Book Talk with Dr. Jack Miles: God in the Qur'an
Department: Religious Studies
Date and Time: November 19, 2019 | 5:00 PM-6:30 PMEvent Location: HG 1010
Event Details
God as Allah is the protagonist of the Qur’an, omnipresent and overwhelming in that classic scripture even more than he is in the Bible as Yahweh or as Christ. In the Qur’an, moreover, God speaks of some of the same iconic episodes that loom largest in the Bible. In God in the Qur’an -- just published in paperback after a warm reception in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Harper’s and elsewhere -- Jack Miles places these iconic episodes in cross-scriptural, inter-textual context.
What is alike, and what is different about how the respective scriptures tell these shared stories? And what do the similarities and differences tell us about the variably understood character of God?
The result is a path into the Qur’an for Jews and Christians, a path into the Bible for Muslims, and perhaps a step toward sympathetic understanding for all affected by these classics no less of world literature than of faith. Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Religious Studies at UCI, is a past winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, and (his favorite) the UCI Distinguished Faculty Research Award. His most recent book (a little one, and again his favorite) is Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story (W.W. Norton).