Most Muslims will certainly prefer to keep their belief that...

Most Muslims will certainly prefer to keep their belief that Jesus was not crucified, and consider the Bible cor­rupted on that point. For those desiring to meet Christians on a more congenial footing, another interpretation is possible. A more difficult problem for Muslims is the Bible prac­tice of describing God in anthropomorphic terms. The Hebrew Scriptures are especially filled with such passages and the translations into Arabic do nothing to mitigate the problem.

Muslims reading the Arabic Bible thus get a stronger impression of anthropomorphism than is found in the Hebrew. An example is Genesis 6:6. `And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.' The Christian will likely feel comforted by the idea of God grieving for humankind. The Muslim will focus on the problem of God regretting having made man.

The Muslim will note that the text does not take divine foreknowledge into consideration, nor God's unchange­ability. Some Muslims might also be offended by attribution of grief to God. Another example is Exodus 31:17. `It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.' The Qur'anic references to the same event speak not of resting on the seventh day, but of ascending the throne.

The Muslim finds the idea of God needing rest in the first place offensive, and to add to this that God was `refreshed' is outright repulsive. The Chris­tian, on the other hand, may find such expressions comforting in bringing God closer to human experience. It is likely that both Muslims and Christians do the text an injustice by judging it from criteria foreign to it. The ancient Hebrew language is extremely poor in expressions indicating the distinction between concrete and abstract.

Thus words are used in Hebrew with both an abstract and concrete meaning. By contrast, the Arabic language is very precise in making such distinctions. It is easy to miscon­strue the Hebrew meaning of words by giving them concrete connotations where such did not exist at the time of writing. Thus both Muslims and Christians should adjust their thinking. Christians should realize that the Hebrew text is more foreign to their thinking than they presume in drawing anthropomorphic conclusions.