Do We Still Need Inspiration?

Book excerpt: The concept of inspiration is part and parcel of the theological tradition in several religious confessions, but it has largely receded to the background, if not vanished altogether, in the discussions of biblical scholars. The question "Do we still need inspiration?" might well reflect the perplexity of many exegetes today. Systematic theologians, for their part, often further their own reflections on the subject independently of developments in the field of exegesis, with the risk of remaining purely theoretical. Biblical research in the last decades has been marked by new insights about the nature of the biblical texts, stemming from the study of their inner plurality (insofar as they combine and sometimes intertwine conflicting theologies), of their textual fluidity, and of their reception. Can these new insights be integrated into a theological reflection on the notion of inspiration? These questions are often explicitly raised about the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, but they also prove increasingly relevant for Qur’ānic studies. This volume addresses them through contributions from exegetes of the Bible and of the Qur’an and systematic theologians.