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Languages of God: The Word as Decoration But there is an
important difference. The Jews lost their Hebrew as a living
language while the Bible was still in the process of formation.
As a result, some of the last sections of the Book of Daniel are
not in Hebrew but in Aramaic, a closely related Semitic language
spoken by many in the Middle East, including Jesus, in post-
Exilic times. Muslims, on the other hand, never turned away from
the Arabic, because the language and style of the Quran were
early on proven inimitable—and as a result, became the
validating miracle of Islam, similar in importance to the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The veneration of text and
language thus went hand in hand in Islam, and the emphasis on
both was strengthened by an even earlier aversion to figurative
art. Muslims took God’s Biblical prohibition against idols as
seriously as the Jews, and, like t