Religionswissenschaft und Judaistik

Prof. Dr. Holger Zellentin

Holger Zellentin is an award-winning scholar of Late Antiquity, with a focus on Talmudic and Qur’anic studies. He combines literary, legal and historical approaches in order to understand shared and diverging patterns within Jewish, Christian and early Islamic cultural traditions.
He has received funding from the European Research Council, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2014) as well as an ERC Consolidator Grant, The Quran as a Source for Late Antiquity (2020-2025). From 2020 to 2025, he served as the chair of the board of directors of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA), and from 2012-2019, he was a member of the steering committee of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies (BIAJS). In 2019, he joined the University of Tübingen, where he now works, climbs and cycles.

Contact

Full curriculum vitae and bibliography

Grants, Prizes, and Research Awards (selection)

Career (selection)

Faculty Positions

  • Since 10/2019 Professor of Religion (Jewish Studies), Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Tübingen.
  • 2017 - 2019 Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.
  • 2011 - 2017 Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham.
  • 2007 - 2010 Graduate Theological Union and University of California, Berkeley.
  • 2006 - 2007 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick.

Education (selection)

  • 2007 Ph.D. Department of Religion, Princeton University.
  • 2004 MA Department of Religion and Department of Classics, Princeton University.
  • 2001 Doctoraal (BA cum MA) Juda Palache Institute, University of Amsterdam, cum laude (highest honours).
  • 2000 Doctoraal (BA cum MA), Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam.
  • 1998 Diplôme des Études Universitaires Générales, Protestant Theology, Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg.

Bibliography (selection)

Monographs and Edited Volumes

  • Between Palestine and Medina: Rabbinic Judaism and the Qur’an (Berlin, Leiden: DeGruyter Brill), under review.
  • Law Beyond Israel. From the Bible to the Qur'an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). Open Access download
  • The Qur’an’s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity: Return to the Origins (Routledge Studies in the Quran; Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
  • The Talmud and Christianity: Rabbinic Judaism after Constantine, co-edited with Daniel Weiss and Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, double issue in Jewish Studies Quarterly 25.3 and 4 (2018).
  • The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). (Open Access link)
  • Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 139; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). (Open Access link)
  • Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 119; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), co-edited with Eduard Iricinschi.

Volume Chapters and Journal Articles (since 2020)

  • “Once again on ʿUzayr, the Son of God,” submitted to the Journal of Qur’anic Studies, co-authored with Hythem Sidky. (Open Access link)
  • “Biblical Law,” submitted to Nicolai Sinai and Marianna Klar (eds.), Biblical Traditions in the Qur’an (Princeton: Princeton University Press). (Open Access link)
  • “Between Bible and Byzantium: “Corruption on Earth” (fasād fī l-arḍ) and the Qur’an’s Penal Code (Q 5:33-34.38-39),” Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association 10 (2025): 11-56. (Open Access link)
  • “Banū Isrāʾīl wa-ahl al-kitāb wa-l-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā: Taḥāwur ummat al-Qurʾān maʿ al-yahūd wa-l-masīḥiyyīn,” translated by Ṭāriq ʿUthmān. Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales (MIDÉO) 40 (2025): 31-86. (Open Access link)
  • “Jesus’ Miracles in the Qur’an and in Toledot Yeshu,” in Theology of Prophecy in Dialogue: A Jewish-Christian-Muslim Encounter, edited by Zishan Ghaffar and Klaus von Stosch (Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, 2025), 21-55. (Open Access link)
  • “What Falls Within Judaism According to the Qur’an? Q 5 Sūrat al-Māʾida 44–47 as Critique of Mishnah Avot 1:1,” in Within Judaism? Interpretive Trajectories in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the First to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Karin Hedner Zetterholm and Anders Runesson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023), 282-308. (Open Access link)
  • “banū isrāʾīl, ahl al-kitāb, al-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā: The Qur’anic Community’s Encounters with Jews and Christians,” Entangled Religions 13.2 (2023). (Open Access link)
  • “Jews and the Imperial Cult,” in The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Catherine Hezser (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023), 76-92.
  • “Zwischen Bibel und Byzanz: „Verderben auf der Erde“ (fasād fī l-arḍ) und die koranische Strafgesetzgebung,“ Normativität – Religion - Mobilität, edited by Bernhard Sven Anuth, Michael Droege, and Stephan Dusil (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 113-45. (Open Access link)
  • “‘Honour with Silence the Words of Your Creator’: Moses’ Silence in bMenaḥot 29b in Light of its Jewish and Christian Context,” in Syriac Theology: Past and Present, edited by Martina Aras, Charbel Rizk and Klaus von Stosch (Paderbon: Brill Schöningh, 2023), 183-208. (Open Access link)
  • “Scriptural Hermeneutics and Purity Laws in the Clementine Homilies: Mainstream or Marginal, Progressive or Conservative, Jewish or Christian?,” in Negotiating Identities: Conflict, Conversion, and Consolidation in Early Judaism and Christianity (200 BCE–600 CE), edited by Karin Hedner Zetterholm, Anders Runesson, Cecilia Wassén and Magnus Zetterholm (Coniectanea Biblica; Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2022), 423-454. (Open Access link)
  • “Law in the Medinan Qur’an: The Case of Biblical Incest Law and its Qur’anic Re-Iteration,” Unlocking the Medinan Qur’an, edited by Nicolai Sinai (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 315-389. (Open Access link)
  • “One Letter Yud shall not Pass Away from the Law”: Matthew 5:17 to Shabbat 116a-b,” Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Walking Together & Parting Ways, ed. Ilkka Lindstedt, Nina Nikki, and Riikka Tuori (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 204-258. (Open Access link)
  • “Beyond Ring Composition: A Comparison of Formal Features in Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (Q 96) and Bavli Bava Batra 8a,” in Structural Dividers in the Qur’an, ed. Marianna Klar (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 54-91. (Open Access link)  

 

Memberships

  • Deutscher Hochschulverband (DHV)
  • International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA)
  • European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS)
  • Verband der Judaisten in Deutschland (VJD)