The parallel. Arabic sina (drowsiness) is cognate with Hebrew yāshān (to sleep), and Arabic nawm (sleep) is cognate with Hebrew yānūm (to slumber). The same roots appear, but the Quran flips their order: the Psalm says “slumber nor sleep” ( yanum … yishan), and the Quran says “drowsiness nor sleep” ( sina … nawm), in the reverse order. Both also use a double negation with lā (Hebrew lō): lō yanum welō yishan and lā taʾkhudhuhu sinatun walā nawm. Nicolai Sinai points this out in The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (p. 140).
Then we gave Moses the scripture, perfected for those who do good, detailing everything, and a guidance and mercy, that they may believe in meeting their Lord.
Psalm 19:7 (RSV)
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
The parallel. The Quran describes the scripture given to Moses with tamām (complete, perfect). Psalm 19, a reflection on the revelation of the law to Moses, calls the Torah of the Lord tĕmīmāh (perfect). Gabriel Reynolds notes that these verses are closely connected: Psalm 19:7 describes the law as perfect (Hebrew tĕmīmāh), while Quran 6:154 describes the book given to Moses as completing or perfecting (Arabic tamām).
An objection answered. One might say the Prophet simply heard such things orally. But understanding the word, its context, and its connections would require actually knowing the language. These links go down to the level of the words themselves, which indicates textual knowledge rather than vague oral tradition. And if one suggests a human teacher, whoever the source is must have had access to another language. To explain every connection by saying “it was floating around orally” proves too much: one could say anything, such as that an invisible flying bishop taught all of Mecca the Bible. There is no evidence for such claims.
Say, “My Lord has guided me to a straight path; the perfect religion; the creed of Abraham, monotheism. He was never an idol worshiper.”
The Bible. Abraham is the biblical figure associated with circumcision:
Genesis 17:10–11 (RSV)
This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
The parallel. In rabbinic Hebrew, the word for circumcision is milah (מִילָה). For example, Mishnah Nedarim 3:11 quotes Rabbi Ishmael: gĕdolah milah (גְּדוֹלָה מִילָה), “great is circumcision.” The Arabic millah sounds very similar, and the Quran ties it to Abraham, the figure of circumcision.
The equivalent root to the Quranic Arabic word millat مِلَّةَ in Old Testament Hebrew is מלל (mēm-lamed-lamed). When used as a verb, this root in the Hebrew Old Testament has four distinct meanings in the form of מלל (malal). The definition for all four verbs has to do with separating or severing something from what it’s normally connected to.
One of these four definitions specifically means to circumcise and is a by-form of the verb מול ( mul). We see this form used in Genesis 17:11.
If we look at all the other occurrences of the word מול ( mul) in the Bible, we see this word occurs thirty-six times. In the entire Bible, this word appears in only two verses followed by the name Abraham. These two verses are Genesis 17:26 and Genesis 21:4. Below are both verses showing the Hebrew equivalent of the Arabic مِلَّةَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ (millata ib’rāhīma / the religion of Abraham), which in Old Testament Hebrew occurs as the “circumcision of Abraham”.
How scholars see it. Angelika Neuwirth proposed that Arabic millah is actually derived from Hebrew milah. Nicolai Sinai notes that this tallies well with the Medinan references to the millah of Abraham, though he ultimately rejects the derivation, as the presenters do. The point does not depend on etymology. Whether or not the words are historically related, the Quran’s consistent pairing of millah with Abraham looks like an interlinguistic pun: a subtle wordplay for attentive ears, which rabbis listening to the Quran could catch.
Say, “He is the one and only GOD. The Absolute GOD. Never did He beget, nor was He begotten. None equals Him.”
Deuteronomy 6:4 (RSV)
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD;
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד
The puzzle. What one would normally expect in Arabic is Allāhu wāḥid, but the Quran says Allāhu aḥad. The medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyyah observed that aḥad is not used this way in ordinary Arabic; it typically appears in negations and similar contexts, not as an affirmative description. Its use here is unprecedented.
The explanation. Hebrew eḥad (אֶחָד) in the Shema is the natural counterpart. Angelika Neuwirth argues that the Quran’s peculiar use of the rare form aḥad is best heard against the cognate in the Shema, and Holger Zellentin concurs, noting that the Shema’s eḥad is likewise preserved in the Aramaic translation of the Targum and the Syriac Peshitta.
Takeaway. By using aḥad in an unprecedented way, the Quran shows knowledge of Deuteronomy 6:4 as Moses declared it in Hebrew.
Those who trade GOD’s covenant and their oaths for a cheap price, will have no share for them in the Hereafter. GOD will not speak to them, nor look at them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify them. They will suffer a painful retribution.
The Hebrew background. The Mishnah, the foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, says:
All Israel they have a share in the world to come.
The parallel. The Quranic phrase lā khalāqa lahum (“they have no share”) sounds like the Mishnah’s yesh lahem ḥēleq (“they have a share”), with the Quran inverting the Mishnah’s language. And it does so when speaking to the very Jews who believed in the Mishnah.
Haggai Mazuz, in his study of the Jews of Medina, calls this a bilingual pun, and Nicolai Sinai likewise points to this phrase (in 2:102, 2:200, and 3:77) as likely echoing Mishnaic declarations that certain categories of people have no share in the world to come. The phrase occurs only three times in the Quran, all in Medina, where the Jews lived, and two of the three are directed at the Jews specifically. All of this raises the likelihood that the phrase is a deliberate echo of a rabbinic formula.
“O John, you shall uphold the scripture strongly.” We granted him wisdom as a child. And kindness from us, and purity. He was righteous.
The puzzle. The word ḥanān (affection, tenderness) occurs only here in the Quran, and it is given to John the Baptist (Yaḥyā). Why?
The Hebrew background. The Greek New Testament calls him Iōannēs, but his Hebrew name is Yoḥanan (יוֹחָנָן), built on the root ḥ-n-n (“to be gracious”). The Quran gives John ḥanān, a word that recalls the root of his Hebrew name.
Reinforcement within the surah. Surah Maryam draws deliberate parallels between John and Jesus. When Jesus is announced, the Quran uses the ordinary word for mercy:
He said, “Thus said your Lord: ‘It is easy for Me. We will render him a sign for the people, and a mercy from us. It is a matter already decreed.'”
For Jesus it is raḥmah; for John it is ḥanān. Nicolai Sinai says ḥanān could be a pun going back to the Hebrew or Syriac form of John’s name. A more skeptical scholar, Alfred-Louis de Prémare, concludes that the Quranic author certainly has some knowledge of Aramaic, “at worst indirect, but more probably direct,” and cites this wordplay on John’s name in 19:13 as confirmation.
A further resonance: in Islamic tradition, the mother of Mary (for whom Surah Maryam is named) is called Hannah, which comes from the same Hebrew root.
A mention of your Lord’s mercy towards His servant Zachariah.
The Hebrew background. The name Zechariah (זְכַרְיָה, Zekharyah) combines zākar (“remember”) and Yah, the short form of the divine name Yahweh. It means “Yahweh remembers.”
The parallel. In 19:2, the words dhikr (reminder, the Arabic equivalent of zakar) and rabb (Lord) are placed right beside the name Zachariah. Jews customarily substituted Adonai (“Lord”) for the divine name, and Christians used Kyrios (“Lord”), so rabb can function as a stand-in for Yahweh, and the pun is preserved: “your Lord’s remembrance … Zachariah.”
Why it looks intentional. Elsewhere in Surah Maryam the Quran says “remember in the scripture Mary” (19:16) and “remember in the scripture Abraham” (19:41), but only for Zachariah does it also mention the Lord alongside the remembrance. The pun appears a second time in Surah Al Imran, where Zachariah is told to remember his Lord:
He said, “My Lord, give me a sign.” He said, “Your sign is that you will not speak to the people for three days, except by gestures. Remember your Lord frequently, and praise Him evening and morning.”
Zachariah is not a prominent figure in the Quran the way Moses is, yet twice he is tied to remembrance and the Lord. That repetition suggests the pun is deliberate.
Recall that we said, “Enter this community and eat from it as you please. Enter the gate humbly and say, ‘Forgive us,’ and we will forgive your sins and increase the reward for the righteous.” But the transgressors changed the word to something different from what had been said to them. We therefore sent down upon the transgressors a plague from the sky, for their wickedness.
Recall that it was said to them, “Dwell in this community and eat from it as you please, and say, ‘Forgive us,’ and enter the gate humbly. We will forgive your sins and increase the reward for the righteous.” But the transgressors among them substituted a different word from what had been said to them. We sent upon them a plague from the sky for their transgression.
The puzzle. What does ḥiṭṭah mean? Classical commentators offered various opinions. One scholar reports an opinion that the people were commanded to say a word whose meaning “we do not know.” Al-Razi and al-Alusi also report an opinion that ḥiṭṭah is a word from the People of the Scripture whose meaning is unknown in Arabic. These scholars do not adopt that view, but they report that it existed, and it makes sense: the word is tied in both passages to God forgiving sins.
The Hebrew background. In the Hebrew Bible, the classic formula for seeking forgiveness is to confess sin with a form of ḥāṭāʾ (חטא), “to sin”: ḥāṭāʾtî (“I have sinned”) when an individual speaks, or ḥāṭāʾnû (“we have sinned”) when a group does.
Joshua 7:20 (RSV)
And Achan answered Joshua, “Of a truth I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and this is what I did:
And in the morning they rose early and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, “Here we are, we will go up to the place which the LORD has promised; for we have sinned.”
So they gathered at Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said there, “We have sinned against the LORD.” And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.
The parallel. The Quran tells the Israelites to say ḥiṭṭah and God will forgive their khaṭāyā (sins). The word khaṭāyā is the Arabic cognate of the Hebrew root ḥ-ṭ-ʾ. So the Quran seems first to transliterate a confession formula ( ḥiṭṭah) and then to translate it by using the cognate word for sin. A scholar of Semitic languages argues that the Israelites are being asked to offer a confession of their unspecified sin, with the formula “we have sinned” in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac represented in the Quran by ḥiṭṭah, a reasonably close Arabic approximation.
The changed word. The commentators also discuss what the Israelites said instead. One report says they said ḥinṭah, which means “wheat” in Arabic. (Ibn Abbas is reported to have said they may have said both words, or something like them.) This works even better in Hebrew, because the Hebrew for “wheat” is ḥiṭṭāh (חִטָּה), which sounds almost exactly like the formula for sin.