Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE MUSLIM SCRIPTURE t 113
many of these Hebrew anthropomorphic expressions in their passage
into Greek, but other students of the Bible still had to resort
to an “other reading” (allegoria), a sense residing behind or under
the literal meaning, in order truly to explain Scripture.
The earliest Muslim concern about the “reading” of Scripture
was along a crucial fault line to which the Quran itself had drawn
attention, that between the “categorical” (mukhamat) and the
“ambiguous” (mutashabihat) verses in the Quran (3:7). The Arabic
words describing the verses are themselves somewhat ambiguous,
as was the possibility of understanding these latter, whether
by God alone or also by “those firmly rooted in knowledge,” that
is, the experts. They pointed, in any event, to some type of distinction
within the verses of the Quran, and exegesis was bound to
follow where the arrow pointed.
The Quran thus openly warns of its own ambiguities, and so
Muslims have not hesitated to attempt to unravel the obscurities of
the sacred text; indeed, they have devoted enormous energy to the
task of tafsir in all the same types practiced by the Jews and Christians.
These exegetical efforts eventually ranged from detailed and
sophisticated study of the lexicographical and syntactical problems
posed by the Quran to driving the meaning into the sometimes
remote regions where sectarian preferences or mystical longings
wished it to go. But not perhaps from the very beginning.
Since the Quran was not a historically conditioned revelation, but
rather was thought to reflect an eternal heavenly archetype composed
of the very same words, the so-called Mother of the Book,
the Muslim approach to its exegesis was initially quite different
from that pursued by the other Peoples of the Book. The Quran
did not easily suffer either translation or paraphrase. On the Christian
premise, Jesus was his own revelation: he could teach its significance
with authority and pass on that teaching to his disciples
in a formal and imperative fashion. Muhammad, in contrast, was
the conduit of God’s revelation, much as Moses was, and during
his own lifetime there was no question that he and only he was
the authoritative interpreter of that revelation for the Muslim
community.