This article discusses the major factors behind an oddity in the development of Western Qur’anic studies, the lack of attention to the relationship between the Qur’an and Biblical tradition in the latter half of the twentieth century. This topic represented an important focus in the field up until the 1930s, after which it was relatively neglected throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. It has been taken up again with renewed energy in the present century. Several factors contributed to this development, including the historical configuration of the field of Qur’anic studies into separate research silos, the dispersion of the nucleus of the field in Germany after the National Socialist Party gained power in 1933, the desire to carry on Christian–Muslim dialogue, and the decrial on the part of religious studies scholars of philological obsession with origins and facile theories of influence along with a concomitant move to focus on Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an.

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