Comparing the Qur’an and the Torah :: Compare Contrast Comparison Essays

Comparing the Quran and the Torah Contained in the many intricate and poetic Surahs of the Quran are retellings of a number of famous stories of the Hebrew Bible, known to Jews as the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. However, the Qurans news report of the lives of authorized biblical characters often differs in significant ways from the Judaic version. While a believer in the divine nature of the Quran whitethorn claim that differences in facts stem from distortions of G-ds message as put discomfit in Jewish holy books, both Muslims and non-Muslims might agree that the differences in emphasis are intentional. A more cynical observer might claim that the Quran changed the known Bible stories to suit its objectives. By choosing to include certain parts of a famous flooring and leaving out others, the report card itself takes on a very different significance. Occasionally, the Quran provide also discourse parts of the story which are entirely left out of the Torah, in whic h case a Muslim may claim the Torah did not contain those facts important for its own reasons. A cynical observer would claim the Quran do these additions to make its own message clearer. In the discussion that follows, I will often talk of what the Quran intends, or what the Torah means to say on a topic. It should be understood that I am not ascribing human attributes to dyspnoeic books, but rather that I am intentionally avoiding the conflict implicit in(p) in naming the author of these books. Depending on unitarys tastes, one could understand the Qurans intention to be any Muhammad or Allahs intention. Likewise, the Torah means to say could really be understood as what either Moses or G-d means to say. Either way, the important point is that somebody public opinion through the stories and decided on which words were worthy of being include in the holy texts and which were not. One of the underlying assumptions of this paper is that the stories were written down the wa y we find them today for a reason, and this paper intends to shed return on some of those reasons. Although the points where the Torah and Quran disagree on basic facts may be controversial, these facts can often profoundly change the overall character of a story. Rather than making a value judgment as to which story is better or more likely, I will simply present tense these differences along with a discussion on how they impact the meaning and purpose behind the story.