On the other hand, since the Bible was written by so many people over so many years, it makes sense that there are many genres and perspectives. The Old Testament is often divided into three sections: the Law (Hebrew: Torah), the Prophets (Navi’im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). The Jews refer to the text using an acronym for these three Hebrew words: Tanakh, asserting the diversity of the Scriptures. As examples, long sections of ceremonial law can be found in the Torah, whole books of history are found in the Prophets, and Hebrew poetry is found in the Writings. When we look to the New Testament, we see that it is divided into five historical books, twenty-one letters, and a book of apocalyptic prophecy. Unlike the Quran, the Bible is very diverse in its literary genres and perspectives.
Seeing the New Testament as an addition to the Tanakh might help Christians understand how Muslims see the Quran. It is the final revelation confirming that which was before it—“the Newest Testament,” in a sense. The Quran asserts that the Torah is actually inspired scripture, as is the gospel (5.68), but that the Quran has now come as the final scripture to guide mankind.
THE ORAL OR WRITTEN MODALITIES OF SCRIPTURE
It is also important to note the difference between written texts and oral texts. To understand this, consider the difference between writing a letter and having a transcript of a telephone conversation. Although it might be the same person communicating the same ideas, the mode in which he would write is very different from the mode in which he would speak, primarily because people have more time to consider what to say when writing and more time to consider what has been said when reading. For these reasons, written communication is more thorough and less repetitive than oral communication, along with a host of attendant corollary characteristics.
Since Muslims teach that the Quran was dictated from Allah through Gabriel to Muhammad, and that Muhammad then relayed it orally to his scribes, it makes sense that the Quran is primarily an oral text. Not only is it mostly used in an oral manner, recited aloud in prayer for people to hear and memorize, but also it reads like a transcript of spoken communication. For example, instead of sharing full stories, Allah usually says, “Remember the time when . . .” and begins in the middle of a story, assuming the hearer has already heard the story elsewhere. Otherwise he will start at the beginning and stop in the middle of a story. This is why devout Muslims are often able to refer to names of prophets but not to full life stories. Because of its oral modality, there are almost no full stories in the Quran, with the notable exception of the story of Joseph.
The Bible, on the other hand, is composed of mostly written texts.2 Stories and records are linear and complete. This is why devout Christians are able to share birth-to-death accounts of not just Joseph but dozens of people: Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, John the Baptist, and Jesus, among many others.
ABROGATION AND THE FINAL FORM OF SCRIPTURE
Grasping the orality of the Quran helps with understanding the controversial phenomenon of abrogation. While Muhammad was still alive, he would give recitations that cancelled previous ones. In other words, he would tell his followers that certain portions of the Quran he had relayed before were no longer to be recited as part of the Quran. This was met with resistance, as people asked him how the Word of God could be cancelled. The response is recorded in 2.106 of the Quran, which asserts that Allah can substitute verses in his divine scripture because “he has power over all things.”3
People accustomed to written texts might balk at the concept of abrogation; how can God command removing portions of his eternal word? But Quranic abrogation makes much more sense when we recall that the Quran was primarily oral. People were not expected to tear out pages from their Qurans or take a red pen to certain verses and strike them out. Rather, they were expected to simply stop reciting those passages in prayer, and thereby to forget them.
Although Muhammad’s revelations were considered inspired texts as he relayed them, which was well before the Quran’s final form, the Bible’s books were finalized before the church recognized them as scripture. At that point, there was no room for abrogating portions. Therefore, having a different modality and different history, the Bible never underwent any abrogation.
THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE
Not all abrogated verses were left out of the text of the Quran, though. Muslim scholars have classically taught that there are multiple types of abrogation, including abrogation of text-not-law and abrogation of law-not-text. In other words, they teach that Allah intended certain verses to be recited but not practiced, and other verses to be practiced but not recited. For these reasons, Muslims scholars turn to the records of Muhammad’s life, the hadith, for clarification. In addition, as we have already seen, most Islamic practices actually come from hadith and not from the Quran.
This is why Muslims do not believe the Quran is sufficient for Islamic practice, but it requires authoritative hadith. Very few Muslims believe in the sufficiency of the Quran, and these “Quran only” Muslims are often deemed heretical by mainstream Muslims.
The Bible, on the other hand, requires no complementary texts to decipher its teachings or provide supplementary Christian practices. It is sufficient and serves as the sole authority for Christian doctrine.4
THE EXEGESIS OF SCRIPTURE
The abrogation of the Quran, its piecemeal nature, and its heavy reliance upon hadith have traditionally been part of the reason why the average Muslim does not engage in Quranic exegesis. What if the verse they are reading has been abrogated and no longer applies? What if the context of a verse is not clear, since the verses before it or after it could be from completely different occasions? Besides, the Quran is in classical Arabic, a language no one speaks natively any longer. For these reasons and others, Muslims generally defer to scholars and imams for the explanation of verses and texts. That is why the vast majority of Muslims do not directly use the Quran themselves for anything but liturgy: memorization and recitation for prayers.
The Bible, on account of its written modality, sufficiency, and translatability, is accessible enough for the average literate Christian to read it directly and learn from it. One does not need to be a scholar to interpret what the Bible says. Of course, knowing more context is helpful, and the insights of scholars and theologians are valuable, but the nature of the biblical text allows devout Christians to go to it directly and learn from it, and so they do.
THE EPISTEMIC PURPOSE OF SCRIPTURE
Muslims believe that the Quran primarily serves as a guidance for mankind, of course, but since they do not usually exegete it themselves it is fair to classify this as an indirect purpose for the average Muslim. Rather, it is the mystical value of the Quran that serves as its primary purpose. This is illustrated by devout Muslims’ average encounter with the Quran: its recitation in Arabic, even if the Muslim does not speak Arabic. In this case, it is not guidance but blessings that Muslims seek.
So great is the traditional Muslim’s confidence in the mystical value of the Quran that it serves as the primary proof of Islam’s veracity; Muslims are confident Islam is true because the Quran is so perfect. This epistemic use of the Quran traditionally goes back to Muhammad himself, who pointed to the Quran as the validation for his claim to prophethood. “How could any man produce such a perfect book? It must be from God.” So the primary use of the Quran is to serve as the basis of why Muslims believe in Islam.
On the other hand, as we have seen, the Bible is intelligible to the average Christian who can access it in one’s own language and exegete it for oneself. Of course, there are some who use the Bible for mystical purposes, but that is not its traditional or primary use. Similarly, there are some who believe in the Christian message because of the Bible, but it is usually not the reason why people are Christian. Unlike the Quran, the primary use of the Bible is to serve as the basis of what Christians believe, not why they believe.
And so, in discussing the differences between the Quran and the Bible, we have come full circle. The primary purpos
e of each scripture is related to its nature: The Quran is valuable in its mystical transcendence, while the Bible is valuable in its translatable and accessible guidance. There are many other ways in which the Quran and the Bible differ from one another, but the ones we have just covered will give us the needed insight into common disagreements and misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians over scripture.
CHAPTER 15
QUESTIONING TEXTS
At the end of the twentieth century, one name dominated Muslim-Christian dialogue: Ahmed Deedat. Born in India in 1918, Deedat immigrated to South Africa at a young age and started his adult life making ends meet as a furniture salesman. In that multicultural environment, Deedat encountered evangelists who challenged him to consider the gospel, and he started studying Islamic apologetics in response. By his midtwenties he was teaching apologetic lectures of his own, and for the next forty years he devoted his life to promoting Islam, printing booklets, and even establishing an Islamic seminary. Despite the support of his friends and some significant donations, most of his early work was unsuccessful.
But everything changed for Deedat in the 1980s when he started debating well-known Christians like Josh McDowell and Jimmy Swaggart. He presented challenges from a nuanced Islamic perspective that were uncommon to those accustomed to dialogue with skeptics and the irreligious. The novelty of his arguments combined with his sharp rhetoric often made it appear he had bested his opponents. His fame skyrocketed virtually overnight, and he was received with honor by presidents of Muslim nations and received rewards for his service to Islam.
Along with Deedat’s fame grew his inflammatory rhetoric. As a response to the pope’s positive stance toward interfaith dialogue, Deedat challenged John Paul II to a debate. When the pope refused, Deedat published a pamphlet titled “His Holiness Plays Hide and Seek with Muslims.” He also famously began to argue that the Bible was pornographic. Further inflammatory speech during a Good Friday lecture in Sydney earned him the castigation of the Australian government, and he was even banned from entry into Singapore.
In 1996, at the height of his career, Deedat suffered a severe stroke. Among other neurological deficiencies, Deedat was no longer able to speak, and he remained bedridden until his passing in 2005. Some suggested that God had punished him for his words, and other rumors spread that Deedat had repudiated Islam just before his passing. Within the Islamic world, though, both these suggestions are resolutely dismissed. Deedat’s fame continues to grow, even after his death, into legendary status. His rhetorically charged style of argumentation has been picked up by the present face of Islamic apologetics, Zakir Naik, who has a following of millions of Muslims around the world.
The technique that Naik employs, the one that Deedat mastered and that many Muslims use on account of him today, is to challenge the Bible while proclaiming that the Quran is unassailable. Most commonly, they charge the Bible to be full of contradictions, whereas they assert that the Quran has none.
SCRIPTURE AND CONTRADICTIONS
There is much to be said about this challenge. In essence, Christians agree that inerrant, inspired scripture will not contradict itself. But now that we have discussed the differences between the Quran and the Bible, it might be more clear why this is such a staple of Muslim-Christian dialogue.
First, the Quran is written in one uniform style, whereas the Bible is written in many genres. When someone accustomed to only one mode of speaking comes across texts like “God is love” in 1 John and “God hated Esau” in the Psalms, they often forget to consider the genres.
Ranging from history to law to poetry and even a record of the loving relationship of Solomon and his bride, the Bible is a collection of very diverse books, and we ought not read all the books in the same way. The genre of a book affects the way we interpret it. For example, one should not read the book of Psalms in the same way as the book of Romans; the former is a book of poetry and should be read as a sanctified expression of the heart, whereas the latter is an epistle that explores Christian doctrine and should be among the first foundations of a systematic theology. Another example of poor exegesis would be reading the gospel of John in the same manner as the book of Revelation. Even though they are written by the same author, their genres are very different: The gospel of John is historical and biographic, whereas the book of Revelation is a book of apocalypse, and intends to be understood in prophetic terms. So although we can be quite confident that Jesus literally walked in Galilee (e.g., John 1:43), it is poor exegesis to read about a dragon sweeping away the stars in the same literal way (Rev. 12:4)! Understanding genre is an essential part of interpreting Scripture, yet Muslim apologists often raise the challenge of contradiction without taking genre into account.
Second, the Quran serves as the basis for Muslim confidence in their religion; it is the “why” of Islamic faith. Muslims understand that the Quran is the keystone of Islam’s truth, and they assume the same for the Bible. But the Bible is not the “why” of Christian faith; it is the “what.” The “why” of the Christian faith is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So Muslim apologists direct much dialogue toward Christian Scripture, assuming it ought to have the same impact as a challenge to the Quran would, though that is not the case.
I was guilty of this mistake myself when I was a Muslim. In 2002, I sent an email to my friend David with dozens of alleged Bible contradictions, and he responded. We went back and forth for months. What I ultimately realized then, and am more confident of now, is that allegations of contradictions often reflect more about a reader than the text.
There are two ends to the spectrum of interpreting apparent inconsistencies in a text. On the one hand, a reader can deem every inconsistency a contradiction; on the other, a reader can attempt to harmonize the differences and try to make exceptions for the apparent inconsistencies. If a reader is friendly toward a text, he or she will give it the benefit of the doubt and harmonize it, whereas if a reader is antagonistic, he or she will discredit the text as contradictory. This is almost always what happens when Muslims and Christians lodge accusations of contradictions against one another.
On that note, Christians often do accuse the Quran of having contradictions. One website, for example, charges the Quran with containing over 120 contradictions.1 Some examples: 6.163 says Muhammad was the first believer, 7.143 says Moses was the first, and 26.40 says that Pharaoh’s magicians were; 88.6 teaches that the only food in hell will be thorns, whereas 69.36 says it will be pus, and 37.66 says it will be devil-like fruit; 7.54, 10.3, 11.7, and 25.29 teach that Allah created the world in six days, whereas 41.9–12 gives a total of eight days; 2.29 says Allah created the earth before the heavens, and 79.30 says he created the heavens before the earth; 96.2 says Allah created man from blood, 25.54 says from water, 15.26 says from clay, and 30.20 says from dust; 109.1–6 says non-Muslims worship different gods, whereas 2.139 says Jews and Christians worship the same God as Muslims; 4.48 says Allah does not forgive idolatry, and 4.153 shows him forgiving idolatry; 4.78 says all blessings and afflictions are from Allah, whereas 4.79, the very next verse, says blessings are from Allah and afflictions are brought on by those who suffer them. These are but a few of hundreds of alleged Quran contradictions.
Even though Quran contradictions are far more devastating to the case for Islam than Bible contradictions are to the case for Christianity, I find these arguments about contradictions to be unproductive and bordering on fatuous. I prefer the constructive dialogue of giving each text the benefit of the doubt and discussing the merits of what they are asserting, rather than reading the texts inimically and accusing them of contradictions wherever possible.
HOW DO YOU HANDLE THIS VERSE?
Along the same lines of genre and exegesis, Christians often approach their Muslim friends and ask them how they interpret certain passages of the Quran. For example, Muslims in the West often say that Islam is a religion of peace, to which Christians ask how they handle verses like 9.111, which says: “Allah
has bought your life and your property for this, that you may slay and be slain.” Muslims will often respond at this point that they are not sure how to handle it, but that does not change their minds about Islam being a religion of peace.
Christians may be frustrated by pointing to the apparent meaning of a verse to no effect, but they should remember that Muslims do not generally exegete the Quran themselves; and by asking for an interpretation of a verse, they may very well be asking a Muslim to do something they have never done before. Muslims receive such guidance and interpretations from their imams, and a Christian should not be surprised to hear the retort, “Don’t ask me, I’m not a scholar!”
What might be more helpful for a Christian who wants to point out such verses in the Quran to a Muslim friend is to find a scholar in that Muslim’s line of authority, and see if that scholar’s interpretation says the same thing. If it does, present the verse along with the scholar’s judgment and continue the conversation from there.
THE BIBLE HAS BEEN CORRUPTED
Finally, we turn to the most common Muslim accusation against the Bible: that its text has been changed over time. It should also be clear now why Muslims accuse the Bible of having been altered: because the Quran says it teaches the same thing as the Bible, confirming the Torah and the gospel, yet the teachings of the Bible are clearly different. In the same vein, the Quran teaches that Muhammad was prophesied in the Bible, but there appears to be no such prophecy.2
Interpreting what the Quran says about the Bible is controversial business. There are a few texts in the Quran that Muslims take to teach that the Bible has been changed, but closer investigation seems to reveal that these verses actually teach that Christians and Jews abandon their teachings for falsehood—not that the words of their Scriptures have themselves been corrupted. The overall meaning of the Quran seems straightforward: Jews and Christians still had their holy texts at the time of Muhammad, and they could follow the straight path by reading them. Regardless, Muslims very commonly accuse the Bible of significant alteration.
No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity Page 10
