explore the Qur’an’s origins in the religious, cultural, social, and political contexts of Late Antiquity; its connections to various literary precursors, especially the scriptural and parascriptural traditions of older religious communities; the historical reception of the Qur??n in the West; the hermeneutics and methodology of qur??nic exegesis and translation (both traditional and modern); the transmission and evolution of the textus receptus; Qur??n manuscripts and material culture; and the application of various literary and philological modes of investigation into qur??nic style, compositional structure, and rhetori