Herbert Berg, a scholar of religion, was trained at the University of Toronto's Centre for Religious Studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s; he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies program.

Although also recognized as a specialist on the Nation of Islam, Berg's primary work shares much in common with scholars who study the earliest histories of modern religious movements. In this regard, he uses social theory to study the historical sources and context of the early texts of Islam.

Works by Herbert Berg

• Guest editor of the quarterly journal Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (1997), special issue devoted to assessing the scholarly contributions of John Wansborough

• The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The Debate over the Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period (Routledge/Curzon, 2000)

• Method and Theory In The Study Of Islamic Origins (Brill, 2003)

Some of Berg's studies are also included in Quest for the Historical Muhammad edited by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus, 2000)

Orientalists | Historiographers of Islam