Making of a Forefather

This comparative analysis examines the Islamic and Jewish exegetical narratives [hadith/qisas al-anbiya' 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.