Authorship is complicated. When we ask “who is the author?” of any particular text we often squeeze many questions into one:
In the case of scriptures we likely have in mind the metaphysical origins of the text. Before any human spoke or wrote these words, did God speak them? And if so, how? The question is more complex if we come to it with strong views about the power and transcendence of God. Can any words be spoken unless God enables them to be spoken, or written unless God enables them to be written? So how are the words of one particular text uniquely God’s speech in a way that other words are not? We might use the word “inspired” for both The Book of Job, and for Hamlet. Both are works of genius. So how is one divinely inspired in a way that the other is not? The nonbeliever might reply that there is no difference. For the believer, whether Christian and Muslim, there is a clear difference that involves claims to unique perfection, unique authority and unique universality. We believe that God has chosen to perfectly and authoritatively speak to all of humanity in these words and only in these words. Putting the question this way our claims are irreconcilable: A Christian who believes the Bible is the unique and authoritative word of God will be unable to call God the author of the Qur’an, nor can a Muslim consider God the author of the Bible in the same way that he believes him to be author of the Qur’an. A Christian might nevertheless read the Qur’an as a valuable classic, possibly thinking of it as “inspired” in the sense that we call other great classics inspired. And many Muslims will be willing to read the Bible with respect, even though most contemporary Muslims believe that it has been corrupted so that human words have become mixed in with divine words. More on that below.
Or we may be asking a literary question: As a matter of literary form, whose voice is speaking in the text? In the case of the Qur’an the answer is easy: God is speaking. This is, in fact, one of the ways in which the Qur’an stands apart from other world scriptures – it is much more self-conscious and direct in its claims to authority and revelation. For the Bible, the questions of literary authorship is far more complex, and becomes especially confusing for Muslim readers. Sometimes Paul or Peter or Isaiah or Luke is speaking; sometimes God speaks directly; sometimes the voice is that of an unknown historian, poet or theologian. In this book, when I talk about God speaking in the Qur’an, I will most often be referring to authorship in this literary sense. When I talk about God speaking in the Bible, I will more often intend it in a metaphysical sense: God is the ultimate source of the words, regardless of the human voice.
Finally, we may be asking about the history of the text. What human voices first spoke or human hands first wrote down the words of the text, and when? This question will be important regardless of how we answer the metaphysical one. Through what human agents did the book come to us? Was the Qur’an recorded by one person, or by many, over a short time or long? Who were those who passed it on, wrote it down, edited or copied it, possibly added their own stamp to it, or inadvertently changed it? Are these not, in some sense, authors too? Thorny questions will inevitably arise with regard to the relationship of this human “authorship” with claims to divine authorship.
With regard to the question of human authorship, Christians and Muslims face a huge divide about how they think about scripture and revelation. Most Muslims hold that Muhammad had no part to play other than faithfully transmitting the words he was given. He was only the channel for words that are entirely God’s. This contrasts sharply with Christian views of the inspiration of scripture, whereby God speaks through the human voices, pens and circumstances of human authors to communicate his word. Muslims tend to come to the Bible expecting an idealized book that matches the Qur’an and consequently are quick to believe that the Bible Christians read is at best a corrupted version of the real thing. Christians will naturally approach the Qur’an as the work of Muhammad or of other human authors. Critical scholarship of the qur’anic and biblical texts further complicates the divide. Modern scholars of the Qur’an have suggested that the text may have taken much longer to reach its final, canonical form than the Muslim tradition suggests, and even the Muslim tradition records evidence of a complex process of compilation and editing–a process that literary scholars think they can trace from the text itself. Muslim polemicists like Ahmed Deedat have eagerly used modern biblical criticism to attack the integrity of the biblical text. Because my aim is for Christians to understand how most Muslims view the Qur’an and the Bible, and for Muslims to understand how most Christians view the two books, this book will not explore these important questions or debates in any depth.
Here’s the difficulty I’m feeling right now. This section seems like it is not finished – that questions raised by critical scholarship about the origins of the Qur’an are hanging out there. But I didn’t really intend to take those on here. How to deal with this? [I’ve updated since asking this question – does it work?]
The concern I feel most definitely as I read this is that the Christian reader may not be prepared by it for the claim by the Muslim that ‘we believe in the Bible.’ Is there a way to speak to that without going down a rabbit trail? Secondarily, how is this Muslim view of the Christian Scriptures different from the Christians’ view of the Hebrew Scriptures?
Regarding your question, is it possible to introduce the subject of critical scholarship about Qur’anic origins sympathetically by comparing it to the critiques that Christians also have had to deal with concerning the Bible? The concerns are different, but it might alert readers to the open discussion while also not creating a disruptive force.
I think Matt’s observation that Christians may be somewhat disconcerted over the statement by Muslims of “We believe the Bible” is a good one. I have seen both that and “We believe in Jesus” really challenge and throw Christian college students who are being introduced to Islam for the first time. That and the fact that they are encountering people with as strong and zealous a faith as their own can cause a faith crisis of sorts. It’s not a bad crisis to have, but if that can be addressed I think it would be helpful.
I’m loving and learning from this project. Thanks for doing it.
This is helpful. I had not thought of addressing that problem, but I’m wondering if this is the right place. Originally this section was slated to be a sidebar, but it is growing beyond that.
I’m a bit uneasy about the question “Isn’t God the ultimate author of everything?” The significant biblical categories of false witness, lies and lying spirits on one hand and the related affirmation that God “cannot lie” (Tit 1:2; cf Num 23:19; Heb 6:17-18) on the other would seem to me to imply that God is not the author of all words, written or spoken. I would prefer to create some cognitive dissonance by asking what they mean when they say that they “believe the Bible.” Typically they only believe in the Bible in the sense that the Qur’an claims to confirm the earlier Scriptures so they must believe in their existence.
Thanks, George. I assume you mean you are uneasy about an implied answer, not the question itself. Maybe the solution is to make clear that this may be another question that divides us.
As I read this through again more carefully, I see what you mean. Yes, I would be uneasy about an affirmative answer. I think I would have to answer the question negatively, or at least assert that God has given genuine autonomy to his creatures, enabling them to speak words that God is not speaking or inspiring.
Two related areas could be clarified:
1) If as Christians we don’t believe the Islamic claim that God wrote the Qur’an, we might need to state clearly that we believe it is (only?) a human production even if we cannot reach definitive conclusions about who authored it. This is what we do with other sacred texts such as the Book of Mormon.
2) The situation is more complicated for Muslims since the Qur’an affirms that God sent down earlier Scriptures, the Tawrat, Zabur and Injil, and belief in these books is a central tenet of Islam, even if the Qur’an is the final word. From this perspective God is for them the author of these earlier Scriptures. But they do not believe that the Christian Bible contains those books, at least in a pure form, and thus do not believe God authored the Bible. Perhaps this issue could be mentioned.
Echoing some of the questions raised above, I think you should write something about specific Muslim beliefs that Christianity corrupted earlier Scriptures and went astray. I recently found a fascinating text by Rumi, where he describes how he believes Christianity was corrupted with a parable: The story goes that a Jewish king wanted to infiltrate Christianity and corrupt it, and so he pretended to convert, but his secret mission was really to tell lies and contradictory teachings to each of his 12 students, so that they would get into fights about it after his death.
I was really struck by this parable. It shows the honest and hard feelings of a (Sufi) Muslim about the sectarianism and divisions he saw in Christianity (interestingly, the opinions of the 12 traditions are not so much theological as they are practical, but he does mention debates about “faith and works”). This is also a historical problem which has provoked not a few crises of faith in Christians, too.
This also shows how Muslims tend to take pride in simplicity: the oneness of God, the unity and simplicity of faith and religion, the ummah and community of Muslims. What would be the Christian response to this?
Rumi may be following a fairly common pattern, using Christians in his parable when his true target is not Christianity but sectarianism among Muslims. Dante does something similar. His Muslim occupants of hell are sometimes transparently there as stand-ins for his real targets, or so it seems to me. In Rumi’s case that would explain why the divisions are practical, not theological. Similarly, the faith/works dispute is very much a native Muslim problem.