Obliged by Grace: Edward Jurji’s Legacy in the History of Religions at Princeton Theological Seminary,1939–77

Abstract

A study in the history of the history of religions at Princeton Theological Seminary, the article reflects on the contribution of an under-appreciated figure on the faculty, Edward Jurji, a Syrian Christian acclaimed as a scholar of Islam and as a phenomenologist. Jurji’s intellectual odyssey is traced as he emerged from the shadow of his predecessor Samuel Zwemer, famed (and reviled) as a missionary polemicist in the Middle East, to become an avid proponent of a dialogical approach to the history of religions. Much is owed to Jurji for pioneering the seminary’s first large-scale interfaith colloquies.