The Quran Has More In Common With The Bible Than You Think
Contrasting Christian (left) and Muslim (right) depictions of Mary holding the newborn Jesus.
Many people think of the Quran as a radically different book from the Bible. Moreover, according to this view, even though Muslims and Christians (and Jews) all believe in the same God, these religions are different, distinct traditions.
An argument can be made, however, that the similarities between the Bible and the Quran are actually much more intimate than one might think, and that Islam, Judaism and Christianity are closer to being different interpretations of a shared religious culture than totally distinct traditions.
According to Muslim belief and scholarly accounts, the history of the Quran began in the year 610, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in a cave near Mecca, reciting to him the first verses of the Quran.
The angel Gabriel is, of course, an important character in the Hebrew Bible (where he appears to and explains visions to the prophet Daniel) and the New Testament (where he appears to Zecharia, telling him of his son-to-be, John the Baptist).
Beyond Gabriel, the Quran is filled with characters from the Hebrew Bible: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and Goliath, Jonah, Mary, and John the Baptist all appear, among others — including Jesus.
Those shared characters also participate in many shared narratives between the Quran and the Bible. Among them are the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the choice of Abraham and the creation of the people of Israel, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of one of his sons, Moses and the liberation of Israel from Egypt, the life and death of Jesus, and the idea that God repeatedly sends prophets to humanity to warn and instruct them.
As similar as all these stories and characters are, many fascinating differences exist among the texts. These differences appear to have two explanations: First, Muhammad could not actually read the texts of the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament (Islamic tradition claims he was illiterate). Instead, he heard traveling Jews and Christians tell oral renditions of Biblical stories, liberally mixed with folklore. Second, Muhammad altered some of the stories’ details to fit his own cultural and theological perspective.
Here are five fascinating examples that reveal the crucial similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam, some of whose followers find themselves increasingly at odds with one another:
Jesus
The Quran’s transformation of the story of Jesus shows both borrowing from Christian apocrypha (non-scriptural legends) and Muhammad’s editorializing.
As an example of the former, the Quran relates that Jesus brought clay birds to life by breathing on them (from the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas) and could speak as a prophet in the cradle (from the Apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel). However, Jesus’ ethical teachings, his parables, and the narratives of his life as an itinerant rabbi and healer — which make up so much of the Bible — do not appear in the Quran.
As an example of editorializing: Whereas in the New Testament Jesus is the crucified and resurrected son of God, the Jesus of the Quran is a holy prophet and messenger of Allah whom God saves from crucifixion (and thus does not need to be resurrected). This revision reflects Muhammad’s rejection of the divinity of any being except Allah:
“And they said we have killed the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, the Messenger of God. They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them; those that disagreed about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him. On the contrary, God raised him unto himself. God is almighty and wise.” (Quran 4:157-158)
Satan
In the Hebrew Bible, God forms Adam from the soil, blows the breath of life into him, and places him and a female companion, Eve, in a garden to “keep and guard it.” According to the creation narrative in the Quran, before God made Adam, He informed the angels of His divine plan to “create a vicegerent on earth.”
The angels, however, objected to creating humans because they believed that humans would become violent (Quran 2:30). This same detail about the angels occurs in the Jewish Talmud, a then-circulating piece of Jewish folklore.
In the Muslim tradition, God next commanded all of the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam, to honor God’s new creation, and to display obedience to God. All of them did so except for Shaitan, a jinn (spirit) who refused to comply because he viewed Adam as inferior to him. Shaitan (the Muslim equivalent of Satan) subsequently swore to mislead mankind from the path of God, who responded by expelling him from the Garden (Quran 7:11-12).
This story appears to be a development of a Christian legend present in The Life of Adam and Eve (circa 100-300 CE), which recounts the Archangel Michael bringing Satan, then still an angel, to bow to Adam, with Satan refusing to bow.
In Muhammad’s understanding, evinced several times in the Quran, angels are too lofty to rebel in this way, so he makes Satan a jinn, a kind of spirit being from Arab folklore who can be either good or bad.
Violence and Treatment of Nonbelievers
As well as sharing narratives and some theological suppositions, the Quran and the Bible also share some harsh laws and a sometimes violent attitude toward outsiders perceived to threaten the religious community. Two Dutch comedians famously demonstrated these similarities when they read harsh verses from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament to people on the street, claiming they were from the Quran. The comedic duo elicited horrified and amused reactions from people when participants realized that the passages did not come from Islamic texts, but the Bible.
In fact, both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran command and restrict violence in defense of the creation and protection of their respective religious communities. The Hebrew Bible commands all-out warfare in order to establish the Jewish religious community in Israel but then commands that non-Jews be free to live in Israel unmolested. The Quran likewise commands warfare to protect the early Islamic community in Arabia but then limits warfare to those who break treaties or persecute Muslims. The New Testament is distinct here in that Jesus commands non-violent resistance and love of enemies, even when the individual or the religious community is threatened (admittedly a precept that many of his followers neglect).
As for treatment of outsiders, the Hebrew Bible says that God gave other religions to other people (Deuteronomy 4:19) and assumes that there are righteous and pious people among non-Jews (like Noah, Enosh, Enoch, Malchizedek, etc.). The Quran presents more explicit and tolerant statements on the subject:
“We (God) have appointed a law and a practice for every one of you. Had God willed, He would have made you a single community, but He wanted to test you regarding what has come to you. So compete with each other in doing good. Every one of you will return to God and He will inform you regarding the things about which you differed.” (Quran 5:48)
Elsewhere, the Quran states, “Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from error, and whoever rejects evil and believes in God has the most trustworthy hand-hold, and that never breaks.” (Quran 2:256) as well as, “And dispute not with the People of the Book, except with means better than mere disputation, unless I be with those of them who inflict wrong and injury. Rather say to them: ‘We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our God and your God is one; and it is to Him that we bow.'” (Quran 29:46)
Mary and Treatment of Women
The Hebrew Bible mentions 133 women by name in its approximately 1,000 pages; the New Testament mentions 33 in around 300 pages; the Quran, at around 500 pages in English, names one: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Women in the Quran generally play a smaller role than in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. For example, in the Hebrew Bible, several women converse directly with God: Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Hannah, and Deborah. In the New Testament, several named women have close relationships with Jesus, and several are described as leaders and “prophetesses” in the early Church. However, the Quran depicts Mary as the only woman who talks to the divine, when she speaks to the angel Gabriel before her conception of Jesus through “the divine breath” (Quran 66:12).
Cain and Abel
In the Bible, Cain murders his brother Abel after God favors Abel’s sacrifice above his own. In the Quran, the details are almost identical, but then the Quran offers the following lesson: “We ordained for the children of Israel that if any one slew a person…it would be as if he slew the whole of mankind: and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole of mankind” (Quran 5:32).
At the same time, in the Jewish Mishna (the religion’s first major redaction of oral traditions), which predates the Quran by centuries, we find the following text in reference to the story of Cain and Abel:
“Man was created single in order to show that to him who kills a single individual it shall be reckoned that he has slain the whole race, but to him who preserves the life of a single individual it is counted that he has preserved the whole race” (Mishnah Sanhedrin, 4:5).
Sodom and Gomorrah
In the Biblical story, Abraham is resting in the heat of the day when he sees three mysterious strangers, whom the Bible identifies as an appearance of God. Abraham feeds them/God and they/God converse with him and his wife, Sarah, promising the couple that they will have a child in their old age.
Afterward, Abraham goes for a walk with the three men, where God tells Abraham that He is about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (the Bible elsewhere says [Ezekiel 16:49] that this was because of their pride, wealth, and mistreatment of the poor, not, as according to a later Christian tradition, because of their embrace of homosexuality). Abraham argues with God, bartering for the people of the cities, and God agrees that if Abraham finds even ten righteous among them He will spare it. The cities don’t pass the test and thus God destroys them.
In the Quran, Abraham receives the same message as above from angels, not identified as God Himself, as that would seemingly provide theological discomfort to have God be so intimate and familiar with humans. Thus, when Abraham attempts to argue with God, he is simply silenced, once again conveying a more transcendent notion of God at a greater distance from human beings.