Journeys in Holy Lands

Reuven Firestone is Assistant Professor of Hebrew language and literature in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature at Boston University.

• Preface Introduction Transliterations Abbreviations Part One: Background 1. Biblicists and Arabs2. The Nature of the Literature Part Two: The Syrian Prologue 3. Abraham's Emigration4. The Tyrant5. The Birth of Ishmael6. Beersheba7. The Angels Visit Part Three: The Meccan Sequence 8. The Transfer to Mecca9. The Jurhum10. Abraham's Visits11. Building the Ka'ba12. The Pilgrimage Part Four: The Sacrifice 13. Prelude to Sacrifice14. The Sacrificial Act15. The Redemption16. Isaac or Ishmael?Conclusion Part Five: Appendices 1. The Exegetes and Their Sources2. Traditionists Naming Isaac or Ishmael as the Intended Sacrificial Victim Notes Selected Bibliography Index

"Reuven Firestone discusses the relationships among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic treatments of Abraham and Ishmael without resorting to the older and invidious terms of borrowing and dependency. He is sensitive to the individual genius of each tradition while still demonstrating that they all operate in a shared universe of religious ideas. Firestone's work should become one of the models that future students of comparative religions will look to for this type of study." — Gordon Newby, North Carolina State University"I have done some work in the same field and found myself constantly reacting with growing excitement and enthusiasm to the author's approach, methodology, and conclusions. His division of the sources into biblist, pre-Islamic Arabian, and Islamic, is in itself, a very new and useful approach." — William M. Brinner, University of California at Berkeley