Unit 14 · The Qur'an and the Bible

The Qur’an names about twenty-five prophets, and most of them also appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Adam, Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Yusuf (Joseph), Musa (Moses), Dawud (David), Sulayman (Solomon), Yunus (Jonah), Maryam (Mary) and Isa (Jesus) all have a place in it. But the Qur’an does not tell their stories the way Genesis or the Gospels do. It usually gives a scene, a speech, or a lesson, then moves on. Scholars call this style allusive: it points to a story rather than narrating it from start to finish.

Take Nuh (Noah). Surah 71 is named for him, and Surah 11 tells the flood in some detail. But nowhere does the Qur’an give the ark’s measurements, the forty days of rain, or the dove with the olive leaf. Instead it stresses Noah’s long preaching, his people’s refusal, and one son who would not board. Genesis 6 to 9 has none of that son and all of the measurements. Each book tells the part that serves its purpose.

Historians of the Qur’an note that Mecca and Medina in the 600s had Jewish and Christian neighbors, and Arabic-speaking traders knew biblical stories from hearing them told. Muslims believe the Qur’an confirms earlier scripture (a claim it makes in 2:97 and 3:3). Whichever way a reader explains it, the text often works like a reminder. The Qur’an even uses that word for itself: dhikr, a reminder. Reading side by side lets you see what it reminds its hearers of and what it changes.

This lesson gives you a method. First, find the passage in each book. Second, list what each one includes and leaves out. Third, ask what each telling stresses. Fourth, and only then, ask how readers in each tradition have explained the differences. Jews, Christians and Muslims have all done this work for over a thousand years. Your job is to describe their readings fairly, not to rule on them.

A comparison is only as good as the texts on the table. The Hebrew Bible, which Jews call the Tanakh, was written in Hebrew with a little Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Qur’an was recited in Arabic, and Muslims hold that only the Arabic is the Qur’an itself; an English version is a rendering of its meaning. So when this course reads side by side, it is reading three translations, and it names each one.

For the Bible we use two public-domain translations. The King James Version of 1611 was made by English scholars for the Church of England and shaped English for centuries. The Jewish Publication Society translation of 1917 was made by American Jewish scholars in Philadelphia and follows the Hebrew order of the books. Both are old, so their English can sound formal, with ’thee’ and ’thou’ and ’saith’. For the Qur’an we use Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930). Pickthall was an English convert to Islam, and his title itself says the book is a rendering of meaning.

Translators make choices. Pickthall keeps ’Allah’ rather than ’God’. He writes the prophets’ names in their Arabic forms, so you will see Ibrahim, Musa and Isa, while the KJV and JPS write Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Pickthall’s English is deliberately old-fashioned, close to the KJV’s sound. This can make the two books feel alike on the page even when their content differs, so read for meaning, not for tone.

One more rule: modern translations like Yusuf Ali (1934) or Arberry (1955) are still under copyright, so this course describes them but does not quote them. When you cite a passage, give the book, chapter and verse or surah and ayah, the translator and the year. That is what lets another reader check your work.

Genesis 2 and 3 tell how God forms the man from dust, plants a garden in Eden, makes the woman from his side, and forbids one tree. A serpent persuades the woman, she eats, the man eats, and both are sent out of the garden. Genesis names the woman Eve and lists the consequences: pain, hard work, and the ground cursed. Christians later read this story as the origin of sin for all people; Jewish readers generally did not read it that way.

The Qur’an tells Adam’s story in several places, most fully in 2:30 to 39, 7:11 to 25 and 20:115 to 123. Here are the parts it stresses. God announces to the angels that he will place a khalifa, a deputy or successor, on the earth. God teaches Adam the names of all things, and the angels cannot match him. God commands the angels to bow to Adam. All do except Iblis, who refuses out of pride. Adam and his wife (she is not named in the Qur’an) are warned against one tree, are tempted by Satan together, both eat, and both are sent down.

Then comes the difference readers notice most. In 2:37 the Qur’an says Adam received words from his Lord and God relented toward him. Muslims read this as Adam being forgiven on the spot. Mainstream Muslim teaching therefore holds that no guilt passes to Adam’s children; each person is born without sin and answers for their own deeds. Pickthall’s rendering of 2:37 says the Lord ’relented toward him,’ and Muslim commentators such as Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) point to it as the moment of pardon.

Reading side by side, you can see three scriptures and three emphases. Genesis narrates the loss of the garden and its costs. Christian readers, following Paul in Romans 5, often read Adam as the one through whom sin entered the world. The Qur’an narrates the honor of Adam, the fall of Iblis, and a quick forgiveness. None of these readings is a mistake about the others; each is a reading of its own book.

Abraham is the figure the three traditions share most fully, and the one they claim most strongly. Genesis 12 to 25 tells his call, his journey to Canaan, the covenant, the birth of Ishmael to Hagar and of Isaac to Sarah, and the sending away of Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. The Qur’an calls him Ibrahim and names him a hanif, one who turned from idols to the one God, and khalil Allah, the friend of God (4:125). Surah 14 is named for him.

The Qur’an tells scenes Genesis does not. In 6:74 to 79 and 21:51 to 70, young Ibrahim argues with his father and his people about their idols, smashes the idols, and is thrown into a fire that God makes cool for him. Jewish readers will recognize the fire: a rabbinic midrash in Genesis Rabbah tells a similar story of Abraham and the furnace of Nimrod. Historians note this as one of many places where the Qur’an and Jewish tradition seem to share a pool of stories beyond the Bible’s text.

The biggest addition is Mecca. In 2:125 to 129, Ibrahim and his son Ismail (Ishmael) raise the foundations of the House, the Kaaba, and pray that God will send their descendants a messenger. Muslims read that messenger as Muhammad. Nothing in Genesis brings Abraham to Arabia; Genesis 21 leaves Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness of Paran. Muslim tradition says Ibrahim brought them to the valley of Mecca, and the pilgrimage rites (running between the hills of Safa and Marwa, the well of Zamzam) retell Hagar’s search for water.

So each tradition draws its own line from Abraham. Jews trace the covenant through Isaac and Jacob (Israel). Christians, following Paul in Galatians 3, read Abraham’s faith as the model for faith in Christ. Muslims read Ibrahim as the first Muslim in the plain sense of the word, one who submitted, and as the ancestor of the Arabs through Ismail. Qur’an 3:67 says Ibrahim was neither Jew nor Christian but a hanif who submitted. Each claim is a reading of a shared ancestor.

Genesis 22 is one of the most studied chapters in the Bible. God tests Abraham, telling him to take his son Isaac to Moriah and offer him up. Jewish tradition calls the story the Akedah, the Binding, and reads it in synagogue on the New Year. Christians have often read Isaac carrying the wood as a picture of Jesus carrying the cross. In the KJV the command names the son at once: ’Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.’

The Qur’an’s version in 37:99 to 113 never names the son. Ibrahim prays for a righteous child and is given good news of a gentle boy. When the boy is old enough to walk with him, Ibrahim tells him of a dream in which he sacrifices him and asks what he thinks. The boy tells his father to do as he is commanded. Both submit, Ibrahim lays him down, and God calls out that the vision is fulfilled and ransoms him with a great sacrifice. Then, in 37:112, the text gives good news of Ishaq (Isaac), a prophet.

That last verse is why Muslim commentators argued. If Isaac is announced after the sacrifice, some reasoned, the boy on the mountain must be the other son, Ismail. Others held that the boy was Isaac, as the Bible says, and al-Tabari (d. 923) reports both views with their supporting reports. Over the following centuries the view that the son was Ismail became the mainstream Muslim position, tied to the Kaaba story and to the festival of Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the sacrifice.

Two features of the Qur’an’s telling stand out beside Genesis. First, the son is asked and consents; in Genesis he asks where the lamb is and is not told. Second, the Qur’an gives no place, no wood, no altar and no ram, only ’a great sacrifice.’ Read one way, this is a text that assumes its hearers know the scene. Read another way, it is a text that shifts the focus from the father’s obedience alone to the shared submission of father and son. Both readings are found among Muslim commentators.

The Qur’an calls Surah 12 ’the best of stories’ (12:3) and tells the story of Yusuf (Joseph) from beginning to end in 111 verses. This is unusual; almost every other biblical figure appears in pieces across many surahs. Genesis 37 to 50 tells the same story: a favored son, jealous brothers, a pit, slavery in Egypt, a master’s wife, prison, dreams interpreted, rise to power, famine, and the brothers’ return. The two versions run in parallel more closely than any other pair in this unit.

The differences are in what each version keeps. Genesis gives names: Potiphar, Reuben, Judah, Benjamin, Pharaoh. The Qur’an names only Yusuf and his father Yaqub (Jacob); the master is ’the Aziz,’ the wife is unnamed, and the brothers are unnamed. Genesis gives the coat of many colors; the Qur’an gives a shirt, first stained with false blood, then torn from behind (12:26 to 28), then sent home to restore Yaqub’s sight (12:93). The shirt works as a thread through the whole surah.

Some scenes are only in the Qur’an. The master’s wife invites the women of the city to a meal, gives them knives, and has Yusuf walk in; they cut their hands in astonishment (12:31). Yusuf preaches to his fellow prisoners about the one God before he interprets their dreams (12:37 to 40). At the end Yusuf prays to be taken as a Muslim, one who submits (12:101). Genesis has none of these; it has Joseph weep in private and, at the very end, forgive his brothers and speak of God’s purpose (Genesis 50:20).

Muslim commentators read Surah 12 as a story about patience, God’s plan, and the lure of a beautiful person, and Sufi poets like Jami (d. 1492) turned Yusuf and the wife, whom later tradition names Zulaykha, into a poem about longing for God. Jewish readers have long treated Joseph as the one who preserved his brothers and kept faith in exile. Christian readers sometimes saw in the rejected brother who saves his family a foreshadowing of Jesus. One story, told twice, has fed three sets of readers.

By most counts Musa (Moses) is named about 136 times in the Qur’an, more than any other person. His story is spread across many surahs, with Surah 20 (Ta Ha), Surah 28 (Al-Qasas, The Story) and Surah 26 (Ash-Shu’ara) giving the longest stretches. Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy tell the same life in the Hebrew Bible. Muslim readers have often noted that Muhammad’s own career, as tradition tells it, echoed Musa’s: a prophet sent to a stubborn people, then a migration.

The shared scenes are easy to find. God speaks to Musa from a fire at the sacred valley of Tuwa (20:9 to 24; Exodus 3). Musa’s staff becomes a serpent and his hand shines white (20:17 to 22; Exodus 4). He confronts Pharaoh (Firawn) and the magicians, who in the Qur’an fall down as believers (20:70; Exodus 7 to 8 has no conversion). The sea is parted (26:63; Exodus 14). Israel receives tablets at the mountain and makes a golden calf (20:83 to 98; Exodus 32).

The differences are small but telling. In the Qur’an the calf is made not by Aaron (Harun) but by a figure called al-Samiri (20:85 to 97), and Harun is cleared of blame. In Exodus 32 Aaron makes the calf himself. The Qur’an also tells a story with no biblical parallel: Musa travels with a mysterious servant of God, unnamed in the text but called al-Khidr in tradition, who does three shocking things and then explains them (18:60 to 82). Muslim commentators read it as a lesson about the limits of human knowledge.

Both books call Moses a lawgiver. The Qur’an says the Torah (Tawrat) was given to him with guidance and light (5:44). It calls the Israelites the Children of Israel (Bani Israil) and Surah 17 opens with that name. Jewish readers see in Exodus the founding of a people bound by covenant; Muslim readers see in Musa’s story the pattern of every prophet and a warning about a people who received a book and, in the Qur’an’s view, sometimes strayed from it. Neither reading is the whole of either book.

The Hebrew Bible tells David’s life at length in 1 and 2 Samuel: shepherd, giant-killer, outlaw, king, and sinner who takes Bathsheba and is rebuked by the prophet Nathan. Tradition links him to the Psalms. His son Solomon builds the Temple in Jerusalem, judges wisely, receives the Queen of Sheba, and in 1 Kings 11 turns to other gods in old age. The Bible presents both as great kings with real failings.

The Qur’an knows Dawud (David) as a prophet-king who killed Jalut (Goliath) (2:251) and received a book called the Zabur, usually identified with the Psalms (4:163, 17:55). Mountains and birds praise God with him (21:79, 34:10). It also tells a scene of two disputants who climb into his prayer chamber; Dawud judges hastily, then asks forgiveness and is forgiven (38:21 to 25). Most Muslim commentators read this as a lesson in judgment; a few early ones linked it to the Bathsheba story, but the mainstream rejected that, since Muslims hold prophets are protected from grave sin.

Sulayman (Solomon) gets even more color. The wind is subjected to him and the jinn work for him (34:12). He understands the speech of birds and hears an ant warn its fellows to get out of his army’s path (27:16 to 19). A hoopoe brings news of a queen in Sheba who worships the sun; Sulayman writes to her, a jinn brings her throne, and she enters a palace floor of glass she mistakes for water and submits to God (27:20 to 44). The Bible’s Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10) comes to test Solomon with riddles and goes home impressed, with no conversion.

Reading side by side, the pattern of the chapter repeats. The Bible keeps the politics and the failures; the Qur’an keeps the prophethood and the signs, and where the Bible reports a sin it either leaves it out or turns it toward repentance. Jewish and Christian readers do not think less of their text for its candor; they read the failings as part of its honesty. Muslim readers do not see a gap in theirs; they read it as a book about what prophets are for. Each set of readers has its own reasons.

The Book of Jonah is four short chapters in the Hebrew Bible. God sends Jonah to Nineveh; he flees by ship; a storm rises; the sailors throw him overboard; a great fish swallows him; he prays; the fish spits him out; he preaches; Nineveh repents; and Jonah sulks under a withered plant while God asks whether he should not pity a great city. Jews read it in synagogue on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because it is a story about repentance accepted.

The Qur’an names Yunus (Jonah) in Surah 10, which bears his name, and tells the story mainly in 37:139 to 148 and 21:87 to 88. Yunus goes to the ship, draws lots, is swallowed by the fish, and calls out from the darkness. He is cast onto the shore, a gourd plant grows over him, and he is sent to a city of a hundred thousand or more, who believe. In 68:48 to 50 he is called ’the companion of the fish’ and the reader is told not to be like him in his haste. The Qur’an never names Nineveh and never tells the ending under the plant.

The heart of the Qur’an’s version is the prayer. In 21:87 Yunus calls out from the darkness that there is no god but God, that God is glorified, and that he himself has been among the wrongdoers. Muslims often recite this line in distress; hadith collections record the Prophet recommending it. In the Bible, Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 is a full psalm of thanksgiving from the belly of the fish. The two prayers have the same setting and different moods: one confesses wrong, one gives thanks.

Notice what the Qur’an keeps and drops. It keeps the disobedience, the fish, the plant, and the city that believed. It drops the argument between Jonah and God over pity for Nineveh, which is the Bible’s whole last chapter. Jewish and Christian readers have read that argument as the point of the book. Muslim commentators read Yunus’s story as a warning about impatience in a prophet and a proof that a whole people can turn and be spared. Same fish, different lesson.

The Qur’an names Maryam (Mary) about 34 times, more often than the New Testament does, and she is the only woman it names at all. Surah 19 is named for her, and Surah 3 tells of her mother’s vow, her childhood in the sanctuary under the care of Zakariya (Zechariah), and the food she was given from God (3:35 to 37). The Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell of Mary’s betrothal to Joseph, the angel’s announcement, the journey to Bethlehem and the birth in a manger. The Qur’an mentions none of those settings and never names Joseph.

Both books have an annunciation. In Luke 1:26 to 38 the angel Gabriel tells Mary she will bear a son, and she asks how, since she has known no man. In Qur’an 19:16 to 21 a spirit sent from God appears to Maryam in the form of a man; she asks the same question, and is told it is easy for God. Christians and Muslims agree that Mary conceived Jesus without a father, though they read what that means very differently, as the next lesson shows.

The birth scene is the Qur’an’s own. Maryam withdraws to a distant place, is seized by labor pains at the trunk of a palm tree, and cries out that she wishes she had died. A voice tells her not to grieve: a stream runs below her, and if she shakes the palm, ripe dates will fall (19:22 to 26). She brings the child to her people, who accuse her; she points to the baby, and Isa (Jesus) speaks from the cradle, declaring himself a servant of God given a scripture and made a prophet (19:27 to 33). The canonical Gospels have no palm, no stream and no speaking infant.

Historians note that a speaking infant Jesus and a palm tree that feeds Mary appear in Christian texts outside the New Testament, such as the Arabic Infancy Gospel and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which circulated in the centuries before Islam. Muslim commentators such as al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir treat the Qur’an’s account as the true report and read the palm scene as a sign of God’s care. Christian readers, whose Bible does not include those texts, mostly encounter the scene as new. Both sets of readers see in it a Mary honored for her purity and trust.

The Qur’an calls Isa (Jesus) ’the Messiah’ (al-Masih) eleven times, ’a word from God’ (3:45), ’a spirit from Him’ (4:171), and a messenger who was given the Injil, the Gospel (5:46). It tells of his virgin birth, his miracles by God’s leave, including healing the blind and the leper and raising the dead (3:49; 5:110), and his disciples. No other prophet in the Qur’an is given such titles. Muslims regard Isa as one of the greatest messengers and believe he will return before the end of time, though that return is drawn mainly from hadith rather than from the Qur’an’s own text.

At the same time the Qur’an denies what Christians affirm most. Surah 112, which many Muslims recite daily, says God ’begetteth not nor was begotten.’ Qur’an 5:72 says those who say God is the Messiah have disbelieved, and 5:73 rejects the claim that God is ’the third of three.’ Qur’an 4:171 tells the People of the Book not to say ’Three’ and calls Isa a messenger and a word, not a son. Muslim scholars read these verses as protecting tawhid, the oneness of God. Christian scholars read the New Testament, especially John 1, as teaching that the Word who was with God became flesh in Jesus.

It helps to state both positions precisely. Mainstream Christianity, as defined at the councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), holds that Jesus is fully God and fully human, one person of the Trinity. The Qur’an, as Muslims read it, holds that Jesus is a created human being, a prophet, born of a virgin by God’s command, who never claimed divinity (5:116 has Isa deny telling people to worship him and his mother). Some historians suggest the Qur’an’s ’third of three’ may address a local form of Christian belief; Muslim commentators generally read it as addressing the Trinity itself.

The disagreement is real and old, and this course does not settle it. What it can do is show how each side reads. Christians point to the Gospels and letters written within decades of Jesus’s life. Muslims point to the Qur’an, which they believe corrects what earlier communities altered, a claim the next chapter examines. Both traditions honor Mary and Jesus; both reject the other’s central claim about him. Describing that fairly, in each tradition’s own words, is what a careful comparison looks like.

All four Gospels end Jesus’s life with his crucifixion under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and his burial, followed by the resurrection. Historians of the ancient world, whatever their faith, generally accept the crucifixion as one of the best attested facts about Jesus, since it is reported by Christian, Jewish and Roman sources. For Christians it is the center of their faith: Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ died for sins and was raised.

The Qur’an addresses the cross once, in 4:157, in a passage listing charges against certain Israelites. Pickthall renders the key clause: ’they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them.’ The next verse says God raised him to himself (4:158). From early on, most Muslim commentators read this to mean Jesus was not killed at all. Many, following reports in al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir, held that another person was made to look like Jesus and was crucified in his place, while Jesus was taken up alive. This is the substitution reading.

Not every Muslim reader agreed on the details. Some classical commentators recorded several candidates for the substitute and admitted uncertainty. A few readers, ancient and modern, have argued that the verse denies only that Jesus’s enemies succeeded in defeating him, not that he died; others, like the Ahmadiyya movement, hold that he survived the cross. Mainstream Sunni and Shia scholars maintain the view that Jesus was not crucified and was raised alive, and that he will return. The Arabic phrase Pickthall renders ’it appeared so unto them’ (shubbiha lahum) is what all the readings turn on.

For comparison, this is the sharpest divide in the whole unit. It is not a matter of a missing detail, like the ark’s size, but of two texts that say opposite things about one event. Christians read the Gospels as eyewitness-based history; Muslims read the Qur’an as God’s correction of what earlier communities believed or wrote. Scholars of religion describe both readings and note where each rests. A student’s task is to state each accurately: what the passage says, who reads it, and how.

The Qur’an speaks of three earlier scriptures by name. The Tawrat (Torah) was given to Musa (Moses); the Qur’an says God sent it down with guidance and light, and that the prophets who submitted judged by it (5:44). The Zabur was given to Dawud (David) (4:163, 17:55); Muslim tradition matches it with the Psalms. The Injil (Gospel) was given to Isa (Jesus), again described as guidance and light and as confirming the Torah before it (5:46). Muslims believe each was a genuine revelation from the same God.

The Qur’an then places itself in that line. Qur’an 3:3 says God sent down the Scripture to Muhammad confirming what came before it, and sent down the Torah and the Gospel earlier. Qur’an 2:136 has believers declare that they believe in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the tribes, to Moses and Jesus, and to the prophets, making no distinction among them. For Muslims, the Qur’an is the last of a series, not the first book.

One word matters here. Qur’an 5:48 says the Qur’an was sent down confirming the earlier Scripture and as a muhaymin over it, a word Pickthall renders ’watcher.’ Muslim commentators such as al-Tabari read this to mean the Qur’an guards and judges the earlier books: it confirms what agrees with it and corrects what does not. This is the basis for the Muslim view that where the Bible and Qur’an differ, the Qur’an has the final say. Jewish and Christian readers, who do not accept the Qur’an as revelation, do not accept that role.

Notice the shape of the claim. The Qur’an does not say the Torah and Gospel are false books; it calls them light. It says they came from God, that their communities should judge by them (5:47 tells the people of the Gospel to judge by what God revealed in it), and that the Qur’an now stands over them. That combination of honor and claim is what shaped everything Muslims later wrote about the Bible, and it is why Muslims call Jews and Christians People of the Book rather than idolaters.

The phrase Ahl al-Kitab, People of the Book (Pickthall: ’People of the Scripture’), appears dozens of times in the Qur’an. It marks Jews and Christians, and later Muslim law extended it to Zoroastrians and others, as communities that had received a revealed scripture. The phrase set them apart from the idol-worshipers of Mecca. Under classical Muslim law, People of the Book could keep their religion and their houses of worship as protected communities (dhimmis) who paid a tax called the jizya; historians describe this status as protected but not equal.

The Qur’an speaks of them in several registers. In praise: 3:113 to 114 says some of the People of the Scripture stand and recite God’s revelations at night, believe in God and the Last Day, and do good. Qur’an 2:62 says that those who believe, and the Jews, Christians and Sabians, whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does right, will have their reward with their Lord and need not fear. Qur’an 5:82 says the closest in affection to the believers are those who call themselves Christians, because among them are priests and monks who are not proud.

In criticism and argument: the same 5:82 begins by naming Jews and idolaters as most hostile to the believers, a line historians tie to conflicts between Muhammad’s community and the Jewish tribes of Medina in the 620s. Qur’an 9:29 commands fighting those of the People of the Book who do not believe until they pay the jizya, a verse classical jurists applied to war and modern scholars read within its occasion, the campaign toward Tabuk in 630. Qur’an 3:64 invites the People of the Scripture to ’come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah.’

Readers handle this range in different ways. Classical Muslim jurists sorted the verses by occasion and by the rule that later verses could limit earlier ones. Modern Muslim scholars often stress that criticism is aimed at particular groups and actions, not at whole peoples, and point to 2:62 and 5:69 as the Qur’an’s broadest statements. Jewish and Christian scholars note both the honor and the polemic. A fair account of the Qur’an on the People of the Book must include all three registers and the occasions attached to them.

Several verses accuse some among the People of the Book of tampering with scripture. Qur’an 2:75 says a party of them used to hear God’s word and then alter it knowingly. Qur’an 2:79 pronounces woe on those who write scripture with their own hands and then say it is from God, to sell it for a small price. Qur’an 4:46 and 5:13 say some ’change words from their context’ (Pickthall’s phrase). Qur’an 3:78 says some twist their tongues in reciting so hearers think a thing is from the Scripture when it is not. The Arabic term for this is tahrif, alteration or distortion.

Muslim scholars have read these verses in two main ways. One is tahrif al-ma'na, alteration of meaning: the texts are genuine but were misread, mistranslated, hidden, or explained away, especially the passages Muslims believe foretold Muhammad. The other is tahrif al-nass, alteration of the text: the words of the Torah and Gospel as they now stand are not what God revealed. Both views have deep roots. Al-Tabari and many early commentators leaned toward the first; Ibn Hazm of Córdoba (d. 1064) argued the second at length, listing what he saw as contradictions in the Bible; Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) took a middle position, allowing some textual change.

The other side answered. Jewish scholars pointed to the Masoretic care with which the Hebrew text was copied and counted. Christian writers under Muslim rule, such as Theodore Abu Qurrah (d. c. 820) and the Catholicos Timothy I, who debated the caliph al-Mahdi in Baghdad around 782, argued that scriptures spread across so many languages and churches could not have been changed in secret. Some medieval Muslims agreed that wholesale corruption was unlikely and read the verses as about small groups in Medina.

Modern scholars of religion describe rather than settle the question. Historians note that the Qur’an’s own text quotes the Torah approvingly (5:45 cites the law of retaliation, ’an eye for an eye,’ as found in it), which fits the meaning-alteration reading. They also note that the Bible’s manuscript history shows real variation between copies, which Muslim writers since the 1800s have cited. The charge of tahrif is a claim within Islam, held in more than one form; a fair account gives both forms and the replies to each.

Baghdad was founded in 762 as the capital of the Abbasid caliphs, and within a century it was the largest city in the world outside China. Its population included Muslims of several schools, Jews whose academies at Sura and Pumbedita lay nearby, and Christians of the Church of the East, whose leader, the Catholicos, lived in the city. All of them spoke and wrote Arabic. That shared language made a shared argument possible for the first time.

The earliest famous exchange is the debate between the Catholicos Timothy I and the caliph al-Mahdi, around 782, preserved in Syriac and Arabic. Timothy reports the caliph asking why Christians do not accept Muhammad, and answering, in the caliph’s presence, that Muhammad ’walked in the path of the prophets,’ while holding to the Trinity. The tone is courteous. Around the same time Theodore Abu Qurrah wrote Christian theology in Arabic for Muslim readers. On the Muslim side, al-Jahiz (d. 869) wrote a sharp Refutation of the Christians, and Ali ibn Rabban al-Tabari (d. c. 870), a convert from Christianity, wrote The Book of Religion and Empire arguing that the Bible foretold Muhammad.

Jews joined in Arabic too. Saadia Gaon (d. 942), head of the Sura academy, translated the Torah into Arabic and wrote The Book of Beliefs and Opinions using the methods of Muslim theologians. Karaite Jews, who rejected rabbinic tradition, wrote biblical commentary in Arabic and argued with both rabbis and Muslims. Visitors described Baghdad gatherings where members of every faith debated with the rule that only reason, not scripture, could be cited. The Andalusian who reported this was horrified; historians read it as evidence of a real intellectual culture.

What made this possible was a shared toolkit. Greek philosophy had been translated into Arabic, often by Christian translators such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873). Muslim theologians (the mutakallimun) developed methods of argument that Jews and Christians borrowed. Each tradition kept its own scripture and its own verdict on the others; none gave ground on the central claims. But they read one another’s books, sometimes to refute and sometimes to learn, and their writings are the beginning of the comparative study you are doing now.

Córdoba under the Umayyads of Spain was, by the 900s, a rival to Baghdad in learning. Here the sharpest medieval critic of the Bible wrote. Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) was a jurist and poet who, in his book on religions and sects, went through Genesis and the Gospels listing what he judged contradictions and impossibilities and concluded that the texts had been corrupted. His work is the fullest statement of tahrif al-nass and was read for centuries. It is also a sign that Muslims in Spain read the Bible closely, in Arabic translation.

Jews in Spain answered in Arabic and Hebrew. Judah Halevi (d. 1141) wrote the Kuzari, a dialogue in which a king of the Khazars questions a philosopher, a Christian, a Muslim and a rabbi, and chooses Judaism; its argument rests on the public revelation at Sinai witnessed by a whole people. Moses Maimonides (1138 to 1204), born in Córdoba and later physician to the sultan’s court in Cairo, wrote his Guide for the Perplexed in Arabic. In his legal code he described Islam as strictly monotheistic, and in his letter to the Jews of Yemen, written after persecution, he spoke of Islam harshly. Both sides of him are on record.

Christian Europe entered the conversation later and mainly through polemic. In 1143, at the order of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur’an, so that Christians could refute it. Christian disputations with Jews, such as the forced debate at Barcelona in 1263 between the rabbi Nahmanides and a convert named Pablo Christiani, used the Talmud against its own readers. Historians note that Christian reading of the other two scriptures in this period was almost entirely hostile, while Muslim and Jewish readings ranged from hostile to curious.

Two lessons stand out for a comparative reader. First, reading another tradition’s book to attack it still requires reading it; Ibn Hazm and Peter the Venerable both produced knowledge that later, calmer readers used. Second, the same scholar can hold respect and hostility at once, as Maimonides did. The medieval record does not divide neatly into good dialogue and bad polemic. It is a long argument, in three languages, in which each side learned the other’s text well enough to quote it.

Why did medieval scholars read one another’s scriptures at all? Three purposes appear again and again, and it helps to name them, because each produced a different kind of reading. The first was prophecy. Muslims searched the Bible for foretellings of Muhammad, since Qur’an 7:157 says the unlettered prophet is written of in the Torah and the Gospel, and 61:6 has Isa announce a messenger to come named Ahmad. Deuteronomy 18:18, the prophet like Moses, and the Paraclete of John 14 to 16 were the passages most often cited.

Jewish and Christian readers had read the same passages for centuries with different results. Jews read Deuteronomy 18 as a promise of prophets within Israel; Christians read it as pointing to Jesus and the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit. So the same verse, in the same Hebrew or Greek, carried three readings. Historians treat this as a case study: scripture read for prophecy tends to find the prophecy the reader already expects, in every tradition.

The second purpose was defense. Each community wrote manuals to answer the others’ objections. Jewish writers compiled lists of biblical verses Christians cited and explained the Jewish reading of each. Christian writers under Muslim rule wrote ’questions and answers’ in Arabic to help ordinary believers respond to Muslim neighbors. Muslim scholars wrote replies to Christian and Jewish arguments about the Qur’an’s style or content. Reading for defense produces careful, point-by-point knowledge of the other text, but rarely sympathy.

The third purpose was method. Saadia used the tools of Muslim theology to organize Jewish belief. Muslim philosophers read Aristotle through Christian translators. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) cited Maimonides and the Muslim philosophers Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd by name. Here the borrowing was real and admitted, and it crossed the lines that prophecy and defense kept sharp. When you compare scriptures today, ask which purpose you are reading for; the answer shapes what you will find.

In September 1893, as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago hosted the World’s Parliament of Religions in the building that is now the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue. For seventeen days, from September 11 to 27, speakers from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other traditions addressed crowds of thousands. Historians call it the beginning of the modern interfaith movement. The organizers were mostly liberal Protestants, and the program leaned toward Christianity, but the platform itself was new.

Islam was represented mainly by Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb, an American journalist and former United States consul in the Philippines who had converted to Islam. He gave two addresses explaining Muslim belief and practice to an audience that knew almost nothing about it and, by his own account, faced hostile questions. Jewish speakers included Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago’s Sinai Congregation. The best-remembered speaker was Swami Vivekananda, whose opening words, ’Sisters and brothers of America,’ drew a long ovation.

What did the Parliament do for the reading of scriptures? It put the texts in public together. Speakers quoted their own scriptures to strangers and heard others quoted back. It also raised a question that has not gone away: can traditions meet on an equal platform without one of them setting the terms? Some Christian participants hoped the Parliament would show Christianity’s superiority; some Asian participants used it to challenge missionary claims. Webb argued that Americans had been given a false picture of Islam and asked them to read the Qur’an for themselves.

Chicago kept the thread. In 1993, a hundred years later, the Parliament of the World’s Religions met again in Chicago, with thousands of participants from around the world, and adopted a declaration toward a global ethic. The organization that grew from it, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, is based in Chicago. Students in this city are a short train ride from the room where it started.

The twentieth century changed how the traditions spoke of one another. In 1965 the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate, a declaration that spoke with respect of Muslims, who ’adore the one God,’ and rejected blaming Jews as a people for the death of Jesus. Many Protestant churches issued similar statements. In 2007, 138 Muslim scholars sent an open letter to Christian leaders titled A Common Word, built on Qur’an 3:64 and on the two commandments of love of God and neighbor. Jewish organizations and Muslim organizations have since issued shared statements as well.

Alongside statements came a practice. In the 1990s a group of Jewish scholars in the United States began meeting to read Tanakh and Talmud together in a way that let the text speak before theory did. They invited Christian colleagues, and then Muslims. The result was scriptural reasoning: small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims who read short passages from all three scriptures on a common theme (guests, water, sacrifice, a prophet) and talk about them for an hour or two. Scholars such as Peter Ochs and David Ford helped shape it; it now runs in universities, mosques, churches, synagogues and prisons.

The practice has rules that fit this course. Each person reads the other scriptures as a guest, without claiming the host’s authority. No one is asked to agree that another’s book is true. Disagreement is expected and named. Participants describe learning more about their own text by hearing how a stranger reads it. Critics note that it works best among people already willing to talk and does not settle the hard questions, such as the cross or tahrif. Supporters answer that settling was never the goal; understanding was.

Chicago has its own groups. Since the 1990s, interfaith organizations in the city and suburbs have brought together congregations from the three traditions for study, service and public statements, and universities and seminaries in the area host scriptural reasoning sessions. A student in an Illinois public school can watch this happen without joining any faith, and can practice its main skill in class: reading a text you do not hold as sacred with the care you would want given to your own.

Everything in this unit comes down to a method, and this last lesson states it plainly. The academic study of religion, as practiced in public universities and public schools, describes what traditions say and do. It attributes claims: ’the Qur’an says,’ ’Muslims believe,’ ’the Gospel of John teaches,’ ’Jewish tradition reads.’ It does not rule on whether God spoke to Moses or whether Jesus rose. Those are the questions the traditions answer for their members. A comparative reader can hold any faith or none and still do the work well.

The first habit is precision. ’The Bible says’ and ’the Qur’an says’ are only useful with a reference. Genesis 22:2 names Isaac; Qur’an 37:102 names no one. That is a fact about two texts, and a student can state it without deciding which son stood on the mountain. The second habit is naming the reader. The substitution reading of 4:157 belongs to al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir and to most Muslims today; the view that Jesus was crucified belongs to the Gospels and to nearly all historians. Naming the reader turns a fight into a map.

The third habit is refusing the ranking words. ’Borrowed,’ ’copied,’ ’distorted,’ ’garbled’ and ’corrupted’ are verdicts, and each tradition has used them about the others. A scholar can note that the Qur’an’s palm-tree birth appears in earlier Christian infancy texts without saying the Qur’an copied it; Muslims explain the shared story as two reports of one true event, and historians explain it as a shared pool of stories. Both explanations can be stated. The fourth habit is proportion: give the honor and the polemic, the 2:62 and the 9:29, in their occasions, and let neither one stand for the whole.

Why does this matter in an Illinois classroom? Because your classmates read these books at home in three or more different ways, and some read none of them. A method that describes fairly lets everyone stay in the room. It is also what the best readers in each tradition have wanted from outsiders: to be quoted accurately, in their own terms, with their disagreements intact. That is a standard you can meet. It is the standard this course has tried to hold.