Faculty Publishes Book on Jesus in the Qur'an
05/29/2018
Dr. Carlos Segovia's (Humanities) most recent book, The Quranic Jesus offers a completely new interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the Qur'an through an analysis of the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an.
This implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question.
He also examines the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-à-vis its radically monotheistic theology, and advances three major theses:
- Originally, the earliest redactional layers of the Qur'an bear witness to a non-Jesus-centered Christology that was later re-shaped in light of, and subordinated to, a less-ambiguously monotheistic creed; and the most plausible setting for such early layers is Iraq rather than the Hijaz in the Arabian Peninsula.
- The Jesus passages contained in the Qur'an belong to two distinct and successive redactional layers with the post-Muhammadan Arab conquest of Syria-Palestine and Iraq: the first of these layers presents evident and recurrent anti-Jewish overtones and proves to be, upon close analysis, pro-Christian, while the second one is overtly anti-Christian.
- It is incorrect to read the Qur'an's Jesus-passages from the point of view of the latter anti-Christian texts and/or approach them from a purely thematic standpoint.
The overall argument of this book is that the qur'anic Jesus is the key to unravelling not only the intriguing beginnings, but also the fascinating development of the Qur'an's complex, multi-phased theology — and hence perhaps too the key to deciphering what the Qur'an is ultimately about.
The book will be released for publication in November 2018.