Anton Wessels

Anton Wessels is a Dutch theologian and scholar of comparative religion who has spent more than fifty years studying how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam illuminate one another. He grew up in Friesland, the son of a Reformed minister who hid Jews during the German occupation. In the late 1960s he lived in Egypt for more than two years, immersing himself in Arabic and Islamic thought. From 1971 to 1978 he worked at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut.

From 1978 to 2002, Wessels was Professor of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he taught the comparative study of the Abrahamic faiths. His books read scripture in unexpected places: the Torah, the Gospels, and the Qur’an, but also the paintings of Van Gogh and Chagall, the lives of Muhammad, and the shared grief of Abel, Jesus, and Husayn.

Moses, Jesus, Muhammad: Three Prophets, One Story is his latest book. This English edition was translated by Henry Jansen from the Dutch original, Mozes, Jezus, Mohammed (Iur Press, 2025).