Hurtado on the dogmatic origins of the Qu'ran and the Gospels

In a post on October 22 of this year, Larry Hurtado put into words something I've been chewing on for a while about dogma behind why Christians and Muslims treat their scriptures differently.

[The] traditional Muslim view of the Qur’an is widely different from the way that traditional Christians view their scriptural texts such as the Gospels. In traditional Muslim belief, the Qur’an is a miracle, the direct speech of Allah, and has been preserved miraculously down the ages with scarcely a variant. In contrast, in traditional Christian belief, the biblical writings are the products of human beings, “inspired” by God to write their texts. But the texts in question are the words of those human authors. That is, the biblical texts partake of the various historical circumstances in which they were written, edited, and copied. So, as with any text transmitted by hand, these writings have been subject to the vicissitudes of that historical process, and, therefore, textual criticism of these texts is essential to try to establish the most reliable form/wording of them. A vast amount of scholarly effort over a few centuries now has been given to setting these texts in their historical context, and to tracing how they have been transmitted through to the invention of the printing press.

But an equivalent scholarly effort to trace the origins and transmission of the Qur’an is still, by comparison, in its infancy. And a good part of the reason for this is deep opposition from Muslims who regard any such critical inquiry to be . . . well, almost blasphemous. So, it’s hardly a level playing field when Muslim and Christian apologists engage matters. Muslim apologists are impressively keen to follow critical investigation of the biblical texts such as the Gospels, but (as I know from personal experience) are reluctant to engage in, or even allow, such critical inquiry about the Qur’an. Indeed, I was told years ago by a Western scholar of Islam that one just didn’t explore certain questions, particularly about the textual transmission of the Qur’an.

Even the historical processes involved in the transmission of the Qur’an and the Gospels differ. From a very early point, Muslim rulers (such as Caliph Uthman in the late seventh century) took an interest in establishing a stable Qur’anic text, as part of their aim to standardize Islam, and consolidate their rule. But early Christian rulers such as Constantine showed no equivalent effort. Again, the reason partly lies in the different views of the respective sacred texts. And also, of course, from practically the outset, Islam was wedded to political regimes, where for the first three centuries the Christian movement was not.