53 Preface وَإِذ آتَينا موسَى الكِتابَ وَالفُرقانَ لَعَلَّكُم تَهتَدونَYusuf AliAnd remember We gave Moses the Scripture and the Criterion1 (Between right and wrong): There was a chance for you to be guided aright.(Cf. 8:29) God’s revelation, the expression of God’s Will, is the true standard of right and wrong. It may be in a Book or in God’s dealings in history. All these may be called His Signs or Miracles. In this passage some commentators take the Scripture and the Criterion (Furqan) to be identical. Others take them to be two distinct things: Scripture being the written Book and the Criterion being other Signs. I agree with the latter view. The word Furqan also occurs in 21:48 in connection with Moses and Aaron and in the first verse of Sūra 25, as well as in its title, in connection with Muḥammad. As Aaron received no Book, Furqan must mean the other Signs. Al Muṣṭafā had both the Book and the other Signs: perhaps here too we take the other Signs as supplementing the Book. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong.” (Prelude. Book 4).