[Book Review] Modern Hadith studies: continued debates and new approaches. Edited by Belal Abu-Alabbas, Michael Dann and Christopher Melchert

For a long time, western studies on Islam in general and hadith in particular has been occupied with the question of origin. For hadith studies, discussions ensued on whether the hadiths purporting to go back to the Prophet actually did go back to the Prophet. Goldiziher, Schacht and Juynboll believed that, although the hadith cannot be an accurate report of the origins of Islam, they can function as documentary evidence for some of the tendencies found in the community during its mature development. With the seminal works of Jonathan Brown, Scott Lucas and Eerik Dickinson, a shift is seen in the field from searching for the origins of hadith to its reception history. The works of Garret Davidson and Joel Belcher is a continuation of this reception history, extending our understanding of hadith reception to post the era of the canonical collections