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 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 192 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 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 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 272 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 an s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity written by Holger M. Zellentin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the relationship between the Qur’an and the Jewish and Christian traditions, considering aspects of continuity and reform. The chapters examine the Qur’an’s retelling of biblical narratives, as well as its reaction to a wide array of topics that mark Late Antique religious discourse, including eschatology and ritual purity, prophetology and paganism, and heresiology and Christology. Twelve emerging and established scholars explore the many ways in which the Qur’an updates, transforms, and challenges religious practice, beliefs, and narratives that Late Antique Jews and Christians had developed in dialogue with the Bible. The volume establishes the Qur’an’s often unique perspective alongside its surprising continuity with Judaism and Christianity. Chapters focus on individual suras and on intra-Qur’anic parallels, on the Qur’an’s relationship to pre-Islamic Arabian culture, on its intertextuality and its literary intricacy, and on its legal and moral framework. It illustrates a move away from the problematic paradigm of cultural influence and instead emphasizes the Qur’an’s attempt to reform the religious landscape of its time. The Qur'an's Reformation of Judaism and Christianity offers new insight into the Islamic Scripture as a whole and into recent methodological developments, providing a compelling snapshot of the burgeoning field of Qur’anic studies. It is a key resource for students and scholars interested in religion, Islam, and Middle Eastern Studies.

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 Islam and its Past written by Carol Bakhos and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-03 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islam and its Past: Jāhiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qur'an brings together scholars from various disciplines and fields to consider Islamic revelation, with particular focus on the Qur'an. The collection provides a wide-ranging survey of the development and current state of Qur'anic studies in the Western academy. It shows how interest in the field has recently grown, how the ways in which it is cultivated have changed, how it has ramified, and how difficult it now is for any one scholar to keep abreast of it. Chapters explore the milieu in which the Meccan component of the Qur'an made its appearance. The general question is what we can say about that milieu by combining a careful reading of the relevant parts of the Qur'an with what we know about the religious trends of Late Antiquity in Arabia and elsewhere. More specifically, the issue is what we can learn in this way about the manner in which the 'polytheists' of the Qur'an related to the Jewish and Christian traditions: were they Godfearers in the sense familiar from the study of ancient Judaism? It looks at the Qur'an as a text of Late Antiquity-not just considering those features of it that could be seen as normal in that context, but also identifying what is innovative about it against the Late Antique background. Here the focus is on the 'believers' rather than the 'polytheists'. The volume also engages in different ways with notions of monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia. This collection provides a broad survey of what has been happening in the field and concrete illustrations of some of the more innovative lines of research that have recently been pursued.

Download or read book The Qur an and the Bible written by Gabriel Said Reynolds and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 1029 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "While the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are understood to be related texts, the sacred scripture of Islam, the third Abrahamic faith, has generally been considered separately. Noted religious scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds draws on centuries of Qur'anic and Biblical studies to offer rigorous and revelatory commentary on how these holy books are intrinsically connected."--Dust jacket.

Download or read book Mu ammad and His Followers in Context written by Ilkka Lindstedt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-30 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library.The book surveys and analyzes changes in religious groups and identities in late antique Arabia, ca. 300-700 CE. It engages with contemporary and material evidence: for example, inscriptions, archaeological remains, Arabic poetry, the Qurʾān, and the so-called Constitution of Medina. Also, it suggests ways to deal with the later Arabic historiographical and other literary texts. The issue of social identities and their processes are central to the study. For instance, how did Arabian ethnic and religious identities intersect on the eve of Islam? The book suggests that the changes in social groups were more piecemeal than previously thought.

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 2017-05-30 with total page 687 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 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 The Making of the Last Prophet written by Gordon Darnell Newby and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sacred biography of Muhammad has shaped Muslims' perceptions of the place of Islam in the religious history of the world and located the Islamic founder and prophet as the last of God's messengers. As Muslims established political control over ancient Jewish and Christian communities, they also claimed hegemony over the panorama of biblical prophets and holy men. In the eighth century, the author of the first complete biography of Muhammad set out a plan for a history of the world that culminated with the advent of Muhammad and the religion of Islam. The biography not only gave the details of Muhammad's life but also retold the stories of past prophets from an Islamic perspective. The Making of the Last Prophet is an examination of the reshaping and retelling of the biblical past to form the image of Muhammad as the "Seal" of the prophets of God. Through a translation of the reconstructed Arabic text, the sources, the form, and uses of the eighth-century biography are examined for the ways in which attitudes toward Muhammad were shaped in early Islam. The work particularly underscores the interplay of Jewish, Christian, and other Near Eastern religious ideals in the formation of Islam's notions of prophethood.

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 259 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 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 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 The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur an written by Michael E. Pregill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-30 with total page 512 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.