EUME
2011/ 2012

Joseph Witztum

EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Qur’an in Light of the Christian Syriac Literary Tradition

Joseph Witztum holds a BA and MA in Arabic Language and Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his doctoral dissertation, "The Syriac Milieu of the Qur'an: The Recasting of Biblical Narratives", was completed in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University (2011). He is especially interested in the comparative study of the Qur'an, Syriac poetry, and rabbinic texts. Witztum's publications include "Q 4:24 Revisited", Islamic Law and Society (2009) and "The Foundations of the House (Q 2:127)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (2009). In his dissertation, he studied four Qur'anic recastings of Biblical narratives in the light of Syriac sources.

 

Qur’an in Light of the Christian Syriac Literary Tradition

Witztum will analyze other Qur'anic retellings of Biblical stories along the same lines. He also plans to integrate the results of his textual studies into our knowledge concerning Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia.