Reading The Bible in Islamic Context181420304

Reading the Bible in Islamic Context
In the current political and social climate, there is increasing demand for a deeper
understanding of Muslims, the Qur’an and Islam, as well as a keen demand among
Muslim scholars to explore ways of engaging with Christians theologically, cultur-
ally and socially.
This book explores the ways in which an awareness of Islam and the Qur’an can
change the way in which the Bible is read. The contributors come from both Mus-
lim and Christian backgrounds, bring various levels of commitment to the Qur’an
and the Bible as Scripture, and often have significantly different perspectives. The
first section of the book contains chapters that compare the report of an event in the
Bible with a report of the same event in the Qur’an. The second section addresses
Muslim readings of the Bible and biblical tradition and looks at how Muslims might
regard the Bible – Can they recognise it as Scripture? If so, what does that mean,
and how does it relate to the Qur’an as Scripture? Similarly, how might Christian
readers regard the Qur’an? The final section explores different analogies for under-
standing the Bible in relation to the Qur’an. The book concludes with a reflection
upon the particular challenges that await Muslim scholars who seek to respond to
Jewish and Christian understandings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
A pioneering venture into intertextual reading, this book has important implica-
tions for relationships between Christians and Muslims. It will be of significant
value to scholars of both Biblical and Qur’anic Studies, as well as any Muslim
seeking to deepen their understanding of the Bible, and any Christian looking to
transform the way in which they read the Bible.
Daniel J. Crowther is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-

Christian Studies and an associate member of the Faculty of Theology and Reli-
gions at the University of Oxford, UK.
Shirin Shafaie is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian

Studies and teaches Middle East Politics at SOAS, University of London. She is
also the founder and director of Visual Academics.
Ida Glaser is Director of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies and a lecturer
at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK.
Shabbir Akhtar is a research fellow at the Centre for Muslim–Christian Studies and
a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religions at the University of Oxford, UK.
Routledge Reading the Bible in Islamic Context Series
Series Editors: Ida Glaser and Shabbir Akhtar
This series represents an urgent theological initiative for the third millennium:
purposeful interpretation of the Bible in contexts provided by Islam, especially the
Qur’an. Biblical interpretation has affected the development of Western society
and continues to be a key determinant of Christian and Jewish action worldwide;
and Muslim views of the Bible and of how Jews and Christians interpret it are key
determinants of Muslim views of non-Muslims. We therefore expect the series to
produce novel perspectives on the continuing religious, political and ideological
rivalries which divide the contemporary world as well as fresh insights into bibli-
cal texts.
The opening volume features scholarly work from a conference held in Oxford
in September 2015 to explore the parameters of this innovative venture. Subse-
quent monographs explore a range of methodologies and deal with historical and
cultural, as well as intertextual, dimensions of the interpretative task. Topics range
from an Islamic commentary on a key New Testament epistle, through Christian
readings of biblical themes ‘in conversation with’ the Qur’an and its interpreta-
tions, to historical studies of Muslim engagement with the Bible.
1 Reading the Bible in Islamic Context

Qur’anic Conversations
Edited by Daniel J. Crowther, Shirin Shafaie,
Ida Glaser and Shabbir Akhtar
Reading the Bible in
Islamic Context
Qur’anic Conversations
Edited by Daniel J. Crowther,

Shirin Shafaie, Ida Glaser
and Shabbir Akhtar
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Daniel J. Crowther, Shirin Shafaie, Ida Glaser and Shabbir Akhtar
The right of Daniel J. Crowther, Shirin Shafaie, Ida Glaser and Shabbir Akhtar
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Crowther, Danny, editor. | Shafaie, Shirin, editor. | Akhtar, Shabbir,
1960–editor.
Title: Reading the Bible in Islamic context : Qur’anic conversations / edited by
Danny Crowther, Shirin Shafaie, Ida Glaser and Shabbir Akhtar.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge biblical
interpretation in Islamic context series ; 1 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025916 | ISBN 9781138093577 (hbk) | ISBN
9781315106748 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Qur’an—Relation to the Bible. | Bible—Islamic interpretations. |
Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Qur’an—Criticism, interpretation, etc. |
Islam—Relations.
Classification: LCC BP134.B4 R43 2018 | DDC 220.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025916
ISBN: 978-1-138-09357-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-10674-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Contributors viii
Foreword xi
M A RT I N WH I T TI NGHAM
Synopsis xiii
D A N I E L J . C R O WT HE R
Transliteration note xvi
Introduction 1
1 Biblical interpretation in Islamic context: particular

experiments, general tasks and signposts for the future 3
IDA GLASER
PART I
Intertextual conversations 29
2 Abraham in narrative worldviews: reflections on doing

comparative theology through Christian–Muslim conversation
in Turkey 31
G E O R G E B R I S TOW
3 Toward inter-theological hermeneutics: a case study

in reading between the Joseph stories 45
S H I R I N S H A FAI E
4 The “sin” of David in light of Islamic thought 62

A L I M A K H L A B I AND L ARRY CI CCARE L L I
5 David and the single ewe lamb: tracking conversation

between two texts (2 Samuel 12:3 and Q38:23) when
they are read in their canonical contexts 77
C A R O L M . WA L KE R
vi Contents
6 Facing mirrors: the intertwined golden calf story 88
M O H A M M A D GHANDE HARI AND MOHS E N F E YZB A K H SH
PART II
Questions about texts 101
7 The fourth source: Isrā’īliyyāt and the use of the Bible

in Muslim scholarship 103
WAN MOHD FAZRUL AZDI WAN RAZALI, AHMAD YUNUS MOHD NOOR
A N D J A F FA RY AWANG
8 Constrained by scriptural polemics: Hamiduddin Farahi

on the Akedah 116
N A Z I R U D I N MOHD NAS I R
9 The culture shock of the Bible 126

D A N I E L J . CROWT HE R
10 Islamic tradition and the reception history of the Bible 148

M A RT I N O ’ K ANE AND TAL HA BHAMJI
11 The morphology of the narrative exegesis of the Qur’an:

the case of the cow of the Banū Isrāʾīl (Q2:67–74) 167
S. ALI AGHAEI
PART III
Analogical explorations 195
12 The place of purity in faith 197

D W I G H T S WANS ON
13 Biblical Ruth as a qur’anic Queen of Sheba: scriptural

narratives of foreigner assent 208
G E O R G I N A L. JARDI M
14 Reading Paul on idolatry (Romans 1:18–32) alongside

the Qur’an: a theology of divine signs 224
M I C H A E L L ODAHL
15 Indirection in biblical and qur’anic discourses, and

in Bible translation in Islamic contexts 239
A N D Y WA R RE N- ROT HL I N
Contents vii
16 The Gospel of John as a structure for Muslim-Christian
understanding 253
D A N I E L A . M A DI GAN, S J
Concluding reflection 271
17 Three methods for a Muslim reading of the Bible 273

S H A B B I R A K H TAR
Bibliography: Works In Arabic 285

Bibliography: Non-Arabic Works 289
Index of scripture citations 303
Index of scriptural characters 318
Contributors
S. Ali Aghaei is a research associate in the Corpus Coranicum Project at

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a member of the
Department of Qur’an and Hadith Studies at Encyclopaedia Islamica Founda-
tion, Tehran.
Shabbir Akhtar is a research fellow at Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies
Oxford, a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religions at the University
of Oxford, and author of A Faith for all Seasons (Bellow 1990).
Jaffary Awang is Head of the Department of Theology and Philosophy in the
Faculty of Islamic Studies at the National University of Malaysia (UKM).
Talha Bhamji is an MA student in Islamic Studies at Markfield Institute of Higher
Education, Leicester, UK.
George Bristow serves as coordinator of a teaching network which provides prac-
tical theological training for churches in Turkey.
Larry Ciccarelli is a scripture engagement consultant with SIL International and
has worked in Arab-speaking countries in the Mediterranean region for over
thirty years.
Daniel J. Crowther is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-
Christian Studies Oxford and an associate member of the Faculty of Theology
and Religions at the University of Oxford.
Mohsen Feyzbakhsh is a doctoral student of Philosophy of Religion at the
University of Tehran and a fellow of the Institute of Imamite studies in
Tehran. He has taught at Imam Sadiq University, as well as the University
of Tehran.
Mohammad Ghandehari is a doctoral student of Islamic studies at the Uni-
versity of Tehran and a fellow of the Institute of Imamite Studies work-
ing on early Islamic Hadith, Qur’anic exegesis and Christian-Muslim
Relations.
Contributors ix
Ida Glaser is Director of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies Oxford, a lecturer
at Wycliffe Hall and the author of Thinking biblically about Islam (Langham,
2016).
Georgina L. Jardim is a research associate of the University of Gloucestershire
(UK). Her doctoral thesis was published as Recovering the Female Voice in
Islamic Scripture (Ashgate, 2014).
Michael Lodahl is Professor of Theology and World Religions at Point Loma
Nazarene University (San Diego, California) and the author of Claiming
Abraham: Reading the Bible and the Qur’an Side-by-Side (shortlisted for the
Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing in 2013).
Daniel A. Madigan, SJ is the Jeanette W. and Otto J. Ruesch Family Associate
Professor in the Department of Theology of Georgetown University (Washing-
ton, DC), a Jesuit priest and the author of The Qur’an’s Self-Image (Princeton,
2001).
Ali Makhlabi is an assistant professor in Arabic language, literature and civiliza-
tion at the University of Tunis and is the author of Adam in Islamic Culture
(in Arabic).
Nazirudin Mohd Nasir is Director of Religious Policy and Development for the
Islamic Religious Council of Singapore and lectures in Religion at the Singa-
pore University of Social Sciences.
Ahmad Yunus Mohd Noor is a senior lecturer in the Department of Theology and
Philosophy of the Faculty of Islamic Studies (FPI) at the National University
of Malaysia (UKM).
Martin O’Kane is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at University of
Wales, Trinity Saint David and Senior Research Fellow at the University
of Birmingham.
Wan Mohd Fazrul Azdi bin Wan Razali is a lecturer in Comparative Religion
at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) and author of The Modern Study of
Religion: A Preliminary Survey on Clifford Geertz (2009).
Shirin Shafaie is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Chris-
tian Studies Oxford and teaches Middle East Politics at SOAS, University of
London. She is also the founder and director of Visual Academics.
Dwight Swanson is Senior Research Fellow in Biblical Studies at the Nazarene
Theological College, Manchester, and Co-director of the Manchester Centre for
the Study of Christianity and Islam.
Carol M. Walker is a lecturer in Old Testament and Islamic Studies at All Nations
Christian College, UK, with over twenty years’ experience of Bible teaching in
Pakistan and the Middle East.
x Contributors
Andy Warren-Rothlin is Professor of Hebrew at the Theological College of
Northern Nigeria and Global Translation Adviser for the United Bible Societies.
Martin Whittingham is the Academic Director of the Centre for Muslim Chris-
tian Studies Oxford, a research fellow at Regent’s Park College (Oxford) and
the author of Al-Ghazali and the Qur’an (Routledge, 2007).
Foreword
You have in your hands an exciting new work which richly rewards the reader. But
please do not read this book if you are looking for a simple guide to what to think.
This work invites you to reflect on a range of complex and sometimes sensitive
issues. It is a pioneering attempt to engage a variety of voices on the question of
reading the Bible in Islamic context. There is a great deal of theological work on
the Bible in a variety of contexts, but rarely with Islam and Muslims as the con-
text in view. There is also much work on Islam and Muslims, but only occasion-
ally with the Bible in view. This book represents a series of detailed experiments
conducted to help to change that situation. It was born from a conference held in
Oxford in September 2015, which I attended, and where I had the privilege to meet
an amazing array of people, from a wide range of different nationalities and back-
grounds. The energy and enthusiasm of those presenting work at the conference
was clear for all to see as they explored this new and exciting ground.
You will find in these pages a variety of approaches, including comparisons and
contrasts, an attempt to combine different narratives, and reflections on what any
differences and similarities mean. All of these approaches are anchored in specific
examples, not based on broad generalisations. Questions will be raised, such as
whether David sinned (an issue with implications for Muslim views of prophets),
why the biblical Ruth might be parallel to the qur’anic Queen of Sheba, and why
the Bible presents a culture shock to most Muslim readers.
Mutual understanding, of course, does not require mutual agreement. Likewise,
readers are unlikely to agree with every contribution, but each chapter will stimu-
late further thought on what is involved in reading the Bible in the context of
Muslim scripture, faith and people. Of course, it is not always comfortable to be
involved in such exploration, either for the writer or for those around them. The
final reflection explores this tension between exploration of unfamiliar terrain and
the attachment of believers to their own convictions.
I have spent over twenty years in the formal study and teaching of Islam and
Christian–Muslim relations. This has involved exploring how a faith which is not
my own – in this case Islam – relates to, differs from and intersects with, my own
Christian beliefs. So I am excited to see such a new and valuable contribution
which does something different. While many works explore the Bible and the
Qur’an in order to shed light on the Qur’an, and others mine the rich resources of
xii Foreword
historical encounters, this book seeks to look at the Bible with Muslim contexts
squarely in view. Why does this matter? While understanding one scripture and
its history of interpretation can be a daunting task, to try to understand two is yet
more of a challenge. Yet it is a challenge only growing in importance as people
live alongside one another and share their beliefs, their physical territory and their
views with one another. This book is a really important step in the development
of biblical interpretation, and in opening up an entirely new way of approaching
the subject, it provides a stimulus to others to follow where it leads – and beyond.
I am delighted to recommend it to you.
Martin Whittingham
Regents Park College, May 2017
Synopsis
This book aims to explore the ways in which an awareness of Islam and the Qur’an
can change the way in which the Bible is read.
Introduction
The first chapter in this collection, by Ida Glaser, functions as an introduction
to the whole volume. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of reading the Bible in
the context of Islam and David Tracey’s model of conversation, recognition and
analogy as a way of understanding them. Glaser then summarises the argument of
each of the chapters and relates them to each other according to this model. The
chapters in this volume are presented in three sections according to the model
proposed by Glaser:
Part I: Intertextual conversations

This first section contains five chapters that compare the report of an event in the
Bible with a report of the same event in the Qur’an. In the first of these, George
Bristow compares an evangelical Christian reading of Genesis 12–16 with a Turk-
ish Muslim reading of a number of Abraham narratives in the Qur’an. In the sec-
ond, Shirin Shafaie employs a narrative analysis of voice and characterisation to
explore how the focus and interests of the Joseph narrative of Genesis 37–50 are
quite distinct from those of Surah Yusuf. In the third, Ali Makhlabi and Larry
Ciccarelli form a Muslim–Christian partnership to review how the doctrine of
‘iṣma (the sinless nature of the prophets) has impacted the way in which Muslims
have approached the story of David and the ewe lamb. In the fourth, Carol Walker
employs rhetorical analysis to understand how the story of King David and the ewe
lamb functions within its biblical setting of the Books of Samuel and then how
the different telling of this story functions in its qur’anic setting in Surah Ṣād. The
fifth and final chapter of this section by Mohammad Ghandehari and Mohsen
Feyzbakhsh argues that many of the lacunae in the accounts of Aaron and the
golden calf that are found in Exodus 32, Surah 7 and Surah 20 can be resolved
when the three accounts are read in relation to each other.
xiv Synopsis
Part II: Questions about texts
The second section contains five chapters that address Muslim readings of the Bible
and biblical tradition. First, Wan Mohd Fazrul Azdi Wan Razali, Ahmad Yunus
Mohd Noor and Jaffary Awang recount the historical development of a Muslim
method of reading the Bible. In this approach, the Qur’an is used as a means to
evaluate the places in which the biblical text provides a genuine revelation, the
places in which it provides an uncertain guide to truth and the places in which it,
in its present corrupt form, opposes the truth. Second, Nazirudin Mohd Nasir
examines this Muslim approach to the Bible as exemplified by the nineteenth-
century Muslim Indian scholar Hamiduddin Farahi in his analysis of the Hebrew
text of Genesis 22 and expresses some reservations in regard to it as a method of
understanding the text of the Bible. Third, Daniel Crowther observes how seven
different features of the form and the content of the Bible scandalise Muslim read-
ers. In each case, Crowther finds that the feature that causes the scandal illuminates
the very different identity and function of the Bible as scripture vis-à-vis the Qur’an.
Fourth, Martin O’Kane and Talha Bhamji survey different Muslim treatments of
Abraham’s sacrifice of his son on Mount Moriah. O’Kane and Bhamji argue that,
although the relationship between the text of the Bible and the text of the Qur’an
is uncertain, both the qur’anic text and subsequent Muslim traditions are an impor-
tant chapter in the reception history of the text of Genesis 22. Fifth and finally, Ali
Aghaei considers the evolution of the Islamic tradition relating to the cow of the
sons of Israel as found in Q2:67–74. Through a detailed analysis of nine different
traditions reported in al-Ṭabarī, Aghaei observes how Muslim tradition developed
in interaction with the biblical text and biblical tradition.
Part III: Analogical explorations

The chapters in the third section explore different analogies to understand the
Bible in relation to the Qur’an. Dwight Swanson compares and contrasts the cultic
concepts of purity and impurity as found in, first, the Hebrew Bible, second, the
New Testament and, third, the Qur’an. Georgina Jardim observes that whilst
the account of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the Qur’an follows a different
trajectory to the account in the Bible, the biblical account of Ruth the Moabitess
shares a similar theme (the female outsider) and a similar outcome (a declaration
of faith and allegiance). Michael Lodahl finds that the new perspective on Paul
(as a rabbinic follower of Christ) provides us with a fresh opportunity to compare
biblical and qur’anic opinion in regard to creation, idolatry and human nature.
Andy Warren-Rothlin finds a close analogy in the way in which human meta-
phors and human figures of speech are used in both the Bible and the Qur’an to
describe divine realities. Warren then compares and contrasts the different ways
in which different translators have handled these different ‘anthropotheisms.’ And
finally, Daniel Madigan uses a Jewish reading of the Gospel of John to reconsider
the Christian understanding of the divinity and pre-existence of Jesus. By means
of this reconsideration, Madigan reviews afresh the points of contact between
Synopsis xv
Christian conceptions of Jesus Christ as the Word of God and Muslim conceptions
of the Qur’an as the pre-existent Word of God.
Concluding reflection
The last chapter of the collection by Shabbir Akhtar reflects upon the particular
challenges that await Muslim scholars who seek to respond to Jewish and Christian
understandings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. In his opinion, Muslims
must choose between three approaches: a Muslim method of understanding the
Bible through the Qur’an (as laid out by Razali et al.), a God-focused form of
agnosticism, or a suspension of belief for the purposes of academic study. Accord-
ing to Akhtar, each one of these three approaches comes with its own share of
problems and challenges, and there is no easy, or obvious, choice.
Daniel J. Crowther
CMCS Oxford, May 2017
Transliteration note
Six alphabets appeared in the first draft of the chapters submitted for this volume:
Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. At an early stage of the editing
process, it was decided that few readers (or, indeed, few editors) would be com-
fortable reading a text with all six of these alphabets. Consequently, the decision
(not without pain) was made to transliterate all the Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek
and Syriac words into Latin alphabetical forms. The outworking of this decision
created two challenges.
First, a number of Arabic words have established various anglicised forms (for
example, Koran, Qur’an, Qur’ān), whilst others are in the process of being estab-
lished (for example, fatwa). It seemed counter-intuitive not to recognise this mix-
ing of culture and language, but somewhat arbitrary to rule upon it. As a result, we
(arbitrarily) have determined the following forms to be anglicised words: Ayah,
fatwa, hadith, Mecca, Medina, Muhammad, Surah, Shia and Sunni. The arbitrary
nature of this is underlined by the fact that we decided to avoid the plural form
Ayahs (in favour of āyāt), but to accept both plural forms Surahs and suwar (as per
context) and to always prefer the plural hadiths (over aḥādīth). A further complica-
tion concerned regional differences in the anglicisation of Arabic words: especially
whether they are capitalised and whether tā’ marbūṭa is accorded an h. In these
issues, we have determined to respect each author’s traditions, but where there
are none, transliterations into Arabic avoid capital letters and do not use a h for
tā’ marbūṭa.
Second, the transliteration of multiple languages into simple Latin alphabetical
forms inevitably results in one-letter symbol indicating one sound in one language
and another in another language. In order to minimise the confusion, we have pre-
sented the Arabic transliterations of five letters with a dot below the transliterated
letter and avoided sub-linear dots in the lettering of our Hebrew transliterations.
The relatively rare occurrences of Aramaic and Syriac have been transliterated
in accord with their synonyms in the Hebrew alphabet. The Cyrillic and Greek
transliterations are, we hope, self-evident.
Transliteration tables
ARABIC HEBREW
alif ‫ا‬ alêf ‫א‬ ’

bā’ ‫ب‬ b bēth ‫ב‬ ‫בּ‬ b v
tā’ ‫ت‬ t gimêl ‫ג‬ ‫גּ‬ g gh
thā’ ‫ث‬ th dālêth ‫ד‬ ‫דּ‬ d
jīm ‫ج‬ j hē ‫ה‬ h
ḥā’ ‫ح‬ ḥ wāw ‫ו‬ w
khā’ ‫خ‬ kh zayin ‫ז‬ z
dāl ‫د‬ d chēth ‫ח‬ ch
dhāl ‫ذ‬ dh tēth ‫ט‬ t
rā’ ‫ر‬ r yodh ‫י‬ y
zāy ‫ز‬ z cāf ‫כ‬ ‫כּ‬ k kh
sīn ‫س‬ s lāmêdh ‫ל‬ l
shīn ‫ش‬ sh mēm ‫מ‬ m
ṣād ‫ص‬ ṣ nun ‫נ‬ n
ḍād ‫ض‬ ḍ sāmêch ‫ס‬ s
ṭā’ ‫ط‬ ṭ ‘ayin ‫ע‬ ‘
ẓā’ ‫ظ‬ ẓ pē ‫פ‬ ‫פּ‬ p f
‘ayn ‫ع‬ ‘ tsadê ‫צ‬ ts
ghayn ‫غ‬ gh qof ‫ק‬ q
fā’ ‫ف‬ f rēsh ‫ר‬ r
qāf ‫ق‬ q sin ‫שׂ‬ s sh
shin ‫שׁ‬
kāf ‫ك‬ k tāw ‫ת‬ ‫תּ‬ t th
lām ‫ل‬ l
mīm ‫م‬ m pattāch chataf pattāch a
nūn ‫ن‬ n sêggol chataf sêggol ê
hā’ ‫ه‬ h tsērē ē
wāw ‫و‬ w qāmats ā
yā’ ‫ي‬ y sounded shewā e
cholām qāmats qātan o
chataf qāmats o
shuruq qubbuts u
Introduction
1 Biblical interpretation
in Islamic context
Particular experiments, general
tasks and signposts for the future
Ida Glaser
This volume represents a step in a pioneering venture: we are trying to find out
what is involved in serious engagement of the Bible with Islamic thought and
with Muslim people, and thence to learn to interpret the Bible ‘in conversation
with’ Islam. It is a venture in which Muslims and Christians travel side by side,1
although with different perspectives and different agendas. For both Muslims and
Christians, this is much more than an academic venture: it has consequences for
life and faith.
• For Christians, faithful reading of the Bible is essential to faithful living in

any context. There can be no obedience to Scripture without reflection on
how it relates to the situation of the readers. That necessarily involves reflec-
tion on the world in which the readers live; and Muslim people are part of
that world.
• Muslim readings of the Bible are of necessity ‘in Islamic context’. The
Muslim scholars writing in this volume suggest a range of motivations for
reading the Bible: it can aid the interpretation of the Qur’an; it can be a
source of godly wisdom; and it can help in the development of interfaith
relations and intercultural understanding in today’s world.
This introductory chapter represents a Christian’s analysis: in writing it, I have

been thinking about how the various contributions relate to the hermeneutical
adventure that I envisioned and on which we have been working together; and I
finish the chapter with some thoughts relating to my own concern about faithful
Christian reading of the Bible. The final chapter represents a Muslim’s reflec-
tions: Shabbir Akhtar, my colleague and co-series editor, considers what might be
involved in faithful Muslim reading of the Bible in the light of his own reading
journey.
There can be no single method for encompassing all the complexities of the
Bible and of Islamic contexts. The Biblical Interpretation in Islamic Context proj-
ect has been influenced by F. X. Clooney’s insistence that the enterprise of read-
ing a Christian text in the context of any other faith and its texts should proceed
through ‘studiously and stubbornly particular’ experiments.2 That is, general meth-
odologies are not to be produced at the outset in order to read the texts: rather, they
4 Ida Glaser
are to be discerned through trying out different ways of reading particular texts
in the context of other particular texts within their own contexts. The project can,
then, be seen as encouraging ‘particular experiments’. By observing the whole
range, we can discern emerging patterns.
This book represents an important part of the process. We produced it by hosting
a conference (in Oxford, September 2015) that invited papers relevant to ‘biblical
interpretation in Islamic context’. The editorial team then worked with selected
authors and with each other to develop the papers (that is, chapters). In keeping
with the experimental approach, we aim not to impose methodology on contribu-
tors, but to allow methodology to emerge from a range of particular readings. We
trust that the results will stimulate yet more particular experiments, and hence lead
to deeper and wider establishment of the venture.
This chapter offers a brief exploration of the question of what might be involved
in reading the Bible in Islamic context, a look at the contributors and their tools,
and then a consideration of the tasks that they have set themselves and the insights
and issues that have resulted. The ‘tasks’ – that I have called ‘intertextual conversa-
tions’, ‘questions about the texts’ and ‘analogical explorations’ – give the basis for
the organisation of the volume.
‘Islamic context’: what might it mean?

What do we mean by ‘biblical interpretation in Islamic context’? Such is the vari-
ety of Muslim people that we might even ask whether it makes sense to speak of
Islam as ‘a context’. If we define Islam as ‘what Muslims believe’ or ‘how Mus-
lims live’, it might be better to speak of a variety of ‘Islams’. So, then, what might
we mean by ‘Islamic context’, and in what ways might ‘the context of Islam’ be a
special case in contextualised reading?
The most obvious answer is that ‘Islamic contexts’ are characterised by the
importance of the Qur’an within them. It is the Qur’an’s relationship to the Bible
that makes Islamic contexts a unique challenge and opportunity for the biblical
interpreter. It is not, then, surprising that nearly all the papers submitted to our con-
ference focussed on reading the Bible alongside the Qur’an, and this is reflected
in the subtitle of the present volume.
An important corollary is that the hermeneutical question is not just how one
might read the Bible: it is also how one might read the Qur’an. A variety of ways
of reading the one can be combined with a variety of ways of reading the other,
and this multiplies possibilities. Further, Muslims and Christians are likely to bring
different considerations to the interpretation of the two texts. The reading of the
Scripture of another tradition, and of a Scripture that is often seen as in competition
with one’s own Scripture, is an important underlying issue to our whole venture
that it is dealt with in Shabbir Akhtar’s contribution (Chapter 17).
Arguably, the uniqueness of Islamic contexts for Bible reading lies in the fact
that the Qur’an, unlike the scriptures of other world religions, includes extensive
material related to the Bible. It refers to the Torah, the Psalms, the Prophets and
the Gospels, and includes treatments of characters and themes that are found in
Interpretation in Islamic context 5
the Bible. It also includes material that relates to Jews and to Christians, who are
characterised as ‘People of the Book’; and ‘The Book’ is likely to be an allusion to
the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.3 It sees itself as a continuation from biblical
revelation, but it is a different kind of book than any biblical book.4
There are, then, several considerations that are expected to characterise the
venture:
• Consideration of the similarities and differences between biblical and

qur’anic ideas of revelation and of the nature of Scripture. For example,
the Qur’an’s view of itself as direct divine dictation highlights, by compari-
son, the varied human voices of the Bible. Biblical interpretation in Islamic
context is likely, then, to provoke reflection on the nature and origin of the
biblical text in question. Further, the range of Christian views of what
the Bible is, may be put into conversation both with Islamic views of what
the Bible ought to be, and with Islamic responses to the actual phenomena
of the Bible.
• Consideration of the Qur’an’s treatment of characters and stories that
are found in the Bible. Most of the increasing literature on comparative
reading of the Bible and the Qur’an is more concerned with understanding
the Qur’an than with interpreting the Bible.5 Some literature takes this further,
asking what the comparative reading does for mutual understanding as, for
example, believers read their scriptures together after the manner of ‘Scrip-
tural Reasoning’. It is acknowledged that such reading challenges Jewish
and Christian readers of the Bible and can open fresh understandings of
their own texts: in this volume and in the series which it inaugurates, we
are seeking to focus on those fresh understandings. Of every comparative
reading, we ask, ‘How might this affect biblical interpretation – by Muslims
as well as by other readers?’
• Consideration of qur’anic themes. There are common themes that have
different places within the two Scriptures, apparently common themes that
have different meanings, and unique features of each. Any of these may pro-
voke the Bible reader into paying attention to neglected aspects of the text.
For example, both the Qur’an and the Bible deal with laws about inheritance.
In the Qur’an, they are precise and are used in current legal decisions.6 In the
Bible, they are seldom read, the legal details being generally seen as inap-
plicable, perhaps on the basis of Jesus’ discussion about inheritance in Luke
12:13–21. In Islamic contexts, not least in the case of conversion between
faiths, it may be important to re-visit the biblical material.
• Consideration of the range of Muslim readings of the Qur’an. Non-
Muslim focus on comparative and historical studies of the Qur’an may
neglect engagement with tafsīr or other Muslim discourse. For a reading of
the Bible to be in ‘conversation’ not only with texts but also with persons,
we require engagement at least with the qur’anic interpretation of the par-
ticular dialogue partners. For a thorough reading, engagement with the wider
tradition of interpretation is needed.
6 Ida Glaser
To complicate matters, there is a long history of Muslims and Christians using the
Bible in relation to one another, and we are all writing at particular points in time
and in contexts affected by that history. An ‘Islamic context’ is not only character-
ised by the centrality of the Qur’an, but also by the centrality of Muhammad. The
historical reason for the inclusion of so much material about Jews and Christians in
the Qur’an is that Muhammad had many encounters with them. Most of these were
friendly, but some were not. There were some difficult and even violent incidents
relating to the Jews; and there were some polemical discussions with Christians.
Further, the Qur’an arguably reflects something of the fusion between Christianity
and power in the Byzantine Empire, as well as with the monastic Christianity of
desert areas. This is the context for the Qur’an’s own interaction with the Bible.
On the one hand, it sees itself as confirming and perfecting the previous scriptures,
and it refers extensively to them. On the other hand, it accuses Jews and Christians
of misunderstanding, disobeying and miscommunicating their books.
It is not, then, surprising, that there is a long history of Muslim writings about
the Bible. Many of these are polemical, attacking either the biblical text or Chris-
tian and Jewish interpretations of it.7 However, there are also more positive works,
which use biblical material to assist commentary on the Qur’an,8 or which see
the Bible as a source for material that affirms Islam and predicts the coming of
Muhammad.9 There are very few that seek to understand the Bible as it is under-
stood by Christians or by Jews.10
The Bible has also been important to Christian thinking about Islam and about
Muslims since the seventh century: some of the earliest Christian reflections on the
Arab conquests seek a biblical framework – typically, through an understanding of
the Arabs as descendants of Ishmael or through identifying Muslim conquerors with
apocalyptic powers.11 There are readings that shock twenty-first-century Christians, not
least the use of the Cross during the period of the Crusades.12 There are also readings
that offer rich resources, such as those represented by the history of translation of the
Bible into Arabic.13 For both Christian and Muslim readers, historical study can both
indicate the reasons for received interpretations and applications of the texts and chal-
lenge those interpretations and applications. Our points in time and our perceptions of
our histories affect the choices and approaches in our particular reading experiments.
The experiments
We are now ready to examine the other chapters themselves. We have described
our venture in terms of a series of ‘experiments’ from which patterns can emerge
that will facilitate further study: we continue the analogy by beginning with a sec-
tion that might be titled ‘apparatus’. The ‘apparatus’ for reading is the readers and
the skills and academic disciplines which they bring to their tasks.
Who is reading? People and their tools

It is often observed that knowledge has dimensions that depend on the knower;14
and the interpretation of texts is dependent on the readers as well as on the texts
themselves. Our conference attracted a range of people, each bringing one or more
traditions of reading texts to their reading experiments. Each writes in their own
context and on the basis of their own experience.
Most obviously, there are writers from Muslim and from Christian backgrounds,
who bring various levels of commitment to the Qur’an and the Bible as Scripture,
who have various understandings of the natures of their texts, and who represent
various traditions of interpreting them. It is also obvious that some are male and
some are female, and that they represent a variety of social and geographical con-
texts. To complicate matters, there are chapters that have more than one author – in
two cases, a Muslim and a Christian writing together. Such aspects of the writ-
ers’ identities affect their interests and their purposes in writing, as well as their
approaches to both the Bible and the Qur’an.
Equally important is another aspect of reader variety: our authors have been
trained in a variety of academic disciplines. All are currently working in areas
relating to scriptural interpretation, and the reader will readily discern conse-
quent approaches in their chapters. For example, O’Kane uses the methods and
approaches of the reception history of the Bible, and Wan Razali, Mohd Noor and
Awang use tools drawn from classical Islamic thought.
Further, many of our contributors were trained in another academic discipline
before entering formal scriptural studies. We will not pause to speculate on how
prior experience of moving across disciplines might form a basis for the cross-
disciplinary venture of biblical interpretation in Islamic context. Rather, we will
note that people bring some of the tools from their previous disciplines into
our venture. In some cases, the tools are explicit. For example, Shirin Shafaie
brings the tools of narrative analysis used in her doctoral research on war nar-
ratives, and Andy Warren-Rothlin brings linguistic tools from his discipline of
translation studies. In other cases, the tools are not discussed, but we can easily
discern their influence. For example, Shabbir Akhtar brings analytical tools from
his philosophical training, and I, as a physicist, not only see our whole enter-
prise in terms of a series of experiments, but have also structured this chapter
accordingly.
Tasks, questions and the organisation of this volume

The analysis above implies that there are many tasks before the scholar who
wishes to take the Qur’an into account as they read the Bible. Many of our con-
tributors focussed on the task of reading part of the Bible alongside its qur’anic
parallel. Several focussed on the more methodological question of how Muslims
might approach the Bible, or of how the Qur’an might be related to the history of
biblical interpretation. Others developed discussions around themes of interest
on the Muslim–Christian interface. We have organised this book around such
tasks.
The organisation has been influenced by an analytical framework of ‘conversa-
tion, recognition, analogy’, which has been the basis for my own work.15 The for-
mulation reflects David Tracy’s thought about the reading of classic texts.16 Tracy
8 Ida Glaser
sees the reading progressing through a ‘conversation’ between the classic and
the reader’s world, ‘recognition’ of relevant commonalities in those two worlds,
and then the development of ‘analogy’ that builds on the commonalities with full
awareness of the difference between the two worlds.
In the case of biblical interpretation in Islamic context, the ‘classic’ to be read is
the Bible, and the ‘conversation, recognition, analogy’ proceeds not only between
the classic and the reader, but also between the world of the Bible and the world
of Islam, not least the world of the Qur’an. This complicates matters. In particu-
lar, ‘conversations’ between the Bible and the Qur’an rapidly indicate difference
between the natures of the texts, so the question of how far and in what way the
reader can ‘recognise’ both books arises. This is the context of difference within
which analogies between the books can be developed, and then put into further
‘conversation’ with the worlds of the readers.
So, then,
• Part I comprises ‘conversations’ that our authors have set up between bibli-
cal and qur’anic texts. The chapters explore commonalities and differences
in various ways, and an implicit process of ‘recognition’ and ‘analogy’ can
often be discerned.
• Part II focusses on questions about the nature of the texts that arise out of
the intertextual conversations. We might say that these are questions about
‘recognition’ that are peculiar to Islamic contexts. First, how should Muslims
regard the Bible? Can they recognise it as Scripture? If so, what does that
mean, and how does it relate to the Qur’an as Scripture? Second, how might
Christian readers regard the Qur’an? Can they recognise it, and the inter-
pretative tradition to which it gives rise, as in some way continuous with
the Bible and with Jewish and Christian discourse?
• Part III includes chapters that explore themes that we might call ‘analogies’ –
concepts such as Word, Sign, Idolatry, Unity and Purity which are shared
themes in the Qur’an and the Bible, but appear in different contexts and are
understood in different ways.
Not all the chapters fit neatly into this framework, and several deal, at least implic-
itly, with all the above tasks. The following analysis aims to use insights from the
chapters to develop signposts for the ongoing journey into biblical interpretation
in Islamic context.
Part I: Intertextual conversations

• ‘Abraham in narrative worldviews: reflections on doing comparative theology
through Christian–Muslim conversation in Turkey’ by George Bristow
• ‘Toward inter-theological hermeneutics: a case study in reading between the
Joseph stories’ by Shirin Shafaie
• ‘The “sin” of David in the light of Islamic thought’ by Ali Makhlabi and
Larry Ciccarelli
• ‘David and the single ewe lamb: tracking conversation between two texts
(2 Samuel 12:3 and Q38:23) when they are read in their canonical contexts’
by Carol M. Walker
• ‘Facing mirrors: the intertwined golden calf story’ by Mohammad Ghande-
hari and Mohsen Feyzbakhsh
The intertextual ‘conversations’ in these five chapters offer insights into the Qur’an
as well as into the biblical texts studied: they all also contribute to our whole
venture by raising important questions about content and theology, about method,
about the nature of Scripture, and about the relationship between the Qur’an and
the Bible.
There are two chapters by Christian authors, two by Muslim authors, and
one that is a Muslim–Christian collaboration. Each has its own methodological
approach: it is interesting to observe that the chapters with Muslim authors focus
sharply on the particular narratives compared, while the chapters with Christian
authors consider the narratives within their wider canonical contexts. Each chapter
recognises both similarity and difference between the biblical and qur’anic mate-
rial chosen, but they have different ways of dealing with this.
The first two chapters use contrasting strategies to identify significant differ-
ence in narratives which are often seen as common ground between Muslims and
Christians: those of Abraham and of Joseph. The first looks at the narratives as
embedded in the total worldviews of the Qur’an and the Bible, and the second per-
ceives the wider theological agendas through close analysis of the particular texts.
George Bristow presents his comparative narrative analysis of the Abraham
stories in the context of an analysis of the worldviews of the Bible (as perceived
through his own evangelical tradition) and of the Qur’an (as perceived by the
Turkish Muslims with whom he is in conversation). He sees the overall contrast
of the Qur’an’s prophetic history and the Bible’s redemption history echoed in the
shared parts of the Abrahamic narrative, as well as in the selections made by the
Qur’an from the story of Abraham. His method enables him to put the whole of
the biblical Abraham narrative into conversation with the whole of the qur’anic
Abraham narrative, including the pericopes that are unique to each as well as the
few that are shared. His reading highlights difference in what is often regarded
as a common starting point for interfaith relations, and thus questions the value
of the category ‘Abrahamic Religion’ as a common denominator. However, he
reports having found unexpected harmony as well as unexpected dissonance, and
concludes that the understanding of difference through the comparative reading of
the narratives is as important for interfaith relationships as is the recognition
of commonalities.
Shirin Shafaie looks at the narrative strategy within the biblical and qur’anic
tellings of the apparently similar story of Joseph and demonstrates that the two tell-
ings have different purposes and theological functions. She identifies two related
issues that will recur in other chapters: first, Genesis and the Qur’an have differ-
ent views of the nature of prophecy and, second, Islamic tradition has read the
qur’anic accounts through the lens of the doctrine of ‘iṣma. ‘Iṣma, often translated
10 Ida Glaser
as ‘infallibility’, means that prophets are preserved from sin. They are not perfect,
in that they can make mistakes, but they would never rebel against God. How far,
we might ask, do the different views of prophecy echo the differences in biblical
and qur’anic worldviews proposed by Bristow? Instead, Shafaie chooses to exam-
ine the concept of ‘iṣma and to ask how far it is true to the qur’anic narratives. She
concludes that received interpretations might not be faithful to the texts, which
enables her to read the texts as cooperating rather than conflicting, their different
perspectives giving a multidimensional view of Joseph and his story.
One of the places where the question of ‘iṣma emerges most acutely is in the
context of the biblical accounts of David, which are often cited in Islamic polemic
as proof of biblical corruption. Larry Ciccarelli and Ali Makhlabi build on a
longstanding Muslim–Christian collaboration to examine the perceived problem:
that of the sinfulness of David, as God’s chosen prophet and leader, in his treat-
ment of Bathsheba and her husband. Their approach is to study how Muslim
commentators have dealt with the problem, noting that Muslim concerns about
the sinfulness of such an important character as David are, to some extent, shared
by Jewish commentators. They identify a range of treatments, some of which are
re-interpretations of the biblical version rather than rejections of it. They also note
an interesting difference between Sunni and Shia commentators, seeing a politi-
cal determinant in the latters’ greater insistence on ‘iṣma: Shias believe that their
imams (leaders) as well as the prophets are infallible, so are the more concerned
that the great leader of Israel should have been sinless. Ciccarelli and Makhlabi
see their collaboration as fruitful for both Muslim and Christian readers of the
Bible, as it challenges the presuppositions of both in a way that opens the text
afresh to both.
While Ciccarelli and Makhlabi look at their chosen David narrative in the
context of later discussion of a particular problem in it, Carol Walker places
her study of part of that same narrative in the context of a wider study of the
structures of the biblical books of Samuel and of Surah Ṣād (Q38) in which it
appears. She sees the biblical parable of the ewe lamb as a highly significant part
of Samuel’s dealing with issues of power, humility, covenant and social justice:
in contrast, it appears in Surah Ṣād as one of a series of examples of people who
turn to God in repentance and receive forgiveness. While the narratives have
different purposes in their contexts, she recognises that David’s repentance and
forgiveness follow the parable in the Bible and that the themes of Samuel are,
if sometimes in different ways, also qur’anic concerns. She recognises other
shared themes which she relates to contemporary issues: that of the temptations
faced by political leaders and the importance of leaders being under, and not
above, the law.
The various ‘intertextual conversations’ thus far indicate a measure of ‘recog-
nition’ of how the worlds of the text might match with the various worlds of the
readers as well as of how the biblical and qur’anic texts might match. Moham-
mad Ghandehari and Mohsen Feyzbakhsh offer a different sort of experiment.
Rather than comparing the biblical and qur’anic accounts of the ‘golden calf’, they
read the two stories as complementary. The differences between the stories are not,
then, problems, but indicate complementary sources of information that need to be
integrated. They achieve this through considering Jewish discussion of the issues
which are also noted by Christian commentators: the related problems of Aaron
as the high priest being also the person who led Israel into major idolatry, and of
the leniency of his punishment. The Qur’an is seen as resolving the problems, but
in a way that requires reference to the biblical account for a full understanding.
Ghandehari and Feyzbakhsh follow a trajectory that contrasts sharply with
Bristow, with whose chapter we began this part. Where Bristow’s study points
towards irreconcilable differences between the Abrahamic faiths, they see their
method as a way of ‘reconciling Abrahamic Scriptures’. Together, they raise the
sorts of questions about Muslim and Christian understandings of texts that will be
explored in Part II.
• Ghandehari and Feyzbakhsh are Muslims, and Bristow is an evangelical

Christian. Their contrasting approaches are consonant with a tendency that
can be observed throughout this book for Muslim authors to handle apparent
differences as problems to be solved or as ways of adding to their under-
standing of the Qur’an, while Christian authors tend to accept difference as
indicating irreducible differences between the biblical and the qur’anic
worlds. How far, we might ask, is this related to the fact that, while the
Qur’an requires Muslims to accept the Torah (at least in its original form)
to be God-given, there is no biblical requirement for Christians to have any
particular expectation of the Qur’an?
• Ghandehari and Feyzbakhsh’s questions are not Bristow’s questions. The
latter is interested in how the narratives fit into and reflect the grand narra-
tives of the scriptures in which they are situated. The former are interested
in understanding the detailed events referred to within the particular narra-
tives, and do not refer to their contexts and purposes. How far, we might
ask, does this reflect the differing functions of narratives within the Bible
and the Qur’an, and the consequent different ways in which such narratives
have been handled in their respective traditions?
Bristow’s chapter provokes further questions that point towards Part III. It is
the only one so far that deals in any way with the New Testament. The differ-
ing details in the biblical and qur’anic narratives are seen as pointing towards
different resolutions of tensions in the Genesis texts in the Qur’an and the New
Testament, and therefore towards fundamentally different worldviews. How far,
we might ask, do the other Christians implicitly read the Old Testament from the
perspective of a New Testament worldview? What might be learnt by comparing
how the New Testament and the Qur’an respectively deal with other questions
raised by other Old Testament texts? And how far are the tensions dealt with in
both the New Testament and the Qur’an those raised in prior Jewish discussions?
In short, the questions are not just about the relationship between the Qur’an and
the Bible, but about the relationships between the Hebrew Bible, the New Testa-
ment and the Qur’an.
12 Ida Glaser
Part II: Questions about the texts
• ‘The fourth source: Isrā’iliyyāt and the use of the Bible in Muslim scholar-
ship’ by Wan Mohd Fazrul Azdi Wan Razali, Ahmad Yunus Mohd Noor and
Jaffary Awang
• ‘Constrained by scriptural polemics: Hamiduddin Farahi on the Akedah’ by
Nazirudin Mohd Nasir
• ‘The culture shock of the Bible’ by Daniel J. Crowther
• ‘Islamic tradition and the reception history of the Bible’ by Martin O’Kane
and Talha Bhamji
• ‘The morphology of the narrative exegesis of the Qur’an: The case of the
cow of the Banū Isrāʾīl (Q2:67–74)’ by S. Ali Aghaei
On the one hand, the Qur’an claims continuity with biblical revelation: on the other
hand, the biblical books are significantly different from the Qur’an in their form,
variety and content. This raises acute questions for Muslim readers as to how far
can they recognise the extant biblical books as those referred to in the Qur’an, and
hence how far and in what ways they can learn from the Bible. For the Christian
reader, there is the corresponding challenge of asking how far and in what ways
the Qur’an and Islamic tradition can be recognised as continuous with the Bible;
and hence how far and in what ways they can be useful in biblical interpretation.
The chapters in this part are relevant to these questions.
We begin with a discussion from within the worldview of Sunni Islam of the
Shāfi’ī school of law which raises important and widespread questions about how
far Muslims should read the Bible. Wan Mohd Fazrul Wan Razali, Ahmad
Yunus Mohd Noor and Jaffary Awang use the classical category of Isrā’iliyyāt –
Jewish and Christian material, which includes the Bible. Their main conceptual
tool is wiḥdah al-dīn, the unity of all genuine religion. This is not, they point out,
a pluralistic idea, and neither does it suggest that Islam is in any way derived from
other faiths. Rather, it is the view that all prophets brought the same religion: Islam.
This is an Islamic lens through which the Bible is to be read; and it implies that
the Bible is expected to have the same message, if not necessarily the same form,
as the Qur’an. Wan Razali, Mohd Noor and Awang do not attempt to apply their
findings to any actual readings of the Bible, but what is implicit in their chapter
is the fact that there is a disjunction between this expectation and what the Bible
actually is. Their sources indicate that there are parts of the Bible that can be
accepted, parts that must be rejected, and parts that are neutral in that the Qur’an
neither affirms nor refutes them. The question for Muslim scholars is how they
discern what should be recognised and what should be rejected.
On such a basis, readers are likely to approach the Bible with a spectrum of
agendas, from enhancing understanding of the Qur’an to refuting the Bible. The
question for our ‘biblical interpretation in Islamic context’ venture is how far there
is space between these two ends for Muslims seriously to read the Bible in its own
right, and to appreciate it as Christian and Jewish Scripture. Or might there be an
alternative spectrum?
Nazirudin Mohd Nasir’s chapter opens a discussion on these questions as he
interrogates a particular nineteenth-century treatment of the Akedah sacrifice of
Genesis 22 and Q37:99–111: that of Hamiduddin Farahi. Farahi differs from most
of his predecessors in that he deals directly with the Bible and can read Hebrew.
Mohd Nasir notes that, while Farahi uses some of the same methods in interpret-
ing the Bible as he does in interpreting the Qur’an, his agenda is polemical. He is
using the Qur’an as his hermeneutical key to the Bible, with the purpose of finding
taḥrīf – corruption of the biblical texts.
Mohd Nasir questions this agenda on the basis of two contexts for reading: the
wider textual context of Q37: 99–111 within the Qur’an, and the social and politi-
cal context of the reader. In the former context, he points out that the qur’anic text
is, in fact, open to interpretation that does not conflict with the Bible and, indeed,
that some early Muslim readings were actually in agreement with the Bible and
used the Bible in order to augment the brief qur’anic narrative. Further, he argues
that this particular text should discourage Muslims from polemics. All this opens
the possibility of serious reading of the Bible with spiritual as well as informational
gain. Whether and how this is done, however, depends on how open the social
context is to interfaith relations and to new ideas.17
Danny Crowther proposes a refreshing model for dealing with acute differ-
ence: he re-formulates the problem in terms of culture. He offers an analysis of
the disjunction between Muslim expectations of scripture and the phenomena of
the Bible – in particular, its human voice, variety of genre, textual and canonical
history in addition to the sinfulness of prophets explored in the above discussions
about ‘iṣma. The Muslim experience of this he describes as ‘culture shock’, and
he suggests that models of moving across cultures might help Muslim readers to
engage seriously with the Bible. His argument is that the observations Muslims
make about the form and content of the Bible reveal how different it is to the
Qur’an. Attention to their questions can help Christians better understand the way
in which the Bible functions as the Word of God.
This is an example of finding a way forward through a seeming impasse by ask-
ing a new question, a pattern which will be seen in several of the chapters in Part
III. In this case, the question moves from how far the Bible can be recognised as
a Scripture within the concept of wiḥdah al-dīn (unity of faith) to the question of
how a Muslim reader might learn to appreciate the world of the Bible. I will pick
up the important corollary, the question of how Christians understand the Bible in
conversation with Muslim ‘culture shock’, in the final part of this chapter.
The next two chapters are case studies that consider the relationship between
the Bible and the Qur’an and subsequent Islamic tradition. Both argue that the
Qur’an and its traditional interpretation can be viewed through the lens of recep-
tion history of the Bible.
Martin O’Kane and Talha Bhamji argue that Islamic traditions not only can
but also should be seen as part of the reception history of the Bible. Indeed, they
suggest, reception history is incomplete without consideration of Islamic sources.
They recognise that this will not be straightforward, in that the traditions seldom
deal directly with the Bible, and some include polemical refutations of parts of the
14 Ida Glaser
Bible. However, they find plenty of material in both the Qur’an and later Islamic
discussion that enters and extends Jewish and Christian discussion of the actual
texts. Their exploration of Ishmael and Esau in Jewish, Christian and Islamic
tradition indicates a commonality of concerns that are addressed and resolved in
different ways according not only to religious beliefs but also to ethnic and politi-
cal contexts.
Ali Aghaei demonstrates the reception and elaboration of Islamic tradition that
relates to the Bible through a detailed case study of the development of Islamic
exegesis of the Qur’an. He chooses one of the Qur’an’s most perplexing allusions
to the Bible: the ‘Cow of Banū Isrāʾīl’ in Q2:67–74. This appears not to refer
to any single biblical text, but rather to allude to two different texts (Numbers
19:1–19, where a cow is burnt and its ashes are used for purity, and Deuteronomy
21:1–9, where a cow is killed in order to deal with bloodguilt in the case of an
unsolved murder). The developing early discussions appear to get progressively
further from those texts; but the investigation indicates that some of them reflect
Jewish discourse related to an application of the legal prescription in Deuteronomy
21 and, from the tenth century onwards, there are examples of direct references
to the biblical passage. Ali demonstrates that Islamic understandings of Surah
2:67–74 are dependent on the Isrā’iliyyāt and concludes that they should be treated
as part of the reception history of the Bible.
Part III: Analogical exlorations

• ‘The place of purity in faith’ by Dwight Swanson
• ‘Biblical Ruth as a qur’anic Queen of Sheba: scriptural narratives of foreigner
assent’ by Georgina L. Jardim
• ‘Reading Paul on idolatry (Romans 1:18–32) alongside the Qur’an: a theol-
ogy of divine signs’ by Michael Lodahl
• ‘Indirection in biblical and qur’anic discourses, and in Bible translation in
Islamic contexts’ by Andy Warren-Rothlin
• ‘The Gospel of John as a structure for Muslim–Christian understanding’ by
Daniel A. Madigan
All the chapters in this book note similarities between the Qur’an and the Bible,
and all recognise that these similarities occur in different scriptural, historical and
theological contexts. A fruitful way of handling this similarity-in-difference is the
category of ‘analogy’. An analogy chooses a similarity, but in a way that reminds
the reader that things that appear similar are not necessarily the same and that they
may function differently in their different contexts. There is always some choice
in identifying analogies: the choices are not so much ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ as more
or less fruitful.
We begin with the chapter that explores a deliberately chosen analogical theme:
Dwight Swanson’s chapter on purity. In terms of our ‘analogical’ model, we can
see Swanson as setting out the three overlapping circles of Torah, Gospel and
Qur’an on the subject. His approach is to see ‘purity’ in the context of the overall
narratives of the relevant texts, which means that the model can offer analogical
insights into the relationship between the scriptures as well as into the particular
ideas of purity which they contain.
Having set out the system, and started to explore what is in the overlaps and
what is unique to each scripture, Swanson raises an agenda for further study. This
includes historical questions about the relationships between the three scriptures,
questions about biblical and qur’anic treatments of key themes and words (such
as ‘covenant’ and ‘holiness’), and questions about how Jews, Christians and Mus-
lims have developed practices in response to the texts. All this leads to challenges
for Christian readers of the Bible: have Western Christians in particular missed
important aspects of their scriptures?
In Georgina Jardim’s chapter, analogy between a biblical and a qur’anic char-
acter emerges unexpectedly from an intertextual conversation about an obviously
shared character. It demonstrates that fruitful analogies might not be those found
in the most obviously parallel texts.
The initial intertextual conversation was about the Queen of Sheba, and it was
developed in the context of a ‘Holy Book Club’ where Christian and Muslim
women meet to read the Qur’an and the Bible using a ‘Scriptural Reasoning’
model. It indicated a crucial difference between the two accounts: the Qur’an
emphasises the foreign queen’s conversion from paganism to the One God, while
the Bible leaves the question of her conversion open. This led Jardim to ask where
and how the Bible might deal with the conversion of a foreign woman. That is, she
sought a biblical analogy to this aspect of the Queen of Sheba as portrayed in the
Qur’an. She turned to Ruth, and offers us a fascinating re-reading of Ruth with
the questions raised by the initial Queen of Sheba conversation in mind. Taking
Ruth as a biblical analogy to the qur’anic Queen of Sheba produced fruitful and
contextually relevant insights.
The above two analogies emerged from comparative intertextual conversations.
In our next three chapters, concepts that can be described as ‘analogical’ are used
to discuss key theological questions that often emerge in discussions between
Christians and Muslims. The questions have to do with human propensity to sin,
with the transcendence of God, and with the nature of revelation. The theological
differences between Muslims and Christians on these issues underlie difference
on the nature of scripture, and they will inform my Christian reflection in the last
part of this chapter.
Michael Lodahl offers a reading of Romans 1 that deals with the question of
the human propensity to sin: a perennial area of disagreement between Muslims
and Christians which underlies, on the one hand, questions about how sin can
be dealt with and, on the other hand, questions about the doctrine of ‘iṣma that
features so strongly in this volume. Typically, a Muslim says that humans are
born in a state of fiṭra, that is, in a state of innocence in which Islam is natural
to them, and a Western Christian will say that, since Adam, humans have been
born ‘fallen’, that is, not in the original state in which God made humanity. This
is why, Christians say, not even prophets can be sinless, and guidance cannot
be sufficient.
16 Ida Glaser
Lodahl’s approach points a way forward that can shed fresh light both on this
stale-mated debate and on biblical texts: he identifies a fresh question, which can
be shared by Muslims and Christians, and he chooses an analogical concept that
enables a fresh reading of the texts with that question in mind. Central to the pro-
cess is dealing with a passage in its own historical as well as textual context, and
thus of dealing with its purpose as well as with its content.
He begins by asking what questions lie behind Romans 1. This leads to the ques-
tion of the possibility of the knowledge of the One God outside the covenant (that
is, through creation): the major question about human nature is, then, why people
should prefer idolatry to the worship of that God. The next step is to identify a
qur’anic analogy as a hermeneutical key: God’s signs in creation as evidence of
the Creator. This frequent qur’anic idea, he suggests, ‘resonates’ with Paul’s asser-
tion about the knowability of God in Romans 2:19–20. Romans and the Qur’an
agree that many human beings choose to ignore the evidence of the signs and that
the result is service of the creatures rather than the Creator. The shared question
is, then, ‘Why do people reject God’s signs?’ It opens a reading of Romans and
a discussion about human nature that might challenge Muslims, Christians and
Jews alike.
Questions relating to divine transcendence arise in Andy Warren-Rothlin’s
context of Bible translation, as he explores anthropotheism (describing God in
human terms) and apophasis (describing God through negative statements): there
is an underlying question of how human language relates to the divine being.
The presenting questions for both Muslims and Christians are, first, how far
anthropotheism might compromise the difference between Creator and creature
and, second, how far human language can describe God. The history of Muslim
ways of dealing with such questions sharpens the issues for Bible translators in
Islamic contexts.
Warren-Rothlin notes Muslim commentators’ concern to ensure that qur’anic
anthropomorphisms do not detract from God’s transcendent otherness. Parallel
concerns are traced in the history of Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Christian
dealings with the Bible. He concludes that, on the one hand, most scholars
today would see anthropotheisms as linguistic phenomena, merely raising
potential communication problems. On the other hand, there have been times
when anthropotheisms have been theologically interpreted. In the case of apo-
phasis, he suggests that translation choices may be made that take deliberate
account of Islamic language that so often describes God in negative rather than
in positive terms. What he calls the ‘intertwining’ of theology and translation
is evident.
However, it is also evident that there are some differences in the Bible’s and
the Qur’an’s uses of human language to describe God: the apparently com-
mon concerns could, I suggest, fruitfully be seen in terms of analogy rather
than simple similarity. The issues are different for Muslims and for Christians,
because their understandings of how God relates to humans and to language
are different.
This brings us to the theological heart of debates between Christians and Mus-
lims: the relationship between God and God’s Word. What is ‘God’s Word’, and
how can we understand God as having a Word without infringing divine transcen-
dence? Dan Madigan addresses this issue through a reading of John’s Gospel that
offers the possibility of moving from standard debates towards mutual understand-
ing. He develops the analogy between Jesus as God’s Word and the Qur’an as
God’s Word. However, he leaves open the question that haunts this whole volume:
how, then, do we understand the Bible?
Like Lodahl, Madigan opens up the text by identifying questions that are shared
by Muslims and Christians, in this case how God’s Self relates to God’s Word, and
how that Word enters the created world – in the Qur’an or in the Messiah. Madigan
takes these questions to the prologue of John’s Gospel and uses the results as a
key to reading the rest of the Gospel, developing conversation with the world of
the Qur’an and with Muslim readers throughout. This opens fresh understandings
of the text for Christian as well as for Muslim readers: it is a pointer towards the
fruitfulness of the conversation with Islamic context in developing Christian read-
ings of biblical texts.
Madigan has no expectation that this will lead to Muslim–Christian agreement.
Rather, his approach aims to help Muslims to understand Christian belief, and it
results in clarifying difference as well as similarity. Like biblical and qur’anic
concepts of purity, like the biblical Ruth and the qur’anic Queen of Sheba, like
questions about sin and purity, and like scriptural anthropomorphisms, the con-
cept of the Word has a different place within Islamic thinking than it has within
Christian thinking: the concepts are not the same, but analogous. Returning to
Danny Crowther’s proposals, we might say that the method of recognising analo-
gous concepts and questions offers a way of moving from initial ‘culture shock’
through engagement with the texts towards appreciation of the new culture, and
even towards the possibility of learning from it and finding a sense of belonging.
Shabbir Akhtar’s final chapter is an example of a Muslim reader who has so
persevered through the ‘culture shock’ that he is able to study one of the most
controversial books in the Bible for a Muslim reader: Galatians. Akhtar’s care-
ful putting of this letter into conversation with the Qur’an and Islamic thinking
both develops mutual understanding and offers fresh insight to both Christian and
Muslim readers.
What have I learnt? Signposts for the future

This final section offers something of my own reflection on where a Christian
reader like myself might go from here. I hope that it will also offer some signposts
for other readers on other interpretative journeys.
I will use a basic hermeneutical cycle of text, context and practice as a guide to
future experiments. Since it is unlikely that readers will move around the circle in
an orderly fashion, I have represented it as three sectors of a circle rather than as
a circular or spiral series of events, as in Figure 1.1.
18 Ida Glaser
text context
practice
Figure 1.1 Basic hermeneutical map
I see the venture of reading as a set of interdependent tasks.
• Text. Most obviously, there is the task of reading the text itself. As our
focus is the interpretation of the Bible, the biblical text is the ‘text’ in ques-
tion. The task includes considering questions about the nature of the texts
studied as well as their forms and contents and their relationships to the
contexts in which they were written.
• Context. Reading is always done by particular people in particular contexts.
The task here is to take deliberate and explicit account of the context. We
have already observed the role of the Qur’an and its self-perception in relation
to the Bible that makes Islamic contexts of special interest for biblical inter-
pretation. So important is this that we could see reading ‘in conversation with’
the Qur’an as an explicit task, and inscribe it into the circle as a separate
sector. However, since reading between the Bible and the Qur’an is an essential
part of each stage, I prefer to let intertextual study permeate the system.
• Practice18 is the deliberate putting into practice of what has been learnt
from reading. This is of particular relevance in the reading of Scripture:
those who use such a hermeneutical model see obedience to Scripture as
essential to the proper understanding of Scripture. This is inherent to what
is meant by ‘Scripture’. For this venture, the task is potentially huge: it can
include any aspect of Muslims and Christians living in a shared world, as
well as the tasks of teaching our own communities, of communicating our
faiths to each other, and of dealing with the many practical issues of day-
to-day life.
Taking this analysis as a signpost for future readings, we might envisage jour-
neys through the tasks that would begin with an initial reading of a biblical text,
which would lead to the choice of Islamic texts for an intertextual ‘conversation’.
The contexts in which these texts are being read and in which they have been read
in history will affect the intertextual work, so a next stage might be to consider
these contexts. The reader or readers might then consider and execute practical
applications, and finally return to read the text again. Such a path is represented
in Figure 1.2.
We might take as example one of the texts addressed in our chapters. I have cho-
sen the narrative about David, Bathsheba and Nathan in 2 Samuel 11 and 12, dealt
with by Ciccarelli and Makhlabi in Chapter 4 and by Carol Walker in Chapter 5.
Both of them begin by selecting for intertextual conversation the qur’anic account
of the incident in Surah 38:17–26. However, both quickly have to deal with pre-
liminary questions about the text. These arise in two different ways: Ciccarelli and
Makhlabi address the basic question ‘in conversation’ with Islam of how far the
text can be recognised as scripture, given that it appears to conflict with Islamic
understandings of prophetic ‘iṣma. Walker is more interested in how the text func-
tions within the larger text of the books of Samuel, and therefore in what kind of
text it is. She opts explicitly for dealing with the literary and theological ‘form’
of the books. Both chapters deal with these questions through the intertextual
conversation with the Qur’an and, in doing so, they consider something of their
interpretative contexts – Sunni, Shia, Jewish and Christian – and their histories.
We see already the interplays between text, intertext and context.
Text
Intertext
Context
Praxis
Text
Figure 1.2 A path towards interpretation

20 Ida Glaser
Both chapters also indicate a concern for practice. Ciccarelli and Makhlabi’s
chapter is itself a result of the practice of Muslim–Christian collaboration in Bible
translation, and they see their study as having potential for interfaith understand-
ing. Walker takes her reflection in a different direction: she notes that the ‘iṣma
debate related to this narrative led to a legal submission being made to a Pakistani
court for the Bible to be banned; but her conclusion focusses on the practical
implications of the whole thrust of the text. This is, she suggests, for the Qur’an
as well as the Bible, a concern about the accountability of leadership.
Together, the two chapters take readers on a journey from a standard polemical
discussion about prophetic ‘iṣma and the taḥrīf of the biblical text through recog-
nition of shared concerns within the debate, re-reading of texts and commentaries
within their contexts, and on to the recognition of a different shared concern. We
can then return to the biblical text – and to another stage of the journey through
intertext, context and practice – with a fresh perspective.
What, then, might be the next steps in the journey of interpreting 2 Samuel 11
and 12 in Islamic context? Here are some possible directions:
Text
The books of Samuel amply illustrate the ‘culture shock’ identified by Crowther.
Ciccarelli and Makhlabi grapple with the ‘scandal’ of David’s sin, but we might
also note that the ‘voice’ of the story is that of a human writer, that the two books
of Samuel were originally one and are now two, that they are differently situated
in the Old Testament and in the Hebrew canon, that their authorship is unknown,
that the standard Hebrew text (MT) has significant differences from the Greek
Septuagint (LXX) and that aspects of their historicity have been challenged.19
What might Christian readers make of these challenges, what might be a route
for Muslim through the ‘culture shock’ to an understanding of 2 Samuel, and what
might the Christian reader learn from the interaction? I shall focus on the first
and the last questions, and trust that this will help Muslim readers to consider the
central question for themselves.
We consider the first question through two currently popular ‘study Bibles’,20
which offer scholarly insights at an accessible, faith-based level. In their introduc-
tion to Samuel, neither mentions its human ‘voice’ – this is so common a feature of
biblical writings that it is no surprise to the reader. Both note extensive scholarly
discussions about authorship, date and genre; but these are treated as interesting
puzzles that add to understanding rather than as scandalous problems. Both also
acknowledge the textual questions, footnoting to indicate some major textual dif-
ferences between the MT and the LXX, and the ESV giving some space to trans-
lation decisions. Again, this is treated as an instructive puzzle to be solved rather
than as a scandalous undermining of the Scripture.
The only one of all Crowther’s ‘scandals’ that is seen as potentially undermining
1 and 2 Samuel as Scripture is that of historical reliability. The primary way of
dealing with apparent historical difficulties is through considering literary genres
and structures:21 questions of chronology are dealt with by considering how the
author has put together the different parts of the book, and the author’s literary
and theological intentions are accepted as features rather than problems. However,
basic historical accuracy is implicitly affirmed through extensive explanation and
illustration of the geography and culture mentioned in the text, and the denial of
historicity is disallowed. In the specific case noted by Crowther – the question of
whether it was Elchanan the Bethlehemite and not David who killed Goliath (2
Samuel 21:19), the ESV notes two solutions that make Elchanan and not David
the killer, but comments, ‘these interpretations would deny the truthfulness of 1
Samuel 17, and other solutions are preferable.’ The solutions preferred are textual
or linguistic – for example, that there is an omission of ‘the brother of’ in the MT
and LXX as compared to 1 Chronicles 20:5,22 or ‘Goliath’ is a general word for a
giant rather than the proper name of an individual.23
In short, both of these study Bibles indicate awareness of most of Crowther’s
‘scandals’, but the only one that appears to be perceived as problematic is that of
historicity, and the commentators find ways of dealing with this by appreciating
the texts with their human histories and by acknowledging the limitations of cur-
rent knowledge of the ancient world. The human ‘scandals’ are not problems, but
features which add to the way the text speaks into the life and faith of the believing
community.
This is pointing to a key difference between the Qur’an and the Bible. It is not
incidental that the biblical books are written in human voices and in different liter-
ary forms. Rather, they are consistent with the pattern observed by Madigan that
it is Jesus, and not the Bible, that is viewed in the New Testament as God’s eternal
Word. At the centre of a Christian understanding of revelation is not a Book, but
the Word-made-flesh. Similarly, the books of Samuel do not consciously present
themselves as revelation: rather, they tell the story of a key stage of God’s working
through his chosen people.
What, then, is the Bible? We might take the clue from John 1:1–14, which
includes mention of the prophet, John the Baptist. He is not, insists John, the Light,
but he is a witness to the Light. One category for thinking about the New Testament
writings is, then, that they are a form of inspired witness to the Word-made-flesh.
By extension, a simple description of the Old Testament writings might be that
they are Israel’s inspired witness to her history of encounter with God, collected
and passed down to teach generations of believers. And Israel is the people called
by God as a light to the nations and as the community into which the Word was
born. This is so different from the Qur’an’s view of itself that we might question
how far Christian and Muslim views of scripture can be seen as analogous, let
alone similar.24
The inspired biblical witness is believed to be both humanly produced and
divinely inspired: that this is the sort of Scripture that we have is indicative of the
nature of humanity and of God. The questions about anthropotheism and apophasis
explored by Warren-Rothlin arise in the context of translating language that is a
human production as well as a divine communication; and this raises the ques-
tion of how the human production of the text as well as the human language
which it uses relates to divine transcendence. My own conclusion is that divine
22 Ida Glaser
transcendence is as free to choose human production as to choose human language
and that the choice of using inspired human writers is entirely consistent with the
human–divine relationship as expressed throughout the Bible.
Further, since my first reading of the Bible in ‘conversation’ with the Qur’an, I
have realised that the form is as much a part of a revelation as is the content. That
is, we can and should learn about the Creator and his creation from the way that
the text has been produced and shaped, as well as from what it says. Walker works
carefully with the literary form of the texts, and that is an important element; but
the comparative reading is incomplete if we do not take into account the specific
human process of production and canonisation of the biblical texts in contrast with
Muslim beliefs about the origins of the Qur’an.
Viewed in this way, the so-called scandals become not problems, but essential
features which need to be taken into account in exploration of the worlds of the
text. 2 Samuel 11–12 is not a divinely told lesson about the accountability of rulers
or the virtue of repentance/turning to God: it is a telling of the history of Israel’s
founder king that shows his accountability. The books of Samuel are not divine les-
sons about how God puts down the mighty and raises the lowly that are illustrated
from Israel’s history: they are Israel’s account of its history that witnesses to God
who works through putting down the mighty and elevating the lowly. Reflection
on the purposes of the human writer – whether for or against the Davidic dynasty,
and in comparison with Chronicles and Deuteronomy – does not undermine the
books’ authority, but enhances understanding of the texts.25 With this in mind, we
can continue into further intertextual reading.
Intertext
It is noteworthy that the one of Crowther’s ‘scandals’ that is not considered as
in any way problematic by the study Bible is just the one that is dealt with by
Ciccarelli and Makhlabi: that of David’s sinfulness. The Christian biblical com-
mentators do not see the inclusion of this story as a difficulty, but as an essential
feature of the text. Shabbir Akhtar recently asked a question that has helped me to
see its importance: ‘What would Christians see as scandalous about the Qur’an?’
My answer was that Christians see the attempt to exonerate prophets from major
sin – both qur’anic and merely Islamic – as scandalous. Further, the whole idea
of ‘iṣma – that prophets are a special category of humanity – is scandalous. 2
Samuel’s relentless shaming of David matters.
As Ciccarelli and Makhlabi demonstrate, the Qur’an implies that David did
something wrong, but it maintains David’s honour and gives only the slightest
hint that this might have been a sexual matter. Had we started from 2 Samuel’s
focus on David’s marriage to a woman seen accidentally when still the wife of
another, we might have chosen for intertextual study not Surah 38, but the analo-
gous story of Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab, the wife of Zayd, his adopted
son (Q33:36–38). The story behind the qur’anic text is that Muhammad arranged
the marriage between Zayd and Zaynab, but that, much later, he accidentally saw
Zaynab partially dressed, and desired her. Zayd then divorced her, and Muhammad
married her.26 Where Samuel stresses that David sinned, the Qur’an exonerates
Muhammad from any blame and indeed sees his actions as God-ordained and
praiseworthy.
Christians have expressed shocked scandal at this since the earliest Islamic
times.27 How could a scripture condone such a marriage, let alone present it as
God’s will? Would the story of Muhammad ‘fall down’ if he could be found to
have committed such sin as is recorded of David, or even the lesser sin perceived
by Christian readers in the Zaynab story? One direction for further intertextual
reading would be to ask why Muhammad is portrayed in this way, with the related
question of why so many Muslims insist on the ‘iṣma of the prophets when, as
Shafaie shows in relation to the Joseph story, there is little qur’anic warrant for it.
Taking our clue from Georgina Jardim’s chapter, another direction for further
reading might be to ask whether there are other passages in the Qur’an or other
Islamic sources that would pick up the themes of the ewe lamb parable. For exam-
ple, if, as Walker argues, the texts are about the accountability of leaders, where
does the Qur’an deal specifically with that question? This would take us into fresh
intertextual discussions, with fresh questions about how our question is dealt with
in Jewish, Christian and Islamic discussions of the texts, and their applications in
today’s world. Other themes might include divorce, family dynamics and polyg-
amy. All these take us on into our current contexts and have practical implications.
Context and practice

Perhaps the most urgent challenges for the practice of both Muslims and Christians
in current contexts are those which Walker identifies as the key lessons drawn by
the Qur’an and affirms as major lessons in Samuel: they are to do with power
and repentance. The books of Samuel are about Israel’s transition to monarchy,
exploring the whole, ambivalent, nature of kingly power and its relationship with
God’s kingship as expressed through prophets and priests. The ‘sin of David’ in
Chapters 11 and 12 opens up questions about accountability, about honour and
about restoration of a leader after gross misconduct.
It is interesting that the ewe lamb parable that so angers David (2 Samuel 12:1–
6) is not in itself about the sins of adultery and murder which so shock Muslim
readers: it is about abuse of power, of the poor by the rich, and this is the one aspect
of the story that is picked up by the Qur’an. Reading back into 2 Samuel 11, we
can see the relentless wielding of power as David sits back and instructs people.
Does his need for explanation and his immediate repentance (2 Samuel 12:7–13)
imply that he did not realise the extent to which he had yielded to the temptation
to use his power for his own ends and his own honour? Certainly, the rest of 1 and
2 Samuel presents him as someone who hates injustice, who refuses to grasp the
kingship when he can (1 Samuel 24 and 26) and who repudiates the murders which
establish his throne (2 Samuel 3 and 4).
The story of David’s tragic fall at the very pinnacle of his establishment as
God’s anointed king will challenge the practice of political as well as religious
leaders in all our contexts. But the story in its biblical and qur’anic contexts also
24 Ida Glaser
raises acute questions about how the leaders and their people might deal with such
falls. Here, we select but three of these, both of which should provoke further
intertextual study.
First, how far should the sin of the leader be exposed? In 2 Samuel, all the palace
servants clearly know about David’s adultery, yet David seeks to defend his and
Bathsheba’s honour through his dealings with Uriah. By the end of the chapter, it
seems that all has been dealt with, and everyone is content – except God, who then
exposes everything.28 The writer of 2 Samuel also exposes it.
In contrast, the Qur’an is so circumspect in its handling of the affair that the
commentators can argue that, if there was a sin, it was a very minor one; and 1
Chronicles, with its focus on genealogy and the temple, covers it completely. There
are intrafaith as well as interfaith discussions to be pursued here. The Qur’an pro-
vokes the question, ‘How far should the honour not only of this particular prophet-
leader but also of today’s leaders be preserved?’ perhaps leading to the question of
how the honour of the leader might relate to the honour of the community. From
2 Samuel, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that justice may require a public
calling to account of the leader; but this particular leader repented and was forgiven
and restored. Perhaps the contrasting 1 Chronicles implies that, under some condi-
tions, even such sin as David’s can be left behind.
Second, who might expose the leader’s sin? The encounter between David and
Nathan is an important element of Samuel’s exploration of the relationship between
the human king and the rule of God. The latter is represented by the prophet
Nathan; and we note that there is a careful and growing distinction between the
role of the king and the roles of the prophets and priests as the books progress. It
is part of the role of the prophet to confront the human king with the requirements
of the Divine King, not least because the power gained by the human king may
blind him to his breaking of those requirements.
In contrast, the Qur’an has not a prophet, but two mysterious, probably angelic,
intruders conveying the parable to David. For me, as a Christian reader, this raises
the question of whether this is because David is being treated as a prophet as well
as a king, and therefore of the implications of combining the role of the leader
with the role of the prophet, as is exemplified in the person of Muhammad. Does
this imply that no-one but God, through His angels, is in a position to call such a
leader to account? In the case of Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab, was anyone in
the community in a position effectively to challenge Muhammad? Today, what are
the dangers of a political leader assuming religious authority (or vice versa)? For
Muslims and Christians, in different ways, this should take us back to our texts and
to our traditions to discern who is responsible for challenging our leaders, and how.
Third, what might be the conditions for the restoration of an erring ruler?
The Qur’an simply indicates that David repented and does not even hint that his
sin might have been such that his kingdom should be forfeited. 2 Samuel tells
us that he repented and that God removed his sin, but then relates at length the
consequences of that sin. Yet, in contrast with the case of Saul, David does not
lose his throne – it is threatened and briefly lost, but eventually restored. It is very
clear that, as it was God who gave him the throne in the first place, so it was God
who restored it to him; but there were people involved at every stage of the king-
making. When should we, today, reject a ruler, and when should we accept the rule
of a repentant ruler? Again, our questions take us back to our texts.
Back to the text

I have proposed that the Christian reader should see the differences that might
seem scandalous to the Muslim reader not as problems, but as features of the very
nature of scripture. In returning to the text with all the above discussions in mind,
I have been considering an alternative: the ‘thought experiment’ of cutting the
‘scandal’ from the books of Samuel. It could not work. The incident is a pivot in
David’s story: the brilliantly narrated turning point between his rise to power and
the family disintegration that makes him (and the reader) ready to let go of the
kingdom that God has given to him.29
It is also, therefore, the crux of the mystery of Samuel: why does God establish
the kingdom through David, and not through Saul? How can the later assessment of
1 Chronicles judge Saul as ‘breaking faith’ (10:13) and David as ruling with justice
and righteousness (18:14 cf. 2 Samuel 23:3), and omit the Bathsheba incident com-
pletely? How can we make sense of the three structuring songs,30 that frame the ‘How
have the mighty fallen?’ of 2 Samuel 1:19–27 not only with Hannah’s ‘the Lord will
exalt the power of His Annointed’ of 1 Samuel 2:1–10 but also with David’s ‘the
Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness’ of 2 Samuel 22:2–51?
The puzzle of the sinful king who is also a ‘man after God’s own heart’ is inten-
sified through reading ‘in conversation with’ the Islamic ‘iṣma doctrine, and the
Qur’an’s exoneration of Muhammad in the analogous relationship with Zaynab
and Zayd. The comparison with the Qur’an’s circumspect handling of David’s sin
highlights 2 Samuel’s insistence on bringing into the open the very shame which
David has sought to hide (12:12).
We cannot escape the conclusion that David’s sin is crucial to Samuel’s his-
tory of the rise of the Israelite monarchy, and to the establishment of the Davidic
messianic dynasty. But why does God not reject such a sinful king, as He rejected
Saul, and replace him with someone better? In the light of the whole biblical
canon, I would suggest that the answer is, ‘There could be no-one better.’ The sin
of David is in the pattern of the sin of Adam,31 and no human being escapes that
pattern. As God committed Himself to work with sinful humanity after the flood
(Genesis 8:21), so He has to work with sinful human beings in choosing a nation
and its leaders. It seems that the big difference between Saul and David is in how
they responded to being challenged about their sin. Where Saul, like Adam, tries
to justify his actions, cover his shame and clutch his kingdom, David repents and
recognises that he deserves to lose everything.
We need to add to the discussion about the universal human tendency to sin in
Lodahl’s chapter the observation that there is, in the Bible, no ‘iṣma. There are
not two categories of human being – the good and the bad. No prophet, priest or
king is miraculously protected from falling into sin. It would not even be correct to
describe Jesus, who was ‘in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without
26 Ida Glaser
sin’ (Hebrews 4:15, ESV), in terms of ‘iṣma. He was not a divinely protected
human being, but the eternally holy Word-made-flesh.
So, in the turbulence of today’s power struggles, we can expect the mighty – even
the best of them – to fall. But, if their response to their shame is acknowledging their
poverty of spirit, mourning over their sin, being meekly ready to let go of power
rather than to cling to it; if they long for justice and learn to be merciful to their
opponents; and if they accept undeserved persecutions, maybe the books of Samuel
are telling us that it is then that God will purify their hearts, cleanse their hands from
blood and, through them, bring the peaceful kingdom of the Anointed.32
Onward towards biblical interpretation in Islamic context

My journey is not finished, and neither is my reading of this volume. The explora-
tion of 2 Samuel 11 and 12 provoked by Walker and Makhlabi and Ciccarelli and
augmented through interaction with other chapters has taken me into the whole of
the Samuel literature, and provoked fresh intertextual conversations and questions
about the texts as well as further analogies for future exploration. I now want to go
forward from this introduction to see what other chapters have to offer.
What insights might Bristow’s worldview approach offer on the differences
between biblical and qur’anic handling of the sins of leaders? What parallels might
I find between the idolatry of the golden calf (explored by Ghandehari and Feyz-
bakhsh) at the height of Israel’s encounter with God and the power abuse of David
at the height of his reign? Are there parallels between the Muslim discussions of
this sin of David and the discussions about the Aqedah sacrifice explored by Mohd
Nasir? What might a reception history approach, such as is used by O’Kane and
Bhamji, add to my understanding? Are there further pointers relating to murder and
law as well as to the development of the story in Aghaei’s chapter?
What about the puzzle of 2 Samuel using, in its summary of David’s life, a
song which claims purity and cleanness of hands (2 Samuel 22:21, 25, 27)? All
believers are likely to face a similar puzzle in their own lives, as they are invited
in the Psalter to make it their own song (Psalm 18). How might Muslim readers
interact with this psalm? How might Swanson’s analysis of purity questions feed
the discussion? How might Shabbir Akhtar’s insights into law and grace in Gala-
tians contribute to our mutual concerns about forgiveness and restoration? What
resources does Akhtar’s chapter offer to enable Muslim readers to study 2 Samuel
rather than to reject it?
And how, I wonder, will reading this volume augment the experiments in bibli-
cal interpretation yet to be carried out by its various readers?
Notes
1 It is, in principle, a venture also shared by Jews; but the current work involves only
Christians and Muslims.
2 This is how he describes his own experiment in F. X. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta:
An experiment in comparative theology (New York: State University of New York Press,
1993), 3–4.
3 It is not easy to discern just what ‘Book’ might be meant here. Relevant questions include
those of what parts of the Bible might have been available in Arabic (see S. Griffiths,
The Bible in Arabic: The scriptures of the ‘people of the book’ in the language of Islam
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013) and of the Jewish and Christian canons
(see Crowther’s paper, chapter 9). For a study of the qur’anic concept of ‘Book’, see
D. Madigan, The Qur’an’s self-image: Writing and authority in Islam’s scripture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
4 See also my ‘Towards a mutual understanding of Christian and Islamic concepts of
revelation’, Themelios, vol. 7, no. 3, April 1982, 16–22; and ‘Qur’anic challenges for
the Bible reader’, in The enduring authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 1013–1056.
5 Examples include Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and its Biblical subtext (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2010); M. Ipgrave (ed.), Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and
Muslims studying the Bible and the Qur’an together: A record of the seminar ‘Build-
ing Bridges’ Held at Doha, Qatar, 7–9 April 2003 (London: Church House, 2004)
and subsequent volumes of the ‘Building Bridges’ conferences; D. Ford and C. C.
Pecknold (eds.), The promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); M.
Higton and R. Muers, The text in play: Experiments in reading scripture (Oregon:
Wipf and Stock, 2012).
6 Q4: 7–12.
7 The pattern was set by Ibn Hazm (994–1064), Kitāb al-Fiṣal. Very influential in the
modern era is R. Kairanawi, Izhar Ul-Haqq (1864). Published in Arabic and then Urdu
in India, 1864. English translation: London: Ta Ha, 4 volumes, 1989–90.
8 See discussions in Chapters 7, 9 and 11 of this book. A recent example is M. Mir,
Understanding the Islamic scripture: A study of selected passages from the Qur’an
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2007).
9 The pattern was set by Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī (785–860), The book of religion
and empire, trans. A. Mingana (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1922).
10 See discussion in Chapter 17, this volume.
11 A well-known example on Muslims as Ishmaelites and Hagarenes is John of Damascus
(died 749 CE) in De haeresibus, extract in N. A. Newman (eds.), The early Christian–
Muslim dialogue: A collection of documents from the first three Islamic centuries
(632–900A.D.) (Pennsylvania: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1999),
139–144. For an overview of early apocalyptic interpretation of the Islamic conquests,
see R. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as others saw it: A survey and evaluation of Christian,
Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1997),
Chapter 8.
12 As evidenced in, for example, C. T. Maier, Crusade propaganda and ideology: Models
sermons for the preaching of the cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
13 S. Griffiths, The Bible in Arabic.
14 A seminal thinker on this subject in recent times was M. Polanyi, Personal knowledge:
Towards a post-critical philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
15 I first developed this in my doctoral thesis: An experiment in contextual comparative
hermeneutics (Durham, 1995).
16 As developed in D. Tracy, The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the cul-
ture of pluralism (London: SCM, 1981). In reflecting on the power of analogy, he quotes
Aristotle: ‘to spot the similar in the dissimilar is the mark of poetic genius’ (p. 410).
17 In the context of such discussions, the work of Ghandehari and Feyzbakhsh (Chapter 6)
and Shafaie’s work (Chapter 3) are interesting experiments in seeing the Bible and the
Qur’an as complementary rather than conflicting sources.
18 I use ‘practice’ rather than ‘praxis’ to avoid a limited interpretation in terms of liberation
theology.
19 See, as one of many examples, the introduction to A.A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (Word
Biblical Commentary vol. 11) (Nashville, TN: Word Books, 1989).
28 Ida Glaser
20 The ESB study Bible (Wheating, IL: Crossway, 2001), notes on 1 and 2 Samuel by D.T.
Tsumura, The NIV study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 5th edition, 2011), notes
on 1 and 2 Samuel by J. R. Vannoy. I shall not deal with details, but limit my observa-
tions to the ways in which the various ‘scandals’ are approached.
21 An influential study of the literary form of the section of 2 Samuel that includes the
Bathsheba story is R. N. Whybray, The succession narrative (London: SCM, 1968).
22 This is the NIV preference, its note stressing that 1 Samuel 17 requires the interpretation
that David killed Goliath.
23 The problems noted in Crowther’s note 64 are dealt with by offering a range of simple
solutions that would harmonise the texts in question.
24 There is much more to be said here, not least in asking how, if at all, the nature of the
Bible might be understood in Islamic categories. I hope to address this in my forthcom-
ing monograph in this Routledge series.
25 Note also the fruitfulness of asking about the purpose of the human writer in Lodahl’s
paper.
26 For a thorough comparison of the David/Bathsheba and Muhammad/Zaynab stories and
their accompanying traditions, see Z. Maghen, ‘Intertwined triangles: Remarks on the
relationship between two prophetic scandals’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam,
vol. 33, 2007, 17–92.
27 The best known early example is John of Damascus (d.752 A.D.), in his famous passage
on Islam in De Haeresibus.
28 Reading with E. R. Richards and B. J. O’Brien, Misreading scripture with Western eyes
(Westmont: IVP, 2012), 120–127, who argue that David’s whole interaction with Uriah
is aimed at keeping/restoring David’s honour and that, according to the mores of the
time, no one but Yahweh would have objected to what David had done.
29 See R. Alter, The David story: A translation with commentary (London: Norton, 1999)
and R. Barron, 2 Samuel (Ada: Brazos Press, 2015) on 2 Samuel 11 and 12 for narrative
analyses which highlights these features.
30 See Walker’s paper, Chapter 5, for these three songs as key to the chiastic structure of
1 and 2 Samuel.
31 See R. Barron, 2 Samuel on 2 Samuel 11 for a comparison.
32 This paragraph reads 1 and 2 Samuel in the light of the beatitudes – Matthew 5:2–10.
References
Abd Al-Jabbr b. Amad , Tathbt dalil al-nubuwwa (Cairo: Maktabat Muaf al-Bb, n.d.).
Abd al-Razzq Ram , al-Ibdt f al-adyn al-samwiyyah (Damascus: Mabaat al-Awil, 2001).
Ab Shahbah , Muammad Muammad , al-Isrliyyt wa-l-mawt f kutub al-tafsr (n. pl.: Maktabat al-
Sunnah, 1987).
Al-Arsi al-uwayz , Abd Ali b. Jumuah , Tafsr Nr al-thaqalayn, ed. Hshim al-Rasl al-Maallt (Qom:
Muassasat Ismaliyn, 1991).
Al-Baghaw, Ab Muammad al-usayn b. Masd , Tafsr al-Baghaw: Malim al-tanzl, eds. Muammad
Abdallh al-Nimr (Riyadh: Dr Taybah, 1997).
Al-Biq, Burhn al-Dn Ibrhm b. Umar , Nam al-durar f tansub al-yt wa-l-suwar (Hyderabad: Dirat
al-Mrif al-Uthmniyya, 1984).
Al-Bukhr, Muammad b. Isml , a al-Bukhr (Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing, 1998).
Al-B, Muammad Sad Raman , Kubr al-yaqniyyt al-kawniyyah: wujd al-khliq wa-wafat al-makhlq
(Damascus: Dr Al-Fikr, 1997).
Darwazah, Muammad Izzat , al-Tafsr al-adth: tartb al-suwar asab al-nuzl (Beirut: Dr al-Gharb al-
Islm, 2000).
Darwsh, Muy al-Dn b. Amad Muafa , Irb al-Qurn wa-baynuh (Damascus: Dr al-Yammah, 1994)
Al-Dhahab, Muammad usayn , al - Isrliyyt f al-tafsr wa-l-adth (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1990).
Al-Dhahab, Muammad usayn , al-Tafsr wa-l-mufassirn (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 2000).
Farahi, Hamiduddin , al-Ray al-a f man huwa al-dhab (Damascus: Dr al-Qalam, 1999).
Al-Frzbd, Muammd b. Yaqb , Tanwr al-miqbs min tafsr Ibn Abbs (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah,
1992).
Al-Harar, Muammad al-Amn , Tafsr adiq al-r wa-l-rayn f rawb ulm al-Qurn (Beirut: Dr awq al-
Najh, 2001).
Al-awwr, Hd b. Mukim Muakkam , Tafsr kitb Allh al-azz, ed. Beljj Sad Sharf (Beirut: Dr al-Gharb
al-Islam, 1990).
Ibn Ab al-Duny, Ab Bakr Abdallh b. Muammad , Kitb Man sha bad al-mawt, ed. Muammad usm
Bayn (Beirut: Muassasat al-Kutub al-Thaqfiyya, 1993).
Ibn Ab tim al-Rz , Abd al-Ramn b. Muammad , Tafsr al-Qurn al-am: musnadan an rasl Allh wa-l-
aba wa-l-tbin, ed. Asad Muammad ayyib, I (Mecca: Maktabat Nazr Muaf al-Bz, 1997).
286 Ibn Ab Zamann , Ab Abdallh Muammad b. Abdallh , Tafsr al-Qurn al-azz, eds. Ab Abdallh
usayn b. Ukshah and Muammad b. Musaf al-Kanz (Cairo: al-Frq al-adthah, 2002).
Ibn dil Al-anbal , Ab af Umar b. Al , al-Lubb f ulm al-kitb, eds. dil Amad Abd al-Mawjd and Al
Muammad Muawwa (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1998).
Ibn Ajba, Ab al-Abbs Amad b. Muammad al-Fsi al-f , al-Bar al-madd f tafsr al-Qurn al-majd, ed.
Amad Abdallh al-Qurash Rasln (Cairo: al-Hayah al-Miriyyah al-mmah li-l-Kitb, 1998).
Ibn shr, Muammad al-hir , Tafsr al-tarr wa-l-tanwr (Tunisia: al-Dr al-Tnisiyyah li-l-Nashr, 1984).
Ibn Aiyya al-Andalus, Ab Muammad abd ul-Haqq b. Ghlib , al-Muarrar al-wajz f tafsr al-kitb al-
aziz, ed. Abd al-Salm Abd al-Shf Muammad (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 2001).
Ibn ajar al-Asqaln , Fat al-br shar a al-Bukhr (Riyadh: n.pb., 2001).
Ibn anbal, Amad b. Muammad , Musnad al-imm al-fiz Ab Abdallh Amad Ibn anbal (Riyadh:
International Islamic Publishing, 1998).
Ibn azm al-Andalus , Kitb al-Fial f al-milal wa-l-ahw wa-l-nial (Baghdad: al-Muthann, n.d.).
Ibn Kathr al-Dimashq, Ab al-Fid Isml b. Umar , al-Bidyah wa-l-nihyah, ed. Abdallh b. Abd al-
Musin al-Turk (Cairo: Dr Hajr, 1997).
Ibn Kathr al-Dimashq, Ab al-Fid Isml b. Umar , Qia al-anbiy, ed. Abd al-ayy al-Farmw (al-Manra:
Muassasat al-Nr li-l-Nashr wa-l-Iln, 1997).
Ibn Kathr al-Dimashq, Ab al-Fid Isml b. Umar , Tafsr al-Qurn al-am, ed. Sm b. Muammad al-
Salma (Riyadh: Dr ayba, 1997).
Ibn Khaldn , al-Muqaddimah, ed. Abd al-Wd Wf (n.pl.: Lajnat al-Bayn al-Arab, 1960).
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ab Abdallh Muammad b. Ab Bakr , Zd al-mad (Beirut: Muassasat al-
Rislah, 1987).
Ibn Qutaybah, Ab Muammad Abdallh b. Muslim , Tawl mukhtalif al-adth (Beirut: al-Maktab al-
Islm, 1999).
Ibn Qutaybah, Ab Muammad Abdallh b. Muslim , al-Marif l-Ibn Qutayba, ed. Tharwat Ukshah
(Cairo: Dr al-Marif, 1969).
Ibn Taymiyyah, Amad b. Abd al-alm , Majm fatw shaykh al-Islm Amad Ibn Taymiyyah (Cairo:
Maktabat Ibn Taymiyyah, 1978).
Ibn Taymiyyah, Amad b. Abd al-alm , Muqaddimah f ul al-tafsr (Beirut: Dr Ibn azm, 1994).
Al-Ibahn, Abdallh b. Muammad , Kitb al-Aamah, ed. Ri Allh b. Muammad Idrs al-Mubrakfr , 5
vols. (Riyadh: Dr al-imah, 1987).
Al-Ja, Ab Bakr Amad b. Al , Akm al-Qurn, ed. Abd al-Salm Muammad Al Shhn (Beirut: Dr al-
Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1995).
Al-Jazir, Nimat Allh b. Abdallh , al-Nr al-mubn f qia al-anbiy wa-l-mursaln, with introduction and
commentary by Al al-Dn al-Alam (Iran: Dr al-Fiqh, 2001).
Al-Khafj, Shihb al-Dn Amad b. Muammad , Hshiyat al-Shihb al Tafsr al-Bayw (Beirut: Dr dir,
n.d.).
Al-Khlid, al Abd al-Fatt , Tarf al-drisn bi-manhij al-mufassirn (Damascus: Dr al-Qalam, 2008).
Al-Khlid, al Abd al-Fatt , Maa qaa al-sbiqn f al-Qurn (Damascus: Dr al-Qalam, 2007).
287 Al-Khir, Muammad Slim , Thumma abartu al-aqqa (Alexandria: Dr al-Imn, 2006).
Al-Majlis, Muammad Bqir b. Muammad Taq , Biar al-anwr al-jmiah li-durar akhbr al-aimmah al-
ar, eds. Yay al-bid al-Zanjn and Abd al-Ram al-Rabbn al-Shrz , 2nd ed. (Beirut: Muassasat al-
Waf, 1983).
Al-Maqdis, Ab Nar al-Muahhar b. al-hir , Kitb al-Bad wa-l-trkh, ed. Clement Huart (reprint in
n.pl.: Maktabat al-Thaqfah al-Dniyyah, n.d.).
Al-Mashhad al-Qumm, Muammad b. Muammad Ri , Tafsr Kanz al-daqiq wa-bar al-gharib, ed.
Hosein Dargh (Tehran: Wizrat Farhang wa-Erashd Eslm, 1986).
Al-Mward, Ab al-asan Al b. Muammad , al-Nukat wa-l-uyn, ed. Al-Sayyid b. Abd al-Maqsd b.
Abd al-Ram (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, n.d.).
Muammad Rif Muammad Amn , Muy al-Dn Ibn Arab wa-wadat al-adyn: qirah min khill nuih,
Jurnal Akidah dan Pemikiran Islam, 9 (2008), 157184.
Mujhid b. Jabr , Tafsr al-imm Mujhid ibn Jabr, ed. Muammad Abd al-Salm Ab al-Nl (Cairo: Dr al-
Fikr al-Islm al-adthah, 1989).
Muqtil b. Sulaymn al-Balkh , Tafsr Muqtil ibn Sulaymn, ed. Abdallh Mamd Shata (reprint Beirut:
Muassasat at-Trkh al-Arab, 2002).
Muslim b. al-ajjj al-Qushayr al-Naysbr , a Muslim (Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing,
1998).
Al-Nadw, Ab al-asan Al , al-Arkn al-arbaah (al-alh, al-zakh, al-awm, al-ajj) f aw al-kitb wa-l-
sunnah: muqranah maa al-diynt al-ukhr (Kuwait: Dr al-Qalam, 1974).
Al-Najaf, Muammad Jawd al-Balgh , l al-ramn f tafsr al-Qurn (Beirut: Dr Iy al-Turth al-Arab,
1936).
Al-Najjr, Abd al-Wahhb , Qia al-anbiy, 3rd edition (Beirut: Dr Iy al-Turth al-Arab, n.d.).
Nanah, Ramz , al-Isrliyyt wa-atharuh f kutub al-tafsr (Damascus: Dr al-Qalam, 1970).
Al-Nasaf, Ab al-Barakt Abdallh b. Amad , Madrik al-tanzl wa-aqiq al-tawl, ed. Ysuf Ali Badw
(Beirut: Dr al-Kalim al-ayyib, 1998).
Al-Qafr, Nir b. Abdallh , Ul madhab al-shiah al-immiyyah al-ithn ashariyyah: ar wa-naqd ([Cairo:
n.pb.],1993).
Al-Qumm, Ab al-asan Ali bin Ibrhm , Tafsr al-Qummi, ed. ayyib al-Musaw al-Jaziri (Qom: Dr al-
Kitb, 1983).
Al-Qurub, Ab Abdallh Muammad b. Amad , al-Jmi li-akm al-Qurn wa-lmubayyin li-m taammanah
min al-sunna wa-y al-furqn, eds. Abdallh b. Abd al-Musin al-Turk and Muammad Riwn Irqass
(Beirut: Muassasat al-Rislah, 2006).
Al-Qurub, Ab Abdallh Muammad b. Amed , al-Jmi li-ahkm al-Qurn, eds. Amad al-Bardn and
Ibrhim Aafayyish (Cairo: Dr al-Kutub al-Miriyyah, 1964).
Al-Qushayr, Abd al-Karm b. Hawzin , Laif al-ishrat al-marf bi-Tafsr al-Qushayr, ed. Ibrhim al-
Basyn (Cairo: al-Hayah al-Miriyyah al-mmah li-l-Kitb, 2000).
Rashd Ri, Muammad and Muammad Abduh , Tafsr al-Qurn al-akm al-mushtahar b-ism Tafsr al-
manr (Cairo: al-Manr, 19061935).
Al-Rz, Fakhr al-Dn Muammad b. Umar , Tafsr Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz al-mashhr bi-l-Tafsr al-kabr wa-
Mafti al-ghayb (Beirut: Dr al-Fikr, 1981).
Al-Rz, Fakhr al-Dn Muammad b. Umar , Kitb Mafti al-ghayb al-mushtahar bi-l-Tafsr al-kabr
(Cairo: al-Mabaah al-Miriyyah al-Miriyyah, 1862).
Al-adq, Abu Jafar Muammad b. Al Ibn Bbawayh al-Qumm , Man al-Akhbr, ed. Ali Akbar al-
Ghafari (Qom: Qom Teachers University Press).
288 Al-Samarqand, Ab al-Layth Nar b. Muammad , Tafsr al-Samarqand al-musamm Bar al-ulm,
eds. Al Muammad Muawwa (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1993): 1/127.
Al-Sanad, Muammad , al-abah bayna al-imah wa al-adlah, ed. Muafa al-Iskandar , (Qom:
Manshrat Lisn al-idq, 2005).
Al-ann , Abd al-Razzq b. Hammm , Tafsr Abd al-Razzq , ed. Mamd Muammad Abduh (Beirut:
Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1999).
Al-Shfi, Muammad b. Idrs , al-Rislah (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, n.d.).
Al-Sharf al-Murtaa , Kitb Tanzh al-anbiy (Beirut: Dr al-Aw, 1989).
Al-Shawkn, Muammad b. Al , Fat al-qadr al-jmi bayna fann al-riw yah wa-ldiryah min ilm al-tafsr
(Beirut: Dr al-Fikr, n.d).
Al-Suy, Jall al-Dn Abd al-Ramn b. Ab Bakr , al-Durr al-manthr f al-tafsr bi-lmathr, ed. Abdallh b.
Abd al-Musin al-Turk (Cairo: Dr Hajr, 2003).
Al-Suy, Jall al-Dn Abd ul-Raman b. Ab Bakr , al-w li-l-fatw (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-ilmiyyah,
1983).
Al-abar, Ab Jafar Muammad b. Jarr , Tafsr al-abar: Jmi al-bayn an tawl y al-Qurn, eds. Mamd
Muammad Shkir and Amad Muammad Shkir , II (reprint Cairo: Dr Ibn al-Jawz, 2008).
Al-abar, Ab Jafar Muammad b. Jarr , Trkh al-rusul wa-l-mulk (Beirut: Dr Ibn Kathr, 2007).
Al-abars, Ab Al Fal b. al-asan , Majma al-bayn f tafsr al-Qurn, eds. Hshim al-Rasl al-Maallt and
Fal Allh al-Yazd al-abab (Beirut: Dr al-Marifah, 1988).
Al-abars, Ab Al Fal b. al-asan , Tafsr Majma al-bayan (Beirut: Muassasat al-Alam, 1995).
Al-abab, Muammad usayn , al-Mizn f tafsr al-Qurn (Beirut: Muassasat al-Alam li-l-Mabt, 1973).
Al-anw, Muammad Sayyid , al-Tafsr al-was li-l-Qurn al-karm (Cairo: Dr Nahat Mir, 1998).
Al-Thalab, Ab Isq Amad b. Muammad , al-Kashf wa-l-bayn: al-marf [bi-]tafsr al-Thalab, ed. Ab
Muammad b. shr and Nar al-Sid (Beirut: Dr Iy al-Turth al-Arab, 2002).
Al-Thalab , Ab Isq Amad b. Muammad, Aris al-majlis f qia al-anbiy or Lives of the prophets,
trans. William M. Brinner (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
Thoha, Anis Malik , al-Taaddudiyyah al-dniyyah: ruyah islmiyyah (Kuala Lumpur: IIUM
Research Centre, 2005).
Al-s, Ab Jafar Muammad b. asan , Tahdhb al-akm (Tehran: Dr al-Kutub al-Islmiyyah, 1970).
Al-Utayb, Muammad b. Sulaymn , Afl al-rasl all Allh alayhi wa-sallam wa-daliluh al al-akm al-
shariyya, (Beirut: Muassasat al-Rislah, 2003).
Al-Zabd, Muammad Murta , Tj al-ars min jawhir al-Qms, ed. Abd al-Sattr Amad Farrj (Kuwait:
Mabaat al-ukmah, 1965).
Al-Zamakhshar, Ab al-Qsim Mamd b. Umar , al-Kashshf an aqiq ghawmi al-tanzl wa-uyn al-aqwl
f wujh al-tawl, eds. dil Amad Abd al-Mawjd and Al Muammad (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Ubaykn,
1998).
Al-Zarkash, Ab Abdallh , Al-Bar al-mu f ul al-fiqh (Cairo: Dr al-Kutub, 1994).
Al-Zuayl, Wahbah Muaf , al-Tafsr al-munr f al-aqdah wa-l-sharah wa-l-Manhaj (Damascus: Dr
al-Fikr al-Muir, 1997).
Abdel Haleem, M. A. S. The Quran: English Translation and Parallel Arabic Text (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
Abrahamov, B. Anthropomorphism and Interpretation of the Qurn in the Theology of al-Qsm ibn
Ibrhm, Kitb al-Mustarshid (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
Abu Haggar, D. Repetition: A Key to Quranic Style, Structure and Meaning, University of
Pennsylvania, Ph.D Thesis (Ann Arbor: ProQuest LLC, 2011).
Adang, C. Medieval Muslim polemics against the Jewish scriptures in Muslim Perceptions of
Other Religions: A historical survey ed. Waardenburg, J. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999): 143159.
Adang, C. Muslim writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm
(New York: E.J. Brill, 1996).
Adnan Aslan , Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The thought of John Hick
& Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1994).
Afsaruddin, A. Reconstituting Womens Lives: Gender and the Poetics of Narrative in Medieval
Biographical Collections in The Muslim World, 92 (2002), 461479.
Akhtar, S. The Quran and the Secular Mind (Routledge, 2007).
Akhtar, S. A Faith for all Seasons (Chicago: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield, 1991).
Akhtar, S. Be Careful with Muhammad! (London: Bellew, 1989).
Akhtar, S. Christianity and the Secular Heritage (London: Grey Seal/Cassell, 1990).
Akhtar, S. The New Testament in Muslim Eyes: Pauls Letter to the Galatians (London:
Routledge, forthcoming).
Albayrak, I. Reading the Bible in the light of Muslim sources; from Isrliyyt to Islmiyyt in Islam and
Christian-Muslim Relations, 23:2 (2012).
Albayrak, I. The People of the Book in the Qurn in Islamic Studies, 47. 3 (2008).
Albayrak, I. Qurnic narrative and Israiliyyat in Western scholarship and in classical exegesis
(PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2000).
Al-Bukhr, Muammad ibn Isml a al-Bukhr: The translation of the meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari:
Arabic-English, trans. and ed. Muhammad Muhsin Khan (Riyadh-Saudi Arabia: Darussalam
Publishers & Distributors, 1997).
Alexander, T. D. Abraham in the Negev: A Source-Critical investigation of Genesis 20:122:19
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 1997).
Al-Farsy, Abdullah Saleh , Qurani Takatifu, 3 rd edition (Nairobi: The Islamic Foundation, n.d.).
Al-Faruqi, I. R. A Comparison of the Islamic and Christian Approaches to Hebrew Scripture in
Journal of Bible and Religion 31. 4 (1963).
290 Al-Hill, M. T. and Khn, M. M. Translation of the Meanings of the Noble Qurn in the English
Language (Medina: King Fahd Complex, 1998).
Ali Quli Qarai , The Quran with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (London: Islamic
College for Advanced Studies Press, 2004).
Ali, A.Y. The Holy Quran, Text, Translation and Commentary (Leicester: Islamic Foundation,
1975).
Ali, S. S. Euphemism in Translation: A comparative Study of euphemistic Expressions in two
Translations of the Holy Qurn in Turjumn 5. 1 (1996): 2337.
Aling, C. F. The Historicity Of The Joseph Story, Bible and Spade, Volume 9:1 (Winter 1996)
Aling, C. F. Egypt and Bible History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981).
Ali-Quli Qarai, S. The Quran With a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (London: Islamic
College for Advanced Studies Press, 2004).
Al-Khatib, M. A. Politeness in the Holy Quran: A sociolinguistic and pragmatic perspective in
Intercultural Pragmatics 9. 4 (2012): 479509.
Al-Qirqisn , Ab Ysuf Yaqb , Yaqb Jewish sects and Christianity: A translation of Kitb al-anwr
Book 1, trans. Bruno Chiesa , Wilfrid Lockwood , and Albert Harkavy (Frankfurt am Main: Lang,
1984).
Al-abar, Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarr , The History of al-Tabari, Volume III: The Children of
Israel, trans. William Brinner , (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989).
Al-abar, Ali ibn Sahl Rabban , The Book of Religion and Empire, trans. by A. Mingana
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1922).
Al-Thalab , Ab Isq Amad ibn Muammad ibn Ibrhm , Aris al-majlis f qia al-anbiy or Lives of the
Prophets, trans. William M. Brinner (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
Alter, R. Genesis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996).
Alter, R. The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
Alter, R. The David Story: A translation with commentary (London: Norton, 1999).
Amos, C. Incomplete without the Other: Isaac, Ishmael and a Hermeneutic of Diversity in Islam
and Christian-Muslim Relations, 20: 3 (2009).
Anderson, A. A. 2 Samuel (Nashville: Word Books, 1989).
Archer, G. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 2007).
Asad, M. and Moustafa, A. The Message of the Qurn: the full account of the revealed Arabic
text accompanied by parallel transliteration, 5 th edition (Bitton: Book Foundation, 2004).
Asad, M. The Message of the Qurn: translation and explanation (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus,
1980)
Augustine, St. St. Augustine: Tractates on the Gospel of John 2854, trans. and ed. Rettig, J. W.
(Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1993).
Ayoub, M. M. The Quran and Its Interpreters (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1984).
Badawi, E. and Haleem, M. A. S. (eds.) Arabic-English Dictionary of Quranic Usage (Leiden:
Brill, 2010).
Bakhos, C. Abraham Visits Ishmael: A Revisit in Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007):
553580.
Bakhos, C. Ishmael on the Border: Rabbinical portrayals of the first Arab (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2006).
Bakhos, C. The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretations (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2014).
291 Baneth, D. Z. H. What did Muhammad mean when he called his religion Islam? The original
meaning of aslama and its derivatives, in The Quran: Style and contents, ed. Andrew Rippin
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001): 8592.
Bar-Efrat, S. Introduction and Annotations, First Samuel in The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford
University Press, 2004).
Barr, J. The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).
Barrett, C. K. The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd edition (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991).
Barron, R. 2 Samuel (Ada: Brazos Press, 2015).
Barth, K. The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University
Press, 1933).
Bartholomew, C.G. Canon and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).
Barton, J. The Old Testament canons in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: from the
beginnings to 600, ed. James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013): 145164.
Bayrakl, B. Yeni Bir Anlayn Inda Kuran Tefsiri (Quran Tafsir in the Light of a New
Understanding), 21 vols. (Istanbul: Bayrakl Yaynlar, 2003).
Beal, L. M. W. 1 & 2 Kings (Nottingham: Apollos, 2014).
Beerle-Moor, M. , Desnitsky, A. , Kazenin, K. and Maiskaya, T. Biblia i Koran: Parallelnie Mesta,
2 nd edition (Moscow: Institute of Bible Translation, 2012).
Bell, R. A Commentary on the Quran (Manchester: The Victoria University of Manchester,
1991).
Bergen, R. D. 1 & 2 Samuel (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1996).
Blomberg, C. L. Contagious Holiness: Jesus meals with sinners (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity,
2005).
Blowers, P. M. The Regula Fidei and the Narrative Character of Early Christian Faith in Pro
Ecclesia 6. 2 (1997).
Boyarin, D. The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John in
Harvard Theological Review 94. 3 (July 2001): 243284.
Boyarin, D. The Jewish Gospels: The story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press,
2013).
Bristow, G. F. V. Jnr. Sharing Abraham? Narrative Worldview, Biblical and Quranic
Interpretation, and Comparative Theology in Turkey (Doorlight Academic, 2017).
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C. Politeness: some universals in language usage (Cambridge:
CUP, 1987).
Brown, R. Part I: Explaining the Biblical Term Son(s) of God in Muslim Contexts in International
Journal of Frontier Missiology 22. 3 (2005): 9196.
Brown, R. E. An Introduction the New Testament: The abridged edition (New Haven: Yale
Brown, R. E. The Gospel According to John, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 19661970).
Brown, W. P. Character in Crisis: A Fresh Approach to the Wisdom Literature of the Old
Testament (Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996).
Buber, M. I and thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937).
Bullinger, E. W. Figures of Speech used in the Bible (London: Messrs Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1989).
Bultmann, R. The History of Religions Background of the Prologue of the Gospel of John in The
Interpretation of John, ed. Ashton, J. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997).
Calabria M. D. The Movie Mogul, Moses and Muslims: Islamic Elements in Cecil B. DeMilles
The Ten Commandments (1956) in Journal of Religion & Film 19. 3 (2015).
292 Calder, N. From Midrash to Scripture: The Sacrifice of Abraham in Early Islamic Tradition
Le Muson: Revue detudes orientales 101. 3 (1988): 375402.
Calder, N. , Mojaddedi, J. A. and Rippon, A. (eds.) Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious
Literature (London: Routledge, 2003).
Calder, N. Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: Problems in the description of a genre, illustrated
with reference to the story of Abraham in Approaches to the Quran, ed. G.R. Hawting , and
Abdul-Kader A. Shareef (London: Routledge, 1993):101140.
Charlesworth, J. H. (ed.) Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 19831985).
Clark, M. Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Jerusalem, Feldheim, 1999).
Clines, D. J. A. What remains of the Hebrew Bible? Its text and language in a postmodern age
in Studia Theologica 56. 1 (2002):7695.
Clooney, F. X. Theology After Vedanta: an experiment in comparative theology (New York:
State University of New York Press, 1993).
Colenso, J. W. The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined (London: Longman,
1863).
The Catholic Church Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Dominus Iesus: On the unicity
and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2000).
Cragg, K. Faiths in their Pronouns: Websites of identity (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2002).
Cragg, K. The event of the Qurn: Islam in its scripture (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971).
Crone, P. Jhil and Jewish Law: the Qasma in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4(1984):
153201.
Crown, A. D. , Pummer, R. & Tal, A. (eds.) A Companion To Samaritan Studies (Tbingen: J. C.
B. Mohr, 1993).
Cuypers, M. The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Quran (Miami: Convivium Press,
2007)
Dalman, G. The words of Jesus (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902).
Daryabadi, A. M. Tafsir -ul- Qurn vol III (Karachi: Darul-Ishaat, 1991).
Davies, W. D. and Allison, D. C. A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according
to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 19881997).
Davis, E. F. Teaching the Bible confessionally in the Church in The Art of Reading Scripture ed.
Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003): 926.
DeRouchie, J. S. The Blessing-Commission, the Promised Offspring, and the Toledot Structure
of Genesis in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56. 2 (2013): 2229.
Donaldson, D. M. The Shiite Religion: A History of Islam in Persia and Irak (London: Burleigh
Press, 1933).
Donaldson, T. L. Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostles convictional world
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).
Douglas, M. Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
Douglas, M. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1975).
Droge, A. J. The Qurn: A New Annotated Translation (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013).
Duffy, S. J. The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology (Collegeville:
The Liturgical Press, 1993).
Dumbrell, W. J. The End of the Beginning: Revelation 2122 and the Old Testament (Eugene:
Wipf and Stock, 2001).
293 Dunn, J. D. G. Christology in the making: an Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the
Incarnation, 2 nd edition (London: SCM Press, 1996).
Dunn, J. D. G. Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1990).
Edenburg, C. and Pakkala, J. (eds.) Is Samuel among the Deuteronomist? Current Views on
the Place of Samuel in a Deuteronomistic History (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013).
El-Cheikh, N. M. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Enns, P. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the problem of the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005).
Esposito, J. L. Islam and Politics, 4th edition (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998).
Evans, C. Holman Quick Source Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls (North Nashville: Holman
Reference, 2010).
Festinger, L. A theory of cognitive dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).
Festinger, L. and Riecken, H. W. and Schachter, S. When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1956).
Fierro, M. Asfar in Studia Islamica 77 (1993): 169181.
Firestone, R. Comparative Studies in Bible and Qurn; A Fresh Look at Genesis 22 in Light of
Surah 37 in B. H. Harry , J. L. Hayes and F. Astren (eds.), Judaism and Islam: Boundaries,
Communication and Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2000): 169184.
Firestone, R. Merit, Mimesis and Martyrdom: Aspects of Shiite Meta-Historical Exegesis on
Abrahams Sacrifice in Light of Jewish, Christian and Sunni Muslim Tradition in The Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 66. 1 (1998): 93116.
Firestone, R. Ishmael in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 nd edition, ed. Bearman, P. (Leiden: Brill,
19802004).
Firestone, R. Journeys in Holy Lands: The evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael legends in Islamic
exegesis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
Fitzmyer, J. A. The One Who is to Come (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).
Flood, D. Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and
Why We All Need to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Books, 2014).
Fokkelman, J. P. Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Louisville: John Knox
Press, 1999).
Ford, D. and Pecknold, C. C. (eds.) The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell,
2006).
Freidenreich, D. M. Holiness and Impurity in the Torah and the Quran: Differences within a
Common Typology in Comparative Islamic Studies, 6. 1 (2010): 522.
Friedlander, G. Pir de Rabbi Eliezer the Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great According to the
Text of the Manuscript Belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna (London: Kegan Paul, 1916).
Gardet, L. Kalm in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. Bearman P. (Leiden: Brill,
19802004).
Geertz, G. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected essays (London: Hutchinson, 1973).
Geiger, A. Judaism and Islam (Madras: SPCK, 1898)
Geiger, A. Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen (Bonn, 1833; revised
edition: Leipzig, 1902).
Gesenius, W. Hebrisches und aramisches Handwrterbuch ber das Alte Testament, 18 th
edition, eds. Rudolf Meyer and Herbert Donner (Berlin: Springer, 2007).
294 Ghaleb, R. and Al-Qarni, A. M. Euphemism in Saudi Arabic and British English in Journal of
Pragmatics 44 (2012): 730743.
Gilliot, C. Mujhids Exegesis: Origins, Path of Transmission and Development of a Meccan
Exegetical Tradition in its Human, Spiritual and Theological environment in Tafsr and Islamic
Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre, eds. Andreas Grke and Johanna Pink
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 63111.
Glaser, I. J. Towards a Mutual Understanding of Christian and Islamic Concepts of Revelation in
Themelios 7. 3 (April 1982): 1622.
Glaser, I. J. An Experiment in Contextual Comparative Hermeneutics (Durham: PhD thesis,
1995).
Glaser, I. J. Qurnic Challenges for Genesis Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 75
(1997).
Glaser, I. J. Reading the Bible with Islam in Mind in Anvil 31. 1 (2015): 1831.
Glaser, I. J. Quranic challenges for the Bible reader in The Enduring Authority of the Christian
Scriptures ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016): 10131056.
Goheen, M.W. and Bartholomew, C.G. Living at the Crossroads: An introduction to Christian
Worldview (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).
Goldziher, I. Muslim Studies (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971).
Goody, J. Religion, Social Change and the Sociology of Conversion in Changing Social
Structure in Ghana: Essays in the Comparative Sociology of a New State and an Old Tradition,
ed. J. Goody (London: International African Institute, 1975): 91106.
Gordon, C. H. and Rendsburg, G. A. The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4 th edition (London:
W. W. Norton, 1997).
Grant, R. M. A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, 2nd edition (London: Adam &
Charles Black, 1965).
Grieb, K. The Story of Romans: A Narrative Defence of Gods Righteousness (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).
Griffith, S. H. The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the People of the book in the Language of
Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Griffith, S. H. The Sunna of Our Messengers: The Qurns Paradigm for Messengers and
Prophets; A Reading of Srat ash-Shur (26) in Qurnic Studies Today, ed. Neuwirth, A. and Sells,
M. A. (New York: Routledge, 2016): 207227.
Gruber, M. I. Red Heifer in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik ,
2 nd edition (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
Grneberg, K. N. Abraham, Blessing and the Nations: A philological and exegetical study of
Genesis 12:3 in its narrative context (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003).
Grypeou, G. and Spurling, H. Abrahams Angels: Jewish and Christian Exegesis of Genesis
1819 in The Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, ed. Grypeou
and Spurling (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 181203.
Gumi, A. U. S. Alkurni mai Girma da kuma Tarjaman Maanninsa zuwa ga Harshen Hausa
(Medina: King Fahd Complex, 1996).
Gunn, D. M. and Fewell, D. N. Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993).
Halperin, D. Can Muslim narrative be used as commentary on Jewish tradition? in Medieval and
modern perspectives on MuslimJewish relations, ed. Nettler, R. L. (Luxembourg: Horwood
Academic, 1995).
Hansen, G.W. Abraham in Galatians: Epistolary and rhetorical contexts (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1989).
295 Harink, D. Paul among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology beyond Christendom and
Modernity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003).
Hasan, A. The Concept of Infallibility in Islam in Islamic Studies 11. 1 (March 1972): 111.
Hasson, I. David in Encyclopaedia of the Quran, ed. Jane Damen McAulliffe (Leiden: Brill,
2001).
Hawting, G. R. and Shareef, A. A. (eds.), Approaches to the Quran (London & New York:
Routledge, 1993).
Hawting, G. R. The Religion of Abraham and Islam, in Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites:
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham, ed. Martin Goodman ,
Geurt van Kooten and Jacques van Ruiten (Leiden: Brill, 2010): 477501.
Heinzerling, R. On the interpretation of the census lists by C. J. Humphreys and G. E.
Mendenhall, Vetus Testamentum 50. 2 (2000): 250252.
Higton, M. and Muers, R. The Text in Play: Experiments in Reading Scripture (Oregon: Wipf
and Stock, 2012).
Hill, D. The Gospel of Matthew (London: Oliphants, 1972).
Hirschfeld, H. New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of the Qoran (London,
1902).
Hong, K. S. An Exegetical Reading of the Abraham Narrative in Genesis: Semantic, Textuality
and Theology (University of Pretoria, 2007).
Hoskisson, P. Y. Aarons Golden Calf in FARMS Review 18. 1 (2006).
Hoyland, R. Seeing Islam as others saw it: a survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and
Zoroastrian writings on early Islam (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1997).
Humphreys, C. J. The number of people in the Exodus from Egypt: Decoding mathematically
the very large numbers in numbers I and XXVI in Vetus Testamentum 48. 2 (1998): 196213.
Ibn Isq, Muammad ibn Yasr The life of Muhammad, trans. Alfred Guillaume (Lahore: Oxford
Ibn Kathr al-Dimashq , Ab al-Fid Isml b. Umar Tafsir Ibn Kathir: Al-Ankabut 46 to Al-Azhab 30,
trans. and ed. Abdul-Rahman (London: MSA, 2009).
Ibn Khaldn , Abd al-Rahman Abu Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad The Muqaddimah: an
introduction to history, trans. Franz Rosenthal , 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1967).
Ibn Taymyyah . Amad ibn Abd al-alm A Muslim theologians response to Christianity: Ibn
Taymiyyas al-Jawab al-sahih, trans. Thomas F. Michel (Delmar: Caravan Books, 1984).
Ingleby, J. Missionaries, Education and India: Issues in Protestant missionary education in the
long nineteenth century (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000).
Ipgrave, M. (ed.), Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims Studying the Bible and the
Quran Together: A record of the seminar Building Bridges held at Doha, Qatar, 79 April 2003
(London: Church House, 2004).
Janzen, J. G. Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of
Genesis 1250 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993).
Jardim, J. L. Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture: Women and Silence (Alder-
shot: Ashgate, 2014).
Jeffery, A and Sijistn A. A. S. Materials for the history of the text of the Qurn: The old codices
which present a type of text anterior to that of the canonical text of Uthmn (Leiden: Brill, 1937).
296 Jeffrey, D. L. (ed.) A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1992).
Jenson, P. P. Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Concept of the World (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1992).
Johnson, W. S. Reading the Scriptures Faithfully in a Postmodern Age in The Art of Reading
Scripture ed. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003): 109124.
Kades, T. Die arabischen Bibelbersetzungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 1997).
Kairanvi, M. R. Izhar-ul-haq reprinted from 1864 edition (London: Ta-Ha, 1989).
Kalkan, A. Kavram Tefsiri, 11 vols. (Istanbul: Kavram Tefsiri, n.d.).
Karesh, S. E. and Hurvitz, M. H. Encyclopedia of Judaism (New York: Checkmark Books,
2006).
Kassis, R. A. The Book of Proverbs and Arabic Proverbial Works (Leiden, Brill: 1999).
Katsh, A. I. Judaism and the Koran: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of the Koran and its
Commentaries, New York, 1962).
Katz, M. H. The Study of Islamic Ritual and the Meaning of Wudu in Der Islam 82 (2005).
Katz, M. H. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity (Albany: SUNY
Press, 2002).
Kermode, F. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Harvard University
Press, 1979).
Khoury, A. T. Der Koran (Dsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2005).
King, P. Ladders and Wheels: Comparing Metaphors for Bible Translation in the Context of
Sustainability in Bible Translation: Frames of Reference, ed. Tim Wilt (Manchester: St Jerome,
2002).
Kitchen, K. A. On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
Klar, M. Stories of the Prophets in The Blackwell Companion to the Quran ed. Rippin, A.
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
Klawans, J. Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: University Press, 2000).
Klein, M. L. The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch According to Their Extant Sources
(Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980).
Klinghoffer, D. The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism (New York:
Doubleday, 2003).
Lane, E. W. An Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Willams & Norgate, 1863).
Langston, S. M. Exodus through the Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
Lassner, J. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical
Judaism and Medieval Islam (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Lin, T. Y. The golden calf, Gods nature, and true worship in Exodus 323 (PhD diss., Trinity
International University, Deerfield, Illinois, 2010).
Lodahl, M. Claiming Abraham: Reading the Bible and the Qurn Side by Side (Grand Rapids:
Brazos Press, 2010).
Lowin, S. L. Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegesis in Religion Compass 5. 6 (2011): 224235.
Lowin, S. L. The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives
(Leiden: Brill, 2006).
Lumbard, J. What of the Word is Common? in Muslim and Christian Understanding: Theory and
Application of A Common Word ed. Waleed El-Ansary and David Linnan (New York:
PalgraveMacMillan, 2010): 93109.
Madelung, W. Ima in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. Bearman, P. (Brill: Leiden,
19802004).
297 Madigan, D. A. The Qurns Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islams Scripture, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
Madigan, D. A. Revelation and Inspiration in The Encyclopaedia of the Qurn, ed. Jane Dammen
McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
Maghen, Z. Much Ado about Wuduin Der Islam 76 (1999): 205252.
Maghen, Z. After Hardship Cometh Ease: The Jews as the Backdrop for Muslim Moderation
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006).
Maghen, Z. Intertwined triangles: remarks on the relationship between two prophetic scandalsin
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007): 1792.
Maier, C.T. Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: models sermons for the preaching of the cross
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Maier, J. The temple scroll: An introduction, translation & commentary (Sheffield: JSOT, 1985).
Markham, I. S. and Pirim, S. B. An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, thought and writings
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).
Martin, R. C. Anthropomorphism in Encyclopaedia of the Qurn, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe
Mazuz, H. Polemical Treatment of the Story of the Annunciation of Isaacs Birth in Islamic
Sources in The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 17 (2014): 252262.
McAuliffe, J. D. Assessing the Isrliyyt: An Exegetical Conundrum in Story-telling in the
Framework of Nonfictional Arabic Literature , ed. Stefan Leder (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1999): 345369.
McGrath, J. and Truex, J. Two Powers and Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism in Journal
of Biblical Studies 4. 1 (2004): 4371.
Metzger, B. M. The canon of the New Testament: Its origin, development, and significance
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
Metzger, B. M. A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, 4 th edition (New York:
United Bible Societies, 1994).
Meyer, T. Review of Abrahamov, Binyamin, Anthropomorphism and Interpretation of the Qurn in
the Theology of al-Qsm ibn Ibrhm, Kitb al-Mustarshid in Journal of Qurnic Studies 1. 1 (1999):
189192.
Milani, S. Prayer (London: Islam in English Press, 2011).
Milgrom, J. Leviticus 116 (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
Milgrom, J. and Rabinowitz, L. I. Eglah Arufah, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Michael
Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik , 2 nd edition (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
Milstein, R. Stories of the Prophets and Their Illustration in Islamic Mysticism in Biblical Stories
in Islamic Painting, ed. Naama Brosh (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1991): 2042.
Mir, M. The sura as a unity: A twentieth century development in Quran exegesis in Approaches
to the Quran, ed. Hawting, G.R. and Shareef, A. A. (London & New York: Routledge, 1993):
211224.
Mir, M. Understanding the Islamic Scripture: A Study of Selected Passages from the Quran
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2007).
Mohammed, K. David in the Muslim Tradition: The Bathsheba Affair (Lanham MD: Lexington
Books, 2015).
Moloney, F. J. The Gospel of John (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1998).
Mosher, L. and Marshall, D. (eds.) Monotheism and Its Complexities: Muslim and Christian
Perspectives (Washington: Georgetown University Press, forthcoming).
298 Moyaert, M. Interreligious Dialogue and the Debate between Universalism and
Particularism: Searching for a Way out of the Deadlock in Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 15.
1 (2005): 3651.
Murata, S. and Chittick, W.C. The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon House, 1994).
Murray, J.C. We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on an American Proposition (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1960).
MuslimChristian Research Group , The Challenge of the Scriptures: The Bible and the Qurn,
trans. Stuart E. Brown (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989).
Nadvi, A. J. Understanding the Principles of Islamic World-View in The Dialogue VI, no. 3
(2011): 268289.
Naguib, S. And Your Garments Purify: tahara in the light of tafsr in Journal of Quranic Studies
(2007): 5977.
Najman, H. The Vitality of Scripture within and Beyond the Canon in Journal for the Study of
Judaism 43, no. 45 (2012): 497518.
Nasr, S. H. Ideals and Realities of Islam (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966).
Nasr, S. H. Sufi Essays (Chicago: ABC International, 1999).
Nasr, S. H. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: Harper-Collins,
2015).
Nasser, S. H. The transmission of the variant readings of the Qurn: The problem of tawtur and
the emergence of shawdhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Nestle, E . Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
2004).
Nettler, R. L. Early Islam, Modern Islam and Judaism: The Isrliyyt in Modern Islamic Thought in
Muslim-Jewish Encounters: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics , ed. Ronald L. Nettler
and Suha Taji-Farouki (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998).
Neuwirth, A. Some Remarks on the Special Linguistic and Literary Character of the Quran in
Andrew Rippin (ed.), The Quran: Style and Contents, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001): 253257
Neuwirth, A. Scripture, Poetry and the Making of Community: Reading the Quran as a Literary
Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
Neuwirth, A. (eds.) Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature:
Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach (Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1999).
Newman, N.A. (ed.) The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue: a collection of documents from the
first three Islamic centuries (632900A.D.), (Pennsylvania: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research
Institute, 1999).
Nihan, C. From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
Noegel, S. B. & Wheeler, B. M. Historical Dictionary of Prophets in Islam and Judaism (London:
The Scarecrow Press, 2002).
Noerdlinger, H. Moses and Egypt: the documentation to the motion picture The Ten
Commandments (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1956).
Noldeke, Th. The History of the Quran trans. and ed. Behn, W. H. (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Noth, M. The Deuteronomistic History, 2nd ed. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991).
OKane, M. Who Was Esau? in Bible, Art, Gallery, ed. Martin OKane (Sheffield: Phoenix Press,
2012): 150180.
Oliphint, K. S. God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Wheaton:
Crossway, 2012).
Osborne, G. R. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A comprehensive introduction to biblical
interpretation, 2 nd ed. (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006).
299 Padwick, C. E. Muslim Devotions: A Study of Prayer-Manuals in Common Use (London:
SPCK, 1961).
Polanyi, M. Personal Knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1958).
Poorthuis, M. Hagars Wanderings: Between Judaism and Islam in Der Islam 90. 2 (1989):
220244.
Pope, M. H. Euphemism and Dysphemism in the Bible in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed.
Freedman, D. N. (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
Pregill, M. E. The Hebrew Bible and the Qurn: The Problem of the Jewish Influence on Islam in
Religion Compass 1. 6 (2007): 643659.
Pregill, M. The living calf of Sinai: Orientalism, influence, and the foundations of Islamic
exegetical tradition (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2008).
Rahman, F. Islam (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1968).
Rahner, K. The Oneness and Threefoldness of God in Discussion with Islam in Theological
Investigations XVIII: God and Revelation, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Darton, Longman and
Todd, 1983): 105121.
Redford, D. B. A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Leiden: Brill, 1970).
Reeves, J.C. Some Explorations of the Intertwining of Bible and Qurn in Bible and Qurn: Essays
in Scriptural Intertextuality ed. Reeves, J. C. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003): 4360.
Revell, E. J. Scribal Emendations in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. Freedman, D. N.
(New York: Doubleday, 1992).
Reynolds, G. S. The Quran and Its Biblical Subtext (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).
Richards, E.R. and OBrien, B.J. Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes (Westmont: IVP,
2012).
Ricur, P. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics in Studies in Religion 5
(19756):1433.
Ricur, P. Myth as the Bearer of Possible Worlds in A Ricur Reader: Reflection and Imagination,
ed. Mario J. Valds (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).
Ricur, P. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, narrative, and imagination, trans. David Pellauer
(Minneaplois: Fortress Press, 1995).
Riddell, P. Islamic Variations on a Biblical theme as seen in the David and Bathsheba Saga in
Vox Evangelica 27 (1997): 5774.
Rippin, A. Studying Early Tafsr Texts in Tafsr: Interpreting the Quran , ed. Mustapha Shah
(London: Routledge, 2013), vol. 1: 401415.
Roberto Tottoli , Origin and Use of the Term Isrliyyt in Muslim Literature in Arabica 46. 2 (1999):
193210.
Robinson, N. Discovering the Quran: A contemporary approach to a veiled text, 2 nd edition
(Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 2003).
Ronning, J. L. The Curse on the Serpent (Genesis 3:15) in Biblical Theology and Hermeneutics
(PhD Dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, 1997).
Rost, L. The Succession Narrative to the Throne of David translated by Rutter, M. and Gunn, D.
(Sheffield: Almond Press, 1982).
Routledge, R. Old Testament Theology: A thematic approach (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008).
Rubin, U. Traditions in Transformation: The Ark of the Covenant and the Golden Calf in biblical
and Islamic Historiography in Oriens 36 (2001): 196214.
Rubin, U. Repentance and Penance in Encyclopaedia of the Quran, ed. Jane Dammen
McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
300 Ruhe, A. The Structure of the Book of Leviticus in the Narrative Outline of the Priestly Sinai
Story (Exod 19:1 Num 10:10) in The Book of Leviticus: Composition and reception, ed.
Rendtorff, R. and Kugel, R. (Atlanta: SBL, 2003).
Rushdie, S. The Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988).
Russell, L. M. & Clarkson, J. S. (eds.) Dictionary of Feminist Theology (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1996).
Saheeh International Translation , The Quran with Srah Introduction and Appendices
(Birmingham: Maktabah, 2010).
Said, E. W. Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Siad, G. R. The Qurn and Its Biblical Subtext (London: Routledge, 2010).
Sakenfeld, K. D. Ruth (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1999).
Sarwar, G. Islam: beliefs and teachings, 8th edition (London: Muslim Educational Trust, 2006).
Savant, S. B. Isaac as the Persians Ishmael: Pride and the Pre-Islamic Past in Ninth and Tenth
Century Iran in Comparative Islamic Studies 2. 1 (2006): 521.
Sawyer, J. F. A. A Critical Review of Recent Projects and Publications in Hebrew Bible and
Ancient Israel 3. 1 (2012): 298326.
Schimmel, A. Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (Albany:
State of New York University Press, 1994).
Schmuttermayr, G. Psalm 18 und 2 Samuel 22; Studien zu einem Doppeltext. Probleme der
Textkritik und Ubersetzung und das Psalterium Pianum (Munich: Ksel-Verlag, 1971).
Searle, J. R. Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language (London: Cambridge
Segal, A. Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism
Shah, Z. A. Anthropomorphic Depictions of God: The Concept of God in Judaic, Christian and
Islamic Traditions: Representing the Unrepresentable (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic
Thought, 2010).
Sherwood, Y. Binding Unbinding: Divided Responses of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the
Sacrifice of Abrahams Beloved Son in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72. 4
(2004): 821861
Sherwood, Y. Hagar and Ishmael: The Reception of Expulsion in Interpretation: A Journal of
Bible and Theology 68. 3: 286304
Siddiqui, M. Christians, Muslims & Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
Sirry, M. Muqtil b. Sulaymn and Anthropomorphism in Studia Islamica 107. 1 (2012), 3864.
Sirry, M. Scriptural Polemics: The Quran and other religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014).
Skinner, C. W. Character Studies in the Gospel of Mark and Characters and Characterisation in
the Gospel of John (London: T&T Clark, 2013).
Small, K. E. Textual Criticism and Quran Manuscripts (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011).
Smith, M. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2 nd edition
(Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002).
Spellberg, D. A. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The legacy of Aisha Bint Abi Bakr
(Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1994).
Speyer, H. Die biblischen Erzhlungen im Qoran (reprint: Hildesheim, 1961).
Spina, F. A. The Faith of the Outsider: Exclusion and inclusion in the Biblical Story (Cambridge:
Eerdmans, 2005).
Steinmetz, D. From Father to Son: Kinship, conflict, and continuity in Genesis (Louisville:
Westminster, 1991).
301 Stendahl, K. Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976).
Storti, C. Art of crossing cultures, 2nd edition (Yarmouth: Intercultural Press, 2001).
Stowasser, B. F. Women in the Qurn, Traditions, and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
Strom, M. From Promised Land to Reconciled Cosmos: Pauls Translation of World-view,
Worldstory and Worldperson in The Gospel and the Land of Promise: Christian Approaches to
the Land of the Bible, ed. P. Church (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011): 1427.
Swanson, D. Leviticus and Purity in Purity: Essays in Bible and Theology, ed. Andrew Brower
Latz and Arseny Ermakov (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014).
Tennent, T. C. Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is
Influencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).
Thomas, M. A. These Are the Generations: Identity, Covenant, and the Toledot Formula (New
York: T & T Clark International, 2010).
Thomasset, A.S.J. Biblical Hermeneutics, the Art of Interpretation, and Philosophy of the Self: A
Tribute to Paul Ricur and Paul Beauchamp in Ethical Perspectives, Volume 9. 1 (2002): 4855.
Tov, E. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3 rd edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012).
Tracy, D. The Analogical Imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism (London:
SCM, 1981).
Tsumura, D. 1 and 2 Samuel in The ESB Study Bible (Wheating: Crossway, 2001).
Tull, P. K. Esther and Ruth (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).
Ulrich, E. The Dead Sea scrolls and the origins of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
Vajda, G. Isrliyyt in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 nd edition, ed. Bearman, P. (Brill: Leiden,
19802004).
van Ess, J. Tashbh wa-Tanzh in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 nd edition, ed. Bearman, P.
van Ess, J. Verbal Inspiration? Language and Revelation in Classical Islamic Theology in The
Qurn as Text, ed. Stefan Wild (Leiden: Brill, 1996): 177194.
van Ess, J. Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1997).
Vanhoozer, K. J. Introduction in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin
Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005).
Vannoy, J. R. The NIV Study Bible, 5 th edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).
Von Rad, G. Genesis: A Commentary, trans. J.H. Marks , 3 rd edition (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1972).
Waardenburg, J. Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).
Wadud, A. Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Womans Perspective
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Waldman, M. R. New Approaches to Biblical Material in the Quran in The Muslim World,
Volume 75. 1 (1985): 113.
Walker, C. M. Not Just Decoration: Rhetoric and Women Characters in Selected Biblical and
Quranic Texts, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis (Middlesex University, 2011).
Waltke, B. K. Samaritan Pentateuch C.8 in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. D.N.
Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
Wansbrough, J. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation reprint with a
foreword, annotations, and a glossary by Andrew Rippin (Amherst, 2004).
302 Ward, K. Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Warren-Rothlin, A. Body Idioms and the Psalms in Interpreting the Psalms: Issues and
Approaches, ed. P.S. Johnston and D.G. Firth (Leicester: IVP Apollos, 2005): 195212.
Warren-Rothlin, A. Euphemisms and Bible translations, in The Encyclopedia of Hebrew
Language and Linguistics, ed. Geoffrey Khan (New York: Brill, 2013): 1/8651/869.
Warren-Rothlin, A. Politeness Strategies in Biblical Hebrew and West African Languages in
Journal of Translation 3. 1 (2007): 5571.
Watson, F. Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T & T Clark International, 2004).
Watt, M. W. The Queen of Sheba in Islamic Tradition, in Solomon and Sheba, ed. James B.
Pritchard (London: Phaidon, 1974): 85103.
Watt, W. M. Early Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991).
Watt, W. M. MuslimChristian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (London: Routledge,
1991).
Watt, W. M. and Bell, R. Introduction to the Quran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1970).
Watts, J. W. Aaron and the Golden Calf in the Rhetoric of the Pentateuch. Journal of biblical
Literature 130 (2011).
Wehr, H. Arabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (New
York, Spoken Language Services, 1976).
Wenham, G. J. Genesis 115, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word Books, 1987).
Wenham, G. J. Genesis 1650, vol. 2, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Books, 1994).
Wesley, J. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1966).
Whybray, R. N. The Succession Narrative (London: SCM, 1968).
Winter, T. Quranic reasoning as an academic practice in The promise of scriptural reasoning,
eds. David Ford and C. C. Pecknold (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
Witztum, J. Variant Traditions, Relative Chronology, and the Study of Intra-qurnic Parallels in
Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in honor of Professor Patricia Crone, ed. Sagheni, S.
Ahmed, A. Q. , Hoyland, R. G. and Silverstein, A. (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 150.
Witztum, J. The Foundations of the House (Q2: 127) in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 72. 1 (2009): 2540.
Wolfson, H. A. The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
Wolters, A. M. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd edition
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).
Wright, C. J. H. The Mission of Gods People: A Biblical Theology of the Churchs Mission
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010).
Wright, N. T. The Crown and the Fire: Meditations on the Cross and the Life of the Spirit
(London: SPCK, 1992).
Yeivin, I. and Revell, E. J. Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah (Missoula: Scholars Press,
1979).
Yudkowsky, R. Chaos or Chiasm?: The Structure of Abrahams Life in Jewish Bible Quarterly
35. 2 (2007): 109114.
Zebiri, K. Muslims and Christians face to face (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).
Zellentin, H. M. The Qurans Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure
(Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
Ziesler, J. Pauls Letter to the Romans (London: SCM Press, 1989).
Zwemer, S. M. Arabia the Cradle of Islam (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1900)
Zwemer, S. M. Islam: A Challenge to Faith (New York: Laymens, 1907)

Reading The Bible in Islamic Context181420304

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reading The Bible in Islamic Context181420304

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reading The Bible in Islamic Context181420304

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reading the Bible in Islamic Context

Daniel J. Crowther is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-

Shirin Shafaie is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian

1 Reading the Bible in Islamic Context

Edited by Daniel J. Crowther,

Typeset in Times New Roman

1 Biblical interpretation in Islamic context: particular

2 Abraham in narrative worldviews: reflections on doing

3 Toward inter-theological hermeneutics: a case study

4 The “sin” of David in light of Islamic thought 62

5 David and the single ewe lamb: tracking conversation

7 The fourth source: Isrā’īliyyāt and the use of the Bible

8 Constrained by scriptural polemics: Hamiduddin Farahi

9 The culture shock of the Bible 126

10 Islamic tradition and the reception history of the Bible 148

11 The morphology of the narrative exegesis of the Qur’an:

12 The place of purity in faith 197

13 Biblical Ruth as a qur’anic Queen of Sheba: scriptural

14 Reading Paul on idolatry (Romans 1:18–32) alongside

15 Indirection in biblical and qur’anic discourses, and

Concluding reflection 271

17 Three methods for a Muslim reading of the Bible 273

Bibliography: Works In Arabic 285

S. Ali Aghaei is a research associate in the Corpus Coranicum Project at

Part I: Intertextual conversations

Part III: Analogical explorations

alif ‫ا‬ alêf ‫א‬ ’

• For Christians, faithful reading of the Bible is essential to faithful living in

This introductory chapter represents a Christian’s analysis: in writing it, I have

‘Islamic context’: what might it mean?

• Consideration of the similarities and differences between biblical and

Who is reading? People and their tools

Tasks, questions and the organisation of this volume

Part I: Intertextual conversations

• Ghandehari and Feyzbakhsh are Muslims, and Bristow is an evangelical

Part III: Analogical exlorations

What have I learnt? Signposts for the future

Figure 1.1 Basic hermeneutical map

I see the venture of reading as a set of interdependent tasks.

Figure 1.2 A path towards interpretation

Context and practice

Back to the text

Onward towards biblical interpretation in Islamic context

You might also like