Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature: Difference between revisions

None of the early Christian texts support the Muslim contention of corruption of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, as there arguments fail to distinguish between apocryphal and canonical works. They fail to see the difference between mainstream texts and cultic/Gnostic texts. There don't exist any earlier Christian texts which accord with the Muslim view of Jesus and early Christianity, and in order for the Christian scriptures to reflect this a conspiracy spanning centuries amongst disparate people speaking different languages and belonging to different Christian factions would be required. As such this possibility is usually rejected by modern historians.  

Hard textual evidence is needed to prove corruption in the manner asserted by modern Muslims, and this is totally lacking for the direction and manner of corruption that is alleged. The next possibility is to examine the change in the succession of early manuscripts – the historical approach. However, as far as is known, the Judeo-Christian scriptures are remarkably similar to historical manuscripts. The next possibility is to examine the extra-scriptural writings of the early Rabbis and early Church fathers. The variations found in the Qur'an do not tend to show up here either.

The charge of a scheme to corrupt the Christian and Jewish scriptures in just such a way as to render the Qur'an seemingly inaccurate would have required a conspiracy of hundreds of different individuals working accross immense distances of time and space in different linguistic and religious traditions; it can be dismissed prima facia as a groundless conspiracy theory.

 

However, the parallelism between the Qur'an and the Judeo-Christian scriptures is undeniable. The main parallelisms have been mentioned in this set of articles. I have ignored other charges such as the [[Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in the Quran|seven sleepers in the cave]] {{Quran|18|8-26}} (as per the seven sleepers of Ephesus); the story of the angels Harut and Marut {{Quran|2|102}} (as per Midrash Yalkut chapter 44 with the angels Shamhazai and Azael: for further details, click [http://www.truthnet.org/islam/src-chp3.htm here]); and God holding Mt Sinai over the Israelites {{Quran|7|171}} (as per the second century Jewish apocrypha Abodah Sarah).  

As such, the parallelism in the Qur'an stems not from divine revelation, but from mundane religious contact.

*<p>a. The Qur'an itself admits to the borrowing, with the phrase, 'We <u>decreed</u> (katabnā) for the Children of Israel…’</p><p>This word katabnā كَتَبْنَا is from the same Arabic root as kitāb, meaning book, as in 'People of the Book', and the verb katabā literally means he wrote. It is used a few verses later (wakatabnā) in {{Quran|5|45}} regarding some things that are certainly in the written Torah, and in another example {{Quran|7|145}} it is used for Allah writing on the stone tablets. Lane's Lexicon includes 'prescribed', 'ordained' among its definitions for this verb <ref>katabā [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume7/00000118.pdf Lane's Lexicon book 1 page 2590]</ref>, though it is likely that this usage arose from royal decrees and legal rulings being written down. In some other verses exactly the same word is translated 'We have written'. It is quite obvious that the author believed that this 'decree' was in the law book of the Jews, the written Torah.</p>

#Dr Saifullah has created a straw man argument. The Qur'anic text is not a complete copy of the Talmudic text, but rather a parrellel.

#The commentary also appears in the Jerusalem Talmud, [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mishnah/Seder_Nezikin/Tractate_Sanhedrin/Chapter_4/5 Sanhedrin 4/5], which omits the phrase, ‘of Israel’. There is no evidence that Muhammad had to rely on the Babylonian Talmud and not the Jerusalem Talmud, even though the former is considered more authoritative. Thus, Dr Saifullah has committed another straw man argument.

'''Prima facie''' - this is a clear-cut case of the Qur'an taking a story from apocryphal literature as scripture, since Sanhedrin 37a is from the "oral" Torah and therefore not part of the original biblical canon. There is no other explanation for the phrase, ‘We decreed / have written’ (katabna) in the verse-- it appears the Qur'an considers this aprocryphal tradition to be on the same level as the biblical canon. The claim that it is lost because the Torah is corrupted stretches credulity because the parallelism exists in the Talmud, and it is unlikely that something lost from the Torah should find its way almost unchanged into the Talmud as a commentary of a narrative (i.e. a mishnayot). If the Rabbi had in mind a verse in the Torah that has since been lost, why does he quote verbatim from Genesis 4:10 ('it is written...'), but then when making his main point not quote directly this hypothetical lost verse? It is not a law, despite being in the Talmud (Oral Law) but a commentary by a Jewish sage, who explains his reasoning.  

Thus, it seems perplexing that Allah should katabna / decreed / ordain / prescribe / write something that is a commentary written by a Jewish Rabbi. The conclusion seems to be that the Qur'an sees this tradition as being on the same level as the Bible.

This story of the raven and the burial of Abel has led critics to charge that the Qur'an borrowed Jewish folklore because this account is not in the Old Testament or the Torah. In the Jewish folklore it was Adam who noticed the raven burying a dead bird and that gave him the idea to bury Abel. Thus, the parallelism isn’t with the person who did the burying but with the raven providing the idea of burial in the ground.  

'''Critics point out four sources of this Jewish folklore:'''

It would have been more correct to claim that the raven burial story in the Qur'an has its predecessor in Jewish folklore, which has also been preserved in the Pirke De-Rabbi Eli'ezer, and the Midrash Tanhuma. This is because there is no evidence that Muhammad copied from these texts. The claim should be that he probably heard the story from Jewish folklore. It is for the dating of this Jewish folklore that critics should introduce those texts as evidence.

==Apocryphal Account==