Vahid M. Mehr, Is the Quran Supersessionist? Toward Identifying the Quran’s Theological Framework of Engagement with Earlier Abrahamic Traditions. Paderborn, Germany: Brill/Schöningh, 2023. viii, 104 pp. ISBN 978-3-506-79166-5.

It has been the established opinion of virtually all students of the Qurʾān, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, medieval or modern, that the Qurʾān is a supersessionist text—that is, that it is overtly polemical, and claims to transcend and render obsolete the earlier monotheistic scriptures, in particular the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, and the religions on which they are based. In this short but well-documented book, Vahid M. Mehr presents a strong case for seeing the Qurʾān differently. He argues that many passages in the text have been misconstrued by earlier scholars, and through a meticulous reading of the text tries to show that in fact the Qurʾān draws on Jewish and Christian tradition only to show that it, too, qualifies as a text of divine scripture, and should thus be accepted alongside them—not that it claims to supplant them. In short, the answer to the question posed by his title is simply “No.”

The book, which is the published version of the author’s dissertation for Paderborn University, consists of an Introduction and three chapters. In the Introduction, the author first discusses the concept of supersessionism and its origins in Christian anti-Jewish polemic, and shows how Western scholars projected the assumption of supersessionism and polemical intent onto the Qurʾān. He then provides a detailed explanation of his methodology. He reviews the three different approaches scholars in the West have adopted to clarify the Qurʾān’s relationship to its scriptural predecessors, the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospel tradition (direct borrowing; “cultural fusion” or independent reworking of older scriptural materials; and the “Semitic culture thesis,” which argues that elements common to the Qurʾān and earlier scriptures were drawn upon independently by each scripture from a vast reservoir of familiar concepts and phrases circulating in the cultures where the various scriptures coalesced). He then addresses the problem of the Qurʾān’s longer sūrahs, where most of the presumed supersessionist verses in the Qurʾān occur. He asserts that modern Western scholars have either sidestepped the question of the coherence of the longer qurʾānic sūrahs, or have attempted to establish coherency in them on the basis of formal criteria such as rhyme or topical focus, but have paid little attention to their theology. This is partly because those scholars have simply assumed that the Qurʾān is a polemical text with a supersessionist goal, and therefore that its theological pronouncements about Judaism or Christianity were not intended to be accurate, but rather were simply meant to convince its interlocutors that it represents the right doctrine, and that other views are wrong.

In its three body chapters, the author targets for reconsideration the most apparently blatant supersessionist passages found in several long sūrahs. Chapter 1 (pp. 19–54) deals with the question of how the Qurʾān views the Jewish covenant. It focuses in particular on passages in Sūrah 2 (al-Baqarah), but with reference to numerous other qurʾānic passages. He argues that “the Quran seems to accord with [the] rabbinic understanding of the covenant” (p. 26); furthermore, the Qurʾān implies that, despite the fact that the Children of Israel broke the covenant by worshipping the golden calf, God forgave them and did not annul His covenant with them. His reading of the relevant passages suggests that the Qurʾān’s attitude toward the covenant is closer to the rabbinic understanding, rather than to the Syriac Christian understanding, a conclusion that challenges the work of many modern students of the Qurʾān. He argues that some of the apparent thematic disjunctures in Sūrah 2, such as its brusque juxtaposition of the story of Adam’s fall and that of the Israelites’ sin in making the calf, make sense if we analyze the sūrah as presenting a non-supersessionist theology, but that Western scholars have missed this coherence because they have insisted on viewing the Qurʾān through a supersessionist lens.

Chapter 2 (pp. 55–80) examines passages in Sūrahs 3–5 to show that “[t]he Quran tries to legitimate Jesus, the Messiah, for its Jewish audience” (p. 75). It deals in detail with the issues of the crucifixion, the rabbinic charge against Jesus that he had engaged in sorcery, and the question of “sons of God,” among others.

Chapter 3 (pp. 81–96) focuses on the Qurʾān’s portrayal of Abraham. He argues that in the qurʾānic view, “… the concept of exclusive salvation of any particular Abrahamic tradition is irreconcilable with possessing the divine Scripture” (p. 83). In other words, the Qurʾān’s goal is not to de-legitimize the earlier Jewish or Christian scriptures or traditions, but rather to establish the legitimacy of the Qurʾān as monotheist scripture alongside the others, and its community of Believers as standing as an equal alongside the Jewish and Christian communities. It is not trying to replace those scriptures or communities.

The book is attractively printed and produced. There are a few minor typographical errors or infelicities in syntax. For example, “eighter” in the middle of P. 61 should be “either;” on p. 57 the word “Jewish” seems to be missing a noun following it; and in a couple of places one of a pair of quotation marks surrounding a passage is missing (e. g., 53, top). The paragraph beginning on page 23 discusses diverse opinions on the question of the Qurʾān’s view of the Jewish covenant, but the tangled references in that paragraph to works by O’Connor, Firestone, Goudarzi, Rubin, and to the apostle Paul sometimes make it difficult to be sure who is saying what. This is, however, an exception in a work that is, for the most part, very clear in its meaning and logical presentation. One unfortunate feature is that the book contains no index—not even a list of the Qurʾān verses that are discussed; this would have been easy to include and would have greatly increased the book’s usefulness; the publisher should have insisted on it or prepared one themselves.

This brief summary of Is the Quran Supersessionist? does not do justice to its rich content, careful argumentation, or meticulous analysis of passages of the Qurʾān text. The author is intimately familiar with a wide array of relevant scholarship, and boldly engages in robust debate with a wide variety of modern students of the Qurʾān, frequently challenging their logic or their reading of the Arabic text in ways that often seem, to this reviewer at least, quite compelling. For example, on pp. 43–44, he critiques an interpretation of Q. 2:51–54 by Michael Pregill by observing that the passage in question is clearly addressed to the Children of Israel, calling into doubt Pregill’s view that it was meant to serve as a warning to Muḥammad’s followers; it was not addressed to them, and seems more likely that it was part of Muḥammad’s ongoing dialogue with the Jews of Medina. Similarly, on p. 84, he shows how, by leaving out the simple word “and” in the middle of his translation of Q. 3:68, Gerald Hawting distorts the theological import of the passage. Since the author’s thesis is, as noted above, one that flies in the face of the opinion of almost all modern scholars of the Qurʾān, hardly anyone’s ox goes ungored, but all students of the Qurʾān need to give this short, incisive book a serious reading. Mehr’s conclusions, if they stand up to more rigorous and theologically well-informed scrutiny than I offer here, clearly have practical, as well as scholarly, implications of the utmost importance for Muslims and non-Muslims, scholars and laypersons, alike.