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Higher biblical criticism revolutionized Judaism and Christianity by calling into question long-held assumptions about the origins of the Bible; some ambitious textual critics are attempting to do the same for the Qur'an. They claim that parts of the Qur'an are based on stories of the Tanakh ( Hebrew Bible), the New Testament of the Christian Bible, and other non-canonical Christian works; differences of the biblical to the Qur'anic versions indicate that these stories were not taken directly from written texts but seem rather to have been part of the oral traditions of the Arab peninsula at Muhammad's time. To Muslims, however, this explanation is topsy-turvy: the "non-canonical" Jewish and Christian stories are simply further textual corruptions of an otherwise nearly lost divine original reflected in the Qur'an.
These critics also seek to find evidence of text evolution and transcription disputes in early Islam; the results have been meager, but some have expressed hopes that recent discoveries of "Qur'an Graveyards" in Yemen will throw more light on the subject.
The most important external aid used in interpreting the meanings of the Qur'an is the Hadith - the collection of Islamic traditions from which the details of early Islamic history are derived. An extensive science of isnad emerged in the early centuries of Islam, attempting to classify alleged sayings according to their reliability. The interpretation of the Qur'an soon developed into its own science, the ilm at- tafsir. Famous commentators include at-Tabari, az-Zamakhshari, at-Tirmidhi, Ibn Kathir. While these commentaries mention all common and accepted interpretations, modern fundamentalist commentaries like the one of Sayyed Qutb show tendencies to stick to only one possible interpretation.
Belief in the Qur'an's direct, uncorrupted divine origin is fundamental to Islam; this of course entails believing that the Qur'an has neither errors nor inconsistencies. ("This is the book in which there is no doubt, a guide to the believers": Surat al-Baqarah, verse 2.) However, it is well-known that certain chronologically later verses supersede earlier ones - the banning of wine, for instance, was accomplished gradually rather than immediately - and certain scholars have argued that some verses which discourage certain practices (for instance, polygamy) without banning them altogether should be understood as part of a similar process, though others argue that this contradicts "This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and chosen for you Islam as your religion" ( 5 .3).
Note that, while certain Hadith - the Hadith Qudsi - are claimed to record noncanonical words spoken by God to Muhammad, or the gist of them, these are not considered to form any part of the Qur'an.
As to the basic message of the Qur'an, there are three fundamental points, repeated and restated throughout the work. They are as follows: this present physical life is a test; the afterlife is certain; our actions in this present life have consequences in the next.
The most widespread varieties of Muslim theology consider the Qur'an to be eternal and 'uncreated'. In this it was influenced by Greek philosophy, especially Plato's theories that all ultimate realities and truths had to be eternal and unchanging. Given that Muslims believe that Biblical figures such as Moses and Jesus all preached Islam, the doctrine of an unchanging, uncreated revelation implies that contradictions between their statements according to the Qur'an and the Bible must be the result of human corruption of the earlier divine revelations.
However, some, notably including the Mu'tazili and Ismaili sects, dispute this doctrine of the uncreated Qur'an. Various liberal movements within Islam implicitly or explicitly question the doctrine of the uncreated Qur'an when they question the continuing applicability and validity of Islamic law, as their justifications for doing so are often based on a belief that such laws were created by God to meet the particular needs and circumstances of Muhammad's community. A Qur'an created by God for a particular context might also account for differences between the Bible without requiring humans to have corrupted divine texts.
The Qur'an often, although by no means always, uses loose rhyme between successive verses; for instance, at the beginning of surat al-Fajr:
or, to give a less loose example, the whole of surat al-Fil:
Note that verse-final vowels are unpronounced when the verses are enunciated separately, a regular pausal phenomenon in classical Arabic. In these cases, î and û often rhyme, and there is some scope for variation in syllable-final consonants.
The length of verses ( ayat) varies notably from sura to sura; in general, the earlier Makkan suras tend to have shorter verses than the later Madinan suras, with legal verses being particularly long. Contrast the Makkan verses above with a verse such as al-Baqara 229:
Similarly, the Madinan suras tend to be longer, including the longest sura of the Qur'an, al-Baqara.
Every chapter but one is preceded by the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, "In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate". Several suras begin with letters taken from a restricted subset of the Arabic alphabet; thus, for instance, surat Maryam begins "Kaf. Ha. Ya. 'Ain. Sad. A mention of the mercy of thy Lord unto His servant Zachariah." While there has been some speculation on the meaning of these letters - for instance, the letters Alif Lam Mim seem to be normally followed by mention of the Qur'an itself - the consensus of Muslim scholars is that these letters' meaning is beyond our understanding. Western scholars' efforts have been equally tentative; one proposal, for instance, was that they were initials or monograms of the scribes that had originally written the sura down. See Qur'anic initial letters for a fuller discussion.
A notable feature of the Qur'an is its rather frequent partial repetition, ranging from brief epithets (eg "Lord of the heavens and the earth") to sentences. For instance, in the story of Adam, the words "And when We said unto the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Adam, they fell prostrate, all save Iblis", are repeated verbatim in suras al-Baqarah, al-Isra, al-Kahf , and Ta-Ha , and with only slight change in al-A`raf . Similarly, "Come not nigh to the orphan's property except to improve it, until he attains the age of full strength" is found both in al-An'am 152 and in al-Isra 34. These repetitions sometimes serve to emphasise an important point, and sometimes are repeated in different contexts to illustrate different points. They often prove difficult for memorisers of the Qur'an, since, whereas most verses can only have one possible verse following them, these can have several.
Less literally, thematic repetition is also found; the stories of Thamud or Adam, for instance, is narrated in several places to about the same level of detail each time. One reason for this is that the Qur'an is not a narrative; rather than having a single centralized place for a given account, it generally tells the account whenever it serves to illustrate the appropriate point, typically recounting those portions of it that are most relevant.
Traditionally, the Arabic grammarians consider the Qur'an to be a genre unique unto itself, neither poetry (defined as speech with metre and rhyme) nor prose (defined as normal speech or rhymed but non-metrical speech, saj' .)
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