Religious Studies

The problem of natural theology has become more acute in late modernity. With impulses from the philosophy of religion, problem-historical analyses and contemporary systematic-theological reflections, the contributors to this volume undertake a reassessment of the problem field of natural theology.

Although scriptural discourses in late antiquity are eminently characterized by forms of wisdom thinking, wisdom is not yet an established category in Qur'anic and Islamic studies. The contributors to this volume explore traces of wisdom thinking, teaching, and interpretation in an interreligious perspective from the Hebrew Bible to the gospels and Hellenistic and late antique literature, and ask for its continuing presence in the context of Islam.

Literature or textbook? In antiquity, no clear distinction was made in this respect, as Christian Neumann demonstrates regarding the complex interplay of literary design and didactic function in Plutarch's Quaestiones Graecae and Romanae and Gellius' Noctes Atticae.

While past scholarship has emphasized graphic imagery, Matthew Michael engages in the soundscape of the book of Revelation. Blending biblical studies with sound theory, he shows the strategic use of sound, noise, and weeping scenes in challenging Rome's power and the re-imagination of a new world.