DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Overlapping Inquiries

Adele Berlin editor Mordechai Z Cohen editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:6th Jun '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam cover

This comparative study examines how scriptures - the Bible and the Qur'an - were interpreted in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam throughout history.

This comparative study examines how scriptures - the Bible and the Qur'an - were interpreted in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam throughout history, with emphasis on the pivotal medieval period. Topics discussed include the challenges of translating scripture, its literal and non-literal meanings, its portrayal in art, and its relation to secular literature.This comparative study traces Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural interpretation from antiquity to modernity, with special emphasis on the pivotal medieval period. It focuses on three areas: responses in the different faith traditions to tensions created by the need to transplant scriptures into new cultural and linguistic contexts; changing conceptions of the literal sense and its importance vis-à-vis non-literal senses, such as the figurative, spiritual, and midrashic; and ways in which classical rhetoric and poetics informed - or were resisted in - interpretation. Concentrating on points of intersection, the authors bring to light previously hidden aspects of methods and approaches in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This volume opens new avenues for interdisciplinary analysis and will benefit scholars and students of biblical studies, religious studies, medieval studies, Islamic studies, Jewish studies, comparative religions, and theory of interpretation.

'This volume brings together an excellent collection of essays that will prove useful for scholars in many fields including hermeneutics, medieval religious thought, the history of biblical interpretation, and the history of the three Abrahamic religions. The two outstanding qualities of the volume are the various chapters on Islamic interpretive tradition and the four chapters comprising part 2s on the sensus literalis. In the case of this first strength, the chapters dealing with issues within the Islamic interpretive tradition go a long way in both introducing this important vein of scriptural interpretation to the interested reader and showing in a compelling manner the various points of contact between Islamic interpreters and those from Judaism and Christianity. In the second instance, part 2 of this volume represents one of the best treatments of the sensus literalis available to an academic readership. For these reasons, this volume deserves much attention.' Stephen D. Campbell, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures

ISBN: 9781107065680

Dimensions: 231mm x 160mm x 33mm

Weight: 680g

402 pages