The Making of a Forefather

Know about the book -

The Making of a Forefather is written by Shari Lowin and published by BRILL. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 9047410106 (ISBN 10) and 9789047410102 (ISBN 13).

This comparative analysis examines the Islamic and Jewish exegetical narratives [ḥadīth/qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ and midrash aggadah] on the early life of the forefather Abraham. It reveals how the traditions utilized one another’s materials in creating and re-creating the patriarch in their own image. Each chapter examines a particular motif in Abraham’s development, from the prophecy surrounding his birth to his discovery of God and polemics with pagans to his salvation in the fiery furnace of Chaldea. Indexes of the more salient rabbinic or Islamic texts follow at the end of each chapter. The work is particularly valuable for scholars of rabbinics and Islamicists alike; it challenges earlier scholarship by revealing that the Islamic and Jewish exegetical traditions were not entirely distinct traditions but were intertextually related, mutually giving and receiving ideas.