While the Bible is by far the most inspirational and influential text of all time, the Qur’an (although quite far behind it) is still among the most influential. The Bible supposedly governs the lives of the majority of the population; the Qur’an governing the second largest portion of the population. As the religion following the Qur’an, that is, Islam begins to grow at an accelerating rate, it became apparent to me that if I want to converse with a Muslim about faith with any hopes of progress, I should come to the conversation with a minimum of studying of their most important text: the Qur’an. In studying [my English translation of] their Qur’an, I made sure to constantly keep its’ context in the back of my mind as best as possible and, at the same time, consider its similarities and differences from my own. This essay will explore the similarities and differences.

Despite my expectations of a great amount of narrative with some poetry and discourse in the mix, I came to find [my English translation of] the Qur’an to be a mix of prose and discourse. To explain the style of [my English translation of] the Qur’an’s texts to a student of the Bible, I would compare its literature to that of the Prophets - Although its poetry is always prose and never poetry (at least in my English translation of it) - with a mix of Levitical Law. The little narrative that is present in [my English translation of] the Qur’an is always within discourse in order to prove some point that is blatantly stated in the text (12:102-105). The text is extremely plain and straightforward and for the most part, did not seem to follow any logical order. Every sura was a response to some people or event.

This brings me to my first problem with [my English translation of] the Qur’an: instead of repeating the famous phrase “Thus says the LORD” (Isaiah 43:1; 44:6; 45:1; 48:17, and all over the Prophets and other books of the Hebrew Bible) that the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible often used, [my English translation of] the Qur’an would repeat some “say [Prophet]” (2:97, 135, 139 and all over every other sura) but would never elaborate on just who the Prophet would be speaking on behalf of. Even in the one sura that is most clear about how the Qur’an was revealed, “The Star” (sura 53), it says that “[i]t was taught to him by [an angel]” (53:5a). Regardless of the fact that the Prophet swears (or maybe it is only my English translation that makes it seem that it is a swear) before every sura, “In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy” (1:1 and before just about every other sura), he never seems to claim to speak on his behalf. Now, it is still quite possible that the text gives this away in the original language and some translations but that my translation did not clearly convey it. However, until notified of a reason to believe otherwise, it seems that the Qur’an does not specify God as being the writer or deliverer of the message. Even suras that do claim God to be the originator of the message (6:114 being an obvious example) are curious to not have God speak for himself as he often does in the Hebrew Bible that the Qur’an claims to be continuing after.

Further, for a book that claims to continue in the line of the biblical Prophets, the Qur’an is exceptionally divergent in the literary genre that it chooses to communicate through. Instead of using the extremely metaphorical poetry that is most often used in the Prophets, the Qur’an employs plain prose. It states: “These are the verses of the Scripture, a Qur’an that makes things clear” (15:1b). While the Bible does communicate clear truths, it often uses complicated stories and long confusing poems; this is true especially in the Prophets - The section of the Hebrew Bible that the Qur’an seems to be closest to. Further, the Bible was written by people from a high-context culture (meaning that the authors assumed their readers to understand their culture in the same way that they did - Opposite of how contemporary westerners communicate), while the Qur’an is written from what is clearly a very low-context culture.

In the end, the Qur’an is really not similar to the Bible in just about any sense. It uses vastly different literary genres and communicates truth in a style about the opposite of the way the Bible does; it even lacks an indicator of God directly speaking to anyone at all. The Qur’an is incomparably less sophisticated than the Bible in just about every way possible.