re: #537 Annar

While the Biblical Old testament is based on prophets supposedly ‘inspired by god,’ the Qur’an is taken to be the exact word of god as written in some eternal sky book that Allah keeps on his night stand. Inspired prophecy leaves room for interpretation and revisionism whereas it is heresy oft punishable by death (even today as we see regularly in the news) to attempt to revise or re-interpret the words of the Islamic rock god or his sexually deviant prophet.

This is such a widespread misconception that I’m sure my puny little comment here will do nothing to contain it. But the position of traditional Judaism is and has always been that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible contain the exact word of God, dictated to Moses at Sinai. More recent liberal interpretations may vary.

This in no way closes the door to interpretation and indeed volumes of such interpretation are part and parcel of Jewish law. Revisionism, not so much (although at times the lines blur).