Questioning the Sources: Textual Parallels, Chronological Dilemmas and Orientalist Critics of the Qur’ān

Abstract

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Western Orientalist scholarship adopted historical-critical source criticism to argue that non-biblical narratives in the Qur’ān were borrowed from Rabbinical and Apocryphal traditions. Pioneered by Jewish rabbinical expert regarding Jewish lore and expanded by Christian missionaries concerning Christian apocryphal Christology and Mariology, this premise asserted textual dependence on sources such as the Talmud, Midrashic compilations and extra-canonical Infancy Gospels. Subsequently, this hypothesis was widely weaponized in missionary polemics, echoed by various regional interlocutors including Urdu theological writers and continues to inform modern source-critical paradigms. This paper critically re-evaluates the validity of these borrowing hypotheses through a twofold analytical inquiry. First, it reassesses the alleged textual parallels to examine whether thematic resonance genuinely demonstrates literary plagiarism or reflects independent oral and shared late antique typologies. Second, it investigates the acute chronological dilemmas underpinning these claims, rigorously interrogating whether the proposed rabbinic and apocryphal texts were definitively compiled prior to the seventh-century Qur’ānic revelation or represent contemporary or posterior redactions. In doing so, this study challenges foundational assumptions in Orientalist source criticism and calls for a chronologically grounded framework for evaluating late antique scriptural intertextuality.