Common Themes For Peaceful Co-Existence. The Books: Bible & Qur’an - See more at: vanguardngr/2014/06/common-themes-peaceful-co-existence-books-bible-quran/#sthash.yc5yBWdB.dpuf OR GET THE BOOK BY M.O. OPELOYE. IF YOU CAN FIND TIME TO READ IS VERY INTERESTING. THE QUR’AN THE Qur’an is the holy of Islam. The scripture is believed by the Muslims to be the final revelation from God to Mankind (Al-Mallah, 2008:96). It is believed to contain words of God and consequently, it serves as an expression of divine will. According to Charis Waddy (1982:14), if the Qur’an has to be compared with anything in Christianity, it must be compared with Christ Himself. This is because Christ, according to christian belief, is the expression of the divine among men, the revelation of the divine will and this is what the Qur’an is for Muslims. He compares the role of Muhammad with that of Mary because Muhammad was the vehicle of the divine words as Mary was the vehicle of Jesus birth. The Muslims regard the Qur’an as the greatest of all miracles, hence, much reverence is given to it. The collection of divine revelations in the Qur’an serves Muslims as the primary source of guidance. It is also a source for their religious doctrines.M O Opeloye The Qur’an was revealed in the Arabic language. Kenneth Cragg(1971: 40) rightly remarks that Qur’an is the glory of Arabic while Arabic is the pride of the Qur’an. The scripture is divided into one hundred and fourteen (114) chapters of unequal length known as suwar (plural of Surah). The particular titles are sometimes taken from a particular matter treated or a person mentioned therein. The Qur’an gives us some information regarding its revelation. According to the scripture, it was revealed to prophet Muhammad through angel Gabriel (Jibril) as evident in Surah 26: 192-195 which reads: “And surely this is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds, the faithful spirit has come down with it upon thy heart, that thou may be of the warners…” Surah 2:97 of the scripture, clarifies who the faithful spirit is when it declares: “Whoever is the enemy of Gabriel, surely he revealed it (the Qur’an) to thy heart by Allah’s command”. From these passages it is understood that the Qur’an is a divine message revealed through Gabriel and not a prophetic utterance made under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Qur’an was revealed piecemeal within a period spanning almost twenty-three years (610-632 C.E.). In other words, the Qur’anic revelation was progressive, a fact confirmed by Surah 17:107 which claims that the scripture was revealed in stages. The first revelation of the Qur’an occurred at the Cave of Hirah in the month of Ramadan on a night later known as Lailatul Qadri (Surah 2: 185, and Surah 97:1). This was sequel to Angel Gabriel’s visit to the cave at the time Muhammad was on meditation there.1 The central themes of the Qur’an are creation and invitation of man to the right way in which the prophets from Adam to Muhammad were engaged. The preservation of the Qur’an Each time Muhammad received a revelation, he recited it to the companions, who, at once, committed it to memory and writing. Thus emerged two models of preserving the scripture. Collection of the Qur’an The historical account of how the Qur’an was collected as a canonized scripture is more complex than it is sometimes thought. This is as a result of the diverse traditions on the subject. In al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur’an by Al Khoee, A.A (nd: 240) alone, twenty-two of such traditions are listed. The most widely accepted tradition, however, is the one attributed to Zaid b. Thabit which is quoted below as contained in al-Jamic Li ahkam al-Qur’an vol. 1 of al Qurtubi (nd : 50)Zaid reports as follows: Abu Bakr sent for me on the occasion of the deaths of those killed in Yamamah wars. I found Umar b. al-Khattab with him, Abu Bakr said, ‘Umar has just come to me and said: ‘In the Yamamah fighting death has dealt most severely with the Qurra and I fear it will deal with equal severity with them in other theatres of war, and, as a result, much of the Qur’an will perish. I am, therefore, of the opinion that you should command that the Qur’an be collected.’ Abu Bakr added, “I said to Umar, ‘How can we do what the prophet never did?’ Umar replied ‘that it is nonetheless a good act. He did not cease replying to my scruples until God reconciled me to the undertaking/Abu Bakr continued, “Zaid, you are young and intelligent and we know nothing to your discredit. You used to record the revelations for the prophet. So pursue the Qur’an and collect it all together.” By God! had they asked me to remove a mountain it could not have been more weighty than what they would have me do in ordering me to collect the Qur’an. I, therefore, asked them how they could do what the prophet had not done, but Abu Bakr insisted that it was permissible. He did not cease replying to my scruples until God reconciled me to the undertaking as He had already reconciled Abu Bakr and Umar. I thereupon pursued the Qur’an collecting it all together from palm-branches, flat stones and the memories of men … From this report, we can deduce the following facts: that Muhammad did not collect a complete written text of the Qur’an before his death; that nothing of the Qur’an was lost; that it was preserved primarily in oral form and that when recorded the recording was done on primitive materials; that the first official retention authorised by the first caliph was also the first complete collection. Most Muslims not only recognise these points as facts but regard the narration as the authentic historical account of the collection of the Qur’an. THE BIBLE According to Arndt and Gingrich (1979: 141) the word Bible is derived from the Greek word biblion which means book. The plural form is biblia. The Bible contains sixty-six books; thirty-nine form the Old Testament (OT) while twenty-seven form the New Testament (NT). The OT books are classified into three, namely: The Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy), The Prophets (former prophets – Joshua to Kings; later prophets – Isaiah to Malachi) and The Writings (Cook Stanley 1958: 35). The NT, on the other hand, comprises the Gospels, the Acts, the Letters and the Apocalypse. We would discuss these books in greater details in Chapter Three. Even though the Bible consists of two testaments, they are not independent of each other; as a matter of fact, the NT complements the OT. It has been argued that Christianity originated from the OT because the ethical monotheism” which was perfected in Jesus, originated and developed in Israel. According to Baker (1976: 159), the cultic and nationalistic elements of the OT were eventually subordinated to this spiritual faith in the preaching of the prophets, and Jesus simply continued their message. Central themes of the Bible The central themes of the Bible, reveal continuity in the two testaments. The themes are creation, sin, fall, redemption and salvation. In the beginning, God created man and he was in the state of well-being until he was tempted to sin and consequently fell. God started a plan of redemption with Abraham and made promises in Genesis twelve. Thus, Israel was to be a prototype to reach out to the entire world. Under the leadership of Moses, God made a covenant with the Israelites. They settled in Canaan and established a monarchy. Corruption reigned supreme, consequently prophets appeared on the scene. The kingdoms later fell: the North was captured by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. and the south (Judah) was captured by Babylonians in 586 B.C. This incident was followed by the exile of the Israelites. The first of the exiles returned to Jerusalem from Babylon in 538 B.C. Return from the exile saw the beginning of the inter-testamental period when the messianic expectation was rife. The NT era was ushered in by John the Baptist. With the advent of Jesus (the expected Messiah) the Gospel was declared and after him the apostles propagated it with emphasis on the second coming of Jesus, while the eschatological events are being anticipated as enunciated in the Book of Revelation. Thus God’s singular programme developed progressively from Genesis to Revelation. The Biblical books were not committed to writing very early. Perhaps this was due to the importance attached to memorisation or because writing was cumbersome in those days. Much of the OT was based on oral tradition. The Pentateuch to Samuel was based on many oral traditions which centered mainly around the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, David and later in a section of Kings, Elijah and Elisha (Wilfred, J.H 1976: 21). This, however, does not rule out the use of written sources. David and others, such as Solomon, Jeroboam I and II probably had secretaries in their courts who could have recorded events that happened during their reigns. This is to say that the Israelites were not ignorant of the art of writing. They were exposed, in some ways, to writing because of their contact with Egypt. For instance, the Ten Commandments were immediately written down. Different reasons have been advanced for why the NT was not written very early: the active participants (i.e., Jesus’ disciples) were still alive; their reliance on their retentive memory; emphasis on the Kerygma (i.e., oral message preached); anticipation of the early second coming of Jesus; persecution of the Jews by the Romans (which did not give them rest of mind); and the laborious nature of the art of writing. Writing of the message was later encouraged because original apostles and eye witnesses were dying; the second advent did not quickly come; there was need for missionary work and there was also need for scripture for worship and devotion (Duffield G.P. et al 1983: 9). In discussing the writing of the Bible, three aspects of the subject should be considered: (i) the writers of the scripture; (ii) the period of writing and (iii) the method of writing. i. It is not easy to determine with precision the number of the inspired writers who wrote the books of the Bible. This is because some books were written by more than one author while some writers wrote more than one book. Huffman (1945:53) suggests that forty inspired writers wrote the different books of the scripture. Sometimes, the author of a book dictated to a professional scribe as Jeremiah and Paul did. Some of the Biblical books are ascribed to well-known Biblical personalities while controversy surrounds the authorship of some, e.g., Mosaic authorship of Pentateuch in the OT and the Book of Hebrew in the NT. ii. As regards the duration of writing the books, Huffman is of the view that the thirty-nine OT books were written during a period of one thousand years beginning about 1100 B.C. while the twenty-seven books of the NT were written in less than one hundred years between 50 and 150 C.E. iii. How was the Bible written? The OT books were hand-written in ink usually with a reed pen, on scrolls made of leather or papyrus, while the NT books were written originally on scrolls but, later on, the early Christians copied the scriptures on codices and parchments or valium (Ryrie C.C. 1976: 45). A scroll was made from a number of papyri or prepared animal skins. After the sheets were sewn together to make a strip measuring ten to thirty feet long, it was rolled around a stick like a map. A codex (pl. codices), on the other hand, was made of several quires of parchment of papyri sheets folded to make pages. The quires were stitched together like the modern book (Mckenzie J.L 1978: 102). The OT was originally written in Hebrew except for four chapters in Ezra, six chapters in Dn. and Jr. 10:11 which were written in Aramaic. The NT, on the other hand, was written in Koine Greek, the language commonly spoken and written throughout the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries C.E. (Hunter A.M 1972 : 9). We can now turn our attention to the preservation of the Bible. As mentioned above the Biblical books were preserved in writing on scrolls and codices by original writers. The early Christians out of enthusiasm to have copies of the scripture, copied either directly from the original manuscripts or from the copied materials. A Comparative Appraisal of Evolution of the Qur’an and the Bible The Qur’an and the Bible are believed to be revealed scriptures and as such, they are seen as containing divine words. Having been preserved for some time, both became authoritative after they had been given official sanction by the scrutinising councils of their respective religions. Thus the two scriptures passed through similar processes of evolution, i.e. revelation, preservation and collection/canonisation; but not similar methods as our discussion has revealed. While the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad through angel Gabriel within a period of about twenty-three years, the Biblical books were written by about forty inspired writers in several centuries. In view of the fact that the two scriptures emanate from the same source which is God, their contents are believed to be inspired. However, the Muslims understand the Qur’anic inspiration in the sense of angel Gabriel dictating the words of God to Muhammad. This concept of inspiration does not gain currency among the Biblical scholars. The Qur’an was not only reduced to writing but was also fully memorised by the huffaz. Great importance is attached to the memorisation of the Qur’an because firstly, the huffaz were employed to check the correctness of the written records and secondly, up till today, Muslims commit several chapters of the Qur’an (and in some cases the entire scripture) to memory for use in their daily prayers and on special occasions. With regard to the Bible, its books were written on scrolls or codices by inspired writers while their adherents faithfully copied the scripture and translated it into different languages. Apart from copying, many Jewish Rabbis and members of the early church memorised different passages of the scripture. In an attempt to correct errors in copying, different editions of the Bible emerged. Memorisation of the two scriptures by the early Muslims and Christians respectively was due to their veneration for the words of God contained in the Holy Books. Canonisation of the Bible As regards the canonisation of the Bible (in contrast to collection with reference to the Qur’an) the following points are worthy of note: (i)Canonisation took place several centuries after committing the books to writing. (ii)It was done in stages, i.e., the books of law became canonical before the prophetic books, while the prophetic books became canonical before the writings and the NT was naturally canonised after the OT. (iii)Canonisation involved scrutinizing the authenticity of the original of each books leading to its recognition or rejection. Conversely, the Qur’an was compiled only six months after the death of Muhammad when many of the memorisers were still alive and the manuscripts were still extant. It was compiled by Abu Bakr and reviewed under twenty years later by Uthman. The absence of any spurious portion of the Holy Book made its compilation and review straight forward for those who carried out the exercises. Its authenticity as perceived by Muslims has never been in doubt. The main task of the reviewers was merely to reconcile the dialectical differences detected among its readers during Uthman’s caliphate. The wideness of the time lag between the period of writing the Bible and its canonisation accounts for the easy access of accretions and interpolations into the scripture which were being got rid of gradually by reviewing the scripture from time to time on discovering valuable manuscripts. On the other hand, the shortness of the time lapse between the complete revelation of the Qur’an and its compilation makes it exceedingly difficult for any accretion and interpolation to get into the scripture. These are academic reasons for the preservation of the text of the Qur’an. To the orthodox Muslims, however, the preservation of the Qur’an is divine and spiritual as contained in Surah 15:9 of the scripture. The foregoing illustrations notwithstanding, Muslims have a way of applying Islamic concept of revealed books to the Judeo-Christian scriptures by making Prophet Musa’s Taurat equivalent to Moses’ Pentateuch. Prophet Daud’s Zaburah equivalent to David’s Psalm and Prophet Isa’s Injil equivalent to the New Testament.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 08:30:13 +0000
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