The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, edited by Adam J. Silverstein, Guy G. Stroumsa, and Moshe Blidstein

Abstract

The "Handbooks" genre has witnessed a literal explosion over the past decade, for a variety of reasons many of which unrelated to scholarship proper. "Handbooks" may affect scholarship, however, in the way they identify concepts and highlight potentially meaningful research fields. The volume under review opens with a clear statement: "The primary aim of this book is to contribute to the emergence and development of the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions." (xiii) The book (henceforth abbreviated OHAR) is a witness to the three editors' commitment to this process: Stroumsa, professor emeritus in the History of Religions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, held the first professorship for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at the University of Oxford between 2009 and 2013. He has published a number of studies in which he presents his approach to "Abrahamic religions" (and to the very concept of "Abrahamic religions") as a historian of Late Antique religion\s (see, e.g., Stroumsa 2011Stroumsa , 2015. Silverstein had directed the Abrahamic Religions in History Program at King's College, London, and was a lecturer in Near Eastern Studies at Oxford when OHAR was conceived; he now teaches Islamic history at Bar Ilan University and Shalem College, Jerusalem. As for Blidstein, a former student of Stroumsa's with special expertise in Early Christianity, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the time of editing and is today a member of the University of Haifa's Department of History. That a project devoted to the "emergence and development" of a field should be steered by three scholars representing different generations seems most appropriate.This said, what field are we considering? The label "Abrahamic religions" generally includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, each of which is taken as "one religion" among three and as a member of an extended family. "What brings the Abrahamic religions together is a common set of questions about God and his world; what distinguishes the Abrahamic religions from each other are their respective answers to these questions." (xv) This bold statement does not necessarily imply that each religion has only one answer to a given question; but the arrangement of the three as members of one family tends to keep inner diversity, competition and controversies at the background of scholars' attention, whether on purpose or not. Moreover, conceiving religion\s in terms of Q&A seems to reflect a primarily theological interest, which is somewhat surprising given the editors' and most contributors' expertise as historians (mostly, of religion\s and their contexts).Though not a modern invention, the label "Abrahamic religions" is of relatively recent conjuncture. It has been increasingly used since the mid-1980s, and with special emphasis since 9/11/2001, by religious representatives in Western Europe and the U.S. to highlight interreligious activities (sometimes called "trialogue") aiming to reduce tensions between communities of believers and to prevent stigmatization of religious minorit...