Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Yaʿlā said:
Abū Khaythamah narrated to us; Wakiʿ narrated to us; Rabiʿ ibn Saʿd al-Juʿfī narrated to us, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sābiṭ, from Jābir, who said:
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared,
“Relate the reports of the Children of Israel, for remarkable wonders took place among them.”
He ﷺ then began to recount:
“A party from the Children of Israel once went to one of their cemeteries and said, ‘Let us pray two rakʿahs and beseech Allah, Exalted is He, to bring forth for us a man who has died, so that we may question him about death.’ They did so, and while they were thus engaged a man raised his head from one of the graves, bearing the mark of prostration between his eyes. He said, ‘O people, what do you want of me? I died a hundred years ago, yet the heat of death has not cooled from me until now. So pray to Allah to return me to the state in which I was.’”
This ḥadīth is odd. Even though narrating from the People of the Book is permissible, such reports must be confined to what can reasonably be true. Whatever is known—or even presumed—to be false because it contradicts the truth we possess from the Infallible Prophet is to be left aside and rejected outright. Moreover, the permissibility of relating a report does not oblige one to believe it.
Al-Bukhārī alone transmitted—through Muḥammad ibn Bashshār; ʿUthmān ibn ʿUmar; ʿAlī ibn al-Mubārak; Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr; and Abū Salamah—from Abū Hurayrah, who said:
The People of the Scripture would recite the Torah in Hebrew, then translate it into Arabic for the Muslims. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“Do not affirm what the People of the Scripture say, nor deny it. Instead, say, ‘We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us and to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we submit.’”
Imām Aḥmad likewise related—through al-Zuhrī—from [Ibn] Abī Namalah al-Anṣārī, from his father—that he was sitting with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when a Jewish man came and asked, “O Muḥammad, does this corpse speak?” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied, “Allah knows best.” The Jew said, “I testify that it does speak.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then said, “When the People of the Scripture relate something to you …”