Francis Edward Peters

Francis Edward Peters (born June 23, 1927 in New York ) is an American scholar of Islam and religion, as well as a classical philologist .

Life

Peters attended Regis High School in Manhattan and graduated from school in 1945. He then entered the Jesuit Order at St. Andrew on Hudson in Hyde Park , NY. He then studied Classical Philology at St. Louis University and obtained a BA in 1950, an MA in 1952 and a licentiate in philosophy at one of the Pontifical Academies in Rome .

From 1952 to 1954 he taught at Canisius High School in Buffalo , NY and was released from the vow as a Jesuit in 1954. In 1956 he graduated from Fordham University with a degree in Russian Language and Literature . 1961 followed by a doctorate in Islamic studies at Princeton University . From 1961 to 2008 he taught at New York University . There he served as head of both the Department of Classics and the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He has held various visiting professorships at other universities and has curated exhibitions at the College of the Holy Cross , the British Library and the New York Public Library .

Research priorities

Peters' field of work is the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism , Christianity and Islam . A specialty are the Graeco-Arabica , the study of the tradition of Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle , about Syriac and Arabic .

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

• Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon , New York University Press (1967)
• Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam , New York University Press (1968)
• Aristotle Arabus. The Oriental Translations and Commentaries of the Aristotelian Corpus , EJ Brill, Leiden (1968)
• Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity , Simon and Schuster, New York, ISBN 0-671-20658-3 (1971)
• Allah's Commonwealth: A History of Islam in the Near East, 600–1100 AD , Simon and Schuster, New York, ISBN 0-671-21564-7 (1973)
• Jerusalem: Holy City / Holy Places , New York University, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York (1983)
• Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-07300-7 (1985)
• Distant Shrine: The Islamic Centuries in Jerusalem , AMS Press, New York, ISBN 0-404-61629-1 (1993)
• Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02120-1 (1994)
• Jerusalem and Mecca: The Typology of the Holy City in the Near East , New York University Press, ISBN 0-8147-6598-X (1986)
• Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: The Classical Texts and Their Interpretation , Princeton University Press
  • Volume I: From Covenant to Community , ISBN 0-691-02044-2 (1990)
  • Volume II: The Word and the Law and the People of God , ISBN 0-691-02054-X (1990)
  • Volume III: The Works of the Spirit , ISBN 0-691-02055-8 (1990)
• "The Quest of the Historical Muhammad", in International Journal of Middle East Studies , Vol. 23, No. 3. (August 1991), pp. 291-315
• Muhammad and the Origins of Islam , State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-7914-1875-8 (1994)
• Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-03267-X (1994)
• The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition , Princeton University Press
  • Volume I: The Peoples of God , ISBN 0-691-11460-9 (1994)
  • Volume II: The Words and Will of God , ISBN 0-691-11461-7 (1994)
• Judaism, Christianity and Islam: the Monotheists , Recorded Books, Prince Frederick, MD, ISBN 1-4025-3900-2 (2003)
• Islam, A Guide for Jews and Christians , (2003)
• Jerusalem: The Contested City , Recorded Books, Prince Frederick, MD, ISBN 1-4025-3909-6 (2003)
• Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam , with a foreword by John L. Esposito , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-07267-1 (2004)
• The Voice, the Word, The Books. The Sacred Scriptures of the Jews, Christians and Muslims , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-13112-0 (2007)
• Jesus and Muhammad. Parallel Tracks, Parallel Lives , Oxford University Press, New York, ISBN 978-0-19-974746-7 (2010)

Editorships

• Arabs and Arabia on the Eve of Islam , Aldershot, Brookfield, Vt., ISBN 0-86078-702-8 (1999)
• Reader on Classical Islam , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-03394-3 (1994)

Autobiography

• Ours, The Making and Unmaking of a Jesuit , Penguin Books, New York, NY, ISBN 0-14-006317-X (1982)

Web links

• Personal page