Why do the Bible and Qur'an differ about the Prophets? (2021-01-21) #

0:00:02 the quran has a great deal to say about the patriarchs and the prophets sent to previous 0:00:07 peoples especially to the israelites but in telling its version of these stories sometimes 0:00:13 the narrative is very similar to the bible and sometimes it's radically different and 0:00:19 i want to explore why this might be the case with the help of this book the bible in arabic 0:00:27 the scriptures of the people of the book in the language of islam by sydney h griffith who is 0:00:34 professor in the department of semitic and egyptian languages and literatures 0:00:38 at the catholic university of america this is quite a new book and it has some rave reviews on 0:00:47 the back by leading scholars for example from yale university it says the bible in arabic 0:00:53 represents the work of a scholar at the height of his powers griffith demonstrates widespread 0:00:59 mastery of his subjects his expertise spans not only christian arabic translation and 0:01:04 interpretation of the bible but also jewish and islamic arabic literature as well the result is a 0:01:10 book that fills a conspicuous gap in our knowledge it will surely become a standard in the field 0:01:17 that's from steve davis who is a professor at yale university so i just want to share with you what 0:01:24 griffith says uh about this uh because i think he has some fascinating uh ideas his hypotheses are 0:01:31 very compelling i think although obviously you can disagree about why the stories of moses abraham 0:01:39 and david and job and so on are similar in uh to what we find in the bible yet sometimes they're 0:01:45 different and what's really going on here why is the quran different from the bible about these 0:01:50 patriarchs and prophets and griffith comes up with a plausible uh view i think so i'm just going to 0:01:56 read some uh extracts from chapter 2 the bible in the arabic quran and i'll be making some comments 0:02:03 as always on root the quran is a very is very conscious of the bible and sometimes presents 0:02:10 itself as offering once again a revelation previously sent down in the torah and the gospel 0:02:17 one verse even seems to put the quran on a par with these earlier scriptures when it speaks of 0:02:22 the promise of paradise for those who fight in the way of god as already truthfully recorded 0:02:28 in the torah the gospel and the quran that's the the ninth chapter verse 111. on the other hand 0:02:36 the kran's text insistently recalls the earlier biblical stories of the patriarchs and prophets 0:02:43 and even appeals to the books of the torah the prophets the psalms and the gospel by name 0:02:49 on the other hand islamic scripture also pursues a reading of its own and often noticeably distinct 0:02:56 from and sometimes even contrary to the biblical understanding of jews or christians for the quran 0:03:03 is in fact very selective in its approach to the bible and to biblical law law spell lore 0:03:11 it ignores entirely portions of the scriptures that are very important to jews and christians 0:03:16 the new testament pauline epistles that's paul's letters are a notable instance of this disinterest 0:03:23 they're completely ignored as are large portions of the former and later prophets in the hebrew 0:03:29 bible what is noticeable is that the quran is not so much interested in the bible per se 0:03:35 as it is in well-known accounts of the bible's principle characters a adam noah 0:03:41 abraham ishmael isaac jacob joseph moses aaron miriam david solomon even job and jonah along 0:03:48 with zechariah john the baptist mary and jesus son of mary just to mention the major personalities 0:03:56 it interweaves recollection of this recollections of the stories of these patriarchs and prophets 0:04:02 into its own distinctive prophetology this is a very griffith word prophetology his own 0:04:09 understanding of the prophets the way it presents the prophets culminating in muhammad the messenger 0:04:15 of god and the seal of the prophets in surah 33 40. and in the presentation of god's message 0:04:23 to the community of believers the prophet has summoned to hear it the quran thus appears on the 0:04:28 horizon of biblical history as a new paradigm for the reading figuratively speaking of a familiar 0:04:35 scriptural narrative in an arabic speaking milieu offering a new construal of a familiar salvation 0:04:42 history albeit not without echoes of earlier traditions so that's uh sydney griffith setting 0:04:49 up the chapter um i think he's he's more or less saying that the crime tells these familiar stories 0:04:57 of moses and abraham and so on in its own way according to his own understanding of prophethood 0:05:04 and there's more to come about this he continues at the end when he summarizes the chapter having 0:05:11 looked at each of these prophets in turn and what the quran says and how it differs from the bible 0:05:16 the quick review of quranic presentations of biblical patriarchs and prophets just rehearsed 0:05:23 selective and schematic as it is nevertheless nevertheless makes three things fairly clear 0:05:30 biblical personalities in their stories are recalled according to the paradigm 0:05:35 of quranic prophetology and not according to jewish or christian narrative patterns the 0:05:41 narratives are sometimes hauntingly close to the biblical versions but they frequently incorporate 0:05:48 non-biblical jewish or christian apocryphal and traditional law l-o-r-e again and there are almost 0:05:56 never any actual quotations from a known biblical text or for that matter from any other text 0:06:03 these observations give rise to three preliminary conclusions the sources of the quran's biblical 0:06:10 and traditional reminiscences are oral the quran's recollections of the biblical patriarchs 0:06:16 and prophets according to the paradigm of its own prophetology bespeaks the arabic scriptures 0:06:24 corrective even polemical stance towards jewish and christian scriptures and traditional law lore 0:06:33 so what he's saying here is put it in simpler english because it's a very academic book this 0:06:38 is not what's not meant for the the daily mail reader or something um what he's saying is that 0:06:42 the quran obviously retells these same stories according to his own understanding of prophethood 0:06:49 but it it does it not just summarizing or paraphrasing what's in the bible it corrects 0:06:55 it it corrects the biblical stories it talks about even polemical stance towards jewish and christian 0:07:01 scriptures it clearly views these scriptures as distorted as not speaking the whole truth about 0:07:07 moses abraham david and so on so this is what the the quran is doing it has it has this corrective 0:07:15 polemical relationship with the previous scriptures and he continues and giving the lack 0:07:22 of actual quotations from the bible the presence of the bible in the quran is not textual in other 0:07:28 words it's not quoting chunks in the bible in its own words in its own words it is present but by 0:07:35 way of illusion illusion and re-presentation so in other words it retells stories which sound eerily 0:07:43 familiar to us if we know the bible well the other hand they they sound different as well but 0:07:49 the reason is the quran is correcting the bible the stories according to sydney clifford's here
0:07:57 so um the last part i want to read is the last paragraph of the chapter 0:08:06 uh entitled the bible encountered in the quran the bible is both in the quran and not in the 0:08:14 quran that is to say it has virtually no textual presence he says virtually because 0:08:19 arguably there is a single verse from assam that is quoted in the quran 0:08:27 that is to say it has virtually no textual presence but the selective presence of an 0:08:32 interpreted bible in islamic scripture is undeniable and the selection process involved 0:08:38 in the inclusion of biblical reminiscences in the quran according to the hypothesis advanced here 0:08:46 is one determined by the quran's own distinctive prophetology that is to say 0:08:51 recollections of biblical patriarchs and prophets and references to the earlier scriptures that tell 0:08:57 their stories appear as integral components of the quran's advancement of its own prophetic message 0:09:05 and what is more the quran is corrective of and even polemical towards the earlier 0:09:11 readings of the scripture people that's jews and christians to the point that it 0:09:16 can even accuse jews of distorting the scripture of god sent to them 0:09:21 and then he gives some quotes from the quran this dimension of the quran's reprise of the bible 0:09:28 bespeaks the opening of a new book altogether in the growing library of books on the interpreted 0:09:35 bible or perhaps it bespeaks not so much a new book as a corrected alternative scripture 0:09:42 one that recalls the tanakh and the bible but ultimately rejects them in the forms in which 0:09:48 jews and christians actually have them it is no wonder then that for the letter 0:09:53 but that for the later muslim scholars there was for the most part little interest over the 0:09:59 centuries in the bible as the jews or christians actually have it the quran has made it irrelevant
0:10:09 which is very very interesting my own personal analogy for this uh he talks about the this 0:10:17 dimension of the quran's reprise of the bible bespeaks the opening of a new book or perhaps 0:10:23 it bespeaks not so much an uber as a corrected alternative scripture what we're looking at to 0:10:27 use a very different analogy is like you're updating your software from particularly a a 0:10:34 software computer that may have just about worked but nevertheless was riddled with problems and 0:10:39 distortions and you came a lot and you replaced it with an ac pc software system i'm not mentioning 0:10:45 apple here or my own macbook pro one that doesn't crash one that's not uh you know messed up 0:10:51 and uh that's a very crude analogy here i think uh the quran is the pristine replacement for a 0:10:58 scripture that has been changed and misinterpreted and partially lost or forgotten and so on although 0:11:03 it still retains some of its uh integrity in that is speaking of moses and abraham and so on 0:11:11 so i think that that would be my own kind of rough reinterpretation of what griffith is saying 0:11:17 um so that that explains i think and i find this personally i find this plausible this explains why 0:11:22 uh there are these differences why uh the crown's presentation of moses 0:11:27 as a righteous man is so different from the bloodthirsty killer that is presented in the 0:11:32 bible someone who commands in the name of god that women and children should be killed we 0:11:38 would not find that in islam of course at all finally um there's a little footnote by way of 0:11:44 uh parenthesis here uh fitness footnote 64 by issa the name of isa which i find fascinating 0:11:50 and he says of the many explanations for the form of jesus's name as it appears in the quran what's 0:11:57 the origin where is this why is it issa the most reasonable one from this writer's point of view 0:12:03 is that it reflects an arabic speaker's spelling of what he hears in an arabic articulation of the 0:12:12 common eastern syria syrian form of the name issue i-s-h-o i-s-h-o so it's an arabic understanding 0:12:22 of the common syrian form and of course the syrian form is the aramaic form as well so 0:12:31 i do recommend this book very much it is a heavyweight academic tome no worse for that 0:12:38 it has rave reviews as i say from academics in the field and i think it plausibly uh advances 0:12:44 the case which has been believed i think by muslims most muslims throughout the centuries 0:12:49 that the the quran uh corrects uh and gives you the truth about the uh the stories of 0:12:56 the people of the moses and abraham jesus and so on and it frees it from the corruptions that um 0:13:03 have crept into these scriptures that christians and jews have today until next time