Customer Reviews

Claiming Abraham: Reading the Bible and the Qur'an Side by Side

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Michael Lodahl's fascinating work illuminates the Quran in a way that allows the Christian reader to grasp both the details and the spirit of Islam's most holy book. He is thorough, but does a very good job of keeping the reader's head above water. Lodahl does a great service to Muslim-Christian understanding by taking the Quran seriously rather than using it as a foil for theological argument.

Of note: His final chapter deals with End Times expectations in both the Quran and the Bible. This is especially illuminating - it may open the eyes of some Christians to what the Bible says on the topic as well as what is in the Quran. Lodahl isn't the first to set Muslim and Christian ideas about the End Times side-by-side. In the 1880's, hundreds of Mennonites fled to Central Asia in search of the place of Christ's Second Coming, and found themselves in the care of a Muslim king. Along the way they debated eschatology with hostile rulers, and studied Islamic scripture in the palace of Khiva's Khan. The best book on this episode in Muslim-Christian relations is Pilgrims on the Silk Road: A Muslim-Christian Encounter in Khiva. It would make a great companion to Lodahl's book.

Lodahl's book offers two important insights--first, the great similiarity between the Quranic and Biblical traditions when viewed on the surface and, second, the vast differences between the traditions when carefully considered. Lodahl writes as a Christian theologian, though as a theologian of exceptional wit and sensitivity. What results is both a clear depiction of the interaction between the traditions under consideration and an equally clear depiction of the important differences between an Islamic theology of Quranic revelation (as the written words of the Quran) and a Christian theology of incarnational revelation (as the Living Word of Christ). A truly great read!
Thomas E. Phillips
Prof. of New Testament & Early Christianity
Point Loma Nazarene University

Michael Lodahl has written the perfect book to introduce ideas in comparing the writings of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Claiming Abraham is scholarly yet written in a way everyone can understand. You will be surprised at the similarities between the three religions that have been stereotyped as arch rivals.

With 12 chapters, Lodahl dives into the differences with regards to:

Abraham
Israel and Christianity
The God of Creation
The actual Word of God
Adam and what it means to be human
Cain and Abe
The truth behind the Noah story
What happened at Sinai
Mary the mother of Jesus
Who Jesus really was
The idea behind Allah or Adonai
and the end of the world.

I found it fascinating to read that it's possible Mohammad gained some of his beliefs from the Jewish commentators of his time. It's also fun to read how a few Christian stories have some of their points originating from the Qur-an and Islamic thought rather than the Bible.

Claiming Abraham is a terrific book for anyone interested in learning more about Islam, Christianity and how other religions view similar stories.

A great read.


This book was provided for review by Brazos Press.

Michael Lodahl's work in Claiming Abraham is a very basic introduction to comparative textual analysis between Qur'anic and Biblical texts. That being said, Mr. Lodahl seems to lack a sensitivity for, and appreciation of, the Islamic interpretative tradition regarding origins and use of the text of the Qur'an. This is especially evident in his total lack of analysis of major Tafsir works, including the essential Al-Kashshaaf 'an Haqa'iq at-Tanzil, instead trusting his own analysis of the Qur'an in translation as a firm basis for theological work. This is problematic at best as Lohahl's lack of Arabic hinders his ability to see for himself what the Qur'an says about a subject, instead seeing what a translator says about it.

This is a huge problem with Qur'anic study in English. The Qur'an exists only in Arabic, and once the document has been translated, it ceases to be the Qur'an according to Islamic theology and the principle of i'jaz al-Qur'an (inimitability of the Qur'an). The language of the Qur'an, Arabic, as a Semitic language is highly dependent on context of words for determining their meaning as spelling alone is not enough, meaning the translator must make far more significant, and more frequent, judgments about meaning than a translator of a Latin text might have to. Thus an orthodox Muslim would say that, at best, Lodahl is working with an echo of the Qur'an proper. How useful is this to a Christian seeking to learn about the Qur'an, or a Muslim?

Ignoring the fact that the Qur'an and the Bible are very different in form, and that the narratives that Lodahl focuses his book on are a very small section of the Qur'an we are still left with an inadequate source for comparative textual criticism of any real depth. While I would recommend Lodahl's book to Christians just getting their feet wet with comparative religious studies I would much rather recommend Andrew Rippin's Muslims: their religious beliefs and practices as a superior source of introductory material about the Qur'an and Islam in general. As for a superior source of comparative textual analysis I have to recommend Bible and Quran: Essays in Scriptural Intertextuality edited by John C. Reeves as a seminal work in the area that came in very useful during the course of my own studies.

Every time I've read through the Qur'an, some of the stories seemed just bizarre and nonsensical. Lodahl's book gives me some understanding of why the Quranic stories are so different from their Biblical counterparts: in many cases, Mohammad was not basing his stories on the Biblical accounts at all, but rather on later Jewish & Christian interpretive developments which came about either because these interpreters didn't feel comfortable with the anthropomorphic God presented in Scripture, or because they couldn't resist elaborating and embellishing the Biblical accounts with details that, for whatever reason, the original writers didn't include. But this book isn't just about the Qur'an; by looking carefully at how the Jewish & Christian were interpreting Scripture prior to and during the time of Mohammad, Lodahl raises some excellent questions for Bible readers today. Many modern-day Christians unknowingly hold views of God that seem more like the Qur'anic portrait than the biblical portrait. Reading this book can help you regain a more authentically biblical view of God.

Book Review for Michael Lodahl, Claiming Abraham: Reading Bible and Qur'an Side by Side, Brazos Press, 2010 by Dr. Walter Ziffer, a.k.a. "Religious Skeptic."
{read my other reviews and publications)

Is it possible to claim genuine revelatory status for the Qur'an, the Holy book of Islam, a book claiming to present the final and ultimate revelation of Allah, the Muslims' and the world's only and unique God?
By reading a few Qur'anic and Biblical texts side by side, Michael Lodahl attempts to establish areas of theological agreement between the two, an attempt which in this reviewer's opinion, is doomed from the beginning.
So, for instance, where orthodox Christianity affirms that Jesus is the Son of God, Islam negates this. For Muslims Jesus is one among other prophets and strictly human. No wonder then that the Qur'an invariably refers to Jesus as "the son of Mary" making it abundantly clear that he is the son of a human mother and not the son of Allah, "The God." Interestingly, Lodahl never makes this particular observation. This issue alone illustrates the unbridgeable chasm that separates Christianity from Islam. To find some kind of cogent harmonization between these two views is impossible and even the cleverest theological mental gymnastics cannot succeed. It is precisely here that my critique of Lodahl is the strongest: his mental gymnastics intended to establish some commonalities, some common theological points of contact between the two faiths, simply do not pan out.
As far as his treatment of the Hebrew Bible texts in this project is concerned, I find that he gives Judaism relatively short thrift when compared to his treatment of Christianity-related texts. Despite this shortcoming, his comparisons of the Genesis texts dealing with Abraham and Noah and parallel texts in the Qur'an are well done. Also his choice of Midrash which, in modified form appears in the Qur'an here and there, is well taken. Overdone, in my opinion, is, what may not have been intended as Christian apologetics but which, undeniably, comes across as such.
The author expresses quite cogently what scholars before him have seen as the most probable reasons for the Qur'an's usage of Jewish and Christian biblical and post-biblical materials, namely Muhammad's contacts with Jews and Christians in Medina. It is more than likely that these folk never or no longer knew the canonical versions of the material but carried with them modified ones which, because of their oral transmission over several centuries, had eventually become popular "street versions" of the texts but accepted as the genuine stuff.
There are a good many contact points between Qur'an on the one hand and Talmud and Midrash on the other hand, with respect to Qur'anic alleged Jewish "unjust and degrading" accusations of Mary and to Gnostic-like-related statements with regard to Jesus' alleged unreal death on the cross. A longer treatment of these contact points between Qur'an and Rabbinic literature would, I think, have been more profitable than the author's long dissertations on Christology.
In the end let me just say that the major differences between Qur'an and Jewish and Christian Bibles resist harmonization because both the Jewish Bible and the New Testament are essentially libraries of books, written by a number of different human authors over, in the first case, several centuries and in the latter case, several decades, while the Qur'an claims to be the direct, un-filtered and unadulterated, word of Allah, conveyed directly to the one person of Muhammad, the seal of the prophets, by the angel Gabriel.