Recently the field of Qur’anic studies has begun to be transformed by new digital tools that allow scholars to analyse the Qur’an’s language, structure, formation and transmission in powerful ways. Just as they have transformed the study of other ancient texts, new computerised approaches to the Qur’an are shedding new light on an ancient scripture.

This lecture will showcase some of the latest developments in Qur’anic Computing and, as an example, demonstrate how they can shed light on one of the thorniest questions in critical scholarship: how was the Qur’an first composed and how the largely oral environment in which Islam began affected the Arabic text that we have today.

About the speaker:

Dr Andrew G. Bannister is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam, Melbourne School of Theology, and a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations, London School of Theology. He is the author of An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qur’an (Lexington Books, 2014) as well as the best-selling popular philosophy book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist (or: The Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments) (Monarch, 2015). He is also the Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity, a think tank that aims to generate conversations about faith, culture and philosophy.