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The modern academic study of sacred texts developed alongside major changes in European approaches to language, history, manuscripts and religion. Biblical studies became an important setting for developing and debating these approaches; they later became part of the wider intellectual environment in which European scholars studied the Qurʾān.

The terms used in this article are related but not interchangeable. Historically, “Higher Criticism” referred to questions about a text’s authorship, sources, composition, dating, and historical setting. “Historical criticism” is a broader approach to examining a text in its historical context and may draw on several methods. “Source criticism” investigates the sources or compositional layers that may underlie a text. “Philology” examines language, grammar, vocabulary and textual usage in historical context, while “literary criticism” analyses genre, structure, rhetoric and narrative. “Textual criticism”, by contrast, compares manuscript witnesses and related textual evidence to study a text’s wording and transmission.

Subsequent academic study of the Qurʾān has included historical, linguistic, and literary approaches, alongside debates about the assumptions and aims of scholarship [1].

This article argues that the relationship between Biblical Higher Criticism and Qurʾānic Studies was not a simple transfer of a single fixed method. Qurʾānic Studies developed within a wider intellectual environment shaped by biblical philology, historical criticism, comparative Semitic studies, Orientalism, and scholarship on Judaism and Christianity. These approaches raised questions and provided analytical tools that scholars later applied to Qurʾānic material, but similar methods alone do not prove direct influence from one scholar or school to another.

The discussion therefore distinguishes between comparable methods and historical links that can be documented. It moves from Spinoza and Richard Simon to Wellhausen’s influential synthesis, then examines Geiger’s comparison of Qurʾānic narratives with Jewish and rabbinic materials and Nöldeke’s philological approach to chronology. It concludes by considering how these approaches interacted with Islamic scholarly traditions concerned with Qurʾānic language, readings, transmission and interpretation.

The Intellectual Background of Higher Criticism

The roots of modern biblical criticism predate the nineteenth century. During the Renaissance, scholars became more interested in studying ancient texts in their original languages. The Reformation also increased debates about Scripture, its interpretation and religious authority. As a result, philology became an important tool for studying texts in their linguistic and historical contexts. A major development came in the seventeenth century with Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, published anonymously in 1670, he examined the Bible using historical and philological methods. His work was influenced by earlier humanist scholarship, but he reached more radical conclusions than many of his predecessors. [2]

Spinoza argued that Scripture should be studied through its language, historical setting and human authorship. His work became an important step in the development of historical approaches to the Bible. However, Spinoza did not create Higher Criticism alone. His ideas developed within a wider seventeenth-century tradition of biblical philology and debates about scriptural authority. [3]

Richard Simon and the Critical History of the Old Testament

Another important figure was the French priest Richard Simon (1638–1712). His book Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, published in 1678, was an important step in the development of biblical criticism. Simon studied the history and transmission of the Hebrew Bible, including its different textual forms, translations and interpretations. He also used manuscripts and historical evidence in his research. [4]

His work shows that biblical criticism did not develop simply or peacefully. It faced strong opposition from religious and political authorities in seventeenth-century France, and his book was eventually suppressed. [5] This history shows that debates about the authority of Scripture, the role of tradition, the reliability of manuscripts and the development of biblical texts had already begun long before the nineteenth century.

The Nineteenth Century and the Systematisation of Higher Criticism

During the nineteenth century, biblical scholars examined sources, literary layers and historical periods within biblical texts. Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) became one of the most influential figures in this development. His Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, issued as the second edition of his earlier Geschichte Israels in 1883, synthesised earlier source-critical scholarship and offered a historical reconstruction of Israelite religion and biblical literature [6]. He did not originate source criticism, and later scholars have debated and revised his reconstruction [6].

From Biblical Scholarship to the Academic Study of the Qurʾān

The nineteenth century also witnessed the emergence of a more systematic academic study of the Qurʾān in Europe. This development occurred in an intellectual environment where biblical philology, Semitic linguistics, comparative religion, Orientalism, and historical criticism were already established. The history of academic Qurʾānic scholarship is therefore connected to this wider scholarly world, though that connection should not be reduced to a single direct line of influence [1].

Andrew Rippin’s survey of academic Qurʾānic scholarship discusses figures including Theodor Nöldeke, Abraham Geiger, Gustav Weil and Ignaz Goldziher, and traces later developments through scholars such as Richard Bell, Montgomery Watt, John Wansbrough, Fazlur Rahman, Toshihiko Izutsu and Angelika Neuwirth [7]. This history cautions against treating “Western scholarship” as a single methodology: scholars have worked with different assumptions, evidence and analytical tools.

Abraham Geiger and the Comparative Study of the Qurʾān

Among the earliest important figures was Abraham Geiger (1810–1874). In 1833 Geiger wrote „Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?“ (“What Did Muhammad Borrow from Judaism?”). The work compared Qurʾānic narratives, concepts and terminology with Jewish and rabbinic traditions.

Modern scholarship identifies Geiger’s work as an important early contribution to Western Qurʾānic Studies. Saqib Hussain characterises Geiger’s engagement with the Qurʾān as intertextual and rooted in source criticism: Geiger sought to trace Qurʾānic narratives to biblical and rabbinic antecedents. Hussain notes that this approach helped situate the Qurʾān within its Late Antique milieu, while also discussing later scholarly concerns about ‘parallelomania’—the tendency to treat similarities as proof of a direct literary connection before the relationship has been established [8].

Distinguishing a method from the conclusion it yields is essential. Comparing Qurʾānic passages with earlier Jewish and Christian materials can clarify shared traditions and the historical setting in which texts circulated. Yet a parallel alone does not establish direct borrowing, the direction of transmission or the precise means by which a tradition reached a particular text. Such conclusions require attention to chronology, the specific form of the resemblance, possible channels of circulation and the Qurʾān’s own wording and rhetorical purpose. Similarities may reflect oral transmission, a shared cultural environment or a more complex engagement with inherited narratives [11].

Theodor Nöldeke and the Historical Study of the Qurʾān

A second landmark was Theodor Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qorâns, first published in 1860. Nöldeke used historical and philological analysis to propose a relative chronology of Qurʾānic sūrahs, drawing in part on linguistic and stylistic features. In this respect, his method differs from source criticism: rather than identifying possible underlying sources or compositional layers, it uses features of language and style to propose a sequence for the sūrahs. His chronology became highly influential, though later scholars have revised and challenged some of its aspects. The 2013 English edition is not simply an unmodified translation of Nöldeke’s 1860 book; it incorporates revisions and expansions by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträßer, and Otto Pretzl, and Wolfgang H. Behn translated it into English [9].

Nöldeke’s chronology is best treated as an influential historical reconstruction rather than an unquestionable sequence. The 2013 English edition also records later revisions and expansions, not Nöldeke’s original text alone [9].

The chronology itself cautions against a simple, one-way transfer model. Geiger’s study appeared in 1833, Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qorâns in 1860, and Wellhausen’s Prolegomena in 1883 [6, 8, 9]. Geiger and Nöldeke therefore cannot simply be described as applying Wellhausen’s later synthesis to the Qurʾān. Their work belongs to an overlapping history in which comparative inquiry, philology, and historical reconstruction developed across different fields. The dates support a history of methodological affinity and adaptation; they do not, by themselves, establish direct influence from any single biblical critic.

Was Higher Criticism Simply Transferred to the Qurʾān?

The answer is no—not in any simple or uniform sense. The differences are visible in the methods themselves. Geiger placed Qurʾānic narratives and concepts alongside biblical and rabbinic materials, using comparative source criticism; Nöldeke proposed a relative chronology of sūrahs through philological and stylistic analysis; and later work on Qurʾānic readings brought the history of qirāʾāt into conversation with manuscript and textual research [8–10]. These are related forms of historical inquiry, but they ask different questions. Their presence in Qurʾānic Studies shows adaptation of methods and questions, not that the entire field derived from a single model of biblical criticism.

The Qurʾān also has a distinct religious and textual history, including revelation, memorisation, written transmission, recitation and interpretation. Islamic scholarship had already developed disciplines relevant to these subjects, particularly qirāʾāt, tafsīr, and traditions of Arabic linguistic and rhetorical analysis. These disciplines should not be collapsed into modern historical criticism, but they also cannot be ignored when describing the academic study of the Qurʾān. Their existence complicates any account that makes modern scholarship appear to have merely applied external methods to a passive textual tradition [10, 13].

The study of qirāʾāt illustrates this interaction. Mustafa Shah surveys the tradition’s history and authentication alongside modern manuscript and textual research, including work by Nöldeke, Bergsträsser, Pretzl and Arthur Jeffery [10]. This is a conversation between traditions and methods, not a simple replacement of one by the other.

From “Influence” to Intertextuality

One important development in contemporary scholarship concerns how Qurʾānic relationships with Jewish and Christian traditions are described. Some earlier studies framed the question primarily in terms of borrowing, as Geiger’s 1833 title itself indicates. Contemporary research has increasingly discussed intertextuality, shared traditions, and the wider Late Antique environment, while more precisely asking what kind of relationship a proposed parallel can establish [8, 11].

This shift matters because similarity and borrowing are not synonymous. A Qurʾānic narrative may resemble an earlier Jewish or Christian narrative without necessarily reflecting direct textual dependence. Traditions may have circulated orally, through liturgical practices, storytelling, preaching or other forms of cultural transmission. A careful comparison must therefore consider both the earlier material and the Qurʾānic passage in its own literary and theological context [11].

The Problem of Intellectual Assumptions

No method operates independently of a researcher’s assumptions. Historical criticism can ask valuable questions about chronology, language, composition, and historical context, but the answers depend on the evidence selected, the criteria employed, and the assumptions used to interpret it. Source criticism, philology and literary analysis each clarify different features of a text; none should be treated as a substitute for the others or as a guarantee of a predetermined conclusion.

In Qurʾānic Studies, a researcher may examine a passage's historical setting, its vocabulary in relation to the languages of Late Antiquity, or its relationship to earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. Each is a distinct research question and requires evidence suited to it. For example, evidence of a linguistic parallel does not, by itself, answer a question about a passage's date or prove a claim about revelation.

But the methodological question should remain separate from theological conclusions. A historical-critical reconstruction does not automatically establish a theological judgment about revelation. Conversely, a theological commitment does not eliminate the possibility of rigorous historical investigation.

Andrew Rippin's discussion of academic Qurʾānic scholarship highlights questions about insider and outsider perspectives, confessional and non-confessional approaches, claims about truth, and the intrusion of polemical discourse into scholarship. [12]

Beyond Acceptance and Rejection

For Muslim researchers, the history of Western Qurʾānic scholarship presents two equally problematic extremes. The first is uncritical acceptance: assuming that because an argument is presented in academic language, it must therefore be historically established. The second is wholesale rejection: assuming that because a method was developed in a European intellectual environment, every conclusion reached through it must necessarily be false.

Neither approach constitutes critical scholarship. A more productive approach is to separate three questions: What is the method? What assumptions does the researcher bring to the method? What evidence supports the conclusion? This distinction allows us to acknowledge genuine scholarly contributions without accepting every historical reconstruction.

For example, manuscript cataloguing, linguistic comparison, study of ancient inscriptions, investigation of the history of Qurʾānic readings, and analysis of Late Antique religious traditions can produce valuable evidence regardless of the researcher's theological position.

The Qurʾān and the Expanding Field of Contemporary Scholarship

Modern Qurʾānic Studies is broader than the nineteenth-century models from which it partly emerged. The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies surveys scholarship on historical context, language, textual transmission, literary analysis, and interpretation, illustrating the range of questions the field addresses [13].

This expansion matters because contemporary Qurʾānic Studies differs from the nineteenth-century work of Geiger and Nöldeke: its sources and methods have broadened, and earlier conclusions continue to be reassessed.

Conclusion

The history examined here points to three conclusions. First, questions developed in biblical scholarship—how to situate a text historically, compare it with earlier materials and examine its language and composition—became part of the wider intellectual setting in which modern Western Qurʾānic Studies emerged. Second, these questions were adapted in different ways: Geiger compared Qurʾānic narratives with Jewish and rabbinic materials, while Nöldeke used linguistic and stylistic evidence to propose a chronology of the sūrahs. Later work on qirāʾāt and manuscripts has also brought the study of Qurʾānic transmission into closer conversation with material and textual evidence [8–10].

This history does not establish that Qurʾānic Studies simply copied a completed biblical method, that every scholar followed the same approach, or that textual parallels alone prove direct borrowing. Such conclusions require specific historical and textual evidence. For Muslim researchers, the task is neither to accept Western scholarship without question nor to reject it because of its origins. Each method should be assessed according to the question it asks, its assumptions and the strength of its evidence, while recognising the Qurʾān’s distinctive textual history and the Islamic scholarly traditions through which it has been read, recited and interpreted.

About the Author

Asraful Alom is a postgraduate student of Qurʾānic and Related Sciences at Darul Huda Islamic University, Kerala, with an academic background in Economics. His interests include Qurʾānic studies, Islamic intellectual history, contemporary Muslim thought, and the engagement between classical Islamic scholarship and modern academic approaches. He is particularly interested in examining contemporary questions related to Islam through careful study of both Islamic sources and modern scholarship.

Endnotes

1. Andrew Rippin, ‘Academic Scholarship and the Qur’an’, in Mustafa Shah and Muhammad Abdel Haleem, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199698646.013.41.
2. Jetze Touber, ‘Spinoza’s Biblical Criticism’, in Spinoza and Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 30–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198805007.003.0002.
3. Anthony Grafton, ‘Spinoza’s Hermeneutics: Some Heretical Thoughts’, in Dirk van Miert, Henk Nellen, Piet Steenbakkers and Jetze Touber, eds., Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 177–196. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198806837.003.0009.
4. Timothy Twining, ‘Richard Simon and the Remaking of Seventeenth-Century Biblical Criticism’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (2018): 421–487. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304003.
5. Patrick J. Lambe, ‘Biblical Criticism and Censorship in Ancien Régime France: The Case of Richard Simon’, Harvard Theological Review 78, nos. 1–2 (1985): 149–177. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816000027425.
6. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1883); Reinhard G. Kratz, ‘Eyes and Spectacles: Wellhausen’s Method of Higher Criticism’, Journal of Theological Studies 60, no. 2 (2009): 381–402. https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flp038.
7. Rippin, ‘Academic Scholarship and the Qur’an’, 26–38.
8. Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? Eine von der Königl. Preussischen Rheinuniversität gekrönte Preisschrift (Bonn: F. Baaden, 1833); Saqib Hussain, ‘Adam and the Names’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 88, no. 1 (2025): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X24000600.
9. Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorâns (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1860); Theodor Nöldeke, Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträßer and Otto Pretzl, The History of the Qurʾān, trans. Wolfgang H. Behn (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
10. Mustafa Shah, ‘The Corpus of Qur’anic Readings (qirāʾāt): History, Synthesis, and Authentication’, in Mustafa Shah and Muhammad Abdel Haleem, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 194–216. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199698646.013.47.
11. Saqib Hussain, ‘Adam and the Names’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 88, no. 1 (2025): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X24000600.
12. Rippin, ‘Academic Scholarship and the Qur’an’, 26–38.
13. Mustafa Shah and Muhammad Abdel Haleem, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199698646.001.0001

AI Use Declaration: AI tools were used during revision for language refinement and structural editing of the author’s existing manuscript.