Study Spotlight: the Religious Roots of Europe
A Look at Late Antiquity and the 'Parting of Ways': Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
In this little piece, I highlight some of the central tenets and attitudes behind the Master’s programme, Religious Roots of Europe, under which I created the thesis that is the foundation on my Thesis Series. As you will see, the name is meant to make you ask questions: What are “religious roots”? And at that, what is “Europe”? Where does it start? Where does it end? In short, the ‘roots’, if we can talk of such a thing, of the religions that flourish in Europe, were already in full growth long before the concept of ‘Europe’, or ‘Africa’, or ‘the Middle East’ for that matter, were even developed in a sense that would be recognizable to modern readers (‘Middle East’ as far as I know is a fairly modern British and/or American term, ‘Africa’ started out as the name of a Roman province, and ‘Europa’ was a Phoenician princess of Tyre (ancient city, now ‘Tyr’ [spelled صور “Ṣur” - colloquial pronunciations + Arabic spellings of very old names get a little funky sometimes] in contemporary Libanon), and mother of king Minos, before anything else).
I will briefly review some central developments to the formations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the 1st-9th centuries, and compare and discuss how the scholarly perspectives on these centuries, the religions, the concept of religion and religious groups itself, have changed during our current millennium. I shall start with an exploration of the so-called Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity. This will be followed by an investigation of the rise and spread of Islam and its relationship to Judaism and Christianity. Through this I aim to show both the developments in scholarly perspectives, and further how scholarship must grapple with both its own discourse and conventions, as well as those of the religious traditions they are studying. And finally I shall be comparing a few of the aspects touched upon in the first sections of the paper, and illustrating their relevance to a critical approach to religion in Late Antiquity. Now, let us begin our exploration with some conceptual observations.
1: The Multiplication of the Ways
The concept of Late Antiquity is rather new, having been scarcely used to describe a rather short string of centuries between Roman emperor Constantine and the perceived end of Roman rule, with different implications depending on which school of researchers employed it. For example: Some say Rome ‘fell’ with the sack of the city of Rome in 476. But the fact of the matter is Rome was barely an important city (economically and politically, of course in some ways still culturally) anymore at this point, the Roman empire having moved its capital to Constantinople, not to mention Ravenna having taking the place as perhaps them, or at least one of the most important Italian (geographically) cities in the empire.
When Rome, the city, was sacked, the Roman empire (in its own self-understanding) lived on until the sack of Constantinople a thousand years later. In modernity, historians (and thus, people) have taken to calling it “the Byzantine empire”, but the inhabitants, subjects and emperors of that empire called themselves Ῥωμαῖοι Rhōmaîoi, “Romans” in Greek. As such, within the past 50 years, both the concept and timeframe of Late Antiquity has been greatly expanded upon.1 This reconceptualization of Late Antiquity brought about changes to our understandings of, and narratives on, religions and religious and ethnic groups of the period. These changes have a significant meta-narrative impact too, being increasingly reflected in the organization of our contemporary fields of research, which had been (and to an extent still are) markedly separated along similar lines to said meta-narrative.2
More traditional understandings of the terms “antique”, “medieval”, and “modern” garnered a conception of history as unfurling from Antiquity, through the Middle-ages, and culminating in Modernity with Europe, rising out of the darkness of the Middle Ages to rediscover its Graeco-Roman glory, providing a (misleading) narrative template for a final step in an evolution of societies.3 In the following I shall provide examples of how a renewed approach to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity brought about insights that are still transforming our fields.
In the centuries preceding the first century CE, a strong focus on the Torah as law, an increasingly center-stage position for scripture, as well as apocalyptic and messianic aspects had entered Judaism. As the Near East increasingly Hellenized, the philosophy and terminology of the Hellenes was deployed to debate such topics as the human body and soul, the nature of Jewish law, and human agency. This new intellectual environment is reflected in such things as the composition of the Septuagint, the “exegetic factions” in Palestine, or in Jewish philosophers such as Philo, who was based in Alexandria, which gradually came to take on a central role in philosophy throughout the Near East.4 In this context I shall briefly discuss the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism.
Following the rabbinic tradition5, and seemingly some scholars, a newer example of which would be French-born Israeli Guy Stroumsa, Rabbinic Judaism emerged at Yavneh after the Second Temple was destroyed.6 However, other thinkers, such as Reed & Becker or Hayes, would argue that while the destruction of the temple was certainly a key event, and while Rabbinic Judaism would indeed emerge as the central hegemon in formulating future Judaisms, this happened quite slowly.7 Stroumsa does suggest that with the end of the Temple comes the end of sacrifice, which he identifies as a central change in religious attitudes of the First Millennium, and a revolution of the concept of religion itself.8 This, he argues had major impact on the human psyche. He also identifies this change with a further shift towards scripture, and with a change in religion from being civic to communitarian in nature.9
In earlier scholarship, Judaism had been considered a stagnant at the end of the first century. However, as scholarship disentangled itself from Biblical presumptions, what was considered Christians in the first centuries have increasingly come to be considered as Jesus-followers, a part of the landscape of a developing Judaism of the 1st century.10 Christianity as we know it would slowly begin to take form over the next centuries with a mix of the teachings of Jesus, Paul, and the interpretations of these teachings by their followers, as well as of the grand systemic changes introduced in the 4th century, and of the interaction between the Jews from whom they had drawn their religious heritage, and the Greek and Roman worlds whose cultural, political and religious norms and practices they were appropriating.11 However, before we reach the great states of the Near East and Mediterranean in the 1st millennium, let us look at Paul.
Paul was a Jewish Roman citizen, scholar, and moralist, Pharisee, and an apostle.12 From Acts of the Apostles and his own letters, it seems one of his central missions was reaching out to the gentiles amongst the Jesus-followers, whom Rousseau at this rather early point, despite his reservations still call “Christians”.13 A central question in relation to Judaism and Christianity was the place of gentiles in revelation. Pauline theology played a major role in reconceptualizing the pact and conversion to include the Gentiles, an issue that many other apostles such as James equally tried to solve in other ways than Paul.14 This re-negotiation of scriptural interpretation yielded interesting polemical texts which shall be dealt with later in this paper. However, despite polemics neither Paul nor the Jesus-followers he inspired renounced their Jewish identities. Centuries later, it appears groups of Jesus-followers would continue to think of and conduct themselves as Jews.15
This categorical laxness would be challenged. Before the Jewish Wars, Jews had been exempted from civic cults of Antioch and the Empire. After the Jewish Wars a persecution of Jewish religious practises and privileges ensued as Jewish reputation suffered. Further, Vespasian instated a tax, fiscus Judaicus, meant for Jewish citizens, as a replacement for the Temple tax, which would change the social landscape and further solidify the difference between Gentile and Jew, Jesus-follower or not.16 For example, if someone made claims that they did not have to pay fiscus Judaicus, this simultaneously made it impossible to be exempt from attending the state cult, but accepting it equated to affirming a Jewish identity.17
Theologically, and by extension politically and socially, the Jesus-following Pauline Gentiles were reduced to Jesus-following God-fearers, and this effectually locked them out of the covenant to the Jewish communities, and simultaneously out of the Roman state cult, leaving them with no religious identity. Their primary commonality was now Christ.18 Though we return to theology and polemics later, for now, suffice it to say that Jesus-followers would establish themselves as a legitimate, separate, and ancient cult by Roman standards, by claiming and refuting Judaism. As the empire Christianized, roles switched, and led to counter-Roman Jewish polemic of messianic character.19 As shown, and as will be discussed further in part 3, reconceptualizing Christianity, Judaism, and the First Millennium made new approaches to Biblical literature, and the concept of Religion itself possible.
Another central event in the story of the parting is the Constantinian turn, otherwise known as a series of innovations and changes in both the early Church as well as the Roman state ideology, that took place in the 3rd and 4th centuries, often symbolized by Constantine. This turn would change the place of Christianity and its wealth, power, and influence in- and outside the empire.20 Along with polemics, I briefly return to this subject in the third section of this paper. For now, to conclude this already heavily condensed section, let us quickly turn to Judaism’s relationship to power and the Near Eastern empires.
After the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135 CE), in an effort to to strip Israel of any risky political unity, to reduce the risk of revolt, it was renamed Syria-Palestine and took on the structure of a Roman province. The priests who held central power during the Second Temple period were now without temple, and though they would make a return21, as their influence waned, rabbis following the Torah-oriented Judaism of post-Temple sages would steadily gain influence.22 In the 3rd century the office of the Patriarch, an administrative position as representative of the Jews to the Roman empire was created. By the 4th century the Patriarch nominally represented all Jews, both in the empire and the diaspora23.
However, the bulk of theological and exegetical developments, such as the Midrash, that would lead to the fruition of rabbinic Judaism would take place in Persian Babylonia. Here sages developed academies, or Yeshivot, that would come in direct competition with Palestinian hegemony, and as both the Patriarch and Palestinian Jewish center of learning waned, the Persian court instated a position called the Exilarch to represent the Jews to the Sassanid kings. Ultimately, the Palestinian Talmud was closed in the 4th century and gave way for the Babylonian academies’ exegetic hegemony24. Indeed, Hayes amongst others show that Judaism’s way to Rabbinic Judaism, as Christianity, went through and was partially a result of Hellenization, centuries of developing scripture, and foundation narratives.25 This section has attempted to show how treating categories like Religion, Judaism, and Christianity not as eternal monoliths, but as processual and open-ended, allows us a more nuanced and coherent understanding of Late Antiquity.
2: The Rise and Spread of Islam
The rise and spread of Islam are heavily contended subjects. In the Islamic tradition an idea of isolation has dominated; both isolation of the Arabian Peninsula from any of the great empires of the Near East, and an isolation of Muhammad from any non-Islamic monotheisms, at least until after he received his revelation. This, like the idea of Jesus as the Word and son of God for Christiantiy, or rabbis as inheritors of Moses’ revelation for Judaism, creates a powerful foundational narrative where Islam simply spread by the power of faith and the truth of the revelation.26 In the early days of Islamic studies, most scholars seemed to believe the Islamic history and the historicity of the sources, as Shoemaker remarks. However, exemplified by such names as Goldziher, over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a more critical view on the historicity of Islamic sources developed.27 Amongst contemporary Western scholars there is an agreement that we must treat these sources with skepticism. However, Shoemaker notes the stunning insignificance this supposed skepticism has had on the field. This he exemplifies with Montgomery Watt's biographies of Muhammad, which practically gained canonical status amongst scholars in the latter part of the 20th century, and which is almost completely fateful to the Sira-tradition.28
Apart from the Qur’an the primary two literary corpuses that both Muslims as well as scholars (of all creeds) draw upon in explorations of Islam’s early history are the Hadith and Sira-traditions. Ibn Ishaq's Sira collection is mainly known through the much later Ibn Hisham.29 This temporal distance, taken together with other aspects of Ibn Hisham’s authorship, such as his self-professed tendency to abridge and refer only to what, in his estimation, is relevant to the Qur’an, already casts doubt on authenticity30. And while Ishaq attributes material to his teacher Ibn Shihab az-Zuhri, and 'Urwa ibn az-Zubayr, there are issues with temporality, and we know that isnad, or chains of transmission, were often falsified, for many divergent reasons.
As such, we simply have no proof of the information on the compilations of these text collections.31 Scholars have attempted, with both Hadith and Sira, to "push them back in time" to the first Islamic century, however doing so cannot be done without compromising the limited historicity and viability of our isnad and sources. However, even with little hope in finding with certainty a “historical Muhammad” in the most positivist sense, it more so points to the difficulty of knowing things certainly, than it discourages us to dismiss his existence, which seems as foolhardy as it would to dismiss that of Jesus. Further and importantly, we can still use the traditional Islamic sources to approximate one or several Islams in the early period.32 As we shall see, the nature of our textual sources is the crux of the debate on the rise and spread of Islam. Exemplified by names such as Crone, Hinds, Hughes and Wansbrough are some of the scholars that have started critically questioning the authenticity the most central Islamic source material in new ways.33 Here, let us consider John Wansbrough’s take on the above narrative, as explained to us by Hughes.
Most Muslims believe the Quran to be uncreated and unchanged, having had its present form since Abu Bakr’s or Uthman’s recension. A seminal critical voice, Wansbrough suggested that Islam began as a Judaeo-Christian sect (which is a very oversimplified view in my opinion, but I will get back to that), and the Qur’an was a measure to distinguish and legitimize themselves, and that it would take a couple centuries for it to reach the form we know today.34 In section 3, I will discuss, in relation to the Constantinian turn and polemical texts mentioned in the precious section, the possibility of a direct connection between the early theological debates in Islam, as well as many of the topics touched on by the Qur’an itself, and theological discourse in the entire Mediterranean and Near Eastern area during the First Millennium.
For now, however, we shall return to the rise and spread of Islam and its relations to Judaism and Christianity in Arabia. If one follows the skeptical approach, the establishing of the legal schools, the need for a biography of Muhammad, and the composition of the Qur’an would have arisen as more or less contemporaneous desires, some 150-200 years after the prophet himself had perished.35 The earliest Qur’an fragments we know of date to the late 8th century. However, these fragments, along with quotations from the Qur’an in, for example, a letter from Hasan al-Basri, or on coins minted in Kufa, both from around year 700, hint at a Qur’an that was may not yet have been standardized, as these verses appear different from the redaction we know today.36
As early as the 19th century, scholars in Europe were critically contemplating the relationship between Islam and Judaism. One such example is the German rabbi and founder of reform Judaism, Abraham Geiger. He argues how there are several terms in the Qur’an that appear “borrowed” from earlier religions, specifically Judaism.37 Hughes, however, notes how there are issues with this assumption. Harkening back to my discussion of it in Thesis Series, the concept of “borrowing” in this context gives an impression of a rabbinic Judaism that is crystallized in a form like the one we know now, which, as just reviewed, seems to be misleading, also in the 5th century.
Interestingly, Cohen, in his treatment of Jewish life under Islam from 2002, expresses similar attitudes. He talks about “influence” from Judaism to Islam, recalling a similar image of complete units exchanging ready-made attributes.38 In his work, notably from the same year, Firestone suggests considering this exchange in scriptural traditions in the Near East during Late Antiquity as a “reciprocal influence” rather than “borrowing”.39 Regardless, Hughes notes that the observation that Muhammad, or whoever the final redactor of the Qur’an was, might have had an interest in using language which was familiar or relatable to monotheistic traditions and followers in the Near East, is very interesting indeed.40 Following the logic of my Thesis Series a bit further, one may perhaps think of it more as contributions to discourse that are meant to allude to long-standing discussions or debates about certain religious and philosophical questions, with a new twist, interpretation, or differing opinions on particular matters or events.
As with the Jesus-followers mentioned in section 1, Muslims established legitimacy by distance themselves from and embracing Jewish traditions. However, differently it seems Islam was in some ways conceived into a position of power. Firestone suggests that the Islamic tradition developed Jewish (and likely also Christian) polemics while it was consolidating its rapidly expanding rule over the Mediterranean, as a wish grew from the caliphate to establish itself and Islam as independent from and insubordinate to outside traditions.41 Another similarity in polemics relates to idolatry and accusations hereof in texts like John Chrysostom’s or Didascalia Apostolorum. It is suggested that all biblical law after the Golden Calf is a punishment of God for the transgression of idolatry, said punishment finally being absolved with Jesus’ sacrifice.42 In Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, a similar rationale is expressed: Here it is argued that as Christ was the first being in the universe, anyone who lived before his revelation, but acted in accordance with revelation, were considered Christians.43 This concept of pre-Christian Christians is very similar to the traditional Islamic narrative of the Hunafa, the original, “proto-muslim” monotheists. This theme is used in Islam to levy accusation of idolatry against all People of the Book, whose distorted version of the original revelation given to Moses and Abraham led them astray.44
However, at the same time, a proximity can certainly be gleaned from the source material. For example, there exists Arab versions of a story that is itself a Midrashic invention to accommodate a fatherlier image of Abraham, as a rabbinic response to Genesis 21.45 In these versions, Abraham’s relationship to Ishmael and to Bedouin life, and their trip together to build the Ka’ba shows how, over time and re-telling, Abraham becomes literarily entwined in the local traditions of both Arabian Jews, Christians, and pagans.46 Other texts that hint the closeness of early Islam and Judaism, are the stories of the rabbi and very late convert Ka’b al-Ahbar. His portrayal in Islamic sources as a Jewish sage who, among many things unusual to the modern observer, uses his scripture (probably the Torah/Tanakh) to falsify or corroborate Muhammad’s revelation, hints at a time before the need to downplay Islam’s connection to the other monotheist traditions.47 As this section’s very last, but no less crucial point: As opposed to the Islamic narrative that Aristotle (as well as Plato and Greek philosophy generally) was inherited from Alexandria to Baghdad, Fowden suggests that while the house of Wisdom in Baghdad was certainly a key point of conjuncture in the intellectual and religious traditions of Late Antiquity, Syriac Christians and the translations and transmission of literature that happened, particularly through monasteries, was also crucial to what Fowden calls the maturation of Islam, and thus its development into a form we recognize today.48 And now, as we turn to the last segment of this paper where we synthesize some of the things we’ve discussed here.
3: The First Millennium in Western Eurasia
As the astute reader (of this Substack in general) may have noted, throughout this paper I have been hinting at Garth Fowden in terminology and observations. Having also worked with him during my Thesis Series, and despite reservations on parts of his work, there is no doubt that his treatment of monotheist historiography, Aristotle and Plato, and many of the relatively “silent voices” that also laid the groundwork for what would become Judaism, Christianity and Islam, such as Manichaeism and Mazdaism, is amazingly interesting49. So is the ever-elusive, so-called Gnostics and their connection to the discourses of their contemporaries. Even though ‘Gnosticism’ is often seen as some kind of strange, mysterious, yet somewhat coherent and organized religion, in many ways it seems hard to separate entirely from the religious discourses they grew out of. In a way, we might think of them as different philosophies for how to approach much similar mythological and literary material as that, for example, of the Rabbis or Jesus-followers, amongst many others50 (potentially late Babylonian religious communities, but I will get back to that in a later paper).
As already exemplified earlier, certain elements in polemic literature across religions can tell us a lot about the intellectual environments said texts came to be in. To briefly review an example, Thomas claims in his treatment of polemics in the 8th-9th centuries, that The Font of Knowledge by John of Damascus seems to bear practically no mark of Islam, although he also notes the “surprising” amount of knowledge John of Damascus has of the faith.51 Though I must be brief, suffice it to say that Thomas’ understanding that John’s knowledge of Islam is “surprising”, and his consideration that verse 100-101 is the only part of the Font of Knowledge that has to do with Islam52, and his consideration that Abu Isa al-Warraq was a “Shī’ī of some kind” in the 9th century53, are all contestable. Griffith argues for example that the first Christian Summas of theological doctrine, such as the Font of Knowledge, were a direct response to the Arab expansion and the growth of Islamic institutions and works of Islamic scholars such as al-Waqidi or Ibn Ishaq.54 John of Damascus even frames Islam as a Christian heresy.55 While this certainly could be a polemical device, and Thomas does point out the tendency of polemics in the period to recall their theological opponent’s views mostly as rhetorical devices, before returning to the comfort of their own doctrine56, it tells us something about how unstable the now (apparently) monolithic categories of Islam and Christianity were in the 8th century. Further, it must be stated that, as Hellenic discourse made its way into 1st century Judaism, icons, and iconoclasm where enormously contentious topics in the Near East and Mediterranean, (including North Africa, really also Iberia/Andalusia) in the 8th century.57 And it goes, practically without saying, that the positive stance towards icons that became dominant in a forerunner to Orthodox Christianity ( ‘Melchite’ [strikingly from the Semitic root M-L-K ‘power/kingship’] Christianity), after a brief hiatus58, and the reversely more reserved attitude towards icons we find in the Islamic tradition59, hints at a lively intellectual environment that spanned across philosophies, theologies and polities.
In Fowden’s framework, whether we talk about Greek philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Roman state, or many others, they all went through a process of maturation, involving prophetic, scriptural, and exegetic phases (See Thesis Series Part 3 for longer elaboration).60 In some traditions this process was already taking place in the previous millennium, but all of them came into a mature form, more easily recognizable today, during this First Millennium AD.61 As such, studying the First Millennium, using the (Long) Late Antique framework, with a focus on religion, and a sensitive reservation towards viewing the young, developing religious systems with modern eyes and categorization, allows us to make more critical observations.62
As has been pointed out very briefly, the policies developed during the century of Constantine are also quite certainly not only to be seen in Christian states. As also noted by Hughes, much Abbasid innovation came from translations, adoptions, and interaction with Roman, Persian, and many other non-Arab practices63. For example, Stroumsa notes theological parallels post-Constantinian emperors of Rome as lawgivers in the image of Moses, and representatives of God on earth, and of the post-Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad as Caliphs of God’s prophet.64 And even before the Abbasids, Hughes and Zellentin points out how especially the Caliphs Mu’awiya and Abd al-Malik can be attributed with reorganizing the state in ways that were reminiscent of the Roman state, or how Qur’anic law developed out of a cross-cultural and religious landscape.65
As I have attempted to show in this paper, the First Millennium sees a new kind of religion emerge along with a new form of government and organizations of society. However, recalling my Thesis Series, although I call them new, it should be stressed that these configurations grew in, with and out of Antiquity, and as such cannot be seen as radical breaks or abandonments of a previous age, just as it cannot be seen as a complete continuation. Ultimately, however, it must be stated that I am a ‘synthesist’ at heart. As such, I tend to see similarities much more than differences. This is a weakness that I think shines through in my work, and that I am acutely aware of. I could certainly easily be accused of “continuitism”66, and it is a critique I might well deserve, as it could easily be argued that my readings of history tend to be teleological, in so far as they favor stressing forms of expressions, particularly revolving around politics and/or religion, and their manifestations in different contexts across time and space.
Where Fowden suggests a postcolonial approach67, I believe that to fully expound a Long Late Antiquity, in the spirit, and with the ramifications that Fowden suggests, we might have to move beyond the framework that postcolonial studies have provided us. I discuss this at length in the Thesis Series Part 4, but to summarize in brief: The inherent dichotomy between the East and West, which seems to inhabit postcolonialism, flies in the face of the concept of Long Late Antiquity that a postcolonial approach helped develop. Something that should be very clear from the developments described throughout this paper, is that considering the Roman empire or the ancient Greeks to be “Western” makes about as much sense as considering Europe the sole inheritor of its inventions.
In my work, I generally seek to stretch the relevant components of the Long Late Antiquity, and as such areas worth investigating, further back in time than perhaps many would. Yet I identify both components and telos with an immediate awareness that, to put it proverbially, there is a hen to every egg, and an egg to every hen. And as should be clear from my earlier work, what I am here to do is not to try and find or declare the original chicken (or egg), rather I am interested in the process of hatching, growing, and laying. (…I realize that’s a very provincial metaphor, but I’m a very provincial guy)
Conclusion
In this paper I have reviewed and discussed the so-called ‘Parting of the Ways’ of Judaism and Christianity, and further the rise and spread of Islam, and its relation to the former two, as a way to illustrate the way we approach the study of religions in the Religious Roots of Europe programme. At once religious traditions are studied both taking seriously their self-understanding and source material, but drawing also on critical analysis and outside perspectives to help our understanding. Throughout I have also made observations on the scholarly trends and changes that have affected the field, particularly the last 20 years. This exploration has highlighted how monolithic understandings of religious groups and religions in themselves have obscured somewhat the study of the history of religion.
A more holistic understanding of the areas we call Europe, the Mediterranean, and Middle East in the First Millennium, may help us immensely if we want to understand how some of the religions that sprang from and developed in these areas, and came to shape much of history and thought, not only in these regions, but all over the planet. Ultimately, studying the history of these religions help us understand not only the reasons for their differences, but simultaneously allows us to see how much of a common heritage we all draw upon, whether we speak English, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, whether we live in Paris, Stockholm, Mecca, Washington D.C., Jerusalem, Damascus, or Beirut.
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Cohen, Mark, R. 2002. “Medieval Jewry in the World of Islam”. In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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Irshai, Oded. 2012. “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Life and Culture in the World of Early Byzantium”. In Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures. Brill, Leiden.
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Shoemaker, Steven J. 2012. “Muhammed and the Qur’ān”. In Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stroumsa, Guy G. 2015. “God’s Rule in Late Antiquity”. In The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Thomas, David. 2006. “Christian Theologians and New Questions”. The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam. Edited by E. Grypeou, M.N. Swanson & D. Thomas. Brill, Leiden.
Zellentin, Holger, The Quran’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure.Mohr Siebeck, 2013 (Pp. vii–xiii, 175–202).
Zetterholm, Magnus. 2003. The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A social-scientific approach to the separation between Judaism and Christianity. Routledge.
Clark, Gillian. 2015. Late Antiquity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1.
Reed, Anette Y. & Becker, Adam. 2007. “Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions”. In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Fortress Press, Minneapolis.: 11-20.
Fowden, Garth. 2014. Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused. Princeton University Press. Princeton: 51.
Hayes, Christine. 2007. The Emergence of Judaism: Classical Traditions in a Contemporary Perspective. Augsburg Fortress press, Minneapolis: 77-83.
ibid.: 97-98.
Stroumsa, Guy G. 2015. “God’s Rule in Late Antiquity”. In The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. Oxford: 37.
Reed, Anette Y. & Becker, Adam. 2007. “Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions”. In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 4-6; Hayes, The Emergence of Judaism, 2007: 89.
Stroumsa, God’s Rule in Late Antiquity, 2015: 27.
Ibid.: 27-28.
Reed & Becker, The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 2007.
Rousseau, Philip. 2002. The Early Christian Centuries. Longman, London.: 2-3.
Ibid.: 23.
Ibid.: 24-25.
Zetterholm, Magnus. 2003. The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A social-scientific approach to the separation between Judaism and Christianity. Routledge.: 194-195.
Rousseau, The Early Christian Centuries, 2002: 7, 25-26.
Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A social-scientific approach to the separation between Judaism and Christianity, 2003: 185-191.
Ibid.: 198.
Ibid.: 196.
Irshai, Oded. 2012. “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Life and Culture in the World of Early Byzantium”. In Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures. Brill, Leiden: 56, 62-63.
Rousseau, The Early Christian Centuries, 2002: 187-190.
Irshai, Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Life and Culture in the World of Early Byzantium, 2012: 42-44.
Hayes, The Emergence of Judaism: Classical Traditions in a Contemporary Perspective, 2007: 89-90.
Ibid.: 90.
Ibid.: 93-95, Irshai, Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Life and Culture in the World of Early Byzantium, 2012: 56-57.
Hayes, The Emergence of Judaism: Classical Traditions in a Contemporary Perspective, 2007: 96-100, 108.
Hughes, Aaron W. 2013. Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam. Columbia University Press. New York: 20-21.
Shoemaker, Steven J. 2012. “Muhammed and the Qur’ān”. In Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press: 1078-1079.
Ibid.: 1079.
Ibid.: 1080
Fowden, Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused, 2014: 76-78.
Shoemaker, Muhammed and the Qur’ān, 2012: 1080-1081.
Ibid.: 1082-1086.
Hughes, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam, 2013: 73, 103.
Ibid.: 73.
Ibid.: 73.
Ibid.: 74-75.
Ibid.: 77.
Cohen, Mark, R. 2002. “Medieval Jewry in the World of Islam”. In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 195-196.
Firestone, Reuven. 2002. “Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam”. In Cultures of the Jews: A New History. Edited by D. Biale. Schocken, New York: 278-279.
Hughes, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam, 2013: 77.
Firestone, Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam, 2002: 295-297.
Fonrobert, Charlotte, E. 2005. “Jewish Christians, Judaizers, and Christian Anti-Judaism”. In Late Ancient Christianity. Edited by V. Burrus. Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 246-247.
Hirshman, Marc. 1996. A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity. State University of New York Press: 11.
Firestone 2002: 276-278, 286.
Firestone 2022: 275-276.
Firestone 2002: 276.
Firestone 2002: 291-298.
Fowden 2014: 55, 143-145.
Fowden 2014: 54, 68.
Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity, 1996: 3-7; Stroumsa, God’s Rule in Late Antiquity, 2015: 87.
Thomas, David. 2006. “Christian Theologians and New Questions”. The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam. Edited by E. Grypeou, M.N. Swanson & D. Thomas. Brill, Leiden: 258-259.
Ibid.: 258.
Ibid.: 267.
Griffith, Sydney. 2008. “Apocalypse and the Arabs: The First Christian Responses to the Challenge of Islam”. In The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton University Press, Princeton: 39-43.
Griffith, Apocalypse and the Arabs: The First Christian Responses to the Challenge of Islam, 2008: 42-43.
Thomas, Christian Theologians and New Questions, 2006: 273-274.
Haldon, John. 2008. “Political-Historical Survey”, 518–800. In The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon and R. Cormack. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 258-261.
Ibid.: 260-261.
Hughes, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam, 2013: 20.
Fowden, Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused, 2014: 55-57.
Ibid.: 68.
Ibid.: 82-83.
Hughes, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam, 2013: 107-111.
Stroumsa, God’s Rule in Late Antiquity, 2015: 127-129.
Hughes, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam, 2013: 102-104; Zellentin, Holger, The Quran’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure.Mohr Siebeck, 2013 (Pp. vii–xiii, 175–202).
Fowden, Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused, 2014: 88.
Ibid.: 162.