Critics say the Quran copied from Jewish and Christian writings, and they list the matches: Cain and the raven, Abraham and the idols, Solomon and the queen of Sheba, the clay birds of the child Jesus. Some of these matches are real, and a reader should hear that first.
Below are six points: how to test a parallel, four sets of Jewish parallels and the Christian ones. Each gives the parallel, the likely date of the other source, which way influence could run, and what Muslim scholars say. Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the recipient of the Quran on the Muslim account, and that claim is weighed where it bears on the evidence.
Two books that tell the same story raise three questions. Which source is older? Could the later author have reached it? Does the later version contain details found only in the earlier one? Dates matter a great deal. The Mishnah (the early rabbinic law code) was compiled around the year 200, and Genesis Rabbah, a midrash (rabbinic storytelling that expands the Bible), is usually placed in the fifth century. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, the Targum Sheni to Esther and the Targum known as Pseudo-Jonathan (a targum is an Aramaic translation with added commentary) are later or hard to date, and many scholars put them after the rise of Islam.[1]
The critics have a fair starting point. Abraham Geiger argued in 1833 that Muhammad drew on Judaism, and scholars have debated the question since. Muslims answer that the Quran never hides a shared heritage. It says it confirms and guards what came before (5:48) and that it explains much of what the Children of Israel dispute (27:76). Dates can show that a given source is too late to be the source. They cannot show, alone, that an Arabic text was fed by a written Jewish one, because stories travelled by speech.[1]
In 5:27-31 Cain kills Abel and does not know what to do with the body. God sends a raven that scratches the ground, and Cain learns to bury his brother. Genesis 4 has no raven. The detail appears in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, a work usually dated to the eighth or ninth century, so it cannot be shown to be the earlier source. The critique also names a Targum Jonathan, whose date is itself debated. Scholars disagree on whether such late midrash preserves older lore or took material from its Arabic surroundings.[2]
Verse 5:32 is the strongest case. It says that whoever kills a soul, other than for a soul or for corruption in the land, is as if he had killed all people, and whoever saves one is as if he had saved all people. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) says that whoever destroys one soul is counted as if he destroyed a whole world. The saying is clearly related and much older.[3]
The Quran itself introduces the verse with “We decreed upon the Children of Israel.” It names the earlier community as the source of the ruling and does not claim novelty. It also adds the two exceptions and applies the rule to all humanity. Manuscripts of the Jewish saying differ on whether it speaks of any person or only of a person of Israel, and scholars discuss which wording is older.[3]
In 21:51-70 Abraham breaks the idols of his people but leaves the largest, and tells them to ask it who did the deed. They throw him into a fire, and God makes it cool. Genesis Rabbah 38 has a very similar tale: Terah’s idol shop, the smashed images, the blame laid on the biggest idol, and a fire from which Abraham is saved. That midrash is from about the fifth century, two centuries before the Quran, and the book of Jubilees (chapter 12) has an older story of Abraham burning an idol house.[4]
Here the critic has a strong point: the outline is shared, and the earlier date is secure. The Muslim response does not deny the resemblance. It says that the tradition of Abraham confronting idolatry is a common inheritance of the communities that claim him, and that the Quran retells it in its own manner. The Quran also gives Abraham a reasoned argument from the setting of the stars, the moon and the sun (6:74-79) and ends with the plain statement of devotion to the One who created the heavens and the earth.[4]
Whether shared inheritance or copying explains the match, the sources cannot say. A reader who accepts revelation has no reason to expect the story of a real prophet to be absent from earlier memory.
The Quran says that the queen of Sheba was invited into a palace court. She took the floor for a pool of water and bared her legs, and Solomon told her that it was a court paved with glass. She then said that she had wronged herself and submitted to God (27:44). The Targum Sheni to Esther 1:2 tells of Solomon’s throne and a glass floor that Sheba took for water.[5]
The two versions share the central trick. The date of Targum Sheni is disputed, and many scholars place it after the Quran, which weakens the claim that the Quran took the scene from it. The Targum also gives the episode a different purpose. It adds remarks about the queen’s body that the Quran lacks, and the Quran ends the scene with her conversion to the worship of the Lord of the worlds.[5]
The motif was in Jewish tradition when the Targum was written down, and nobody can fix the order of the two texts. Muslims need not defend a direction, since both could draw on an older source now lost.
Several smaller motifs are cited in the critique. In 20:88 the calf made by the Israelites has a body that lows. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 45 has the golden calf come out lowing, again a late source. In 2:63 and 7:171 the mountain is raised over the Israelites, and the Talmud (Shabbat 88a) says God held Sinai over them like a vat. That Talmud passage is older, and the parallel stands.[6]
The Quran speaks of seven heavens (2:29, 67:3), and the Talmud (Hagigah 12b) names seven. Cosmologies with seven heavens were widespread in the ancient world, so neither book can be said to own the idea. The weighing of deeds on a scale (21:47) has an Egyptian ancestry far older than either, and rabbinic texts also speak of a balance of merits and sins.[7]
The man who sleeps in death for a hundred years (2:259) recalls Honi the Circle-Drawer, who slept seventy years (Taanit 23a). The number, the donkey and the lesson of resurrection are the Quran’s own. Commentators name the man differently, and the Quran names none.[8] Together these show a common stock of imagery. They do not show that any passage depends on one text.
The Quran says that Jesus made a bird from clay and breathed into it, by God’s leave (3:49, 5:110). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a text of the second century or later, tells of the child Jesus making sparrows from clay on the Sabbath and bringing them to life. The Quran says that he spoke from the cradle (19:29-33), and the Arabic Infancy Gospel has the same motif. The palm tree that gives Mary dates in 19:23-26 resembles the palm that bends for her in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a compilation usually dated to the eighth or ninth century. Mary’s dedication and upbringing in the temple (3:35-44) resembles the Protevangelium of James, from the second century.[9]
The dates give a mixed result. Thomas and the Protevangelium are older than the Quran, so the critic’s claim is possible. Pseudo-Matthew is later than the Quran, so it cannot have been the source. The Arabic Infancy Gospel is hard to date, and a case can be made that it reflects the Arabic-speaking Christian milieu.
The Quran also leaves out what is most striking in those books. Thomas has the child Jesus curse a boy who then dies, and the Quran has nothing of the kind. In the Quran the infant speaks to defend his mother and calls himself God’s servant (19:30). Muslim scholars hold that the Quran reports true events that Christian storytellers had embroidered. The Sleepers and Alexander are handled in 6 Quranic stories and what other sources say.
The bottom line
Some parallels are close and old: the saying behind 5:32, the story of Abraham and the idols, the mountain over Sinai, the clay birds. Others rest on late sources, such as the raven, the glass floor and the palm tree. No parallel proves copying, since stories moved by speech and a common stock of lore lies behind both books.
A Muslim can grant the similarities and still hold the Quran to be revelation, because it says openly that it confirms earlier scripture. The skeptic can read the same table as influence. The data fit both readings, and the choice depends on the weight a reader gives to the Quran’s own claim. For that claim see Who wrote the Quran? 5 answers to the authorship claim.
Notes
- Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (1833); Quran 5:48; 27:76; H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, for dates of the rabbinic works.
- Quran 5:27-31; Genesis 4:1-16; Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 21.
- Quran 5:32; Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5.
- Quran 21:51-70; 6:74-79; Genesis Rabbah 38; Jubilees 12.
- Quran 27:15-44; Targum Sheni on Esther 1:2.
- Quran 20:85-98; 2:63; 7:171; Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 45; Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a.
- Quran 2:29; 67:3; 21:47; Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 12b; Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16b-17a.
- Quran 2:259; Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 23a; the classical tafsir (commentary) of al-Tabari on 2:259 for the different identifications.
- Quran 3:35-44; 3:46; 3:49; 5:110; 19:16-33; Infancy Gospel of Thomas 2; Arabic Infancy Gospel; Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 20; Protevangelium of James 4-8.