This volume brings together new research perspectives on how religious traditions have been criticized, reconsidered, and modified by exploring the dialectics of continuity and rupture that pervade religious communities. The collected essays consider how forms of criticism are classified, perceived, and constructed in different critical discourses. This investigation sheds new light on the dynamics of religious transformation, past and present.

The art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the...