EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: THE QUR’AN BETWEEN BIBLE AND TAFSIR

Abstract

 JIQSA is being launched at a crucial time for the growth and development of Qur’anic Studies as a scholarly field. While there has been a surge of advances in just the last fifteen years, the field at times appears incoherent, seeming to lack a clear disciplinary identity. As greater numbers of scholars devote their efforts to the study of the Qur’an, there is a natural diversification of research aims and methods, stimulating attempts to define Qur’anic Studies "proper”—to distinguish those aims and methods that are central to the field from those that are peripheral, and determine how (and whether) the center and peripheries are meaningfully related.