ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a detailed examination of Q 6:91, a puzzling verse that seems addressed partly to the Jews and partly to the pagans. A close textual analysis of this text and the surah as a whole suggests that Q 6:91 speaks to the pagans alone and that a variant reading of this verse is preferable to its currently dominant reading. The verse also seems to provide an implicit defence of the piecemeal and oral nature of Qurʾanic revelations as well as a simultaneous critique of the Torah’s mode of preservation, a topic that the chapter probes at some length. Finally, I provide an extensive survey of Muslim exegesis of Q 6:91 and show that discussions of this verse in modern academic scholarship would have benefited greatly from substantive engagement with works of tafsīr and qirāʾāt. The chapter ends by calling for such engagement in all studies of the Qurʾanic text.
