This online course will illustrate how the Qur’an situates itself as part of, and as a correction to, the religious discourse of the Jewish and Christian communities of Late Antique Arabia. 

The course will use the Qur’an, as well as Jewish and Christian historical documents, to reconstruct the religious landscape to which the Muslim scripture reacts in a pointed, precise and nuanced way.

This will give you a historically more informed understanding of nascent Islam, and will allow you to reconsider many of the theological and cultural tenets of Late Antique Judaism and Christianity. 

What topics will you cover? 

• Traditional and Western approaches to the Qur’an 
• Arabia in Late Antiquity 
• Judaism and Christianity from the first to the seventh century 
• The Qur’an and the Hebrew Bible 
• The Qur’an and the New Testament 
• Law and ritual purity in the Bible, Judaism, Christianity, and in the Qur’an 
• The Qur’an, Judaism and Christianity 

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