In this introduction to the use of linguistics in biblical interpretation, Peter Cotterell and Max Turner focus on the concept of meaning, the significance of author, text, and reader, and the use of discourse analysis.

Muhammad: the man who transformed Arabia. The man whose life in some measure determines the everyday behaviour of more than a billion of his followers across the world. And yet a man it is difficult to know. As the author of this book points out, biographies of Muhammad have tended to present him either as a man who could do nothing right or else as a man who could do nothing wrong. Somewhere in between is the real Muhammad. Dr Cotterell has taught and lectured on Islam for more than 30 years. For over 20 years he lived and worked in Ethiopia. This book is the result of those years of struggling to understand Islam and Muhammad, its central figure.