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Parabolic Resonances in the Gospels and the Qurʾān

Year 2023, , 255 - 287, 31.12.2023
https://doi.org/10.12730/is.1217930

Abstract

There are apparent similarities between the parables contained in the Gospels and those found in the Qurʾān, which provide their audiences with illustrations of complex religious concepts and moral teachings through the imagery of everyday life. Based on the form-critical analysis of the Gospel Parable of the Sower and some Qurʾānic parables, this article aims to detect defining similarities and differences between the Gospels and Sūrat al-Baqarah and illuminate details about the historical and geographic context in which the two texts originated. Based on the findings of the comparison, this article will argue that the Qurʾānic text represents a genuine continuation of the biblical text.

Supporting Institution

European Union’s Horizon 2020: Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement

Project Number

No: 101022180 — TIQ.

Thanks

I thank Mohammed Rustom for editing this article and John Kloppenborg and Axel Marc Oaks Takács for their critical comments.

References

  • Boucher, Madeleine. The Mysterious Parable: A Literary Study. Washington: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1977.
  • Buck, Christopher. “Discovering”. The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān. Edited by Andrew Rippin. 18-35. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
  • Dodd, C. H. The Parables of the Kingdom. Glasgow: Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1988.
  • Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.
  • Donner, Fred M. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
  • Donner, Fred M. “The Historical Context”. The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 23-39. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521831601.002
  • Gerhardsson, Birger. “The Parable of the Sower and Its Interpretation”. New Testament Studies 14/2 (January 1968), 165-193. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500018609
  • Hedrick, Charles W. Parables as Poetic Fictions. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994.
  • Jaffer, Tariq. Rāzī: Master of Qur’ānic Interpretation and Theological Reasoning. Oxford - New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Jeremias, Joachim. Rediscovering the Parables. London: SCM Press, 1966.
  • Jeremias, Joachim. The Parables of Jesus. Translated by S. H. Hooke. 2nd revised edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.
  • Juel, Donald H. “Encountering the Sower: Mark 4:1–20”. Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 56/3 (July 2002), 273-283. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096430005600304
  • Kadi (al-Qāḍī), Wadad - Mir, Mustansir. “Literature and the Qurʾān”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 1/205-226. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001.
  • Khel, Muhammad Nazeer Kaka. “Foundation of the Islamic State at Medina and Its Constitution”. Islamic Studies 21/3 (Autumn 1982), 61-88.
  • Mir, Mustansir. “Language”. The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān. Edited by Andrew Rippin. 88-106. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
  • Motzki, Harald. “Alternative Accounts of the Qurʾān’s Formation”. The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 59-75. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Munt, Harry. The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
  • Neuwirth, Angelika. “Qurʾānic Studies and Philology: Qurʾānic Textual Politics of Staging, Penetrating, and Finally Eclipsing Biblical Tradition”. Qurʾānic Studies Today. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth - Michael A. Sells. 178-206. New York: Routledge, 2016.
  • Neuwirth, Angelika. The Qurʾān and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage. Translated by Samuel Wilder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
  • van Putten, Marijn. “‘The Grace of God’ as Evidence for a Written Uthmanic Archetype: The Importance of Shared Orthographic Idiosyncrasies”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 82/2 (June 2019), 271-288. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X19000338
  • al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar. Tafsīr al-Fakhr al-Rāzī al-musammá al-Tafsīr al-kabīr wa-Mafātīḥ al-ghayb. 32 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1981.
  • Rippin, Andrew. “Literary Analysis of Koran, Tafsir, and Sira: The Methodologies of John Wansbrough”. The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book. Edited by Ibn Warraq. 351-369. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.
  • Rubin, Uri. “The ‘Constitution of Medina’ Some Notes”. Studia Islamica 62 (1985), 5-23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1595521
  • Sadeghi, Behnam - Goudarzi, Mohsen. “Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān”. Der Islam 87/1-2 (March 2012): 1-129. https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2011-0025
  • Saeed, Abdullah. Interpreting the Qur’ān: Towards a Contemporary Approach. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
  • Saeed, Abdullah. The Qurʾān: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Etymological Fallacy and Qurʾānic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity”. The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx. 649-698. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2009.
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Psalms in the Qurʾan and in the Islamic Religious Imagination”. The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms. Edited by William P. Brown. 281-296. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199783335.013.018
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Preacher of the Meccan Qur’an: Deuteronomistic History and Confessionalism in Muḥammad’s Early Preaching”. Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20/2 (June 2018), 74-111. https://doi.org/10.3366/JQS.2018.0338
  • Smith, Charles W. F. The Jesus of the Parables. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1948.
  • Stein, Robert H. An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1981.
  • Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn. al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān. 20 Vols. Qom: Ismāʿīlīyān, 1985.
  • Tolbert, Mary Ann. Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
  • Waines, David. “Agriculture and Vegetation”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 1/40-50. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill, 2001.
  • Wansbrough, John. Qurʾānic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1977.
  • Wansbrough, John. Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006.
  • Wierzbicka, Anna. What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Wiles, M. F. “Early Exegesis of the Parables”. Scottish Journal of Theology 11/3 (September 1958), 287-301. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930600007900
  • Young, Brad H. The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998.
  • Zahniser, A.H. Mathias. “Parable”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 4:9-11. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004.
Year 2023, , 255 - 287, 31.12.2023
https://doi.org/10.12730/is.1217930

Abstract

Project Number

No: 101022180 — TIQ.

References

  • Boucher, Madeleine. The Mysterious Parable: A Literary Study. Washington: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1977.
  • Buck, Christopher. “Discovering”. The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān. Edited by Andrew Rippin. 18-35. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
  • Dodd, C. H. The Parables of the Kingdom. Glasgow: Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1988.
  • Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.
  • Donner, Fred M. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
  • Donner, Fred M. “The Historical Context”. The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 23-39. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521831601.002
  • Gerhardsson, Birger. “The Parable of the Sower and Its Interpretation”. New Testament Studies 14/2 (January 1968), 165-193. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500018609
  • Hedrick, Charles W. Parables as Poetic Fictions. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994.
  • Jaffer, Tariq. Rāzī: Master of Qur’ānic Interpretation and Theological Reasoning. Oxford - New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Jeremias, Joachim. Rediscovering the Parables. London: SCM Press, 1966.
  • Jeremias, Joachim. The Parables of Jesus. Translated by S. H. Hooke. 2nd revised edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.
  • Juel, Donald H. “Encountering the Sower: Mark 4:1–20”. Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 56/3 (July 2002), 273-283. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096430005600304
  • Kadi (al-Qāḍī), Wadad - Mir, Mustansir. “Literature and the Qurʾān”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 1/205-226. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001.
  • Khel, Muhammad Nazeer Kaka. “Foundation of the Islamic State at Medina and Its Constitution”. Islamic Studies 21/3 (Autumn 1982), 61-88.
  • Mir, Mustansir. “Language”. The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān. Edited by Andrew Rippin. 88-106. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
  • Motzki, Harald. “Alternative Accounts of the Qurʾān’s Formation”. The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 59-75. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Munt, Harry. The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
  • Neuwirth, Angelika. “Qurʾānic Studies and Philology: Qurʾānic Textual Politics of Staging, Penetrating, and Finally Eclipsing Biblical Tradition”. Qurʾānic Studies Today. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth - Michael A. Sells. 178-206. New York: Routledge, 2016.
  • Neuwirth, Angelika. The Qurʾān and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage. Translated by Samuel Wilder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
  • van Putten, Marijn. “‘The Grace of God’ as Evidence for a Written Uthmanic Archetype: The Importance of Shared Orthographic Idiosyncrasies”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 82/2 (June 2019), 271-288. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X19000338
  • al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar. Tafsīr al-Fakhr al-Rāzī al-musammá al-Tafsīr al-kabīr wa-Mafātīḥ al-ghayb. 32 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1981.
  • Rippin, Andrew. “Literary Analysis of Koran, Tafsir, and Sira: The Methodologies of John Wansbrough”. The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book. Edited by Ibn Warraq. 351-369. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.
  • Rubin, Uri. “The ‘Constitution of Medina’ Some Notes”. Studia Islamica 62 (1985), 5-23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1595521
  • Sadeghi, Behnam - Goudarzi, Mohsen. “Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān”. Der Islam 87/1-2 (March 2012): 1-129. https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2011-0025
  • Saeed, Abdullah. Interpreting the Qur’ān: Towards a Contemporary Approach. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
  • Saeed, Abdullah. The Qurʾān: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Etymological Fallacy and Qurʾānic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity”. The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx. 649-698. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2009.
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Psalms in the Qurʾan and in the Islamic Religious Imagination”. The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms. Edited by William P. Brown. 281-296. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199783335.013.018
  • Saleh, Walid A. “The Preacher of the Meccan Qur’an: Deuteronomistic History and Confessionalism in Muḥammad’s Early Preaching”. Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20/2 (June 2018), 74-111. https://doi.org/10.3366/JQS.2018.0338
  • Smith, Charles W. F. The Jesus of the Parables. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1948.
  • Stein, Robert H. An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1981.
  • Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn. al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān. 20 Vols. Qom: Ismāʿīlīyān, 1985.
  • Tolbert, Mary Ann. Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
  • Waines, David. “Agriculture and Vegetation”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 1/40-50. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill, 2001.
  • Wansbrough, John. Qurʾānic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1977.
  • Wansbrough, John. Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006.
  • Wierzbicka, Anna. What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Wiles, M. F. “Early Exegesis of the Parables”. Scottish Journal of Theology 11/3 (September 1958), 287-301. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930600007900
  • Young, Brad H. The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998.
  • Zahniser, A.H. Mathias. “Parable”. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 4:9-11. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004.
There are 40 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Religious Studies
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Seyfeddin Kara 0000-0002-0651-0859

Project Number No: 101022180 — TIQ.
Publication Date December 31, 2023
Submission Date December 12, 2022
Published in Issue Year 2023

Cite

ISNAD Kara, Seyfeddin. “Parabolic Resonances in the Gospels and the Qurʾān”. Ilahiyat Studies 14/2 (December 2023), 255-287. https://doi.org/10.12730/is.1217930.

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