Between the Seventh and the Twenty-first Musings on Texts and Contexts in the Early Twenty-first Century

Abstract

Monotheistic traditions of the Abrahamic variety have commonly conceived of the Divine interacting with this world through the Divine Word. No surprise, then, that the Qur’an refers to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims as “People of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab). Yet the task of seeking and finding God is not as simple as opening a book, even the Book. Reading religious words necessitates some self-awareness about the revelation’s context, the history of interpretations that stands between us and the text, and our own situatedness. What follows is a series of musings on these principles.