Why There Is No “Historical Criticism” Of The Qur’an As There Is Of The Bible?
By
Blogging Theology
Transcription
of Video Talk by Paul Williams
2 Dec 2020
I just want
to explore a bit further the Bible and the Quran in terms of where they came
from and questions of critical scholarship particularly when it is applied to
the Bible and the Quran.
The first
text I want to share with you is: “The Quran and the Secular Mind: a
Philosophy of Islam” by Shabbir Akhtar – a lecturer in Theology at
Oxford University.
The second
book called “REFLECTIONS” by Gai Eaton. This is the last book he wrote
before he sadly passed away.
And both
passages I am going to quote complement each other. They are saying the same
thing but with a different emphasis.
They are both of value.
Shabbir
Akhtar starts off looking at the origins of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian
Bible and then compares that with the Quran and in a similar way Gai Eaton
makes an observation as well.
Shabbir
Akhtar says:
Unlike the
scriptures of other extant historical religions, the Quran is contemporaneous
with the faith it established. The Hebrew Bible and the Christian New
Testament, for instance, came to acquire belatedly the status of scripture
within their communities. Groups of churchmen, in the case of the Greek New
Testament, canonized a set of writings well over three centuries after the
events those books and letters allegedly record.13 The result is often seen,
even by Jews and Christians, as a poorly edited anthology of religious
literature. The Quran’s status is different. It is self-described as
revelation; and it single-handedly created the community that treated it
authoritatively, not the converse. No discipline among the sciences of the
Quran (‘ul ¯um al-qur’ ¯an) corresponds to the critical historical concerns of
critical biblical scholarship, a field covering textual criticism as well as
form, source, redaction, literary, and historical criticism.14 The Muslim
reluctance to develop the discipline of critical Quranic scholarship is
mistakenly thought to be connected to religious obscurantism. In fact, there
are no materials and no need for such a discipline. The Quran, unlike the
Bible, is not the heterogeneous work of many hands, in several genres, in a
trio of languages, in varied geographical locales, stretching over millennia,
surviving only in uncertain and fragmentary forms. It is a unified canon,
‘revealed’ in just over two decades, addressed to a man fully known to his
contemporaries and to subsequent history, a man living in only two geographical
locations in the same country. It was written in one language, the language of
the recipient and of the first audience, a living language that is still widely
spoken. The period between its oral revelation and final authoritative
compilation is only about two decades. Apart from some variant readings that do
not materially affect the sense, the text is invariant, defined, and fixed.
Textual emendation – editing the text to remove alleged corruptions and errors
in copying – was never permitted. The text has retained perfect purity; a
unique version has enjoyed universal currency during the entire history of
Islam. I cannot see, barring motives of malice and envy (that should have no
place in scholarship), any grounds for developing a critical textual
scholarship of the Quran.
So that
sets up the contrast nicely I think from the Muslim point of view between the
genesis of the Bible and of the Quran and why we cannot have the same kinds of
textual critical historical analysis of the Quran if the Quran’s claims are
true.
Guy Eaton
says something similar and there is another comment he makes which I’ll just throw
in for good measure which I think is just rather good. He says:
This leads
to two questions which I and other Muslims in the west are frequently asked why
in the first place is there no historical criticism of the Quran as there is of
the Bible. Here we have a simple misunderstanding. The Bible is made up of many
different parts compiled over many centuries. It is possible to cast doubt on
one part without impugning the rest. But the Quran is a single revelation
received by just one man. Either you accept it for what it claims to be in
which case you are a Muslim, or you reject this claim and so place yourself
outside the fold of Islam.
So
basically, he is saying similar things to Shabbir Akhtar. And then he goes on
and this is a different subject but fascinating:
Secondly,
we are sometimes asked why we hesitate to adapt the Quran to the needs of our
modern age. The book itself answers this question. There is no changing the
words of God. The fact that it was sent down in the 7th century of the
Christian era and not the 21st is irrelevant.
You do not wear down a diamond by constant handling and the passage of
the centuries cannot erode the words of God. That after all is the whole point
of a divine intervention in the affairs of this world. The act, the revelation,
is located in time but it is itself timeless and Islamic theology always
defines the essence of the Quran as uncreated therefore eternal. This question
is so important in relation to contemporary religious debate that I hope to
return to it later in the talk. For the moment suffice it to say that as
Muslims we ask not how the book can be adapted to our lives in the world of
today but how our daily lives can be adapted to the Quran.
And this really gets to the heart of many of
these debates over specific issues whether it be sexual morality or how we deal
with other religions and so on. The churches typically adapt their scriptures
to the needs of today. So, they will delete, ignore, overlook, or reinterpret
passages so that it fits in comfortably with the world view and the spirit of
the age, the zeitgeist, usually the western zeitgeist. Whereas the Quran asks
in fact, states as it’s the eternal word of God, the speech of God Himself
– it cannot be changed like that. There
is either submission to the truth of God or one is in rebellion to it.
Anyway, I
just wanted to share those two passages with you I think they are fascinating.
Whether you believe them or not they express a key insight into the Muslim
world view and how their religion works, if you like and I think it’s worth
sharing for that reason thank you.
Related
Articles:
Why the Message of the 7th Century Quran Is Eternally and
Universally Valid
On The Historical Approach to
Reforming Islam
The
Meaning of the Quran Resonates With the Aims of Progressive Islam
URL: https://newageislam.com/multimedia/historical-criticism-quran-bible/d/127965
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