Ma`rifat

A multi-textual study of verses with a covenantal background with the sacred texts of the People of the Book is a window towards a historical-doctrinal understanding of the extra-religious propositions of the Holy Quran. One of these extra-religious verses is the verse of magic (Al-Baqarah/102), which refers to several beliefs of the People of the Book, such as the disbelief of Prophet Solomon, following the reading of the devils and the teaching magic of Harut and Marut, using magic to cause separation between husband and wife, etc. The aim of the following article was to find the covenantal subtext of these propositions. To achieve this goal, the verse was first divided into several parts. Then, by studying a multi-textual transtext with the Testaments and the Talmud, the covenantal subtext of the verse was collected and analyzed. The findings of the study show that verse 102 of Surah Al-Baqarah is, in most cases, in line with the content of the Testament, although in some instances it rejects and denies the propositions accepted by the People of the Book. The different belief of the Quran and the Testament in this verse is about the disbelief of Prophet Solomon and the sin and fall of Harut and Marut, which it explicitly rejects the former and implicitly the latter. Other parts of the verse are also a detail or summary of the beliefs of the Testament in this regard.