Transfer and Religion: Interactions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Edited by Alexander A. Dubrau, Davide Scotto, and Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino

Abstract

In recent decades, the study of the entangled relations between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has increasingly become one of the main points on the agenda of historians and scholars of religion. Seeking to understand the social, religious, and cultural encounters among the members of these Abrahamic religions, scholars have looked at various historical contexts as they have constantly revised their perspectives by using new tools and methodologies in their investigations. Considering the recent efforts and results that discuss how debates on entangled cultural history reflect in the refashioning of religious studies and its related fields, the editors of this volume make a good case for approaching the religious contacts between Jews, Christians, and Muslims through the lenses of “religious transfer,” a process that entails “the transfer of knowledge, ideas, objects, texts and customs of religious character, which affect religious life on an individual or community level” (3). In their quest of defining the phenomenon, the editors argue that religious transfer takes place in a “space of interaction between faiths leading either to the building of bridges or to the exacerbation of contrasts” between them (3–4). Divided into two parts, the volume includes thirteen chapters in English, French, and German, arranged along chronological lines, which investigate multiple contexts of interaction from the medieval to modern times.