Several verses particularise which prophet was given what: David is given ḥikmah only (Q 2:251; 38:20), while Jesus is associated with kitāb and ḥikmah (Q 3:48; 5:110; 19:30; 43:63). Moses is never said to have been given ḥikmah. Rather, he is only given the kitāb (e.g., Q 2:53, 2:87, 17:2, 23:49, and 25:35). John is also given the kitāb in one verse (Q 19:12). Finally, Muhammad is given both kitāb and ḥikmah (e.g., Q 2:129; 2:151; 3:164; 62:2). In the case of John, he is only ever told to “hold on” or “take” (khudh) the kitāb with firmness (bi-quwwah), a locution frequently used for the Israelites in relation to receiving the Torah, for instance, “And We wrote for him [i.e., Moses] in the tablets advice concerning all things and an elaboration of all things, [saying], ‘Hold on to them (khudhūhā) with firmness (bi-quwwah), and bid your people to hold on (yaʾkhudhū) to the best of [what is in] them. Soon I shall show you the abode of the transgressors’” (Q 7:145; cf. Q 2:63, 93; 7:171). It seems that John in Q 19, like the Israelites before him, is being instructed to strictly adhere to the kitāb of Moses, rather than being given a separate kitāb.
As for Jesus, in two of the four verses where he is associated with the kitāb, he is taught it (Q 3:48; 5:110). This is very different from the language employed in relation to Moses and Muhammad, who are “given” the book, or to whom it is “sent down,” or “revealed” (e.g., for Moses, Q 2:53, 6:91; for Muhammad, Q 3:3, 29:45). In the remaining two verses, Jesus is indeed “given” the kitāb (Q 3:79, 19:30), but both of these are part of the kitāb/ḥukm/nubuwwah group of verses discussed in chapter 2, which, as I discussed there on the basis of Goudarzi’s research, stand for the Israelite tradition of Torah and prophecy. Far from showing Jesus to have been the recipient of a separate kitāb, these verses show that Jesus was an inheritor of the Israelite tradition of prophecy, grounded in the kitāb of Moses. Thus, the pattern that emerges is that Moses is given the kitāb, David and Jesus are given ḥikmah, and Muhammad is given both kitāb and ḥikmah. Importantly, these four are both the only specific recipients of kitāb or ḥikmah (i.e., discounting verses that seem to generalise the recipients of kitāb and ḥikmah to all prophets, or to all of Abraham’s descendants, such as Q 3:81 and 4:54), and the only recipients of a specific scripture in the Qur’an. As for the ṣuḥuf of Abraham and Moses, mentioned in Q 53:36–37 and 87:91, this seems to be shorthand for the Bible, rather than a separate revelatory scripture. See Sinai, “An Interpretation of Sūrat Al-Najm,” 16–18.
This suggests that we can divide the Qur’an’s scripturology into a kitāb revelation to Moses, two subsequent ḥikmah revelations to David and Jesus, and finally a unification of the two types of revelation in the Qur’an, which is both kitāb and ḥikmah. The remainder of this section will attempt to provide evidence that this is indeed the case.