Mohammad Ghandehari, Independent Scholar
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 2. Characters, Narratives, and Strategies in the Qur’anic Text
Aṣ-Ṣaff 61:14, reporting the victory of a group of Israelites who believed in Jesus over their enemies, has been challenging for both classical commentators and modern scholars. Modern scholarship has regarded this account significantly different from that of Jesus in the New Testament, maintaining that “this verse is not related or reflect not so much anything in the Gospels”. However, there are some pieces of evidence showing that the Qur’an is aware of the story of the mission of the seventy-two disciples in the Gospel of Luke and the Qur’anic verse alludes to Luke 10 (vv. 1 & 16–23). The account of the faithful group in the Qur’an is analogous to the way the disciples of Jesus are described in Luke 10 (their identity, the number of the group and the way Jesus sends his disciples). In both Qur’an and Luke, there is a confrontation between the disciples and their enemy, in which the strengthening that the faithful received from God was spiritual in nature, which resulted in final domination of the disciples of Jesus over their enemies. Addressing these parallels, in this paper, I will examine how the Qur’anic text relates to the Lukan narrative.