Who Are the Chosen Ones? The Qur’an’s Correction of the Bible on the Election of the Children of Israel

Published: December 27, 2024 • Updated: January 2, 2025

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Contents

•Introduction •The incoherent chosenness of the Israelites in the Bible •The chosenness of Israel in Western scholarship •The Abrahamic covenant in the Qur’an •Qur’anic coherence versus Biblical incoherence •Qur’anic terminology •The covenant with the Israelites •Chosen and preferred over others •Killing prophets instead of supporting them •The end of the Israelites’ chosenness •Christian adaptation of the Jewish misunderstanding •The Qur’an’s “one nation”•The Qur’an’s “best nation”•Conclusion •Notes

Introduction

The chosenness of the Children of Israel by God occupies a central role in Judaism as it is the main theme in the history and theology of its Scripture.

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) starts with an account of creation that quickly moves to focus on the creation of mankind. One fifth of the way into its first book, Genesis, it moves to focus on Abraham and then his descendants, in particular those from his grandson, Jacob (Israel). The book is effectively a history of the Israelites in which all other peoples are supporting actors. Even God is depicted as being focused on the Israelites more than anyone and anything else. This ethnos is presented as the chosen people of God and the center of His plans and actions.

While early Christians did not hold one view of how the Hebrew Bible related to Jesus’s message, it was accepted as God’s word. Christianity inherited the Biblical concept of the chosen people of God but reworked it to meet its theological needs, presenting the Church as the new chosen people.

The Qur’an confirms that the Children of Israel were chosen and preferred by Allah over other peoples, but it explains this differently from its presentation in Judaism and later adaptation in Christianity. Muslim scholars have agreed that the Qur’an does not present the chosenness of the Israelites as perpetual over all nations. Yet when it comes to the exact meaning of this chosenness, scholars have often spoken about it in general terms, citing various divine favors referred to in various verses. Such general and broad statements do not clearly explain the specific concept of “chosenness” as they do not distinguish between different Qur’anic terms. Studies of the various forms of chosenness in the Qur’an often conflate different, albeit related, terms and concepts.

Translating those already-conflated Qur’anic terms into another language adds another layer of misconception, making the distortion of meanings considerably harder to spot.

This article will try to show that distinguishing between different Qur’anic terms clarifies the exact meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites and related concepts. The result is a simple, coherent, and compelling explanation that corrects the Jewish and Christian misunderstandings of the meaning of God’s choosing of the Israelites.

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The incoherent chosenness of the Israelites in the Bible

The Hebrew Bible mentions several covenants that God had with people. The first of these is the covenant He made through Noah with all creatures that never again would a flood destroy the whole of the earth and those living on it. He set the rainbow as a reminder of this covenant.

In the second covenant, God promised Abraham to make his descendants His chosen people. It is first mentioned when God instructed the seventy-five-year-old Abraham to leave Haran, believed to be today’s Harran in southeastern Turkey, and go to Canaan, which He told him He would give to his offspring.

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From then on, God’s promise to Abraham is mentioned repeatedly, as in this speech by God to the ninety-nine-year-old Abraham:

I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God… As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.
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The Bible later clarifies that it is only Abraham’s descendants through his son Isaac

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and grandson Jacob,

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who is later called Israel, whom God chose as His people.

The Bible describes the uniqueness of God’s election of the Israelites and His relationship with them in exclusive language that effectively makes Him more of a god of His chosen people than the rest of the creation. Here are a few illustrative statistics from its second book, Exodus, which starts with the Israelites being numerous but enslaved by the Egyptians. In Exodus, the expression “the God of” occurs twenty-seven times, all referring to Israelites:

The God of the Hebrews: 6
The God of Israel: 4
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: 3 x 3 = 9
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: 1
The God of your ancestors: 3
The God of their ancestors: 1
The God of your father: 1
The God of my father: 2

There is not a single instance in which God is referred to as also the God of the Egyptians or anyone else. Similarly, Exodus reports God using the expression “my people” to exclusively refer to the Israelites no less than twenty-seven times. So, the various forms of the phrases “the God of” and “my people” in reference to Israel occur as many as fifty-four times in Exodus alone. This tribal image of God significantly conflicts with also presenting Him as the only Lord of everyone and everything.

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Western scholars also agree that the Israelites once believed that each tribal nation had its own god. This is traceable to at least as early as Julius Wellhausen in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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The early Israelites “did not think of YHWH as the only God, but as the mightiest among the gods. His power, though, was restricted to the land of Israel.”

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The Israelites are also said to have worshipped more than one god.

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The Qur’an, however, explains the presence of polytheistic and monotheistic language in the Bible differently. The Israelites’ religion as taught by the Patriarchs was always monotheistic, acknowledging only one God and calling the Israelites and people in general to worship Him. The polytheistic passages in the Bible are extraneous to what Abraham and later prophets taught, representing reflections, distortions, and historical episodes by some misguided Israelites over the centuries. For instance, the Qur’an records that post-exodus Israelites asked Moses to make for them an idol to worship similar to idols other peoples worshipped

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and later, when Moses was receiving the tablets, they made a calf out of their ornaments and worshipped it.

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These episodes are parts of the history of the Israelites but had nothing to do with Moses’ teachings.

Western scholars also look at the concept of election as a product of polytheism, as various ancient nations, including the Israelites, each claimed to have been elected by its god. Early in the twentieth century, Powis Smith suggested a god-nation election relationship was meant to give the elected nation authority over other nations. But as disasters continued to inflict Israel, they could not maintain the myth of world supremacy. The Israelite prophets then developed the common god-nation election to place Israel not as the world ruler but as its spiritual teacher and savior. Rather counterintuitively, Smith argued that the long editorial process through which the Old Testament went ensured that its doctrine of election was ethically and spiritually superior to similar ancient doctrines.

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More recently, Reuven Firestone stated that when the early Israelites became monotheistic and believed their god to be the One God, the chosenness that they once had with their tribal god became chosenness by the universal God. Rather than a chosen people by their god, they became the chosen people by the one God.

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As it offers its own explanation of the Bible’s accommodation of monotheistic and polytheistic passages, the Qur’an gives a completely different picture of the election of the Israelites, as we shall see later.

In making the chosenness of the Israelites the focus of its history and theology, the Bible has two related fundamental problems: it does not provide a meaningful explanation of this chosenness nor does it give a logical justification for it. The following is a typical passage in which chosenness is confirmed but no explanation or justification is given:

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
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The Bible is unclear as to what making the Israelites God’s chosen people means. The awarding of the Mosaic Law cannot be the explanation because the election predates it by centuries. Indeed, being given the Torah is seen as a result of being God’s chosen. The offering of the Torah to Israel was itself an act of divine love for the elected.

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What about the unique granting of the holy land? This could have been a meaningful explanation if this was a case of a feudal landlord giving a group of his servants a piece of land, but it would be absurd to suggest that this could even partially explain the eternal chosenness of a group of human beings by the Divine.

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The Bible’s focus on a land in this world, though, is consistent with its ignorance of life after death.

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The holy land itself is repeatedly praised for its worldly benefits, such as its produce.

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Even piety and righteousness are presented as needed in order to benefit in this world.

The Bible is even more averse to providing a justification for the election, making this divine act arbitrary. The following is one passage, in which God addresses the Israelites through Moses, that captures this silence:

When the LORD your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, “It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to occupy this land”; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that the LORD made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, then, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness; you have been rebellious against the LORD from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place.
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The Bible mentions the evil of the Canaanite nations as the reason for removing them from the land. Yet it repeatedly and expressly reminds the Israelites that they did not deserve God’s decision to replace the Canaanites with them. The passage seems set to explain giving the land to the Israelites, only to end up stressing that there is no justification, condemning the Israelites instead.

Usually, the Abrahamic covenant, when his descendants were first declared chosen, is seen as unconditional by Biblical scholars, while the Sinaitic (Mosaic) covenant, when the Law was given to Moses, is considered conditional. The Bible stipulates that the covenant depends on the Israelites’ obedience to God, using terms such as “commandments,” “statutes,” “decrees,” and “ordinances”:

If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the LORD your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors.
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Yet paradoxically, there is nothing that the Israelites could do, no matter how evil in God’s sight, that would make them “unchosen.” This is why God’s commitment to the Israelites is also described as everlasting. The Israelites might sin and get punished by God but they would never lose their status as His chosen. We may draw a timeline of the Israelites’ alternating prosperity and punishment throughout history, but there is no corresponding timeline of chosenness and “unchosenness.” For example, after the destruction of the northern and southern kingdoms and the taking of their inhabitants into exile, Jeremiah prophesied that God would end the suffering and return the exiled home:

Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. For the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the LORD, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it.
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Significantly, “the God of Israel” still refers to the punished people who had lost the holy land as His people. Triumphant or defeated, rewarded or punished, the Israelites remain God’s chosen people at all times.

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No matter how good any other nation is, it remains unchosen. Christianity changed this Biblical doctrine, as we will see later.

The Bible’s concept of election, as well as the promised land, is unclear.

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The relevant texts are incoherent, so it is not possible to make sense of the concept. But its comparative claim is clear: the Israelites are “the most blessed of peoples.”

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They are better than other peoples and more loved by God. They are God’s privileged people. However, the Bible fails to explain or justify God’s unique election of the Israelites.

The genesis of this confused and paradoxical chosenness is its ethnic nature. God understandably loved Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for their righteousness, yet He inexplicably chose all the descendants of one of those three individuals as His people, “And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them,”

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fully aware that they would be a disobedient people throughout history. This chosenness is described as a “covenant” and does place commitments on the Israelites, yet in reality it is more of a one-sided commitment by God as it is unconditionally everlasting. The writers of the Bible could not deny that the history of the Israelites is one of persistent disobedience and numerous national calamities, which are linked to their rebellion against God, but they were not going to compromise their ethnocentric message either. The Israelites were chosen not because of their righteousness or any particular virtue but because of their ethnicity, the Bible unambiguously states. The inevitable outcome was an incoherent and paradoxical election. This is one Biblical contradiction that the Qur’an explains and corrects.

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The chosenness of Israel in Western scholarship

This section presents a quick review of how Western scholarship has dealt with this core Biblical concept. I will make references to early Judaism, but I will discuss the Christian adoption and adaptation of this notion later.

Jewish, Christian, and secular scholars of all persuasions acknowledge that the Bible’s presentation of the election of Israel is at least challenging, if not incoherent, as I have already shown. Leaving aside secondary issues, for now, the fundamental claim that God, the Lord of all creation, prefers one ethnic group over all other ethnicities and human groupings is intrinsically problematic. This already difficult concept is made even more counterintuitive by the Bible’s insistence that the Israelites were not given this status on merit but sola gratia.

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Many Jewish and Christian scholars have settled for God’s love as the explanation for His choosing of the Israelites.

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This love is “mysterious,” as Kaminsky describes it, because it is “inexplicable.”

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Sanders has noted that God’s love for the Israelites is a constant theme in Tannaitic literature while stressing that this is not much of an explanation.

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Similarly, Novak notes that claiming that God loved/chose the Israelites because He loved/chose them is tautological.

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The unmerited election is explained by unmerited love. The question of why God loved Israel has no answer; hence, the election of Israel remains a mystery. Divine love is called upon to explain Israel’s election, only to end up being another special favor from God that cries for an explanation, “those whom the king loves are greater than those who love the king.”

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A similar attempt at an explanation makes the election of the Israelites a fulfillment of the promise God made to their forefathers.

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One Jewish scholar has advised that, when studying this mystery, we should “avoid an answer that does too much.”

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Ironically, this explanation by mystery is common in books and papers that use the full power of human reasoning to develop sophisticated, defensive, rational arguments of Biblical theology, including the notion of the election of the Israelites.

This may satisfy those who identify with the ancient Israelites (Jews) and those who believe that they are the new Israel (Christians), as this theological doctrine is profitable to them. For the rest of us, including those Jews and Christians who do not believe in the inerrancy of Biblical theology or that it is wholly inspired,

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this love-election circular thinking that confirms Israel’s uniqueness by stressing the arbitrariness of God’s decision is wholly unsatisfactory. God is not irrational and does not engender incomprehensibility or reward incomprehension. Outsourcing the explanation to the mystery of divine love buries rather than addresses the serious problems in the concept of the chosenness of Israel. An inexplicable and unjustifiable ethnic election is an affront to divine justice and God’s equal Lordship of all nations, as David Cline explains in these critical observations:

There is no doubt that the Pentateuch represents God as the God of the Hebrews—God of the Hebrews, that is, in a way he is not God of the Egyptians or Hittites, for example (even if he is God of those nations in any sense at all). This is all right if you happen to be an Israelite and have no dealings with Hittites. You know all you need to know, which is that Yahweh is your God. But if you happen to be a Hittite, or even a twentieth-century reader of the Pentateuch, how congenial is it to encounter in its pages a deity who is bound in this way to just one nation: the nation claims that he is their peculiar deity, and he professes that he has chosen them as his own peculiar people? What is the sense in this arrangement, what rationale is offered for it—especially since the Pentateuch itself regards God as the creator of the whole world? And above all, for our present consideration of God in the Pentateuch, what does this exclusivity say about the character of the deity represented here? The Pentateuch itself sees no problem here, nothing to be excused or justified; if anything, it makes a point out of there being no rationale for the choice of Israel as the people of God. But it does not occur to it that the very idea that there should be just one nation that is the chosen people—leaving the rest of humanity unchosen—is itself problematic. The time-honoured language, and the sense of fitness that creeps over us through long acquaintance with the idea, should not be allowed to soften the sense of shock to the modern conscience (religiously formed or otherwise) that such an example of nationalistic ideology must deliver. Nor should we blur the contours of this distinct figuration of God in the Pentateuch with some pacific harmonization or identification of this God with the universal deity of the Christian religion—or, for that matter, patronize the God of the Pentateuch by excusing the myopia of his vision as a necessary stage in the progress of religion.
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Opponents of this kind of commonsense scrutiny often argue that it is misguided because it applies Enlightenment values to Biblical theology. The problem with critiquing election in this way, in the words of one Jewish scholar, is that the “Biblical text might not be compatible with the now pervasive liberal, democratic, multicultural ethic.”

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Another Christian scholar acknowledged that Israel’s special status causes discomfort to the modern interpreter

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but goes further by noting that even the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not prove that God’s election of them was more than a caprice. The assumption that God’s choice must be fair, he argues, seems to “import a modern concern into the text.”

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Pioneering rationalists, such as Spinoza (d. 1677 CE) and Kant (d. 1804 CE), are accused of marginalizing election by pointing out its contradiction with Enlightenment universalistic ideas, in particular monotheism.

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The application of Enlightenment universalism to the particularistic election of Israel could have been accused of being illegitimate anachronism had Judaism not been a living religion and the Bible not treated today as sacred Scripture. But the often vehement defense of this Biblical concept in modern scholarship is not undertaken in the context of discussing an ancient religion that once was. Indeed, Spinoza did not reject that the Israelites were chosen by God, but he argued for a particular interpretation of that election and that it had ceased.

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Blaming the Enlightenment for questioning the rationality of the chosenness of the Israelites is a misleading defense. Rabbinic literature shows that early Jewish scholars also grappled with the illusive meaning and justification of this concept.

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They tried to show that “it was not odd of God to choose the Jews.” They came up with three answers: 1) God offered the covenant (and the commandments attached to it) to all, but only Israel accepted it; 2) God chose Israel because of some merit found either in the Patriarchs or in the exodus generation or on the condition of future obedience; 3) there is no reason beyond God’s own will.

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The latter was a last-resort position they were forced to take only when a reasoned answer was not possible.

On the other hand, the great twelfth-century Jewish theologian Maimonides almost completely ignored the chosenness of the Israelites. It does not feature in his Thirteen Principles and Mishneh Torah (The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah) and it appears probably only once in his other writings.

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He denied that the Israelites had any inherent, essential characteristic that distinguished them from other nations, arguing that they were made a holy nation by having been taught the Torah.

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Yet, as already noted, the Torah followed, rather than preceded or caused, the election. Maimonides probably found the Biblical portrayal of the election of Israel irrational and indefensible, so he acknowledged this foundational Biblical theme only in passing and tried to rationalize it. His solution might well be a response to the teachings of the Qur’an on the election of the Israelites, so its context might be Jewish-Muslim polemics.

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Furthermore, God’s choosing of the Israelites is not a purely divine matter that is not subject to reasoning, like why He created the universe or why He did so at a particular point. It is not even only a matter between God and that one nation because the choosing of the Israelites meant the "unchoosing" of all other peoples. Even those who defend the chosenness of Israel concede that the choosing is not inconsequential for the unchosen.

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Indeed, it has been noted that the privilege of chosenness could be detrimental to the unchosen. Unconstrained chosenness could portray the Jews as a herrenvolk (master race) and the only possible relationship Gentiles can have with them is to “accept Jewish sovereignty and dominance, be it political or only ‘religious.’” It could lead to “a practical program of coercive dominance,”

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as seen in Zionism. Lohr agrees with critics like Clines that “a God of favourites is dangerous.”

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Kaminsky accepts that the treatment of the Canaanites was genocidal but he rejects the assumption that “ancient Israel’s treatment of the Canaanites was paradigmatic for her treatment of other outsiders.”

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While it is true that the belief in the chosenness of Israel does not have to lead to coercive dominance and genocide, the history of the modern state of Israel shows just how easy it is for this to happen. It suffices to refer to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza and the genocidal language repeatedly used by Israeli officials when referring to the Palestinians, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the slaughter of the Amalekites in the Bible.

One approach to ameliorating the problem of election theology has been to play down the implied inferiority of the unchosen. Kaminsky came up with the creative solution of suggesting that the Bible differentiates between two groups of unchosen, “non-elect” and “anti-elect.” Those who suffered the worst consequences of being unchosen, such as the Canaanites, are assigned the label “anti-elect.” They are “generally seen as beyond the pale of divine mercy and doomed for destruction.” The non-elect, on the other hand, “have a place within the divine economy even while they retain a different status than Israel, the elect of God.”

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Kaminsky goes on to reassuringly note, “In much of the Hebrew Bible (as well as in much of rabbinic thought), being non-elect is in no way equivalent to being damned.”

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Lohr finds this distinction between non-elect and anti-elect useful for reading Deuteronomy.

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However, he confines the importance of non-elect nations to treat “God’s elect with blessing, not disdain.” They “appear to be able to respond to God appropriately while remaining outside of God’s people.”

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Another question that has occupied scholars is whether the election of Israel is conditional or not. Thornhill argues that many scholars, including Jewish Second Temple authors, saw the covenant as involving both conditional and unconditional elements, which “resonates with the Old Testament itself.”

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Sanders disagrees, as does Novak,

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noting that the Tannaitic literature supports the opposite view:

Although God would punish disobedience and although intentional rejection of God’s right to command implied rejection of the covenant, the Rabbis did not have the view that God’s covenant with Israel was conditional on obedience in the sense that the covenantal promises would be revoked by God because of Israel’s sin. The covenant is, in this sense, unconditional, although it clearly implies the obligation to obey.
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Kaminsky suggests that the shock of the exile was reflected in post-exilic texts in the Bible that stress conditional covenantal theology.

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The conditional-unconditional question of the election of Israel is thus an intrinsic conflict within the Bible reflecting the historical development of its texts. Spinoza, for instance, used the Bible to show that “God did not choose the Hebrews forever.”

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As the covenant was unconditional, rabbis believed that God would never cancel it even when faced with disobedience.

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Kaminsky notes, “The vast bulk of relevant texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament affirm that God’s promises to Israel are unbreakable and persist in perpetuity.”

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The election of the Israelites, specifically, is irrevocable in the Hebrew Bible. Although the covenant repeatedly seems on the verge of dissolution, it is always renewed; it is never ended.

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This quick overview shows that huge efforts have been invested by Jewish and Christian theologians to address the internal inconsistencies of the concept of the chosenness of Israel in the Bible and its conflict with basic values, such as justice. One scholar who describes himself as a Christian and a Gentile ends his book on the subject with an honest question:

The criticisms of Schwartz,
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Clines, and others—that a God of favorites is dangerous—may well hold true. But what might be the alternative? I am not altogether sure, but the Bible implies that the God of Israel is a God who takes risks and is deeply involved in the matters of humanity.
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The Bible’s version of history and theology is not without an alternative. The Qur’an provides one.

The Abrahamic covenant in the Qur’an

The Qur’an does confirm that the Israelites were chosen by Allah but, unlike the Bible, it gives a clear and coherent meaning of the election. Indeed, the Qur’an’s correction of the Biblical narrative starts with Allah’s promise to Abraham, which is the equivalent of the Abrahamic covenant in the Bible:

And when Abraham was tried by his Lord with commands and he fulfilled them, He said, “Indeed, I will make you a leader for people.” He [Abraham] said, “And of my descendants?” He [Allah] said, “My covenant does not include the wrongdoers.”
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Allah confirmed that He was going to make Abraham an imam (a spiritual leader) for people because he fulfilled his obligations. Abraham asked for this favor to be extended to some of his descendants as he was wise enough to know such a favor may be conferred on certain individuals, but never on a whole nation. Allah answered Abraham’s prayer and confirmed that only righteous individuals of his descendants would be granted this favor. Furthermore, Abraham did not ask for the favor to be confined to only one line of his descendants.

There is so much to say about the Abrahamic covenant in the Qur’an,

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but I would just like to shed light on one Qur’anic subtlety that is particularly relevant to this article. In the Bible, God’s covenant with Abraham includes the repeated promise to make his descendants a huge nation, “like the dust of the earth”

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and “numerous as the stars of heaven.”

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This is another form of glorification of the ethnic group that is the focus of Biblical theology and history. This aspect of the covenant is so significant that God changed Abraham’s name accordingly:

You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
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This claim is not explicitly addressed in the Qur’an but it is implicitly and eloquently rejected. When Abraham destroyed the idols of his people, this is how they identified him:

They said, “We heard a young man mention them called Abraham.”
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Significantly, this is the only place in the Qur’an where the phrase yuqālu lahu (called) is mentioned before someone’s name. Otherwise redundant, this very unusual expression clearly indicates that Abraham was his name when he was a young man living with his father. It was not a new name he acquired late in his life, as the Bible claims. This subtle observation is further confirmed by the fact that the Qur’an does mention Jacob’s second name, Israel, so it would have mentioned Abraham’s supposed earlier name.

Interestingly, while the Bible claims that God changed Abram’s name to Abraham because his lineage would be numerous, this etymology is not Hebrew. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that “the form ‘Abraham’ yields no sense in Hebrew, and is probably only a graphic variation of ‘Abram.’”

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Similarly, the Catholic Encyclopedia describes the Biblical meaning as “popular word play, and the real meaning is unknown.”

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Some Muslim scholars have reported the Biblical etymology while others have derived it from the Arabic or Chaldean ab raḥīm/rāḥim (merciful father).

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Some Western scholars also have suggested it is Arabic.

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It should be noted, though, that the name Ibrāhīm in the Qur’an is a diptote (mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf)—i.e., treated as a foreign name—although this could be due to it being ancient and unfamiliar to the Arabs then. These are all speculations but what is certain is that the Biblical etymology, which is linked to its claim that the name was changed, is incorrect.

Qur’anic coherence versus Biblical incoherence

In analyzing the meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites in the Qur’an, this article employs the established hermeneutical method: the Qur’an interprets itself. This principle was hinted at in a sermon by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661).

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The earliest exegetical work in which I have seen a mention of it in some form is the commentary of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143), who states that “the best meanings [of verses] are those that the Qur’an points to.”

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Sohaib Saeed Bhutta has traced the earliest direct reference to this hermeneutical principle to Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 728/1328) Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr.

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This interpretive methodology is possible because the Qur’an has one Author, ensuring its coherence.

Conversely, even a remotely similar hermeneutical principle for the Bible does not exist because it is a set of diverse books that were written and edited by many unknown individuals over centuries. Some of the editorial work aimed for harmonization but no effort could have made it anywhere near one textual unit. As noted by John Barton, the Bible is not a monolith but “the record of a dialogue among authors and transmitters of tradition, and contains commentary in many of its books on many others.”

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To quote Shabbir Akhtar’s succinct comparison:

The Quran, unlike the Bible, is not the heterogeneous work of many hands, in several genres, in a trio of languages, in varied geographical locales, stretching over millennia, surviving only in uncertain and fragmentary forms. It is a unified canon, “revealed” in just over two decades, addressed to a man fully known to his contemporaries and to subsequent history, a man living in only two geographical locations in the same country. It was written in one language, the language of the recipient and of the first audience, a living language that is still widely spoken.
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The Bible repeatedly contradicts itself, so it cannot interpret itself. This is one cause of the unbridgeable gap between Jewish and Christian theologies and their respective Scriptures.

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As rightly noted by Barton:

Islam perhaps is the ideal type of book religion, and by comparison with it, Judaism and Christianity stand at a considerable distance from their central holy text.
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Because the Bible is incongruous, extracting a clear concept from it often necessitates ignoring parts of it. While the Qur’an interprets itself, the Bible obfuscates itself. The incoherence, and, consequently, irresolvable tension, that shrouds the chosenness of the Israelites in the Bible is one manifestation of this fact.

Qur’anic terminology

The Qur’an uses five different terms to describe Allah’s favors to the Israelites, including choosing them, listed here in their denominal forms:

ʿAhd (covenant)
Mīthāq (solemn covenant)
Ikhtiyār (choosing)
Tafḍīl (preferring)
Niʿma (favor)

Citing various verses, I will explain how these terms are precisely used in the Qur’an to tell us much about the Israelites. But here is a brief broad overview first.

Lexicographers usually consider the terms mīthāq and ʿahd synonymous,

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as both terms refer to commitments that a party has made under an agreement with one or more other parties. But while mīthāq is very close to ʿahd, it has the connotation of additional confirmation,

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so something like “sworn covenant” or “sealed covenant.” Also, when used to refer to a ʿahd that Allah has with a group of people, mīthāq stresses the obligations of the people under the terms of that covenant, which is why it is repeatedly used in the Qur’an in the formula Allah took the mīthāq from. I will translate mīthāq as “solemn covenant.”

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In addition to being used once to refer to choosing the Israelites, the verb ikhtār is also used once to describe Allah’s choosing of Moses to be a prophet

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and another time for His absolute freedom to choose to create and give creatures what He wants.

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It is not used exclusively for Allah’s actions, as it is also used to describe Moses’ choosing of seventy men for his appointment with Allah.

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In the seventeen times in which it appears in verbal form II, tafḍīl always describes a divine action of preferring individuals or groups over others. Four of these are for Allah’s preference of the Israelites.

While tafḍīl is a comparative term, niʿma is not. The latter is a general term that is used to describe any favor.

Whenever I quote a verse that contains any of these terms, I will mention their romanized forms, along with their translations. This makes the arguments of this article clearer and makes it easier for anyone interested to further study those terms.

Before discussing how each of these terms is distinctly used in the Qur’an in the following sections, I would like to make a quick but important observation. The two main Qur’anic terms for chosenness by Allah for noble responsibilities and spiritual ranks are iṣṭifāʾ and ijtibāʾ. For example, these terms describe Allah’s choosing of certain individuals for the elevated position of “prophet.” Significantly, neither of these two terms is used for the Israelites.

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The covenant with the Israelites

The first observation to make is that Allah’s keeping of His covenant with the Israelites is conditional on their meeting their covenantal commitments:

O Children of Israel, remember My niʿma (favor) that anʿamtu (I favored) you and fulfill My ʿahd (covenant) so I fulfil your ʿahd (covenant), and be afraid of Me.
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Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an does not portray Allah as having any unconditional commitment towards the Israelites. He has no eternal commitment that He is self-obligated to keep regardless of how the Israelites behave. For example, He will forgive and admit to paradise only those who keep His covenant:

Allah took a mīthāq (solemn covenant) from the Children of Israel, and We delegated from among them twelve leaders. Allah said, “I am with you. If you establish prayer, give alms, believe in My messengers and support them, and loan Allah a goodly loan, I will surely remove from you your misdeeds and admit you to gardens beneath which rivers flow. But whoever of you disbelieves after that, he has certainly strayed from the plain path.”
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The terms of the covenant that the Israelites have to comply with may be compiled from various verses. This is one verse:

When We took a mīthāq (solemn covenant) from the Children of Israel that, “Do not worship except Allah; do good to parents and to relatives, orphans, and the needy; speak to people good words; establish prayer; and pay alms.” Then you turned away except a few of you, shunning.
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The terms of the covenant that are mentioned here fall under what is usually known in Judaism as the two tables of the law, the first of which governs the relationship with God and the second the relationship with the creation. The equivalents of these in Islam are ʿibādāt (acts of worship), which concern the Muslim’s relationship with Allah, and muʿāmalāt (interpersonal transactions/dealings), which describe and govern the Muslim’s relationship with the creation in general.

Other covenantal terms include following God’s revelation, making it known to people and not concealing it, not treating each other violently or aggressively, and believing in and supporting the messengers that Allah sends:

Take what We have given you firmly and listen.
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You must make it clear to the people and not conceal it.
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Do not shed each other’s blood or evict one another from your homes.
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You believe in My messengers and support them.
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The covenant is made up of divine commandments that were revealed to the Israelites in Scripture, hence described as mīthāq al-kitāb or “the solemn covenant of the Book.”

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In the Qur’an, “Book” is a universal concept that refers to Allah’s Scriptural revelation to prophets. Accordingly, the concept of a Scriptural covenant that contains creedal and behavioral terms should be expected to be found in Islam as well. Indeed, this is the case, as clear in these verses that talk about the followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ:

Then is he who knows that what has been revealed to you from your Lord is the truth like one who is blind? Only the people of understanding remember. Those who fulfill the ʿahd (covenant) of Allah and do not break the mīthāq (solemn covenant).
⁹⁸

So the concept of covenant is not unique or specific to the Israelites. Contrary to how it is understood in Judaism and Christianity, it is broader than the chosenness of the Israelites. It is certainly not about a promise of a land, even if a certain land was promised and given to them at some point.

⁹⁹

The Qur’an also makes a general statement that inheriting the land is one of His favors to the righteous:

And We have already written in the Zabūr after the reminder that the land is inherited by My righteous servants.
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Whether “land” here refers to paradise, as most exegetes think, or to the holy land or the earth,

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inheriting it is linked to righteousness, not chosenness.

What is that election then?

Chosen and preferred over others

The Qur’an is unambiguous that Allah chose the Children of Israel over other nations:

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Ikhtarnāhum (We chose them), with knowledge, over all peoples.
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Choosing the Israelites over other peoples implies preferring them with certain favors, which the Qur’an also explicitly states:

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O Children of Israel, remember My niʿma (favor) that anʿamtu (I favored) you and that faḍḍaltukum (I preferred you) over the peoples.
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Muslim exegetes over the centuries have agreed that the ʿālamīn (peoples) that the Israelites were chosen over were their contemporaneous nations, not all nations throughout history.

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Yet when it comes to explaining this specific chosenness, various general favors are often cited. One example is in Ibn ʿĀshūr’s interpretation of verse 2:47:

Allah combined in them the kind of good attributes that describe tribes and nations that He did not grant others, which are: noble bloodline, perfect character, sound creed, comprehensive religious law, freedom, bravery, and care from Allah in all of their affairs.
¹⁰⁷

In addition to the fact that attributes such as “perfect character,” “freedom,” and “bravery” are general, not specific, such a statement projects attributes of Israelite individuals on the whole nation. Another example of such a broad interpretation is by al-Bayḍāwī (d. 791/1388):

Allah (exalted is He) gave them knowledge, faith, and good deeds, and He made them prophets and just kings.
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Such general interpretations show clear influence by the mention of Allah’s niʿma (favor) to the Israelites in 2:47. Yet as already explained, niʿma is a general term that, in the case of the Israelites, includes chosenness but does not define it.

Al-Ṭabarī

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attributes to the Successor (tābiʿī) Abū al-ʿĀliya

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the view that the choosing and preferring of the Israelites over other nations refer to the fact that they were given “kingship, messengers, and Books.” The inclusion of kingship in defining chosenness, however, is problematic. First, being self-governing is far from being a distinguishing feature of any nation. Second, while the Israelites were a sovereign nation for parts of their history, they were under direct occupation or a client state of a bigger power for most of their history. Makkī b. Abū Ṭālib

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(d. 437/1045) and Ibn Kathīr

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(d. 774/1372) avoid this mistake as they restrict preferring the Israelites over other peoples to having prophets and divine Books, while al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1272) mentions only having prophets.

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These interpretations of verse 2:47 and others that mention kingship are influenced, explicitly or implicitly, by the following verse:

When Moses said to his people, “O my people! Remember the favor of Allah to you as He made among you prophets and made you kings and gave you what He never gave to any of the peoples.”
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This verse contains a beautiful subtlety that reveals the precise meaning of the chosenness of the Children of Israel. Having prophets and being sovereign and self-governing both benefited the Israelites. However, when mentioning His favor to the Israelites of having kings, Allah described it as making the Israelites kings, while when earlier mentioning the favor of having prophets, He described it as making prophets among the Israelites, even though those prophets were also Israelites. This subtle distinction in wording specifies the meaning of Allah’s chosenness of the Israelites and preferring them over other peoples: He made them the host nation of prophets. Unlike the kings, who are described as Israelites, the Israelite prophets are described as living among the Israelites, who were commanded to support them. The Qur’an has an abundance of such amazing subtleties that reveal various historical and theological facts.

Comparing Qur’anic statements with their equivalents in the Bible particularly highlights the impressive accuracy of the Qur’an and the precision with which it was worded by its Author. This marvel is even more impressive when the Qur’an offers this superiority silently, presenting it in a subtle manner for readers to discover. The marvelous wording of verse 5:20 is one such example. In the following comparable statements from the Biblical Abrahamic covenant, in the first, God speaks to Abraham about himself, and in the second, He refers to his wife, Sarah:

I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.
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I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.
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The Biblical authors and editors mention that God would make Israelite kings, but they show no interest in or awareness of the role of prophets. Yet there is nothing special about having native kings in the history of nations, whereas hosting prophets is truly unique. This is what “gave you what He never gave to any of the peoples” means and why the verse mentions the favor of having prophets before that of having kings. The true meaning of the election of the Israelites as the divine favor of making them the host nation of prophets had been lost by the time the Biblical text was finalized. The exclusive focus on kingship is unsurprising given the obsession of the Bible authors with promoting their ethnic group, making the Bible worldly and ethnocentric. This comparison is one impressive example of how the Qur’an corrects Biblical history and theology. Presuming the Qur’an to be authored by a human cannot account for such subtle precision.

The consistency of the Qur’an further shines when other verses that confirm the meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites are noted. I have already mentioned one verse about Allah’s covenant with the Israelites in which He commands them, “believe in My messengers and support them.”

¹¹⁷

This is another verse confirming that hosting the prophets is at the heart of the covenant:

We took a mīthāq (solemn covenant) from the Children of Israel and sent messengers to them.
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At some points in history, prophets were sent to the Israelites in successive generations, but this was an exception, not the rule. Being chosen to host the prophets, therefore, must have meant not only believing in and supporting them when they came but also preserving their tradition and legacy for future generations after they were gone. Again, this is exactly what the Qur’an says:

We gave the Children of Israel the Book, wisdom, and prophethood; We provided them with good things; and faḍḍalnāhum (We preferred them) over the peoples.
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Preferring the Israelites over other nations meant giving them the responsibility for the custodianship of the prophetic heritage. They were the guardians of monotheism, divine law, and moral code. They were by no means excellent custodians but they were the only such people. It has been noted that while other monotheistic communities may have existed in the ancient Near East, “Israel was the only community that successfully held on to (monotheism).”

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That this guardianship role was for the benefit of all peoples, not only the Israelites, is almost concealed by the Bible authors whose only focus, as of that of the Biblical God, is their ethnos. Yet there are some hidden hints, describing them as being charged with bringing justice

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and being a light to the nations.

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One passage even links this role of guidance to the covenant:

I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.
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Some Western scholars have tried to highlight the significance of such pericopes, arguing that the chosenness of the Israelites was for a mission to the unchosen nations.

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The view is particularly influenced by the Christian belief that the Church superseded Israel as the chosen people of God,

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which is discussed later. It has even been claimed that “Israel did not always understand her calling in this universal perspective.”

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Support for this view is also sought in Second Temple apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature.

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However, it has been claimed that the concept of mission entered Judaism later from other cultures.

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Another critic has justifiably noted that while the concept of mission fits “modern categories of what a faith community should be” and “Christian theological notions of mission,” it cannot be derived from the Hebrew Bible.

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This objection reflects the predominant representation of the election of Israel in the Bible. Yet Isaiah 42:6 and similar Biblical passages are completely aligned with the portrayal of the chosenness of the Israelites in the Qur’an, which is, to use Western terminology, corporate election for service. It is not an individual election like, for example, the election of Abraham or Isaac for the office of prophethood. Each Israelite is free to discharge or not uphold the responsibility of the chosen group, and this response determines whether they are a member or not.

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This unique role that was meant to benefit all people is what made the Israelites a resilient nation despite their small size and the many calamities they faced throughout their history. As a side point, Jewish and Christian Zionists over-focus on the success and good fortune of the secular state of Israel in modern history, presenting it as proof of the Biblical claim that the chosenness of the Israelites is forever. This false argument ignores centuries of national ill fortune and disasters that the Israelites experienced.

The Qur’an distinguishes the Israelite prophets from the other Israelites because it considers the special spiritual status of prophethood, which Allah conferred on them, as their main identity, not their ethnicity as their main identifier. This is why, for example, Allah addresses or refers to Muhammad ﷺ numerous times as a “messenger” or “prophet” but never an “Arab,” even though He does describe the Qur’an as “Arabic.” Indeed, the only time Muhammad ﷺ is called an “Arab” in the Qur’an is in a dishonest argument that the Qur’an rhetorically attributes to the disbelievers:

Had We made it a non-Arabic Qur’an, they would have said, “If only its verses were detailed? [How come,] it is non-Arabic whereas he is an Arab?”
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In other words, prophethood became the main identity of every prophet as soon as he was made a prophet. His ethnicity only identified the people he came from but it no longer served as his main identity, i.e., the identity that truly mattered.

Prophethood is the spiritual office through which Allah delivered the only true religion, Islam, to all people. Naturally, all prophets were “Muslims” (lit., submitters [to Allah]). “Muslim” is another identity, albeit not restricted to prophets, that transcends ethnic, social, and all other identities. It is their only religious and spiritual identity. This is why, for instance, the Qur’an repeatedly states that the prophets were not Jewish or Christian:

Or do you say that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Descendants were Jews or Christians? Say, “Are you more knowing or is Allah?” Who is more unjust than one who conceals a testimony he has from Allah? Allah is not unaware of what you do.
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Judaism is monotheistic but is founded on an ethnocentric theology, while Christianity is universal but not strictly monotheistic given its doctrine of the Trinity. Islam, on the other hand, uniquely combines monotheism and universality. Islam is the religion of the one Rabb al-ʿālamīn (the Lord of all peoples/worlds). The prophets sent by Allah were, therefore, Muslim, not Jewish or Christian. Islam is the original religion that Allah revealed to people; it never changed. Conversely, Judaism and Christianity are later developments and distortions of the authentic original faith that the Qur’an calls “Islam.”

Killing prophets instead of supporting them

The Qur’an and the Bible agree that the Israelites were no different from other nations in disobeying Allah and committing sin. Both Books claim that the Israelites repeatedly disobeyed Allah’s commands. This is another confirmation that the chosenness of the Israelites did not mean they were better than other nations and it refers to their role as the host nation of prophets. The Qur’an mentions historical sins of the Israelites, such as disobeying Moses and worshipping a calf, and sins committed at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an, which include rejecting the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ, concealing parts of their Book, and taking usury. But the crime that highlights their repeat transgressions most is the killing of prophets because it went completely against what Allah had uniquely chosen them for. One indication of the significance of this heinous form of rebellion against Allah is that the Qur’an mentions it as many as nine times.

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This serious failing is reported in the Bible as well.

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It describes the killing of the priest Zechariah, son of Jehoiada,

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who is called a “prophet” in rabbinic writings,

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and the prophet Uriah, son of Shemaiah.

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It also mentions three times in passing the killing of “prophets” in the plural.

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The Bible gives all kinds of trivial details yet it relegates these serious murders to a footnote. This shows how the meaning of chosenness is completely lost in the Bible and how the role of prophets in raising the status of the Israelites is unacknowledged as the privilege is assigned to ethnicity.

The New Testament authors, however, do not share this indifference of the Old Testament writers.

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Paul

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and Stephen the Martyr

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highlighted the killing of prophets. More importantly, Jesus mentioned it several times in a highly critical speech:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, “If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.
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Jesus goes on to describe Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”

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One Qur’anic verse links the Israelites’ breaking of the covenant with the killing of prophets:

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[We cursed them] for their breaking their mīthāq (solemn covenant), their disbelief in the signs of Allah, their killing of the prophets without right, and saying, “Our hearts are covered.”
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This connection is aligned with the Qur’an’s portrayal of the chosenness of the Israelites as being the hosting nation of prophets.

Interestingly, a similar connection is found in a Biblical passage. After running for his life, the ninth-century BCE prophet Elijah complained to God:

The Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.
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While the Bible is confused and incoherent about what the chosenness of the Israelites meant, this pericope alludes to an explanation similar to the Qur’an’s.

The Bible has no awareness of the historical meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites, which allows it to underplay the killing of prophets. On the other hand, the Western dogma that the Qur’an is strongly influenced by Jewish and Christian writings and cannot be more reliable than them leaves Western scholars unable to properly explain the prominence the Qur’an gives to the killing of prophets, despite its remarkable mention in Jesus’s relatively short sayings as well.

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The Israelites were persistently rebellious against God throughout their history. But their killing of prophets was particularly evil because they were chosen to be the nation that provides support and protection for God’s messengers.

The end of the Israelites’ chosenness

For many centuries, the Israelites were chosen by Allah as the host nation of prophets. They were assigned the honorable custodianship of prophetic tradition. Helped throughout history by many righteous men and women among them who followed the teachings of prophets, the nation taught monotheism, divine law, and moral values. Yet despite the support of those wise, pious individuals, the nation as a whole was increasingly failing its duties as the guardian of the prophetic legacy. The failure reached its highest level by the time of the last prophet among the Children of Israel: Jesus.

Instead of living up to their historical responsibility of supporting the new prophet, the Jews rejected and even tried to kill him. Rather than protecting and preserving his message, they became responsible for the loss of his teachings and divine Book. Furthermore, their persecution of Jesus and his true early followers also led to the emergence of a new religion that falsely claimed to be Jesus’s teachings. It was largely the work of someone who never saw Jesus and did not believe in him during his lifetime, Saul of Tarsus, or Paul. This could not have happened had the Israelites discharged the responsibility that Allah had chosen them for.

As imperfect and failing as they were, the Israelites were still the best keepers of monotheism and the surviving teachings of the prophets. This and their centuries-long chosenness, however, came to a complete and sudden end when the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was commissioned by Allah. First, he was sent among the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula, so the Israelites were not the people whose support he needed. Second, he is the last prophet.

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Third, he was given a new divine law, so there was no need for the partially preserved prophetic tradition the Israelites had. Fourth, he was given a Book that corrected the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, which human hands had significantly tampered with:

We have revealed to you the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and having authority over it.
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Furthermore, as Muhammad ﷺ was the last prophet, Allah promised to protect the Qur’an from being corrupted or lost:

Indeed, it is We who sent down the Remembrance and We surely guard it.
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Falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it; it is a revelation from One who is wise and praiseworthy.
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The revelation of the first verse of the Qur’an finally ended the chosenness of the Israelites as the host nation of prophets. The universality of the new message and the amazing speed with which it spread to various peoples and places meant that it never needed the support of any one people anyway. The chosenness of the Israelites was a means to an end, so it was over when the goal itself ended. Allah could not have described that chosenness as “everlasting,” as the Bible claims.

One other relevant piece of information is found in Abraham’s prayer when he was in Mecca:

Our Lord, and send among them a messenger from themselves who will recite to them Your verses, teach them the Book and wisdom, and purify them. Indeed, You are the Mighty, the Wise.
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This prayer was answered when Allah made Muhammad ﷺ a messenger.

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Significantly, Abraham did not think that prophets could appear only among the Israelites. Also, from a Biblical perspective, the Patriarch who was promised the chosenness of the Israelites is the one who prayed, albeit indirectly, for the end of that chosenness. The Bible does not know of Abraham’s life in Mecca. This is not surprising, as the focus of its ethnocentrism is Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob, not Ishmael.

Christian adaptation of the Jewish misunderstanding

Christianity emerged in first-century Jewish Palestine. Its believers accepted the Jewish Scripture as the Word of God but added to it Christian writings, such as the Gospels and Paul’s letters. Christians adopted the Old Testament’s image of chosenness as meaning ethnic superiority, but they reworked it in light of the non-ethnic New Testament. The outcome was two new theologies: supersessionism and dispensationalism.

Supersessionism was accepted by the overwhelming majority of Christians until the last two centuries. According to this theology, the Church is the new Israel as the chosen people of God. Christians replaced the Jews, or spiritual Israel replaced ethnic Israel,

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which is why this understanding is also known as “replacement theology.” A similar term that is at times used is “fulfillment theology,” indicating that Israel was an image of the true chosen people of God that was fulfilled in the Church. The Jewish dichotomy of “Jew and Gentile” was replaced in Christianity by “the church and the world (or those in Christ and those outside Christ).”

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Supersessionism is usually divided into “punitive” and “economic.” Punitive supersessionism, which was common among the Church Fathers, understands the replacement of the Jews as the chosen people as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. Economic supersessionism, on the other hand, stresses that it was always God’s plan to change His chosen people from an ethnic to a universal group.

The Gospels report Jesus’s rejection of the significance of the Israelites’ descent from Abraham, arguing that “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

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But the main source of supersessionism is Paul who claimed that “not all Israelites truly belong to Israel,” in the same way “not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants” but only those “through Isaac.”

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Abraham now is “the ancestor of all who believe,” circumcised (Jews) or uncircumcised (Gentiles).

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Paul believed that faith in the crucified Christ defined chosenness by God, thus replacing the Biblical particularistic election with a universalistic one.

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Supersessionists also usually find support for this position in the Epistle to the Hebrews,

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which quotes the following passage from the Old Testament:

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
¹⁶²

Yet while God’s words to Jeremiah talk about a new covenant, it would still be with the Israelites. This passage also enforces the role of the Law, rather than diminishing or even abolishing it as was done in Christianity. Referring to replacing ethnic Israel with the Church, replacement theology is effectively the replacement of a fundamental Biblical theological doctrine with a new, Christian one.

Some supersessionists believe that Israel will experience salvation. Paul’s letter to the Romans is usually quoted to support this view.

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Significantly, all supersessionists believe that there is no restoration of Israel.

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This is a major difference between supersessionism and dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism is usually traced back to the Bible teacher John Nelson Darby (1800–1882). In the early twentieth century, the Scofield Reference Bible by Cyrus Scofield (1843–1921) popularized dispensationalism in America. Dispensationalism, which is now very popular and widespread, divides history into distinct periods, or dispensations, in each of which God has a different plan for humanity. It claims that both the Christians and the Jews are chosen by God, which is why it believes in the restoration of Israel and has played a major role in promoting Zionism.

The paradoxical chosenness of the Bible is understood in Judaism as meaning that the Jews are the best people. Christianity copied this misrepresentation and adapted it for its non-ethnic theology. The claims of supersessionism and dispensationalism that the Church is the or a new chosen people of God, respectively, are slightly different forms of a fundamental misunderstanding. Christians cannot claim to be chosen by God because they were never tasked with hosting prophets and preserving prophetic heritage. Christianity is mainly based on the teachings of Paul, not Jesus. It is not strictly monotheistic, as it deifies Jesus,

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and it does not have a law nor does it follow the Mosaic Law in full.

Indeed, the Qur’an admonishes both Jews and Christians for claiming to have a specially close relationship with Allah based on their respective claims as His chosen people:

The Jews and the Christians say, “We are the children of Allah and His beloved.” Say, “Then why does He punish you for your sins?” Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills and He punishes whom He wills.
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They are subject to Allah’s law and judgment like every group and individual. A righteous or sinful Jew or Christian is no more or less so than someone who is not a member of either faith. Corporate election in the Qur’an does not mean individual salvation.

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This verse exposes the irresolvable tension in the Jewish concept of chosenness and its Christian adaptations. As noted by Fazlur Rahman, in the Qur’an, “no community may lay claims to be uniquely guided and elected.”

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In the last two sections, I will examine two Qur’anic terms that beautifully and succinctly encapsulate the Qur’an’s theology and contrast it with the concepts of election in Judaism and Christianity.

The Qur’an’s “one nation”

Reuven Firestone has suggested that Islam claims “chosenness” for its own believers, albeit in a less exclusive manner than Judaism and Christianity do. He states that the Qur’an makes chosenness shared among all monotheists, giving a place for the covenanted chosenness of Judaism and Christianity within Islam.

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While differentiating Islam from Judaism and Christianity on chosenness is correct, Firestone’s statement fails to distinguish between “chosenness” and “covenant” in the Qur’an and the Bible and also conflates “chosenness” and “covenant” in the Qur’an.

Repeatedly and consistently, explicitly and implicitly, the Qur’an states that Allah does not have preferential treatment for a particular group based on ethnicity or any other discriminatory factor. This is one verse that makes this point completely clear:

O People! Indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.
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Righteousness is Allah’s only measure of a human being. This is confirmed in the Qur’an when it describes the followers of Islam, the religion of submission to Allah, throughout history as representing “one nation.” For instance, after mentioning many prophets who lived centuries apart and recounting the stories of some of them, from Abraham to Jesus, Allah goes on to say:

Indeed this is your nation, ummatan wāḥidatan (one nation), and I am your Lord, so worship Me.
¹⁷¹

So the prophets and their true followers are the one nation of Muslims. This connection of faith and good character, transcending place and time, is why the Qur’an states that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his followers are as close to Abraham as those who followed him:

Indeed, the people who have the best claim to Abraham are those who followed him, this prophet, and those who believe. Allah is the ally of the believers.
¹⁷²

The verse concludes by specifying “believer” as the attribute that identifies the brothers and sisters that the one nation is made of. This is seen in Allah’s emphasis that the followers of the Prophet ﷺ and the past followers of other prophets will all be judged using the same criteria of having faith and doing good works:

Indeed, those who have believed, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabeans—those who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did good deeds will have their reward with their Lord, and there will be no fear for them nor will they grieve.
¹⁷³

Islam judges its followers on merit. After mentioning His revelation of the Qur’an, Allah goes on to say that those who inherited the Qur’an—i.e., the followers of Muhammad ﷺ—fall into three categories:

Then we caused those We iṣṭafaynā (had chosen) of Our servants to inherit the Book. Among them is he who wrongs himself, among them is he who is moderate, and among them is he who is foremost in good deeds by permission of Allah. That is the great favor.
¹⁷⁴

The only distinction between the three groups is faith and good deeds. Indeed, the Qur’an repeatedly stresses that every person is judged individually, not based on any group identity:

And all of them will come to Him on the Day of Resurrection alone.
¹⁷⁵

Islam has no concept of group salvation or group condemnation. When the Qur’an talks about rewarded and punished groups on the Day of Judgment, a group is a collective reference to the individuals whose respective records in this world entitle them to similar treatment in the next world.

¹⁷⁶

The Qur’an’s one nation is made up of all Muslim believers throughout history, that is, the righteous followers of every prophet. It is not based on tribe, race, color, social standing, or any other discriminatory attribute.

¹⁷⁷

It is not a blood connection that the members of this nation share, but they are connected by the combination of faith (imān) and good deeds (ʿamal ṣāliḥ), which the Qur’an mentions numerous times.

¹⁷⁸

The Qur’an’s “best nation”

The Qur’an also has the concept of “the best nation”:

You have been khayra ummatin (the best nation) produced for people, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah. If the People of the Book had believed, it would have been better for them. Among them are believers but most of them are disobedient.
¹⁷⁹

Exegetes have offered four views in identifying the best nation: the emigrant Muslims (muhājirūn), the Muslims who fought at Badr, all the Companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and all the followers of the Prophet ﷺ throughout time. In fact, all four views have been attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās.

¹⁸⁰

In explaining the meaning of “the best nation,” ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb is reported to have said to some Muslims, “Whoever does your deeds will be like you.”

¹⁸¹

This seems to imply that at the time of revelation, “the best nation” described the Companions while also applying to all followers of the Prophet ﷺ.

¹⁸²

This inclusive identification of the best nation is the view of many scholars, including al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī,

¹⁸³

al-Zajjāj,

¹⁸⁴

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr,

¹⁸⁵

Ibn ʿAṭiyya,

¹⁸⁶

al-Qurṭubī,

¹⁸⁷

Ibn Kathīr,

¹⁸⁸

and Ibn ʿĀshūr.

¹⁸⁹

The majority belief that the generation of the Prophet ﷺ is the best generation of Muslims should not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the description “the best nation” applies only to them.

¹⁹⁰

There are indications that the best nation is not restricted to the Companions or the early Muslims but includes all followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. First, the term nation is applied to all Muslims, such as in the expression ummatan wasaṭan (just nation), which all agree refers to all followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ:

And thus We have made you ummatan wasaṭan (a just nation) so that you will be witnesses over people and the Messenger will be a witness over you.
¹⁹¹

Second, when referring to the Companions of the Prophets Muhammad, Abraham, Hūd, or Noah, the Qur’an uses the expression wal-ladhīna maʿahu (and those with him).

¹⁹²

Third, the broad identification of the best nation as those who believe in Allah and invite people to His way clearly applies to all righteous followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, as stated in ʿUmar’s above saying.

The “best nation,” which represents all righteous followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, is, therefore, a subset of the “one nation” of all genuine Muslims throughout history. Like the “one nation” of Muslims, the Qur’an’s “best nation” is not a group that is open to some people but closed to others, but it is open to every person. Anyone can join the best nation by following Allah’s commandments. Indeed, after mentioning the best nation, verse 3:110 goes on to make it clear that while the Jews and Christians who are disobedient to Allah do not belong to the best nation, those who obey Him by following the Prophet ﷺ do.

History has confirmed the accuracy of the Qur’an’s description of the nation of Muhammad ﷺ as the best nation as his followers have become by far the most successful nation in preserving and spreading the message of the oneness of Allah. The other enduring monotheistic nation, which is the followers of the Prophet Moses, was limited and undermined by the corruption of its original teachings, including making it ethnocentric. Christianity, on the other hand, did not preserve the pure monotheism that Jesus taught. Both faiths have other problems with the scriptures and traditions they follow, as already explained. That the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ gifted the world its best nation is the reason why he is the last Messenger.

Conclusion

The Hebrew Bible presents the Israelites as God’s exclusive people, whom He loved more than any other nation and has an eternal covenant with. Yet it fails to give a meaningful explanation of this chosenness or justify it. In fact, it paints an incoherent image of this divine chosenness of an ethnic group.

Christianity inherited the Jewish paradoxical concept of chosenness, removed its ethnic identity, and applied it to its own followers. In other words, Christianity borrowed a meaningless claim and assigned to it a meaning that suited its needs.

As it does with many Jewish and Christian historical and theological matters, the Qur’an corrects the Bible’s presentation of the chosenness of the Israelites and provides a clear, logical, and coherent explanation. It confirms Allah’s choosing (ikhtiyār) and preferring (tafḍīl) of the Israelites over other peoples, explaining that this collective favor (niʿma) meant that Allah chose them as a host nation of prophets and the guardians of prophetic heritage over the centuries. This is one element of His covenant (ʿahd) and solemn covenant (mīthāq) with them, which also contained creedal and behavioral terms that applied to all Israelites individually.

For over two millennia, the Israelites/Jews were the carriers of prophetic heritage, including monotheism and the divine law, albeit imperfect carriers. This responsibility and privilege ended when Muhammad ﷺ was sent as a prophet. The Qur’an explains that the only criterion that Allah uses to differentiate between people is piety. It describes all righteous individuals in history, meaning Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad ﷺ, and all other prophets and their followers, as “one nation” of Muslims. The Book of Allah also calls the “best nation” all those who follow the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, being Allah’s last prophet and the culmination of His line of messengers, and invite people to the way of Allah.

Notes

1 While the terms “Israelites” and “Jews” are related and often used interchangeably, they are different. I will use “Israelites” for the ancient ethnic group and “Jews” when referring to them in later times and to their faith. A detailed discussion of the differences and overlap between these terms is outside the scope of this article.

2 Umm Hānī Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, al-Iṣṭifāʾ fī al-Qurʾān al-karīm: Dirāsa mawḍuʿiyya (Maktabat al-Rushd, 2011).

3 NRSV, Gen. 9:9–17.

4 NRSV, Gen. 12:7.

5 NRSV, Gen. 17:6–10.

6 NRSV, Gen. 17:19–21.

7 NRSV, Gen. 35:12.

8 David Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 200.

9 Julius Wellhausen, “Israel,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature, 9th ed. (Adam and Charles Black, 1898), 399.

10 Nathan MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of “Monotheism” (Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 26.

11 Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002); MacDonald, Deuteronomy.

12 Qur’an 7:138.

13 Qur’an 7:148–50.

14 J. M. Powis Smith, “The Chosen People,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 45, no. 2 (1910).

15 Reuven Firestone, Who Are the Real Chosen People? The Meaning of Chosenness in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2008), 13–30.

16 NRSV, Deu. 7:6.

17 Joel S. Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Abingdon Press, 2007), 88.

18 This article’s interest in the related concepts of “holy land” and “promised land” is confined to pointing out that they do not help in providing a meaningful explanation of the chosenness of the Israelites.

19 The lone clear reference to life after death in the Hebrew Bible is this, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” NRSV, Dan. 12:2. The Book of Daniel was written no earlier than the second century BCE, so this passing reference has no bearings on the Bible as a whole.

20 E.g., NRSV, Deu. 11:10–15.

21 NRSV, Deu. 9:4–7 (emphasis mine).

22 E.g., NRSV, Deu. 7:12.

23 NRSV, Jer 30:2–3.

24 David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 123–24.

25 Ira Sharkansky, Governing Israel: Chosen People, Promised Land, and Prophetic Tradition (Routledge, 2005), 6–8.

26 E.g., NRSV, Deu. 7:14.

27 E.g., NRSV, Deu. 4:37.

28 Novak, Election of Israel, 115–16.

29 George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim, vol. 2 and 3 (Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 95; Jon D. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2016), 48; Sigurd Grindheim, The Crux of Election: Paul’s Critique of the Jewish Confidence in the Election of Israel (Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 12, 33.

30 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 194.

31 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Fortress Press, 2017), 101–4.

32 Novak, Election of Israel, 116.

33 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 101.

34 Grindheim, Crux of Election, 12; Marvin A. Sweeney, “Jewish Biblical Theology,” in The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship, ed. Frederick E. Greenspahn (New York University Press, 2008), 200.

35 Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel (Harper and Row Publishers, 1989), 58.

36 There is a growing discomfort with the concept that the Jews are the elect people of God even among Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Jews. Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 194.

37 Clines, Interested Parties, 200–201.

38 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 7.

39 Joel N. Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 33.

40 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 199.

41 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 3.

42 Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Jonathan Israel, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 43–56.

43 Levenson, Love of God, 42–48.

44 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 87.

45 Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (State University of New York Press, 1991), 89–90.

46 Kellner, Maimonides, 92.

47 Maimonides was a Sephardic rabbi who was born in Córdoba, al-Andalus, and later lived in Morocco and Egypt. He was familiar with Islamic thought and was influenced by Muslim philosophers and theologians.

48 Wyschogrod, Body of Faith, 60, 64.

49 Novak, Election of Israel, 247.

50 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 199.

51 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 11–12.

52 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 4.

53 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 5.

54 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 198.

55 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 196–97.

56 A. Chadwick Thornhill, The Chosen People: Election, Paul, and Second Temple Judaism (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 20.

57 Novak, Election of Israel, 123–24.

58 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 96–97.

59 Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, 88.

60 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 54.

61 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 95; Novak, Election of Israel, 123–24.

62 Joel S. Kaminsky, “Can Election Be Forfeited?,” in The Call of Abraham: Essays on the Election of Israel in Honor of Jon D. Levenson, ed. Gary A. Anderson and Joel S. Kaminsky (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 61.

63 Levenson, Love of God, 58.

64 Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (The University of Chicago Press, 1997).

65 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 199.

66 Qur’an 2:124.

67 See Louay Fatoohi, “Abraham’s Covenant: A Qur’anic Correction of Biblical History and Theology,” YouTube video, February 6, 2024, https://youtu.be/uAa6T7iyZK0.

68 NRSV, Gen. 13:16.

69 NRSV, Gen. 26:4.

70 NRSV, Gen. 17:4–5.

71 Qur’an 21:60.

72 https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/360/.

73 https://www.ccel.org/ccel/herbermann/cathen01.html?term=abraham.

74ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-wajīz fī tafsīr al-kitāb al-ʿazīz, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2001), verse 2:124; Muḥammad al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qur’an, ed. ʿAbd Allah al-Turkī (Muʾssasat al-Risāla, 2006), verse 2:124; Maḥmūd al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-maʿānī, ed. ʿAlī ʿAṭiyya (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), verse 2:124; Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀshūr, Tafsīr al-taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr (al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-l-Nashr, 1984), verse 2:124.

75 Metin Teke, “Sarah’s Gāreš and Abraham’s Šellach of Hagar: Expulsion or Apostolic Mission?,” Journal of Religion and Theology 6, no. 1 (2024): 27–28.

76 ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, Nahj al-balāgha, ed. ʿAbd Allah al-Ṭabbāʿ and ʿUmar al-Ṭabbāʿ (Muʾassasat al-Maʿārif, 1990), 337.

77 Jār Allah al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, ed. ʿĀdil ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muʿawwaḍ, 6 vols. (Maktabat al-ʿUbaykān, 1998), verse 30:23.

78 Sohaib Saeed Bhutta, “Intraquranic Hermeneutics: Theories and Methods in Tafsīr of the Qurʾān through the Qurʾān” (PhD diss., University of London, 2017), 24.

79 John Barton, A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths (Penguin, 2019), 2.

80 Shabbir Akhtar, The Quran and the Secular Mind: A Philosophy of Islam (Routledge, 2008), 123.

81 In Christianity, the divinity of Jesus is one claim that Scripture not only does not support but also refutes.

82 Barton, A History of the Bible, 3.

83 See “ʿ-h-d” entry in Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, ed. ʿAbd Allah al-Kabīr, Muḥammad Ḥasab Allah, and Hāshim al-Shādhilī (Dār al-Maʿārif, n.d.), 4:3148–51.

84 See “w-th-q” entry in Aḥmad Ibn Fāris, Muʿjam maqāyīs al-lugha, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn (Dār al-Fikr, n.d.); Aḥmad al-Ḥalabī, “w-th-q,” in ʿUmdat al-ḥuffāẓ fī tafsīr ashraf al-alfāẓ, ed. Muḥammad ʿUyūn al-Sūd (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1996).

85 For the use of the terms mīthāq and ʿahd for other covenants in the Qur’an, see Joseph Lumbard, “Covenant and Covenants in the Qur’an,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 17, no. 2 (2015).

86 Qur’an 20:13.

87 Qur’an 28:68.

88 Qur’an 7:155.

89 This is all that needs stating for the purpose of this article.

90 Qur’an 2:40.

91 Qur’an 5:12.

92 Qur’an 2:83.

93 Qur’an 2:93.

94 Qur’an 3:187.

95 Qur’an 2:84.

96 Qur’an 5:12.

97 Qur’an 7:169.

98 Qur’an 13:19–20.

99 Qur’an 7:137.

100 Qur’an 21:105.

101 Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-Turkī, 24 vols. (Dār Hajr, 2001), verse 21:105; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, 32 vols. (Dār al-Fikr li-l-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 1981), verse 21:105; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr, verse 21:105.

102 Qur’an 44:32. Anti-Jewish sentiments have made some authors claim that preferring the Children of Israel was not over all peoples then, as the Qur’an clearly states, but over specific peoples, such as Pharaoh and his court. ʿAfīf Ṭabbāra, al-Yahūd fī al-Qur’an (Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1984), 39.

103 Qur’an 44:32.

104 Also, Qur’an 45:16, 7:140.

105 Qur’an 2:47, 122.

106 For instance, this is the understanding of the first generations of Muslims, as reported by al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/922); later scholars, such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 604/1207); and modern exegetes, such as Ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1393/1973).

107 Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr, verse 2:47.

108 Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl wa asrār al-taʾwīl, ed. Muḥammad Ḥallāq and Maḥmūd al-Aṭrash (Dār al-Rāshīd, 2000), verse 2:47.

109 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ, verse 2:47.

110 He embraced Islam as a young man during the caliphate of Abū Bakr and died around the end of the first century of hijra/seventh century CE.

111 Abū Muḥammad Makkī b. Abū Ṭālib, al-Hidāya ilā bulūgh al-nihāya (Jāmiʿat al-Shāriqa, 2008), verse 2:47.

112 ʿImād al-Dīn Ismāʿīl Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’an al-ʿAẓīm, 15 vols. (Muʾassasat Qurṭuba, 2000), verse 2:47.

113 Al-Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, verse 2:47.

114 Qur’an 5:20.

115 NRSV, Gen. 17:6.

116 NRSV, Gen. 17:16.

117 Qur’an 5:12.

118 Qur’an 5:70.

119 Qur’an 45:16.

120 Firestone, Who Are the Real Chosen People?, 21.

121 NRSV, Isa. 42:1.

122 NRSV, Isa. 49:6.

123 NRSV, Isa. 42:6 (emphasis mine).

124 Smith, “The Chosen People,” 82.

125 Temjen Imchen, “The Election of Israel: A Theological Critique,” Indian Journal of Theology 43, no. 1/2 (2001): 26–27.

126 Bernhard Anderson, “God, OT View of,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Abingdon Press, 1196), 429.

127 Thornhill, The Chosen People, 259.

128 Firestone, Who Are the Real Chosen People?, 115–21.

129 Lohr, Chosen and Unchosen, 33.

130 The concept of corporate election is often conflated with individual election in Jewish and Christian theology, in particular when it is linked to individual salvation. See, for instance, Brian Abasciano, “Clearing Up Misconceptions About Corporate Election,” Ashland Theological Journal 41 (2009).

131 Qur’an 41:44.

132 Qur’an 2:140. Also, Qur’an 3:67.

133 Qur’an 2:61, 87, 91; Qur’an 3:21, 112, 181, 183; Qur’an 4:155; Qur’an 5:70.

134 Louay Fatoohi, “The Non-Crucifixion Verse: A Historical, Contextual, and Linguistic Analysis,” American Journal of Islam and Society 40, no. 1/2 (2023): 62–64.

135 NRSV, 2 Chron. 24:17–22.

136 The Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57b.

137 NRSV, Jer. 26:20–24.

138 NRSV, 1 Kings 18:4, 19:10; Neh. 9:26.

139 By the middle of the second century, Bishop Melito of Sardis had called the Tanakh “the Old Testament” and in the following century the Christian writer Tertullian introduced the term “New Testament.”

140 NRSV, 1 Thess. 2:15; Rom. 11:3.

141 NRSV, Acts 7:52.

142 NRSV, Matt. 23:29–36 (emphasis mine); also, Luke 11:46–51.

143 NRSV, Matt. 23:37; also, Luke 13:34.

144 An implicit link is also found in Qur’an 5:70.

145 Qur’an 4:155.

146 NRSV, 1 Kings 19:10 (emphasis mine).

147 Gabriel Said Reynolds, “On the Qur’ān and the Theme of the Jews as ‘Killers of the Prophets,’” al-Bayan 10, no. 2 (2012).

148 Qur’an 33:40.

149 Qur’an 5:48.

150 Qur’an 15:9.

151 Qur’an 41:42.

152 Qur’an 2:129.

153 Qur’an 2:151; Qur’an 3:164; Qur’an 62:2.

154 Rolf Rendtorff, “A Christian Approach to the Theology of Hebrew Scriptures,” in Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky (Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 147.

155 Jon D. Levenson, “Liberation Theology and the Exodus,” in Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky (Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 225.

156 NRSV, Matt. 3:9; Luke 3:8.

157 NRSV, Rom. 9:6–7.

158 NRSV, Rom. 4:11–12.

159 Craig A. Evans, “Exodus in the New Testament: Patterns of Revelation and Redemption,” in The Book of Exodus, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Craig A. Evans, and Joel N. Lohr (Brill, 2014), 454–56.

160 NRSV, Heb. 8.

161 After Solomon, the kingdom split into a northern kingdom, which retained the name Israel, and a southern kingdom named after the tribe of Judah, in which most of the population lived.

162 NRSV, Jer. 31:31–33.

163 NRSV, Rom. 9–11.

164 Michael J. Vlach, “Various Forms of Replacement Theology,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 20, no. 1 (2009).

165 Qur’an 5:73, 116.

166 Qur’an 5:18.

167 Spinoza noted that the election of the Jews was due to the form of their society and good fortune. So their election was corporate, not individual. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 46, 49.

168 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 165.

169 Firestone, Who Are the Real Chosen People?, 84.

170 Qur’an 49:13.

171 Qur’an 21:92, Qur’an 23:52.

172 Qur’an 3:68.

173 Qur’an 2:62.

174 Qur’an 35:32.

175 Qur’an 19:95. Also, Qur’an 6:94; Qur’an 19:80.

176 For instance, aṣḥāb al-janna (the people of paradise) and aṣḥāb al-nār (the people of the fire), which are used throughout the Qur’an. See also, al-sābiqūn (the forerunners), aṣḥāb al-yamīn/al-maymana (the people of the right), and aṣḥāb al-shimāl/al-mashʾama (the people of the left) mentioned in Qur’an 56:8–10, 38, 41, 90–91.

177 To quote one Western scholar, “The Qurʾan does not apply the concept of election to its own believing community in the same way that Jews and Christians at the time did… But in the Qurʾan, God guides individuals who believe the Qurʾan’s message and act rightly, no matter what community they belong to.” Michael Wesley Graves, “The Upraised Mountain and Israel’s Election in the Qurʾan and Talmud,” Comparative Islamic Studies 11, no. 2 (2018): 168.

178 Its most occurrences are in the group description al-ladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilū al-ṣāliḥāt (those who believe and do good deeds); e.g., Qur’an 2:25, 82.

179 Qur’an 3:110. When certain Companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ called on some Jews to embrace Islam, the latter responded by claiming that Judaism was better than the new religion. This incident is given as the cause of the revelation of the verse, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Wāḥidī, Asbāb al-nuzūl, ed. Kamāl Zaghlūl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1991), 121. But, obviously, the verse is talking about a community.

180 Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-masīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr (Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2002), verse 3:110.

181 Al-Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, verse 3:110.

182 ʿUmar is also reported to have made the contradictory statement that “the best nation” refers to “the earliest of us, not the later ones.” Al-Ḥusayn b. Masʿūd al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-tanzīl, ed. Muḥammad al-Nimr, ʿŪthmān Ḍumayriyya, and Salmān Al-Ḥarash (Dār Ṭība, 1989), verse 3:110.

183 Markaz al-Dirāsāt wa al-Maʿlūmāt al-Qurʾāniyya bi-Maʿhad al-Imām al-Shāṭibī, al-Madkhal ilā mawsūʿat al-tafsīr al-maʾthūr, ed. Musāʿid Al-Ṭayyār (Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2017), verse 3:110.

184 Abū Isḥāq al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa iʿrābih, ed. ʿAbd al-Jalīl Shalabī (ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1988), verse 3:110.

185 Al-Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, verse 3:110.

186 Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrir al-wajīz, verse 3:110.

187 Al-Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, verse 3:110.

188 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, verse 3:110. Ibn Kathīr recounts a number of hadiths that he stresses support the view that the best nation is applicable to all of the Prophet’s followers.

189 Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr. Ibn ʿĀshūr does not support this interpretation as clearly as the other scholars, but this is the view that he elaborates on.

190 The minority view that the first generation of Muslims is not better than all who come later is based on various hadiths that talk about later Muslims who are superior to the early generation, such as, “You are my Companions but my brothers have not come yet.” Aḥmad b. Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī, al-Mujtabā min al-sunan, ed. Farīq Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawliyya (Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawaliyya, 1999), 150. In another hadith, having been asked by a Companion whether there are people better than those who embraced Islam on his hand and fought with him, the Prophet ﷺ replied, “Yes; people who come after you who believe in me having not seen me.” ʿAbd Allāh al-Dārimī, Musnad al-Dārimī, ed. Ḥusayn al-Dārānī, 4 vols. (Dār al-Mughnī li-l-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2000), 2786.

191 Qur’an 2:143. There are hadiths that interpret the expression “just nation” in this verse as denoting all followers of the Prophet ﷺ. Markaz al-Dirāsāt, al-Madkhal ilā mawsūʿat al-tafsīr al-maʾthūr.

192 Qur’an 48:29; Qur’an 60:4; Qur’an 7:72, 64, respectively.