Three books claim to speak for the same god. Each insists it carries the truth, yet each contradicts the others. The Torah, the Bible, and the Quran are presented as divine revelations, but together they tell a story of revision, rivalry, and human ambition. They are not three messages from one source but three versions of one evolving idea.
The faithful call this continuity. Historians call it plagiarism with theology.
The Torah, the foundational text of Judaism, is the oldest of the three. It was written over centuries by multiple authors and redactors, most of whom remain anonymous. Scholars divide its composition into four main strands, known as J, E, P, and D, each representing a different community or ideology. What we now call the Five Books of Moses were not penned by Moses at all but assembled long after his supposed lifetime.
The Torah presents a tribal god, Yahweh, who commands loyalty, rewards obedience, and punishes entire populations for defiance. His morality mirrors the age that invented him: patriarchal, territorial, and violent. The god of Genesis loves sacrifice and detests disobedience. His justice is absolute, but not consistent. He protects Israel while commanding genocide against its neighbours. This is not divine morality but ancient politics sanctified.
The stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are mythic histories designed to forge national identity. Archaeology has found no evidence for a global flood, no record of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and no trace of the Exodus. Yet these tales became sacred because they explained suffering and justified survival. For a displaced people, history written as prophecy offered comfort. It still does.
Centuries later, Christianity inherited this text and rebranded it. The New Testament did not replace the Torah; it repurposed it. The Hebrew god was reimagined as the father of a human saviour. The old covenant was declared incomplete, and the followers of Jesus claimed a new revelation that fulfilled the old.
In doing so, they created theological civil war. Jews saw the Christian reinterpretation as heresy. Christians accused Jews of blindness. Each claimed the same god but rewrote his message to fit its own agenda.
The Gospels selectively quoted Jewish scripture to validate Jesus. Prophecies were mistranslated or pulled out of context. The Hebrew word for “young woman” became “virgin,” and an ordinary birth became a miracle. Paul, more than any other figure, shaped Christianity into something distinct from Judaism. He universalised a Jewish sect into a global religion, but he did so by blending Jewish prophecy, Greek philosophy, and Roman organisation.
The Christian Bible is, in essence, an edited sequel that borrowed its plot, its god, and its moral framework from the Torah while claiming divine upgrade rights.
Six centuries later, Islam entered the stage and announced itself as the final correction. The Quran presents itself as a restoration, not an innovation. It acknowledges Moses, David, and Jesus as prophets but insists they were misrepresented. Muhammad becomes the seal of prophecy, the last and perfect messenger. The Quran recognises the Torah and the Gospel but declares that both were corrupted by human hands.
This is not modesty but monopoly. Islam inherited the Jewish and Christian narratives, streamlined them, and placed Muhammad at the centre. It kept the same god but changed the management.
The Quran echoes biblical myths: Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, Abraham’s trials, Moses confronting Pharaoh. Yet the tone is different. Yahweh, once jealous and personal, becomes Allah, transcendent and singular. The emphasis shifts from story to commandment, from narrative to law. The Quran replaces tribal covenant with universal submission.
But its claims of continuity are undermined by contradiction. Jesus is a prophet, not divine. Crucifixion is denied. The resurrection is rewritten. The Christian trinity becomes blasphemy. Judaism’s chosen people become one nation among many. Each correction deepens division. The three books share characters but not conclusions.
From a historian’s view, the three texts form a literary lineage rather than a divine trilogy. The Torah laid the foundation. The New Testament revised it. The Quran finalised it in Arabic prose. Each author inherited not revelation but reference material. The Bible quoted the Torah; the Quran quoted both. Together they trace the evolution of monotheism from local superstition to global industry.
This inheritance explains the similarities. All three teach devotion, reward obedience, and threaten punishment. All claim moral authority from the same god but express it through different cultures. Where the Torah reflects ancient Israel’s struggle for survival, the New Testament mirrors Rome’s politics and the Quran echoes Arabia’s consolidation of tribal power. Each book is a mirror of its empire.
Linguistically, the Quran is the most refined, written in poetic Arabic that Muslims consider inimitable. The Bible’s Greek and Hebrew sources are more composite and less consistent. Yet beauty of language does not equal truth of message. The Quran’s stylistic perfection proves craftsmanship, not divinity. The Bible’s internal contradictions prove human editing, not cosmic mystery. Both are remarkable human documents. Neither is evidence of a supernatural author.
The idea of one god across three scriptures is often presented as unity, but it is better understood as competition. Monotheism did not arrive as a revelation from heaven; it emerged as a successful political strategy. A single god meant a single law, a single authority, and a single hierarchy. It turned religion into empire.
The Jewish god defended a nation. The Christian god built a church. The Islamic god built a state. Each expansion rebranded the same deity for a new audience. The result is not unity but fragmentation under one name.
The irony is that all three faiths claim Abraham as their father, yet his descendants have fought one another for thousands of years. If there were one god behind these books, he seems to prefer confusion to clarity.
Scholars of comparative religion see the Torah, Bible, and Quran as parts of the same cultural conversation. They are sibling texts written in rivalry. Their similarities prove not divine continuity but shared geography. The myths travelled with merchants and migrants. A story told in Hebrew became scripture in Greek, then revelation in Arabic. Each iteration claimed to be final, and each accused the last of corruption.
This is why the phrase “Abrahamic faiths” hides more than it reveals. It suggests a family, but families share more than DNA; they share peace. These three siblings share a home and still burn it.
If a god did inspire all three books, he appears inconsistent. His voice changes language, temperament, and law with every version. He tells one people to rest on Saturday, another on Sunday, another on Friday. He bans pork in one covenant and blesses it in another. He speaks of mercy, then commands slaughter. The pattern fits human politics, not divine planning.
The simplest explanation is the oldest one: men wrote these books, and each generation remade god in its own image. The Torah’s Yahweh was born in the desert. The Bible’s Christ was born under empire. The Quran’s Allah was born in trade and tribal warfare. None required divine dictation, only conviction and literacy.
What unites the three scriptures is not a god but a question — how should humans live? Each text answers it with certainty, yet their answers contradict. The more we compare them, the clearer it becomes that morality does not descend from heaven but grows from human conscience. The god of these books may differ, but the humanity behind them is unmistakable.
Religion insists there is one god. History shows there are many authors.