Medieval Christian readers studied the Qur’an’s internal play of divine and human speaking voices.

Evidence

Readers of this Book should note that God Himself, so Muhammad pretended, wrote this Law with His own hand and delivered it to the aforementioned Prophet to preach to the world. He said that he had never been able to read, or to know letters, lest it should have been thought to have been composed by him. In spite of this, in speaking he assumed a variety of persons; now indeed he speaks in the person of God, now of the Prophet, now of good people invoking God and giving thanks to Him, and even, occasionally, of those who upbraid the good people: all according to the difference of places.** ‘Note’, he added with finality, ‘that this Book is the height of authority among them, so that whoever says something against it is killed immediately and without further delay.” — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 226

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the vault thread on how the Qur’an’s textual authority was interpreted, pending against Aziz/Razack material.
• DEFINE: This sketches how medieval exegesis grappled with the Qur’an’s shifting speaking subject (God, Prophet, humans).