{"id":3258,"date":"2017-07-28T17:12:01","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3258"},"modified":"2017-07-28T17:12:01","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:12:01","slug":"mattson-the-story-of-the-quran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2017\/07\/28\/mattson-the-story-of-the-quran\/","title":{"rendered":"Mattson, The Story of the Qur’an"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ingrid Mattson,\u00a0The Story of the Qur\u2019an:\u00a0 Its History and Place in Muslim Life <\/em><\/a>(London:\u00a0 Blackwell 2008).<\/p>\n

This is another review of a book assigned for an “Understanding Islam” course I’m taking at Fuller Seminary<\/a>. \u00a0This book provides an overview of Muslim perspectives on the history, nature, interpretation, and role of the Qur\u2019an.\u00a0 I have often heard critics of Islam cite verses from the Qur\u2019an that they believe incite violence or that they think reflect a corruption of the Gospels concerning Jesus.\u00a0 It was always obvious to me that these cherry-picked citations were not the whole story, but I hadn\u2019t previously studied the context for myself.\u00a0 The Mattson text helped me better understand how Muslims<\/em> think about the Qur\u2019an.<\/p>\n

I was particularly interested to note the many ways in which these aspects of the Qur\u2019an in Muslim life are resemble the Bible in Christian life.\u00a0 Like the Bible, the Qur\u2019an contains a diverse array of content that requires contextualized reading.\u00a0 I appreciated Mattson\u2019s discussion of different Islamic hermeneutical schools and of the principle employed by most Islamic scholars that the Qur\u2019an must interpret itself.\u00a0 This is similar to any serious school of Biblical hermeneutics:\u00a0 we recognize the Bible speaks in different voices and that part of the interpretive process is to take any passage within the context of how the rest of scripture treats a question.\u00a0 For example, when God commands Joshua to wipe out the pagan nations, we don\u2019t take that as normative for Christians today, in no small part because we interpret that command in light of Jesus\u2019 later teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.<\/p>\n

I also note an interesting but perhaps subtle difference here, however, which is the role of history in hermeneutics.\u00a0 A good Christian hermeneutic of the Bible\u2019s conquest narratives would also stress the historical context of those narratives, which in a sense relativizes the immediate commands they contain. \u00a0As Mattson suggests, there is<\/em> a similar issue in Qur\u2019anic hermeneutics, because the unique occasion on which a revelation is given provides context.\u00a0 There is also a difference, however, because much of the Biblical revelation is embedded in historical narratives<\/em>, while the Qur\u2019anic revelation is largely in the form of statements rather than narratives. \u00a0Moreover, the Biblical narratives span thousands of years of history, while the Quranic revelations all occur during Muhammad\u2019s life. \u00a0In a sense, it\u2019s easier to contextualize much of the Biblical revelation, because the narrative itself is a key part of the context.<\/p>\n

This dynamic also relates, I think, to the question of the Qur\u2019an\u2019s ontology, which Mattson also explains ably.\u00a0 I find the question of whether the Qur\u2019an is eternal or created endlessly fascinating.\u00a0 For Christians, the Bible itself is not eternal, and indeed it is a fully human, fully historical product, even while it is also divinely inspired.\u00a0 Again, the difference is subtler than it seems at first glance:\u00a0 Christians also<\/em> must try to explain what it means for the transcendent, eternal, timeless God to speak in history.\u00a0 Even more directly, we finally locate God\u2019s \u201cspeech\u201d to us in the eternal Logos<\/em>, which is Christ.\u00a0 So here, this most basic difference between Islam and Christianity \u2013 the question of the incarnation<\/em> of the Word \u2013 is central.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ingrid Mattson,\u00a0The Story of the Qur\u2019an:\u00a0 Its History and Place in Muslim Life (London:\u00a0 Blackwell 2008). This is another review of a book assigned for an “Understanding Islam” course I’m taking at Fuller Seminary. \u00a0This book provides an overview of Muslim perspectives on the history, nature, interpretation, and role of the Qur\u2019an.\u00a0 I have often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[82,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comparative-religion","category-islam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Qy","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3260,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions\/3260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}