The Qur’an’s Dietary Tetralogue: A Diachronic Reconstruction

Four Qur’anic passages present a formulaic list of four dietary prohibitions, consisting of carrion, blood, pork, and “that over which something other than God has been exclaimed” (Q 2: 172–173, 5: 3, 6: 145, 16: 114–115). This article attempts to work out the chronological order of these four passages. I shall endorse the view of some earlier scholars that the dietary prohibitions in Surahs 6 and 16 are later insertions and that all four passages in question postdate the hijra . By contrast, earlier parts of the Qur’an advocate an attitude of unrestricted consumption of what God has provided and warn against the arbitrary “fabrication” of dietary rules. The overall trajectory that emerges from the analysis here proposed resembles an inverse reading of the Bible, progressing from something akin to Pauline antinomianism to a partial reinstatement of the Mosaic law. The Qur’an’s shift towards a specific set of dietary taboos appears to have taken place in response to Jewish law, polemical comments on which accompany the two putatively earliest versions of the Qur’anic list of dietary prohibitions in Surahs 6 and 16