Discovering the Biblical Roots of the Qur’an

Western scholarship has shown interest in the Qur’an from the early period of Islam. The initial works served mostly religious purposes as they were produced to defend Christianity and Judaism against the emerging religion.1 More serious studies on the subject that approached the study of the Qur’an through a historicalcritical method began to arise in the 19th century and have continued to gain momentum since then. The initial studies mostly paid attention to the similarities between Islam and the Judeo-Christian heritage. They held the assumption that Islam was a sect, which was derived from Judeo-Christian heritage. In order to verify this assumption, they relied extensively upon the method of examining ‘historical data’ that is thought to point out the strong presence of Judaism and Christianity in the region and their influence on Muḥammad in establishing the nascent religion. The second methodology that they used was literary analysis of the Qur’an. Western scholarship of the time analysed these words comparatively with biblical sources to strengthen their argument that Old and New Testaments deeply influenced the Qur’an.

Abraham Geiger, a German rabbi and scholar who founded Reform Judaism, carried out one of the first historical-critical approaches to Qur’an. His work entitled Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judentume aufgenommen (Judaism and Islam) published in 1833, was based on the ‘assumption that Muḥammad borrowed from Judaism’, in his quest to establish a new religion. Geiger's work is very comprehensive as he scrutinised the qur’anic verses comparatively with the Judaic sources to point out the ‘influence’ of the Hebrew Scriptures on the Qur’an. He also elaborates upon the presence of the Jewish tribes in Medina to make the connection. The strong presence of various Jewish tribes in Medina is crucial for Geiger's thesis and enables him to argue that Muḥammad interacted with these Jewish tribes at different levels, and as a result, Jewish teachings influenced him. He further speculated that Muḥammad would learn them through word of mouth only.