The sufferings of Job / Eyyup (His cave in Șanlıurfa)

Jews and Christians alike live with the rather depressing wisdom that Job’s sufferings raise a thousand questions and leave us with almost no answers. It even looks as if God himself has locked all possible answers away. He asks Job

Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?
(Job 38:31)

and we silently add if not –shut up! Deep in our judeo-christian soul we nevertheless carry the unspoken optimism that not the answers keep us moving but the questions. Among life's many questions maybe those of Job are the most prominent that make Jews and Christians go on.


Not so the Muslims. Theirs is a simple story of an obedient yet sickly Job / Eyyup who lives in a cave for some times and gets his disease cured by a nearby spring that miraculously occurs out of nowhere. Cave and well can be visited in Șanlıurfa and a huge mosque next to the place invites to offer a thankful prayer, joined by the local population that wears, men and women alike, headscarves in a wonderfully gentle lilac color.


The Quran contains the complete Bible, so the teachers of Islam. But when I read the many shortcuts that the Quran takes to make a complicated Bible story simple, I doubt it. Or should I better ask: what would happen if the faithful followers of the Mighty Quran, peace be upon it, would begin to study the Bible, peace be also upon it?



In Mardin I asked one of the teachers whose university studies had taken him to Islamic Theology, whether he had also studied the Bible in the course of his lectures. Yes, he had read parts of it. Could he tell words from the Bible that he liked and kept in mind? Yes, he said, the parts (in the Gospel of John) where a Comforter is promised, a Paraklete which according to Muslim exegesis of the Bible refers to Muhammad.

I honestly did not like that answer too much. I had made an offert before and had told him that I liked Sura 103 with the order to encourage each other in the pursuit of truth and patience. His answer was given in a way in which people from my home town tease those from the neighboring town: the best thing there is the view on us…

I will not give up the hope that one day I will meet a Muslim that has read parts of the Bible and has found that it unfolds a deep truth of human existence. He may afterwards go back to his Quran. But he should know that the Quran’s wisdom sometimes consists in an abbreviation.