Gabriel Said Reynolds on Islam and the Quran

In the coming weeks, I hope to feature an interview with Gabriel Reynolds of the University of Notre Dame and author of a book due out in April: The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective (Fortress Press, 2012), 248pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

Gabriel Said Reynolds tells the story of Islam in this brief illustrated survey, beginning with Muhammad's early life and rise to power, then tracing the origins and development of the Qur’an juxtaposed with biblical literature, and concluding with an overview of modern and fundamentalist narratives of the origin of Islam. Reynolds offers a fascinating look at the structure and meaning of the Qur'an, revealing the ways in which biblical language is used to advance the Qur'an's religious meaning. Reynolds' analysis identifies the motives that shaped each narrative—Islamic, Jewish, and Christian. The book’s conclusion yields a rich understanding of diverse interpretations of Islam’s emergence, suggesting that its emergence is itself ever-developing.

Reynolds is an accomplished scholar in the area, and author of such other recent studies as The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext and Critique of Christian Origins: A Parallel English-Arabic Text. As so much of Islam grew up in Eastern Christian areas--Syria, Egypt, Armenia, inter alia--and as Eastern Christians, long before their Western counterparts, had to learn to live with Islam, this book promises to be of great interest to Eastern Christians today. 

Dialogue with Islam

David Bertaina, whom I interviewed here, is the author of a recent book, Christian and Muslim Dialogues: The Religious Uses of a Literary Form in the Early Islamic Middle East (Gorgias, 2011) whose details you may read here.

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies sent the book out for expert review by Gabriel Said Reynolds, who is the Tisch Family Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Reynolds, the editor of  The Quran in Its Historical Context (Routledge, 2007) and the author most recently of The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective (Fortress, 2012), has written other works in the field of Islamic studies. 

Reynolds says that Bertaina's treatment of Christian-Muslim dialogues offers us a "clear, organized, and insightful presentation" and is "the first systematic scholarly discussion in English of this literature." He concludes by noting that "Bertaina’s work is a valuable contribution in light of the ever-growing interest in Muslim-Christian dialogue today."