Mårtensson/Divine Covenant, 1.The Writing of History and the ‘Religious Other’

Chapter 1 describes Michel de Certeau’s discourse theory and analytical method, which provides the methodology for my study. In brief, his method implies analysing scholarly discourses with reference to the specific societal institutional order and practices of the society in case. I also discuss de Certeau’s work with reference to general epistemic debates about scientific knowledge, historiography and modern nation-states, and related debates within Religious studies concerning the concept ‘religion’. This refers to the problem I raised above, of how to understand the significance of ‘religious’ aspects of the Islamic disciplines, such as the concept of the divine, of creation, covenant, prophecy, and divinely mediated ‘writing’, and how these can be understood in relation to scientific knowledge and observation.