Suppose our knowledge of the Quran began only recently with the discovery of mysterious scrolls in a desert cave.
Is it conceivable, then, that we might mistake it for the central text of a long-vanished apocalyptic community whose ideas about the next world, colorful and extraordinary as they appear, nonetheless make perfect sense in the context of perhaps the most pervasive literary genre oflate an.
Suppose there was no Islamic history and no Muslim community to help us understand this book.
Suppose our knowledge of the Quran began only recently with the discovery of mysterious scrolls in a desert cave