From the first day Muhammad claimed to receive messages in a cave outside Mecca, the central question has been simple: where did those messages actually come from? Muslims answer confidently, “From Allah, directly, word for word.” Every verse, they say, descended from heaven through Jibril and was recited exactly as written in the eternal heavenly tablet. Muhammad, in this picture, is merely a mouthpiece, not a true author. The Quran, they insist, is timeless and placeless—untouched by culture, history, or human learning.

Yet when we study the Quran carefully and place it against the background of its own time, another picture emerges. Far from floating above seventh-century Arabia, the Quran looks soaked in it. We see Jewish stories retold with Talmudic twists, Christian legends from apocryphal gospels repackaged as revelation, echoes of Zoroastrian and Syriac tales, and large stretches of pre-Islamic poetic style and soothsayer rhymed prose. We see a book that evolves as Muhammad’s career changes—from lonely preacher, to militant leader, to head of a raiding state. We see political crises and domestic embarrassments “solved” by conveniently timed verses. And we see, after Muhammad’s death, a caliph ordering alternative Qurans burned so that only one official version remains.

Jehovah’s Word does not arise this way. The Bible is not the product of one man’s lifetime or one region’s imagination. It spans many centuries, various cultures, and multiple human authors, yet it displays a unity that can only be explained by the one Spirit who inspired it through the written text. It interacts with the world around it, but it does not borrow myths and errors and then claim them as direct revelation. When we look at the Quran honestly, we see the opposite: a book stitched together from the religious and literary scraps around Muhammad, then declared untouchable.

If the Creator of the universe truly spoke in seventh-century Arabia, His message would transcend the limitations of that time and place while staying consistent with the revelation He had already given. Instead, what we see in the Quran is exactly what we would expect if a highly gifted but deeply deceived man soaked up stories from Jews, Christians, and pagan Arabs, reworked them in his own style, and presented them as divine speech. In other words, not direct revelation—but the ultimate seventh-century remix.

Jewish Rabbis, Christian Monks, and Pagan Storytellers Muhammad Actually Met

The Quran did not appear in a cultural vacuum. Mecca and its surroundings were religious crossroads. Pagan tribes worshiped idols at the Kaaba, but Jewish communities lived to the north and west, and Christians—especially of various “heretical” or non-orthodox groups—occupied trading towns, monasteries, and caravan routes. Muhammad’s own life put him in contact with these communities long before he claimed prophethood.

As a young caravan worker and later merchant, he traveled north into Syria and Palestine. Traditions speak of encounters with Christian monks such as Bahira, who allegedly recognized signs of prophethood in the boy or young man. Whether the details of this story are precise or embellished, the core point stands: Muhammad moved through regions saturated with Bible-related stories, sermons, and liturgies. He would have heard references to Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, and Jesus—not in the pure form of Scripture, but in the mixed form of stories and interpretations circulating in those days.

In Mecca and later Medina, Jewish tribes preserved their own traditions, sometimes orally, sometimes in scrolls. These included not only the Hebrew Scriptures but also developing Talmudic discussions and midrash—story sermons that elaborated on biblical events. Rabbis and storytellers used imaginative expansions to drive home moral lessons: Abraham smashing his father’s idols, Solomon chatting with animals, and angels debating creation. Many of these midrashic themes reappear in the Quran, often in simplified or altered form.

Once Muhammad reached Medina, his contact with Jewish knowledge increased dramatically. There he encountered rabbis and learned men like Abdullah ibn Salam, who eventually converted to Islam. The very presence of these figures in early Islamic tradition shows that Jews were part of Muhammad’s environment, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, always carrying a rich heritage of biblical and post-biblical stories. Conversations, disputes, and questions would have exposed Muhammad to details he previously did not know.

Alongside Jews, various Christian groups lived in Arabia and its fringes. Some were orthodox in doctrine; others were heretical sects whose teachings diverged from biblical Christianity. Monks might spin tales from apocryphal gospels to entertain or instruct. Merchants brought with them hymns, legends, and sermons from Syria and Iraq. Stories such as Jesus speaking from the cradle, making birds from clay, or giving detailed speeches in infancy circulated in non-canonical writings—and turn up almost verbatim in the Quran.

Finally, pagan Arabs themselves maintained their own stock of legends, poetic sagas, and soothsayer pronouncements. Tribal storytellers recited histories of past peoples destroyed for disobedience, deserts punished by storms, and cities swallowed by catastrophe. When the Quran speaks of vanished nations such as ‘Ad and Thamud, warning Meccans not to repeat their sins, it draws on this pool of local folklore and moral tales.

None of this proves that every detail of Islamic tradition about Muhammad’s contacts is historically precise. But it does prove that he lived in a world buzzing with religious stories and theological disputes. The idea that a man immersed in such an environment could deliver a book borrowing elements from all of them, while claiming they came straight from heaven, is not only possible—it is exactly what the evidence suggests. Jehovah’s Word tells us to test the spirits. When we test the Quran against the background of Muhammad’s actual contacts, it looks thoroughly, undeniably human.

Apocryphal Gospels, Talmudic Legends, and Zoroastrian Echoes—Line by Line Parallels

When we move from general background to specific content, the dependence becomes even clearer. The Quran does not just agree with the Bible on broad themes like one God or judgment. It reproduces particular details that actually come from later Jewish and Christian legends rather than from Scripture itself.

Take the childhood of Jesus. In the canonical Gospels, the early years of Christ’s life are described briefly and soberly. We read of His birth, the visit of shepherds and wise men, the flight to Egypt, and a single scene of Him at age twelve in the temple. There is no tale of Jesus speaking from the cradle, nor of Him making clay birds and giving them life.

Yet the Quran includes both. It presents the infant Jesus defending His mother by speaking miraculously in the cradle. It also describes Him shaping birds from clay and breathing into them so they fly away, “by Allah’s permission.” These details match not Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but stories found in apocryphal writings like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Arabic Infancy Gospel—texts written centuries after the apostles, full of imaginative embellishments.

Similarly, the Quran’s portrayal of Mary’s own early life echoes elements from the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal work that elaborates on Mary’s childhood, her dedication to temple service, and other details absent from the New Testament. In the Quran, Mary’s mother vows her unborn child to service, and Mary grows up under special care, fed miraculously—a mixture of Old Testament and apocryphal motifs, not the simple biblical record.

On the Jewish side, parallels to Talmudic and midrashic legends appear often. The story of Abraham smashing idols and debating with his father and people about their uselessness is prominent in the Quran, yet in Genesis Abraham leaves his homeland because Jehovah calls him; we read nothing of this idol-smashing episode. That story, however, appears in later Jewish midrash, where rabbis use it as a sermon illustration. The Quran takes what was a human rabbinic illustration and elevates it to a divinely revealed historical event.

Stories of Solomon in the Quran likewise bear the marks of rabbinic and legendary expansion. The Bible presents Solomon as a wise king who builds the temple and governs with God-given wisdom, but also tragically falls into idolatry. Later Jewish and Eastern traditions add tales of Solomon controlling demons, speaking with birds, and possessing a mighty ring. The Quran portrays him conversing with ants and birds, commanding the wind, and having armies of jinn—a collage of post-biblical legends.

Zoroastrian influence appears as well in the Quran’s depictions of heaven, hell, and final judgment. The imagery of a bridge over hellfire, balanced scales weighing deeds, and a sharp division of the righteous and wicked in dramatic cosmic scenes reflects themes developed in Persian religious thought. While some of these ideas overlap with biblical teaching in general form, the specific motifs and vocabulary suggest that Muhammad absorbed them from nearby cultures in which Zoroastrian and related ideas had seeped into Christian and Jewish storytelling.

Even the narrative about Dhul-Qarnayn, the “two-horned one” who travels to the ends of the earth and builds a barrier against Gog and Magog, parallels the Alexander Romance—a collection of legends about Alexander the Great popular in Syriac and other languages. The Quran recasts Alexander as a sort of monotheistic ruler, but the storyline bears the fingerprints of that earlier romance literature, not of any lost book of Moses or prophets.

Jehovah’s true revelation does not depend on such late, unreliable sources. The canonical Gospels rest on eyewitness testimony and apostolic authority, not on centuries-later imagination. The Old Testament histories rest on the inspiration of prophets who recorded real events. When we see the Quran align so closely, line by line, with non-canonical legends and folklore, it becomes clear that we are dealing not with a heavenly correction but with a human remix of stories that were already circulating in distorted form.

Pre-Islamic Poetry and Soothsayer Rhymes Recycled Almost Word-for-Word

The Quran’s content is not the only thing that reveals its earthly origins. Its style also points straight back to pre-Islamic Arabia.

Long before Muhammad, Arab tribes honored poets as their spokesmen and memory-keepers. Poetic contests at fairs like Ukaz showcased elaborate odes with strict meter and rhyme. Master poets such as Imru’l-Qays, Antarah, and Zuhayr crafted lines that combined vivid imagery with tight rhythm. Alongside this high poetry, soothsayers known as kahins delivered oracles in saj’—short, rhymed prose that danced on the edge between poetry and ordinary speech. Their utterances often invoked oaths by stars, the night, the dawn, or animals, and warned of impending disaster.

When we read the earliest Meccan suras of the Quran, the resemblance to kahin oracles is striking. These chapters are short, full of sharp rhymes and repeated sounds, and dominated by oaths: “By the dawn… by the night as it covers… by the sun and its brightness… by the fig and the olive…” The syntax is compact; the imagery is stark. The rhythm pulses like the oracles that Arabs already associated with supernatural messages—whether from jinn, spirits, or imagined deities.

Muhammad’s critics in Mecca noticed this right away. They called him a poet, a magician, and a soothsayer. They did not see his recitations as an alien language from another world but as part of the familiar spectrum of Arabian religious and poetic speech. The Quran itself records their accusations and replies defensively that it is “not the word of a poet” or of a soothsayer. Yet the very need to deny this shows how close the similarity was.

In some cases, particular Quranic phrases echo lines from known pre-Islamic poems. Stock formulas about oaths, the terrors of the Last Day, or the fate of past nations appear in ways that feel almost recycled. The Quran does not merely borrow vocabulary; it borrows rhetorical moves. A skilled ear hears the desert bard behind the divine voice.

As Muhammad’s role shifted from peripheral preacher to communal leader, the style of revelation also broadened. Longer Medinan suras adopt more prosaic stretches interspersed with poetic bursts. Legal rulings, treaty norms, and story retellings appear alongside threats and promises. But even here, the backbone of saj’ remains. Verses end with repeating syllables; the flow of sound sometimes takes priority over clear exposition, leading to abrupt shifts in subject simply to preserve rhyme.

Jehovah’s prophets in Scripture wrote in real human languages, too—Hebrew psalms pulse with parallelism, prophetic oracles thunder with imagery, and New Testament Greek shapes powerful arguments. But the presence of style in the Bible is never used as an argument that the words must be divine. Christians do not say, “The Psalms have unmatched Hebrew meter, therefore the Bible is true.” Instead, style serves substance. The Gospel is grounded in history and fulfilled prophecy, not poetic flair.

With the Quran, style becomes substance. Muslims are told that no one can produce anything like it, that its very rhythm proves its divinity. When we see how thoroughly that rhythm resembles pre-Islamic poetry and soothsayer speech, and how easily an accomplished Arab writer today could imitate its cadences, the claim collapses. The Quran sounds like seventh-century Arabia because it is a product of seventh-century Arabia.

Evolution of the Quran Over 23 Years: From Poet to Prophet to Statesman

The Quran did not fall from heaven as a finished book. Islamic tradition itself admits that it unfolded over about twenty-three years, responding to outward events and inward crises. During those two decades, Muhammad’s position in society changed dramatically—and the content of revelation changed with it.

In early Mecca, Muhammad was a marginalized preacher, mocked by his own tribe and lacking military strength. The suras from this period are short, focused on monotheism, judgment, and basic moral calls. They call people to fear the coming Day, to abandon idols, and to remember how God destroyed past nations for their unbelief. There is little detailed law, no command to form an armed community, and no mention of jizya or statecraft. Muhammad’s role is simply to warn.

As his message continues and pressure mounts, middle Meccan suras engage more directly with Jewish and Christian themes and with accusations from his opponents. These suras introduce figures like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus more prominently, presenting them as predecessors who preached the same message Muhammad claims to carry. Arguments against the Trinity and the Sonship of Christ appear. Yet Muhammad remains without political power; he is still, in effect, a poet-prophet in the eyes of Meccans.

The pivot comes with the Hijra to Medina. There Muhammad becomes the head of a community—a combination of tribal chief, judge, and military leader. The revelations now take on a new character. Legal material increases: rules about marriage, divorce, inheritance, war booty, fasting, pilgrimage, and community discipline appear. Verses deal with hypocrites inside the community and enemies outside. Stories from earlier prophets are retold in ways that justify fighting and present victory as a sign of divine favor.

Crucially, instructions about war develop with circumstances. At first, believers are permitted to fight only in self-defense. Then they are commanded to fight those who fight them. Eventually, the sword verses broaden the mandate to fighting all who resist Islam’s supremacy, whether they are pagans or people of the Book who refuse to submit and pay tribute. Muhammad transitions from marginalized preacher to full-fledged statesman and war leader, and revelation follows his ascent.

This evolution matches human psychology, not divine perfection. A true prophet may receive more detailed guidance as his mission grows, but he does not reverse moral direction based on political fortunes. Jehovah’s prophets in the Bible sometimes experience changes in their external situation—Joseph rises from prisoner to prime minister, Daniel serves under multiple regimes—but the moral law they proclaim does not flip when they gain influence. They do not start preaching holy war once they gain access to troops.

In the Quran, however, the evolution is palpable. It reads like the diary of a movement growing from weakness to strength, justified at each stage by new “revelation” that ratifies whatever tactics are now possible. That is why earlier peaceful verses are later treated as abrogated: they belong to the “weak phase” of Islam, while militant verses belong to the “strong phase.” The book tracks a political revolution in real time, not an eternal word from an unchanging God.

From a Christian perspective, this alone is devastating. Jehovah’s revelation in Scripture never makes the morality of actions depend on the believer’s military power. The Sermon on the Mount does not become obsolete once Christians gain majority status in a particular society. But in Islam, once Muhammad’s community can raid caravans, besiege towns, and expel tribes, the very nature of “obedience” shifts. The Quran’s origin is thus tied to the rise of an earthly leader, not to the eternal counsel of Jehovah.

Uthman’s Bonfires: The Day the Caliph Burned “Variant Qurans” to Create One Official Version

After Muhammad’s death, his followers faced a practical question: how should they preserve the revelations he had recited over the years? Some portions were written on bones, leaves, and bits of parchment. Many companions had memorized parts, but not all memorized exactly the same collections. As Islam expanded rapidly under the first caliphs, regional variations in recitation emerged. Different cities followed different “readings” and sometimes even different arrangements of suras.

According to early Islamic sources, the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, confronted complaints about these differences. Troops from various regions argued about which versions were correct. To prevent fracture, Uthman ordered a committee—led by Zayd ibn Thabit, who had served as Muhammad’s scribe—to produce a standardized codex based on certain witnesses. Copies of this official Quran were then sent to major garrison cities, and Uthman commanded that all other codices and written fragments be burned.

This event, often called the Uthmanic recension, is hailed in Islamic tradition as a wise unifying move. Yet it raises difficult questions. If Allah had perfectly preserved His Word in every detail, why were multiple versions in circulation serious enough to require a purge? If every companion agreed on the exact wording and sura order, why was a committee and subsequent destruction of variant texts necessary?

We know from reports that some prominent companions had personal codices with different sura orders and possibly variant wordings. Ibn Mas‘ud, a respected reciter, reportedly resisted Uthman’s project at first, insisting on his own codex. Others like Ubayy ibn Ka‘b were known for including certain suras or lines not found in later standard texts. The very existence of such disagreements undermines the simplistic claim that the Quran was a single, unchanging book from the beginning.

Burning other copies may have solved the political problem—one empire, one official scripture—but it did so by erasing evidence. Christians, by contrast, preserve early New Testament manuscripts from many regions with minor variations, and scholars use those to reconstruct the original readings. We do not have one emperor’s bonfire that destroys all alternative witnesses. If we did, skeptics would rightly cry foul.

For a book that claims to be the final, perfectly preserved word from heaven, relying on a political act of standardization and suppression is fatal. Uthman’s bonfires show that what we now call “the Quran” is, at least in part, the result of human selection and elimination. The text that emerged may be close to what Muhammad recited in many places, but we cannot pretend that no other forms ever existed. The canonical Quran is, in effect, Uthman’s edition.

Jehovah did not build His church on such a foundation. Though scribal errors occur in any manuscript tradition, the New Testament survived without needing a top-down destruction of variants to enforce unity. The very fact that early Islamic history praises Uthman for burning other Qurans shows how fragile the claim of pristine, direct revelation really is.

Final Question: If It Truly Came from the Creator of the Universe, Why Does It Look Exactly Like a Product of Its Time and Place?

When we step back from the details, the verdict gathers into a simple question that Muslims rarely allow themselves to ask honestly: if the Quran truly came from the Creator of heaven and earth, why does it look and sound so much like a product of seventh-century Arabia?

Its stories mirror the apocryphal gospels and rabbinic legends circulating in late antiquity, not the canonical Scriptures Jehovah had already given. Its style matches the saj‘ of Arab soothsayers and the rhythms of pre-Islamic poets. Its theology borrows from Jewish legalism, Christian heresies, and Persian apocalyptic, then rearranges them into a new legalistic system centered on Muhammad as the final messenger. Its evolution over twenty-three years tracks one man’s rise from powerless outsider to conquering warlord. Its final form depends on a caliph’s editorial decisions and the burning of competing codices.

That is how a human religious text behaves. It absorbs, adapts, and repackages the stories and ideas available in its environment. It changes as its leader’s circumstances change. It shores up political authority. It explains away contradictions by ad hoc doctrines. It emerges in a particular place and time and bears the marks of that origin everywhere.

Jehovah’s Word is different. The Bible does arise in real history and cultures, but it is not confined to them. It speaks consistently across centuries with a unified message of creation, fall, promise, fulfillment, and future glory centered in Jesus Christ. From Genesis’s earliest promise that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head, to the prophets’ visions of a suffering yet triumphant Messiah, to the Gospels’ clear accounts of the crucified and risen Lord, to Revelation’s picture of the Lamb on the throne, Scripture displays a coherence no mere remix could achieve.

The Quran, by denying the cross and resurrection, cuts itself off from this unity. It claims to correct the very heart of Jehovah’s salvation plan—replacing a crucified Savior with a prophet who never died for sin, and offering not grace through atonement but submission through law and jihad. When we ask where such a book comes from, the biblical answer is clear: not from the Spirit of Jehovah, who always bears witness to Christ, but from another spirit entirely.

For Muslims, recognizing the Quran’s earthly origins is not an insult; it is a doorway to freedom. Once they see that their book is rooted in seventh-century borrowings and politics, they are no longer bound by its denial of the Gospel. They can return to the Scriptures the Quran half-acknowledges and half-attacks, read them in their own right, and meet the true Jesus—not just as a prophet, but as the incarnate Son of God who died for their sins and rose again.

The difference between these two revelations is stark. One is a remix of surrounding traditions packaged as final truth. The other is the steady, Spirit-breathed Word of Jehovah fulfilled in Christ. When a person must choose between them, the question is not which sounds more exotic or emotionally stirring. The question is which one bears the marks of the true God, who does not lie, does not contradict Himself, and does not erase the center of His own plan of salvation.

If the Quran truly came from the Creator of the universe, it would confirm the Scriptures He already gave, exalt the cross of Christ, and rise above the limitations of seventh-century myth and politics. Instead, it does none of these things. It looks exactly like what it is: a powerful, flawed, very human book from a specific time and place—one that cannot save and that must not be allowed to eclipse the living Word of God in the Bible.

Jehovah still calls all people, including Muslims, to repent of false revelations and to trust in His Son alone. The door stands open. The true Book is still in their hands. And the real Author, who spoke through Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, continues to speak through that Word today, offering forgiveness and eternal life to everyone who believes.

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