The Quran as Midrash: Islamic Origins and the Sacred Writings of Judaism

It has been widely acknowledged, by scholars such as these and even the casual reader who peruses the Qur’ān, that its pages are filled with accounts of a Biblical origin. The lesser known fact is that it is also replete with Talmūdic and otherwise Midrashic expansions. The Qur’ān assumes the listener is already familiar with the stories of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). It thus uses a common Jewish form of exegesis – Midrash – to demonstrate the moral of the story, relative to contemporary events. Indeed, the “corrections” and “contradictions” of the Torah, presumed by the Muslim world to be an implicit rejection of Jewish doctrines within the Qur’ānic text, are of the sort we normally find between the Torah and Talmūdic (and otherwise Midrashic) exegesis. ..