537 Humanism tion of Theological Method” Renaissance Studies 17.1 (2003) ■ Beza, T., Summa totius Christianismi (Geneva 39–54. ■ Colish, M., “Psalterium Scholasticorum: Peter 1555). Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis,” Spec. 67.3 (1992) 531–548. ■ Erasmus, D., The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1 to 141 (trans. R. A. B. Mynors/D. F. S. Thomson; Collected Works of Erasmus 1; Toronto, Ont. 1974). ■ Erasmus, D., Annotations on the New Testament; ActsRomans-I and II Corinthians; Facsimile of the final Latin text with all earlier variants (ed. A. Reeve/M.A. Screech; Leiden 1990). ■ Gilbert, N., Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York 1960). ■ Grafton, A./L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities (Cambridge, Mass. 1987). ■ Heffernan, T./T. Burman, Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Leiden 2005). ■ Mack, P., Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic (Leiden 1993). ■ Millet, O., Calvin et la dynamique de la parole: Etude de rhétorique réformée (Paris 1992). ■ O’Rourke Boyle, M., Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (ErasSt 2; Toronto, Ont. 1977). ■ Rummel, E., The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and ■ Vermigli, P. M., Reformation (Cambridge, Mass. 1998). Loci Communes (Zurich 1580). ■ Trinkaus, C., In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago, Ill. 1970). Jon Balserak II. Other Religions (India) In the mid 19th century, “humanism,” a term with an extensive history in Western thought (see above, “Christianity”; and also “Humanistic Judaism”), came to designate an approach that emphasized reason, rather than religion, in rationally realizing the value and potential of human life (OED, s.v., “Humanism”; Luik: 365). As such, 19th-century humanism had clear antecedents in the Enlightenment ideals of human dignity and freedom in matters of religion, society, and state (Kant). However, unlike the Enlightenment movement, 19th-century humanism reflected an approach, rather than a system of thought. Moreover, following its rise in the mid-19th century – and perhaps as a means of legitimation – the term “humanism” was often applied anachronistically. Although the modern humanist movement largely characterizes itself as secular (“20th Century Humanism”), humanism from its beginnings did not oppose religion, and humanist thinkers drew frequently on religious texts – the Bible in particular – focusing on the elements of rational morality they found therein. The extensive migration of Europeans outside their native continent in the late 18th century, whether as merchants, colonial administrators, or missionaries, spread throughout the non-European world Enlightenment ideals, and so too, an incipient and largely unsystematic form of humanism. In its turn, this development outside Europe invigorated European humanism, as Europe in the 19th century became entranced with non-European thought (often referred to as the “Oriental Renaissance”). India played an important role in this pattern of development with a broad group of reform- 538 ists, extending from Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) to Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), developing humanistic programs that would later affect humanism in Europe and in America. Along with Enlightenment ideals, these figures drew deeply from liberal 19th-century interpretations of Christian scripture in developing their humanistic programs. First to emerge on the Indian-European stage was Ram Mohan Roy, who, despite his upbringing in a traditional upper-caste family, became one of India’s most vociferous reformers of the early 19th century. Roy opposed the segregation and denial of rights inherent in the Indian caste system (amplified in the treatment of women in India – Roy’s own sister-in-law fell victim to the notorious rite known as “widow-burning”) – while denigrating what he considered superstitious beliefs such as polytheism and idolatrous worship (Roy 1824: xvii– xix). Roy had extensive contact with Europeans in India: he was employed by the East India Company as a “writer” and translator, and as early as 1795 became involved with a group of newly arrived Christian missionaries. By all accounts, Roy had a deep engagement with Christianity and eventually came to espouse Unitarianism as being equivalent to his own vision of the godhead (Roy 1906: 882). In 1820, Roy began a translation of the Christian Bible into his native Bengali language, leading to the publication of his The Precepts of Jesus: The Guide to Peace and Happiness, Extracted from the New Testament. Here, Roy focused on the moral elements of Jesus’ teachings rather than on the Bible’s underlying theology (much to Roy’s surprise, the Christian missionaries sharply criticized him for this), praising it for its promotion of equal treatment in matters of human conduct “without distinction of caste, rank, or wealth” (Roy 1824: xxviii). Roy’s reformist leanings, coupled with his engagement with the Christian Bible, was the subject of considerable contemporary discussion outside India, and Roy eventually traveled to England where he was warmly welcomed by the English Unitarians. Ralph Waldo Emerson, widely viewed as an American exemplar of 19th-century humanist thought, had significant exposure to Roy’s works, and placed Roy in his list of “representative men,” among whom “reasoning … annihilates all distinction of circumstances” (Hodder: 146). Throughout the 19th century, a handful of other eminent Indian reformist-minded thinkers, in seeking to express the notion of a common humanity, evinced significant knowledge of the Bible. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Syed Ahmed Khan, 1817– 1898), a famed Muslim jurist in British India who sought to unify elements of Islamic, Hindu, and British society through educational reform, wrote a commentary on the Bible (1862–87) that highlighted the commonalities of Islam and Christianity, “even if in their pursuit certain vital interests of vol. by 12 | Lafayette College - Skillman Library - Periodicals Dept Brought to you Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception © Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2016 Authenticated Download Date | 11/2/19 2:21 PM 539 540 Humanistic Judaism Islam would have to be sacrificed” (Wasti). Swami Vivekananda (Narendra Nath Datta, 1863–1902), a Hindu nationalist and proponent of a universalist form of religion, recognized the Christian Bible as a scripture no different from the scriptures of Hindus or Muslims. In 1900, he delivered a lecture on Jesus in which he presented him as an “Oriental among Orientals” (Vivekananda: 9). Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a polymath extraordinaire, and the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), was well-known for embodying in his own life the humanistic ideals of charity and faith in human nature. Tagore’s writings show a deep familiarity with the Bible, from the Psalms to the life of Jesus, as he drew on it both for its moral compass as well as its literary style (Chatterjee: 48). Incidentally, Tagore contributed significantly to the use of the term “humanism” in India (and, perhaps so too in the West), applying it anachronistically to Ram Mohan Roy (Dhar: 149) and to the famed Bengali educator and reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891), literally rendering the term “humanism” in the Bengali language (Hatcher: 37). Certainly the best known Indian humanitarian to emerge from the confluence of 19th-century European and Indian thought was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (see “Gandhi, Mohandas”). Gandhi was first exposed to the Bible as a young man studying law in London; though he found the HB to be unpalatable, he considered the Christian scriptures, and, in particular, the Sermon on the Mount, to be second only to the Bhagavad-gītā in importance, even observing that “supposing I was deprived of the Gita and forgot all its contents but had a copy of the Sermon (on the Mount), I should derive the same joy from it as I do from the Gita” (Gandhi: 35). Gandhi’s reading of the Sermon on the Mount, which owed much to Leo Tolstoy, and to the liberal Christians he associated closely with in England and South Africa, became a cornerstone in his development of his philosophy of non-violence, a philosophy that would eventually cross back into the West in informing the views of the American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr. Bibliography: ■ “20th Century Humanism,” British Humanist Association. [Available at www.humanism.org.uk; accessed 30 July 2015] ■ Chatterjee, K. K., “The Biblical Imagination of Rabindranath Tagore,” Renascence 66.1 (2014) 47–56. ■ Dhar, B., “The Humanism of Rabindranath Tagore,” Indian Literature 16 (1973) 147–52. ■ Gandhi, M. K., My Religion (ed. B. Kumarappa; Ahmedabad 1955). [Available at www.mkgandhi.org; accessed July 26, 2015] ■ Hatcher, B., Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life of an Eminent Indian (New Delhi 2014). ■ Hodder, A., Emerson, Rammohan Roy, and the Unitarians: Studies in the American Renaissance (Charlottesville, Va. 1988). ■ Kant, I., An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?” (London 2009). ■ Luik, J., “Humanism,” Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London 2000). ■ Roy, R., The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Bahadur- ganj Allahabad 1906). ■ Roy, R./T. Rees, The Precepts of Jesus: The Guide to Peace and Happiness, Extracted from the Books of the New Testament Ascribed to the Four Evangelists (London 1824). ■ Robinson, R., “Ahmad Khan, Sir Saiyid [Syed Ahmed Khan] (1817–1898),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004). [Available at: www.oxforddnb.com; accessed July 26, 2015] ■ Vivekananda, S., Christ, the Messenger (Boston, Mass. 1900). ■ Wasti, S. M., “Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his Bible Commentary,” Ma’arif Research Journal (2014; available at: www.irak.pk; accessed July 26, 2015). Herman Tull See also /Emerson, Ralph Waldo; /Erasmus, Desiderius; /Gandhi, Mohandas; /Human Rights and the Bible; /Humanistic Judaism; /Khan, Sayyid Ahmad; /King, Martin Luther Jr.; /Roy, Ram Mohan; /Tagore, Debendranath; /Vivekananda, Swami Humanistic Judaism Humanistic Judaism is a cultural Jewish identity that embraces a naturalistic, human-centered philosophy of life. Both individuals and specific Jewish communities and congregations can identify themselves as Humanistic. For Humanistic Jews, the Bible is literature and not law, a human compilation of human compositions. Rather than a gift from beyond, this earliest extant collection of Jewish literature is a creation of the Jewish people. As with any human creation, the Bible’s value – as a whole or particular passages thereof – depends on its resonance with contemporary readers. Humanistic Jewish communities study biblical texts as part of their education programs with the goal of Jewish literacy. Any Jewish education without familiarity with narratives such as the creation and the flood, regardless of their historicity, would seem incomplete. Critique of the Bible is also important in Humanistic Judaism. Biblical claims regarding human origins, Jewish history, personal or communal ethics and theology are rejected when secular evidence or values suggest the reverse. And the use of the Bible in the public square to demand obedience or proclaim public faith is strongly rejected. Humanistic Jews accept academic conclusions regarding authorship and dating of biblical books or passages. The Pentateuch is understood to have been finalized around 500 BCE from earlier sources, not divinely revealed on Mount Sinai. Works like Ecclesiastes that reflect Hellenistic influence are more appropriately dated to the Hellenistic era (ca. 300 BCE) rather than the era of their ascribed author, Solomon (ca. 900 BCE). The HB includes a collection of etiologies for everything from rainbows and mortality to the Jewish people and its practices. These origin stories are not historical fact, though they may have some basis in actual events (e.g., the latter half of 2 Kings). Genesis 9–10 claims that the separation of Canaan- 12 to you byvol. | Lafayette College - Skillman Library - Periodicals Dept Encyclopedia of the BibleBrought and Its Reception © Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2016 Authenticated Download Date | 11/2/19 2:21 PM