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Qur^an have usually been unaware of the inadequacy of their own yardsticks. Missionary literature does not in general show much awareness
of the differences between the Jesus of the NT and the Christ of
Christological dogma, or of the existence of several rather different
Christologies in the NT itself. Hence, the customary missionary approach both fails to do justice to the alien tradition and lacks a realistic
picture of its own tradition. It goes without saying that this fault does
not lie with Christians alone. Standard Muslim criticism of Christianity
and the Bible is certainly not less guilty in this respect.
In recent times, however, polemics and criticism have to a great extent
given way to a new dialogical approach. There is a desire to achieve
"fraternal understanding between the children of Abraham"6 in the
search for social justice, moral values and world peace. One is eager to
find in representatives of the other religion allies against the increasing
encroachment of secularization. Laudable as such an enterprise is, the
dangers inherent in the dialogical approach are those of superficiality
and anachronism. One can easily read the Qur5n with a Christian bias,
more or less ignoring the historical context of the book. Paradoxically
enough, certain claims belonging to the old polemical literature are time
and again repeated in a new form in the dialogue: the Qwan, as opposed to later Islam, does not (it is held) deny the divinity of Jesus or the
Christian doctrine of the Logos.7 But the Qur5n is not to be expounded
by the NT. Against all dialogical claims it should be emphasized that a
knowledge of the NT is not at all necessary for an understanding of the
Qur5an in its historical setting.8
The third approach may be termed historical. During the last hundred
years much work has been done to trace all sorts of traditions which
went into the making of the QurDan. Jewish and Judeo-Christian,
Nestorian and Monophysite, Manichaean and Gnostic motives and
traditions have been discovered. Especially clear is the influence of certain popular apocryphal traditions concerning Mary and the birth and
childhood of Jesus. This tracing of sources is part of the historical task,
but by no means the whole of it or even the most important aspect. The
Qur5an is not just the sum of its 'sources.' The establishment of the
origin of some of its elements does not add up to an 'explanation' of the
book. Muhammad was not merely a collector of ideas. Whatever tradi* Denise Masson, Le Coran et la rvlation Judo-Chrtienne, I (Paris: AdrienMaisonneuve, 1958), p. 7.
7
See, e.g., R. C. Zaehner, At Sundry Times (London: Faber & Faber, 1958), pp. 209,
216.
Contra Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur^Qn (London: Faber & Faber, 1965),
p. 173.
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tions were available to him, they all passed through his fervid religious
experience and were transmuted by it. Every detail in the QurDan,
whatever its origin may be, must be interpreted in the light of the new
Quranic context. The QurDn must be explained by the Quran and not
by anything else. This is the lesson to be learnt from the 'redactioncritical' studies of the Old and the New Testament. No matter what the
Christians meant, for instance, when they spoke of Jesus as the
"Word" of God, from the point of view of the QurDn the only relevant
question is: "What could Muhammad possibly mean by that expression
in the context of his total view?" Seen against the background of
Muhammad's theology as a whole, the Quranic portrait of Jesus stands
out as coherent and clear. The various stories of Jesus and the
references to him, as well as the more dogmatic Christian statements
known to Muhammad, were reinterpreted by Muhammad in the light of
his own personal experience. Like other previous messengers of God,
Jesus became an example and a precursor of Muhammad, a guarantor
of Muhammad's message who had experienced similar things.
To speak of the Qur^an as an expression of Muhammad's religious
experience is bound to offend Muslims. Many Christian writers, Watt
and Parrinder for instance, attempt, therefore, to avoid such language
altogether.9 This kind of language also appears to violate an often cited
canon, formulated by W. Cantwell Smith, according to which "no
statement about a religion is valid unless it can be acknowledged by that
religion's believers."10 I think Cantwell Smith is right as regards
descriptions of what is believed today by adherents of a religion. But his
statement should not be applied to the historical study of religions.
When a NT scholar tries to reconstruct the teaching of the historical
Jesus, he does not and cannot stop to ask the average Christian believer
what he thinks of the issue. On the contrary, the Biblical critic is likely
to try to persuade the ordinary Christian to take another look at the
historical evidence and rethink the whole thing. There is no reverting of
the historical insights of the last two centuries. Christian theologians
have had to learn to cope with the strictly historical treatment of their
holy Scripture. They may be forgiven if they apply the same methods to
other Scriptures, provided that the standards they apply are in fact the
same.11 I feel justified in speaking of the Qur3an in terms of Muham9
Cf. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (London: Oxford University Press,
1953), p. x; Parrinder, Jesus, p. 10.
10
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, "Comparative Religion: Whither and Why?," in The
History of Religions, ed. by Mircea Eliade and Joseph Kitagawa (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1959), p. 42.
1
' For an attempt to compare the Bible and the Qur3an from this perspective, see Heikki
Risnen, The Idea of Divine Hardening, 2nd ed. (Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society, 1976).
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Chosen One (Lk 9:35, Acts 3:20). His mighty acts were in fact worked
by God through him (Acts 2:22), for God was with him (Acts 10:38).
One may compare Muhammad's contention that Jesus worked his signs
with God's permission. Jesus was killed according to God's plan (Acts
2:23). God raised him from the dead and made him Lord and Christ
(Acts 2:23, 36). Professor John Hick is quite justified in inferring from
such verses that "the first Christian preachers did not draw the conclusion that he [Jesus] was himself God but that he was a man chosen by
God for a special role and declared by his resurrection to be Messiah
and Lord."15 In his Infancy narrative Luke seems to indicate that Jesus
was chosen for this role from the very beginning, before he was born; he
also emphasizes God's creative activity in the whole matter. A certain
tension exists between this and the statement in Acts 10:38, where Jesus'
anointment with the Holy Spirit and with power is connected with his
baptism. In Luke 1 the anointment is dated further back. Nevertheless,
the total picture is not much affected by such differences. Jesus is God's
chosen agent who does God's work, submits himself to suffering and
death according to God's plan, and is raised to divine glory by God.
Canon John Drury comments:
Luke's Jewish historical faith determines his theology of Christ,
notoriously lower than some. It is in fact as high as traditional
historical monotheism will allow and no higher....
Luke's Jesus is the epitome and compendium of the men whom
God raised up: he is Son of God like the kings, wise men and
Joseph in Joseph and Asenath, he is Son of David born in David's
city, teacher, and, most striking of all, a prophet in the mould of
Elijah, which role Luke deliberately takes from John...and gives to
Jesus.16
Of the men raised up by God he is primus inter pares, as such
having the uniqueness which is a gift of the spirit bestowed on
man.... It does not seem necessary in the Lukan frame to posit that
uniqueness of kind which has been the rampart of Christian
separatism.... Monotheism reserves that transcendent uniqueness
for God....17
Altogether, Drury can speak of a "take off" rather than a "landing"
Christology in Luke.18
15
John Hick, "Jesus and the World Religions," in The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. by
John Hick (London: SCM Press, 1977), p. 171.
16
John Drury, Tradition and Design in Luke's Gospel (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1976), p. 9.
17
Ibid., p. 12.
18
Ibid., p. 123.
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And even C.H. Dodd, who made out an attractive case for the
existence of historical tradition in the Fourth Gospel, could write
concerning the statements about the Paraclete: "It would seem that the
evangelist was conscious of putting forward a bold reinterpretation of
what was believed to be the teaching of Jesus."22
The Johannine reinterpretation of older traditions is, needless to say,
quite different from the later Quranic one. They reflect different
religious experiences and, probably to an even greater extent, different
cultural presuppositions. The notion of Jesus' prexistence, so important to the Fourth Evangelist, came to him through traditions molded
by Jewish speculation as to the prexistent Wisdom of God, the
mediator of creation, as is recognized almost universally by NT scholars
today. John and his precursors interpreted their experience of the risen
Christ through the lenses supplied by such speculations. Muhammad,
on the other hand, interpreted the Jesus tradition known to him in the
light of his strict monotheism and through his experience with Arabian
polytheism. The results were bound to be poles apart, but the
phenomenological processes themselves look remarkably similar. Of
course, it may be argued, as Professor Moule does,23 that the Johannine
interpretation is only a development of something that was there from
the very beginning, whereas Muhammad's interpretation implies a far
more radical break with previous tradition. In other words, "reinterpretation" may turn out to be far too vague a category. On the other
hand, the category of organic development is problematic, too, as
Professor Moule himself admits. As regards the prexistence of Jesus, it
would seem that that notion simply did not exist, either explicitly or
implicitly, in Jesus' own message or in the Synoptic tradition and that it
may be taken as an extremely radical Christological reinterpretation. So
21
Ernst Ksemann, Essays on New Testament Themes (London: SCM Press, 1964),
p. 32.
22
Charles Harold Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, repr. 1968), p. 406.
23
Moule, Origin, pp. 2 ff. and passim.
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there are problems on both sides. I should like simply to point out that
at a certain level, at least, there are similarities between the Bible and the
QurDan which have hitherto been largely overlooked.
Prophecies. Christians have always objected that Muhammad falsely
applied Biblical prophecies to himself, above all the promise of the
Paraclete in John (if that is what the ahmad passage, S. 61:6, refers to).
Such a criticism is, of course, quite justified, but it is one that is likely to
backfire. Precisely the same kind of thing happened when the early
Christians read the OT, searching for prophecies about Jesus. Such
prophecies were detected everywhere. The Gospel of Matthew in particular offers a rich body of material in this respect. Even Professor
Moule admits that Matthew "seems to be doing much the same" as the
Qumran sect was doing in its "abuse" of the Scripture (as he chooses to
call it). "Ignoring the original context and doing violence to the original
meaning, the Evangelist fits the ancient words by force into a contemporary, Christian meaning...."24 Exactly. To be sure, Professor Moule
also asserts that the Christians' arbitrary use of the words of Scripture is
to be explained by the fact that they had "discovered in Jesus an overall
fulfilment, on the deepest level, of what Scripture as a whole reflected."
This he takes to mean that, in the case of Jesus, "in contrast to the
Qumran sect's leader, there was found to be fulfilment in a far profounder, and a deeply religious sense."25 But certainly the Qumran sect
had also discovered an overall fulfilment of Scripture in a deeply
religious sense in what was happening and what was expected still to
happen to them, and it is futile to quarrel as to whose discovery was the
more profound. Muhammad's procedure in his interpretation of what
he knew of Jewish and Christian Scriptures was neither less nor more arbitrary than that of the Christians or that of the Qumran sect (or the
Rabbis, or the Church Fathers).
John the Baptist. One last example. What happened to Jesus in the
Qur5an resembles in many ways the fate of John the Baptist in the NT.
In the Qwan, Jesus became a precursor of Muhammad and a witness
to him. This is exactly what happened to the Baptist with respect to
Jesus in the Christian tradition. It is doubtful whether the historical
John ever expected anyone like Jesus to come after him. Most probably
he only expected, if not God Himself, then the Danielle Son of Man,
conceived as a superhuman heavenly judge, to set his seal on his
preaching of repentance.26
24
Ibid., p. 128.
bid., p. 129.
26
See Jrgen Becker, Johannes der Tufer und Jesus von Nazareth (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1972), pp. 34 ff.
25
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The portrait of John in Matthew is particularly instructive.27 According to Matthew, John's message is perfectly identical with Jesus'
preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. "Repent, for the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand," says John (Mt 3:2). So does Jesus, in exactly the
same words, as he begins his preaching (4:17). This parallel results from
Matthew's editing of his sources. At other points, too, identical
statements recur in the mouths of John and Jesus (3:1 Ob/7:19,
3:7b/23:33; cf. 12:34), both of whom have to face a similar front of opposition. The Pharisaic opposition to Jesus is retrojected into the mission of John, the clearest case being the editorial framing of John's proclamation of judgment in 3:7a, where Matthew (differing from Luke
and probably from the common source known as Q as well) makes the
Baptist address "the Pharisees and the Sadducees." On the whole, Matthew speaks of John as if he and his disciples were ordinary Christians.
All these features recall Muhammad's treatment of the Jesus traditions.
Jesus preaches just like Muhammad, faces a similar front of opposition
and makes his disciples Muslims. On the other hand, just as Matthew
never allows John to interfere with Jesus' exclusive significance as the
Redeemer,28 Muhammad makes a clear distinction in rank between
Jesus and himself, the "seal of the prophets." Both the Baptist in the
NT and Jesus in the QurDn point to the greater one who was to come.
IV
Different as the Bible and the Qur^n are, from a phenomenological
point of view the processes that led to their respective formations look
remarkably similar. Of course, the Qur^n is a single book, whereas the
Bible is a library in itself. In the Qur3n we can study the religious experience of a single individual within a relatively short period of time. In
the Bible we are confronted with the experiences and reinterpretations
of many succeeding generations in changing cultural circumstances.
Nevertheless, the general similarities remain.
Wherever our personal roots happen to be, we all exist within a living
and constantly changing context of tradition and interpretation. The
most meaningful thing to do would seem to be to help one another to
react in creative ways to our new situations and to find constructive
27
See Wolfgang Trilling, "Die Tufertradition bei Matthus," Biblische Zeitschrift,
III (1959), 271 ff.
28
Matthew makes a sharper distinction than Mark, omitting Mark's remark that
John's baptism was for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4) and inserting a corresponding
remark on forgiveness in the story of the institution of the Eucharist (Mt 26:28).
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HEIKKI RISNEN