When I started reading this book I could not help wondering what the point of it is. It is hard enough, one might think, to write about any one religion, but to talk about three, and how they link up with each other, is a really tough prospect. I am not convinced that it really works, but some of the chapters are very impressive and readers will learn much from them. This review could easily be on just one of the chapters, and all I can do here is present a survey and make some comments on the project as a whole. There are 32 chapters and they are often very different. Some are factual and descriptive, while others tend to pose questions to the reader. Many of them are difficult and involve a great deal of prior knowledge.

It is divided up into sections: the first on the concept of the Abrahamic religions themselves; the second on the various communities; the third on hermeneutics; the fourth on religious thought, which seems to cover a vast variety of topics; the fifth on rituals and ethics; and then there are epilogues, which in many ways embody the problems with the volume as a whole, and I suspect the topic, which is vagueness. The most disappointing section is the end. Peter Ochs throws in everything in his epilogue, including quantum science, semiotics, Peirce's critique of Cartesianism, and so on, none of which it seems to me throws any light on whatever issue he thinks he may be addressing. A calmer epilogue by David Ford suggests that it could be argued that neither Judaism nor Islam has anything like Christian theology (p. 588), which is an interesting claim, and it would have been good to have seen some argument for it and against it. It seems to me to be entirely untrue, and that much Jewish and Islamic theology is similar to the Christian variety, but the problem here is not who is right but why it was felt useful to write at such a high level of generality that no issues are actually addressed and dealt with. Finally, in the last epilogue Tariq Ramadan tells us (p. 610) that we have to work together. Noble sentiments certainly, but one looks in vain for anything that is more than a platitude. However, he goes even further: we should care for the environment, dialogue is not enough, and people of faith need to express their views are other weighty conclusions he reaches.

Some of the sections are excellent and all the contributors are potentially capable of more impressive work than they have sometimes presented here. On the whole, when authors have a concrete issue to discuss they do well. It is worth looking at Rémi Brague's chapter comparing the bibles and the Quran. He makes an intriguing suggestion on p. 97 which is that the idea of Abraham that the three books use is just a vague abstraction and cannot be used in any attempt to try to understand the religions. I could not help wondering why there is no chapter looking at how Abraham was discussed in each book and then contrasted and compared. Firestone does this a bit in the first chapter, but agrees at the end that these Abrahams are different from each other. Would it not be interesting to examine how far the differences between the Abrahams are useful in illuminating the differences in the religions? How far are they similar? The abstract nature of the discussion is such that there is no reference to Abraham's hospitality, and one wonders how that has over time reflected different and similar ways that religions have used that concept. Those sorts of comparative remarks are useful and instructive in our grasp of the links between religions, by contrast with many of the far more abstract issues that are addressed in the volume. Some authors, like Antony Black who writes clearly on political theory, wonder whether the concept “Abrahamic” conceals as much as it reveals (p. 403). This is an issue several authors take up. Mark Silk looks at how the concept has been used and also criticized in modern times, as does Guy Stroumsa, although the latter is more of a believer. Perhaps it comes down to the simple fact that comparative religion is difficult, and there are arguments about how it should be carried out and what sorts of results we can anticipate. It is all too easy for a reviewer to sneer at the effort and be sceptical of the point of the whole exercise, and there are many wonderful chapters in this book. The chapters on rituals, prayer, dietary law, and purity and pollution work really well; these are areas it is not that difficult to examine comparatively. Those on aspects of theology are impressive also, and I thought David Abulafia on the Mediterranean is a triumph of conciseness and accuracy.

Authors do on the whole manage to be objective in their comments, while one realizes that this is a topic that can divide as well as unite religions. In a fine piece on pilgrimages Yousef Meri cannot resist having a dig at the Israeli government (who cannot, nowadays?) and says that safety of sites was on the whole better under Muslim rule (p. 500). Apparently violence at sites venerated by two religions in the Middle East and North Africa is rare (ibid.). Many readers will be surprised by this comment and it should not necessarily be taken as useful travel advice.