Overview

How to Read the Qur'an offers a compact introduction and reader's guide for anyone, non-Muslim or Muslim, who wants to know how to approach, read, and understand the text of the Qur'an. Using a chronological reading of the text according to the conclusions of modern scholarship, Carl Ernst offers a nontheological approach that treats the Qur'an as a historical text that unfolded over time, in dialogue with its audience, during the career of the Prophet Muhammad. Ernst explores the history of the text and its development in the Meccan and Medinan periods; the Qur'an's important structural features, including symmetrical or ring composition; recent revisionist challenges to its textual integrity; and intertextual references in the Qur'an that relate to earlier works, such as the Bible. Featuring Ernst's illuminating new translations of 725 Qur'anic verses, close studies of numerous key passages, and appendices with tools to help readers work their way through the entire text, How to Read the Qur'an not only summarises historical and literary issues but also engages with the religious and political context of understanding the Qur'an today.

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9780807835166

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Reviews

This will serve both as a fine teaching tool at the college or seminary level and as a useful resource for engaged nonspecialists, who will find it challenging but rewarding. <br>- Library Journal

Ernst offers this elegant guide on how to read and understand the text sacred to Muslims.--Publishers Weekly This will serve both as a fine teaching tool at the college or seminary level and as a useful resource for engaged nonspecialists, who will find it challenging but rewarding.--Library Journal This book includes an accessible discussion of Qur'anic studies to date, along with easily followed investigations of particular chapters using the ring methodology. Also included is a brief appendix with pointers for students so that they can use the author's approach to treat other chapters of the Qur'an similarly. Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.--Choice The Qur'an is widely misunderstood, partly because it's very difficult to read. . . Ernst explains why and offers a way through.--Endeavors Ernst's book is an illuminating and well-written companion to the Qur'an. . . . Demonstrat[es] that the Qur'an can actually be read, rather than just quoted, dissected, summarized, ridiculed, glorified or studied for its obvious importance in later Islam.--Times Literary Supplement Muslim, non-Muslim, religious, and irreligious readers will all find in the Qur'an, as Ernst presents it here, something of interest. This is a groundbreaking and essential book, surely to be of interest and use in mosque study groups and intellectually minded book clubs as well as classrooms. An appendix on Suggested Interpretive Exercises will serve all such audiences well.--Rain Taxi Review of Books Ernst's scholarship makes room for a respectful appreciation of the religious commitments of many who approach it. Such a judicious approach models a way forward for Christians, Jews, Muslims and people who profess none of these faiths to read the Qur'an and talk with one another about what they read.--Christian Century

Muslim, non-Muslim, religious, and irreligious readers will all find in the Qur'an, as Ernst presents it here, something of interest. This is a groundbreaking and essential book, surely to be of interest and use in mosque study groups and intellectually minded book clubs as well as classrooms. An appendix on -Suggested Interpretive Exercises- will serve all such audiences well.--Rain Taxi Review of Books

Author Information

Carl W. Ernst is William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World, among other books.

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