The Origins of the Precept “Whoever Saves a Life Saves the World”

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I don’t suppose I was the only Jewish reader to be startled by an October 20 New York Times op-ed column about the humanitarian disaster in Syria. Its author was Raed Saleh, director of the Syrian Civil Defense Force: “a group of volunteers,” as he describes it, “who rush to the scene of recent bombings to try to save people trapped beneath the rubble.” The organization’s work, he wrote, “is guided by an Islamic principle, written in the Quran: ‘Whoever saves one life, it is written as if he has saved all humanity.'”

An Islamic principle? Isn’t the precept cited by Saleh, the startled reader asks, a Jewish one, one of the noblest of its kind, found in the Mishnah as well as other talmudic-period texts? How can it be claimed for the Quran, which was written in the 7th century after the entire Talmud was redacted?