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I have just finished the first draft of my parts of Three Testaments – the prologue, twelve little chapters of Middle East contextual commentary (might yet appear as three essays) and epilogue.

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Out east, Ellen Frankel finished her Preface to the Torah a couple months ago and Marc Brettler will complete his highly anticipated Introduction to the Torah in October.

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In Toronto, David Bruce has just completed a solid initial draft of his Introduction to the Gospel and Nevin Reda is about to begin her Introduction to the Quran.

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In Chicago, Henry Carrigan is now about to start work on his Preface to the Gospel and Laleh Bakhtiar’s Preface to the Quran will follow right on the heels of Nevin Reda’s work.

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If you think this represents a picking up of the pace, you are right. Illustrations and other matters remain, but the next step is negotiations with publishers. Meanwhile everything to do with Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations has become hot: mosques, aborted book burnings, Middle East Peace negotiations, etc.

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So in case our publisher wants to get this out by September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragic events in America, we hope to have the basic text ready by the end of this year. That  is about six months ahead of the previously proposed date for completion of the writing. We may be already too late to see publication by next September, but just in case someone wants a positive alternative to the aborted burning of the Quran on the ninth anniversary, we will offer this engaging of the Quran as a token of integration of Muslims into American life for possible publication and release on the tenth anniversary.