The State of the Art on Qur’anic Studies
4 stars
First of all, I must confess that I did not read all of these essays here. I read primarily the epistemological and historiographical essays, essays on Islamic origins and the construction of the Qur’an as a single text, and most of the essays on Qur’anic themes, among a few others. I largely dodged the extensive chapters on Qur’anic commentaries (tafsir).
This book is fairly readable, and it stands in contrast to the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, which is significantly denser and seems to presuppose knowledge of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic philosophy (which makes sense, given that many early Islamic thinkers turned to these traditions as they sought out tools to understand God). The book is also comprehensive, and there’s a huge amount covered. I was particularly interested in the debates over epistemology and Islamic origins, although the arguments here push against the Islamic tradition, and I’d be curious to …
First of all, I must confess that I did not read all of these essays here. I read primarily the epistemological and historiographical essays, essays on Islamic origins and the construction of the Qur’an as a single text, and most of the essays on Qur’anic themes, among a few others. I largely dodged the extensive chapters on Qur’anic commentaries (tafsir).
This book is fairly readable, and it stands in contrast to the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, which is significantly denser and seems to presuppose knowledge of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic philosophy (which makes sense, given that many early Islamic thinkers turned to these traditions as they sought out tools to understand God). The book is also comprehensive, and there’s a huge amount covered. I was particularly interested in the debates over epistemology and Islamic origins, although the arguments here push against the Islamic tradition, and I’d be curious to hear arguments by traditionalist scholars that go beyond the Qur’an referencing itself as the literal word of God. Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s version of the Qur’an in English does some of this work, although it’s very much a “first encounter with the Qur’an” sort of work (although I haven’t read the commentary, as my Kindle doesn’t allow it.