Welcome to our episode with Dr. David Penchansky, professor emeritus in the Department of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota.  This was a fascinating conversation. We learn about David growing up in Brooklyn in a family that were atheists and his own religious conversion on a “hippie commune,” his words, in Washington State fifty years ago. He became an Assembly of God minister before entering the Catholic Church and working as a Professor.

He was trained as a Hebrew Bible scholar at Vanderbilt University and he has written numerous books, including  Understanding Wisdom Literature : Conflict and Dissonance in the Hebrew Text, Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible, and What Rough Beast?: Images of God in the Hebrew Bible. His most recent book Solomon and the Ant: The Qur’an in Conversation with the Bible, published by Cascade books, was the focus of much of our conversation.

We talk about how David became interested in the Quran and started to learn Arabic. Much of his interest began with his wife Hend Al-Mansour, a medical doctor from Saudi Arabia, who left medicine behind while studying at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to work full time as an artist. You can check out her art, much of it focused on Arabian and Islamic themes at her website. I would love to have Hend on the podcast some day to discuss her art.

Then we did a deep dive into the three sections of Solomon and the Ant: The Qur’an in Conversation with the Bible, considering the themes of theodicy, polytheism, and prophetic revelation and the nine Suras he examines to explore these themes in the Quran and in conversation with the Bible.

David also mentioned a recommended English translation of the Quran, though we discuss in the podcast some of the issues with translating the Quran into any language other than Arabic. David recommended  the A.J. Droge translation and John Kaltner’s  general introduction to the Quran.

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