the Book and the Sunnah, as in His words:

“That is because they followed what angered Allah and disliked His pleasure, so He rendered their deeds worthless.”

And His words, Most High:

“So when they angered Us, We took vengeance upon them.”

And His words:

“When he came to it, he was called, ‘O Moses!’”

And the Most High said:

“We created you, then fashioned you, then said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam.’”

And the Most High said:

“Indeed, the likeness of Jesus in Allah’s sight is that of Adam: He created him from dust, then said to him, ‘Be,’ and he is.”

He has also informed us that His words are inexhaustible, saying:

“If the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even if We brought another like it as a supplement.”

And the Most High said:

“If all the trees on earth were pens, and the sea, replenished by seven more seas, were ink, Allah’s words would not be exhausted. Indeed, Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.”

The followers of the early generations say that Allah’s speech is eternal, meaning that He has always spoken if He wills. They do not say that any particular utterance itself is eternal, such as His call to Moses and the like. These people, however, believed that the Quran and every other particular instance of Allah’s speech are eternal, and that Allah does not speak by His will and power.

They then differed. Some said that what is eternal is a single meaning constituting all the meanings of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran; that the Torah, when expressed in Arabic, becomes the Quran; and that the Quran, when expressed in Hebrew, becomes the Torah. They said that Allah did not speak the Arabic Quran. Rather, either He created it in some physical body, or Gabriel or Muhammad brought it into being. In that case, it would be the speech of that messenger, by which he conveyed the single meaning subsisting in the Lord’s essence, which is