Differences Between Qur’anic and Biblical Commentaries
An Orientation
(avg. read time: 4–8 mins.)
I know a crossover between qur’anic and biblical scholarship does not happen often from the side of the biblical scholar. This became especially apparent to me in my search for an external examiner for my dissertation. But since I have made such a crossover in my dissertation, I thought I might provide an orientation to qur’anic scholarship and its differences from biblical scholarship for those who seek to explore this field. Two secondary sources that will be especially helpful in charting these differences are Martin Accad’s Sacred Misinterpretation and Jane Dammen McAuliffe’s Qur’ānic Christians (the latter was published in 1991, but it still largely reflects the state of affairs in scholarship). To clarify further, I will be addressing here primarily Muslim qur’anic scholarship and Christian biblical scholarship, especially as reflected in commentaries, and not so much the broader fields pertaining to each.
Deference to Classics
First, qur’anic commentaries feature much more deference to classic sources, especially the Hadith, the sunnah, and the various tafsirs. The Hadith are ancient Muslim traditions said to be reports of sayings or deeds of Muhammad (hadith means something like “account,” “narrative,” “report,” or “speech”), and, by some definitions, Muhammad’s companions. These are provided in commentaries to illuminate various qur’anic texts. The sunnah are normative customs of tradition and practice said to be passed down from Muhammad and early Muslim communities, which are mediated to the faithful by different means according to different Muslim branches. These, too, are applied to expound upon various teachings in the Qur’an. Finally, the tafsirs are the (mostly) classic commentaries on the Qur’an, which are still cited to this day, not only for their passing on of tradition, but also because of the quality of their work in engaging with the task of explaining language and grammar. As McAuliffe explains the first guiding principle of the classic qur’anic exegete:
He will seek to clarify words and phrases that carry an uncommon signification. He will make explicit the grammatical relationships within the verse and suggest connectives where the passage is elliptical or paratactic. Any apparent irregularities of morphology, syntax, or word order will be discussed within the framework of classical Arabic grammar, itself drawn substantially from the evidence of Qur’ānic usage.1
Likewise, one of the major portions of a commentary (tafsir al-ma‘na or “commentary on the meaning”), will tend to involve, where applicable, as Martin Accad observes, “a commentator generally [transmitting] exegetical material from predecessors, often in massive cumulative amounts, before stating his agreement with one particular existing opinion.”2 This portion, at least, is not all that different from contemporary biblical commentaries, but the difference is that there is not such an ingrained deference to classic sources, as a Muslim commentator is unlikely to reject all interpretations of a text from classic sources.
Indeed, contemporary Christian biblical commentators, especially Protestants, are much less likely to be deferential to the classic commentaries and other classic expository texts on Scripture. In fact, commentators today have a tendency to reject traditional interpretations of texts, as well as traditional claims of authorship, dating, and provenance. They also almost never look to the classic works for guidance on expounding the scriptural language. Three general factors contribute to this lack of tendency. One, biblical scholars tend to rely on more recent Greek grammars, as well as contemporary linguistic theories. Two, textual criticism is a key feature of biblical scholarship, as we are aware of variations in early readings, and while some early Christian teachers show awareness of this variety as well, they do not often engage the issue in a systematic fashion that might be expected from a contemporary commentary, nor do they necessarily do so by the canons of modern textual criticism. By contrast, textual criticism is by no means a major aspect of qur’anic scholarship, per Accad, “According to the classical Islamic account of the Qur’an’s development, a major codification of the text took place on the order of the third caliph, ‘Uthman, who reigned 644–56. At the present stage in the study of the history of the qur’anic text, it is not possible to know the extent to which this canonical version reflected the Qur’an that circulated orally (and possibly partially in writing) during Muhammad’s lifetime.”3 Three, the early centuries of Christian exposition on the Scriptures were not as often focused on the Hebrew OT or the Greek NT, as such, since translations of Scripture in multiple languages (especially Latin, but also Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and so on) became points of reference in the early Christian centuries, and many worked with a Greek translation of the OT anyway. This is not to say that there were no translations of the Qur’an, as there are testimonies (but not extant manuscripts) of its translation into Syriac and Greek, although the earliest extant translation is a Persian one from the tenth century, and the basic model was to keep the Arabic text in sight, as Meir M. Bar-Asher says, “Most translations by Muslims were in one of two formats: interlinear translation, and translations in which the original and translation appear on facing pages.”4
As such, it is necessary to become familiar with the older medieval sources, as they will generally define the parameters of later commentaries. Many of these sources are available for free online. Some can be found on given texts on qur’anic sites like quran.com. Other more extensive works can be found translated and untranslated at sites like altafsir.com.
Contextual Placement
Second, related to the above, another important principle of qur’anic scholarship, especially among the classic tafsirs, is that of identifying the “occasions of revelation” (asbab an-nuzul). These are extra-textual traditions, which may be supplied by the Hadith or sunnah and may be directly applied by the classic tafsirs, that identify the original occasion in which the surah was revealed to Muhammad. Similar extra-textual traditions circulated among the early Christians that provided an historical context in which to place the OT and NT writings.
On the surface, this appears similar to the historical-critical method that has often been used as a predominant method in Western biblical scholarship for a long time now. However, as Accad observes, “The main difference is that in the case of historical criticism, the historical setting of a text is to a large extent derived from other elements within that text.”5 In other words, the text ultimately drives proposals about the historical setting and contextual placement of a work, as scholars often engage in mirror reading to derive clues of such from the text. But, as Accad notes, “In the case of the Qur’an, the individual reader is not allowed to carry out this exercise. Instead, others have done this for them in the past, and they are required to make use of that data in their own reading.”6 Indeed, the Qur’an is such a text that the individual reader has precious little to go on to contextualize the disconnected narratives and teachings.
On broader questions of historical context and relationships with other historical entities, McAuliffe makes an apt observation:
What the classical and modern exegetes, as discussed in this study, will not do is to consider a word or passage as incomplete or corrupt, a victim of scribal transmission. They will not entertain theories about cultural borrowing or extra-Islamic influence. Qur’ānic passages that appear to echo versions of Biblical narratives are not examined in order to discover their possible lines of transmission and the various shapings undergone along the way. In fact, most of the questions that fuel the historical-critical method of the Biblical scholar are, for his or her Qur’ānic counterpart, non-questions or even blasphemies.7
Less Interaction with Contemporaries and Other Methodologies
Third, in line with the general deference to classic sources, there is not much cross-referencing among contemporary qur’anic commentators. They will interact with the classic sources, but will scarcely have much interaction with more recent commentators or more general qur’anic scholarship. This can be bothersome for those of us accustomed to doing chain citations, building our bibliographies in part from the sources our sources cite. Likewise, there is not much methodological experimentation in qur’anic commentaries that cross-fertilizes with other fields of research or applies insights of more recent methodologies in qur’anic studies. Again, accounting for what the classic sources say is more crucial than being up to date on what other qur’anic scholars are saying.
Qur’anic Repetition
Fourth, one major difference in the scholarship emerges from the character of the Qur’an itself. If a reader looks for insight on the meanings of certain words, phrases, and statements in the Qur’an, one must attend to the many parallels of these things throughout the Qur’an, as it is given to frequent repetition. In examining the tafsirs, one must thus not only look at the commentary of the passage under consideration, but also at the commentary on any parallel points in the Qur’an. Of course, as the Qur’an began its life in the Muslim community as oral transmission, such frequent repetition of words, phrases, and statements, even in largely different surahs, only makes sense as an aid to memorization.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Qur’ānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 29.
Martin Accad, Sacred Misinterpretation: Reaching across the Christian-Muslim Divide (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 51.
Accad, Sacred Misinterpretation, 47.
Meir M. Bar-Asher, “‘We Have Made It an Arabic Qur’an’: The Permissibility of Translating Scripture in Islam in Contrast with Judaism and Christianity,” in Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries, ed. Mordechai Z. Cohen and Adele Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 71. In a similar vein, he notes: “Muslim scholars insisted that a Qur’an translation be labelled tarjamat al- ma‘ānī (‘translation of the meanings’) or tarjama tafsīriyya (‘interpretive translation’), to indicate that it captures only the basic meaning of the text – more precisely, one of its possible meanings – and not the full glory and richness of the original Arabic Qur’an” (74).
Accad, Sacred Misinterpretation, 48.
Ibid.
McAuliffe, Qur’ānic Christians, 30.