Dr. Peter Riddell delivered a lecture on the stories of the Prophets and the Isra’iliyyat during a CIU course. Here, Riddell presents how the Arab communities interacted with the stories of the Prophets, the infiltration of stories from Jewish and Christian converts into Islam, and their impact (Isra’iliyyat) on Islam.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Peter Riddell’s Lecture, The Stories of the Prophets and the Isra’iliyyat:
Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re continuing on this lecture on the stories of the prophets and the Israel I liyat. And now we’re going to turn our attention to the Israelite. Now these two components of this lecture can’t be torn apart in any realistic way because they’re closely interwoven, as you will see. Just taking stock, we talked about the stories of the prophets, how, how Arab communities interacted, whether they were Jewish Arab, Christian Arab, or pre Islamic Arab, and they shared stories.
And this was very much a feature, it seems, of, pre Islamic Arabian society. Now stories serve to unpack, text, sacred text. And for Muslims, their book of the Quran, contains accounts of prophets. But when you look at the accounts of the prophets, you find that they’re very sketchy. They lack in so much detail that sometimes it’s difficult to understand the point of the story.
It’s almost it’s almost as if the account of the prophets in the Quran was being told to an audience that knew the details, and therefore, they were only given a bare outline of the story. Now where did the extra information come from if a story was being told about a prophet and the Quran only contains, a skeletal outline of that story? Where does the extra information come from? Well, it seems that extra information was brought into Islam by Jewish converts to Islam or Muslims of Jewish ancestry drawing on the egotic material of Judaism or old testament accounts. Now there are 2 big names here.
Kaob al Abbar, he converted to Islam in 638, and Wahab ibn Munabbi, who died in 728. Now there are subsequent generations of scholars, but the later generations can usually trace their statements back to these first two. If you look at the tradition accounts, if you look at the Hadith, you find the names of Abu Huraira and Ibn Abbas occurring a lot. They were sources of the, they were often cited as original sources of Hadith accounts, and you find that a lot when you look at the Hadith accounts. Now they were well, Reuben Firestone points out that they were early traditionalists who were known to be familiar with the Hebrew Bible or to collect traditions from Jews and Christians.
Now you can see where I’m going with this. Clearly, some of the detailed material, which fills out the Koranic story, the Koranic account, was brought into Islam by Jews and Christians who converted to Islam. And in time, some Islamic scholars came to be suspicious of this. There was an effort by the ulama, by the Islamic scholarly community, to forbid the transmission of traditions that derive from foreign sources, namely Jewish or Christian sources. Firestone explains this by saying that there was a growing sense of Islamic pride and concern for an integral identity and standardization of practice among what had become an increasingly diverse ethnic Muslim population.
Remember, we have Firestone’s book available in part through the link on the Moodle page. So what do we have here? We have a set of material, additional story based material brought into Islam by Jewish and Christian converts to Islam, brought in from Jewish and Christian sources. And this came to permeate some commentaries on the Quran, the stories of the prophets, and the tradition material. And soon this sense of suspicion grew of stories derived from Jewish sources, and these stories came to be known as the Israel Iliat.
In other words, stories of dubious reliability which had infiltrated and corrupted Islam. Now this whole process of suspicion was intertwined with an ongoing suspicion of all things Jewish that was reinforced by Koranic pronouncements about the Jews that were negative pronouncements. Now, again, I’ve been talking, about the past in discussing this topic of these three Iliad, but let let me assure you that this is not simply a detailed history. This is an ongoing issue and this book, Hadis Palsu Danhriwayat Isra Iliyat is a book that was published in Indonesia in recent times about the whole question of false hadith and Israeliat stories. That’s that’s what the title means.
Here’s another book in Turkish published on the Israelite. So this question of the Israelite, the idea that Jewish and Christian stories crept into Islam, into the Islamic material, and therefore cause causes suspicion. That’s still a living issue in the Muslim world. The question of the is a very interesting topic, and it could be one for an assignment if you’re interested in doing that. Now the Israelite were rejected by Muslim scholars by the 9th century because, says Firestone, they were not considered to be sound traditions.
The view that the Israelite tales were traditions that had been distorted by Jews because of their jealousy of the powers and political hegemony of the Muslims, And Firestone adds, only those stories that appeared to contradict Islamic dogma were labeled and outlawed as Israelite tales. You can imagine the dilemma. If Muslims found that on the one hand, the Quran said one thing, but on the other hand, a commentary or even a hadith account said something opposite to the Quran. How were they to deal with that? Well, part of the answer was in identifying the differing accounts in Hadith and Commentaries as Israelite, as Israelite corruptions.
Let’s take an example here. The question of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son. Is it Isaac or is it Ishmael? Of course, this has direct ramifications for us as Christians. And it’s interesting to look at this question, in the the context of Christian responses to Islam.
It’s very clear in the biblical account that the son that Isaac took to sacrifice was Isaac. There’s no doubt about that. What about in the Islamic materials? Reuben Firestone looks closely at this. He considers, the sources for the Abraham Ishmael stories because today, if you ask Muslims, which son did Abraham try to sacrifice, Muslims will unanimously say it was Ishmael.
And Firestone identifies the Abraham Ishmael stories within Islam as being sourced from biblical literature, pre Islamic Arabian folklore, and Islam itself. But interestingly, Firestone then undertakes a survey of the major commentaries. Remember all those commentaries we talked about in earlier lectures, the commentaries based on hadith and story, commentaries based on philosophical approaches? Firestone surveyed the major commentaries to see whether they identified Abraham’s would be sacrificed as Isaac or Ishmael, and he came up with some very interesting findings. For example, he went back to the great early exegete, at Tabari, one of the very first commentators we looked at, a commentator whose work is very much hadith based.
And at Tabari, who died in 923, he said quite clearly that the son who Abraham tried to sacrifice was Isaac, although he does offer arguments for both views. But, nevertheless, Isaac rates a mention in one of the greatest commentators who’s ever lived within the Islamic tradition. On the other hand, a athalaby, another narrative commentator, who we discussed earlier, favored Ishmael, although he too offers arguments for both views. Moving down the centuries, ibn Kathir, who died in 13/73, who we all also discussed earlier, he favored Ishmael. And by this stage, by the 13 by the 1300 late 1300, Ibn Kathir is articulating a kind of conspiracy theory where he says the people of the book, namely the Jews and the Christians, dishonestly and slanderously introduced Isaac to the story in the Bible by forcing him in.
So Jews and Christians corrupted the Bible by putting Isaac in there. Firestone comments on page 144 that the Ishmael traditions therefore represent Islamic material that evolved in an effort to affirm the view that Ishmael was the intended sacrificial victim. So let’s think about this. Around the time of a fallabee in 900, many Muslim scholars said Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac. By the late 1300, the standard view was that Abraham tried to sacrifice Ishmael, and today that’s the view.
Part of the process of that move from Isaac to Ishmael is associated with this whole Israelite controversy, where Muslim scholars became suspicious of material that they felt had been infiltrated into Islam by from Judaism and Christianity. And the claim that Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac was part of the whole Israelite controversy. This crossover between Islamic material and Jewish and Christian material, especially Jewish material, is quite profound and affects many different topics. For example, f e Peter’s comments in his book a reader on Islam that almost everything that is said of Mecca and of the Kaaba, the great black shrine in Mecca, can be found in the dense body of Jewish legend surrounding Jerusalem. These stories came from men like ibn Abbas, Wahab ibn Munnabi, or Kaab al Ahbar.
Now this is a very interesting topic. This whole question of the Israelite, the suspicion by Muslim scholars that some Islamic textual material has been corrupted by bringing in Jewish and Christian, especially Jewish stories, and you may wish to write an assignment on this topic. I’d like you to think further about this by going to the Moodle page and having a look at Ginsberg’s legends of the Jews. I have a link to it there. Have a look at that work.
That’s a gatic material within the Jewish tradition. Of course, it’s richly narrative going far beyond the biblical account of of of of of different topics. I’d like you to look at those materials to see what Ginsburg’s legends of the Jews says about the Adam and Eve story. Think about that and then also have a look at the link on the middle page to the excerpt from the tales of the prophets of Al Kisai where the Adam and Eve story is presented. See if you can see any overlap, any points of connection, any parallels between the rich, a gatic legends of the Jews and the rich narrative tales of the prophets of Al Qisai.
To get a sense as to how the material within the Islamic tales of the prophets might have been sourced from legendary material within Judaism. That is the essence of the Israeliat controversy. Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re continuing on this lecture on the stories of the prophets and the Israel I liyat. And now we’re going to turn our attention to the Israelite.
Now these two components of this lecture can’t be torn apart in any realistic way because they’re closely interwoven, as you will see. Just taking stock, we talked about the stories of the prophets, how, how Arab communities interacted, whether they were Jewish Arab, Christian Arab, or pre Islamic Arab, and they shared stories. And this was very much a feature, it seems, of, pre Islamic Arabian society. Now stories serve to unpack, text, sacred text. And for Muslims, their book of the Quran, contains accounts of prophets.
But when you look at the accounts of the prophets, you find that they’re very sketchy. They lack in so much detail that sometimes it’s difficult to understand the point of the story. It’s almost it’s almost as if the account of the prophets in the Quran was being told to an audience that knew the details, and therefore, they were only given a bare outline of the story. Now where did the extra information come from if a story was being told about a prophet and the Quran only contains, a skeletal outline of that story? Where does the extra information come from?
Well, it seems that extra information was brought into Islam by Jewish converts to Islam or Muslims of Jewish ancestry drawing on the egotic material of Judaism or old testament accounts. Now there are 2 big names here. Kaob al Abbar, he converted to Islam in 638, and Wahab ibn Munabbi, who died in 728. Now there are subsequent generations of scholars, but the later generations can usually trace their statements back to these first two. If you look at the tradition accounts, if you look at the Hadith, you find the names of Abu Huraira and ibn Abbas occurring a lot.
They were sources of the, they were often cited as original sources of Hadith accounts, and you find that a lot when you look at the Hadith accounts. Now they were well, Reuben Firestone points out that they were early who were known to be familiar with the Hebrew Bible or to collect traditions from Jews and Christians. Now you can see where I’m going with this. Clearly, some of the detailed material, which fills out the Koranic story, the Koranic account, was brought into Islam by Jews and Christians who converted to Islam. And in time, some Islamic scholars came to be suspicious of this.
There was an effort by the ulama, by the Islamic scholarly community, to forbid the transmission of traditions that derive from foreign sources, namely Jewish or Christian sources. Firestone explains this by saying that there was a growing sense of Islamic pride and concern for an integral identity and standardization of practice among what had become an increasingly diverse ethnic Muslim population. Remember, we have Firestone’s book available in part through the link on the Moodle page. So what do we have here? We have a set of material, additional story based material brought into Islam by Jewish and Christian converts to Islam, brought in from Jewish and Christian sources.
And this came to permeate some commentaries on the Quran, the stories of the prophets, and the tradition material. And soon this sense of suspicion grew of stories derived from Jewish sources, and these stories came to be known as the Israel Iliat. In other words, stories of dubious reliability which had infiltrated and corrupted Islam. Now this whole process of suspicion was intertwined with an ongoing suspicion of all things Jewish that was reinforced by Koranic pronouncements about the Jews that were negative pronouncements. Now, again, I’ve been talking, about the past in discussing this topic of Israel Iliad, but let let me assure you that this is not simply a detailed history.
This is an ongoing issue and this book, Hadis Palsu Danhriwayat Isra Iliyat is a book that was published in Indonesia in recent times about the whole question of false hadith and Israeliat stories. That’s that’s what the title means. Here’s another book in Turkish published on the Israelite. So this question of the Israelite, the idea that Jewish and Christian stories crept into Islam, into the Islamic material, and therefore cause causes suspicion. That’s still a living issue in the Muslim world.
The question of the is a very interesting topic, and it could be one for an assignment if you’re interested in doing that. Now the Israelite were rejected by Muslim scholars by the 9th century because, says Firestone, they were not considered to be sound traditions. The view that the Israelite tales were traditions that had been distorted by Jews because of their jealousy of the powers and political hegemony of the Muslims, And Firestone adds, only those stories that appeared to contradict Islamic dogma were labeled and outlawed as Israelite tales. You can imagine the dilemma. If Muslims found that on the one hand, the Quran said one thing, but on the other hand, a commentary or even a hadith account said something opposite to the Quran.
How were they to deal with that? Well, part of the answer was in identifying the differing accounts in Hadith and Commentaries as Israelite, as Israelite corruptions. Let’s take an example here. The question of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son. Is it Isaac or is it Ishmael?
Of course, this has direct ramifications for us as Christians. And it’s interesting to look at this question, in the the context of Christian responses to Islam. It’s very clear in the biblical account that the son that Isaac took to sacrifice was Isaac. There’s no doubt about that. What about in the Islamic materials?
Reuben Firestone looks closely at this. He considers, the sources for the Abraham Ishmael stories because today, if you ask Muslims, which son did Abraham try to sacrifice, Muslims will unanimously say it was Ishmael. And Firestone identifies the Abraham Ishmael stories within Islam as being sourced from biblical literature, pre Islamic Arabian folklore, and Islam itself. But interestingly, Firestone then undertakes a survey of the major commentaries. Remember all those commentaries we talked about in earlier lectures, the commentaries based on hadith and story, commentaries based on philosophical approaches?
Firestone surveyed the major commentaries to see whether they identified Abraham’s would be sacrificed as Isaac or Ishmael, and he came up with some very interesting findings. For example, he went back to the great early exegete, at Tabari, one of the very first commentators we looked at, a commentator whose work is very much hadith based. And at Tabari, who died in 923, he said quite clearly that the son who Abraham tried to sacrifice was Isaac, although he does offer arguments for both views. But, nevertheless, Isaac rates a mention in one of the greatest commentators who’s ever lived within the Islamic tradition. On the other hand, a athalaby, another narrative commentator, who we discussed earlier, favored Ishmael, although he too offers arguments for both views.
Moving down the centuries, ibn Kathir, who died in 13/73, who we all also discussed earlier, he favored Ishmael. And by this stage, by the 13 by the 1300 late 1300, Ibn Kathir is articulating a kind of conspiracy theory where he says the people of the book, namely the Jews and the Christians, dishonestly and slanderously introduced Isaac to the story in the Bible by forcing him in. So Jews and Christians corrupted the Bible by putting Isaac in there. Firestone comments on page 144 that the Ishmael traditions therefore represent Islamic material that evolved in an effort to affirm the view that Ishmael was the intended sacrificial victim. So let’s think about this.
Around the time of a fallabee in 900, many Muslim scholars said Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac. By the late 1300, the standard view was that Abraham tried to sacrifice Ishmael, and today that’s the view. Part of the process of that move from Isaac to Ishmael is associated with this whole Israelite controversy, where Muslim scholars became suspicious of material that they felt had been infiltrated into Islam by from Judaism and Christianity. And the claim that Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac was part of the whole Israelite controversy. This crossover between Islamic material and Jewish and Christian material, especially Jewish material, is quite profound and affects many different topics.
For example, f e Peter’s comments in his book a reader on Islam that almost everything that is said of Mecca and of the Kaaba, the great black shrine in Mecca, can be found in the dense body of Jewish legend surrounding Jerusalem. These stories came from men like ibn Abbas, Wahab ibn Munnabi, or Kaab al Ahbar. Now this is a very interesting topic. This whole question of the Israelite, the suspicion by Muslim scholars that some Islamic textual material has been corrupted by bringing in Jewish and Christian, especially Jewish stories, and you may wish to write an assignment on this topic. I’d like you to think further about this by going to the Moodle page and having a look at Ginsberg’s legends of the Jews.
I have a link to it there. Have a look at that work. That’s a gatic material within the Jewish tradition. Of course, it’s richly narrative going far beyond the biblical account of of of of of different topics. I’d like you to look at those materials to see what Ginsburg’s legends of the Jews says about the Adam and Eve story.
Think about that and then also have a look at the link on the middle page to the excerpt from the tales of the prophets of Al Kisai where the Adam and Eve story is presented. See if you can see any overlap, any points of connection, any parallels between the rich, a gatic legends of the Jews and the rich narrative tales of the prophets of Al Qisai. To get a sense as to how the material within the Islamic tales of the prophets might have been sourced from legendary material within Judaism. That is the essence of the Israelite controversy.