Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation

This book sheds new light on Jerusalem's status in early Islam. The sanctity of the city is already discerned in the Qurʾān. The vision of redemption that the Qurʾān displays coincides with the messianic expectations that have swept throughout the entire region, especially among the Jews, due to the attempted renewal of Jewish liturgy in Jerusalem following the Persian victory over Byzantium in 614.
On the other hand, the Qurʾān also portrays the holiness of Mecca and the Kaʿba. This book shows how it promotes their pre-Islamic holiness around the image of Abraham and Ishmael. The changing balance between the sanctity of Jerusalem and the sanctity of Mecca, in favor of the latter, is noticeable in the Qurʾān as one proceeds from the Meccan sūras to the Medinan ones. The change occurs against the background of the twist in relations between Muḥammad and the Jews. This book also points out the correlation between Muḥammad's situation in Medina and events in Palestine involving the victory of the Byzantines over the Persians in 628, as alluded to in the opening passage of Sūrat al-Rūm (30).
Thie work illuminates the growing sanctity of Jerusalem following the arrival of the first Muslims to Palestine. As in the Qurʾān, Mecca continued to struggle to preserve its status as a holy city vis-à-vis that of Jerusalem. Key aspects of this struggle are reflected in traditions in which patterns of sanctity move from Jerusalem to Mecca, and which this book also scrutinizes.

L’auteur part du principe que les racines du vieux contentieux entre l’islam et le christianisme ont des apparences politiques et socio-économiques, mais sont en réalité d’ordre structurel. L’intolérance se fonde sur une certaine vision de Dieu, une compréhension de la foi et une lecture du Livre saint. Il puise donc dans les écrits de Mgr Georges Khodr, un pasteur et théologien arabe, quelques propositions herméneutiques et théologiques parmi les multiples recommandations pour un meilleur vivre-ensemble islamo-chrétien au Moyen-Orient. Parmi ces propositions, il y a un appel à revisiter le passé en approfondissant quelques notions déformées comme les propriétés de la civilisation arabe, l’identité des Nassarah mentionnés dans le Coran et le rôle des chrétiens arabes dans les croisades. La deuxième proposition herméneutique est un appel à revivifier des lectures nouvelles du Livre de l’islam qui favorisent une religion à la fois fidèle à ses origines et ouverte aux réalités nouvelles du monde. Parmi les propositions théologiques, Khodr invite d’abord à la rencontre autour du Christ et de sa mère, des figures qui peuvent susciter une proximité affective et spirituelle entre les fidèles des deux religions, et appelle ensuite les musulmans à regarder la crucifixion comme l’accomplissement de l’appel coranique à l’islam [obéissance, soumission] absolu et inconditionnel à Dieu. L’auteur approfondit les propositions khodriennes en vue de les confirmer, de les rejeter ou de les nuancer, et soumet à son tour de nouvelles propositions et ouvertures.

Mgr Georges Khodr, un pasteur et théologien chrétien arabe, propose dans ses écrits des critères théologiques et herméneutiques qui peuvent aider ses compatriotes musulmans à reconnaître une société plurielle qui préserve le vivre-ensemble entre chrétiens et musulmans. L’auteur approfondit ces critères afin d’en vérifier le bienfondé et de présenter à son tour de nouvelles propositions.

Arabic-speaking evangelicals in Israel are caught in the midst of a complex identity conflict: unlike the understanding of religion dominant in Israel with its legal and political impact, their emphasis on faith leads to disputes about religious identity, while their evangelical Christian Zionism intensifies disputes relating to national identity between Arabic, Palestinian, and Israeli.

The tale of a collective evil force known as Gog and Magog has occupied the imagination of Jews, Christians, and Muslims for millennia, finding expression in literary and scholarly works and other cultural artifacts. This book gathers the papers from two conferences at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg by scholars ranging from history, to religious studies, to art history, and is the most thorough work on the subject to date.

Travel and pilgrimage have become central research topics in recent years. Some archaeologists and historians have applied globalization theories to ancient intercultural connections. Classicists have rediscovered travel as a literary topic in Greek and Roman writing. Scholars of early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been rethinking long-familiar pilgrimage practices in new interdisciplinary contexts.

This volume contributes to this flourishing field of study in two ways. First, the focus of its contributions is on experiences of travel. Our main question is: How did travelers in the ancient world experience and make sense of their journeys, real or imaginary, and of the places they visited? Second, by treating Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experiences together, this volume develops a longue durée perspective on the ways in which travel experiences across these three traditions resembled each other. By focusing on "experiences of travel," we hope to foster interaction between the study of ancient travel in the humanities and that of broader human experience in the social sciences.

The study of Islam’s origins from a rigorous historical and social science perspective is still wanting. At the same time, a renewed attention is being paid to the very plausible pre-canonical redactional and editorial stages of the Qur'an, a book whose core many contemporary scholars agree to be formed by various independent writings in which encrypted passages from the OT Pseudepigrapha, the NT Apocrypha, and other ancient writings of Jewish, Christian, and Manichaean provenance may be found. Likewise, the earliest Islamic community is presently regarded by many scholars as a somewhat undetermined monotheistic group that evolved from an original Jewish-Christian milieu into a distinct Muslim group perhaps much later than commonly assumed and in a rather unclear way. The following volume gathers select studies that were originally shared at the Early Islamic Studies Seminar. These studies aim at exploring afresh the dawn and early history of Islam with the tools of biblical criticism as well as the approaches set forth in the study of Second Temple Judaism, Christian, and Rabbinic origins, thereby contributing to the renewed, interdisciplinary study of formative Islam as part and parcel of the complex processes of religious identity formation during Late Antiquity.

This detailed study by Jutta Sperber shows how the magisterium of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and various parts of the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Iran have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogues. The mainly anthropological topics range from tolerance and human dignity, the position of women and children, media and education, to mission, resources and nationalism. They paint an interesting picture of the position of Man before God and the world in both Christianity and Islam.

Since the Mediterranean connects cultures, Mediterranean studies have by definition an intercultural focus. Throughout the modern era, the Ottoman Empire has had a lasting impact on the cultures and societies of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. However, the modern Balkans are usually studied within the context of European history, the southern Mediterranean within the context of Islam.

Although it makes sense to connect both regions, this is a vast field and requires a command of different languages not necessarily related to each other. Investigating both Greek and Arabic sources, this book will shed some light on the significance of ideas in the political transitions of their time and how the proponents of these transitions often became so overwhelmed by the events that they helped trigger adjustments to their own ideas. Also, the discourses in Greek and Arabic reflect the provinces of the Ottoman Empire and it is instructive to see their differences and commonalities which helps explain contemporary politics.

Throughout history, the study of sacred texts has focused almost exclusively on the content and meaning of these writings. Such a focus obscures the fact that sacred texts are always embodied in particular material forms—from ancient scrolls to contemporary electronic devices. Using the digital turn as a starting point, this volume highlights material dimensions of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The essays in this collection investigate how material aspects have shaped the production and use of these texts within and between the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from antiquity to the present day. Contributors also reflect on the implications of transitions between varied material forms and media cultures.

Taken together, the essays suggests that materiality is significant for the academic study of sacred texts, as well as for reflection on developments within and between these religious traditions. This volume offers insightful analysis on key issues related to the materiality of sacred texts in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while also highlighting the significance of transitions between various material forms, including the current shift to digital culture.

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.

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds.

In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed.

In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

The present volume offers the first scholarly discussion of Günter Lüling’s (1928-2014) work. Lüling’s views, long passages of the Qur’ān are originally mere reworking of pre-Islamic Christian hymns have not received the scholarly attention they deserve, since they were published at the beginning of the 70s of the previous century. Lüling attempted to reconstruct an “Ur-Qur’ān” in order to show that Islam emerged in a Christian context in Mecca. He also believed that Muhammad converted from Trinitarian Christianity to paganism and that the Kaaba was a church. Lüling’s hermeneutical approach to the Qur’ān and other Arabic sources on early Islam is, for the first time, the subject of the studies included in the present book. In addition, the volume offers interesting insights in the law case which accompanied the publication of Lüling’s work.

The art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the present volume.

Interreligious dialogue is an essential tool to facilitate peaceful coexistence among people groups with different religious backgrounds in an increasingly metropolitan world. The Orthodox Church has a long experience with interreligious dialogue and has encouraged tolerance and mutual understanding. This volume documents the contribution of the autocephalous orthodox churches since the 1980s until today in an ecumenical context.

Understanding how medieval textual cultures engaged with the heritage of antiquity (transmission and translation) depends on recognizing that reception is a creative cultural act (transformation). These essays focus on the people, societies and institutions who were doing the transmitting, translating, and transforming -- the "agents". The subject matter ranges from medicine to astronomy, literature to magic, while the cultural context encompasses Islamic and Jewish societies, as well as Byzantium and the Latin West. What unites these studies is their attention to the methodological and conceptual challenges of thinking about agency. Not every agent acted with an agenda, and agenda were sometimes driven by immediate needs or religious considerations that while compelling to the actors, are more opaque to us. What does it mean to say that a text becomes “available” for transmission or translation? And why do some texts, once transmitted, fail to thrive in their new milieu? This collection thus points toward a more sophisticated “ecology” of transmission, where not only individuals and teams of individuals, but also social spaces and local cultures, act as the agents of cultural creativity.

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.

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.

This volume presents Theodore Abu Qurrah’s apologetic Christian theology in dialogue with Islam. It explores the question of whether, in his attempt to convey orthodoxy in Arabic to the Muslim reader, Abu Qurrah diverged from creedal, doctrinal Christian theology and compromised its core content. A comprehensive study of the theology of Abu Qurrah and its relation to Islamic and pre-Islamic orthodox Melkite thought has not yet been pursued in modern scholarship. Awad addresses this gap in scholarship by offering a thorough analytic hermeneutics of Abu Qurrah’s apologetic thought, with specific attention to his theological thought on the Trinity and Christology. This study takes scholarship beyond attempts at editing and translating Abu Qurrah’s texts and offers scholars, students, and lay readers in the fields of Arabic Christianity, Byzantine theology, Christian-Muslim dialogues, and historical theology an unprecedented scientific study of Abu Qurrah’s theological mind.

This volume opens up new research perspectives on the interplay between the formation of religious traditions and the criticism addressed to them in different contexts. The scholarly investigation of how religious traditions have been criticized, reconsidered, and modified helps to better understand the dialectics of continuity and rupture that pervade religious communities. The exploration of the interactive processes of emergence, criticism, and reconsideration of religious traditions not only provides insight into how religions have developed in the past but also illuminates the present rise of new forms of religiosity within the framework of postmodernity. Belonging to different scholarly disciplines such as Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Christian Theology, Islamic Studies, History, Philosophy, and Sociology, and resorting to a broad spectrum of methodological tools, the authors of this volume delve deep into the realms of religious reality and shed new light on the dynamics of religious transformation, past and present.

This volume explores theoretical discourses in which religion is used to legitimize political violence. It examines the ways in which Christianity and Islam are utilized for political ends, in particular how violence is used (or abused) as an expedient to justify political action. This research focuses on premodern as well as contemporary discourses in the Middle East and Latin America, identifying patterns frequently used to justify the deployment of violence in both hegemonic and anti-hegemonic discourses. In addition, it explores how premodern arguments and authorities are utilized and transformed in order to legitimize contemporary violence as well as the ways in which the use of religion as a means to justify violence alters the nature of conflicts that are not otherwise explicitly religious. It argues that most past and present conflicts, even if the discourses about them are conducted in religious terms, have origins other than religion and/or blend religion with other causes, namely socio-economic and political injustice and inequality. Understanding the use and abuse of religion to justify violence is a prerequisite to discerning the nature of a conflict and might thus contribute to conflict resolution.

Focusing on travel narratives as a setting for spelling out both cultural exchanges and identity building, the present volume maps a variety of strategies employed in travelogues by Christians and Jews in the late antique Roman East.
The first part sheds light on the shared cultural background – folkloric or mythic – reflected in late antique Jewish and Christian sea-travel stories, and the various attempts to adapt it to a specific religious agenda. While the comparative analysis of the sources from two textual communities emphasizes their different religious agendas, it also allows for restoring patterns of the broader background with which they converse. The second part highlights Christian perceptions of the Land of Israel in missionary enterprises and in the eschatological visions.
The travelogues offer a window on the interplay between shared inheritance and new agendas within the dialectical development of religious traditions in Late Antiquity.