The Qur'an on Scriptural Forgery

From WikiIslam, the online resource on Islam
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

This article or section is being renovated.

Lead = 1 / 4
Structure = 1 / 4
Content = 2 / 4
Language = 4 / 4
References = 2 / 4
1 / 4
1 / 4
2 / 4
4 / 4
2 / 4

The Quran condemns people who write scriptures with their own hands and then claim it is from god. Traditional Islamic scholarship has seen this as proof of the Quran's origin, however modern scholarship has questioned whether this could have been a rebuke of those who were doing such things at the time the material of the Qur'an was compiled, thus calling into question whether such forged material made its way into the Qur'an and whether this verse itself is a later forgery.

The Quran


Historical context

It was common in ancient times to make forgeries. The famous 2nd century physician Galen in his lifetime found a lot of forgeries written in his name on the market, which forced him to write a book about it named "On my own books". It was also not special for a forgery to include warning against forgeries. This was actually a method for raising credibility of the forgeries. So warning against forgeries is not something a forgery wouldn't say.

For example, there is a 4th century forgery named "Apostolic Constitutions" which pretended to be written by the 12 apostles of Jesus. It includes warnings against forgeries and condemns people who make them. It also talks about how the evil forgeries are widespread:

Concerning Books with False Inscriptions.


Apostolic Constitutions, book VI, section XVI [1]

The Quran condemns those who write fake revelations in a similar way as this book condemns those who write fake apostolic traditions.