http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/theolog...llowship-jewish-christianity-and-the-quran_ft
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Two aspects of Late Antique religious history have puzzled scholars for over a century: one, the gradual disappearance of those parts of the Jesus movement that were committed to ritual purity ('Jewish Christianity') from the fourth century C.E. onwards, and two, the appearance of Islam in the seventh century. My research project situates the Qur'an vis-à-vis the supposedly vanished tradition of ritually committed followers of Jesus and explains tendencies throughout Late Antiquity, from Matthew to Muhammad, that may allow us to appreciate both the Qur'an and Jewish Christianity as illuminating each other.
My central claim is that many-though by far not all-of the Qur'an's laws, especially concerning ritual, civil, and criminal matters, as well as the legal narratives justifying these laws, engage a concrete legal culture. This culture can largely be approached through two Late Antique texts, each attested in various versions from the third through the seventh century, the Didascalia Apostolorum and the ("pseudo"-) Clementine Homilies. These texts attest to a Jewish Christian tradition, distinct from rabbinic and Greek and Syriac Christianity, which remained largely stable up to the seventh century. I seek to understand the Qur'an's many continuities, as well as its specific criticisms of, and changes to, the legal traditions of its time. In effect, the Qur'an evaluates nearly all of the Jewish Christian laws, explicitly rejecting some, while accepting, modifying, and integrating most others into its own legal system.
The project allows for a more concrete understanding how the Qur'an relates to Judaism and Christianity. The research project includes a collaboration with the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme at the Faculty of the Divinity at the University of Cambridge, which housed a workshop on "Jesus and the Law in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam;" a collaboration with the Quran seminar at the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame; and a conference titled "Return to the Origins: the Qur'an's Reformation of Judaism and Christianity," at the University of Nottingham. Related publications include a monograph on the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Qur'an (forthcoming), a monograph on Jewish Christianity and the Quran more broadly (under contract with OUP), the publication of the conference proceedings, and contributions to the a collaborative Quran Commentary edited by Gabriel Said Reynolds and Mehdi Azaiez.
