Friday, November 25, 2016

Cohen and Berlin (eds.), Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

NEW BOOK FROM CUP: Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries (Yeshiva University).
Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries, edited by Mordechai Z. Cohen and Adele Berlin (Cambridge University Press, 2016), is a comparative study of Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptural interpretation from antiquity to modernity, with special emphasis on the pivotal medieval period. It focuses on three areas: (1) responses in the three faith traditions to tensions created by the need to transplant their scriptures into new cultural and linguistic contexts; (2) changing conceptions of the literal sense and its importance vis-à-vis non-literal senses (figurative, spiritual, midrashic, etc.); (3) the ways in which classical rhetoric and poetics informed—or were resisted in—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretation.

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