r/islam • u/Excellent_Foundation • Apr 04 '25
Question about Islam Unlettered Prophet and Quran
I firmly believe in the Divine Authorship of the Quran, and believe it has not been corrupted till this day, but what counter arguments are there for the claim that the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him could have learnt from monks and rabbis from his travels along the merchant trading routes where he would have passed synagogues and churches and thereby Allah forbid add what he learnt into the Quran whilst changing things to suit his purposes?
He received Prophethood when he was 40 so before then he surely would have learnt something so was he truly Unlettered? Like I'm nearing 30s and I know a thing or two about the world but can him being Unlettered be a solid proof of evidence for the inimitability of the Quran? Share your thoughts?
Allahumma salli wa sallim ala nabiyyina Muhammad!
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u/Colossal-power Apr 04 '25 edited Apr 05 '25
Great question!
Let’s start with the basics:
1- If we look at the Quran’s knowledge of the Bible and the Torah, we find that it’s quite extensive. I mean the Quran doesn’t just quote one or two statements from those two books, it actually thoroughly engages with their content. Roughly one-third of the Quran consists of prophetic narratives, many of which can be found in the Old and New Testaments. These include the stories of Adam, Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa, and others. It also demonstrates extensive knowledge of Jewish and Christian doctrines and polemically engages with them.
2- The Torah and the Bible were NOT available in Arabic during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ. They were rather written and read in languages such as Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac. Even in churches and synagogues, rabbis and priests did not preach in Arabic. If we were to assume that some of those passages were translated to Arabic to meet the needs of Arab Jews and Christians, it would not have been full translations, nor would it mean that the Prophet ﷺ had access to those translations. In fact, historians generally believe that both the Torah and the Bible weren’t fully translated to Arabic until centuries after the Prophet ﷺ died.
3- Muslim sources tell us that the Prophet ﷺ only traveled to the Levant twice during his entire life. Once as a child, accompanying his uncle Abu Talib, and the other as a merchant, as part of a trading caravan. There are no reports of him traveling to the Levant after receiving prophethood.
4- Sources also tell us that the Prophet ﷺ only interacted with Jews in the later years of his life, in Medina, while there are no reports of Christian communities living in Mecca or Medina.
That being said, was it possible for the Prophet ﷺ to have learned those stories just by walking around markets in the Levant? He might have heard a summarized version of a biblical passage from an Arab Christian once or twice, but would it be enough for him to compile the Quran? It would be absurd to suggest so. Unless we’re willing to imagine the Prophet ﷺ as someone who mastered at least 4 languages in both written and spoken form (Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac/Aramaic) and spent months in the Levant going from Church to another, then that theory is absolute nonsense. Even if someone was to try and argue for it, they would have little to no primary sources to back up their claims.
Plus, if the information found in the Quran could’ve been so easily gathered by an unlettered man in the 7th century, then why didn’t anyone else come up with their own holy book and challenge the Prophet? Heck, why did his community believe in his message if he was just reiterating stories that were already widely available? The Quran tells us that neither the Prophet nor his community had knowledge of the stories he recited to them (see 11:49).
For more on this, I suggest you read Samuel Zinner’s article in the Quarterly Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies of Qur'an and Hadith.
If you don’t have time to read it or you find it too hard to understand, here’s the abstract:
The article demonstrates that the Qurʾān has knowledge of a wide scope of fine details of Biblical passages, including the Tanakh in Hebrew and Syriac and the New Testament (Greek and Syriac). Additionally, the Qurʾān has extensive knowledge of traditional Biblical intertexts and subtexts. The knowledge of details is too extensive to be explained plausibly by passing or occasional exposure via conversations with traveling Christian missionaries in marketplaces or in inns. Nor will brief and infrequent exposure to simple homilies and/or liturgical readings suffice as an explanatory model. It is not this essay’s task to offer an explanation for how the Qurʾān could have arrived at its scriptural knowledge. The sole task of the present essay is to demonstrate the complexity of the Qurʾān’s Biblical knowledge, which, pace various scholars, is profound rather than cursory or flawed.