Comparing Quran and Tanach competitions

Every year, there is a worldwide International Bible Competition - Chidon HaTanach - held with the final round in Israel.

Competitors study between 100 and 150 chapters of the Hebrew Scriptures and go through regional competitions to the finals in various age groups.

Here are some of the questions from 2016: (Some of the tests are in Hebrew.)

There are national and international Quran competitions as well. But all of the famous ones do not require the competitors to study the texts - but to memorize them. These are competitions on chanting beautifully. Some of the criteria for scoring in this Toronto competition, for example, are:

½ mark will be deducted for each time the participant is unable to read fluently
1 mark will be deducted for any Hifz errors that are corrected by the participant himself after being informed by the Questioner by the ringing of the bell
2 marks will be deducted if the Questioner has to correct the mistake
If a participant makes more than 3 Hifz mistakes in a question, which the Questioner has to correct, the participant will fail that question.
The Questioner will ring the bell to bring any Hifz mistakes to the participant’s attention.
For Tajweed errors, the bell will not ring but the Judges will mark the mistakes on the mark sheet.

The Jews study the content. The Muslims memorize words and punctuation.

Every once in a while a Muslim writer will point out that Israelis have more Nobel prizes than the entire Arab world combined. This comparison of how the religious of each faith look at their sacred texts - analysis versus rote memorization - is a strong clue as to why this is.

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