The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? (2012 Segovia, Lourié), edited volume

<bibexternal title="The Coming of the Comforter" author="Segovia"/>

The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Various Other Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough (2012) is a volume edited by Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié, with essays in English and French by Herbert Berg, Caterina Bori, Michel Cuypers, Claude Gilliot, Geneviève Gobillot, Basil Lourié, Gabriel Said Reynolds, Andrew Rippin, Carlos A. Segovia, Jan M. F. Van Reeth, and John Wortley.

Abstract

John Wansbrough is famous for his pioneering studies on the "sectarian milieu" out of which Islam emerged. In his view, Islam grew out of different – albeit rather marginal – Jewish and Christian traditions whose intertwinings deserve being studied. In the present volume, which is dedicated to Wansbrough's memory, specialists in Islamic studies and students of the Jewish and early Christian traditions out of which Islam presumably arose summarise Wansbrough's achievements in the past thirty years. The volume also goes a step further by setting forth new landmarks for the study of the traditions implied in Wansbrough's aforementioned concept of the "sectarian milieu" from within which Islam emerged, perhaps later than is commonly assumed and in a rather unclear, even ambiguous way.

Editions and translations

Published in Piscataway, NJ [USA]: Gorgias Press, 2012 (Orientalia Judaica Christiana 3; ISBN 978-1-4632-0158-6).

Table of contents

• Preface / Basil Lourié
• John Wansbrough and the Problem of Islamic Origins in Recent Scholarship: A Farewell to the Traditional Account / Carlos A. Segovia

PART ONE: FORMATIVE ISLAM WITHIN ITS JEWISH-CHRISTIAN MILIEU

• Des textes Pseudo Clementins à la mystique Juive des premières siècles et du Sinaï à Ma'rib / Geneviève Gobillot
• On the Qur'an's Ma'ida Passage / Gabriel Said Reynolds
• Prayer and the Desert Fathers / John Wortley
• Friday Veneration in Sixth- and Seventh-Century Christianity and the Christian Legends about the Conversion of Najran / Basil Lourié
• Thematic and Structural Affinities between 1 Enoch and the Qur'an: A Contribution to the Study of the Judaeo'Christian Apocalyptic Setting of the Early Islamic Faith / Carlos A. Segovia

PART TWO: REVISITING SOME EARLY ISLAMIC SOURCES, FACTS, AND INTERPRETATIVE ISSUES

• The Needle in the Haystack: Islamic Origins and the Nature of the Early Sources / Herbert Berg
• "All We Know Is What We Have Been Told": Reflections on Emigration and Land as Divine Heritage in the Qur'an / Caterina Bori
• L'analyse rhétorique face à la critique historique de J. Wansbrough et G. Lüling / Michel Cuypers
• Mohammed's Exegetical Activity in the Meccan Arabic Lectionary / Claude Gilliot
• The Search for Tuwa: Exegetical Method, Past and Presen / Andrew Rippin
• Who Is the "Other" Paraclete? / Jan M. F. Van Reeth