N o t e

For the next few weeks blogging will be sparse, while I work on my book on the intertextual relations among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--the Abrahamic religions. Obviously this is a tall order. I have, however, produced fragments of the projected work over the last two years or so on this blog. I am now pruning these and drafting some much needed additional material in an effort to create a continuous narrative.

Having taught elements of this complex of religious material in my college classes in art history (where these themes have inspired countless works of art), I have since come to realize how problematic and indeed deleterious this heritage is. However, one cannot simply throw it out, as the New Atheists urge. The Abrahamic memes have been--and still are--too important to Western civilization. As they are to every part of the world, except for East Asia and the Hindu-Buddhist realms of South and Southeast Asia.