Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

2. The Past Remembered
ALTHOUGH if many of the figures mentioned by
name in the Quran are familiar from the Bible, the
rhythms of the Recitation are not biblical, even across
translation: the style of the Quran is that of neither the
Old nor the New Testament. And it is not merely the
voices and rhythms that differ: the structure, the miseen-scène
in which these familiar figures now appear, is
different from their earlier presentations in the Scriptures
of the Jews and the Christians. We are hearing
something else in the Quran, a second, somewhat foreign
accent we can discern, only after close inspection,
as coming from the time and place the Recitation was
first recited, in seventh-century Arabia, in a place called
Mecca, from the lips of a man called Muhammad.
There appear to be, then, two levels of sensibility in
the Quran. One of these has already been identified as
“biblical,” and it is chiefly characterized by its content
and assumptions. The other is discernible, to be sure,
but it is much more difficult to define; we can call it for
the moment “Arabian.” It is reflected in the work’s expressive
style, in many of the Quran’s social, economic,
and political concerns, and finally in another, not terribly
well articulated belief system that lies next to the
biblical and is either repudiated or reformed. Where
the biblical sensibility came from is an open question,
but it is natural to think that the Quran’s Arabian quality
is the product of the society in which Muhammad
lived.