cosmology in Judaism,” in The Concept of Protology in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses, ed. G. Tamer (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2024), and Menahem M. Kasher, “Creation and the Theory of Evolution,” in Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Menahem M. Kasher (New York: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society, 1953), 221–244. See also Shlomo Glicksberg, “Judaism and Evolution in Four Dimensions: Biological, Spiritual, Cultural and Intellectual,” Origin(s) of Design in Nature 23 (2012).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daniel Langton
Daniel Langton is Professor of Jewish History and Co-director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. Among his publications on Jewish engagement with evolutionary theory is Reform Judaism and Darwin (2019).