The University of Helsinki hosted the European Association of Biblical Studies’ annual meeting, which this year was held together with the Society of Biblical Literature’s international meeting, from July 30 – August 3, 2018.
View from Helsinki Harbour of the Cathedral
Delegates were welcomed to the conference by Outi Lehtipuu, chair of the local organizing committee, John F. Kutsko, SBL’s executive director and Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, EABS’ executive officer, in the historic surroundings of the University’s Great Hall. This was followed by a reception at the City Hall, hosted by the major of Helsinki.
Delegates were treated to a concert in the Rock Church, one of Helsinki’s most popular attractions (Photograph courtesy of SBL)
The conference included a wide range of papers on qur’ānic studies:
Sayed-Hassan Akhlaq (Boston) “The Inspirational Aspect of the Idea of “Tahrif” for Interreligious Dialogue” and “The Biblical and Qur’ānic Image of Moses and Jesus”
George Archer (Iowa State) “Ephrem’s 27thHymn on the Nativity in the Qur’anic Landscape”
Rachel Claire Dryden (Cambridge) “How al-Shayṭān got his Name: The Arabic Recensions of the Narratives from the Syriac Cave of Treasures”
Alyssa Gabbay (North Carolina) “Jesus, Son of Mary: Lineage and Descent in the Bible and the Qur’ān”
Abdulla Galadari (Khalifa University) “The Qur’ān: Authorship between Muhammad and the Divine”
Ghilène Hazem (Paris-Nanterre) “Avoiding Embarrassing Meanings: Ambiguous Qur’ānic Verses, Corrected Scribal Errors and Biblical/Apocryphal Intertexts”
Bert Jacobs (KU Leuven) “Reading the Gospel in a Muslim Context: Dionysius Bar Salibi’s (Re)Interpretation of Jesus’ Difficult Words and Deeds”
Ilkka Lindstedt and Nina Nikki (Helsinki) “Abraham as an Identity Sign in Paul and the Qur’ān”
Jusuf Salih (Dayton) “Mustafa Sabri Efendi’s Views on the Resurrection of Jesus”
Mohammad Ghandehari (Tehran) “Clarifying the Divine Teachings for Thee”: The Qur’ān’s Self-Identified Role in Clarifying the Bible”
Kate Tinson (Cardiff) “Moses and His Leprosy: Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Texts and the Qur’ān”
The conference provided an important forum for scholars of the Qur’ān to interact with biblical scholars as well as being a key meeting point for the field in 2018, when there is no IQSA international meeting. Many thanks to the local organizing committees and the staff and graduate helpers at the University of Helsinki for such a warm welcome to a beautiful city and for an extremely well-organised conference – kiitos!
EABS’ next Annual Meeting will be held from August 11 – 14, 2019 in Warsaw, Poland.
SBL’s next International Meeting will be held from July 23 – 26, 2019 in Bangalore, India, which will coincide with IQSA’s biannual International Meeting.
The calls for papers for the above will be announced in due course.
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2018. All rights reserved.