Apocryphal Elements in the New Testament and Qur'an

This essay explores how both the Qur'ān and the New Testament make use of apocryphal (noncanonical) or aggadic sources in their presentations of characters known from the Hebrew Bible and how scholars of each tradition, in accordance with their own theologies of revelation and prophecy, have explained this phenomenon. For Christians, both in the patristic period and in the modern world, the main issue has been relating the apocryphal elements to the canonical Old Testament and finding various explanations for the presence of non-Old Testament material. For Muslims, who accept prophetic revelation prior to the Prophet Muhammad but do not recognize the canonicity of any previous Scriptures as preserved, the issue has generally involved explaining why other "biblical" traditions (canonical or otherwise) differ from the Qur'an. In addressing this issue, certain arguments were held in common between Muslims and Christians, but a major difference in approach can be seen to derive from the different relationship each group has to the Hebrew Bible. Both Christian and Muslim scholars in the modern world have shown greater willingness than their classical counterparts to recognize apocryphal sources for their sacred texts and to offer more nuanced theological explanations for how their sacred texts relate to these sources.