Response to Gabriel Said Reynolds

Isaac W. Oliver
Bradley University

The Early Islamic Studies Seminar, in association with the Enoch Seminar, aims at

studying anew the early history of Islam, not least its foundational text—the Quran—in light of

earlier sources, Jewish, Christian, and other. Gabriel Said Reynolds’ paper on the relationship

between the “Bible” and the Quran could not be more suitable, therefore, to open a conference that

gathers specialists in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

As Reynolds notes in the opening to his paper, scholars long ago recognized a close

relationship between the Quran and the “Bible” or more broadly speaking, “biblical literature.”

Reynolds acknowledges in this regard the pioneering works of Abraham Geiger and Heinrich

Speyer, noting also some of the more recent contributions to the discussion, which signal a revival

in the critical investigation of the Quran. Reynolds briefly defines “biblical literature” as “Jewish

and Christian literature shaped in some way by the Bible—more generally” (p. 1 fn. 1).

Although the Quran reveals a familiarity with many stories and themes found in both the

Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, it is curious that the Quran never includes actual quotations

from the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Only at one point does the Quran approximate quotation,

but, interestingly enough, as Reynolds notes, rather than quoting the Bible, the Quran quotes the

Mishnah! This observation alone raises numerous questions for the field of quranic studies: was

the actual wording of Jewish and Christian scriptures familiar to whomever produced the Quran?

If so, did there exist a biblical translation of said scriptures into Arabic before the composition of
the Quran? Or were biblical contents simply transmitted through oral means, thus accounting for

the distinctive way the Quran interacts with these materials?

Reynolds approaches the complex question on the relationship between biblical literature

and the Quran by focusing on the latter’s usage of “biblical turns of phrase.” Even if the Quran

does not contain actual quotations from biblical literature, it does include smaller turns of phrase,

mostly from the New Testament. This phenomenon would suggest something about the culture of

the Quran, as Reynolds concludes at the end of his paper, namely, that the Quran was proclaimed

in a milieu where biblical expressions, particularly New Testament ones, circulated widely.

Reynolds isolates ten examples from a wider pool to illustrate his point. Because of time, I only

discuss a few selected examples.

Reynold’s first example of a biblical turn of phrase appears in Surah 7:40, which employs

a familiar expression drawn from the synoptic Gospels (Matt 19:24/Mk 10:25/Lk 18:25): “until

the camel passes through the needle’s eye.” In Surah 7 this saying has been reapplied against those

who deny God’s signs, a common theme running throughout the Quran, while the synoptic Gospels

employ this saying in a context about the overwhelming difficulty for the wealthy to inherit eternal

life. The Quran has not simply copied and pasted this NT saying but has recycled it according to

its liking. This is true of many other biblical turns of phrase, which are taken out of their original

context, leading Reynolds to wonder whether in fact the Quran draws directly from the New

Testament or simply originated in a milieu where biblical sayings circulated orally. This is a point

worth discussing further, and I will return to it shortly. On a side note, I concur with Reynolds’

assessment that the quranic recasting of the synoptic saying on the camel passing through the eye

of a needle does not fit nicely under the traditional categorization of Surah 7 as “Meccan.” The

phrase, like others in the Quran, is interwoven in such a way into the quranic tissue that it
presupposes a milieu at home with scriptural idioms of Jewish or Christian provenance rather than

a pagan setting. This finding reminds me of Guillaume Dye’s own paper, which he presented at

the first EISS-Enoch Seminar meeting two years ago, convincingly showing that parts of surah 19,

also a so-called Meccan surah, made better sense in a Christian Palestinian milieu.

Reynolds’ second example of a biblical turn of phrase concerns the Quran’s portrayal of

the “uncircumcised hearts” of the Israelites. The vocabulary for this portrait can be traced back to

the Hebrew scriptures but is reused polemically in the New Testament to condemn those Jews

opposed to Jesus and his followers (e.g., Acts 7:51–53). Several early Christian writers, including

Aphrahat and Ephrem, also present the spiritual condition of the Jewish people in this way as part

of a wider anti-Jewish discourse characteristic of early Christianity. The Quran perpetuates this

kind of anti-Jewish discourse by presenting the Israelites on two separate occasions as openly

saying, “our hearts are uncircumcised” (Q 2:88 & 4:155). The self-damning statement appears in

contexts that also refer to the Israelites’ slaughtering of the prophets and their rejection of Jesus.

These accusations are unmistakably Christian in origin. Here too, I cannot but agree with

Reynolds’ assessment that the statement placed in the mouths of the Israelites obviously does not

reflect actual conversations between Jews and Muhammad on the ground in Medina—a claim,

after all, that the Quran does not make for itself but is only later specified in Islamic tradition. It is

fanciful indeed to imagine the Jewish people collectively speaking of themselves in such a

disapproving manner before a potential adversary. We are dealing plain and simple with a quranic

presentation, based on biblical phrasing, that is polemically motivated and preceded in

Christianity. In this regard, I think of the gospel of Matthew that has the Jewish crowd in Jerusalem

say to Pilate, “his blood be on us and our children” (Matt 27:25). No serious historian of early

Christianity, of course, would view this statement as historically reliable but would attend instead
to the redactional concerns of the evangelist in order to comprehend its function within a wider

literary and historical context. For the study of the Quran, it could be worthwhile examining further

how other early Christian writings, in their retellings of biblical stories, imagine the Israelites

deliberately condemning themselves.

Suras 2:93 and 4:46 also portray the Israelites in a self-incriminating way, having them

say: “we hear and disobey.” It would seem that we have before us a biblical turn of phrase that

does not stem from the New Testament this time but from the Hebrew scriptures. Here the Arabic,

sami‘ana wa-‘asayna, sounds very much like the Hebrew phrase in Deuteronomy 5:27, shama‘nu

ve-‘asinu, save that it makes the Israelites say the exact opposite from what they declared at Sinai,

according to the Pentateuch, when they expressed their resolve to observe God’s commandments

stating, “we will do and we will hear.” Just as the Israelites openly confessed that they had

uncircumcised hearts, they also intentionally claimed that they were disobedient, so the Quran

claims. As Reynolds observes, this particular example would represent a unique case where the

Quran would be informed by a biblical phrase from the Hebrew scriptures, and, we should add, in

its Hebrew form. For in order to have its maximum rhetorical effect here, we must imagine on the

part of the Quran some kind of knowledge of the phrase from Deut 5:27 in the original Hebrew

language. What kind of milieu, however, are we to imagine for the Quran in this case?

Furthermore, why did the Quran gravitate toward this particular statement in Deuteronomy?

These questions bring our attention back to the intriguing observation that the Quran comes

close to quoting a full statement from the Mishnah rather than from the Bible. Reynolds has

convincingly demonstrated, in my opinion, that the biblical turns in phrase in the Quran are drawn

mostly from the New Testament. As Reynold infers, this would suggest indeed “something about

the culture in which the Quran was proclaimed, namely, that Biblical expressions (and in particular
expressions from the New Testament) circulated widely therein.” Yet how do we assess this

finding no longer in isolation but in connection with the many other parallels the Quran shares

with traditions outside the New Testament, including rabbinic midrash, the Mishnah, non-

canonical gospels such as the Protoevangelium of James or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not to

mention the many episodes and stories that ultimately go back to the Hebrew Bible? I guess the

questions behind my question are: how significant is the presence of biblical turns of phrase as

opposed to other kinds of biblical or extra-biblical equivalents for appreciating the milieu in which

the Quran was produced? And, more specifically, what of the quranic materials that are ultimately

known to us from Jewish sources, such as rabbinic literature, or, the scriptures in Hebrew, as

evidenced possibly by Deut 5:27? With respect to the New Testament parallels, Reynolds first

presents two possibilities: either the Bible was not well known to the author of the Quran or the

author of the Quran had access to written texts and then radically rewrote them. The form scenario

envisages an author who only learned about the New Testament through hearsay or eventually

forgot or was even confused about its contents. The latter scenario envisions an author quite at

home with an inherited tradition, set on creating an original text that departed from previous ones.

Reynolds discusses these two possibilities by speaking of the author of the Quran in the singular.

Yet given the diversity, number, and repetitions of traditions attested in Jewish and Christian

sources, how viable is it in this case to speak of a singular author when discussing the milieu in

which such a complex, eclectic text as the Quran was composed? If we are speaking of one

individual, me must admit that this author heard or read many things.

But perhaps this is an unhelpful comment that unfairly focuses on authorship and detracts

from appreciating the milieu of the Quran. I would like to balance, therefore, my probing with a

consideration that might strengthen the hypothesis that I gather Reynolds seems ultimately to have
favored, a middle path lying between a superficial, oral acquaintance with scripture and a careful

consultation of written sources. Following Sydney Griffith, Reynolds suggests that the “Bible”

was not yet translated into Arabic at the time of the Quran’s origins. This means that the author of

the Quran would only have heard the contents of the “Bible” orally, and then presumably in Arabic

paraphrases of the Aramaic Bible. How then do we deal with the particular case of Deut 5:27? I

would propose that the “author” of the Quran did not actually know the biblical text but had heard

of a Jewish midrash or targumic paraphrase that boasted about the Israelites’ reception of the Torah

when they stood below Sinai and said: “we will do and we will hear.” This exemplary reply was

possibly already celebrated in Second Temple times and for sure in rabbinic midrash, as I point

out in my paper for this conference.1 The reply, “we will do and we will hear,” virtually became a

motto of Judaism, and is still remembered today, more so in the form from Exod 24:7: na‘aseh ve-

nishma. The Quran’s author may have heard of this saying either directly from Jews who

celebrated the giving of the Torah exclusively to Israel or indirectly in a polemical form via

Christians who challenged these Jewish claims. This proposal would imply, however, that the

rhyme between the Arabic and the Hebrew in Deut 5:27 and Q 2:93/4:46 is more coincidental than

intentional, as the saying would have been heard in Aramaic or Arabic paraphrase rather than in

Hebrew.

On a final note, I could not help but wonder about the concept of “rewritten Bible” or

“rewritten scripture” as I read Reynolds’ paper on the relationship between the “Bible” and Quran.

Mogens Müller, from the University of Copenhagen, a few years ago in a conversation, had

introduced his idea to me of conceiving the Quran as a “rewritten Bible” and has written on the

1
See Josephus, Contra Apionem 2:156, 169 declaring apologetically about how Moses succeeded in compelling all
of the Israelites to accept the Sinaitic legislation. Cf. Antiquities 3:93, 102: the Israelites rejoiced in receiving the
commandments.
topic.2 The category of “rewritten Bible” goes as far back as the late Geza Vermes who is credited

with coining the term. Originally, Vermes had in mind the insertion of haggadic developments into

the biblical narrative. For Vermes, the Palestinian Targum, Josephus’ Antiquities, Pseudo-Philo,

the Genesis Apocryphon, and even a first-millennium CE document known as Sefer ha-Yashar,

showed each in its own way how the “Bible” was rewritten. Much discussion on the understanding

and the application of the notion has ensued since then. Some have called for the dismantlement

of the concept altogether while others still see real value in its usage. Often the investigation of

this category has been confined to a small corpus within the Qumranic literature. Others, however,

apply it more broadly, for example, to gospel texts. Anders Klostergaard Petersen is a proponent

for its retention and broad application provided we stand on strong theoretical ground and are clear

conceptually about what we mean by “rewritten Bible” or “rewritten scripture.”3 In the context of

Second Temple Jewish studies, many prefer the term “rewritten scripture,” as there was no firm

canon of the Hebrew Bible even in the first or second century CE. Perhaps, it is best to retain

rewritten scripture even for the late antique period. After all, which canonical Bible do we have in

mind when we speak of the relationship between the “Bible” and the Quran? The Jewish Bible or

the Christian one? And is there only one Christian Bible? Furthermore, how should “extra-biblical”

writings, for lack of better words, be conceived in relationship to the “Bible”? How is this word or

concept of “Bible” relevant for rabbinic Jews, for example, who conceive of their teachings, oral

Torah, in relation to the Written Torah? And how is this relationship then perceived in the Quran,

which at least once interlaces into its text contents from both the Mishnah and the written Torah?

The same question applies to the “gospel” literature: is there a fundamental difference in status,

2
Mogens Müller, ”Koranen som ”bibelsk genskrivning”, Bibel-ske genskrivninger, red. Jesper Høgenhaven og
Mogens Müller, Forum for bibelsk Eksegese 17 (København: Museum Tusculanum 2012), 377–412.
3
József Zsengellér, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Textual Fidelity, Elaboration, Supersession or Encroachment?”
Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: A Last Dialogue with Geza Vermes (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 13–48.
for example, between the teachings found in the Protoevangelium of James versus those from the

Gospel of Luke for members belonging to the milieu that gave us the Quran?

Terminology aside, if we conceive of “rewritten scripture” as a textual authorizing strategy,

we may think of it, as Anders proposes, as some kind of interactive process with a scriptural

antecedent that enjoys special authority, which in turn generates a new text that does not simply

comment on but also rewrites its scriptural antecedent through harmonization, insertions,

omissions, variations, and the like. In the context of Second Temple Jewish studies, many have

insisted that “rewritten scriptures” were not designed to replace their scriptural predecessors. Yet

Anders argues that rewritten scriptures do in a certain sense replace their base texts with respect

to their claims of authority, purpose, and function. I wonder then whether an attentive reflection

on the perceived authority of Jewish and Christian scriptures might be warranted in order to

appreciate how their wording or contents have been modified and then incorporated into the

quranic scripture? After all, the Quran is understood as sacred scripture that acknowledges the

authority of previous revelations given to Jews and Christians. At the same time, the Quran is

heralded as a new revelation that restores and ultimately replaces previous scriptures that were

allegedly tampered by Jewish and Christian tradents. Furthermore, the Quran does not contain

extensive narrative, the textual base of rewritten scriptures from the Second Temple period. Yet it

does occasionally relate biblical episodes intermingled with aggadic materials that ultimately

rewrite Jewish and Christian scriptural passages. I note, finally, the claim in Q 85:21–22 that the

“Quran” is on a “preserved tablet,” which makes me think of the strategy employed by the book

of Jubilees, a Second Temple Jewish work that rewrites Genesis-Exodus, claiming to have

originated from “heavenly tablets.” As is known, Jubilees was preserved among the biblical works

of Ethiopic Christianity, in the vicinity, therefore, of the Arabian Peninsula. The fact that one finds
affinities between Jubilees and the Quran in their mutual reports about Abraham’s life, as Francis

Watson discussed in a previous paper at EISS two years ago, may add further merit to considering

the Quran as “rewritten scripture.”4

I don’t know if this proposal to read the Quran as rewritten scripture will ultimately prove

to be fruitful or become an unnecessary distraction. What I hope it will do in the short run is

stimulate lively discussion at this conference on the major points raised by Reynolds’ excellent

paper. By reflecting on the relationship between the “Bible” and the Quran as well as the milieu

that gave us the Quran, we might not only learn new lessons about the fabric of the Quran and its

milieu but also gain fresh perspectives on the reception of Jewish and Christian scriptures during

Late Antiquity.

4
Francis Watson, “Abraham the Iconoclast in Qur’anic Transformation.”