Portal: Islam and the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Difference between revisions

The Qur'an makes constant reference to the stories of the Judeao-Christian tradition. The references are familiar and sometimes in passing, and assume a great deal of familiarity on the part of the listeners. The audienceof the Qur'an was clearly one well-acquainted with the stories themselves and the Qur'an itself says that it is a "reminder" (73:19) of the message which has come before. The stories referenced are not only from the Bible, but come from a wide variety of literary traditions within ancient near east Christianity and Judaism such as the Alexander Romances, saints lives, and the Talmud. The stories (and even the names of the characters) often differ markedly from their original versions, sometimes in content and sometimes in emphasis. These stories are also preserved in secondary Islamic literature such as the Israeliyyaat, or the "Israeli" (Jewish) stories, and together these stories (and the Islamic accretions thereto) form the corpus of Islamic "Heilsgeschichte" or "holy history" and myth outside of the life of the prophet himself.