Mengingat pentingnya masaalah otentisitas al-Mushaf itu resensi
buku Luxenberg yang banyak dibicarakan orang itu.
Saya fwd resensi dari journal siriak, artinya dari orang yang tahu
apa yang dibicarakannnya dan bukan dari omong kosong orang Islam
tukang tipu yang tanpa baca bukunya, tanpa tahu apa masalahnya
lantas dengan seenak udelnya mengeluarkan pendapatnya.
Dari salah seorang yang dekat dengan Luxenberg saya mendapat
kabar bahwa versi bahasa Inggeris buku Luxenberg masih
dipersiapkan,Sedangkan edisi ke II dalam bahasa Jerman sudah
keluar.
Hingga hari ini saya belum membaca adanya kritik scholars yang
serius terhadap buku Luxenberg ini.
Kajian Luxenberg ini, yang melanjutkan tulisan ahli bahasa
semitik Minggana dipermulaan abad yang lalu, perlu ditempatkan di
perspektif penelitian sejarawan revisionist yang sejak tahun 1978
yang dimulai oleh Wansbrough menyimpulkan - in a nutshell - bahwa
al-Mushaf itu ditulis oleh beberapa orang.
Juga perlu diingat, untuk memperluas perspektif, tulisan Puin dan
von Bothmer tentang al-Mushaf Yemen.
Satu lagi (tapi informasi ini mesti diterima dengan hati-hati):
beberapa artefak menunjukkan bahwa Kaabah itu dulunya adalah
gereja dan orang Quraish itu dulunya penganut Nasrani.
=============
HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES
BOOK REVIEW
Christoph Luxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische Lesart des Koran; Ein
Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Qur'ānsprache. Berlin, Germany:
Das Arabische Buch, First Edition, 2000. Pp. ix + 306, bibliography on
pp. 307-311, no index. Paperback, Euros 29.70, no price available in
US Dollars. ISBN 3-86093-274-8.
Robert R. PHENIX Jr. and Cornelia B. HORN
University of St. Thomas
Department of Theology
John Roach Center 153
2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55107
[1] Not in the history of commentary on the Qur'ān has a work
like this been produced. Similar works can only be found in the body
of text-critical scholarship on the Bible. From its method to its
conclusions on the language and content of the Qur'ān,
Luxenberg's study has freed scholars from the problematic tradition of
the Islamic commentators. Whether or not Luxenberg is correct in every
detail, with one book he has brought exegetical scholarship of the
Qur'ān to the "critical turn" that biblical commentators took
more than a century ago. This work demonstrates to all exegetes of the
Qur'an the power of the scientific method of philology and its value
in producing a clearer text of the Qur'an. Scholars of the first rank
will now be forced to question the assumption that, from a
philological perspective, the Islamic tradition is mostly reliable, as
though it were immune to the human error that pervades the
transmission of every written artifact. If biblical scholarship is any
indication, the future of Qur'ānic studies is more or less
decided by this work.
[2] The book presents the thesis, sources, method, and examples of its
application in eighteen sections. Sections one through ten cover the
background, method, and the application of that method to unlocking
the etymology and meaning of the word Qur'ān,1 which Luxenberg
argues is the key to understanding the text as a whole. Sections
eleven through eighteen follow the conclusions set out in the first
half by arguing solutions to several problematic expressions
throughout the text. These include lexical, morphological and
syntactic problems that illustrate the basic principles underlying the
many errors in the transmission of the Qur'ān (11-14) and the
extension of the method to examine problems that create
misunderstandings of thematic material throughout the text (15-16).
Luxenberg then applies his conclusions to an exegesis of suras 108 and
96. A synopsis of the work follows in section 18.
[3] Luxenberg aims to make available a selection of findings from an
ongoing investigation into the language of the Qur'ān so that a
preliminary discussion about methods of text linguistics as well as
about the implications of the findings of such methods on the content
of the Qur'ān might begin without waiting for the complete work.
This =
work is only a sketch, developed with a heuristic and supported by
extensive evidence. Luxenberg is aware that many features of a
standard philological presentation are missing. These he promises in
the final study.
[4] In the Foreword, Luxenberg summarizes the cultural and linguistic
importance of written Syriac for the Arabs and for the Qur'ān. At
the =
time of Muhammad, Arabic was not a written language. Syro-Aramaic or
Syriac was the language of written communication in the Near East from
the second to the seventh centuries A.D. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic,
was the language of Edessa, a city-state in upper Mesopotamia. While
Edessa ceased to be a political entity, its language became the
vehicle of Christianity and culture, spreading throughout Asia as far
as Malabar and eastern China. Until the rise of the Qur'ān,
Syriac was the medium of wider communication and cultural
dissemination for Arameans, Arabs, and to a lesser extent Persians. It
produced the richest literary expression in the Near East from the
fourth century (Aphrahat and Ephraem) until it was replaced by Arabic
in the seventh and eighth centuries. Of importance is that the Syriac
Aramaic literature and the cultural matrix in which that literature
existed was almost exclusively Christian. Part of Luxenberg's study
shows that Syriac influence on those who created written Arabic was
transmitted through a Christian medium, the influence of which was
fundamental.
[5] Luxenberg then gives an etymology of the word "Syriac," and notes
that the language is mentioned with importance in the earliest
hadīth =
literature which reports that Muhammad instructed his followers to
know Syriac (as well as Hebrew). This can only be the case because
these were the literary forerunners of written Arabic. Luxenberg
conceived his study to test the following hypothesis: since written
Syriac was the written language of the Arabs, and since it informed
the cultural matrix of the Near East, much the same way that Akkadian
did before it and Arabic after it, then it is very likely that Syriac
exerted some influence on those who developed written Arabic.
Luxenberg further proposes, that these Arabs were Christianized, and
were participants in the Syriac Christian liturgy.
[6] Western scholars have since the nineteenth century been aware of
the influence of foreign languages, particularly of the dialect of
Aramaic called Syriac, on the vocabulary of the Qur'ān. Luxenberg
assembles all of the pieces of this line of research into a systematic
examination of the Arabic of the Qur'ān in order to provide a
general solution to its many textual difficulties. The conclusions
drawn about the source of the Qur'ān, its transmission history
from Muhammad to cUthmān, and its thematic content rest on
arguments drawn from evidence collected and examined through the tools
of philological and text-critical methods. No part of the method rests
on a blind acceptance of religious or traditional assumptions of any
kind, especially with respect to the Arabian commentators. Until now,
Western critical commentators of the first rank have not been critical
enough in this regard and Luxenberg directly and indirectly through
his conclusions proves that their trust was betrayed. Hence any
argument that seeks to prove Luxenberg's findings incorrect cannot
assume that the earliest Arabian commentators understood correctly the
grammar and lexicon of the Arabic of the Qur'ān. This is an
important contribution of the study.
[7] Luxenberg then presents the Islamic tradition about the early
transmission history of the Qur'ān. According to that tradition,
khalifa cUthmān ibn cAffan (A.D. 644-656) first assembled into a
single book the written record of the utterances of Muhammad (A.D.
570-632). The Qur'ān is the first book of the Arabic language of
which scholars are aware. It is important because it is the basis for
written Arabic, the language of a sophisticated Medieval civilization,
and because for Muslims it is the source of all religious expression,
theology, and law, and is held to be God's revelation to Muhammad. For
non-Muslims, it is an important literary artifact, and deserves to be
studied from a historical as well as a philological perspective.
[8] It is the latter prespective that Luxenberg follows. Western
commentators have followed Islamic tradition rather than used the
reference tools and techniques of philological investigation.
Luxenberg gives a brief description of the findings from important
works on Qur'ānic philology in the West. Scholars have been
increasingly aware of the presence in the Qur'ān of foreign terms
and =
references to foreign historical events and that Aramaic dialects
contributed most of these. However, because Western scholars
maintained the technically outdated and unscientific approach of
Islamic exegesis, the significance of these findings has had to wait
until the present study.
[9] Section two is little more than a statement that Luxenberg's study
is independent of both Arabian as well as Western research precisely
because his method does not rely on the explanations of the Arabian
commentators, but rather on Arabic and Syriac lexical tools as well as
comparative Semitic linguistics. His chief source among the Arabian
commentators is the earliest commentary on the Qur'ān, that of
Tabarī.2 Tabarī had no Arabic dictionary that he could
consult, and so he had to rely on oral tradition and on commentators
closer to the time of Muhammad whose lost works his citations in part
preserve. The Lisān, the most extensive lexicon of the Arabic
language,3 the Western translations and commentaries of Bell,4
Blachère,5 and Paret,6 the Syriac dictionaries of Payne Smith7 and
Brockelmann,8 and the Vocabulaire Chaldéen Arabique of Mannā9
are the other primary reference works.
[10] The use of these materials is placed in the service of the
method in section three. Luxenberg states that the primary goal of the
study was to clarify expressions that were unclear to the three
Western commentators. The discovery of many Aramaisms led Luxenberg to
check these in passages that were supposedly not contentious according
to the Western exegetes. The examination of these passages was all the
more justified when the explanations of the Arabian commentators
(which the Western scholars largely followed) did not at all fit the
context. For example, Tabarī did not have any lexicographical
tools and only occasionally cites a verse from pre- Qur'ānic
Arabic poetry as support for his interpretation of a given expression.
In such cases the margin of error is wide because the context for
these pre-Islamic poems is often difficult to ascertain. Even so, in
many instances the Western commentators accept these explanations
uncritically.
[11] Using his philological method Luxenberg attempts to establish the
historical context for the Qur'ān in order to provide a
systematic approach to solving text-critical problems. His base text
is the canonical edition of the Qur'ān published in Cairo in
1923-24, =
taken without the vowel marks. The advantage of this edition over
earlier ones is that it sought to base its readings on a comparison of
earlier Arabic commentators. The most important feature of this work
is that the redactors attempted to fix the diacritical points that
distinguish between possible readings of a single letter. Luxenberg
does in many cases emend these points, but does so following a clear
and detailed method. When he has a clear choice between two variant
readings, lectio difficilior prevails. Only when the context of an
expression is manifestly unclear, and the Arabian commentators have no
plausible explanation, does Luxenberg explore a solution that involves
changing one or more diacritical points in the Cairene edition.
[12] Luxenberg clearly outlines the heuristic. Starting from those
passages that are unclear to the Western commentators, the method runs
as follows. First check if there is a plausible explanation in
Tabarī that the Western commentators overlooked. If not, then
check whether the Lisān records a meaning unknown to Tabarī
and his ear= lier sources. If this turns up nothing, check if the
Arabic expression has a homonymous root in Syriac with a different
meaning which fits the context. In many cases, Luxenberg found that
the Syriac word with its meaning makes more sense. It is to be noted,
that these first steps of the heuristic do not emend the consonantal
text of the Cairene edition of the Qur'ān.
[13] If these steps do not avail, then see if changing one or more
diacritical marks results in an Arabic expression that makes more
sense. Luxenberg found that many cases are shown to be misreadings of
one consonant for another. If not, then change the diacritical point
(s) and then check if there is a homonymous Syriac root with a
plausible meaning.
[14] If there is still no solution, check if the Arabic is a calque of
a Syriac expression. Calques are of two kinds: morphological and
semantic. A morphological calque is a borrowing that preserves the
structure of the source word but uses the morphemes of the target
language. For example, German Fernsehen is just the morphemes tele and
visio of English "television" translated into their German
equivalents. A semantic calque assigns the borrowed meaning to a word
that did not have the meaning previously, but which is otherwise
synonymous with the source word.
[15] In section four, Luxenberg presents the development of the
Arabic script and its central importance to the transmission history
of the Qur'ān. He demonstrates that there were originally only
six letters to distinguish some twenty-six sounds. The letters were
gradually distinguished by points written above or below each letter.
The Arabic alphabet used in the Qur'ān began as a shorthand, a
mnemonic device not intended as a complete key to the sounds of the
language. Luxenberg concludes that the transmission of the text from
Muhammad was not likely an oral transmission by memory, contrary to
one dominant claim of Islamic tradition.
[16] That tradition preserves different stories about the oral
transmission of the Qur'ān and Luxenberg assembles these in
section five. According to Islamic tradition, the Qur'ān was
transmitted in part by an uninterrupted chain of "readers," Arabic
qurrā', contemporaries of Muhammad such as ibn cAbbas (d. 692)
and maintained by such early authorities as Anas ibn Mālik (d.
709). Contradicting this is another tradition, that cUthmān
obtained the "leaves" of the Qur'ān from Muhammad's widow Hafsa,
and assembled them into a codex. The Islamic tradition is unable to
pinpoint when the diacritical points were finally "fixed," a process
that unfolded over three hundred years, according to Blachère. The
reason for the difficulty in tracing the development of the
Qur'ān before cUthmān is, as Ta= barī points out, that
cUthmān destroyed all manuscripts with variant readings of the
consonantal text which disagreed with his final recension.
[17] In section six Luxenberg presents the Islamic tradition derived
from Muhammad himself concerning the indeterminate nature of the
Qur'ān's consonantal text, of which two stories are recorded by
Tabarī. The gist of these is that Muhammad sanctioned any reading
of the text that did not blatantly change a curse into a blessing or
vice-versa. Luxenberg argues that these obviously later stories
reflect what must be a faint recollection of the indeterminacy of the
Arabic alphabet.
[18] In section seven, Luxenberg outlines how Islamic tradition
resolved the doubts due to Muhammad's "flexibility" concerning the
text that arose among the first commentators. In this section,
Luxenberg applies his heuristic method on the Qur'ān to show that
the =
Qur'ān itself gives evidence that the tradition of the seven
readings, Arabic sabcat ahruf, which were permitted to Muhammad out of
recognition of the many dialects of Arabic, is closely connected with
the seven vowel signs of Estrangeli, the writing system developed by
speakers of East Syriac. This system uses dots above and below the
letters, similar to the dots used in Arabic to distinguish consonants.
Tabarī also knows of the tradition that there were five readings,
which he suggests correspond to the five vowel signs of West Syriac.
The vowel signs of the West Syriac system are the source of the three
vowel signs used in Classical Arabic.
[19] The rest of the section draws on personal names of Biblical
origin in the Qur'ān to demonstrate that the so-called Arabic
matres lectionis, 'alif, wāw, and yā, must also be
polyvalent. Luxenberg=
points out that Islamic tradition admits a reading of the mater for
long /ā/ in certain instances as /ē/ because this
pronunciation w= as a peculiarity of the Arabic of Mecca. Luxenberg
shows that the term harf, "sign" must also carry a meaning synonymous
to qirā'at, "(way of) reading" and that this is not only
supplying the vowels in an unvocalized text, but also supplying the
diacritical points that distinguish consonants. It is only gradually
that these diacritical points became fixed so that consonants came to
have just one reading. This process of determining the value of each
letter of the Qur'ān unfolded over some three hundred years. This
is known from the oldest manuscripts of the Qur'ān which do not
have the diacritical points distinguishing readings of a single
consonant. By the time these became commonly used, Arabian
commentators were no longer aware that many words were either straight
Aramaic or were calques peculiar to Meccan Arabic. From this resulted
the difficulties that the Qur'ān posed to even the earliest
Arabian commentators.
[20] Section eight briefly outlines the difficulties facing a
critical translator. Luxenberg agrees with Paret's general assessment
of the difficulties, which include many unclear words and expressions,
contradictory explanations in the Arabian tradition, and lack of a
textus receptus with fixed diacritical points, such as for the Hebrew
Bible. Moreover, even the earliest Islamic commentators are divided
over many passages and offer sometimes over a dozen possible
interpretations, many mutually exclusive and equally plausible.
[21] Section nine discusses the proposition, which the Qur'ān
itself asserts and which is a basic element of Islam, that the
Qur'ān was revealed in Arabic. In particular, the proposition
that the origin of the Qur'ān, the umm kitāb (lit. "mother
of [the] book"), is in he= aven or with God and is the direct and
immediate pre-image of the Arabic text presents the strongest dogmatic
challenge to Luxenberg's assertion that the Arabic of the Qur'ān
is in large measure not Arabic at all, at least not in the sense the
Arabian commentators understood it. The language of the Qur'ān is
the Arabic dialect of the tribe of Muhammad, the Quraysh, who were
located in Mecca. This does not rule out the possibility that this
dialect was heavily influenced by Aramaic, and Syriac in particular.
Luxenberg maintains that the Islamic tradition alludes to such an
influence. Tabarī follows the tradition attributed to Muhammad
that a scholar must seek wisdom "be it in China" and exhorts the
philologists of the Qur'ān, the ahl al-lisān, to seek sound
philological evidence from wherever it may come in order that the
Qur'ān be clearly explained to all. Luxenberg undertakes in the
subsequent chapters to mine the wisdom of this advice.
[22] Luxenberg proceeds in section ten to the heart of the matter: an
analysis of the word "Qur'ān." He sets out the argument that
qur'ā= ;n derives from the Syriac qeryānā, a technical
term from the Christ= ian liturgy that means "lectionary," the fixed
biblical readings used at the Divine Liturgy throughout the year. His
claim rests on variations in the spelling of the word attested in
early manuscripts. The word qeryānā had been written without
hamza by Muhammad, according to = one early witness and Luxenberg
argues that this reflects a Syriac influence. According to Islamic
tradition, Muhammad's dialect pronounced the hamza, the glottal stop,
"weak." Indeed, the arabophone Aramaic Christians of Syria and
Mesopotamia pronounce the hamza in the same way, approximately /y/.
Furthermore, the Arabic- Syriac lexica which preserve several
pre-Islamic variant readings of Arabic words, give for the Syriac word
qeryānā both qur'ān a= s well as quryān. Luxenberg
posits the development of the spelling of this word =
as follows: qeryān > qurān, written without 'alif, then
qurā= n written with 'alif, and finally qur'ān, with an
intrusive hamza. The commentators were no longer aware that yā'
could represent /ā/, a=
use
extensively attested in the writing of third-weak verbs. The rest of
the section presents clarifications of other unclear passages where
the obscurity arose from the same phenomenon, sometimes directly, and
sometimes in conjunction with other ambiguities in the writing system,
such as mispointing tā' for yā' and then applying the sam= e
derivation.
[23] The section concludes by demonstrating that the technical
meaning of "lectionary" is preserved in the word qur'ān. Most
striking is the conclusion that the term umm kitāb, an aramaism,
must =
be a written source and that the Qur'ān was never intended to
replace =
this written source. One might complain that the details of the
argument for the reading of suras 12:1-2 and 3:7 are squeezed into
footnotes, but nevertheless the argument is clear. Luxenberg proves
that the term qur'ān itself is the key to unlocking the passages
that =
have given commentators in and outside of the tradition frustration.
If quryān means "lectionary," and if the text itself claims to be
a clarification of an earlier text, then that earlier text must be
written in another language. The only candidate is the Old and New
Testament in Syriac, the Peshitta. Hence the influence of Aramaic on
the Arabic of Muhammad has an identifiable, textual origin. At the
very end of the work, Luxenberg makes a compelling argument that sura
108 is a close allusion to the Peshitta of 1 Peter 5:8-9. Indeed this
sura, which is only three lines long, is one of the most difficult
passages for the Arabian as well as the Western commentators.
Luxenberg shows why: it is composed of transcriptions into Arabic
writing of the Syriac New Testament text, i.e., there is almost no
"Arabic" in the sura. These are "revealed" texts, and insofar as the
Qur'ān contains quotations or paraphrases of them, the
Qur'ān=
is
also "revealed."
[24] Many dialects of Arabic existed at the time of Muhammad. In the
ten places where the Qur'ān claims to have been written in
Arabic, Luxenberg shows first that these passages have grammatical
forms which are difficult for the commentators and have varying
interpretations among the translators. He notes that in sura 41:44,
the Arabic fassala means "to divide," but the context here requires
"make distinct" or better "interpret." Nowhere else does the Arabic
word have this meaning, and the Syriac-Arabic lexica do not give the
one as a translation for the other; tarjama (a direct borrowing from
Syriac) is the usual Arabic word for "interpret." However, the Syriac
pra / parre can mean both "divide" as well as "interpret" (like
Hebrew hibdīl; also this is an example of a "semantic calque"
mentioned above). Tabarī too understands fassala to be a synonym
for bayyana (sura 44:3), which also has the meaning "interpret." Sura
41:44 also clearly attests to a source for the Qur'ān that is
written in a foreign language. Luxenberg, following Tabarī, notes
a corruption in the text of this verse that clearly shows that part of
the Qur'ān has a non-Arabic source. His argument here is somewhat
weak if not for the further evidence deduced from eleven other
locations in the Qur'ān where Luxenberg consistently applies
these and similar arguments to difficulties all of which center on the
terms related to the revelation and language of the Qur'ān. These
arguments leave little doubt, that Luxenberg has =
uncovered a key misunderstanding of these terms throughout the
Qur'ān.=
[25] In section twelve Luxenberg demonstrates that not only the
origin and language of the Qur'ān are different from what the
commentators who wrote two hundred years after its inception claim it
to be, but that several key passages contain words or idioms that were
borrowed from Syriac into Arabic. From his analysis of sura 19:24 (in
the so-called "Marian Sura"): "Then he called to her from beneath her:
`Grieve not; thy Lord hath placed beneath thee a streamlet,'" he
concludes that it should be read "He called to her immediately after
her laying-down (to give birth `Grieve not; thy Lord has made your
laying-down legitimate.'" Luxenberg's lengthy discussion of the
complexities of this passage resolve grammatical difficulties in the
Arabic in a way that fits the context: Jesus gives Mary the courage to
face her relatives even with a child born out of wedlock. The section
then presents lengthy arguments dealing with various lexical,
morphological, syntactic and versification problems in sura
11:116-117.
[26] Section thirteen uncovers evidence of Aramaic morphology in the
grammar of the Qur'ān. Instances of ungrammatical gender
agreement (feminine subject or noun with a masculine verb or modifier)
arose because Syriac feminine forms were misread as an Arabic
masculine singular accusative predicate adjective or participle where
the governing noun is a feminine subject. In Syriac, predicate
adjectives and participles are in the absolute form (predicate form).
A feminine singular Syriac form transcribed into Arabic is identical
to a genuine Arabic masculine singular accusative form. This
phenomenon is quite pervasive in the Qur'ān (e.g. sura 19:20, 23,
28). The argument =
that many commentators put forward to explain these anomalies is that
grammar was sacrificed to preserve the rhyme of a verse. Luxenberg
shows the weakness of this argument by demonstrating that in many
cases the rhyme is sacrificed to render a grammatical expression (e.g.
suras 33:63 and 42:17). Moreover, in at least one case of anomalous
syntax in sura 19:23, the grammatically correct word order would have
fit the rhyme. In places where a masculine form corresponds to a
feminine one, Luxenberg realized that the copyist had deleted the
"masculine accusative singular" ending on the predicate adjective, not
realizing that the adjective was a Syriac feminine predicate adjective
transcribed into Arabic. These Syriac predicative/absolute forms in
the Qur'ān are supported by the fact that Arabic always borrowed
Syriac nouns and adjectives in their absolute form and not the
emphatic ("unbound" or "dictionary") form; e.g. allah <
alāhā: absolute state alāh; qarīb, "near" = <
qarībā: absolute state qarīb. Luxenberg then
demonstrates that the loss of the feminine ending in Qur'ānic
Arabic derives from the same phenomenon. Many Arabic grammatical rules
which the earliest Arabian grammarians first posed to explain these
anomalies are shown to have been ad hoc, written by those who no
longer understood the language in which it had been written. A similar
fate befell the so-called accusative of specification, which required
the noun in the sequence number + noun to be in the accusative
singular. Luxenberg demonstrates that the noun in every case is really
a Syriac masculine plural noun; singular and plural masculine nouns in
Syriac have the same consonantal spelling.
[27] In that same section, one also finds a study of how Syriac roots
were misread and altered by later commentators. In one case, the word
jaw (sura 16:79) misread "air, atmosphere" is from Syriac gaw, which
means both "insides, inner part" and can also be used as a preposition
meaning "inside." In sura 16:79 Luxenberg demonstrates that the
prepositional use makes more sense than the solution posed by the
commentators. Classical Arabic grammar, which was created three
hundred years after the Qur'ān, does not recall the prepositional
meaning of the word. However, dialects of Arabic preserve the original
Syriac prepositional use. So where sura 16:79 reads fī jaw
as-samā' "in(side) heaven" referring to birds held a= loft and
kept from falling down by God, the dialects agree: fī jawwāt
= al- bet "inside the house" is perfectly good Arabic. The misreading
of Qur'ānic Arabic jaw as "air" has become part of the technical
vocabulary of modern standard Arabic: "air mail," "air force,"
"airline," and "weather report" all use jaw. The imaginary meaning of
the grammarians lives on.
[28] Finally, Luxenberg shows that there are verb forms in Arabic that
are conflations from two distinct Syriac roots. The argument is
detailed and here it suffices to mention that the confusion is based
on a pronunciation of East Syriac provenance. The meaning of the
Arabic verb saxxara at times corresponds to Syriac axxar "to blame,
use up" and at times to awxar "to keep back, hinder." The confusion
arose because Syriac awxar was pronounced in East Syriac and Mandaic
as either āxar or axxar.
[29] Section fourteen briefly argues for misunderstood Arabic idioms,
which are calques of Aramaic expressions. Luxenberg looks at sura
17:64 which Paret translates as "And rouse with your voice all those
you can, and assemble against them with all of your hosts, with your
cavalry and your infantry, share with them (as a partner) wealth and
children and make them promises but Satan promises them only
deceitful promises" (p. 217). The strange combination of rousing and
besieging indicates a misreading. In this case it is Arabic that is
misread, Arabic that literally translates Syriac expressions.
According to Luxenberg's analysis this verse should read "Thus seduce
with your voice whomsoever from among them you can, outsmart them with
your trick and your lying and deception, and tempt them with
possessions and children and make promises to them indeed Satan
promises them nothing but vain things!" (p. 220).
[30] Harmonization of passages that are united by theme is another
feature of the textual difficulty of the Qur'ān. Sections fifteen
and =
sixteen examine how a misreading in one verse triggered sympathetic
misreadings throughout the text based not on grammatical or lexical
similarity but because the scattered verses alluded to a single
concept. In section fifteen, Luxenberg treats the virgins of paradise
and in section sixteen the youths of paradise. Sura 44:54 is the
starting point for the discussion. Bell translates this as "We will
join to them dark, wide-eyed (maidens)." The verb "join as in
marriage" or "pair as in animals for copulation" is a classic
misreading of zāy for rā and jīm for hā' (both
pairs di= stinguished only by a single dot), instead of zawwaj it is
rawwah "give rest, refresh," the object of the verb being the blessed
in paradise. The major conclusion of section fifteen is that the
expression hūr cī= n means "white (grapes), jewels (of
crystal)" and not "dark, wide-eyed (maidens)" (suras 44:54 and 52:20).
Luxenberg first examines carefully each component of sura 44:54 and of
sura 52:20. The Qur'ān mentions other kinds of fruits in
paradise, namely, dates and pomegranates (sura 55:68) as well as
grapes (sura 78:32). Grapes are also mentioned in the context of
"earthy" gardens ten times. Since earlier scholarship knows that the
Qur'ān uses the Syriac word for garden gantā > janna for
paradise, the grape then must be the fruit of paradise par excellence
(p. 234). Why, if that is so, is the grape only mentioned in
connection with the "heavenly" garden once?
[31] To answer this, Luxenberg presents earlier scholarship, notably
that of Tor Andrae and Edmund Beck, showing a connection between the
images of the garden of paradise in the Qur'ān and in the hymns
of Ephraem the Syrian entitled On Paradise. Andrae remarked that
hūr was =
likely from the Syriac word for "white," but his solution was to say
that the Qur'ānic usage was somehow metaphorical. Neither he nor
Beck =
considered that the Arabic "virgin" was a later misunderstanding on
the part of the commentators.
[32] Ephraem uses the term gupnā, "vine," grammatically feminine,
with which hūr agrees and from this Andrae concluded that it was
a metaphor for "the virgins of paradise" in the Qur'ān. In suras
44:54 and 52:20, Luxenberg argues that instead of the singular
cīn the plural cuyun should be read, referring to the grapes on
the vine. Elsewhere the Qur'ān compares the grapes to "pearls,"
and so they must be white grapes, which is not apparent from the text
at first glance. Luxenberg then offers two variants of this
expression. The first reading renders the phrase "white, crystal
(clear grapes)," the second, and the one Luxenberg adopts, is "white
(grapes), (like) jewels (of crystal)." The restored verse then reads
"We will let them (the blessed in Paradise) be refreshed with white
(grapes), (like) jewels (of crystal)."
[33] Of the several related examples in sections 15.2 15.9,
Luxenberg follows the virgins of paradise through the Qur'ān. In
section 15.2, Luxenberg observes that azwaj, "spouses," also can mean
"species, kinds" (suras 2:25, 3:15, and 4:57). The latter reading
makes more sense "therein also are all kinds of pure (fruits)."
Luxenberg links to the misunderstanding of sura 44:54 zawwaj, "join,
marry." The misinterpretation of one verse spills over into the
related thematic content of another. The other sections are also
well-argued. Of special interest are the discussions in sections 15.5
15.6 of suras 55:56 and 55:70, 72, 74, respectively, which state,
referring to the virgins of paradise "whom deflowered before them has
neither man nor jinn." Instead, these are the grapes of paradise "that
neither man nor jinn have defiled." Luxenberg points out that sura
55:72 evidences another Qur'ānic parallel to Ephraem, who writes
that the vines of paradise abound in "hanging grapes."10
[34] Section sixteen follows this investigation as it points to a
similar misreading of paradise's grapes as youths, Arabic wildun. Sura
76:19 "Round amongst them go boys of perpetual youth, whom when one
see, he thinks them pearls unstrung" (sura 16.1, citing Bell's
translation). Wildun is a genuinely Arabic word, but it is used in a
sense which is borrowed from Syriac yaldā. Youths like pearls is
somewhat suspicious, especially given that "pearls" are a metaphor for
the grapes of paradise from the previous section. Luxenberg uncovered
that Syriac has the expression yaldā dagpettā, "child o= f
the vine," appearing in the Peshitta: Matthew 26:29, Mark 14:25, and
Luke 22:18, in which Christ foreshadows his death and resurrection: "I
will not drink of this child of the vine (yaldā dagpettā)
until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of my Father." Here
it is the juice of the grape that is the "child." Entries in the
Arabic-Syriac lexica for each of yaldā and gpettā = give in
addition to "child" and "vine" "fruit" and "wine," respectively.
Luxenberg gives further evidence from suras 37:45, 43:71, and 76:15
that Ephraem the Syrian's depiction of the grapes of paradise is
behind the original Qur'ānic text.
[35] Section seventeen synthesizes the techniques and findings of the
foregoing study and analyzes two complete suras: 108 and 96. Luxenberg
provides for each a complete commentary and translation. The thrust of
sura 108 has already been presented above. The analysis of all
nineteen verses of sura 96 spans twenty-two pages. Among the many
solutions provided in this section is that the particle 'a which has
stumped the commentators and the grammarians is really two different
words: the Syriac word 'aw "or" and the Syriac 'ēn "if, when."
Omitting here the details of the argument, this sura is to be read as
a call to participate in liturgical prayer and has the "character of a
Christian-Syriac prooemium, which in the later tradition was replaced
by the fatiha (from Syriac ptāxā, 'opening= ')." This is not
just any liturgy, but the Divine Liturgy, the eucharistic
commemoration, as Luxenberg reconstructs verses 17-19: "Should he
[i.e., the Slanderer] wish to call his idols, he will (thereby) call a
[god who] passes away! You should not at all listen to him, (rather)
perform (your) liturgy and receive the Eucharist (wa-isjid wa
iqtabar)" (p. 296). This is noteworthy, as this is the oldest sura
according to Islamic tradition, and reveals its Christian-Syriac
roots. In sura 5 "The Repast" Luxenberg indicates that closely related
eucharistic terminology as in sura 96 (the proof for which is omitted
in this review) suggests that the verses in sura 5:114-115 refer to
the Eucharistic liturgy (and not just the Last Supper). Further
evidence for this reading comes from a piece of pre-Islamic poetry by
the Christian Arab poet `Adi ibn Zayd which the Kitāb al-
aghānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (d. 967)
preserv= ed. Section eighteen, a brief, comprehensive summary,
concludes the study.
[36] The production of the book is overall of good quality. There are
certain proofreading errors, including the mis-numbering of sections
(e.g., pp. 237 and 239), and very few grammatical mistakes. The page
layout is at times difficult to read. This is partly due to the nature
of the study, which requires Arabic, Syriac, Mandaic, and Latin
alphabets to share space with footnotes and inline quotations from the
sources.
[37] A work of this scope presented piece-meal necessarily lacks the
cohesion and elegance of a full study. The implications of this method
are nevertheless clear. Any future scientific study of the Qur'ān
will necessarily have to take this method into consideration. Even if
scholars disagree with the conclusions, the philological method is
robust. It has established a discipline that is substantially
different from the exegetical traditions of the Arabian and Western
commentators. Luxenberg has called into question the view of the
Qur'ān as a "pure" text, one free of the theological and
philological difficulties that plague the transmission histories of
other texts, e.g., the Hebrew Bible and its versions.
[38] A central question that this investigation raises is the
motivation of cUthmān in preparing his redaction of the
Qur'ān. Luxenberg presents the two hadīth traditions
recounting how cUthmā= ;n came to possess the first manuscript. If
Luxenberg's analysis is even in broad outline correct, the content of
the Qur'ān was substantially =
different at the time of Muhammad and cUthmān's redaction played
a part in the misreading of key passages. Were these misreadings
intentional or not? The misreadings in general alter the Qur'ān
from a book that is more or less harmonious with the New Testament and
Syriac Christian liturgy and literature to one that is distinct, of
independent origin.
[39] It is hoped that an English translation of this work will soon
appear. Despite the sober revolution this book will no doubt create,
one should not be naïve to think that all Islamicists in the West will
immediately take up and respond to the scholarly challenges posed by
any work of this kind. However, just as Christianity faced the
challenges of nineteenth and twentieth century biblical and liturgical
scholarship, so too will serious scholars of Islam, both East and
West, benefit from the discipline Luxenberg has launched.
_______
Notes
1 The transcription of Arabic and Syriac mostly follows the standard
transcription, with the noted exceptions in the Hugoye guidelines.
2 Abū Jacfar Muhammad bin Jarīr at-Tabarī,
Jāmic
al-bay= ān can ta'wīl al-Qur'ān (Cairo, 3rd ed., 1968).
3 Abū l-Fadl Jamāl ad-Dīn Muhammad bin Mukarram
al-Ifriq= 9; al-Misrī bin Manzūr, Lisān al-carab
(Beirut, 1955).
4 Richard Bell, The Qur'ān; Translated, with a critical
rearrangement =
of the Surahs, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1937), vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1939).
5 Régis Blachère, Le Coran (traduit de l'arabe) (Paris, 1957).
6 Rudi Paret, Der Koran; Übersetzung (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne,
Mainz, 2nd ed., 1982).
7 R. Payne Smith, ed., Thesaurus Syriacus, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1879), vol.
2 (Oxford, 1901).
8 Carl Brockelmann, Lexicon Syriacum (Halle in Saxony, 1928).
9 Jaques Eugène Mannā, Vocabulaire Chaldéen Arabique (Mossul,
1900); reprinted with new appendix by Raphael J. Bidawid (Beirut,
1975).
10 Luxenberg does not give the place in Ephraem but cites Edmund Beck,
Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Paradiso und contra
Julianum, in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO),
Scriptores Syri t. 78, vols. 174 [Syriac], t. 79, vol. 175 [German
translation] (Louvain, 1957). The passage to which Luxenberg refers is
Hymn VII, stanza 17. In fact, one finds the text in CSCO, vol. 174, p.
29. There are many similar passages where the fruits "stretch
themselves out" to those in Paradise. See Sebastian Brock, tr. and
commentary, St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, N.Y.:
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1998).
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