boundary 2 50:3 (2023) DOI 10.1215/01903659-10472387 © 2023 by Duke University Press A Bridge Too Far? Ludovico Marracci’s Translation of the Qurʾan and the Persistence of Medieval Biblicism Christopher Livanos and Mohammad Salama The tendency to compare the Bible to the Qurʾ an has remarkable merits and has occupied the minds of Muslims and Christians throughout significant periods in European history since the Middle Ages. Not only has this comparative tendency been instrumental in informing acts of transla- tions of the Qurʾ an into European languages since Robert of Ketton’s trans- lation of the Qurʾ an into Latin in 1143, but it has also reemerged on the contemporary scene of Qurʾ anic Studies with extraordinary force. Although this “return to the Bible”—or to biblical and Syriac traditions both inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula—to study the text of the Qurʾ an conflicts with the Qurʾ an’s self-interpretation and its immediate context of asbāb al-nuzūl (historical contexts/occasions of revelation), a closer look at Latin transla- tions of the Qurʾ an, and in particular Ludovico Marracci’s 1698 work, reveals that early linguistic encounters with the Qurʾ an in Europe may have set the tone for a long and protracted religio-political cycle of Biblicism and neo- Biblicism. A certain strain of European and American Biblicism continues to impose itself on the field of Qurʾ anic studies today, repeating the same lim- Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/article-pdf/50/3/145/1996694/145livanos.pdf by Rowan University Libraries user on 23 August 2023