In Defense of the Bible A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqa`i’s Bible Treatise by Walid A. Saleh (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008. 223 pages.)

Abstract

InDefense of the Bible containsWalid Saleh’s critical edition of Al-Aqwal al-
Qawimah fi îukmal-Naql min al-Kutub al-Qadimah (The Just Verdict on the Permissibility of Quoting from Old Scriptures). This treatise, composed by
Ibrahim ibn `Umar al-Biqa`i during the last days of Mamluk rule, sought to
defend his commentarial use of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels
to interpret the Qur’an. While many Qur’anic commentators rely heavily on
the isra’iliyat genre to support their interpretations of the Qur’an, al-Biqa`i’s
tafsir radically departed from the Islamic religious and scholarly practice by
quoting directly from the Jewish and Christian scriptures. This hermeneutical
decision met with great resistance and criticism from al-Sakhawi, one of
Cairo’s leading scholars, who wrote a scathing response in support of the traditional
Islamic legal prohibition against the religious use of the Bible, a text
believed to have existed only in corrupt form.
The question of why al-Biqa`i relied so heavily on the Hebrew Bible
and Christian Gospels, and how he defended his decision to do so, is the subject
of both the Aqwal and Saleh’s introduction to his critical edition of this
medieval text. Saleh’s work not only sheds light on the complexity of
Mamluk-era Cairo’s vibrant intellectual milieu, but, more importantly, corrects
the contemporary academic bias that Muslims rarely engaged with the
Bible during these times ...