Parution : Julien Decharneux, Creation and Contemplation. The Cosmology of the Qur’ān and Its Late Antique Background, De Gruyter, 2023

Creation and Contemplation
The Cosmology of the Qur’ān and Its Late Antique Background

Julien Decharneux

Volume 47 in the series Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110794083

In Creation and Contemplation, Julien Decharneux explores the connections between the cosmology of the Qur’ān and various cosmological traditions of Late Antiquity, with a focus on Syriac Christianity.

The first part of the book studies how, in exhorting its audience to contemplate the world, the Qur’ān carries on a tradition of natural contemplation that had developed throughout Late Antiquity in the Christian world. In this regard, the analysis suggests particularly striking connections with the mystical and ascetic literature of the Church of the East, which was in effervescence at the time of the emergence of Islam.

The second part argues that the Qur’ānic cosmological discourse is built so as to serve the overarching theological message of the text, namely God’s absolute unity. Despite the allusive, and sometimes obscure, way in which the Qur’ān talks about the world’s coming into being and its maintenance in existence, the text betrays its authors’ acquaintance with cosmological debates of Late Antiquity.

In studying the Qur’ān through the prism of Late Antiquity, this book contributes to our understanding of the emergence of Islam and its relationship with other religious traditions of the time.

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