As noted, naming a book after someone significant was a common way of honoring that person and reflecting his views.
As for the high priest—the wretch who betrayed God’s chosen people to Rome for some coin and the right to prance about in his spangled garments? His very existence was an insult to God. It was a bligh...
A true Sufi, Shaykh Haeri writes, does not separate the inner from the outer, for when you start by purifying your inner self, you end up being concerned with the outer and with society.
The hadith, insofar as they addressed issues not dealt with in the Quran, would become an indispensable tool in the formation of Islamic law. However, in their earliest stages, the hadith were muddled...
The bandits tapped into the widespread apocalyptic expectation that had gripped the Jews of Palestine in the wake of the Roman invasion.
Islam and Judaism in seventh-century Arabia operated within the same sphere of religious discourse, in that both shared the same religious characters, stories, and anecdotes, both discussed the same f...
Faith is a choice; anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you.
During Jesus’s lifetime, zealotry did not signify a firm sectarian designation or political party. It was an idea, an aspiration, a model of piety inextricably linked to the widespread sense of apocal...
But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. Fight in the way of God those who fight you, the Quran says, but do...
Because the concept of the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament (the term was coined by one of the oldest and most formidable church fathers, Tertullian of Carthage, early in the t...
As Jesus’s ministry expanded, becoming ever more urgent and confrontational, his words and actions would increasingly reflect a deep antagonism toward the high priest and the Judean religious establis...
The relationship between the Jews and pagan Arabs was symbiotic in that not only were the Jews heavily Arabized, but the Arabs were also significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices.
Los judíos incluso estaban exentos de rendir culto directo al emperador, algo que Roma imponía prácticamente a cualquier otra comunidad religiosa bajo su dominio. Todo
It is difficult to place Jesus of Nazareth squarely within any of the known religiopolitical movements of his time. He was a man of profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of racial exclu...
Consider, for example, how the following verse (4:34) regarding the obligations of men toward women has been rendered into English by two different but widely read contemporary translators of the Qura...