Wisdom in the Quran

Law and Morality from the Bible to Late Antiquity

Hussain, Saqib

This work is the first detailed study of what the Qur'an means by 'wisdom.' It argues that the Qur'an, when it uses the term, is engaging with biblical wisdom discourse as it had been interpreted and understood in late antiquity. Biblical wisdom texts are a category of books in the Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha, such as Proverbs and Sirach, that emphasize the importance of acquiring wisdom through contemplating the natural world and one's own life experience. The presence of this wisdom genre in the Bible encouraged Hellenistic Jews and early Christians to embrace the Greek philosophical notion of natural law, the idea that what is morally right and wrong is known innately, and confirmed through divine revelation.
Over subsequent centuries, church fathers and rabbis continued to debate what the relationship between divine revelation and natural law / wisdom ought to be. While the church fathers argued that much of the legal content of the Hebrew Bible should no longer be followed now that Jesus had restored natural law to its rightful position as arbiter of right and wrong, the rabbis insisted that God is at liberty to impose through Scripture whatever laws he wishes onto humanity. This book asserts that when the Qur'an invokes wisdom, it engages in that debate, and ultimately presents a relationship between Scripture and natural law that is close to the Christian conception, insisting that law must be interpreted within an ethical framework that is innate to human morality.