Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

DISCOVERING SCRIPTURE IN SCRIPTURE t 29
counterparts. So they not unexpectedly addressed the apparently
discordant quranic views about Christians with the distinction just
noted, a distinction suggested by the Quran itself, first in 2:62—
since the Muslim commentators always addressed the Quran verse
by verse in the received order of the text rather than in the chronological
order of the revelations, this would be the first mention
of the Christians they would encounter, albeit in a Medina sura.
There were, in fact, two types of Christians: the true followers of
Jesus, the few “balanced people” who are praised and accounted
among the believers, and the rest of the Christians, those who tampered
with Scripture and willfully misunderstood Jesus’ message,
who are the object of the Quran’s frequent and forceful denunciations.
Contrary to what the non-Muslims assert, Muhammad did
not change his mind in the course of his revelations—a theological
impossibility, in any event—nor did God abrogate the praise
verses by later condemnatory ones. The Quran is talking about
two distinct groups of Christians (2:137).
What the Quran says is fixed in the memory of Muslims, but
what the Quran really means is perhaps known only to God. Over
the centuries, an enormous amount of energy has been poured into
the task of elucidating the Quran, verse by verse, including all the
ones that have been cited here on the subject of Christians and
Christianity. The Quran had its own notion of Christianity, and
Christians, but in the dense pages of the Muslim commentators,
medieval and modern, the construct of the other faith called
“Christianity”—the one used by both early and late Muslim polemicists
and latter-day Muslim “dialoguers”—was continuously
assembled and reassembled.