Two Views of History and Human Future: Qur'anic and Biblical Renderings of Divine Promises

Abstract

Though the Qur'an refers to the Psalms as a scriptural corpus, al-zabūr, the Qur'anic relationship with the Psalms is – unlike that with the Torah or the Gospel – not explicitly described in terms of an affirming re-collection of that scripture. In the Qur'an ‘the Psalms’ as a scriptural authority play a rather marginal role. Yet individual psalm texts are strikingly present in the Qur'an. Not only are they reflected in numerous Qur'anic metaphors, but more generally, their particular vision of human-divine relations is closely related to that mirrored in the early suras. The paper attempts to trace the Qur'anic references to Psalm 136 which, it is argued, is theologically radically re-modelled in Sūrat al-Raḥmān (Q. 55), comparing the texts in order to explore the Qur'anic rejection of the Biblical notion of ‘history as a promise for the future’. It will posit that the new Qur'anic vision of the human future that eventually comes to replace the Biblical is not only a rejection of a previous option, it is at the same time a response to a major question raised in Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. The Qur'an thus is in conversation with two cultural traditions; the options put forward in both being debated and finally replaced.