Muslims say the Pentateuch is not reliable because of the immoral stories about Abraham and his descendants. Your Response?
Question:
According to a Muslim Clergy, the current Pentateuch is not reliable because it has immoral stories about Abraham’s relatives which can’t be from God. Your response?
Answer:
I am well aware of this charge by Muslims. My response is that there is no such thing as an immoral story. There are immoral actions, but not immoral stories. The Qur’an presents a picture of its prophets, including Moses, Abraham and David as near-perfect, nearly sinless persons. There are two problems with this. First of all, logically, which is more likely to contain an accurate picture of the prophets, the Jews, who lived at the time of the prophets, or who wrote about them within at most a few centuries of the lives of these people, or an Arab tribesman, who lived two thousand years afterward, and who had very little exposure to the Jews and Jewish history? Common sense says that obviously the Jewish stories of Abraham, Moses and David are more reliable.
Second, the Qur’an’s descriptions of its prophets are not at all realistic. We know that Muhammad himself was a rather blatant sinner, given his famous temper, that the ordered the execution of more than 500 Jews in Medina, that he engaged in plundering caravans, and carried out war against his enemies. The descriptions of Abraham, as a faithful man, who yet doubted God and sinned is a far more believable description than that of the Qur’an.
These stories about Abraham and his relatives are not immoral. They are true! Abraham’s descendants did immoral things, as have all of us, including Muhammad himself. These are realistic stories, they are true stories, and the Qur’an’s depiction of these prophets is an unrealistic and false one.
John Oakes
