Relationships Between God and People: An Interpersonal Study of Scriptures

Abstract

In past research we systematically examined relationships between God and people portrayed in English narratives from the Torah and New Testament. This article extends this comparative approach to include English narratives from the Qur'an. There were 763 interpersonal narratives from these three scriptures that were examined. Frequent themes for God/human relationships included “helpful,” “divine,” “hurtful,” and “controlling” representations. In all scriptures' global patterns, the most frequently appearing themes for God's wishes and responses toward people were positive relationship themes. Narratives about men exemplars and women showed many positive relationship themes, often with humble or cooperative themes as highest ranking responses from people. All scriptures showed evidence of in-group out-group bias. Differences between scriptures included results on the nature of highest scored global themes and how scripture narratives portrayed in-group out-group bias.