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How to Cite a Sacred Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Ron E. Hassner
Ron E. Hassner*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Ron E. Hassner, 210 Barrows Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. E-mail: hassner@berkeley.edu
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Abstract

Allusions to holy scriptures and quotes from sacred texts appear in hundreds of political science articles. Yet while we treat other ancient texts with reverence and diligence, we have not extended a similar care to the holy scriptures of the world's religions. Political scientists often refer to biblical events, statements, and turns of phrase but rarely cite them, chapter and verse. They are careless about referencing the precise translation of the holy texts used, tend to cite religious passages out of context, and disregard the role of religious tradition, interpretation, and practice in shaping and reshaping the meaning of holy texts. I offer examples for these trends, provide evidence for their harmful implications and offer guidelines for the appropriate treatment of sacred texts as formal scholarly sources.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 844 - 861
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

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References

NOTES

1. On recent trends in the study of religion and politics see Philpott, Daniel. (2009). “Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion?”  Annual Review of Political Science 12:183–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wald, Kenneth D., and Wilcox, Clyde. 2006. “Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor?” American Political Science Review 100:523–529CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kettell, Steven. 2012. “Has Political Science Ignored Religion?” PS: Political Science and Politics 45:93–100Google Scholar.

2. These are articles (as opposed to reviews or editorials) in political science journals that have the terms “religion” or “religious” in the abstract. I conducted this search in January 2012. JSTOR showed 604 articles with “religion” or “religious” in the abstract published since 2002 and 10,388 articles that include “religion” or “religious” anywhere in the text published since 2002.

3. Holy scriptures are mentioned in 27.6% of articles with “religion” or “religious” in the abstract and in 8% of articles that merely mention “religion” or “religious” somewhere in the text.

4. As I explain below, precise numbers are hard to come by since most political scientists who cite from scripture do so without following proper citation practices.

5. JSTOR search, conducted January 2012, for articles in political science journals that contain the term “United States” or “U.S.” and “constitution” in the abstract and the keywords “Madison”, “Constitutional amendment” or “Supreme Court” in the body of the text.

6. My analysis is limited to the sacred scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam though my claims apply equally well to the holy texts of other religious movements. I focus on articles, published since 1945, in journals that are identified as political science publications by on-line journal archives.

7. KJV refers to the King James Version of the Bible. I rely on the 1987 printing which is in the public domain.

8. Those three are McKenna, Joseph C. 1960. “Ethics and War: A Catholic View.” American Political Science Review 54:648–649CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burtchaell, James Tunstead. 1988. “How Authentically Christian Is Liberation Theology?” Review of Politics 50:270CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Atanasov, Bogdan B. 2002. “Friendship and Strife in Frank O'Connor's ‘Guest of the Nation’.” International Journal on World Peace 19:80Google Scholar, 82. None of these indicate which translation of the bible they are using. Indeed, the three articles seem to be using different translations since McKenna uses the KJV phrase “resist not evil” whereas Butchaell uses the NIV's “strikes” instead of the KJV's “smites.”

9. It is worth noting that most of the authors who followed proper citation practices for this verse did so prior to 1945. Talmager, T. Dewitt. 1889. “The Northern and Southern Dead.” American Advocate of Peace and Arbitration 51:79Google Scholar; Talmager, T. Dewitt. 1854. “An Address on Peace.” Advocate of Peace 11:140Google Scholar; Goldtsein, Israel. 1944. “The Stake of the Jew in a Just Peacem.” World Affairs 107:14Google Scholar; Goldtsein, Israel. 1838. “The Duty of Christians Regarding War Learned from the Bible.” Advocate of Peace 4:161Google Scholar; Hershey, Amos S. 1911. “The History of International Relations During Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” American Journal of International Law 5:909CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patai, Raphael, and Wilson, Andrew. 1987. “The Quest for Peace: A View from Anthropology.” International Journal on World Peace 4:11Google Scholar; and Pellerin, Daniel. 2003. “Calvin: Militant or Man of Peace?” Review of Politics 65:53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11. Young, Oran. 1969. “Aron and the Whale; A Jonah in Theory.” In Contending Approaches in International Politics, eds. Rosenau, James N.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar; Bjorvatn, Kjetil. 1995. “Leviathan in a Dual Economy.” Public Choice 84:150CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and others. In fairness, the retelling of this story in Matthew 12:40 mentions a fish or a whale, depending on the English translation used. Hence the significance of the making one's translation explicit, as discussed below.

12. Maghen, Ze'ev. 2008. “Occultation in ‘Perpetuum’: Shi'ite Messianism and the Policies of the Islamic Republic.” Middle East Journal 62:233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Mousseau, Michael. 2007. “Some Systemic Roots of the Democratic Peace.” International Studies Review 9:93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing Rasler, Karen, and Thompson, William R.. 2005. Puzzles of the Democratic Peace: Theory, Geopolitics and the Transformation of World Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sokoloff, William W. 2001. “Kant and the Paradox of Respect.” American Journal of Political Science 45:773CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salamon, Lester M. 1994. “The Rise of the Nonprofit.” Foreign Affairs 73:43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Crocker, Chester A., and Hampson, Fen Osler. 1996. “Making Peace Settlements Work.” Foreign Policy 104:59Google Scholar.

14. See, for example, Ivory, Ming. 2003. “The Social Context of Applied Science: A Model Undergraduate Program.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 585:157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hodge, Robert W., and Lagerfeld, Steven. 1987. “The Politics of Opportunity.” Wilson Quarterly 11:124Google Scholar.

15. Proverbs 16:18 actually reads, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (KJV). Proverbs 13:24 reads: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him in good season” (KJV). In Luke 6:31, Jesus says “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (KJV). A similar statement appears in Matthew 7:12. Articles that misquote these verses include Krugman, Paul. 1998. “America the Boastful.” Foreign Affairs 77:33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huntley, Wade L. 2007. “U.S. Policy toward North Korea in Strategic Context: Tempting Goliath's Fate.” Asian Survey 47:480CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnosky, Jason. 2006. “The Violent Years: Responses to Juvenile Crime in the 1950s.” Polity 38:323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cryer, Debby. 1999. “Defining and Assessing Early Childhood Program Quality.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 563:44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berggren, D. Jason, and Rae, Nicol C.. 2006. “Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush: Faith, Foreign Policy, and an Evangelical Presidential Style.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36:618CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and others.

16. Coombe, Rosemary J. 1993. “Tactics of Appropriation and the Politics of Recognition in Late Modern Democracies.” Political Theory 21:424CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drogus, Carol Ann. 1995. “The Rise and Decline of Liberation Theology: Churches, Faith, and Political Change in Latin America.” Comparative Politics 27:473CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Farah, Randa. 2009. “Refugee Camps in the Palestinian and Sahrawi National Liberation Movements: A Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Palestine Studies 38:84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This last article (mis)locates the verse in the Qur'an.

17. Shimray, U. A. 2004. “Women's Work in Naga Society: Household Work, Workforce Participation and Division of Labour.” Economic and Political Weekly 39:1701Google Scholar.

18. The New Living Translation was completed in 1996. The Douay Rheims translation dates to the early 17th century. Robert Alter's translation appeared in 2004. Alter, Robert. 2004. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

19. There is no evidence that Governor Ferguson actually said these words. Indeed, similar quips have been traced back to the 19th century.

20. To arrive at this figure, I searched the JSTOR archive for political science articles that included key terms like “King James” and “bible” or “King James Version” or “Authorized Version” or “Christian Standard Bible” etc. I obtained a list of the 10 most popular bible translations from the Christian Booksellers Association April 2012 Best Seller list at http://www.cbaonline.org/nm/documents/BSLs/Bible_Translations.pdf. Most of these articles referenced the translation used in the first footnote in which a biblical verse was cited while others alluded to the translation in mid-text without a formal footnote.

21. Other journals that apply formal citation standards to sacred texts often, though not consistently, are Political Psychology, Political Research Quarterly, and Polity.

22. For the RSV, I am employing the 1901 edition of the American Standard Version, which is in the public domain. For the DR, I am using an American edition from 1899 (Baltimore, MD: John Murphy Company, 1899). Readers are invited to compare these and other translations on-line using websites such as http://www.biblegateway.com or bible.cc.

23. Nicolson, Adam. 2003. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 58Google Scholar.

24. This example and others below are from Bobrick, Benson. 2001. Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 112–115Google Scholar; and McGrath, Alister. 2001. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. New York, NY: Random House, 57–59 and 75Google Scholar.

25. These include the Contemporary English Version (1995), the Good News Translation (1992), the English Standard Version (2001), the God's Word Translation (1995), the New American Standard Bible (1960), the New Century Version (2005), the New International Version (1984), and others.

26. For this and many other typographical errors in bible printing see Russell, Ray. 1980. “The Wicked Bibles.” Theology Today 37:360–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. McGrath, ibid., pp. 243–244.

28. Van Evera, Stephen. 2006. “Assessing U.S. Strategy in the War on Terror.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 607:18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Arberry, Arthur J. 1990. The Koran Interpreted. London: Allen & UnwinGoogle Scholar; Dawood, N.J. 1953. The Koran: With a Parallel Arabic Text. London: PenguinGoogle Scholar; and Pickthall, Marmaduke William. 1953. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York, N: New American LibraryGoogle Scholar.

30. For an excellent assessment of various Qur'anic translations, see Mohammed, Khaleel. 2005. “Assessing English Translations of the Qur'an.” Middle East Quarterly, Spring: 58–71Google Scholar. Curiously, Muhammed repeatedly juxtaposes these translations with “literal” translations from an unstated source, presumably the author's own.

31. Readers who wish to explore competing translations of the Qur'an are encouraged to experiment with websites that display multiple variants side by side, such as http://al-quran.info or http://quran.com.

32. Bakhtiar, Laleh. 2007. The Sublime Quran. Chicago, IL: Kazi PublicationsGoogle Scholar.

33. Mohammed, ibid.

34. Mohammed, ibid.

35. Muhammad Ali, Maulana. 2002. The Holy Quran: Arabic Text with English Translation and Commentary. Lahore, Pakistan: Ahmadiyya Islamic Movement, note 1, p. 1140Google Scholar.

36. Haddad, Yvonne. 1983. “The Qur'anic Justification for an Islamic Revolution: The View of Sayyid Qutb.” Middle East Journal 37:27Google Scholar. I have used Dawood's translation of the original verse. Haddad seems to be using her own translation.

37. Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 263Google Scholar.

38. See, for example, Johnson, James Turner. 1997. The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University PressGoogle Scholar; Khadduri, Majid. 1955. War and Peace in the Law of Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins PressGoogle Scholar; and Kelsay, John. 1993. Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox PressGoogle Scholar.

39. Both translations are from Dawood, ibid.

40. Sau, Ranjit. 2002. “Musharraf's Quest for a ‘Progressive and Dynamic' Pakistan.” Economic and Political Weekly 37:1720Google Scholar; and Sau, Ranjit. 2001. “On the Kashmir Question: Liberation, Jihad or What?” Economic and Political Weekly 36:1475Google Scholar.

41. Hassner, Ron E., and Aran, Gideon. n.d. “An Overview of Religion and Violence in the Jewish Tradition.” In Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, eds. Kitts, Margot, Juergensmeyer, Mark, and Jerryson, Michael. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 78–99Google Scholar.

42. Dole, ibid.

43. Recent examples include Barnett, Michael. 2009. “Evolution without Progress? Humanitarianism in a World of Hurt.” International Organization 63:645CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yilmaz, Hakan. 2007. “Islam, Sovereignty, and Democracy: A Turkish View.” Middle East Journal 61:479–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Flint, Andrew R., and Porter, Joy. 2005. “Jimmy Carter: The Re-emergence of Faith-Based Politics and the Abortion Rights Issue.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35:33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Aquinas, Thomas. 1988. Commentary on the Sentences, Book IV, Question 44. Quoted in Baumgarth, William, and Regan, Richard J.. eds. 1988. Saint Thomas Aquinas on Law Morality and Politics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 259–260Google Scholar.

45. Thoreau, Henry David. 1993. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. Toronto: DoverGoogle Scholar.

46. Ellul, Jacques. 1980. “Anarchism and Christianity.” Katalagette Fall:20Google Scholar.

47. Crossan, John Dominic, and Reed, Jonathan L.. 2001. Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 177, 222–223, 320Google Scholar.

48. Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 27:2.

49. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 81b. Author's translation.

50. Collins, John J. 2003. “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence.” Journal of Biblical Literature 122:3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eisen, Robert. 2011. The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism. Oxford: Oxford University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hassner and Aran, ibid.

51. For a sampling of these debates see, for example, Tamimi, Azam. 2009. “The Islamic Debate over Self-inflicted Martyrdom.” In Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World, eds. al-Rasheed, Madawi, and Shterin, Marat. London: I.B.Tauris, 91–104Google Scholar; Moghadam, Assaf. 2008/9. “Motives for Martyrdom:  Al-Qaida, Salafi Jihad, and the Spread of Suicide Attacks.” International Security 33:xx–xxGoogle Scholar; Strenski, Ivan, 2003. “Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim Human Bombers.” In Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Burki, Shireen Khan. 2011. “Haram or Halal? Islamists' Use of Suicide Attacks as ‘Jihad.’” Terrorism and Political Violence 23:582–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Wink, Walter, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), p.176Google Scholar.

53. Walzer, Michael, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p.xiGoogle Scholar.

54. See, for example, Barr, James. 1991. Fundamentalism. London: SCM PressGoogle Scholar.