ITHACA, N.Y. -- Arguably the two most important figures in history will be the topic of a lecture at Cornell University on Thursday, April 18, given by noted historian Francis E. Peters at 4:30 p.m. in Room D of Goldwin Smith Hall. Peters, a professor of Near Eastern languages and literatures and history at New York University, will give a University Lecture titled "Jesus and Muhammad: An Essay in Comparative Historiography." Peters will deliver this semester's final University Lecture, the most prestigious forum Cornell offers visitors who come to campus to deliver a single address. His talk is free and open to the public.

"I will be discussing not the Jesus of faith, but the Jesus of history and how historians approach both him and Muhammad," said Peters, noting that the subject recently has received tremendous interest among members of the American public (and was the theme of recent cover stories in Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report.) It's a subject few know better than Peters, who since 1969 has held a joint appointment in NYU's history and Near Eastern languages and literatures departments with secondary appointments in the Hebrew and Judaic Studies Department and Program in Religious Studies.

Outside academe, he has served as chairman of the Social Science Research Council of the Joint Committee on Near and Middle East (1977-80) and as U.S. representative for the International Commission for the Preservation of the Landmarks of Damascus (1977-84).

Peters, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from Princeton University, has made several trips to the Middle East (which have included spending Christmas in Jerusalem and Bethlehem) and written several books, including The Children of Abraham; Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Mecca and the Hijaz; The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places; and Muhammad and the Origins of Islam.

"Trained as a classicist, Peters became by turns a historian of Islam, a comparative historian of Near Eastern religion, an urban historian and the first scholarly biographer of the prophet Muhammad in more than a generation," said Ross Brann, acting director of Cornell's Religious Studies Program. "Frank Peters is a scholar and teacher of singular wit and unparalleled breadth and insight."