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date: 08 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Was Abraham religious? The question seems out of place in a volume on ‘Abrahamic Religions’. Yet, it is precisely the juxtaposition of strictly anachronistic terms (Abraham, religion) at a time when ‘the religious’ proliferates, that should initiate a sustained interrogation. By considering the ways in which Abraham was never religious, by thinking with Kafka, with Ronell and Derrida, about ‘another Abraham’, this chapter asks about the persistence of an all-too Christian religio and reads Abraham (Sarah and Hagar too) toward another question, another juxtaposition, a different disputation.

Keywords: religion, literature, translation, art of separation, Christianity

Gil Anidjar

Gil Anidjar, Professor in the Department of Religion, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University

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