Stephen J. Shoemaker, Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study

The main purpose of this volume is to study the emergence of the Qur’an from a historical-critical perspective, using the tools and methods applied by religious and biblical studies to analyze biblical and other religious texts. Although the author sought to engage with the Qur’an as a late ancient biblical apocryphon in the Near East as part of a project in the Regensburg Center for Advanced Study researching Christian canon during late antiquity, his realization of how "underresearched” the formative period of the Qur’an was, shifted his focus on the latter subject (p. x).