Answering Objections to Islam · Theology & Doctrine

Did Islam Borrow from Judaism and Christianity?

In short

1.Q 12:111 and 5:48 explicitly present the Qur'an as confirming and criticising what came before.
2.Where the Qur'an overlaps, it also consistently corrects — stripping legendary elements and reasserting monotheism.
3.Parallel does not establish direction of dependence.

The claim being examined

Critics argue Qur'anic narratives derive from the Talmud, Syriac Christian legend and apocrypha — the infancy gospels, the Cave of Seven Sleepers, the Alexander legend.

The Islamic position

Shared narrative material is expected if all three traditions descend from the same prophetic source. The Qur'an itself claims to confirm and correct earlier scripture, so overlap is a prediction of the Islamic position, not an embarrassment to it.

Analysis

Scholars of the Qur'an today (Sinai, Reynolds, Neuwirth) increasingly say the Qur'an is talking *to* an audience that already knew these stories, not copying a book off a shelf. Gabriel Said Reynolds puts it like a sermon: the audience knows the story, and the Qur'an comments on it. The point worth making is what the Qur'an does with the familiar material. Jesus (PBUH) speaking in the cradle stays; the claims that he is divine are gone; and Q 5:116 corrects people who treated Mary as a god. A copyist copies. This is someone correcting.

From the Qur'an

مُصَدِّقًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ وَمُهَيْمِنًا عَلَيْهِ ۖ

muṣaddiqan limā bayna yadayhi mina l-kitābi wamuhayminan ʿalayhi

Confirming what came before it of the Scripture and a criterion over it.

Sources

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