The research project “Interactive Histories, Co-produced communities: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” has started its collaborative work. They aim to create a global community of scholars interested in the inter-related histories of the three religions.
The project is coordinated by Katharina Heyden, Professor for Ancient History of Christianity and Interreligious Encounters at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and David Nirenberg, Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (U.S.), and includes a network of collaborators across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Learn more about the project: https://coproduced-religions.org.
Among their activities, they will be hosting a monthly Zoom seminar. The first seminar will be held on Monday, October 24th from 10:30-12:30am ET/ 4:30-6:30pm CET with Rushain Abbasi (Stanford University) and Orit Malka (Hebrew University):
“Bear witness, for I am with You Among Those Who Bear Witness” (Q.3:81): The Concept of “Witnessing” in the Quran and Its Biblical Subtext (Part I).
In this project, Abbasi and Malka argue that the Quran engages deeply with the biblical covenantal subtext of “witnessing” in its frequent references to the act of shahada. By employing an inner-Quranic and intertextual analysis, they demonstrate that when the Quran uses variations of the root sh-h-d in a theological context this clearly indicates the taking of the oath through which one enters into a covenant with Allah. The Quran thus develops, in their view, a systematic vocabulary around this specific biblical theme and in so doing expands the mechanism of the covenant into an entire theological structure embedded at the very heart of its revelatory message.
Follow this link to register for the Zoom seminar: https://unibe-ch.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5EpduCpqTsvHdFN3lr_V4GWc3JKeETzpDNp