Does the Qur'an endorse the Bible? Part 1

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[Applause]

well good evening and

in uh this episode i'd like to uh

discuss uh the question of

whether or not the koran endorses

the bible now christian missionaries uh

always say actually that the the quran

says that the bible we have today

is uh the scriptures that god gave to

the jews and the christians and that and

this kind of ties up

muslims ties up islam and a

contradiction uh

well on the one hand the quran denies

apparently denies jesus was

crucified denies he's god and yet on the

other hand

um it affirms the various scriptures of

the jews and christians which do

state uh that jesus was crucified and

there are verses in the the bible

uh in my view which do say that jesus is

divine in some sense

so this is a very frequent accusation

meant to kind of

wrong foot muslims i'm just interested

now in what western scholars

um say about this question and i've got

a couple of representative

examples from very distinguished

scholars

um academics specialists in the field

and just to share with you

what they say about this subject of

course they're not addressing missionary

issues they're just trying to uncover

what the quran itself says about the

scriptures of the people of the book

jews and christians so the first um

work i want to briefly look at is this

book

this is published by cambridge

university press

it's called the cambridge companion to

the hebrew bible slash

old testament and it's an anthology

of essays written by

the leading scholars in the field uh

these are specialists in arabic

in the history of the quran of of islam

and so on

and they talk about the text historical

background

um they talk about genres reception and

use of the quran

uh in later history um and there's one

interesting chapter

actually uh called um the hebrew bible

in islam by waleed saleh now wales salad

happens to be professor

at the university of toronto in canada

and he also happens to be who happened

to be

the phd supervisor of shabbat ali who

you may know

so he has been selected to give us an

understanding or an overview of the

crown's understanding of crown's view of

the scriptures and the people of the

book

so i just want to quote a few um bits

from

this essay which you can actually read

um

for yourself online if you just google

uh

this you can read it for free it's

available as a pdf i've discovered

um so in the first paragraph he just

quotes the quran

in from the quran chapter 2 verse 1325

onwards where it says

um ours is the religion of abraham the

upright who

did not worship any god besides god

so say we believe in god and in what has

been sent down to us and what has been

sent down to abraham

ishmael isaac jacob and the tribes

and what was given to moses jesus and

all the prophets by their lord

we make no distinction between any of

them and we devote ourselves

to him so there's the quran saying that

the revelations were given to these

individuals from abraham all the way

to jesus and muhammad

then he um while he then summarizes

um the quran's position um vis-a-vis

the authority of these scriptures uh the

scriptures that christians and jews have

and he says this there are this is very

interesting quite nuanced

there are contradictory though not

irreconcilable

positions expressed in the quran

vis-a-vis the authority

and authenticity of the scriptures of

judaism and christianity

there are many instances where these

scriptures are called upon to vindicate

muhammad they are called

light and guidance and the truth is such

that they make manifest the truth of the

quran

muhammad pleads with his people to query

the people of the book

a phrase invented by the quran the

people of the book

are in a position to vouch safe for the

truth of

the prophecy of muhammad yet there are

verses where the authenticity of these

very scriptures

is called into account the jews are

accused of tampering with their

scripture

corrupting it and violating god's will

how do we understand these statements

and more importantly how are how were

they understood by successive

generations of muslims he asks

and then he discusses this so there is

what he calls a contradictory though not

ultimately irreconcilable

two positions so both affirming and

criticizing at the same time

uh the the scriptures of judaism and

christianity

and the the next uh

the last bit from this particular

chapter i want to share with you

is uh more details of um

exactly what the jews are accused of

according to the crime quoting here from

page

413 of this cambridge companion

the jews are accused of mispronouncing

hiding

and fabricating new scripture this

accusation of falsification known in

arabic as tariff

in truth became the prism through which

later muslims

understood the status of the bible

in many ways the quran poses an almost

impossible dilemma here

the torah is divine the torah is

corrupted

the status of the hebrew bible is ever

suspended

and the tension between its divinity and

its corruption

is never resolved in this sense the

quran sets the stage for the sustained

ambivalence

towards the bible that characterizes all

subsequent

islamic literature indeed a muslim could

never be sure what to think of the bible

in so far as

any judgment was always fraught with

uncertainties

so that's uh a a selection of

how he sees the quran in its view of the

scriptures the people of the book

um now the the next text

uh and scholar i want to refer to is is

this uh

actually it's a very brilliant book

right this is it here

um the scholar is sidney h griffith and

the book is called the bible

in arabic the scriptures of the people

of the book in the language of

islam now griffith is

a very distinguished professor

here is his photograph on the back cover

he's a professor in the department of

semitic

and egyptian languages and literature

the catholic university of america

and he's a specialist in the early

history of islam

and the kram and uh this particular book

this particular work uh has is highly

praised

by his contemporaries uh by leading

scholars

uh at yale and uh even tel aviv

um and uh other places this is

uh the culminating work of this

scholar's

career it's called an outstanding book

and this is fellow scholars

so um i just want to read for you a

slightly longer quote

from uh this book

and um there's a section on page 58

um and it addresses a similar question

about

how the quran presents itself vis-a-vis

the scriptures of the christians and the

jews and he says

and i quote succinctly put the quran

presents itself as confirming the truth

that is in the previous scriptures and

as safeguarding it

after speaking of the torah in which

there is guidance and light and of jesus

as confirming the veracity of the torah

before him

and of the gospel in which there is

guidance and light

god says to muhammad regarding the quran

quote

we have sent down to you the scripture

in truth as a confirmation of the

scripture before it

and as a safeguard for it uh that's

surah al maidah that's the fifth surah

verses 44 46 and 48. he's quoted there

the previous scriptures were of course

in the quran's telling principally the

torah and the gospel

as is clear here and in other places

where the quran says to muhammad

quote he has sent down to you the

scripture in truth

as a confirmation of what was before it

and he sent down the torah and the

gospel

that's uh al-imran verse 3. in these and

other passages one might cite the

position of the quran vis-a-vis the

jewish and christian bible

is clear the quran confirms the veracity

of the earlier

scriptures in other words the quran not

only recognizes the torah and the gospel

and the psalms 2

as we shall see as authentic scripture

sent down earlier by god but it now

stands as the warrant

for the truth they contain

but their matter does not rest there

continues sidney griffith

for while the quran following both the

then current jewish and christian view

recognizes the torah as scripture sent

down to moses

we wrote for him in tablet in the

tablets about everything

that's al-araf 145 the gospel

that the quran confirms is not the

gospel

as christians recognized it in the

quran's own day

rather following the model of its own

distinctive

prophetology the quran speaks of

the gospel as a scripture god gave to

jesus

quote we gave him the gospel where in

his guidance and light

confirming what he had before him of the

torah

that's sir al-maidah 46 al hadid 27

here as in other instances we have noted

in the previous chapter

the quran apparently intends to

criticize and correct what it regards

as a mistaken christian view of the

christian's

own principle scripture

what is more by the time of its

collection and principally in criticism

of the behavior of

the people of the book in regard to

their scriptures

the quran is already speaking of the

distortion

and alteration of scriptural texts

this is to be found in the very passages

and then he quotes

a whole bunch of passages that in

subsequent islamic tradition

will undergird the doctrine of the

corruption of the earliest scriptures

a development that would effectively

discount the testimonies drawn by jews

and christians

from their scriptures in behalf of their

very similitude of their teachings

now when he says this is to be found in

the very passages that

in subsequent islamic the passages he uh

quotes in parenthesis he puts for

example

in stir albacra 79 so al

imran 78 so al-nisa 46

almeida versus 12-19

so this is a really crucial point

i understand griffith is to be saying

that according to the quran's own

position

the revelation that god refers to in the

quran

is that which was given to jesus or

moses or abraham

in the gospel sense of course jesus

received this gospel

from god as revelation this is

distinctive from the christian's own

view

where where you have for example the

writings of paul and and other writers

the four gospels matthew mark grouk and

john which scholars today believe are

anonymous we don't know who wrote them

that they're different and christians

see that as a scripture

but the quran sees the scripture as that

which was given to jesus

in the same way that muhammad received

revelation the same way that abraham or

moses received revelation jesus received

revelation

so uh griffith is saying the quran

apparently intends to criticize and

correct

what it regards as a mistaken christian

view

of the christian's own scripture so they

misidentified it they they look to paul

in his letters for example they look to

anonymous

late first century biographies of jesus

as the gospel

but in fact the correct focus

should be on the scripture that jesus

received and jesus preached

there are verses in the even in the

gospels that christians have which

portray

jesus for example in the in the first

chapter of mark's gospel where

jesus is portrayed as going out and

preaching the gospel

the gospel that jesus preached is not

the gospel

that paul preached and we can you can do

a simple historical comparative analysis

to demonstrate that so the quant is

making

a really quite radical claim i think

i do recommend this book

highly it is a great work of scholarship

and he says a lot more about how the

quran

understands um the stories that the

bible also tells about the prophets and

so on and

the quran tells these stories in its own

way as a corrective

so griffith says as a corrective to the

tellings in the bible of these same

stories so

where the bible that we have today would

portray

the prophets as often as uh evil doers

people who did terrible things or

committed adultery and so on the quran

corrects that and

gives the uh the the truth if you like

of these people's lives so

it's retelling many of the same stories

we see in the bible

but in his own distinctive way

correcting the earlier

account albeit an account that has been

corrupted

by unknown christians i suppose

christian scribes jewish scribes

so um these are two representative

scholars

and uh i obviously you may disagree with

uh what they say

you're free to do so but i i find

uh their arguments uh persuasive and i

suppose

a final point would be this

the christian bible today um is very

clear

in the four gospels and all applause for

the whole of the new testament

that jesus was crucified i mean that's

the dominant theme that you know god god

will

his son the messiah to die the quran

it seems to me denies that so it would

be impossible really

for to believe that the the quran um

which has such a familiarity with the

stories of the prophets and abraham and

moses and jesus and so on

um could not be aware that

the new testament says as it's one great

statement that jesus was crucified

so in denying it it really is in a very

obvious is the elephant in the room i

think

that the quran is obviously not

endorsing the new testament it can't

because the central claim of the new

testament that jesus

was crucified and rose again is simply

denied

by the quran because if obviously if he

didn't die then he wasn't

didn't rise again so i don't think you

really need to be a scholar to work this

one out

uh um kind of a basic logic

um would indicate that and there we are

so i hope that

is interesting and hopefully see you

next time bye for now