Download or read book The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet written by Carlos A. Segovia and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Still in its infancy because of the overly conservative views and methods assumed by the majority of scholars working in it since the mid-19th century, the field of early Islamic and quranic studies is one in which the very basic questions must nowadays be addressed with decision. Accordingly, this book tries to resituate the Qur'ān at the crossroads of the conversations of old, to which its parabiblical narratives witness, and explores how Muhammad’s image – which was apparently modelled after that of the anonymous prophet repeatedly alluded to in the Qur'ān – originally matched that of other prophets and/or charismatic figures distinctive in the late-antique sectarian milieu out of which Islam gradually emerged. Moreover, it contends that the Quranic Noah narratives provide a first-hand window into the making of Muhammad as an eschatological prophet and further examines their form, content, purpose, and sources as a means of deciphering the scribal and intertextual nature of the Qur'ān as well as the Jewish-Christian background of the messianic controversy that gave birth to the new Arab religion. The previously neglected view that Muhammad was once tentatively thought of as a new Messiah challenges our common understanding of Islam’s origins.
Download or read book For Love of the Prophet written by Noah Salomon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet, while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state, its possibilities and impossibilities, surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. For Love of the Prophet looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions, but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows, Noah Salomon’s careful ethnography examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst. Salomon investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history—balanced between unity and partition, secular and religious politics, peace and war—when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse, Salomon depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought, augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy. Among the first books to delve into the making of the modern Islamic state, For Love of the Prophet reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.
Download or read book What the Qur an Meant written by Garry Wills and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s leading religious scholar and public intellectual introduces lay readers to the Qur’an with a measured, powerful reading of the ancient text Garry Wills has spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Christianity. In What the Qur’an Meant, Wills invites readers to join him as he embarks on a timely and necessary reconsideration of the Qur’an, leading us through perplexing passages with insight and erudition. What does the Qur’an actually say about veiling women? Does it justify religious war? There was a time when ordinary Americans did not have to know much about Islam. That is no longer the case. We blundered into the longest war in our history without knowing basic facts about the Islamic civilization with which we were dealing. We are constantly fed false information about Islam—claims that it is essentially a religion of violence, that its sacred book is a handbook for terrorists. There is no way to assess these claims unless we have at least some knowledge of the Qur’an. In this book Wills, as a non-Muslim with an open mind, reads the Qur’an with sympathy but with rigor, trying to discover why other non-Muslims—such as Pope Francis—find it an inspiring book, worthy to guide people down through the centuries. There are many traditions that add to and distort and blunt the actual words of the text. What Wills does resembles the work of art restorers who clean away accumulated layers of dust to find the original meaning. He compares the Qur’an with other sacred books, the Old Testament and the New Testament, to show many parallels between them. There are also parallel difficulties of interpretation, which call for patient exploration—and which offer some thrills of discovery. What the Qur’an Meant is the opening of a conversation on one of the world’s most practiced religions.
Download or read book God A Biography written by Jack Miles and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1996-03-19 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE What sort of "person" is God? What is his "life story"? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book—as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? This is the task that Jack Miles—a former Jesuit trained in religious studies and Near Eastern languages—accomplishes with such brilliance and originality in God: A Biography. Using the Hebrew Bible as his text, Miles shows us a God who evolves through his relationship with man, the image who in time becomes his rival. Here is the Creator who nearly destroys his chief creation; the bloodthirsty warrior and the protector of the downtrodden; the lawless law-giver; the scourge and the penitent. Profoundly learned, stylishly written, the resulting work illuminates God and man alike and returns us to the Bible with a sense of discovery and wonder.
Download or read book The Golden Calf Between Bible and Qur an written by Michael E. Pregill and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the story of the Israelites' worship of the Golden Calf in its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim contexts, from ancient Israel to the emergence of Islam. It focuses in particular on the Qur'an's presentation of the narrative and its background in Jewish and Christian retellings of the episode from Late Antiquity. Across the centuries, the interpretation of the Calf episode underwent major changes reflecting the varying cultural, religious, and ideological contexts in which various communities used the story to legitimate their own tradition, challenge the claims of others, and delineate the boundaries between self and other. The book contributes to the ongoing reevaluation of the relationship between Bible and Qur'an, arguing for the necessity of understanding the Qur'an and Islamic interpretations of the history and narratives of ancient Israel as part of the broader biblical tradition. The Calf narrative in the Qur'an, central to the qur'anic conception of the legacy of Israel and the status of the Jews of its own time, reflects a profound engagement with the biblical account in Exodus, as well as being informed by exegetical and parascriptural traditions in circulation in the Qur'an's milieu in Late Antiquity. The book also addresses the issue of Western approaches to the Qur'an, arguing that the historical reliance of scholars and translators on classical Muslim exegesis of scripture has led to misleading conclusions about the meaning of qur'anic episodes.
Download or read book Stories between Christianity and Islam written by Reyhan Durmaz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories between Christianity and Islam offers an original and nuanced understanding of Christian–Muslim relations that shifts focus from discussions of superiority, conflict, and appropriation to the living world of connectivity and creativity. Here, the late antique and medieval Near East is viewed as a world of stories shared by Christians and Muslims. Public storytelling was a key feature for these late antique Christian and early Islamic communities, where stories of saints were used to interpret the past, comment on the present, and envision the future. In this book, Reyhan Durmaz uses these stories to demonstrate and analyze the mutually constitutive relationship between these two religions in the Middle Ages. With an in-depth study of storytelling in Late Antiquity and the mechanisms of hagiographic transmission between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, Durmaz develops a nuanced understanding of saints’ stories as a tool for building identity, memory, and authority across confessional boundaries.
Download or read book The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qur an written by Andrew Rippin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully revised and updated, the second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qur'ān offers an ideal resource for anyone who wishes to read and understand the Qur'ān as a text and as a vital component of Muslim life. While retaining the literary approach to the subject, this new edition extends both the theological and philosophical approaches to the Qur'ān. Edited by the noted authority on the Qur'ān, Andrew Rippin, and Islamic Studies scholar Jawid Mojaddedi, and with contributions from other internationally renowned scholars, the book is comprehensive in scope and written in clear and accessible language. New to this edition is material on modern exegesis, the study of the Qur'ān in the West, the relationship between the Qur'ān and religions prior to Islam, and much more. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qur'ān is a rich and wide-ranging resource, exploring the Qur'ān as both a religious text and as a work of literature.
Download or read book Exodus written by Annette Hoffmann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific debates on border crossings and cultural exchange between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have much increased over the last decades. Within this context, however, little attention has been given to the biblical Exodus, which not only plays a pivotal role in the Abrahamic religions, but also is a master narrative of a border crossing in itself. Sea and desert are spaces of liminality and transit in more than just a geographical sense. Their passage includes a transition to freedom and initiation into a new divine community, an encounter with God and an entry into the Age of law. The volume gathers twelve articles written by leading specialists in Jewish and Islamic Studies, Theology and Literature, Art and Film history, dedicated to the transitional aspects within the Exodus narrative. Bringing these studies together, the volume takes a double approach, one that is both comparative and intercultural. How do Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and images read and retell the various border crossings in the Exodus story, and on what levels do they interrelate? By raising these questions the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of contact points between the various traditions.
Download or read book Behind the Story Ethical Readings of Qur nic Narratives written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind the Story: Ethical Readings of Qurʾānic Narratives is a pivotal work that presents groundbreaking research on the Qurʾānic narrative as a literary genre with profound moral significance. It underscores the genre's integral role in shaping Islamic moral thought, as manifested in areas like Islamic law, theology, Sufism, politics, and art. The book offers insightful interpretations of various Qurʾānic narratives, delving into their ethical dimensions and challenges. It also examines their historical reception and influence across both Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship, covering diverse disciplines such as mysticism, art, and applied ethics. This volume stands as an invaluable resource for scholars and students seeking a deeper understanding of the Qurʾānic narrative and its multifarious interpretations in the context of Islamic Studies and beyond. Contributors Taira Amin, Halla Attallah, Bilal Badat, Fatih Ermiş, Mohammad Fadel, Hannelies Koloska, Samer Rashwani, Emmanuelle Stefanidis, and Devin Stewart. ما وراء الحكاية: دراسات أخلاقية في القصة القرآنية، يعالج هذا الكتاب القَصص القرآني من حيث هو نوعٌ أدبي ذو مضمون أخلاقي في المقام الأول، الأمر الذي لم يَحظَ بالنظر العلمي والمنهجي من قبل؛ على الرغم من تأثيره العميق في حقول الفقه والكلام والتصوف والسياسة والأخلاق والفن، وغيرها. يقدم القسم الأول قراءات تأويلية تسعى للكشف عن المفاهيم والمبادئ والأسئلة الأخلاقية التي يثيرها القصص القرآني، بينما يكشف القسم الثاني عن تاريخ تلقيها وتأثيرها في فنون عديدة تشمل التصوف والأدب والعمارة والأخلاق التطبيقية. هذا الكتاب لبنة جديدة في منهج دراسة القصص القرآني، ويطمح إلى أن يكون مرجعاً لا غنى عنه للباحثين والطلاب المشتغلين في حقول الدراسات القرآنية، والأخلاق النظرية والتطبيقية، والتصوف، والفنون، والدراسات الإسلامية عمومًا. المساهمون فاتح إرمش، وطاهرة أمين، وبلال بادات، وسامر رشواني، وإيمانويلا ستيفانيديس، وديفين ستيوارت، وهالة عطاء الله، ومحمد فاضل، وهانيليس كولوسكا.
Download or read book The Quranic Jesus written by Carlos Andrés Segovia and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur’ān against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur’ān (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur’ān and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur’ān’s earliest Christology via-à-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur’ān’s original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.
Download or read book The Qur n written by Karim Samji and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The corpus coranicum eludes familiar categories and resists strict labels. No doubt the threads woven into the fabric are exceptionally textured, varied, and complex. Accordingly, the introductory chapter of this book demonstrates the application of form criticism to the text. Chapter two then presents a form-critical study of the prayer genre. It identifies three productive formulae and addresses distinct social settings and forms associated with them. The third chapter begins by defining the liturgy genre vis-à-vis prayer in the Qurʾān. Drawing a line between the hymn and litany forms, this chapter treats each in turn. Chapter four considers the genre classified as wisdom literature. It identifies sapiential formulae and sheds light on wisdom contexts. The fifth chapter examines the narrative genre writ large. It also surveys narrative blocks of the long saga. The subsequent chapter on the proclamation genre inspects a set of vocative formulae, which occurs in the messenger situation. The concluding chapter looks at the corpus through synchronic and diachronic lenses. In the end, Qurʾānic genres encapsulate the form-critical elements of formulae, forms, and settings, as well as an historical dimension.
Download or read book Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft written by Sebastian Günther and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt (The Secrets of the Upper and the Lower World) is a substantial new collection of essays on magic in Islamic cultural history. Both comprehensive and innovative in its approach, this book offers fresh insights into an important yet still understudied area of Islamic intellectual history. The seventeen chapters deal with key aspects of Islamic magic, including its historical developments, geographical variants, and modern-day practices. The general introduction identifies and problematizes numerous sub-topics and key practitioners/theoreticians in the Arabo-Islamic context. This, along with terminological and bibliographical appendices, makes the volume an unparalleled reference work for both specialists and a broader readership. Contributors: Ursula Bsees, Johann Christoph Bürgel, Susanne Enderwitz, Hans Daiber; Sebastian Günther, Mahmoud Haggag, Maher Jarrar, Anke Joisten-Pruschke, Fabian Käs, Ulrich Marzolph, Christian Mauder, Tobias Nünlist, Khanna Omarkhali, Eva Orthmann, Bernd-Christian Otto, Dorothee Pielow, Lutz Richter-Bernburg, Johanna Schott & Johannes Thomann.
Download or read book Islam and Its Past written by Michael Cook and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An edited collection on the historical, religious, and cultural contexts of the origins of the Qur'an.
Download or read book Paul the Jew written by Gabriele Boccaccini and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decades-long effort to understand the apostle Paul within his Jewish context is now firmly established in scholarship on early Judaism, as well as on Paul. The latest fruit of sustained analysis appears in the essays gathered here, from leading international scholars who take account of the latest investigations into the scope and variety present in Second Temple Judaism. Contributors address broad historical and theological questions—Paul’s thought and practice in relationship with early Jewish apocalypticism, messianism, attitudes toward life under the Roman Empire, appeal to Scripture, the Law, inclusion of Gentiles, the nature of salvation, and the rise of Gentile-Christian supersessionism—as well as questions about interpretation itself, including the extent and direction of a “paradigm shift” in Pauline studies and the evaluation of the Pauline legacy. Paul the Jew goes as far as any effort has gone to restore the apostle to his own historical, cultural, and theological context, and with persuasive results.
Download or read book Ali The Well Guarded Secret Figures of the First Master in Shi i Spirituality written by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Alī, son of Abī Ṭālib, Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin, is the only Companion of the Prophet who has remained to this day the object of fervent devotion of hundreds of millions of followers in the lands of Islam, especially in the East. Based on a detailed analysis of several categories of sources, this book demonstrates that Shi‘ism is the religion of the Imam, of the Master of Wisdom, just like Christianity is that of Christ, and that ‘Alī is the first Master and Imam par excellence. Shi‘ism can therefore be defined, in its most specific religious aspects, as the absolute faith in ‘Alī: the divine Man, the most perfect manifestation of God’s attributes, simultaneously spiritual refuge, model and horizon. With contributions by Orkhan Mir-Kasimov & Mathieu Terrier Translated from French by Francisco José Luis & Anthony Gledhill
Download or read book Scripts and Scripture written by Fred M. Donner and published by Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Islam's sacred scripture, the Arabic Qur'an, emerge from western Arabia at a time when the region was religiously fragmented and lacked a clearly established tradition of writing to render the Arabic language? The studies in this volume, the proceedings of a scholarly conference, address different aspects of this question. They include discussions of the religious concepts found in Arabia in the centuries preceding the rise of Islam, which reflect the presence of polytheism and of several varieties of monotheism including Judaism and Christianity. Also discussed at length are the complexities surrounding the way languages of the Arabian Peninsula were written in the centuries before and after the rise of Islam-including Nabataean and various North Arabian dialects of Semitic-and the gradual emergence of the now-familiar Arabic script from the Nabataean script originally intended to render a dialect of Aramaic. The religious implications of inscriptions from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic centuries receive careful scrutiny. The early coalescence of the Qur'an, the kind of information it contains on Christianity and other religions that formed part of the environment in which it first appeared, the development of several key Qur'anic concepts, and the changing meaning of certain terms used in the Qur'an also form part of this rich volume.
Download or read book A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission written by Gabriele Boccaccini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts--a body of hypothetical originals--but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.
