Kutub (Books)Islam Lesson 5 —

THINK BACK TO OUR LESSON ON PROPHECY.

WHY WOULD GOD NEED TO SEND SCRIPTURES DOWN TO

HUMANITY?

God sends guidance to humanity in the form of scripture. The Quran tells us that every people in the world has recieved this guidance in one form or another.

ALL OF HUMANITYneeds guidance.

Nature is a constant revelation of God. Delving deeper into

nature reveals more to use of the signs and wonders of God.

TWO TYPES OF REVELATION

Scripture is the direct communication of God with

Humanity, either in the form of a written book, or in the form of verbal communication with

Humanity.

NATURE SCRIPTURE

A little bit about scriptures in Islam …

We do not know the number of

scriptures that God sent to humanity

It is for the scholars to investigate the

various holy books and see if they are

remains of earlier scriptures

How do you think one could verify if a

particular tradition contains the

remains of an earlier scripture?

All scriptures were the same message

SCRIPTURES IN THE QURAN

ABRAHAM — SUHUF

DAVID — ZABUR

MOSES — TAURAT

JESUS — INJIL

MOHAMMAD — QURAN

Task 1 —

MATCH THE SCRIPTURE TO THE QUOTE FROM THE QURAN

If all scriptures are the same word of God, why are they in different languages?

Kallam Allah

Moses

Jesus

Muhammad

Aramaic

Hebrew

Arabic Q’uran

Injil

Taurat

The source and the messages are always the same, but the languages, prophets, and scriptures are different.

Why do we have the Q’uran?

What do we know about

each scripture?

We don’t know much about Abraham’s contribution, other than its name.

ABRAHAM — SUHUF

Moses’ Taurat is often taken to mean Torah. This raises a number of concerns however, because there are things in the Torah which don’t jive with the Q’uran and Islam (i.e. stories of prophets sinning)

MOSES — TAURAT

It’s important not to confuse Zabur with Psalms. This is because Psalms are largely praises to God, without any instructions on how to live one’s life properly. So, Psalms could contain some elements of Zabur but cannot be the entirety.

DAVID — ZABUR

The Injil can’t be the Gospels, as these are acknowledged by Christians themselves to have been written by humans. The most we can say is that the remnants of the Injil can be seen in the recorded speech of Jesus in the Gospels.

JESUS — INJIL

THE Q’URAN.

Accurate transmission of Kallam Allah

Verified by God to never become inaccurate.

Anything that deviates from the Q’uran is an error

Restates the original and authentic guidance from God to Humanity, correcting human errors in the guidance.

Shi’aSunni

Qur’an is eternal and uncreated.

Qur’an is created. May be added to by Imams

01.Qur’an as authority.

Source of Islamic Law - Shari’ah.

02.Can be difficult to interpret, and doesn’t cover some issues.

03.Sunnah (stories of Muhammad’s life) and Hadith (oral tradition of Muhammad’s teachings) are used in conjunction with Qur’an to make law.

04.Shi’a Muslims might also refer to the Hadith of Ali in their decision making.