c. The Gospels began life as a transla-
tion since Jesus preached and con-
versed in Aramaic, while the
Gospels, which date from 40 to 60
years after his death, are already in
Greek. The translation of the Greek
into other vernaculars of Late
Antiquity—the Latin version by
Jerome (d. 420 CE) is called the
Vulgate—occurred without remark.
d. The Quran contains the very words
of God dictated and pronounced ver-
batim by Muhammad without the
slightest human conditioning.
Resistance to translating the Quran
exists even now. Some translations
prefer to call themselves not “The
Quran” but something like “The
Meaning of the Glorious Quran.”B. Unpacking the Riches: Scriptural
Exegesis
- Departing from the Literal
a. Jews have insisted that the legal
precepts of the Bible, though they
may have a deeper, more spiritual
or mystical sense, must be under-
stood literally.
b. Christians differ from Jews: the for-
mer read the same Bible figurative-
ly, they see it primarily as a docu-
ment foreshadowing the events of
Jesus’ life. Christians allegorize
away much of the ritual and behav-
ioral aspects of the “Old
Testament.”
c. The Quran itself
admits that it is
ambiguous in
places, and so
Muslims too have
developed a body
of exegesis of the
Quran which has
become traditional
and authoritative.
TRANSLATIONS OF
THEQURAN
The translation of the Quran
from its original Arabic to any
other language presents
understandable concerns for
Muslims, who believe that the
Quran is the literal word of
God as passed in Arabic
from God to the angel Gabriel
to Muhammad.
As the letter for letter word of
God, the Quran is different from
religious texts that are divinely
inspired but not direct tran-
scripts of a divinity’s words. For
Muslims, reading and reciting
the words of God is itself a
blessed occurrence, one that is
not possible in any language
but Arabic.
The first known translation
of the Quran into any language
was done in Latin in Toledo
in 1142 by Robert of Chester.
It was paid for by Peter of
Cluny as part of a Christian
conversion project directed at
Spanish Muslims.© Owen Franken/CORBIS