Guy G. Stroumsa - The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity

The idea of this book took form during my tenure as Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford (200914). As the first holder of the chair, I sought to represent in a new light aspects of late antique religious history, on which I had been working for a few decades. It struck me that some patterns later to be identified as Abrahamic were already present during the first centuries ce , as Jews and Christians were vying for the title of the true inheritors of Abraham. The books main argument, then, is that it is in the religious history of late antiquity that we should look, if we wish to understand the genesis of Islam better.

The books ten chapters (most of them published previously in a different version) tackle different issues of this central problem. Although much has already been written on aspects of the problem, it is fair to say more work is needed before a synthetic study can be attempted. At this stage, it is important to realize that the birth of Islam must be seen as an integral part of late antiquity. Without developing a teleological approach, it is possible to analyze the trajectories of concepts and thought patterns that rendered conversion to Islam, on a large scale, possible in the seventh century and afterwards, throughout the Near East.

During the long period of gestation of this book a great number of colleagues have helped me formulate my views, in a number of ways. I am most grateful to them all, although I might not be able to mention them all. At Oxford, Moshe Blidstein, Markus Bockmuehl, Dame Averil Cameron, Beate Dignas, Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, Neil McLynn, Sir Fergus Millar, Robert Parker, Nicolai Sinai, were my main interlocutors. Other colleagues and friends from various places, Nicole Belayche, Corrine Bonnet, Jan Bremmer, Patricia Crone, Ronnie Goldstein, Yonatan Moss, John Scheid, Shaul Shaked, and Sarah Stroumsa have discussed various aspects of the problems tackled in chapters of this book. So had the late Sabine MacCormack and Evelyne Patlagean. Thanks to their remarks, this book is probably less inadequate than it would have been.

My gratitude also goes to Rami Schwartz, who has been extremely helpful in preparing the final manuscript for the press and compiling the index, and to Donald Watt, for his precious help in reading the proofs.

Finally, I should like to honor the memory of the Saudi benefactor who endowed the Chair for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford (and wished to remain anonymous). For him, scholarship has a role to play in the fight against religious bigotry among the children of Abraham. His vision has sustained me during dark hours of violence and hatred.

Guy G. Stroumsa

Jerusalem

August 5, 2014 (9 Ab 5775)

In this regard, I should like to mention here two important books, which appeared too late for me to discuss their findings in the present work: Aziz Al-Azmeh , The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allh and his People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014 ), and Garth Fowden , Before and After Muhammad: The First Millenium Refocused (Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014).

The chapters of this book are derived from the following articles:

Chapter 1: The End of Sacrifice: Religious Mutations of Late Antiquity, in Empsuchoi Logoi: Festschrift Pieter van der Horst, ed. M. Misset-van der Weg, (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 2946.

Chapter 3: False Prophets of Early Christianity, in Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians, ed. Beate Dignas, Robert Parker, and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 20829.

Chapter 4: False Prophet, False Messiah and the Religious Scene in Seventh-Century Jerusalem, in Redemption and Resistance: The Messianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiquity, ed. J. Carlton Paget and M. Bockmuehl (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2007), pp. 27889.

Chapter 5: Seal of the Prophets: The Nature of a Manichaean Metaphor, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986), 6174.

Chapter 6: Religious Dynamics between Christians and Jews in Late Antiquity, in Cambridge History of Christianity, 300600, ed. A. M. Casiday and F. Norris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 15172.

Chapter 7: Gods Rule in Late Antiquity, in Theokratie und theokratischer Diskurs, ed. Kai Trampedach and Andreas Pear (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), pp. 197209.