This study reassesses the too-often oversimplified, in fact multilayered and polyvalent, Christology of the Qur¿¿n against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics and the formation of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East. Additionally, it sheds new light on the Qur¿¿n¿s original sectarian milieu, its intricate redactional process, and the gradual making of the Muhammadan kerygma.