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Every book one Christian or Muslim body leaves out of its canon is received somewhere else: held as scripture, read for instruction, or set apart as neither. Except for one body, which excludes both sides of a divide at once and holds nothing of its own in return.

One Book, Every Position at Once

The Book of Tobit shows the range in a single case. It is held as canonical scripture by roughly fifteen bodies in the atlas's record, among them the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic Church. Five Anglican bodies hold a different account of it: named in the Thirty-Nine Articles as a book the church reads for example of life and instruction of manners, printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of full canon.

A further group of Protestant bodies excludes it outright, following the confessional consensus against the wider Old Testament affirmed at Trent and at the Synod of Jerusalem. Lutheranism and the Nordic Lutheran churches exclude it too, but hold a different account of that exclusion: Luther gathered it into a separate Apocrypha section of his own 1534 Bible, not equal to scripture but good and useful to read, and Lutheran Bibles have printed it there ever since.

The One Body That Excludes Everyone's

Islam's hadith collections divide the same way. Sunni Islam excludes the four hadith collections central to Twelver Shia practice. Shia Islam excludes the six collections central to Sunni practice, among them Jami at-Tirmidhi. Each side keeps its own record and sets the other's aside, which is the ordinary shape of a shadow canon: excluded on one side, held as scripture on the other.

Quranism breaks that shape. It holds that no hadith collection carries religious authority at all, Sunni or Shia, because the collections were compiled roughly two centuries after Muhammad's death and cannot bear the weight the Quran claims for itself alone. Quranism is the one body here that excludes both sides' second canon and is not, in turn, excluded from anyone else's, because it holds none of its own for another tradition to reject.

Where To Read More

• Book of TobitDeuterocanonical BooksThe single book that shows the whole range of stances at once
• Roman CatholicismChristianityHolds Tobit as canonical scripture, declared at Trent
• LutheranismChristianityExcludes Tobit from canon but holds a different account of the exclusion
• SunniIslamExcludes the four hadith collections central to Twelver Shia practice
• Shia (Twelver)IslamExcludes the six hadith collections central to Sunni practice
• QuranismIslamExcludes every hadith collection on both sides, and is excluded from none