Holistic-textual Approach to Qur’anic Verses on Muslim-Jewish Relationship in the Qur’an

The Muslim-Jewish relationship is often associated with tension and antagonism. Authors from both sides who analyse the Sacred Texts on this issue demonstrate that antagonistic and unpleasant relationship between Muslims and Jews stemmed out from the Qur’an. However, this article argues that some of the previous studies on this issue are based on partial insights of Qur’anic verses. Alternatively, it proposes a holistic-textual approach to all verses that relate to this issue. This holistic-textual approach, however, is not sufficient on its own. It serves merely as a basis or a framework, which works hand-in-hand with a historical-contextual approach to understanding the Qur’an. This research demonstrates only the first layer, which is the holistic-textual approach, via the Muslim-Jewish relationship according to accumulated Qur’anic verses on this issue. It analyses 123 Qur’anic verses in which Jews are described in seven different terms. Subsequently, the verses are classified into five categories according to the mode of expressions therein. Three of the categories are considered the major ones, namely positive, neutral and negative expressions. The result of this analysis shows that contrary to commonly held perception, the largest number of verses belongs to the neutral expression category with the total number of 63 verses out of 123. This is followed by 41 verses under the negative expression, 14 verses under positive expression, 5 verses with a combination of neutral and negative expressions, and finally, there is only one verse which combines positive and negative expressions in similar verse.