What does the Quran mean by “the Book”? 7 uses, and what they decide

The verb kataba is the ordinary word for write. It is also the word for decree. Quran 2:183 says that fasting is “decreed upon you as it was decreed upon those before you”, and in 7:156 God says, “I will decree it for those who fear Me and give zakāh and those who believe in Our verses”.^[1] In neither verse does anything get written on a page.

A Muslim who reads the root this way has the Quran behind him. The sense of “decree” does not by itself settle 7:157, which speaks of a prophet “whom they find written” with them in the Torah and the Gospel. That verse uses the participle maktūb, and the natural reading of a thing found “written with them in” two books is a thing found in a text. Saheeh International glosses it “[i.e., described]”.^[2]

This matters for the argument about which verses to cite. A verse that uses a form of the root for what God has decreed, such as the fast, tells the reader nothing about a book in anyone’s hands. Before using a verse as evidence of a written scripture, the reader should ask which sense of the root the verse intends, and 7:157 is the only one of the verses discussed here where the written sense is the natural one.

Strength: firm that the root carries both senses. The sense in 7:157 is open, and the plain reading favours a text.

Quran 13:39 says that God eliminates what he wills or confirms, “and with Him is the Mother of the Book”. Quran 43:4 says that the Quran is “in the Mother of the Book with Us, exalted and full of wisdom”. Quran 85:21 to 22 calls it an honoured Quran “in a Preserved Slate”, and 56:77 to 78 calls it “a noble Qur’an in a Register well-protected”.^[3]

In these verses the Book is the source of revelation, kept with God. The books sent to Moses عليه السلام and Jesus and Muhammad ﷺ ﷺ are its earthly forms. Seen so, “the Book” in many verses means the revelation and not a manuscript, and a verse that tells the People of the Book to hold to “their Book” is speaking of what God gave them.

Strength: firm. The verses are plain. They do not say that every use of the word has this meaning.

The second chapter opens, “This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allāh” (2:2). Quran 46:12 says, “before it was the scripture of Moses to lead and as a mercy. And this is a confirming Book in an Arabic tongue”.^[4] Both Books named in 46:12 are revelations, and the Quran, which existed in the Prophet’s lifetime as recitation, is one of them.

The Prophet ﷺ is told in 29:48 that he never recited any scripture before the Quran, nor inscribed one with his right hand.^[5] Yet the Quran calls its own message “the Book”. So the word cannot mean only a bound volume in its first use for the Quran. The same must be allowed for the Torah and the Gospel.

The consequence for the earlier books is direct. If the Quran uses “the Book” for a message that was recited and not yet written, then a verse that says the Torah and the Gospel were “sent down” is about the revelation to Moses and Jesus. It does not say what survives in a particular manuscript, and that question needs other evidence.

Strength: firm. The usage is the Quran’s own for its own message.

Quran 6:7 speaks of “a written scripture on a page” that the disbelievers might touch with their hands. Quran 6:91 says that the Book Moses brought as light and guidance is made by some into “pages”, which they disclose in part and conceal in much. Quran 2:79 condemns those who write the “scripture” with their own hands and say it is from God.^[6]

These verses show that the Quran distinguishes the revelation from the sheets on which people copy it. A written object in human hands is a recognised thing in the Quran, and it is the thing that can be partly hidden, altered, or sold. A Muslim who reads the earlier “books” as mixed written forms of a revelation has these verses behind him.

The point is not that the Quran treats every written copy with suspicion. Quran 2:282 commands that debts be written down, and the Quran swears by the pen elsewhere. The point is that writing is a tool, and a written text can carry the revelation well or badly depending on the hands that made it. The verses on the earlier books speak about the second possibility, and they say so in the same breath as they say the revelation was light and guidance.

Strength: firm. The three verses are explicit, and they cut against any reading in which every earlier written form carries full authority.

In Quran 19:30 the infant Jesus speaks and says, “Indeed, I am the servant of Allāh. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.” Quran 3:48 says that God will teach him “writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel”, and 5:110 repeats it among the favours God recalls to him.^[7]

A child speaking in the cradle has been given the Book already, before any teaching and before any follower could write a Gospel. So the Injīl is something God gave to Jesus, who taught it, and not a document written by others about him. The same word is used in the singular for the Gospel throughout.

A critic can answer that these verses do not say the written Gospels preserve nothing of it. They are not meant to. Strength: moderate. The verses fix what the Injīl is. They do not say how much of it the later books hold.

The first is Quran 3:93: “bring the Torah and recite it, if you should be truthful”. The challenge takes for granted that a Torah could be brought and recited in Medina. The second is 2:85, which asks the Jews of Medina, “Do you believe in part of the Scripture and disbelieve in part?” A critic says that a Muslim who sets part of the earlier Book aside does the same.^[8]

The context of 2:85 answers the second. The verse is about people who ransom captives, as their Book commands, while driving their own people from their homes, which it forbids. It rebukes picking among commands of one Book that the speakers accept as binding. It does not say that no part of an earlier Book may be set aside. The first is harder. A Torah that could be recited in Medina existed, in some form, and the Muslim answer must allow that.

Strength: moderate. Verse 2:85 is answered by its context. Verse 3:93 stays as a point for the other side.

In the account of the first revelation, Khadīja takes the Prophet ﷺ to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, who had become a Christian and “used to write in Hebrew letters”, and who “would write from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as Allah wished him to write”. He was old and blind. This is Sahih al-Bukhari 3.^[9] Another report in the same collection says that he wrote in Arabic, and scholars have reconciled the two by saying that he could write in both.^[10]

The report shows that a man in Mecca could write out parts of a Gospel, “as much as Allah wished”. It does not show a complete scripture in Arabic circulating among the Arabs, and no written Arabic Bible from before Islam has come to light.^[11] Taken together with the Quran’s own usage, the report fits a revelation known in part and in more than one language, with portions written down by those who could.

Strength: moderate. The report is in the most trusted collection. The details of what he wrote, and in which script, rest on two reports that differ.