Gabriel Reynolds is the Jerome J. Crowley and Rosaleen G. Crowley Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His area of research includes world religions, and the history of Christianity particularly as it intersects with Quranic studies and Muslim-Christian relations.
His recent work explores how Islam engaged with Christianity in the 7th century, and how understanding that could result in better communication between Muslims and Christians today.
Video transcription:
Gabriel Reynolds: So the key question for me in interreligious dialogue is, “Is the task of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, when we sit down together, to reach some sort of common point, some sort of middle ground, or is the task to better understand each other and consequently better understand ourselves?”
And it’s the latter approach which is more interesting to me.
My area of research is generally Islamic studies and, specifically the relationship between the Quran and the Bible and, really, the entire sweep of biblical tradition that leads up to the Quran.
My current book project is about the Quran and Christianity, but different aspects of the relationship between the two.
I’m interested in the historical question and making a really robust argument that Christianity was present in the context of the Quran and this means the early 7th century in the western Arabian Peninsula, an area known in Arabic as the Hejaz.
The whole project involves different aspects. It involves, for example, the evidence of inscriptions that can be dated to just before right at the beginning of Islam’s emergence, which show the presence of monotheists and specifically Christians in Arabia. But it also involves rereading Quranic passages that alludes to figures such as monks, or Christian communities, or even holds up in certain aspects the piety of Christians as something to be emulated.
And finally, there’s an element of the Quran — which is particularly interesting to me — is the presence of Christian or biblical turns of phrase. So the way the Quran — even when it’s making a different point or a new point — might take up a turn of phrase such as the camel in the eye of the needle, such as uncircumcised hearts, or the mustard seed. All of these biblical expressions the Quran often uses them for its new and distinctive theological point.
But the argument I’m making by analyzing these is that Christian language was in the air even at the very beginning of Islam.
It’s important for the scholarship in Quranic studies because this is an innovative argument. Earlier scholars generally said, “Well there might have been individuals who wandered in, a wandering monk, a Christian traveler, someone from Ethiopia who might have encountered Muhammad.” But my argument is that there were settled communities of Christians in Western Arabia in the very context of Islamic origins.
What we do generally at a University — and especially at Notre Dame — is to seek truth for its own sake. So there is something virtuous of understanding the origins of the tradition simply to better understand where we’ve come from, where the tradition of Islam came from, and how it’s related to Christianity.
But it’s also important today because the way in which the Quran, that is Islam, engaged with Christianity in the beginning could inform ways in which Muslims and Christians can better dialogue today.
