Muhammad
“This volume brings together five hard-to-find articles by one of the most original scholars on the study of Islamic origins. Writing in clear and accessible prose, Stephen Shoemaker presents original and stimulating hypotheses on the historical Muhammad, the nature of the Qur’anic corpus, Early Islamic sacred topography and eschatology. An essential read.” –Guillaume Dye, professor of Islamic studies, Université libre de Bruxelles
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Description
The lead essay in this book is the first effort to approach the historical figure of Muhammad in a manner comparable to the investigations that biblical scholars have made in the effort to recover the historical figure of Jesus. Using comparable methods and approaches, this study demonstrates that despite a widely held belief that Islam was born “in the full light of history,” we in fact know considerably less about both Muhammad and the beginnings of Islam than we do about the historical Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. Also included are republications of four previously published essays dealing with such topics as the Qur’an’s status as a late ancient biblical apocryphon, the relation between the Jerusalem Temple and the Holy House revered by the Qur’an, and the imminent eschatology of the Qur’an and the early Islamic tradition.
