The Gospels in Islamic Context

Function and Content

Georgina L. Jardim, Ida Glaser, Shirin Shafaie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040394243
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Bringing together scholars from across the world, this publication shows Christians and Muslims – individually or together – reading the canonical Gospels of the New Testament in 'conversation' with Islamic texts and contexts.

In the discovery of meaning between text, context and praxis, this volume asks 'what are the texts doing?' in contexts as far flung as Indonesia, the Hijaz of early Islam, in Persian poetry of medieval times or modern Sunni interpretation in north America. This second edited volume in the series Reading the Bible in Islamic Context, continues the pioneering venture in contextual and intertextual reading. It shows the richness of cooperative scholarship that results from reading the New Testament in Islamic context, and exploring how the Gospel is understood in various religious traditions.

The Gospels in Islamic Context will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners, encouraging them to explore new methods for taking into account intertextual factors as well as the history of Muslim-Christian relations that arises from them. It is a venture in which Muslims and Christians travel side by side and in conversation with each other, although with significantly different perspectives and often different agendas.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Transliteration Note
• Introduction: Readers, Texts and Contexts
• Part I Foundations for Conversation
• 1 Good News: Greek euangelion, Arabic ʾinjīl and Modern Qurʾan and Bible Translations in Islamic Contexts
• 2 What Are the Gospels?: A Christian Reflection
• 3 Balaaghi and the Canonical Gospels:
• 4 Authenticating the New Testament Gospels from a Sunnite Perspective
• Part II Seven Conversations
• 5 Biblical Allusions in Persian Literature: Persian Poets in the Footsteps of the Christian Tradition
• 6 A Colloquy of God with Jesus: New Testament Parallels in an Early Collection of Sayings of Jesus in Islam
• II.2 Translation: Words in Context
• 7 The First Gospel in Arabic: The Islamic Context
• 8 Kitab Suci Injil: Its Significance for Reading the Matthean Nativity Story in the Indonesian Islamic Context
• II.3 Birth Narratives: A Shared Story?
• 9 The Virgin Mary’s Birth and Early Life in Three Narratives: New Testament, Qur’an, and Biblical Apocrypha
• 10 Redeeming Zechariah: Silence as Mercy in Luke 1 and Q3 and Q19
• II.4 Signs: A Shared Category?
• 11 Miracles as Signs?: Revisiting Jesus’ Gospel Miracles in the Light of Medieval Muslim Critique
• 12 Signs of God in the Qur’an and the Gospel of John: Persuading the Audience to Believe
• II.5 Barzakh and Paradise: A Shared Concept?
• 13 The Qurʾan and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: Crossing Over Barriers
• 14 ‘Today You will Be with Me in Paradise’ – Reading Luke 23:43 in Islamic Contexts
• II.6 Reading in Context
• 15 Respecting Mary: Woman, Mother or Inconsequential? Reconsidering John 2:4 in the Context of Islam
• 16 Contesting the Meaning of the Sheep and the Goats: Variations on Contemporary Indonesian Christians’ Readings of Matthew 25:31–46
• II.7 Reading the Sermon on the Mount
• 17 By whose Authority?: Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) and the Authors of the Christian New Testament
• 18 The Sermon on the Mount Reading Group
• Index of Textual Citations