1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910872193303321

Autore

El-Badawi Emran

Titolo

Female Divinity in the Qur’an : In Conversation with the Bible and the Ancient Near East / / by Emran El-Badawi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer Nature Switzerland : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2024

ISBN

3-031-61800-9

Edizione

[1st ed. 2024.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (209 pages)

Disciplina

297.211

Soggetti

Islam - Doctrines

Islam - History

Religions

Islamic Theology

Islamic History

Comparative Religion

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: The Ancient Tree -- Chapter 3: The Divine Couple -- Chapter 4: Divine Birth -- Chapter 5: Daughters of God? -- Chapter 6: The Rise of Allah -- Chapter 7: Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

“This is a marvelous and original piece of scholarship. El-Badawi’s fresh and controversial ideas will make waves among his peers in the academy, and I mean that in a good way. The author shows remarkable awareness of the history, literature, and epigraphy of the region, very wide and deep. He pulls together a variety of sources and moves easily between them. This is a mature work that shows El-Badawi a first-rate scholar at the top of his field.” —David Penchansky, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA This is the first book to examine how pre-Islamic/Late Antique goddesses shaped the Qur’an, including its basic theology and cosmology. Exploring the traces found in the text of cultic veneration to goddesses of Arabia and the Ancient Near East, this book analyses what these traces tell us about female power in late antique Arabia, and how this power changed on the advent of Islam. While recent studies on the Qur’anic God have typically considered the



question of divinity separately from gender, this book bridges the gap between these two questions, and is therefore an essential constructive mission. This mission adduces literary and documentary evidence—including recent scholarly revolutions in Syriac literature and Arabian epigraphy—and builds upon the critical insights of preceding studies in conversation with post-biblical and Near Eastern traditions. Emran El-Badawi is Dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at Tarleton State University, where he is also Full Professor of History, Geography and GIS. He was formerly Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston, where he also served as Associate Professor and Program Director of Middle Eastern Studies. He is author of Queens and Prophets (Oneworld, 2022); The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (2013), and co-editor of Communities of the Qur’an (Oneworld, 2019). His current research projects include a book on female power in late antique Arabia, and another on hate speech as a global crisis. He has contributed to Forbes, The Houston Chronicle, and The Christian Science Monitor.