Quran Talk Blog

The Quran does not describe God as one object set among other objects. It presents Him as the Absolute in relation to which every object is measured, named, and known. And yet the same book that insists there is nothing whatsoever like Him also speaks of Him ceaselessly—as one who wills, speaks, commands, sends, draws near, and shows Himself in what He makes. This is the cent...

When traditionalists are challenged on the authenticity, reliability, or internal consistency of the Hadith corpus, the response often shifts away from defending those problems on their own terms. Instead, the discussion shifts to a challenge to the Quran: it too is said to produce disagreements, contain variant...

In January of 49 BCE, a Roman general paused on the northern bank of an unremarkable stream. The Rubicon was shallow enough to wade and narrow enough to be overlooked by geography, but it marked the legal boundary of Italy proper—the line beyond which a commander was forbidden to lead an army under arms. To cross it was to declare war on the Republic. Julius Caesar crossed. <...

In the final week of his public life, Jesus stood with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, looking across the Kidron Valley toward the most magnificent building any of them would have seen in their lives. Herod’s Temple was still under construction, a project decades in the making, its retaining walls built from limestone blocks so massive that some weighed hundreds of tons...

There is a way of reading the fall of man that has almost nothing to do with fruit. We tend to imagine the first failure as an act of appetite—a reaching hand, a forbidden taste, desire overrunning a command. But when the Quran narrates the moment, it reaches for a different word, and the word is quieter and far more devastating than appetite.

[20:115] We tested Ad...