Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land: First-Fifteenth Centuries CE

by Guy G. Stroumsa (Editor), Aryeh Kofsky (Editor)

In a contrast to the more monolithic religious history of other lands or geographical entities, the plurality of religious traditions and identities is an essential and distinctive factor in the history of the Holy Land. These identities have usually developed in opposition to one another, and inter-religious relations have more often than not reflected negative—if not openly hostile—attitudes to outsiders. Nonetheless, the daily, polemical or intellectual encounter between members of different religious traditions has occasionally led to a particular dynamic that influences the internal evolutions of each community. Sometimes even common interests or patterns have appeared among the different traditions and communities. Through a series of case studies, Sharing the Sacred exemplifies the variety of issues and methods involved in the study of the religious history of the Holy Land.

285 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1998

About the author

Prof Guy Stroumsa was the first Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford University and Professorial Fellow at LMH from 2009 to 2013. Before joining Oxford he was Martin Buber Professor of Comparative Religions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Prof Stroumsa is a prolific author with a wide range of expertise in the Abrahamic traditions and has also made important contributions to the Study of Religion in general as a human phenomenon.

He was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship in 2013.

Research interests:
the history of religions in the Near East and the Mediterranean world, in particular in Late Antiquity
theoretical, epistemological and historical issues in the History of Religions as a discipline