The Qur’an teaches: Say, [O believers], “We believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us [the Qur’an] and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants [of Jacob] and what was given to Moses [the Torah] and Jesus [the Gospels] and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him.” (2:136)

While Christians, Jews and Muslims should make no disrespectful distinction between any of their prophets or their sacred scriptures, we cannot help but notice that the circumstances and style of each of these three written revelations are very distinct.

The Hebrew Sacred Scriptures are a vast collection (305,358 Hebrew words) of books written over a period of almost a thousand years, by more than four dozen different named Jewish Prophets (seven of them females), plus many more anonymous inspired Historians, Poets, and Philosophers.

The Greek New Testament is much shorter (a total of 138,162 Greek words); and was written over a period of less than 70 years, by four biographers plus maybe a half dozen other writers who all wrote in a language (Greek) that Prophet Jesus and Prophet John never spoke.

The Arabic Qur’an is still shorter (a total of 77,934 Arabic words) recited only by Prophet Muhammad during a period of less than two dozen years and written down by his own disciples.

The most shocking thing that a rabbi notices when reading the Qur’an is that Allah continually refers to himself as “We”. This reiteration of the pronoun  ‘We’ referring to God; occurs over 2100 times in the Qur’an.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the royal “we’ is very rarely used for God, except most noticeably in the creation narrative. All the Jewish Prophets declare God’s words using ‘I’. Of course, I know that ‘we’ in the Qur’an never means that God is plural or Trinitarian. It is a matter of style that might also be meant as an important correction to the error that many of Prophet Jesus’ disciples entered into.

Many disciples of Jesus took Prophet Jesus’ use of “my father in heaven” literally when it was of course meant metaphorically. They also misunderstood a statement of Prophet Jesus: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) The metaphor of a shepherd describes both God and a human ruler. Jesus was saying that a good leader puts the good of the flock ahead of his own good. John understood that “I” [God] will sacrifice [My Son] to save all humanity.

In the same way, many Muslim readers of the Hebrew Bible are shocked by the frequent use of metaphors to describe the Divine One. The Jewish People were the only on-going monotheistic Ummah in the world for more than a thousand years; so using anthropomorphic descriptions of God were minor compared to the on-going religious struggle (Jihad) to eliminate the polytheism and idolatry that many, but not most, Jews engaged in, within the Jewish nation. As the Qur’an states: “They are not all alike. Some of the People of the Book are firmly committed to the truth. They recite the Verses of Allah during the hours of night, and remain in the state of [prayer] prostration before their Lord.” (3:113)

God created Mankind in His own moral image meaning that He wished humanity to live a life marked by justice, equality, fair dealing, mutual respect, sympathy, love, compassion, and charity etc. Many humans on the other hand chose to violate some........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)