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Stephen N. Lambden In this paper I shall focus upon ways in which text focused or scriptural fundamentalism has had negative, disruptive effects upon the intellectual and spiritual life of adherents of the major Abrahamic (to use qur’ānic terminology) ahl kitāb ("people of the Book"), namely, members of the Jewish , Christian and Islamic religions. As the Bābī-Bahā'ī religion(s) is pre-eminently a scripture based "religion of the Book" it will be well to heed lessons from the past, lest the spiritual and intellectual life of the Bahā'ī community be compromised by fanatical, anti-intellectual and fundamentalist elements. I shall first (loosely) define fundamentalism as it is historically rooted in a Christian literalist view of biblical scripture and comment upon some more recent definitions. The cases of the Scottish Protestant, Aberdeen then ultimately Cambridge University lecturer William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) will be outlined as will that of the American Catholic lecturer on the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament" = OT) Henry A. Poels (1868-1948). This will be followed by a few notes pertinent to Thomas, Kelly Cheyne (1841-1915), also a specialist on the Hebrew Bible, a champion of "higher criticism" and of the "hallowing of criticism" also in his last years a professed Bahā'ī. Then will follow a presentation of some aspects of a typically fundamentalist hermeneutical orientation. They will be sketched, critiqued and contrasted with the multi-faceted Bahā'ī scripturally based hermeneutical perspectives which leave no room for fanaticism, fundamentalist elitism, dogmatism or anti-intellectualism.
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