Towards a New Reading of the Qur'ān?

An International Conference at the University of Notre Dame

Conference Abstracts (listed alphabetically)

Amar, Joseph, “Dionysius bar Salibi’s Apologetic Treatise: A Response to the Arabs”

Dionysius bar Salîbî's apologetic treatise, A Response to the Arabs, is the longest and most comprehensive dispute text with Muslims that exists in Syriac. Its purpose is to acquaint the reader with the essential facts pertaining to Islam and to provide apologetic arguments intended to refute the challenges of Islam to the Christian faith. However, quite apart from its monumental scope,  the treatise is unique among Syriac dispute texts, first, for the amount of information it contains concerning the origins,
history, and doctrinal development of Islam; and second, for the extensive collection of quotations from the Qur’ān translated into Syriac that occupy chapters 25-30.

I propose to give an overview of the contents of this work and to offer some initial comments on A. Mingana’s controversial hypothesis concerning the quotations from the Qur’ān. These will be based on my forthcoming edition of the treatise, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 615, summer
2005.

Anderson, Gary, “The Fall of Satan in Early Christian Exegesis and the Qur'ān”

The story of Iblis' refusal to bow down before Adam is richly attested in early Christian tradition and probably known (though not directly referred to) in Rabbinic sources. The question I would like to raise is what the relationship of this antecedent material is to the Qur'ānic narrative.

Böwering, Gerhard, “Some Implications of Recent Research on Reconstructing the Qur’ān”

In the last two years two major reconstructive studies on the Qur’ān, written by scholars active in Germany, have appeared, one under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg and the other by Günter Lüling. Both studies, written by scholars on the fringe of academia, are revisions of research previously published but now purified, stream-lined and improved. Adding new material and unifying major theses advocated in his earlier studies, Über den Ur-Qur’ān (Erlangen 1974) and Die Wiederentdeckung des Propheten Muhammad  (Erlangen 1981), Lüling's A Challenge to Islam for Reformation, appeared in Delhi, India, in
2003. Luxenberg's Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran, representing the second edition of the same title (Berlin 2000) with the addition of some changes and corrections was printed in Berlin in 2004. Though aware of each other's research, neither acknowledge one another nor engage in scholarly interaction, barring one meager footnote on page 459 by Lüling and a paragraph on page 20 by Luxenberg. Both studies, however, possess the common feature of bypassing a dozen centuries of Islamic scholarship on the Qur’ān and deviating categorically from the multifaceted paradigm of Qur’ānic origins which two centuries of Orientalist scholarship have established with meticulous research from Nöldeke and Schwally through Horovitz, Bell and Jeffery to Blachère and Paret. Rich in detail and overwhelming in the minutiae of their assertions, neither study establishes a firm historical basis for highly idiosyncratic theories about the origins of the Qur’ānic idiom within the context of seventh century Arabia. This independent, ingenious, provocative and controversial approach has exposed both authors to the harsh criticism of contemporary Western scholarship on the Qur’ān (cf. C. Burgmer, Streit um den Koran, Berlin 2005) and made them the target of severe militant reproaches from Muslims on the internet. The present paper will unravel some of the implications of this reconstructive research on the Qur’ān.

Donner, Fred, “A Review and Commentary of Some Recent Theories about the Koran, with Particular Reference to the Work of C. Luxenberg”

The paper will briefly attempt to situate the work of C. Luxenberg in the context of earlier Western scholarship on the Qur’ān, and will then move on to consider the implications for future work of some of Luxenberg's observations and methods. It will examine the relationship between written Qur’ān text and the tradition of oral recitation. It will then consider the idea of an Aramaic-Arabic “mixed language” in pre-Islamic Arabia, and the question of writing systems and the text's relation to Arabic orthography.

Gilliot, Claude, “Is the Qur’ān Partly the Fruit of a Collective Work?”

In this contribution the author will sum up a contribution presented at Louvain-la-Neuve/Leuven and now edited, and he will add to it some considerations on what he as called elsewhere: “the reconstruction of the Qur'ān uphill” and its “reconstruction downhill.” It is well known that for the history of the Qur'ān we still are mainly in the world of “Alice in Wonderland” or to be more in the local colour, in the world of the “Marvels of Alaaddin’s lamp,” when we compare it with the researches in the field of Biblical studies for instance. The Qur'ān itself and Islamic tradition contain several (for the first) or many (for the second) indications or information which are an invitation to scholars to reconstruct partly another view of the history of this text. Another means here in some way different from, sometimes opposed to the Islamic official theological representation of the genesis and development of this “recitation” and/or “lectionary” (Qur'ān):

1. The topos “Holy! Holy!” (quddūs, quddūs) or the “auxiliaries” of Muhammad (Khadija, Waraqa b. Nawfal, etc.) “creating him a Prophet.”

2. The theme of the “informants,” to which the Qur'ān alludes and which is treated at length by Islamic tradition.

3. Zayd b. Thabit who probably knew Aramaic, Syriac or Hebrew, or elements of these languages before the arrival of Muhammad to Yathrib.

4. The missing (or supposed so) verses or sūras, and those that God (or Muhammad) suppresses or abrogates.
5. The ambiguities in the vocabulary of memorization (jam‘ and verb jama‘a), collection (again jam‘ and verb jama‘a), composition (ta’līf) of the Qur'ān.

6. Problems concerning the language and style of the Qur'ān, on one hand, and the Arabic writing, on the other hand.

7. Technical terms in the Qur'ān as a book not of Arabic origin: Qur'ān, āya, sūra, mushaf, etc.

8. The embarrassment of ancient Muslim exegetes facing words or passages of the Qur'ān with foreign vocabulary.

9. The recent publication of the book of Christoph Luxenberg has been for me a new impulse to reexamine many materials I had collected during the years and to find new indications showing that  these alls are hints in the direction of another history of the Qur'ān uphill, that is before the Islamic Qur'ān.
10. As for the reconstruction of the Qur'ān downhill, we will present some reflections on the project of Bergsträsser/Pretzl (and Jeffery) and on its importance.

Griffith, Sidney, “Christian Lore and the Arabic Qur’ān: The ‘Companions of the Cave’ in Sūrat al-Kahf and in Syriac Christian Tradition”

The first section of this essay is a brief exposition of the interpretive principles which the present writer thinks reasonable to use in the study of the themes and expressions familiar from Syraic Christian texts which one then finds reflected in the Arabic Qur’ān. The second section considers in this light the allusions to the legend of the ‘Companions of the Cave’ in XVIII al-Kahf 9-26. The earliest, still extant, pre-Qur’ānic texts which tell the story of the ‘Sleepers of the Cave’ are in Syriac. They date from the sixth Christian century and they emanate from the ‘Syrian Orthodox’ church, the Christian community which their adversaries, with polemical intent, have persistently described as ‘Jacobite’, ‘Monophysite’ or ‘Severan’, an obfuscating usage regrettably still employed by most modern western scholars.

The essay presents a reading of the pertinent passage from the Qur’ān against the background of the previously current Syriac accounts of the legend of the ‘Companions of the Cave’. The attempt is to gain from this exercise a deeper appreciation of the Arabic Qur’ān’s handling of Christian lore presumably already familiar to the Islamic scripture’s own Arabic-speaking audience. The essay proposes a hopefully plausible, hypothetical scenario according to which pre-Qur’ānic, Arabic-speaking Christians in Arabia may have become familiar with the legend of the ‘Sleepers of the Cave’ in the form in which one finds it presented in its Syriac recensions. Narrative, linguistic and philological details of both the Syriac and the Qur’ānic texts are compared in an effort to discern how they might enhance a more fully informed reading of the Qur’ān’s allusions to material it manifestly shares with the Syriac Christian tradition. Finally, from the perspective of these reflections, some assessment is offered regarding the plausibility of recent and earlier scholarly suggestions for emendations of the received text of the Qur’ān in the passage under study.

Heck, Paul “The Qur’ān and Concepts of Civilization”

For the conference, I plan to talk about the Qur’ān and Concepts of Civilization. I will look at Muslim concepts of civilization in which Aur'anic verses/visions are at play: a few examples from the classical period, a few examples from the contemporary one. I will then explore ways in which the Qur’ān has served as a reference point in “Muslim” literature (of various genres). I will then conclude by suggesting a reading of the Qur’ān/scholarly approach to Qur’ānic studies in which the Qur’ān is understood as a formative agent of civilization, not unlike the Bible.

Hoyland, Robert, “Christian Contribution to the Qur’ān, Christian Response to the Qur’ān”

     In his book Christoph Luxenberg posits a Christian Syro-Aramaic milieu for the birth of the Qur’ān, but does not examine the historical evidence for such a milieu.  The matter needs consideration, for the Syro-Aramaic culture that Luxenberg draws upon for his rereading of the Qur’ān centres on the region of Edessa, in modern-day Turkey, an enormous distance from Muhammad's Mecca.  This is a task that I will undertake in the first part of my paper.  In particular, I will look at the regions of northern Syria, Damascus, and northwest Arabia in the sixth-century, since it is in these places and in this time that pre-Islamic inscriptions in the Arabic language and the Arabic script make their appearance.  The question will then be posed what led to this new development, i.e. the invention of the Arabic script.  The Arabic language had been spoken long before this, and was very occasionally written down, but always in another script (e.g. south Arabian or Nabataean Aramaic), so what had changed for Arabic to acquire its own script?  I will review the various theories on offer - Christian missionary work, administrative needs of Arab client kingdoms of Rome, a natural evolution from Nabataean Aramaic (as opposed to Syro-Aramaic?), etc. - and consider their relation to the issue of the Qur’ān's composition, and also to the related issues of the emergence of an Arab identity and the rise of Islam.  In the second part of my paper, I will turn my attention to Christian writings about the Qur’ān in the aftermath of the Muslim conquests, and more particularly I will discuss whether they show any awareness of the Syro-Aramaic milieu that Luxenberg proposes.

Kropp, Manfred “Ethiopic Influence on the Qur’ān and Early Islam - Reconsiderations a Hundred Years after Nöldeke's studies.”

Ethiopic influence on the Koran is a special chapter in the large book on the foreign influences on the primitive message of Islam. Certainly, the influence of Christianity and Judaism from the adjacent regions of Syria and Mesopotamia on the Northern Arab communities (cities, petty states etc.) was significant under many respects. But the enormous progress of Sabaic studies has put into evidence the equally significant influence of the Ancient Yemenite (South Arabian) culture on the same communities. Certainly, this culture as well underwent Christian and Jewish influence, but nevertheless characteristic and exclusive traits between Islam and Ancient Yemen can be sorted out.

That is exactly where and when the question of Ethiopic influence is situated. Ancient Yemen and Ancient Ethiopia (Aksum) have a long history in common, starting from Sabaean colonization on the other shore of the Red Sea and continuing through Ethiopian invasions in Yemen. Moreover, commercial and subsequently cultural and religious exchange existed between the empire of Aksum (Christian since the middle of the 4th century AD) and the regions in Northwestern Arabia. Ethiopian merchants, artisans and slaves were common in Pre-Islamic Mecca. They certainly brought not only material goods, merchandise, but also religious and cultural concepts and ideas to this city. The first hijra of some two hundred of Muhammad's followers was directed precisely to Christian Ethiopia. Many of these muhājirūn came back to the Muslim community in Medina.

The reflexes of these relations to Ethiopia and its Christianity are to be seen at first glance in the Ethiopic loanwords, or words influenced by Ethiopic languages, in the Qur’ān. Th. Nöldeke in his Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (1910) discussed the most important of them. Yet a number of very early texts in Old Ethiopic have been edited since Nöldeke's time. This allows us to rewrite the history of several of the words in question (e.g. mā'ida, shaytān) on one hand. On the other hand, this touches the matter of influence beyond the limited field of loanwords; the existence of motifs and narrative topics, perhaps even theological concepts on the Koran that are, if not originally Ethiopian, at least via Ethiopian Christianity. Modern studies on the origin and environment of the Qur’ānic text should take the “Ethiopic factor” into account very seriously, even if it will not always be possible to distinguish Christian Ethiopian from South Arabian/Yemenite.

Madigan, Daniel, “Is What the Text Once Said What It Actually Means?”

Leaving aside the question of the plausibility of Luxenberg's reconstructions of the Qur’ānic text, this paper will open up the hermeneutical and theological question of the relationship between texts that are considered sacred and the communities that find meaning in them. The response to Luxenberg's work has tended to suppose that once the 'real' meaning of the Qur'ân is uncovered it will change the nature of Islam. In the final analysis the question remains what effect does even the reliable establishment of a scriptural Urtext have on what the text means to believers?

Marx, Michael, “Judeao-Christian Beliefs and the Qur’ān”

The hypothesis that what is called Judeao-Christian beliefs are recognizable in the text of the Qur’ān has been articulated by a number of scholars (von Harnack 1911, Schlatter 1918, al-Haddad, de Blois 2004, et al.). Sometimes Judaeo-Christian beliefs are seen not only in the text of the Qur’ān but also in early Islamic tradition. In the scheduled paper the Judaeo-Christian hypothesis will be re-read, especially concerning salvation history or rather the reception of salvation history in the text of the Qur’ān. Given the fact that the Qur’ān shows signs of a performed text or a text situated in a communication pattern of a prophet following his call to talk to his people (comparable perhaps to Jeremiah’s call, cf. Jeremiah 1), the idea of a succession line of biblical prophets will be described and analyzed as given in the text. Following the type of preceding prophets, the Prophet Muhammed stands in the line of Ibrāhim, Mūsā, Nūh and Jesus. Somehow the concept of preceding prophets seems to be incompatible with the Jewish or Christian (Orthodox/Catholic) understanding of salvation history. Even if many textual elements concerning the biblical prophets in the Qur’ān show affinity to Rabbinic literature (Talmud and Midrash; cf. Geigers pioneering study in 1833) the attitude towards Jesus Christ seems to break with a supposed Rabbinic background. The benevolent image of Jesus cannot easily be attributed to Jewish beliefs. The theological argument of “Christ as a predecessor of Muhammad” reminds one of the Judeao-Christian belief in a succession of prophets. The portrayal of the Biblical prophets in the Qur’ān appears often to reveal a “de-mythifying” perspective. The theme of Jesus seems to contain a “low profile Christology.” From the perspective of a “history of preceding prophets” (and less a salvation history) the message of the Prophet Muhammad as “prophecy in progress” or “prophecy live!” can be seen as the implicitly given argument of the Qur’ān.

Mourad, Suleiman, “The Presentation of Mary in the Qur’ān”

The presentation of Mary in the Qur’ān has attracted the attention of several scholars of Islam, precisely regarding the particular way she is identified (in one instance the Qur’ān refers to her as Aaron’s sister, and in another case identifies her as Amram’s daughter).  Some modern scholars have argued that these two particular instances demonstrate that Muhammad was perplexed about the exact identity of Mary, and confused her with Miriam, daughter of Biblical Amram and sister of Moses and Aaron.  In my
paper, I will reexamine the Quranic references to Mary, the problems of her identity as well as the particular stories and theology about her, and the way Muslims exegetes and biographers dealt with these references.

Rippin, Andrew “Syriac in the Qur’ān: Muslim theories”

By no means was Christoph Luxenberg or even Alphonse Mingana the first person to contemplate the presence of Syriac in the Qur’ān. Starting in the early centuries of Islam, exegetes frequently discussed various words which they considered to be of Syriac origin. Early Muslim writers were aware of a language still spoken in their midst called suryānī or nabatī and they appear to have appealed to that knowledge to solve exegetical problems in the Qur’ān. The reasons they did so were tied to a number of considerations, including the morphological form of apparently difficult Arabic words and the impossibility of the required meaning of some words being traced to standard Arabic. There was, as well, the recognition that some proper names were derived from Syriac.

This paper will examine the use of Syriac as a tool for medieval Muslim exegetes and investigate the reasons why they felt it necessary to look to foreign origin of certain words and why it might be that they chose Syriac in certain Qur’ānic instances as compared to Greek, Coptic or Hebrew, other popular “foreign languages” adduced in their commentaries. Consideration will also be given to the changing popularity of the notion of the presence of foreign language words in the Qur’ān among exegetes of various eras.

Saadi, Abdul Masih, “Nascent Islam in the 7th Century Syriac Sources”

The Arab invasions of the seventh century marked the beginning of a dramatic change in the heartland of Eastern Christianity. The Arabs’ style until that time had been to overrun and pillage the landscape, and then, just as quickly, to withdraw to their desert. At this time, however, it was not the case. They called their new invasion: Hijra, i.e., Immigration, and the Syriac people called them: Mhaggraye, i.e., Immigrants. When the Mhaggraye chose to settle in this conquered land, what was the Syriac Christian response (s)? How did they view the “Mhaggraye” historically, religiously, and ethnically in the seventh century?

Samir, Samir Khalil, “A Reconsideration of the Qur'ān and Its Relationship to Christianity”

We have two paths from which to choose in the study of possible Christian influence on the Qur’ān: the philological study of terms borrowed from Greek, Syriac and Ethiopic, and the study of the content of Qur’ānic passages related to the Bible (Old and New Testament) and Christianity. Philological study is built on the work of predecessors, both medieval Arab scholars -- above all the Muzhir and Itqān of Suyūtī -- and western scholars, above all the work of Siegmund Fränkel (1886), Alphonse Mingana (1927, etc.), Christoph Luxenberg (2000) and especially Arthur Jeffery (1938). This work is designed to uncover what type of influence Christianity might have exercised on the Qur’ān.

The study of content, the product of more personal research, is designed to discern, in Biblical allusions, between that which could have come from Jews and that which could have come from Christians, and to specify as much as possible the type of Christianity with which the Qur’ān might have been familiar.

This double approach allows one better to define the impact that Syro-Arabic and Ethiopic Christianity could have exercised on the seminal Islamic community.

Stewart, Devin, “Emending the Text of the Qur’ān: An Evaluation of Qur’ānic Emendations Proposed in Medieval and Modern Scholarship”

Drawing on medieval Islamic sources as well as on modern studies written in the Western European tradition of scholarship on the Qur’ān, this paper examines and critically evaluates the merits of over a dozen proposed emendations of the Qur’ānic text. These include emendations included in the “variant readings” of the sacred text (qirā'āt) and in medieval Islamic sources such as Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyātī’s Itqān fi ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, as well as emendations proposed by modern investigators of the Qur’ānic text such as Charles Cutler Torrey and James Bellamy. In this context, the paper will also touch on some of the more plausible sections of Luxenberg's recent book on the ‘Syro-Aramaic reading’ of the Qur’ān. It will endeavour to assess in detail the probability these emendations have of being correct and why they are likely or unlikely, while making some general comments about the tools available to us to determine that probability--rhyme, rhythm, form criticism, etc.--and the process of emendation itself.

Van Bladel, Kevin, “The Apocalypse of Alexander the Great in the Qur’ān (Q 18:83-102)”

Several studies in European languages since the nineteenth century have tried to explain the episode of Dhu-l-Qarnayn in the Qur’ān (18:83-102). Theodor Nöldeke made the case that these verses of the Qur’ān must be derived from a Syriac story of Alexander the Great, entitled in Budge's edition Neshana dileh d-Aleksandros, roughly “The Acts of Alexander,” which is an apocalyptic text in turn inspired by the prolific tradition of the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Nöldeke dated the text to the sixth century. Later scholars have challenged his conclusions by finding a more exact dating of the Syriac text (629-630 AD).

However, Brannon Wheeler has recently asserted that the Syriac text is not a source of the Qur’ān itself but rather for Qur’ān commentaries on this passage. Moreover, the recent Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān article “Alexander” fails even to mention either the Syriac text or give reference to the debate about its connection to the Qur’ān. Nöldeke’s thesis, that the source of this passage of the Qur’ān can be specifically identified in Syriac tradition, thus seems to be on the verge of oblivion.

This communication applies renewed critical attention to the relationship of this Syriac text and the Qur’ānic episode of Dhu-l-Qarnayn, comparing the content of the two very closely and showing that they contain numerous exact parallels even as specific as individual words. It argues that Nöldeke was basically right about the affiliation, though he was indeed incorrect about the dating of the text. An argument is presented that either the Qur’ān depends on this Syriac text or the two texts share a common source. The Syriac tradition may have been transmitted either directly from this Syriac text or through a limited number of intermediaries, perhaps oral. The implications of these findings for the Qur’ān itself will be discussed. Finally, the reasons for which this text was used by the early followers of Muhammad are connected with the prophetic character of Alexander in the Syriac text and with, more specifically, what I propose to call the Apocalypse of Alexander.