Biblical Turns of Phrase in the Quran

Abstract

Academic scholars have long recognized that the Quran is a text closely related to the Bible and later biblical tradition.1 Already in 1833 Abraham Geiger devoted a book,Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (What has Muḥammad taken from Judaism?) to the question of the relationship of the Quran to Jewish tradition. The standard study of the Quran’s relationship to the Bible, Heinrich Speyer’s Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (The biblical narratives of the Quran), published about a hundred years later, includes detailed discussions of the Quran’s biblical material in relation to Jewish and Christian literature. Scholars have also long recognized, however, that the Quran tends not to reproduce biblical passages closely. Indeed, by my reading, the Quran has not a single passage that we might properly consider a quotation of the canonical Bible.2 The closest thing to a quotation in the Quran comes not from the Bible but from the Mishna.3