The five great sees of the early church
How Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem came to head the church of the Roman empire, and what became of the arrangement after the…
Journal
Explainers and essays on the history, scripture and thought of the Abrahamic traditions. Browse every topic.
-
-
Nicaea, 325: the council, the creed and the church beneath the lake
Archaeologists at Iznik have found the earlier church beneath the lakeside basilica. What the Council of Nicaea decided there, how it ranked the great…
-
The Abrahamic family tree and what the traditions share
Who descends from whom, and what the traditions hold in common: the family of Abraham and the beliefs Judaism, Christianity and Islam share, in…
-
The Sabians in classical Muslim scholarship
Three classical Muslim scholars on the Sabians, and why al-Shahrastani read Abraham’s argument with the stars as a case against them.
-
Apostasy in the Abrahamic traditions
Rabbinic law, Christian empire, classical Islamic jurisprudence and modern reconsideration: how each tradition has treated those who leave.
-
Paul and Peter: two missions in the early church
Paul’s own letters describe a real conflict with Peter at Antioch. A later letter, in Peter’s name, makes peace.
-
The population of the Abrahamic religions
Pew Research projects Islam and Christianity nearing parity by 2050, and Islam becoming the largest religion by 2060 or later.
-
Haman in the Qur’an
Was the Qur’an’s Haman borrowed from the Bible’s Esther, or is his name an Egyptian priestly title?
-
The Cairo Genizah
A synagogue storeroom in Cairo yielded 400,000 medieval fragments and reshaped the study of Jewish history.
-
The Amman Message and A Common Word
Two landmark declarations: a modern Muslim consensus on who is a Muslim, and an open letter to Christian leaders.
-
Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd and the limits of reason
The medieval argument over whether philosophy could be trusted, and why it mattered more in Europe than in Islam.
-
The preservation and transmission of scripture
How the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an were each copied, checked and handed down across centuries.