Whenever a plague befell them, they said, “O Moses, invoke your Lord on our behalf, in accordance with the covenant He has made with you. If you remove the plague from us, we will believe in you and let the Children of Israel go with you.” But when we removed the plague from them, until a time that they were to reach, they broke their promise.
The pattern. Rijz means punishment or torment, but it is not the Quran’s regular word for punishment. ʿAdhāb occurs 322 times, while rijz occurs only nine times. Joseph Witztum, in an article on the relationship between Arabic rijz and Syriac/Aramaic rugzā, notes that one of the nine has a different meaning, leaving eight, and that six of those are in retellings of biblical narratives: one concerns the punishment of Lot’s people (29:34), and three concern the plagues on Egypt (7:134–135). (The remaining two uses of the eight are the punishment of the transgressors in and , quoted in section 11.)
The Jewish and Christian parallel. Witztum cites Jewish and Christian texts that use Aramaic and Syriac rugzā for the punishment of Lot’s people, including Jewish translations of Genesis 18:23–24 and a Samaritan Aramaic work referring to Genesis 19:1. He also shows that rugzā is used for the plagues on Egypt in the Aramaic Targum to Psalm 78:49 and in the Syriac Peshitta of that verse.
So the Quran uses rijz for the same two events (Lot’s people and the plagues of Egypt) for which Aramaic and Syriac texts use rugzā. Witztum concludes that the biblical contexts of most occurrences and the textual parallels strengthen the connection and that the Quran’s use of rijz is likely no matter of chance. Nicolai Sinai also agrees that rijz is related to rugzā.
A clarification. This does not mean the Quran endorses the reasoning behind the Jewish and Christian translations (in Genesis 18:23–24, for example, the reason for choosing that word may be strange). The point is only that the Quran knows how Jews and Christians spoke in their own languages, and it chooses its vocabulary carefully, possibly to be palatable to its audience. As the co-presenter added, the Quran can use the same vocabulary in its own innovative way.
Recall that your Lord said to the angels, “I am placing a successor on earth.” They said, “Will You place therein one who will commit evil therein, and shed blood, while we sing Your praises, and sanctify You?” He said, “I know what you do not know.”
The puzzle. The angels say nuqaddisu laka (“we sanctify You”). This root, in this verbal form ( qaddasa), is never used elsewhere in the Quran.
The background. Jewish and Christian sources tell of Adam’s creation and of the angels’ prostration to him. In Christian accounts, the angels actively worshiped Adam. In the rabbinic work Genesis Rabbah, the angels likewise want to worship or sanctify Adam, until God puts Adam to sleep so that they realize their mistake. There is also a Jewish tradition of angels objecting to Adam’s creation. In these stories the Syriac and Aramaic cognate of qaddasa is used: the Christian Cave of Treasures says the angels sanctified Adam, and in Genesis Rabbah the angels seek to declare Adam holy.
The parallel. The Quran quotes the angels using the same root, but applies it to God rather than to Adam. The Quran thereby seems to refute the idea that the angels worshiped Adam: yes, they prostrate to Adam, but they worship God alone. A scholarly article on this theme notes that whereas the Christian account speaks of Adam’s divine glory and says the angels sanctified him, the Quran depicts the angels as declaring to God “we glorify You with praise and sanctify You,” using the Arabic cognates of the Syriac terms but applying them to God. It thus safeguards God’s exclusive divinity, upholds Adam’s exalted but non-divine status, and absolves the angels of having wrongly worshiped Adam. Holger Zellentin makes a similar observation.
On the late dating of these sources. One might object that these texts are too late to be Quranic sources. But, as the co-presenter noted, these traditions are often older than the specific texts. The idea of angels prostrating to Adam appears in the Life of Adam and Eve, which is dated much earlier than the Cave of Treasures. We should not assume a tradition is late simply because the surviving manuscript is.
28. Inheriting eternal life (أُورِثْتُمُوهَا)
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This section requires background. Surah Al-A’raf 7:40–50 overlaps with several sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.
Surely, those who reject our revelations and are too arrogant to uphold them, the doors of Heaven will not open for them; nor will they enter Paradise until the camel passes through the needle’s eye. Thus, we requite the guilty.
As for those who believe and lead a righteous life—we never burden any soul beyond its means—they are the dwellers of Paradise, where they abide forever. We will remove all rancor from their hearts. Rivers will flow beneath them. They will say, “Praise be to GOD, who guided us to this. We could not have been guided, if GOD did not guide us. The messengers of our Lord have indeed come with the truth.” They will be called: “This is the Paradise that you have inherited, for what you used to do.”
The occupants of the Purgatory will call on certain people whom they recognize by their looks, saying, “Of what avail were your accumulations and your arrogance?”
The inmates of Hell will call on the inhabitants of Paradise: “Pour some water on us, or some of the provisions GOD has given you.” They will say, “GOD has forbidden both to the disbelievers.”
Parallel with Luke 16 (the rich man and Lazarus). A poor man, Lazarus, is with Abraham in the hereafter while a rich man is in torment. The rich man begs for water, and is refused:
Luke 16:24 (RSV)
And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.”
In the Quran (7:50), the people of Hell call out to the people of Paradise for water, and are refused.
Parallels with Mark 10 (the rich man). Here a rich man asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, is told to keep the commandments and to give his wealth to the poor, and goes away sorrowful.
Mark 10:17 (RSV)
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The camel and the needle. Quran 7:40 says the arrogant will not enter Paradise until a camel passes through the eye of a needle, as Jesus says in Mark 10:25.
Wealth. In 7:48 the disbelievers are told their jamʿ (gathering) was of no avail. According to some scholars, this can refer to a gathering of wealth, echoing the condemnation of rich people in Luke 16 and Mark 10.
Keeping the commandments. In Mark 10, Jesus tells the man to keep the commandments; in 7:42, those who believe and do righteous deeds, within their capacity, are the people of Paradise, abiding eternally.
Inheriting. In Mark 10:17 the man asks how to inherit eternal life. In 7:43 the people of Paradise are told, “This is the Paradise that you have been made to inherit” ( ūrithtumūhā).
The linguistic point. The Greek verb in Mark and Luke is klēronomeō (“to inherit”), and the Aramaic equivalent is from the root y-r-th (Hebrew yārash, יָרַשׁ), cognate with Arabic waritha (“to inherit”). The Septuagint sometimes uses klēronomeō to translate the Hebrew yārash. One contemporary writer on Quranic intertextuality notes that the verb “inherit” in the Quran appears right after the camel and the needle, matching the Gospel context in which the rich man asks about inheriting eternal life.
A note from the discussion: the co-presenter added a point about the sequence. If the Syriac Diatessaron (a Gospel harmony widely circulating in Syriac) was available, then the Quran may be drawing on a text where these sayings follow one another, which would show textual knowledge. Alternatively, the Quran may be stitching the two themes together itself, since both concern how the rich find it hard to reach heaven. Either way, the Quran engages two sayings of Jesus in succession, on both the literary and thematic levels, even though it does not say “this is in the Gospel.” (It is a fallacy to assume the Quran must always say so.)
These books were not in Arabic!
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A final, overarching point: the Quran is an Arabic text, yet it preserves information and stories found in a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources:
the Hebrew Bible (mostly Hebrew, with some Aramaic),
the New Testament (Greek),
the Mishnah (Hebrew),
the Talmud (Aramaic),
and apocryphal texts (in languages such as Greek and Syriac).
None of these was written in Arabic, and none had been translated into Arabic. There were translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek and Syriac, but not into Arabic. Sidney Griffith, a leading scholar of Christianity in the Arabic-speaking world, says there is no compelling evidence that Arabic-speaking Jews translated any portion of the Hebrew Bible into Arabic in pre-Islamic times, and that the more probable course of events is that Arabic-speaking Christians, whose religious heritage was largely Aramaic and Syriac, first produced written Arabic translations of portions of the Bible, the Gospels in particular, in the later seventh century, around the time the nascent Muslim community was committing the Quran to writing. That is after the Prophet’s death.
The inference. To access the Jewish and Christian knowledge found in the Quran, the Quranic speaker must have had access to another language: at least one of Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac, and arguably more than one. Even if someone proposes a human teacher, whoever the source is has to know another language.
The teacher hypothesis. The teacher hypothesis faces serious problems. No such teacher is known, and if someone had been teaching the Prophet constantly, there would likely be reports of it. The Quran itself records that the Quraysh made this accusation, and could only point to someone who did not speak Arabic:
We know that they say, “A human being is teaching him.” The language of the one they refer to is foreign, while this is a clear Arabic language.
This suggests that Mecca had no real candidates who could have taught the Prophet.
Conclusion
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The examples above establish that the Quranic speaker knows at least one of Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac. In fact, the presenters argue, the evidence probably shows knowledge of Hebrew and at least one of Aramaic or Syriac.
The argument then runs as follows:
The Quran shows detailed command of a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, in some cases down to precise vocabulary and wording.
That command requires access to a foreign language, since none of these sources existed in Arabic at the time.
The Prophet was an Arab who spoke Arabic, could not read or write, was not known to have had a teacher, and grew up among Arabs who did not even know the basics of the Bible.
The Quran therefore did not come from the Prophet. As the presenters put it, the Quran knows Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac because God knows all languages, knows exactly what the Bible says in Hebrew, and knows how Jews and Christians spoke in Aramaic and Syriac, and He is an independent witness to the true history recorded by the People of the Scripture.
The presenters frame this as one of the Quran’s own arguments, in the same vein as the argument from the Prophet’s unlettered status and from his description in the Torah and the Gospel, and say these are arguments Muslims need to revive. They expect that as time goes on, more evidence will be found of the Quran’s knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, and perhaps other languages.
Note on sources: the scholars named above are cited as they were in the presentation. Readers wishing to verify a claim should consult the works directly, in particular Nicolai Sinai’s The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction and Key Terms of the Qur’an, Gabriel Said Reynolds’s work on the Quran and the Bible, Angelika Neuwirth’s work on Quranic intertextuality, Holger Zellentin’s work on the Quran and rabbinic law, and Sidney Griffith’s The Bible in Arabic.