نشریه پژوهش های ادیانی
پیاپی 11 (بهار و تابستان 1397)

The present paper is to study the relationship between religion and gender. The role of religion in producing and reproducig the patriarchal system, the subordinated image of women in scriptures, women’s deprivation in church ordination, the idea of women’s incapacityy in attaining highly spiritual and gnostic rank, all are factors that made feminists to criticcize religion and religious propositions. Critical outlook of feminism to religion can be observed in feminism theology. Using descriptive- analytic approach, the article examines the feminist understanding of religion and scripture in woman and womanhood issues. Clarifying feminism theology shows that sometimes feminism regards female God as a solution to mental impasse and sometimes it considers the distortion and biased, male interpretation as the cause of women subordination. The origin of regarding women as the subordinated one can be traced back to creation story and woman creation, original sin, blaming woman for fall of man, and belief in trinity.

Soleiman Ali Morad, author of "reconsideration of the image of Maryam in the Qur'an" critically studies the origin of the plot of the story of Mary in the Qur'an. Through delving into the sources of Christian and Greek mythology and matching them with interpretations of the Qur'an and medieval Islamic history books, especially Jahez works, he oncluded that the source of the story of Mary in the Quran is taken from Greek mythology and Christian sources. Then it can be said that Quran is affected by those books. In his view, medieval Muslim commentators without sufficient knowledge about Christian beliefs have interpreted the verses of the story of Maryam .Assessment of these claims revealed that the author of the article by refering to rare sources and without appropriate references for his claims, has made hypotheses and derived incorrect and injustifiable conclusions.

One of the important issues in the interpretation process is the process of getting the meaning of the sacred text and the necessary means to get that meanin. This issue has been investigated in this article considering the viewpoints of two Christian and Muslim mystic commentators, namely, Origen and Abdul Razzag Kashani. Since the interpretation of Origen and Abdul Razaq Kashani is the esoteric one, and meaning in the esoteric interpretation is of an intrinsic meaning, this question arises by these two interpreters: what means and which process should be undertaken to arrive at a latent meaning beyond the apparent meaning of the sacred text? Examinig this issue based on Origen and Abdul Razzaq viewpoints reveals that the interpreter should follow two main stages, namely, spiritual conduct and guidance of the author of the holy text in the interpretation process. Internal factor and external factor can be mentioned as the influential elements in finding the meaning of sacred text.

Despite the suggestion made by one of the Zoroastrian scholars, Mary Boyce (1920-2006) in her late life, the Zoroastrian Studies has not taken into account the Islamic resources yet, and paid a little attention to them. Negligence of such an important issue is made when a number of Iranian old works have been translated into Arabic, Arabicised, and placed among lots of newly texts during the period of transferring Sassanid Iran to Islamic Iran. Undoubtedly, using this great heritage will expand the extent of resources and make a great help in finding the complexities of Zoroastrian Studies. In the present paper, we see that even in a popular and famous book, “Al- mellal val- Nehal”, written by Mohammad Abdul Karim Shahrestani, a passage of true Zoroasrian texts can be found that it may have been directly translated from Pahlavic into Arabic. Though there may be some changes when translating into Arabic, there are some vague hints to Devil and its creaturres in the passage.

Current Studies regarding the background and motives of kin marriage or xvedodah by zoroastrians are generally based on Greek historiography and writings of non- Persian figures and the concepts used in Pahlavi's jurisprudential texts. This practice, in addition to the mentioned sources, has also been reported in the Islamic texts. Yet, no detailed studies of the degree of consistency of the content between the works of these scholars and historical and religious significance has not been made compared with zoroastrain sources. This paper tries to find three basic issues in two resources groups:1.The origin of the ancient tradition of next o kin marriage in Iran history
2.The extent and frequency of this practice
3.The goals and motives of the continuation of such kinship among the Zoroastrians.
But given the mythological background of Zoroastrian jurisprudential text and the reported cases of the spread of this kind of kinship in various Islamic sources, it is not easy to make a definitive statement about the widespread prevalence and popularity of such a ritual.

History of the Manichaean art studies is traced back to the discovered artifacts in Xinjiang, Northwest China. Due to these findings and in light of the studies done in the last century, a study on the Manichaean didactic images - side by side with linguistic and historical researchers - has been flourished. The fact which has been led to the discovery of various aspects of Manichaeism. Yet, the Manichaean new artworks discovered in southeastern China, have changed the Manichaean art studies. These new artistic works are ten hanging-scrolls that have been identified during 2006-2016 in Japanese and American museums. The present paper - in place of the first article in Persian - intend to interpret one of those very important works called “Cosmology Painting”. This didactic painting, which is the most important work among the ten found paintings, demonstrates how details of Manichaean cosmos are arranged together. In the paper, some of the former commentaries are revisited.