Jewish Christianity and the Origins of Islam

Among all the different theories that currently explore the religious milieu of Late Antiquity to elucidate the origins of the Islamic religion, there is a group of scholars supporting that Jewish Christianity must have played a role in its formation, reviving the question of a potential link between Early Islam and the beliefs and practices of those followers of Jesus that maintained or adopted certain Jewish beliefs and practices, either Jews that believed in the messianism and/or the prophecy of Jesus, groups whose existence and nature is still a matter of debate. In any case, the question is still subject of passionate debate among specialists. This volume collects the papers of a two-day colloquium held in Washington DC in October 2015 about the question of Jewish Christianity and Early Islam and highlights the vitality of this field of studies. The contributions included here cover a broad range of topics, and they offer new ideas, interpretations and understandings of the question.