There are many religions in the world, and among them Judaism, Christianity and Islam are known as monotheistic religions. Each of these religions possess its own scripture that constitutes the foundation of belief and practice. Judaism has taken the Torah (the Hebraic Bible) and Christianity has taken the Hebraic Bible adding a few supplements to it (Old Testament) and the four Canonic Gospels adding a few supplements to them (New Testament), while Islam has taken the Quran which appeared six centuries after Jesus taking into account the Torah and the Gospel. From the historical objective the Hebraic Bible, the Gospel(s) and the Quran are on the same level as being collections of divine revelations. However, Judaism has its holy book, the Hebraic Bible and does not admit any revelation subsequent to its own and Christianity has its own holy book (Old and New Testament) taking no account of any revelation subsequent to Jesus and his Apostles, which rules out the Quran.
The authenticity of the writings that constitute the scriptures of the three monotheistic religions may be a question or concern can be addressed with which is of the texts of the three scriptures: the Torah, the Gospel and the Quran is more authentic based on our present knowledge and understanding:
The Torah (Pentateuch)
Torah is the semitic name. The Greek expression, which in English gives ‘Pentateuch’ designates a work in five parts: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Judaism and Christianity for many years considered that the author was Moses himself, perhaps this affirmation was from the Torah itself as well as though the New Testament as it ascribes the authorship to Moses. From the First century B.C. to onwards this theory was upheld, but today this theory has been completely abandoned, and everybody is in agreement on this view point that Moses was not the author of it. However, what is the present day findings about the Pentateuch are mentioned below:
The Nineteenth century saw minute search into the sources of Pentateuch, even giving possible dates to them:
- The Yahvist version was placed in the Ninth century B.C. written in Judah.
- The Elohist version was probably a little more recent written in Israel.
- Deuteronomy was from the Eighth century B.C.
- The Sacerdotal version came from the period of exile or after exile at Sixth century B.C.
The Twentieth century signaled out the multiple version of the four sources of Pentateuch spreading out among eight different authors:
- The Yahvist version has three sources.
- The Elohist version has four sources.
- Deuteronomy has six. sources.
- The Sacerdotal version has nine sources.
It has been seen that the arrangement of the text of the Pentateuch spans at least three centuries, while the multiplicity of sources brings it numerous disagreements and repetitions. Thus the Pentateuch is shown to be formed from various traditions brought together more or less skillfully by the authors. The latter sometimes juxtaposed their compilations and sometimes adapted the stories for the sake of synthesis. They allowed improbabilities and disagreements to appear in the texts, which have led to the objective study of the sources to find that the Pentateuch is adapted made by the hand of man.
The Gospel(s)
There are four Gospels, which are Gospel of Matthews, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and Gospel of John. The writing of the Gospels is the formation of an oral tradition influenced by the preachings of Jesus’s disciples and other preachers thus including preachings, liturgy and teachings of the faithful. The fact that the evangelists resort to various written forms as well as data contained in the oral tradition. They resort to these to produce texts which are suitable for various circles to meet the needs of the Church. Thus the evangelists, each according to his own outlook have collected and recorded in writing the material given to them by the oral tradition.
As far as the date the Gospels were written is concerned, the Gospels did not form a complete whole ‘very early on’; it did not happen until more than a century after the end of Jesus’s mission, even it is claimed that Matthew’s, Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels were written before 70 A.D. is not acceptable. This commentator goes out of his way to present the authors of the Gospels as the apostles or companions of Jesus to suggest dates of writing that place them very near to the time Jesus lived, while it is reported that as for John who lived roughly around 100 A.D. However, the date the four Gospels acquired the status of canonic literature at around 170 A.D.
Among the scriptures the New Testament, the Gospels have a well-deserved position of superiority. This is by virtue of the fact that they represent the most pre-eminent witness to the life and teachings of the Incarnate Word, our Saviour, while at all times and in all places the Church has maintained and still maintains the apostolic origin of the four Gospels. What the apostles actually preached on Christ’s orders, both they and the men in their following subsequently transmitted, with the divine inspiration of the Spirit, in writings which are the foundation of the faith, i.e., the fourfold Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The Quran
Quran is the 7th century revelation to Muhammad who wrote down it and also he had his other companions helped him in the writing as well as in memorizing it. When Muhammad died, the whole Quran was completely written down, although not in one book, but rather on pieces of woods, papers, palm leaves, animal skin, bones…etc. Muhammad also left clear instructions of the order of placing the surahs (chapters) of the Quran including their names, the beginning and end of each verse and surah, and even the absence of Basmallah from the top of surah 9 out of 114 surahs in the Quran. It was the first Khalifa, Abu Bakr who collected the Quran into one bundle and the manuscript on which the Qur’an was collected, remained with Abu Bakr and then with Umar (the second Khalifa), and after him, it remained with Hafsa, ‘Umar’s daughter and one of the prophet’s wives. It is from that copy, Uthman, the third Khalifa rewrote the Quran into a book verifying each and every verse with those who memorized it and made copies to distribute to different regions of the Islamic Empire. Uthman returned Hafsa’s copy of the Quran to her, which was later burned by Marwan b. Hakam (d.65/684), the first peacetime ruler after the end of 50-year war between two parties of Muslims (battle of Karbala).
The first writings of Quran after prophet’s own writings that still exist today were simple Kufic writing but the first script was developed including diacritic marks (tashkeel/harakat) to the letters around tenth century for facilitating easy reading, while the surah and verse numbers were added in 1918 (published in 1924) that we see in the modern editions of Quran. Even today there are various versions of Quran in transmission: Hafs, Warsh, Qalun and Al-Duri but has no great effect on the meaning or the message, while the Hafs-an-Asim reading of the Qur’an is used by the vast majority of Muslims, even some sources claim that this is the case for up to 95% of the Muslim world.
Conclusion
The study shows that the collection of the Torah took place about three centuries from multiple sources as well as multiple authors forming by adapting tradition, while the Gospel formation occurs from an oral tradition influenced by the preachings of Jesus’s disciples and other preachers having preachings, liturgy and teachings of the faithful taking place around 150 A.D. by multiple authors. The formation of the Quran is from Muhammad himself to whom is revealed it over a period of 23 years and from its memorization by many of his contemporaries, and there is no time gap between the formation when it took place and the oral tradition, even around the 7th century text goes update over the centuries to facilitate easy reading of the original text as well as giving access it to the non-Arabic readers all over the world. However, any impartial readers affiliating to any religions would not have any problem to judge and accept which of the scriptural texts among the three: the Torah revealed to a number of prophets, the Gospel revealed to Jesus, son of Mary and the Quran revealed to Muhammad is more authentic just based on when and how it came from is written.
Peaceful Friday, salaam and God bless.
Tafazzal (08/08/2025).