In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 5, no.5), David Cook (Rice University) reviews Michel Cuypers (ed.) A Qurʾānic Apocalypse: A Reading of the Thirty-Three Last Sūrahs of the Qurʾān (Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press, 2018).
In his review, Cook writes “That the Qurʾān as a text has apocalyptic affinities has been the focus of scholarly research for the past century. Of late, due to the work of Fred Donner and others, defining the Qurʾānic apocalypse has come into vogue. Michel Cuypers’ ‘A Qurʾānic Apocalypse: A Reading of the Thirty-Three Last Sūrahs of the Qurʾān’ is a welcome addition to this genre. However, one should note that Cuypers’ work is quite different from other research and readings on the subject. While most scholars seek to place the Qurʾān within an apocalyptic framework, and then relate the text to outside events, or to extract history—such as it is—from the text, Cuypers seeks to read the entire text as if it were an apocalypse in terms of its rhetoric…”
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