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.
University of St. Thomas
Cornelia B.
Horn
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
TEI XML encoding by
html2TEI.xsl
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
January 2003
Vol. 6, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv6n1prphenixhorn
Robert R. PHENIX Jr. and Cornelia B. HORN
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.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol6/HV6N1PRPhenixHorn.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2003
vol 6
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Qur`an
philology
Luxenberg
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[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 defective 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
forces a choice on all exegetes of the Qur’ān:
either to accept the scientific method of philology and its
value in producing a clearer text of the Qur’ān, or
to remain in the darkness. No longer will scholars of the first
rank be able to hide behind any notion that 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,
The transcription of Arabic and Syriac letters
mostly follows the standard transcription with the following
difference: Arabic dad and za are written
d. and z. respectively; Arabic kh in
khalifa and Syriac
het is
written x except in widely recognized words (like
khalifa).
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 on the part of
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 that Luxenberg follows. The text of the
Qur’ān has been largely unexplored with any
philological method. Western commentators have followed Islamic
tradition rather than use the reference tools and techniques.
Luxenberg gives a brief description of the findings from the
important work on Qur’ānic philology in the West.
Scholarship has 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.
Abū Jacfar Muhammad bin Jarīr at-Tabarī,
Jāmic al-bayān can
ta’wīl al-Qur’ān (Cairo,
3rd ed., 1968).
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,
Abū l-Fadl Jamāl
ad-Dīn Muhammad bin Mukarram
al-Ifriqī al-Misrī bin
Manzūr, Lisān
al-carab (Beirut, 1955).
the Western translations and commentaries
of Bell,
Richard Bell, The Qur’ān; Translated,
with a critical rearrangement of the Surahs, vol. 1
(Edinburgh, 1937), vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1939).
Blachère,
Régis Blachère, Le Coran (traduit
de l’arabe) (Paris, 1957).
and Paret,
Rudi Paret, Der Koran; Übersetzung
(Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, Mainz, 2nd ed., 1982).
the Syriac
dictionaries of Payne Smith
R. Payne Smith, ed., Thesaurus Syriacus,
vol. 1 (Oxford, 1879), vol. 2 (Oxford, 1901).
and Brockelmann,
Carl Brockelmann, Lexicon Syriacum (Halle in
Saxony, 1928).
and the
Vocabulaire Chaldéen – Arabique of
Mannā
Jaques Eugène Mannā, Vocabulaire
Chaldéen – Arabique (Mossul, 1900); reprinted
with new appendix by Raphael J. Bidawid (Beirut, 1975).
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 earlier 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 Tabarī 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, waw, and ya, must
also be polyvalent. Luxenberg points out that Islamic tradition
admits a reading of the mater for long /a/ in certain
instances as /e/ because this pronunciation was 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 heaven 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’ān derives
from the Syriac qeryānā, a technical term from
the Christian 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 as well as quryān.
Luxenberg posits the development of the spelling of this word
as follows: qeryān > qurān, written
without alif, then qurān written with
alif, and finally qur’ān, with an
intrusive hamza. The commentators were no longer aware
that ya 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 ta for
ya and then applying the same 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 praš / parreš 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 were
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 aloft 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 šaxxar “to
blame, use up” and at times to šawxar
“to keep back, hinder.” The confusion arose because
Syriac šawxar was pronounced in East Syriac and
Mandaic as either šāxar or
šaxxar.
[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
ze for re and jim for
ha(both pairs distinguished 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
cīn 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 ganta > 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.”
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).
[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 of 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) preserved. 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
cUthmān 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, many of whom are presently engaged in
massive damage control, 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