The Abrahamic Vernacular

A history of Jews, Christians, and Muslims from across the globe have prayed together, studied together, and believed together.

Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg (Author)

9781009517171, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 April 2024

76 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1 cm, 0.257 kg

Contemporary thought typically places a strong emphasis on the exclusive and competitive nature of Abrahamic monotheisms. This instinct is certainly borne out by the histories of religious wars, theological polemic, and social exclusion involving Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But there is also another side to the Abrahamic coin. Even in the midst of communal rivalry, Jews, Christians, and Muslim practitioners have frequently turned to each other to think through religious concepts, elucidate sacred history, and enrich their ritual practices. Scholarship often describes these interactions between the Abrahamic monotheisms using metaphors of exchange between individuals-as if one tradition might borrow a theological idea from another in the same way that a neighbor might borrow a recipe. This Element proposes that there are deeper forms of entanglement at work in these historical moments.

1. How this element works
2. What is an Abrahamic monotheism?
3. Centrifugal and centripetal models of collective monotheism
4. The Abrahamic vernacular
5. Models of religious common sense
6. Concluding thoughts: moving from an affective history to a history of common sense
7. References.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA]