SOURCE: John Renard, in an afterword to All the King's Falcon's: Rumi on Prophets and Revelation, State University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 151-58.

In the following excerpt. Renard discusses the prophetic imagery found in Rumi's writings and examines the function of the prophets and Muhammad as models of the spiritual guide. Please note that the parenthetical references throughout the excerpt and the unmarked references in the notes correspond to Nicholson's translation of the Mathnawi.

Where the Qur'an employs the prophetic stories chiefly as moral exempla, Rumi the teacher uses the prophets and their stories as a convenient reservoir of familiar and attractive images with which he catches the ear of his listener, and as the come-on with which he entices the prospective buyer into his shop. Leaving himself open to the charge of bait-and-switch merchandizing, what Rumi is really selling is a vision of the relationship of...