Distortion and the Qur'an (Part 2)

Creation of the Qur’an through the distortion of the Bible

Masud Masihiyyen

In the first part of this series I briefly discussed the theme of distortion and showed that the Islamic scripture can be perverted in a number of ways today in the hands of modern translators and interpreters. A quick look at some Qur’an verses also proved that the act of distortion and modification was already in process in the so-called revelation of the book because of Satan’s intervention and as a result of Allah’s omnipotence. In addition to these, the accounts in the Qur’an display discrepancies and contradictions when comparatively studied along with the biblical version of those narratives. Although Muslims naturally strive to explain these discrepancies by questioning and attacking the authenticity of the Bible, the real reason underlying the contrasts between the Bible and the Qur’an is Muhammad’s and/or the Quranic writer’s inept and faulty plagiarism.

The evidence provided by the Islamic scripture supports the theory that Muhammad did not have access to the Bible text for a comparison and a faultless plagiarism, basing his teachings of biblical origin on hearsay. This is why the Islamic form of almost every account is rather different than their original version in the Bible in sharp contrast to Muhammad’s fundamental claim that his book was revealed to confirm the scriptures that the People of the Book possessed in their hands in his period (Surah 7:157, Surah 2:41).

Another disadvantage resulting from Muhammad’s partial and imperfect familiarity with the Bible was his failure to distinguish traditional yet non-canonical (apocryphal) writings of both Judaism and Christianity from the inspired and canonical writings of the Bible. A person who is aware of this issue and problem may not be surprised to see that the 27^th Surah of the Qur’an contains a Jewish fable missing from the Hebrew Bible, but present in the Targum (*).

Muhammad’s habitual tendency to present non-traditional writings and stories as an indispensable part of the words of God is not confined to the texts of Judaism, and appears in a more awkward way in his abuse of the Christian sources in the narration of Jesus’ birth and infancy. The scrutiny of Jesus’ nativity and infancy account in Surah 19 enables us to see that he heavily drew from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a prominent and comprehensive non-canonical Gospel of nativity and infancy. However, he applied some weird and mysterious modifications to the narratives he heard from this book while incorporating them into the Qur’an. The inevitable production of this distortion was an Islamic account having obscurities and anomalies.

To remember, Muhammad and/or the writer of the Qur’an altered the chronology of the events in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and claimed that Mary was interrogated by her folk and accused of immorality after she had given birth to Jesus under a palm tree (Surah 19:23-28). Then Jesus miraculously spoke despite being an infant in cradle and identified Himself as a prophet of God sent with a scripture (Surah 19:29-30). The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, on the other hand, taught that Mary was questioned and accused of immorality in the Temple when she was reported to be with child. Mary’s people practiced a special ritual to understand whether she was sinful or innocent. Although no sign of sin appeared in her face, the people witnessing this incident in the Temple fell into disagreement among themselves about Mary’s innocence. Finally, Mary delivered a speech that cleared all the doubts of the people and made her pious in the sight of all (Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew chapter 12).

The person devising the account in Surah 19 evidently changed the time of Mary’s accusation when he turned the metaphorical expression referring to Mary’s pregnancy in Pseudo-Matthew (“After these things there arose a great report that Mary was with child”) into a literal expression referring to Mary’s post-gestation period, asserting that Mary’s people confronted her when they saw her with a baby in her arms. The ritual conducted in the Temple and Mary’s speech in the original text were skipped and replaced in the Qur’an with the miracle of Jesus’ speech from the cradle, which was copied from the Arabic Gospel of Infancy (chapter 1), a different non-canonical Gospel of nativity and infancy. This interpolation became detrimental to the integrity of the narrative in Surah 19 since it gave the wrong impression that Mary’s folk fell into variance among themselves in regard to Jesus’ speech in the cradle (Surah 19:37) rather than in regard to Mary’s chastity and innocence. Consequently, anachronistic and absurd interpretations arose from the writer’s erroneous connection of the differing groups in verse 37 to Jesus’ miracle of speaking from the cradle.¹

The contrast between the scarcity of the data about Jesus and the vast amount of information about Moses in the Islamic scripture should not compel one to conclude that Muhammad managed to be more accurate and less erroneous in terms of plagiarism from the Torah. He may have naively believed that his book was perfectly in line with the Torah and accomplished the task of confirming it. He relied on this compatibility so much that he identified his Qur’an as the Torah’s equivalent, the difference between the two being the language of revelation:

Luckily we have both the Bible and the Qur’an for a sound comparison and we can test the veracity of the verse above by quoting an exemplary account from the Torah and comparing it with the accounts in the Islamic scripture. For this comparative analysis I am choosing the narrative of Abraham’s visitors. My aim is to explain how the Quranic version came into existence through the distortion of the biblical account and how it stunningly took different and inconsistent forms in the hands of the Quranic author.

The narrative of Abraham’s visitors: a comparative study

The account of the three extraordinary visitors that came to Abraham is related in the Book of Genesis in the Torah:

The significance of this biblical narrative is that it recounts how Abraham was visited by heavenly messengers including even God Himself and how Isaac’s miraculous birth was foretold. Muhammad was definitely familiar with this story and decided to incorporate it into his Qur’an. Before starting the comparative analysis, it is imperative to realize that this particular narrative of biblical origin was recorded in Muhammad’s book in three different forms: Surah 11:69-76, Surah 15:51-60, Surah 51:24-34. Interestingly, these chapters follow this sequence also in the chronological order of the Qur’an (*). Thus, the earliest account is the one in Surah 11, the second in Surah 15, and the final one in Surah 51, yet all of these belonging to the pre-migration period.

The first narrative of Abraham’s visitors in the Qur’an

The first and most primitive form of the account concerning Abraham’s visitors and the good news of Isaac’s birth is recorded in Surah 11:

Apparently, this Islamic narrative bears some trivial and some serious discrepancies to the account in the Bible. In the first place, its writer, unlike the author of the biblical narrative, tried to give as few details as possible and did not care about a well-organized narration. For example, he did not state the location of the incident and did not specify the number of the visitors. Likewise, he chose to hide from the reader even the name of Abraham’s wife although the good news of childbirth was particularly delivered to her.

Second, the writer of this Quranic version of the story produced a narrative that contained spoilers and make it look like a poor copy and summary of the biblical account. For example, it is improbable for a person reading the Bible for the first time to know that Abraham’s visitors came to bring him the good news of Isaac’s birth since no spoilers is given in the introductory sentence. On the contrary, there is a chronological sequence of the events and the plot reaches its climax in the prediction of Isaac’s nativity. Despite the fact that the verses quoted above constitute the first narrative in the Qur’an, the introductory verse immediately tells the reader that the messengers visited Abraham to announce some glad tidings. In short, the writer of the Qur’an did not recount the narrative in its genuine form, but added into it some elements that were derived from his foreknowledge of the story.

Similarly, this narrative was written with the presupposition that the reader of the Qur’an would be already familiar with the biblical version of the story. An objective reader may rightly wonder why Abraham started to dispute about the People of Lot although the only thing said by the messengers was that they had been sent to the People of Lot:

This verse obviously does not explain why these messengers were sent to the People of Lot. Right at this point Abraham’s wife intervenes and laughs, which is followed by the annunciation of Isaac’s and Jacob’s birth to her (vs. 71-73). After this interpolation, Abraham is depicted as pleading with God for Lot’s folk, and this is linked to his mild and merciful character in verse 75. We cannot understand until we read verse 76 that God had decided to destroy Lot’s people and Abraham’s objection was related to this decree as we are bafflingly expected to know that the messengers had been sent to Lot’s folk in order to punish them for their sins right at the beginning of the story. Without this background information the current form of the narrative looks awkward and makes little sense.

This particular problem most likely stemmed from the Quranic author’s mistaken combination of the two related yet separate accounts in the Book of Genesis. According to the Bible, Abraham found out about God’s plan to destroy the People of the Plain, where Lot lived with his family, after receiving the good news of Sarah’s conception:

Upon hearing this news of destruction Abraham pleaded for the People of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:22-33). Muhammad most likely became aware of this connection when he heard a summary of this story. He hastily misplaced it right into the account of Abraham’s visitation by God’s messengers as he knew beforehand that these messengers had visited Abraham on their way to the People of Lot. In short, he gave out another spoiler and caused an anomaly in the flow of the narrative.

Apart from these anomalies emerging from the inept writing style of the author of the Islamic scripture, there are a number of discrepancies between the biblical and Quranic version of this particular account that we can discuss in two categories: minor discrepancies and major discrepancies, respectively.

Minor discrepancies

According to the biblical account, Abraham encountered and hosted three visitors, one of whom later turned out to be God Himself when the news of Sarah’s conception was delivered:

The writer of the Qur’an did not explicitly endorse or repeat this information when he identified the people visiting Abraham as God’s messengers in the introductory verse. However, there is an interesting grammatical shift in verse 74. To compare:

Supposedly God speaks in verse 73 and refers to His messengers as they, that is, in the third person plural. Although the narrative is not disrupted and nothing is stated about the messengers’ departure, in verse 74 the narrator uses first person plural (us), and Abraham is claimed to have pleaded with God for the People of Lot. Strangely, it is again the messengers who react and respond to Abraham in verse 76:

Since this utterance obviously belongs to the messengers, one may conclude that Abraham pleaded with the messengers rather than with God in verse 74. Accordingly, Muslim commentators generally tend to interpret the pronoun “us” as a reference to God’s messengers and some Muslim translators reflect this traditional understanding in their translation. For example:

If the indirect object in verse 74 refers to God’s messengers despite the use of a distinct pronoun, it will be reasonable to suppose that verse 74 was uttered by God’s messengers! In any case there is an anomaly in the order of these verses. The problem probably originated from a poor understanding of the biblical account and the mistaken transfer of Abraham’s later dialogue with God about the destruction of Sodom into the story of the visitors.

It must also be noted that in the biblical account Abraham pleads with God for the People of Sodom and Gomorrah after God foretells Sarah’s conception. Similarly, the account in Surah 11 does not only imply that Abraham pleaded with God rather than with the angels according to verse 74, but also that God rather than the messengers announced the birth of Isaac and Jacob to Abraham’s wife since in verse 71 God supposedly says “We announced to her…” rather than “They (our messengers) announced to her…”. It is highly likely that these two grammatical shifts came into existence through the influence of the biblical narrative. However, the writer of the other two accounts in the Qur’an decided not to repeat these grammatical switches from one personal pronoun to another. As a result, the theme of Abraham’s intercession for the People of Lot was totally left out of Surah 15 and Surah 51 and the act of announcing the birth of a child was explicitly ascribed to the messengers rather than to God.

The second minor difference regards Abraham’s emotional reaction to his visitors. Although the Bible does not even imply that Abraham was afraid of his visitors, the author of Surah 11 taught that Abraham felt apprehensive of the messengers when he saw that they did not touch the offered food. Consequently, the messengers had to tell Abraham not to fear:

The root of this teaching was most likely the supposition that Abraham did not at first recognize his guests as angelic beings and his suspicion increased when they did not eat. The assertion that the messengers did not eat may have arisen from the traditional teaching in the rabbinical literature that Abraham’s visitors did not really eat, but only appeared to have eaten:

Another possibility is that the author of the Qur’an likened the story of Abraham’s visitors to that of the litigants suddenly visiting and frightening David:

According to the chronological order of the Qur’an this account precedes all the accounts regarding Abraham’s visitors. More, the particular formulation introducing the narrative of David and the litigants in verse 21 recurs in a few other instances:

Interestingly, the third and final version of the account of Abraham’s visitors is introduced through the same formulation:

Finally, another noteworthy point is that Abraham’s fear is not necessarily associated with the visitors’ reluctance to eat the food offered by Abraham in Surah 15 as we shall see in the analysis of that particular narrative.

Major discrepancies

The first of the two major discrepancies concerns the cause of Sarah’s laughter. According to the biblical account, Sarah laughed because she found the visitor’s prediction about her conception incredible:

The theme of Sarah’s laughter is present in the 11^th chapter of the Qur’an although in this Islamic version of the story Sarah is reported to have laughed before the annunciation of Isaac’s birth:

The current order of these verses is evidently problematic as Sarah’s laughter precedes the annunciation and is stunningly associated with the messengers’ statement to Abraham regarding their mission to Lot’s folk. Of course, this serious problem is obscured or dismissed in the hands of some translators that disregard the original form of the verse. For instance, Pickthall and Khalifa felt free to correct this verse and make it similar to the biblical narrative by using a time adverbial (when clause) to connect Sarah’s laughter to the promise of Isaac’s birth:

Hilali-Khan added in brackets two probable reasons for Sarah’s laughter, deciding to keep faithful to the original form of the Qur’an and thus thematically link Sarah’s laughter to the preceding verse:

The most bizarre and independent translation came from Sher Ali, who probably got a personal revelation from above to omit the verb “laugh” and bind the annunciation of Isaac’s and Jacob’s birth to Sarah’s fear:

Traditional commentators also noticed the problem in this verse and tried to bring up reasons for Sarah’s laughter occurring before the messengers’ prediction. Since the original sequence of the verses gave the impression that Sarah’s laughter ensued the visitors’ response to Abraham, they generally tended to construct a thematic connection between the destruction of the People of Lot and Sarah’s laughter. This kind of an interpretation suggests that Abraham’s wife hated Lot’s folk, delighted when she heard the news of their destruction, and was rewarded with Isaac’s and Jacob’s birth in return for her reaction to the messengers’ utterance:

Ibn Kathir mostly adhered to this traditional commentary, but added that Sarah also laughed because Abraham’s guests did not eat of the offered food:

Not all commentators concurred on the reason for Sarah’s laughter though. Ibn Abbas reported another possibility related to Abraham’s fear:

Apparently, the interpretation in Ibn Abbas’ commentary is still linked to verse 70 although the cause of Sarah’s reaction is tied to Abraham’s fear rather than to the messengers’ statement. The origin of this alternate interpretation was perhaps the discovery of the fact that the simple statement uttered by the messengers “Do not be afraid, we are sent to the People of Lot” does not contain an explicit prediction of doom. The messengers do not tell Abraham that their mission is to destroy the People of Lot because of their sins. More to the point, Abraham’s wife does not say anything about Lot’s people even after Abraham starts pleading with God for them. The commentaries reported by al-Jalalayn and Ibn Kathir actually highlight a contrast between Abraham and his wife, but we can see no sign or evidence of this in the narrative. Ibn Abbas’ commentary, on the other hand, depicts Sarah as a woman that laughs at her husband because of his fear. However, it is based on the mistranslation of the verse as Abraham is not afraid when messengers announce Isaac’s birth. Abraham’s fear precedes the annunciation and cannot be related to it.

After reading these faulty translations and absurd interpretations we can laugh with Sarah at the problematic nature of the verse and at the confused writer of the chapter. The root of the problem is that the author of this Surah hastily and carelessly blended the narrative of the proclamation of Sodom’s destruction into that of Abraham’s visitors since they were thematically relevant. As a result, he mistakenly put into the mouths of the messengers the statement regarding their mission to Lot’s people right before the annunciation of Isaac’s birth. If we replace the visitors’ utterance about Lot’s folk with the glad tidings of Isaac’s birth, the mistake is corrected and the problem is solved.

The second major difference concerns the weird occurrence of the name Jacob in the annunciation of Isaac’s birth to Abraham’s wife:

This verse actually has a two-folded discrepancy since in the biblical account Abraham’s visitors do not pronounce the name of the child that Sarah is going to conceive and bear:

Upon Sarah’s laughter after this prediction, the Lord once more announces the same news, but again does not name the male child to be born:

However, this is not the only narrative related to the annunciation of Isaac’s birth in the Bible. We read that before paying a visit to Abraham with two of His messengers and delivering the same news to Sarah, God spoke to Abraham and foretold Isaac’s birth. More, He disclosed the name of the child:

The reason underlying the choice of the name Isaac for Abraham’s son was its etymological connection to the act of laughing. NET Bible presents the following footnote on the word laughed present in verse 17 of Genesis 17:

When the good news of Isaac’s birth was announced by one of Abraham’s visitors, Sarah also laughed as she doubted and concerned this promise improbable:

Finally, the connection between the name given to Sarah’s son and the verb laugh was revisited in the Bible when the promise was fulfilled and Isaac was born:

At first, it is possible to speculate that the author of Surah 11 inserted the name Isaac into the account of Abraham’s visitation by the messengers because he also referred to Abraham’s wife’s laughter and thus hinted at the etymological connection established in the Bible between the name Isaac and the act of laughing. Nonetheless, this turns out to be far from probable when we remember that in Surah 11:71 not the name of the child, but the good news of his birth was uncannily linked to Sarah’s laughter.

Second, the name Jacob appears in the same angelic annunciation in Surah 11 although it does not have any ties with the verb laugh in the Bible. The Bible identifies Jacob as Abraham’s and Sarah’s grandson born from Isaac’s wife Rebekah (Genesis 25:19:26). The author of Surah 11, however, claimed that the glad tidings of not only Isaac’s, but also Jacob’s birth were given to Abraham’s wife. Even though Muslim commentators, being aware of this problem, assert that Jacob became Abraham’s and his wife’s grandson, the following verse does not distinguish Jacob from Isaac in terms of his relation to Abraham’s wife:

There is nothing in this verse to deny or dismiss the possibility of the conclusion that Abraham’s wife later became Jacob’s mother in the same way as she first became Isaac’s mother. The words “after Isaac” do not necessarily support the view that Jacob was the grandson as the second child born from the same mother cannot be designated as a grandchild. Here the addition of this phrase functions to make it clear that Isaac was Abraham’s and his wife’s first son whilst Jacob was the second. More to the point, we have the right to wonder why the author of this chapter did not include into this verse Esau although he was Jacob’s twin brother, thus Abraham’s and Sarah’s other grandson through Isaac. If Jacob was mistakenly introduced as Sarah’s son in the Qur’an because he was also born through a miracle, we would still expect to see Esau next to Jacob in Surah 11:71 since Isaac’s wife bore twins unlike Abraham’s wife Sarah, who bore one son.

It is also crucial to question why Abraham does not reckon Jacob in Surah 14 while praising God for the children given to him:

Did Abraham forget that the messengers announced to his wife the birth of Isaac and Jacob in Surah 11:71? Obviously, the writer of the Qur’an fell into confusion about the names of Abraham’s two sons. Mostly he replaced Ishmael with Isaac and Isaac with Jacob. When he partly got close to the biblical teaching in Surah 14, he identified Isaac as Abraham’s second child and omitted Jacob. The cause of the confusion was most likely that the names Isaac and Jacob were coupled with Abraham in the Bible and formed a triplet. Muhammad supposed that this triplet consisted of Abraham and his two sons.²

Jacob’s erroneous designation as Abraham’s second son after Isaac was first introduced not in Surah 11, but in Surah 19 according to the chronological order of the Qur’an:

The writer of Surah 11 probably produced the teaching that Abraham’s wife was given the good news of Isaac’s and Jacob’s birth by transferring the two names from the verse above into the narrative of Abraham’s visitation by angels for the annunciation of Isaac’s birth. Thus, he tampered with the original account and caused a gross blunder as well as discrepancy when he included his mistaken conclusion into his new version of the biblical story.

The second narrative of Abraham’s visitors in the Qur’an

In the 15^th Surah of the Islamic scripture is recorded the second narrative of the messengers’ visit to Abraham and the annunciation of Isaac’s birth:

This is apparently a modified and improved version of the narrative in Surah 11. For example, the account was introduced by a statement asking Muhammad to talk about Abraham’s guests. The identity of these messengers and the reason for their visitation were not disclosed in the introductory verse unlike in Surah 11. More interestingly, the reference to Abraham’s treats and the visitors’ reluctance to eat in Surah 11 were omitted in Surah 15. As a result, the cause of Abraham’s fear was associated in this chapter with the visitors’ arrival rather than with the fact that they did not touch the food set by Abraham before them. Accordingly, Abraham said to his visitors “We are afraid of you” upon hearing their salutation.

Some Muslim commentators did their best to connect the dots and overcome this difficulty by transferring the missing elements from Surah 11 to Surah 15. They claimed that Abraham uttered his statement (“We are afraid of you”) after seeing that the visitors did not take of the food:

However, this kind of interpretation is not attested by the Qur’an. According to the account in Surah 11 Abraham did not have to state that he was afraid since the messengers could perceive his apprehension. In Surah 15, on the other hand, Abraham was made to verbally express his fear because there was no reference either to the roasted calf or to the messengers’ unwillingness to eat. Thus, Abraham’s utterance functioned to substitute for these missing elements despite the fact that it looked awkward as the reason for his fear was not explicitly stated.

Besides, it is not possible to know for sure why Abraham used first person plural (we) while telling his guests that he was afraid of them. Did he speak on behalf of his unmentioned wife? Did he refer to some other people helping him host the guests? We can find no definite answer to these questions. Abraham’s wife may be speculated to have feared in the same way as Abraham if we transfer here the reference to her in Surah 11, but in that case another problem arises: the narrative in Surah 11 presents Abraham as the only person fearing the messengers. More to the point, Sarah’s laughter is bound to Abraham’s fear in a certain Islamic commentary, but the idea that Abraham included his wife into the group of people getting afraid of the visitors in Surah 15 is annulled by this commentary and vice versa.

If we keep these inconsistencies aside, we can say that the writer of this chapter did not repeat the two major mistakes occurring in the previous account and brought the story more in line with its biblical counterpart. First, the ridiculous teaching in Surah 11 that the messengers announced not only Isaac’s, but also Jacob’s birth was dropped:

Second, the name of the child whose birth was announced was not revealed in Surah 15 in contrast to the information in Surah 11 and in accordance with the information in the Bible.

Third, the writer of Surah 15 followed the biblical sequence of the events when he wrote that the visitors gave the good news of a boy’s birth right after telling Abraham not to fear and before talking of their mission to the People of Lot. In other words, he revised the mistaken sequence in Surah 11. To compare and contrast:

As in the biblical narrative, the visitors proclaimed the punishment of the People of Lot not before (unlike in Surah 11), but after the annunciation of Isaac’s birth.

When the biblical order of events was followed, the major blunder regarding the cause of Sarah’s laughter in Surah 11 was not repeated in Surah 15 either. Nevertheless, a closer examination shows that the narrative in Surah 15 is not perfectly compatible with the narrative in Genesis 18, and the primary discrepancy results from Sarah’s exclusion from this particular version of the story.

Despite its flaws, the narrative in Surah 11 taught that Abraham’s visitors foretold Isaac’s birth to Abraham’s wife:

However, in Surah 15 the good news was delivered to Abraham whilst his wife was not even once mentioned. Actually, Sarah in Genesis 18 was replaced with Abraham in Surah 15 as the comparison of the following verses demonstrates:

Obviously, the biblical teachings that Sarah doubted the Lord’s promise because she found it impossible to conceive at her age and that she later denied her reaction to this news because she was afraid were ascribed to Abraham in Surah 15. This is why we read in this particular account that Abraham first doubted the messengers’ glad tidings because of his age and he later corrected himself upon the angelic warning.

Finally, we can seek an answer to the question why Abraham’s wife was excluded from the narrative in Surah 15 although this constituted a major discrepancy between the Qur’an and the Bible as well as between Surah 11 and Surah 15. What drove the author of the 15^th chapter to omit a reference to Abraham’s wife? Why did things gradually get worse for Sarah in the Qur’an in comparison to the Bible? The writer of Surah 11 did not give her name, but the writer of the later Surah did not even mention her! What was her guilt?

Sarah was not guilty, and we can put the whole blame on the writer of the Qur’an that mostly tended to assimilate one biblical narrative into another similar and relevant narrative. According to the Book of Genesis, the birth of a son was announced not only to Sarah, but also to Abraham on a different occasion:

Although this was a separate incident and was recorded in the Bible in the form of a separate account, the author of the Qur’an combined it with the particular narrative of Abraham’s visitors and related only the annunciation of Isaac’s birth to Abraham without referring to Sarah and her doubt.

The third narrative of Abraham’s visitors in the Qur’an

In Surah 51 we find the third and final version of the account concerning Abraham’s guests:

This last and comparatively best version of the story seems to be more in line with the biblical narrative than the former two. The author of this chapter managed to synthesize the two former narratives and corrected the story in Surah 15 by bringing Abraham’s wife back and associating her with the angelic annunciation. The following shows the evolution in the Qur’an in regard to the identity of the person hearing the good news of Isaac’s birth:

1. The annunciation was delivered to Abraham’s wife (Surah 11:71).
2. The annunciation was delivered to Abraham alone, and the reaction came from Abraham (Surah 15:53).
3. The annunciation was delivered to Abraham, but the reaction came from his wife (Surah 51:28-29)

The cause of the inconsistency was most likely the Quranic author’s combination of the two separate accounts in the Bible and his failure to understand that the messengers announced Isaac’s birth to Abraham although this prediction was about Sarah’s pregnancy and this was why Sarah reacted to the news. It took the writer of the Qur’an three trials to get the correct version of the narrative. It is also evident that he did not feel courageous enough to include the motif of Sarah’s laughter into Surah 51. Even though he produced a version more similar to the account in Surah 11 than the one in Surah 15, he did not repeat the major blunder concerning the time and cause of Sarah’s laughter as he simply ignored that particular element altogether.

Moreover, we see that he followed a clearer sense of chronology and got himself closer to the biblical version when he placed the prediction of the destruction of Lot’s folk after that of Isaac’s birth. To put it another way, he confessed that the previous error connected to the time and cause of Sarah’s laughter in Surah 11:71 owed its existence to the accidental replacement of the messengers’ annunciation of Isaac’s birth with that of the punishment of Lot’s people. Thus, we know now for sure with the help of the narratives in Surah 15 and Surah 51 that the messengers actually foretold Isaac’s birth right after asking Abraham not to fear:

Similarly, the major mistake regarding the angelic annunciation to Abraham’s wife in Surah 11:71 was abandoned in Surah 51 when the guests foretold the birth of one son instead of two and did not give the name of the child to be born. To compare and contrast:

The narrative in Surah 51 functions to correct not only the narrative in Surah 11, but also the one in Surah 15. To remember, the idea that Abraham showed hospitality and offered some food to his guests had been omitted in Surah 15. As a result, it had become improbable for the writer of Surah 15 to explain why Abraham felt apprehensive of his visitors when the messengers’ refusal to eat was taken out of the story. As a remedy, Abraham was made to utter the awkward statement: “We are afraid of you” right upon encountering the guests. In sharp contrast, the theme of the messengers’ reluctance to eat the food set before them by hospitable Abraham was added into Surah 51 and Abraham’s awkward statement in Surah 15 was therefore removed.

While bringing back the motif of Abraham’s hospitality from Surah 11, the writer of Surah 51 provided additional information missing from both of the previous accounts. For example, he said that Abraham considered his visitors strangers as soon as he received their salutation:

Further, he added the detail that Abraham’s family was involved in his willingness to show hospitality and feed the visitors:

Again, with the help of the narrative in Surah 51 we find out that Abraham set the food before his guests and asked them to eat, which are details not related in Surah 11:

These differences show that the writer of the final version of the narrative deemed it necessary to give a detailed explanation of some trivial events that had been recorded in Surah 11 in the form of a summary. Nonetheless, his alterations were also in the form of exclusions: he omitted two elements occurring in Surah 11: Abraham’s wife’s laughter (verse 71) and Abraham’s mildness instigating him to plead for Lot’s folk (verses 74-75). These could not make their way into Surah 51 probably because both of them represented an error of sequence in Surah 11. Since the messengers did not say in Surah 51 that they were sent to Lot’s folk before giving the glad tidings of a son, since they did not inform Abraham of their mission before Abraham posed them a question (Said he, "And what, O messengers, is your errand?") in verse 31, and since there occurred a smooth transition from the messengers’ answer to the account of Lot’s people’s destruction unlike in Surah 11, the interpolation of the reference to Abraham’s mildness became improbable.

Latest version of the account still far from perfection

Although the author of the Qur’an was able to correct a number of errors and bring the story in Surah 51 comparatively more in line with the biblical account, he failed to reach perfection as he maintained in this chapter an awkward statement that he had first introduced in Surah 15:

The assertion that Abraham questioned his visitors with regard to their business after hearing the good news of Isaac’s birth is problematic because it depicts Abraham as a person somehow knowing that the visitors had been sent for a mission other than announcing to him the miraculous birth of a son. This teaching bears a major discrepancy to the biblical account in Genesis 18, where Abraham does not sound curious or knowledgeable about the messengers’ and God’s next action:

According to the Bible, God chose to inform Abraham of His decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and the revelation of this news was explicitly bound to the promise of Isaac’s birth. The writer of the Qur’an, on the other hand, failed to relate this connection. To remember, he taught in the first version of this account in Surah 11 that the messengers told Abraham even before announcing Isaac’s birth that they had been sent to Lot’s folk (verse 70). Later in Surah 15 he changed this formulation and taught that the messengers presented the annunciation of Isaac’s birth as the reason for their arrival/visit (verse 28). Finally, in Surah 51 he repeated this formulation when he likewise decided to detach the messengers’ glad tidings about a son’s birth from the other news of their mission to Lot’s people (verse 31).

However, the result was yet another anomaly. According to Surah 15 and Surah 51, Abraham was bafflingly made to question the messengers in regard to their mission as if the annunciation of a son’s birth was not a good or a sufficient reason for this unusual visitation. Did Abraham’s question function to remind the messengers of their further mission? It is also possible to speculate that Abraham felt obliged to pose this question in order to combine the account of Isaac’s annunciation with that of the destruction of Lot’s people because he also knew that some substantial modifications had been applied to the sequence of the events recorded in Surah 11? Or was this a haphazard question illustrating Abraham’s impatience with his guests? Did Abraham politely ask his visitors to get up and leave although he was presented in this narrative as a model of pious people showing hospitality to strangers?

It is also worthy of note that the writer of the Qur'an did not even imply that the messengers looked over Sodom while leaving or gave a sign that they would proceed to another place before Abraham asked this question. It is as if Abraham questioned his visitors while they were still sitting and instructing Abraham’s wife to believe in God’s omnipotence. It is not clear in the Qur’an why Abraham posed this question and how he foreknew that the messengers had been sent on a different mission apart from visiting him and proclaiming to him the promise of Isaac’s birth.⁴

It seems that Abraham’s bizarre question posed to the messengers (Surah 15:57 and Surah 51:31) is similar in nature to Abraham’s bizarre statement “We are afraid of you” in Surah 15:52. This awkward utterance owed its existence to the fact that the reference to the visitors’ reluctance to eat was dropped out of Surah 15 and the cause of Abraham’s fear could therefore not be expressed indirectly through that element. When the messengers’ utterance regarding their mission to Lot’s folk in Surah 11 was similarly dropped out of Surah 15 and Surah 51, Abraham had to bring up this issue by asking his visitors a direct question. In short, the writer of the Qur’an was consistent in terms of the repetition of errors and insistence on incoherent formulations.

Verbal variations found in the three narratives of Abraham’s visitors in the Qur’an

Finally, the comparative analysis of these three distinct accounts in the Qur’an reveals that they contain verbal variations. Some of these variations do not drastically affect the essential content of teachings, but are significant in that they display differences in a revelation that supposedly came from one divine source and was meant to represent perfect unity and harmony. The verbal variations can be seen below in the form of different answers given to one and same question.

What did Abraham bring for his visitors?

What did Abraham’s wife say after hearing the good news of a son’s birth?

What did the messengers say in response to Abraham’s wife?

What did the messengers say about the purpose of their mission to Lot’s people?

Although Abraham’s question to the messengers and their response are identical in Surah 15:57-58 and Surah 51:31-32, the messengers’ further statement concerning the purpose of this mission contains remarkable variations:

These verses are obviously not identical. It is a matter of wonder what caused these interesting variations. Did God, the supposed revealer of these verses, suffer from short memory or was it the first generation of Muslims who failed to memorize and recite these verses accurately, causing this mega confusion? Who should we blame?

Conclusion

The foregoing study has shown that the Qur’an, which is considered and presented by Muslims as the only authentic and reliable divine message, had been affiliated with the notion of distortion right from the moment of its creation up to the point of its finalization. More strikingly, even the Quranic narratives came into existence through the alteration of the biblical stories. These alterations mostly represented the Quranic author’s inept plagiarism and poor writing style as they took the form of both minor and major errors, belying and destroying the basic Muslim claim that the Islamic scripture was revealed to correct and improve the former scriptures. As a consequence, we can rightfully say to Muslims who accuse us of following a corrupted book that the Bible was indeed perverted by the author of the Qur’an, but not lost. Its original version is still in our hands whilst its false and deficient version has survived until this day under the name “Qur’an”.