An Egyptian-American Muslim colleague of mine received an e-mail from his Egyptian-American
Coptic friend, addressed to a roster of friends and acquaintances both Christian
and Muslim. The message
read, in its entirety:
Have a blessed
Easter.
Risen indeed.
Now, my colleague often has difficulties with nuances of
English, even after a couple of decades of residence in the U.S. But he did understand that this
terse and telegraphic phrase asserted the Resurrection of Jesus.
Though Muslim to the core, he is quite accepting of the
other Abrahamic faiths (indeed, has more than once attended services with
Christian friends), and he was happy to receive this blessing from a friend. He then asked me, in confidence (since he knows that I am
candid about such things), whether all Christian denominations believed in the Resurrection.
“Um
… yes,” I replied. (The “Um”
part was to stall for time while the taken-aback-sensation passed. In a similar fashion, some years ago, a
young woman colleague, university-educated and soon to be well traveled, asked
me out of the blue, “Do Jews believe that Jesus is the Messiah?” -- “Um … no,” was my reply.)
His own reply was a surprise. “Then we believe the same thing!” he exclaimed,
beaming. For the Koran (he
went on) proclaimed that God “lifted” Jesus up to Paradise (rafa`a). I expressed satisfaction at this congruence, and
privately desired that the message might spread to outfits like ISIL and Boko
Haram, who might, please, accordingly knock it off.
He went on to inform me that (according to Muslims) Jesus of
Nazareth (upon whom be peace) had not actually been crucified. I had heard this motif before in
connection with the Ahmadiyya (a pure simulacrum had been crucified in his
place); but my colleague added a neat twist, reminiscent of the trope wherein
the executioner hoists with his own petard: God had caused the very soldier leading Jesus to
Golgotha to suddenly take on the
mild carpenter’s appearance.
“That’s not in the
Koran,” I frowned. -- “No,” he
conceded.
“Hadith?”
(There are tens of thousands of these, some sounder than others, you
never known what might be found in some of the doubtful ones.) -- He considered. “In
the culture,” he finally said.
Which is to say:
Folklore, like “December 25”. (None but the most ignorant Christian will take
offense if you state that we really have no idea what day Jesus was born on.)
Well -- He is born, and He is risen. Peace on Earth, good will to men.
 |
|
A vision common to
Christianity and Islam
(Nur mit ein bißchen
anderen Worten)
|
~
[Philological footnote] The Arabic, rafa`,
is literally ‘raised’. Thus,
it is not quite equivalent to resurrexit,
in what might elsewhere be a small
but is here a crucial difference:
rafa` is comptabile with Jesus
having been raised to Paradise while
still alive, like Elijah. There is nothing in the Koran saying that he was risen from the dead.
~
With our linguistic caps on, let us look more closely at the
wording of that greeting. To
a Muslim with an uncertain grasp of English, it might seem no more than you
might find on a Hallmark card.
It is thus the perfect two-tier or encapsulated expression: no more than a smooth rock, or
black box, to the uninitiated; but
a treasure-chest which springs open
at the click, to initiates.
The standard American greetings that those of my generation
grew up with were “Happy Easter” and “Merry Christmas”.
But as those holdays became increasingly commercialized, some observent
Christians have come increasingly to say “Blessed Easter” or “Easter
Blessings”, to make it plain that they are actually referring to the holy-day
and not simply a time to hunt eggs or find discounts at the Mall (or as a
counterpunch to the latterday degradation of even “Merry Christmas” to “Season’s
Greetings”). You would not say it
to someone you knew to be an atheist;
though you might say it to a kindly stranger.
“Risen indeed”, by contrast, is not used even by the generality of Christians,
let alone to those of other faiths or none. It specifically echoes the antiphonal style of worship,
priest and congregation:
“The Lord
be with you”
Rx: “And also with you.”
“Christ is risen.”
Rx: “He is risen indeed.”
And by leaving off the first two words of the latter
formula, pronoun and auxiliary verb, the writer made it clear that he was
echoing the ritual greeting, which you may hear in Orthodox, Catholic and
Episcopal services, but not among churches whose liturgy or worship-style is
not antiphonal.
Among the Eastern Orthodox, this formula is known as the Paschal troparion: Χριστὸς ἀνέστη.
The English Wikipedia has a particlarly nice article
on this topic, as does the Russian version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_greeting
Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!
[Update] The
whole offering-and-response style recalls, actually, Arabic. There are
dozens or scores, if not hundreds, of formulaic greetings and blessings, each with a prescribed response. This scarcely exists in English, apart from “Thank you” -- “You’re
welcome”. (Arabic: shukran.
-- `afwan.)
Thus: To al-salaam `aleykum, you reply Wa-`alaykum al-salaam. (“Hello.” -- “Hello back.”)
To SabaaH al-xayr
(“Good morning”), SabaaH al-nuur
(literally “Morning of light”;
with many further variants.)
To na`iiman! (a
salutation to someone who has evidently just bathed, or shaved, or had a
haircut): Allah yin`im `ayleek.
And so on.
There is thus, both a theological
aspect to the responsory mode of worship, and a cultural/aesthetic one:
both typical of the Mideast.
[Further update]
[Further update] Apart from the context of worship, such ritualized exchanges are typical of traditional societies, and indeed help constitute their social cement. Contemporary American is sadly lacking in these: a lonely survival is “Thank you” -- “You’re welcome” -- and even this may go the way of the dodo as the custom of so much as thanking fades, along with that relic of our mother’s day, the Thank-You Note.
(As, https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2025/08/26/carolyn-hax-cash-gifts-thank-you-notes/
Nieces prefer getting cash gifts and not sending thank-you notes. Sending cash feels like paying bills to this aunt, and nieces’ lack of response to gifts makes it even worse.)
But the forefathers of our ancestors in the northern isles, were replete with these. A fossil of one survives in the mysterious word wassail, now known to most speakers only in some old Christmas carols. In origin, it is a salutation; grammatically, an imperative. And it came with its own antiphon:
Host: Wassail! [cognate with Old Norse ves heill ‘be hale’, as in “hale and hearty” and “to your health”]
Guest: Drink-hail!
Ah, the days, those were the days; those were the days indeed.
