Judo-Christian Non-Canonical Scriptures As Sources Of Qur'anic Stories: Historical Investigation

Abstract

Judeo-Christian Apocryphal materials are different from the biblical scriptures. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Western scholars of Qur'an & Islam applied the historical-critical method to examine Judeo-Christian non-biblical textual elements in the Qur’ānic text specially in the Quranic legends and stories what are figures known from the Bible. The most common Judeo-Christian sources that figures in the so-called copying are the Mishna, Babylonian Talmud, Midrash Pirke de-Rabbi Eli`ezer, Midrash Tanhuma, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, The Protevangelium of James, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and Arabic Gospel of Infancy. The earliest person who popularized the theory of origin/original sources of the Qur'anic accounts from these Judeo-Christian  data into the Qur'an was Abraham Geiger in his book "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?" and on same methodology, Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall designed Christian apocryphal literature as original sources of Qur'anic Christology and Mariology. Later on, apologists, Christian missionaries particularly orientalists adopted this assumption that the Qur'an material are drew from above mentioned scriptures. The key object of this paper is twofold. On the one hand it analyses the sources of Qur’ānic stories what have no parallels in the Bible are plagiarized from Judeo-Christian non-biblical data, on the other hand it examines those Judeo-Christian non-biblical scriptures were developed before the time of revelation of Qur’ān or not.