Refiguring Abraham: On the Prophetological Reframing of the Biblical Patriarch in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay illustrates the Qur’an’s theologically creative conversation with Late Antique literature through an analysis of the text’s depiction of Abraham in Sura 21. After a short overview of modern scholarly engagement with the Qur’an’s ‘biblical subtext’ and some subsequent methodological remarks, I examine the ancient and Late Antique Jewish background to the qur’anic story of Abraham in Terah’s idol shop. Here, I elucidate the theological and exegetical concerns prompting these haggadic speculations about the patriarch’s life. In a word, Jewish exegetes employed this story as a way of demonstrating the distinct righteousness of Israel’s lineal forebear. Then, through comparative analysis, I show that the Qur’an takes up and redeploys this motif in the service of articulating its own prophetology, thereby subverting the earlier genealogical framing of this story. Notably, this repackaging of the Abraham-Terah narrative serves a polemical goal. In the last resort, the Qur’an is keen to show that its own followers – not Jews or Christians – are the true heirs of Abraham.