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Theme Changer

 Topic: Qur'anic studies today

 (Read 1485147 times)
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  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #750 - April 19, 2016, 08:24 PM

    Yezevee,
    I was just going to compliment Zaotar on his honesty...Isn´t it essential that we can question all the scholars? Otherwise how can we understand better?
    I still dont understand why Crone doesnt mention the absence of Mecca in historical sources when writing an article about the first islamic century of the higra from Mecca to Medina. Zaotar´s criticism gives some perspective to her text.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #751 - April 19, 2016, 08:35 PM

    Yeez I am distinguishing between her work on early Islam and her studies on the Qur'an specifically.  The former is significantly higher quality, at least in my view, than the latter.  She has mountains of great articles on early Islam  On the composition and interpretation of the Qur'an?  Not so much.  Partly this is because the Qur'an is so resistant to analysis by historical methods.  

    There is no denying her brilliance and erudition, regardless of whether one ultimately agrees with her arguments.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #752 - April 21, 2016, 10:19 AM

    Quote
    Yezevee,
    I was just going to compliment Zaotar on his honesty...Isn´t it essential that we can question all the scholars? Otherwise how can we understand better?
    I still dont understand why Crone doesnt mention the absence of Mecca in historical sources when writing an article about the first islamic century of the higra from Mecca to Medina. Zaotar´s criticism gives some perspective to her text.


    Yeez I am distinguishing between her work on early Islam and her studies on the Qur'an specifically.  The former is significantly higher quality, at least in my view, than the latter.  She has mountains of great articles on early Islam  On the composition and interpretation of the Qur'an?  Not so much.  Partly this is because the Qur'an is so resistant to analysis by historical methods.  

    There is no denying her brilliance and erudition, regardless of whether one ultimately agrees with her arguments.



    Both of you guys are right and mundi  greetings.,   you are absolutely right in saying

    Quote
    .Isn´t it essential that we can question all the scholars? Otherwise how can we understand better?


    that  is indeed essential and fundamental to every field not just history of Quran or Islam   if you read the link of Dr. Liaquat Ali Khan   .. she herself agrees that she is NOT a scholar of Quran.

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim
     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #753 - April 22, 2016, 02:22 PM

    Quote from: Ian David Morris
    Wilferd Madelung (Oxford) has made an astonishing argument about the succession to Muhammad in a book review. ($)  https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.134.issue-3

    Read the thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/iandavidmorris/status/723449480125652992
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #754 - April 22, 2016, 05:31 PM

    Well goddamn that is frickin' awesome .... love it!  Would tie in so well with many suppressed aspects of Qur'anic Studies, like the epic battles over inheritance structures that David Powers has worked on, as well as (IMO) the suppressed theme of late Quraysh seizure of control over the believers.  I wrote a long paper arguing that the traditional narrative is exactly backwards, that the Quraysh evidently defeated the Medinan faction in the post-Muhammad era and imposed their own ideology over it, rather than Muhammad conquering and converting the Quraysh.  Further, I argued that "Quraysh" itself was never a Meccan tribe so much as a rough category of identity that went through dramatic changes, and became shorthand for a loose faction of Muhajirun, opposed to the sedentary Medinan faction.

    Unfortunately I took the paper down (my article on Q 106) because there were several aspects of the argument that I became unhappy with and wanted to rework, which hopefully I'll get to some day.  Q 106 remains, for me, the single most enigmatic text in the entire Qur'an.

    Fascinating to see Madelung make a similar argument from a completely different angle.  Very exciting way to look at early Islamic history!

    Btw, my pet theory is that "Abu Bakr" is an obviously fictitious name (yes, I know it's supposed to be a nickname, but come on guys .... come on .... next you'll be telling me that Abu Jahil was legit), and that 'Umar is the first genuine historical caliph.  Abu Bakr is basically a construct that stand for 'the primal legitimate leader who followed Muhammad'.   If this construct was generated as part of the Quraysh power grab and construction of their history as legitimate successors, that would make a lot of sense.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #755 - April 22, 2016, 06:32 PM

    David Powers - Finality of Prophecy

    https://www.academia.edu/19541526/_Finality_of_Prophecy_in_The_Oxford_Handbook_of_the_Abrahamic_Religions_ed._A._Silverstein_and_G._Stroumsa_254-271_Oxford_University_Press_2015_
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #756 - April 22, 2016, 07:55 PM

    Ian David Morris - Morrow's Lost Covenant

    http://www.iandavidmorris.com/morrows-lost-covenant/
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #757 - April 22, 2016, 11:46 PM


    Here's the text of Madelung's review:
    http://www.readperiodicals.com/201407/3552978361.html
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #758 - April 23, 2016, 10:24 AM

    .............Btw, my pet theory is that "Abu Bakr" is an obviously fictitious name (yes, I know it's supposed to be a nickname, but come on guys .... come on .... next you'll be telling me that Abu Jahil was legit), and that 'Umar is the first genuine historical caliph.  ...........

    Hi Zaotar I asked this question before.,  So again I am curious.,

    If "Abu Bakr" is a  fictitious name then  It  means  "Muhammad" is also  fictitious name.,   And that is my pet theory of Islam.   Cheesy Cheesy .,

    Now If  "Abu Bakr" and "Muhammad" are fictitious names  where do we start Islam?? Everything on those rightly guided Caliphs .. lot of it must be story.

     How about Hassan and Hussain .. The Shia Islamic story??  

    What is real and what is unreal in Islam??   so many questions  ..lol..

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim
     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #759 - April 23, 2016, 09:30 PM

    Hi Zaotar,
    Quote
    I argued that "Quraysh" itself was never a Meccan tribe so much as a rough category of identity that went through dramatic changes


    Gallez thinks that the Quraysh are the Qorechites from Latakia...Apparently place names on old maps of the region still refer to them. Would that make sense to you?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #760 - April 24, 2016, 03:00 PM

    My view, though I can't say I've seen anybody else holding to a similar position, is that "Quraysh" was not a tribal name until very late .... prior to that it designated a functional social category, probably nomadic and non-urban.  The name itself means essentially "the Collected" in Northern Arabic dialect.

    As part of the Arab seizure of power following 622, this loose functional category hardened into a new political identity, a conglomeration of muhajirun, which sought to assert its preeminence over the more sedentary groups (including Muhammad's polity in Medina).  Ultimately, this new political identity succeeded in taking over the believers (hence why its leaders had to be Quraysh).  Thus I see (this is why Madelung's comment is so interesting) early Islamic history as involving the construction of the Quraysh tribal identity and that polygenetic faction's assumption of victory over the believers.  Muhammad himself, in my view, was much more peripheral to the process than is usually understood.  I do not think Muhammad himself was ever Quraysh, but was rather 'Qurayshized' by giving him his traditional pre-Medina biographical backstory .... he had originally been a Quraysh himself, you see, before he fled to Medina, and so he always favored the Quraysh and their Meccan sanctuary over the secondary Medinan faction.  Historically, I think the reverse was probably true.

    So I very much doubt that the Latakians were 'the Quraysh' in the sense of a specific tribe, but rather believe that the Quraysh social function was probably widespread around the Hijaz/Southern Palestine/Syrian regions.  I generally see it as a Syrian/Arabic border term that migrated south in its usage.

    I don't think there ever really WAS a Quraysh tribe, in the sense of a distinct political entity, except as far as it was transformed and constructed as a political grouping as part of the rise of Arab power c. 622.  So it is useless to go looking for it.

    That all said, I think that the Quraysh, and Q 106 generally, remain one of the most mysterious aspects of Early Islamic history, so there's not much room for certainty anywhere.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #761 - April 24, 2016, 07:23 PM

    Zaotar,
    Interesting you say Quraysh has a Northern Arabic meaning what is in line again with Kerr´s and Gallez´ theory that the Quran is  a North Arabian product, not Hijazi
    .
    Do you know of any critical reviews discussing Gallez´s theory which claims that the Nazareans associated with Arab tribes (Qorechites) to conquer Jerusalem? Or should we just dismiss this as a wild phantasy?

    I really don´t get Madelung´s comment that hereditary guidelines for property (thus bringing Fatima in the picture) would be valid for the transfer of leadership. Guess I´m missing too much background here to follow the argument wacko
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #762 - April 25, 2016, 09:37 AM

    Mundi

    i read somewhere that the early Arabs who conqueror Jerusalem had Jews with them, it is documented by a christian historian.

    i was always intrigued by the fact that Muhammad did not settle in mecca after he has "conqueror it", after all it is supposed to be the holiest city in Islam ?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #763 - April 25, 2016, 03:13 PM

    David Cook - The Beginnings of Islam as an Apocalyptic Movement

    http://www.mille.org/publications/winter2001/cook.html

    David Cook - Understanding Jihad

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3_F-NfiYRhCYjZQLW9fM3FOQTA/edit?pref=2&pli=1
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #764 - April 25, 2016, 04:06 PM

    Ofer Livne-Kafri - Jerusalem in early Islam: the eschatological aspect

    http://holyland.oucreate.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/livne-kafri-jerusalem-in-early-islam-eschatological.pdf

    Ofer Livne-Kafri - The Muslim traditions 'in praise of Jerusalem': diversity and complexity

    http://opar.unior.it/1059/1/Articolo_Livne-Kafri.pdf
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #765 - April 26, 2016, 12:00 AM

    Peter Webb - Creating Arab Origins: Muslim Constructions of al-Jāhiliyya and Arab History

    http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18551/1/Webb_3618.pdf
    Quote
    Abstract

    The pre-Islamic Arab is a ubiquitous character in classical Arabic literature, but to date, there has been only scant scholarly analysis of his portrayal. In contrast to the dynamic discussions of contemporary Arab identity, the pre-Islamic and early Islamic-era Arabs are commonly treated as a straightforward and culturally homogeneous ethnos. But this simplified ‘original Arab’ archetype that conjures images of Arabian Bedouin has substantial shortcomings. There is almost no trace of ‘Arabs’ in the pre-Islamic historical record, and the Arab ethnos seemingly emerges out of nowhere to take centre-stage in Muslim-era Arabic literature. This thesis examines Arabness and Muslim narratives of pre-Islamic history with the dual aims of (a) better understanding Arab origins; and (b) probing the reasons why classical- era Muslims conceptualised Arab ethnic identity in the ways portrayed in their writings. It demonstrates the likelihood that the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula was in fact ‘Arab-less’, and that Islam catalysed the formation of Arab identity as it is familiar today. These Muslim notions of Arabness were then projected backwards in reconstructions of pre-Islamic history (al-Jāhiliyya) to retrospectively unify the pre- Islamic Arabians as all ‘Arabs’. This thesis traces the complex history of Arabness from its stirrings in post-Muslim Conquest Iraq to the fourth/tenth century when urban Muslim scholars crafted the Arab-Bedouin archetype to accompany their reconstructions of al-Jāhiliyya. Over the first four Muslim centuries, Arabness and al- Jāhiliyya were developed in tandem, and this study offers an explanation for how we can interpret early classical-era narratives that invoke the pre-Islamic Arab.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #766 - April 26, 2016, 04:50 PM

    Not sure how historically accurate it is, but Gore Vidal has Emperor Julian going on about useless Arab mercenaries.  Maybe there are many references out there.

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #767 - April 26, 2016, 05:01 PM

    Even where you read translations that refer to 'Arabs' this can actually be an interpretation of various different words. It doesn't necessarily mean the original writer was referring to Arabs in anything like the term's later sense.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #768 - April 26, 2016, 05:11 PM

    Peter Webb takes a radical line on this in the conclusion of his thesis:
    Quote
    The divergent scholarly theories about pre-Islamic Arab identity and history can now be appreciated as a logical corollary of the fact that pre-Islamic Arabs never actually existed. Or at least, they did not exist in the form that we expect. We expect the original Arab to be an Arabian Bedouin, and we scour the pre-Islamic historical record to find the first stirrings of the Arab ethnos somewhere in the darkness of the ‘Empty Ḥijāz’, tending camels, singing poetry and jealously guarding their tribal honour. We cannot find these people, however, because that Bedouin stereotype is not a relic of pre-Islamic Arabia, rather, we have been conditioned to expect it thanks to a millennium of Arabic writing augmented by 300 years worth of European scholarship that entrenched the conceptual nexus of tribalist Bedouinness and Arabness. We shall never find the paradigmatic pre-Islamic Arab in any ancient historical record because the quarry of our searches is a construct invented in the Muslim imagination and championed in fourth/tenth century writings.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #769 - April 26, 2016, 08:34 PM

    Hi Hatoush,

    Quote
    i was always intrigued by the fact that Muhammad did not settle in mecca after he has "conqueror it", after all it is supposed to be the holiest city in Islam ?


    Apparently there is serious doubt that Mecca was the main pilgrimage destination in early islam. Mecca´s name only shows up around 750 AD in a Spanish Chronicle with a geographical description not matching the location of Mecca but corresponding to a rather biblical description of Abrahams desert dwelling. Here is a summary of Gibson´s research: http://www.academia.edu/1776803/The_Mecca_Question.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #770 - April 28, 2016, 08:57 PM

    Robert Hoyland - Late Roman Arabia, Monophysite Monks, Arab Tribes

    https://www.academia.edu/3567964/Late_Roman_Arabia_Monophysite_Monks_Arab_Tribes
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #771 - April 30, 2016, 07:56 PM

    Very amazing that the year zero of the calendars used in late antiquity and also later (cfr Michael the Syrian) seem not be religiously based... Maybe "the year of the arabs" wasn´t either?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #772 - April 30, 2016, 09:01 PM

    The year of the formation of their tribal confederacy?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #773 - April 30, 2016, 09:08 PM

    There's a research project here on Calendars in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It might be worth a closer look.

    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish/research/research-pro/calendars-antiquity-middle-ages

    A summary of the Seleucid dating system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_era

    AD dating wasn't popularised until after the rise of Islam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini
    I wonder if there's any argument for it's adoption being a response to Islam and Islamic dating. It's interesting that Bede played a part in this and was also concerned with Islam (or at least 'Saracens') - see for example this introduction to a book on Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World: http://www.beck-shop.de/fachbuch/leseprobe/9780521829403_Excerpt_001.pdf

    Also here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DkDFec14veQC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=Anglo-saxon+perceptions+of+the+islamic+world+bede&source=bl&ots=XJz58D1FUu&sig=NJxpOtnfQ2w0sExVUZTvEFieB5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUm7u9v7fMAhWbHsAKHW-TDxsQ6AEIIjAC#v=onepage&q=Anglo-saxon%20perceptions%20of%20the%20islamic%20world%20bede&f=false
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #774 - May 01, 2016, 09:40 AM

    Hi Hatoush,

    Apparently there is serious doubt that Mecca was the main pilgrimage destination in early islam. Mecca´s name only shows up around 750 AD in a Spanish Chronicle with a geographical description not matching the location of Mecca but corresponding to a rather biblical description of Abrahams desert dwelling. Here is a summary of Gibson´s research: http://www.academia.edu/1776803/The_Mecca_Question.




    all i know is that the Umayyad Caliphate associate themselves with Mecca, Abd Allah al-Zubayr  had a revolt against the umayyad from mecca. this is documented in non Muslim source

    if you accept that the Quran is only a rework of previous non orthodox christian text, then mecca does not fit into this narrative.

    This subject is damn complex, i spent a lot of time readying about the current research in early islam studies, still no damn consensus what may happen really :(

    for example look at this paper and it will tell you a different story all together, may we should look south !!


    https://www.academia.edu/14840043/The_Jews_and_Christians_of_pre-Islamic_Yemen_%E1%B8%A4imyar_and_the_Elusive_Matrix_of_the_Qur_%C4%81ns_Christology_2015_Awarded_Conference_Paper_-_Upcoming_Book_Chapter
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #775 - May 01, 2016, 11:21 AM

    Thanks hatoush. I'd read Segovia's article before but I think without paying it too much attention. It does sound quite plausible on re-reading. It's also interesting that he explicitly suggests that Muhammad is likely to have been a Christian. I wonder if there's an argument for seeing Muhammad as a Christian rather than a Muslim, in the same way we'd now see Jesus as a Jew rather than a Christian - on the basis that the new religions of Islam and Christianity really developed after their respective lifetimes.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #776 - May 01, 2016, 11:35 AM

    ......... Segovia's article ................ It's also interesting that he explicitly suggests that Muhammad is likely to have been a Christian.


    Segovia's article

    if it is there in that article that is preposterous  statement..  which Muhammad  is he taking about?

    Muhammad of Quran?
    or Muhammad the kid in the story of  so-called Aminah bint Wahb  & Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Khadija?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married SAWDA bint Zam'a?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Aisha bint Abi Bakr?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Hafsa bint Umar?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Zaynab bint Khuzayma?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Zaynab bint Jahsh ?
    or the guy so-called Muhammad who married Juwayriyya bint al-Harith?

    yadi...yadi..yadi.... who married yadi...yadi..yadi ?

    which one zeca?? which   Muhammad ?  anyway that link gives pdf article of  Segovia....

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim
     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #777 - May 01, 2016, 12:45 PM


    Guest Ahmad al-Jallad has spent the past several summers digging in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, uncovering new inscriptions thousands of years old, and shares his research that’s shedding new light on the writings of a complex civilization that lived in the Arabian peninsula for centuries before Islam arose.

    http://15minutehistory.org/2016/04/27/episode-82-what-writing-can-tell-us-about-the-arabs-before-islam/
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #778 - May 01, 2016, 02:37 PM

    I was going to post that al Jallad interview, it is fantastic and a must-listen!!!  Highly recommended!!
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #779 - May 01, 2016, 02:37 PM

    Quote from: yeezevee
    Quote from: zeca
    ......... Segovia's article ................ It's also interesting that he explicitly suggests that Muhammad is likely to have been a Christian.

    Segovia's article

    if it is there in that article that is preposterous  statement..  which Muhammad  is he taking about?

    Quote from: Carlos Segovia
    Whatever Abraha’s agenda, his Christological formula evinces that South-Arabian Christians in the sixth century (even mainstream Christians!) were not totally unfamiliar with the representations of Jesus as the Messiah instead of God’s son – a feature that we also find in the Qur’ān from the viewpoint of the Jesus himself, who is repeatedly called there “the Messiah, son of Mary” instead of “son of God”.44 And it is at least curious in this respect to notice the positive references to the religion of the Arab conquerors in several Dyophysite writings of the seventh century, including Išō’yahb III’s letters (48B.97; 14C.251), the Khuzistan Chronicle (34), and John bar Penkāyē’s Book of Main Points (141).45

    Thus unless we represent Muḥammad himself as a non-Christian monotheist – but why should we? – it is fair to ask whether his religious views were somehow influenced by Abraha’s, and thereby to what extent emergent Islam must be studied against the background of sixth-century South-Arabian Christianity.46
    ....
    46 On Muḥammad’s plausible Christian background see Segovia, “Messianic Controversy,” as well as the cross-references to Muḥammad’s and Musaylima’s Qur’ān-s, the Old Syriac version of the Gospels, and the New Testament parable of the mustard seed provided in Segovia, “Abraha’s Christological Formula,” in fine. See also Jan M. F. van Reeth, “Ville céleste, ville sainte, ville idéal dans la tradition musulmane,” Acta Orientalia Belgica 24 (2011): 121-31.

    I don't know, possibly I'm overstating Segovia's position in saying Muhammad is likely to have been a Christian. I'm referring to the actual historical Muhammad here and not the Muhammad of the Muslim imagination, and I'm sure Segovia is doing the same. If the historical Muhammad didn't start off as a Christian he must have started off as something else (Jewish?, pagan?, some other form of monotheist?) - this is possible but why should it necessarily be so?

    I'm not sure Segovia is saying that Muhammad remained a Christian (I'm not sure he takes any position on this). My question though, if we assume Muhammad was originally a Christian, is whether it makes sense to say that at some point he stopped being one and became something else. Did he see actually see himself as launching a new religion or just as a reformer of an existing religion? I'm open to arguments on this, and of course Segovia isn't responsible for the question.

    Edit: from Messianiac Controversy:
    Quote from: Carlos Segovia
    I basically see Muḥammad’s mission (wherever exactly we may need to place the historical Muḥammad) as a political movement with somewhat peripheral but nonetheless strong Christian trimmings that took shape in the aftermath of the Persian invasion of the near East. In my view, there is no intrinsic contradiction between this hypothesis and the very likely probability that the Qur’ān as we now have it (i.e. the Qur’ān’s textus receptus) was written and edited in Syria and/or Iraq after a few texts originally belonging to Muḥammad’s milieu that were thus expanded in some cases, abridged in other cases, and in any event reworked and mixed with other miscellaneous writings a few decades after his death – and that in was in this new scenario (evidently a scribal one) that some additional Jewish and Christian components were incorporated into the quranic corpus.

    Quote from: Carlos Segovia
    one is compelled to ask whether Muḥammad himself may have been raised in a Christian milieu and initially struggled to re-affirm a particular, if peripheral, type of Christianity; peripheral because of its very complex, and not altogether clear, constituting elements – which in my view fall close, nevertheless, to Dyophysite/ Nestorian Christianity.

    Quote from: Carlos Segovia
    I usually tell my students to fancy that they casually come to discover a late-antique fragmentary document that states: “O you who believe, be God’s helpers – as when Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Who are my helpers for God?’ They replied, ‘We are God’s helpers’” (see Q 61:14 above), repeatedly defends Jesus against the “Jews,” declares him to be the messiah, makes systematic use of a number of crucial Christian notions and rhetorical moves, and quotes more or less verbatim the New Testament Apocrypha and the writings of several late-antique Christian authors. “How on earth would you label that text?,” I ask them.

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