Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 17:1 (Jul 2020)
Article: A Tablet From Heaven—Or What?
Author: Hardy Housman

A Tablet From Heaven—Or What?

Hardy Housman

Electronic Edition Editor’s Note: The original footnote numbering in the original was not always sequential, nor did it always have a corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page. Thus the original number and footnotes are retained in the text without being attached as normal.

Abstract: In the article, writer-scholar Hardy Housman takes on the Muslim contention that the Qur’an came directly from heaven, and that Muhammad received it without human intervention or influence upon the contents of the book. Rather, Housman demonstrates, it was far more mundane forces that moved Muhammad, influences that included Gnosticism and, to a much greater extent, Jewish sources and heretical Christian sects. (This essay was originally written as a research paper at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.)

Nay, but it is a glorious Qu’ran.
On a guarded tablet. Surah 85:21–22

―Muslims have come to accept as dogma that the Qur’an is tied to a heavenly text, “the preserved table, ‘which came directly to Muhammad, tanzil, [i.e.], without passing through any other human hands….’” So writes Lebanese scholar Joseph Azzi. He calls this dogma, ―the foundational doctrine regarding the ultimate source of the Qur’an.¹

If Mohammed indeed received the Qur’an intact and verbatim directly from heaven, then it cannot be the case that he complied it by plagiarizing portions and ideas from existing sources that he encountered in his life. Conversely, if the Qur’an’s content is drawn from earthly

¹ Joseph Azzi, The Priest and the Prophet (Los Angeles, The Pen Publishers, 2005), 136.

2

sources, whether in a small measure or large, then the ―foundational doctrine of Islam and its prophet are a monstrous fraud.

In this study we examine that foundational doctrine by critically considering whether the Qur’an is divine or a human product. We approach the subject with skepticism, recognizing that objective truth will always survive the tests of honest scrutiny. In other words, our approach is evidential, following the evidence wherever it leads.

Concurrently we reject as logically fallacious and intellectually dishonest the circular, presuppositionalist approach that assumes a priori the conclusion that the sacred text must be true and all evidence must be pre-filtered to fit that proposition before admission to consideration. By that approach, the precious doctrine is unassailable in principle, protected from scrutiny, and no evidence could ever weigh against it, not even in principle.

First we look a little more closely at t...