Even cursory browsing shows the resemblances between the Qur’an and books of the Bible. Not only does the Qur’an depict the one God as omnipotent and omniscient, creator and judge, as in the Bible, and recount stories of figures in recognizably biblical terms, including Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus, but it also employs unmistakably biblical “turns of phrase” that have been made fully part of its vocabulary.
According to the explanation given in the Qur’an itself, these similarities result from the Torah, Psalms, Gospel and itself all deriving in a historical sequence from God. In consequence, through the early centuries of Islam, Muslims explained the divergences in the Qur’an from earlier scriptures, God forgiving Adam after his disobedience and Jesus being saved from crucifixion being notable among them, as the result of the earlier texts having been corrupted. For their part, Christians and Jews dismissed the Qur’an as the product of Muḥammad’s borrowings, often through renegade monks or rabbis, and argued that the differences arose from his inability to understand what he heard or his deliberate decision to make changes for his own purposes. This was the typical medieval Christian attitude. In recent times, however, it has given way to more scholarly approaches that seek to locate the Qur’an in its original seventh-century milieu and to compare it with retellings of the Bible that could have been employed. The difficulty has been that while parallels between the Qur’an and biblical and post-biblical stories can be identified, notably the two brief mentions in Q 3:49 and 5:110 of Jesus creating birds from clay and the fuller account in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas of him forming birds and breathing into them, the actual process by which such stories were transmitted and distilled into the Qur’an versions has not satisfactorily been traced.
Many suggestions have been made, prominent among them that Muḥammad heard accounts from the Bible on journeys into Syria, though it has generally been acknowledged that too little is known about the presence of Christians in Arabia. Gabriel Said Reynolds, however, in this well-argued study shows that the presence of Christians in early seventh-century western Arabia can in fact be confirmed, and that they may even have constituted “a significant part, perhaps the predominant part, of the Qur’an’s audience” (22). His arguments toward establishing this are set out with impressive clarity and conciseness, consistently showing respect for differing scholarly and religious positions. A particular feature is the wealth of notes that add detail to his discussions: fifty pages for just under two hundred pages of main text.
The book comprises four chapters. The first surveys and assesses earlier investigations of the relationship between the Qur’an and Biblical books and introduces Reynolds’s contention that the main focus of investigation should be upon the text of the Qur’an rather than upon what is known about Muḥammad. It also examines hints of a definite Christian presence in the society in which the Qur’an emerged. The second chapter extends this by demonstrating that elements of Christian beliefs and language turned to new purposes permeate the thought and language of the Qur’an, strongly suggesting reaction to pervasive Christian pressure. Thus, for example, the Qur’anic Jesus communicates distinctly Muslim teachings, primarily that God alone is divine and he himself is God’s servant, and that after him will come a messenger “whose name shall be Aḥmad” (Q 61:6, mentioning a cognate form of “Muḥammad”). In addition, New Testament expressions have been removed from their contexts and made part of the Qur’anic lexicon, including allusions to a camel passing through the eye of a needle (Q 7:140), to the “weight of one grain of mustard-seed” (Q 9:80), and to pardoning seventy times (Q 21:47, listed on 48–49). Reynolds argues that these have been fully absorbed into the mind behind the Qur’an.
The third chapter examines more pieces of evidence that point to the presence of Christians in or near the emerging Muslim milieu. They include the actual language in which the Qur’an appears, standing as a signal that this was a new and distinct discourse; discoveries of Arabian rock inscriptions denoting monotheistic beliefs and suggesting “that Islam emerged from a context in which Arabic speakers had largely set aside polytheism and adopted monotheism, and Christianity above all” (95); and the evidence of passages in the Qur’an that reflect live encounters between Muḥammad and Christians. Lastly, the fourth chapter adduces references suggesting that “a concern for Christianity appears consistently throughout the Qur’an” and is primary among its preoccupations (142). The text attests to care in revising Christian stories about Jesus so that, for example, when he creates birds from clay, he does so not by any power of his own but “by God’s permission” (153–154), in conformity with its particular emphasis on the centrality of God.
The array of arguments that Reynolds amasses is largely persuasive, though one still wonders whether they have fully demonstrated the presence of Christians who could exert influences strong enough to provoke reaction throughout the Qur’an, yet left no incontestable literary or material traces outside it. Further, many claims might benefit from fuller development, among them how biblical “turns of phrase” in the Qur’an necessitate Christians actually living in Arabian communities (the pace with which the US adverb “likely” is replacing “probably” in UK usage attests to the way in which cultural influence works at a distance), and why there are no traces of any contention around the bare contradictions of fundamental Christian teachings in the denial that Jesus was crucified (Q 4:157) and the implication that the Trinity comprises God, Jesus and Mary (Q: 5:116). Such reservations aside, however, this lucid and cogently argued work sets a clear direction of research in the field of Qur’anic origins for years ahead.
