Sandro Magister in Chiesa (thanks to Nicolei) writes about the latest researches of "Christoph Luxenberg," a scholar who studies the origins of the Qur'an and early Islam. The kind of work he does with the Qur'an is the same sort of thing that innumerable scholars do with the Bible -- but while such biblical scholars enjoy comfortable tenured positions in universities, "Luxenberg" publishes under a pseudonym and fears for his life.
That Aramaic was the lingua franca of a vast area of the ancient Middle East is a notion that is by now amply noted by a vast public, thanks to Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," which everyone watches in that language.But that Syro-Aramaic was also the root of the Koran, and of the Koran of a primitive Christian system, is a more specialized notion, an almost clandestine one. And it's more than a little dangerous. The author of the most important book on the subject - a German professor of ancient Semitic and Arabic languages - preferred, out of prudence, to write under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg. A few years ago, one of his colleagues at the University of Nablus in Palestine, Suliman Bashear, was thrown out of the window by his scandalized Muslim students.
In the Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries, mangled by the wars of religion, scholars of the Bible also used to keep a safe distance with pseudonyms. But if, now, the ones doing so are the scholars of the Koran, this is a sign that, for the Muslim holy book as well, the era of historical, linguistic, and philological re-readings has begun.
This is a promising beginning for many reasons. Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, a professor at Saarland University in Germany and another Koran scholar on the philological level, maintains that this type of approach to Islam's holy book can help to defeat its fundamentalist and Manichean readings, and to bring into a better light its ties with Judaism and Christianity.
The book by "Christoph Luxenberg" came out in 2000 in Germany with the title "Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran" ("A Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran"), published in Berlin by Das Arabische Buch. It is out of print, and there are no translations in other languages. But a new, updated edition (again in German) is about to arrive in bookstores.
Here follows an interview with the author, published in Germany in the newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and in Italy in "L'espresso," no. 11, March 12-18, 2004:
From the Gospel to Islam
An interview with "Christoph Luxenberg" by Alfred Hackensberger
Q. - Professor, why did you think it useful to conduct this re-reading of the Koran?
A. - "Because, in the Koran, there are many obscure points that, from the beginning, even the Arab commentators were not able to explain. Of these passages it is said that only God can comprehend them. Western research on the Koran, which has been conducted in a systematic manner only since about the middle of the 19th century, has always taken as its base the commentaries of the Arab scholars. But these have never gone beyond the etymological explanation of some terms of foreign origin."
Q. - What makes your method different?
A. - "I began from the idea that the language of the Koran must be studied from an historical-linguistic point of view. When the Koran was composed, Arabic did not exist as a written language; thus it seemed evident to me that it was necessary to take into consideration, above all, Aramaic, which at the time, between the 4th and 7th centuries, was not only the language of written communication, but also the lingua franca of that area of Western Asia."
Q. - Tell us how you proceeded.
A. - "At first I conducted a 'synchronous' reading. In other words, I kept in mind both Arabic and Aramaic. Thanks to this procedure, I was able to discover the extent of the previously unsuspected influence of Aramaic upon the language of the Koran: in point of fact, much of what now passes under the name of 'classical Arabic' is of Aramaic derivation."
Q. - What do you say, then, about the idea, accepted until now, that the Koran was the first book written in Arabic?
A. - "According to Islamic tradition, the Koran dates back to the 7th century, while the first examples of Arabic literature in the full sense of the phrase are found only two centuries later, at the time of the 'Biography of the Prophet'; that is, of the life of Mohammed as written by Ibn Hisham, who died in 828. We may thus establish that post-Koranic Arabic literature developed by degrees, in the period following the work of al-Khalil bin Ahmad, who died in 786, the founder of Arabic lexicography (kitab al-ayn), and of Sibawwayh, who died in 796, to whom the grammar of classical Arabic is due. Now, if we assume that the composition of the Koran was brought to an end in the year of the Prophet Mohammed's death, in 632, we find before us an interval of 150 years, during which there is no trace of Arabic literature worthy of note."
Q. - So at the time of Mohammed Arabic did not have precise rules, and was not used for written communication. Then how did the Koran come to be written?
A. - "At that time, there were no Arab schools - except, perhaps, for the Christian centers of al-Anbar and al-Hira, in southern Mesopotamia, or what is now Iraq. The Arabs of that region had been Christianized and instructed by Syrian Christians. Their liturgical language was Syro-Aramaic. And this was the vehicle of their culture, and more generally the language of written communication."
Q. - What is the relationship between this language of culture and the origin of the Koran?
A. - "Beginning in the third century, the Syrian Christians did not limit themselves to bringing their evangelical mission to nearby countries, like Armenia or Persia. They pressed on toward distant territories, all the way to the borders of China and the western coast of India, in addition to the entire Arabian peninsula all the way to Yemen and Ethiopia. It is thus rather probable that, in order to proclaim the Christian message to the Arabic peoples, they would have used (among others) the language of the Bedouins, or Arabic. In order to spread the Gospel, they necessarily made use of a mishmash of languages. But in an era in which Arabic was just an assembly of dialects and had no written form, the missionaries had no choice but to resort to their own literary language and their own culture; that is, to Syro-Aramaic. The result was that the language of the Koran was born as a written Arabic language, but one of Arab-Aramaic derivation."
Q. - Do you mean that anyone who does not keep the Syro-Aramaic language in mind cannot translate and interpret the Koran correctly?
A. - "Yes. Anyone who wants to make a thorough study of the Koran must have a background in the Syro-Aramaic grammar and literature of that period, the 7th century. Only thus can he identify the original meaning of Arabic expressions whose semantic interpretation can be established definitively only by retranslating them into Syro-Aramaic."
Q. - Let's come to the misunderstandings. One of the most glaring errors you cite is that of the virgins promised, in the Islamic paradise, to the suicide bombers.
A. - "We begin from the term 'huri,' for which the Arabic commentators could not find any meaning other than those heavenly virgins. But if one keeps in mind the derivations from Syro-Aramaic, that expression indicated 'white grapes,' which is one of the symbolic elements of the Christian paradise, recalled in the Last Supper of Jesus. There's another Koranic expression, falsely interpreted as 'the children' or 'the youths' of paradise: in Aramaic: it designates the fruit of the vine, which in the Koran is compared to pearls. As for the symbols of paradise, these interpretive errors are probably connected to the male monopoly in Koranic commentary and interpretation."
Q. - By the way, what do you think about the Islamic veil?
A. - "There is a passage in Sura 24, verse 31, which in Arabic reads, 'That they should beat their khumurs against their bags.' It is an incomprehensible phrase, for which the following interpretation has been sought: 'That they should extend their kerchiefs from their heads to their breasts.' But if this passage is read in the light of Syro-Aramaic, it simply means: 'They should fasten their belts around their waists.'"
Q. - Does this mean the veil is really a chastity belt?
A. - "Not exactly. It is true that, in the Christian tradition, the belt is associated with chastity: Mary is depicted with a belt fastened around her waist. But in the gospel account of the Last Supper, Christ also ties an apron around his waist before washing the Apostles' feet. There are clearly many parallels with the Christian faith."
Q. - You have discovered that Sura 97 of the Koran mentions the Nativity. And in your translation of the famous Sura of Mary, her "birthgiving" is "made legitimate by the Lord." Moreover, the text contains the invitation to come to the sacred liturgy, to the Mass. Would the Koran, then, be nothing other than an Arabic version of the Christian Bible?
A. - "In its origin, the Koran is a Syro-Aramaic liturgical book, with hymns and extracts from Scriptures which might have been used in sacred Christian services. In the second place, one may see in the Koran the beginning of a preaching directed toward transmitting the belief in the Sacred Scriptures to the pagans of Mecca, in the Arabic language. Its socio-political sections, which are not especially related to the original Koran, were added later in Medina. At its beginning, the Koran was not conceived as the foundation of a new religion. It presupposes belief in the Scriptures, and thus functioned merely as an inroad into Arabic society."
Q. - To many Muslim believers, for whom the Koran is the holy book and the only truth, your conclusions could seem blasphemous. What reactions have you noticed up until now?
A. - "In Pakistan, the sale of the edition of 'Newsweek' that contained an article on my book was banned. Otherwise, I must say that, in my encounters with Muslims, I have not noticed any hostile attitudes. On the contrary, they have appreciated the commitment of a non-Muslim to studies aimed at an objective comprehension of their sacred text. My work could be judged as blasphemous only by those who decide to cling to errors in the interpretation of the word of God. But in the Koran it is written, 'No one can bring to the right way those whom God induces to error.'"
Q. - Aren't you afraid of a fatwa, a death sentence like the one pronounced against Salman Rushdie?
A. - "I am not a Muslim, so I don't run that risk. Besides, I haven't offended against the Koran"
Q. - But you still preferred to use a pseudonym.
A. - "I did that on the advice of Muslim friends who were afraid that some enthusiastic fundamentalist would act of his own initiative, without waiting for a fatwa."
I know someone who is a lecturer at a Bible college in England. I had a conversation with him once about the variations in Biblical manuscripts. As a side note he told me the following about the manuscripts of the Koran:
"Very little comparison of the contradictory Koran manuscripts has been undertaken, and what is done cannot be published for fear of the argument being answered with the sword. I know someone who works with Koran manuscripts (some of the oldest are here in London in the British Museum) and what he says makes me think that Muslims probably have a reason to be afraid of scholarship."
(In other words, if the various existing manuscripts of the Koran were analysed systematically, they are in such a mess that it would be hopeless trying to piece together what Mohammed wrote originally. However, Muslims try to intimidate scholars from even trying.)
PS. The more that variations in the Bible manuscripts are investigated, the more confident scholars become that we can reproduce the original with nearly perfect accuracy.
The work of Christoph Luxenburg, and of others working on the origins of early Islam -- including the redoubtable Patricia Crone at the Institute for Advanced Study -- is not intended to be a weapon of self-defense by Infidels. But weapon such scholarship is, for Islam itself, which requires all Muslims to be literalists, and relies on claims that the Qur'an is the immutable word of God, as dictated by the Angel Gabriel to an illiterate Arab, Muhammad (and from the Qur'an were spun the tales of the hadith, by several generations of pious but highly-imaginative storytellers), will not be able to withstand, as Christianity and Judaism withstood, the scrutiny and analysis of the Higher Biblical Criticism. Crone and others have already, with a wide variety of evidence, suggested the non-Hijazi origins of Islam; there is no evidence for the existence of "Mecca" in the Hijaz as an entrepot, or even as a village, in the period ascribed to it in Islam; there is, however, archeological and other evidence for a different place of origin. Luxenberg's evidence for the Aramaic words in the Qur'an, and his demonstration that many of the otherwise incomprehensible passages in the Qur'an make sense when we read the words as Syriac, not Arabic, is formidable and convincing. There is also doubt, among the handful of serious Western scholars capable of working in this area, even as to the existence of the "historical Muhammad"; we who are Infidels can permit ourselves the luxury of studying the matter in freedom; Muslims cannot, or will not, for if they are not frightened for their physical safety, they are enslaved by their own mind-forged manacles; they cannot allow themselves, save for a few brave exceptions, to examine or analyze the origins of early Islam as is by njow routine for Christians and Jews to study the origins, over time, of Judaism and of Christianity.
There is growing evidence that in the small Arab principalities that already existed outside Arabia in the seventh century (consisting of Arabs who, having left the Arab peninsula in pursuit of booty on the numerous razzias by which the Arab tribes lived, they settled down in Mesopotamia and Shams (Syria), among far larger numbers of Christians and Jews, who enjoyed a far more stable and civilized existence than the tribes of Arabia, and that they discovered, over time, how useful it was to construct an ideology both to justify, and to promote, the Arab conquest of non-Arab peoples. Sometime in the late seventh century -- it may have been Abdel-Malik of the Ummayyads, he of the Dome of the Rock -- various Arabs helped to construct the belief-system, heavy on the geopolitics and on the superior role of the Arabs, known as "Islam." Naturally that belief-system incorporated not only pre-Islamic Arab lore (the djinns, etc.) but also distorted but still semi-recognizable bits and pieces of Jewish and Christian elements; there was wholesale expropriation of the important figures -- from Abraham on -- in those prior-in-time monotheisms. This belief-system, then, would more easily appeal to the much more numerous, much more civilized, but less warlike, Christians and Jews among whom the Muslim Arabs lived, and whom they were busy conquering, in what can only be seen as a veritable frenzy of conquest. Then, as now, da'wa (the Call to Islam) and demography played a significant role, but so few were the Arab conquerors, relative to those they conquered, that da'wa was of the greatest significance. Then, too, where there was not conversion, the imposition of the status of dhimmi -- dhimmitude -- assigned to the Jews and Christians (and subsequently, to the Zoroastrians of Persia), that status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity, which led to the slow asphyxiation of Christian and Jewish life in the Muslim world, and the conversion of most of its adherents to Islam.
There is archeological, linguistic, numismatic evidence for the late, non-Hijazi origins of Islam. This belief-system did not emerge at once, nor after the "23 Years" in which Muhammad was taking dictation. Perhaps, indeed, it was Abdel-Malik in Damascus, he of the Dome of the Rock, who played an important role in the formulation of early Islam, and did so for geopolitical reasons. It was perfectly understandable to create, and then to present to those conquered, a belief-system that would incorporate bits and pieces of Christianity and Judaism, and yet be a supersessional and supremacist ideology (with "Arabs" and the Arabic language always supreme) that would appeal, because of those elements of the prior montheisms, to those very Christians and Jews (or, later, the Zoroastrians of Persia). Muhammad is depicted above all as an Arab tribal leader, a warrior, striking temporary truces, ordering political assassinations, doing whatever he had to do to increase his own worldly power. Islam is not an other-worldly belief system.
One can consult, with profit and pleasure, the excellent scholarly anthologies by the tireless Ibn Warraq -- The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, The Origins of the Koran, and What the Koran Really Says, to learn more of recent scholarship. Luxenburg is included in the last.
It is maddening that so many of the Irwin Coreys of this world (Corey, a comic who billed himself as "the world's greatest authorities") make pronouncements on Islam without having studied it seriously. They would not make such pronouncements on elementary particle physics; what makes them think they know, really know, what the tenets of Islam are, and the origins of the belief-system, and how it spread, and what its peculiar appeal may be, and what its intellectual, political, and economic weaknesses are, and how it might be intelligently undercut and at least some of its followers persuaded that the Qur'an is NOT the literal word of God and must be understood historically. Unless they are prepared to spend a solid year or two on the serious scholarship (not the Espositors and Armstrongs and Saids, but the real scholars),perhaps by first acquiring a CD of the Index Islamicus, they should should be a bit more hesitant about sounding off on "Islam" in the New York Times or elsewhere.
Luxenburg's work is of tremendous interest, to scholars and even, let it be said, to poliycmakers -- if only they had their wits fully about them -- all over the Infidel world. Luxenburg's astonishing philological work deserves attention. He deserves to be protected, and supported to the fullest. And the world of Infidels should understand that the implications of his work, and that of others, are shattering. One can imagine that somewhere -- in the depths of the British Museum, or the Cairo Museum, or even in the rubble of the Baghdad Museum, deep in some sanctum sanctorum, there exists an early Quran'ic text written in -- yes, in Syriac -- with quotations from Efrem the Syrian. Or perhaps such a text long ago made its way into the collection of a freethinking, fabulously rich Kuwaiti, who naturally keeps the text not in Kuwait, but in one of his many homes (let us say, in a fire-proof safe, in an innocuously-looking oast house, on his estate in Kent, or Surrey), and shows it to a handful of fellow Arab freethinkers sworn, on pain of death, to secrecy. They know what such a text would imply not only for the history of early Islam, and for Believers today. If publicly known, if analyzed, it would shake the foundations of Muslim belief, or at least the beliefs of that small, but significant, number of Muslims who retain the capacity for independent thought.
It reminds me of the early interpretation by Christians that Islam was simply a form of Christian heresy, and not an actual new religion.
I wonder when such works will eventually be published in a popular (non-scholarly) format?
thank you Hugh. Once again a wonderfully informative text. I try to thank you for your other exlanations, but sometimes I am unable to post on those sites. (It's a mystery.) In any case, keep them coming.
Re: Prof. Luxenburg's work- absolutely... fascinating. He must represent the Islamist's worst fear. His work and life must be guarded at all costs. Without being melodramatic, the future of Western society may rest on his work.
And thanks to Hugh for yet another significant contribution here.
I would like to add to Hugh's comments as an art historian. Evidence suggests that the Dome of the Rock was built as a means to appropriate Jewish sacred land and to proselytize to Christians, Jews and Persians in order to convert them to Islam, and possibly as a means to increase revenue for the Umayyad Caliphate. It was not believed at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem (637) that Mohammed's night journey, in which he ascended into heaven, occurred in Jerusalem, as the Qur'an only states that he was in the "far off place of worship", i.e. "masjid al aqsa". The documents recording caliph Umar’s first tour of the city, notes that he was interested in seeing the Haram area (temple mount) and that there was no Islamic tradition that the site was associated with Abraham or Mohammed. As Jerusalem was a city known to Mohammed and his followers, the prophet would likely have mentioned it by name if that were the place where his "transportation" took place. Instead the Qur'an does not reference Jerusalem; neither does the Umayyad script inside the building mention Mohammed’s ascension into heaven, though one line comes from the Sura of the Night-Journey. It is sura 17.3 which asserts that Allah has not taken unto himself a son, etc. Another Umayyad quotation in the building is an invitation to “pray for your Prophet and your sevant, Jesus, son of Mary” and goes on to explain (from sura 19.34-37) that God does not beget a son. It therefore is thought that even at the time of the construction of the building, the rock was not associated with the night journey, rather the function of the building was to convince Christians, especially, that Islam was correct and their belief in Jesus’ divinity was false. Other scholars propose that Abdel-Malik of the Ummayyads, when building the Dome of the Rock, did attempt to promote Jerusalem as the place of the night journey in order to gain some of the lucrative wealth from Islamic pilgrims who traveled to the holy city of Mecca. By making Jerusalem a secondary holy site, he hoped to challenge the autocracy of Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca.
See: The Formation of Islamic Art by Oleg Grabar (1973) 48-67.
Wicked Muslims!! Imagine appropriating a holy place to make money and to "convince" Christians. Sounds familiar, but at least, we admit that our religion has (had?) that flaw. Imagine what would happen to any Muslim that would dare to make that assertion about Islam.
It is perhaps Islam's greatest flaw: underneath their superficial cleverness, it appears that, never having experienced it themselves, they don't have a real understanding of the ability and interest of free people to acquire knowledge, to define and solve problems, and finally, to recognize the reality of what is going on between them and the rest of the world.
They depend heavily on prohibitions against thought, such as political correctness, to have their way with us.
Ain't gonna happen.
again, luxenburg's work is exposed for the purely muslim hatred it is. He claims that Arabic comes from Aramaic/Syriac when M.M. al-Azami, in a recently published book "The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation" proves conclusively that not only was Arabic extant at the time of the Quran, but that the earliest known Arabic writings date to around 150 C.E....roughly 500 years before Islam and that Aramaic was most probably derived from Arabic and not the other way around. Islam and the Qur'an stand up to all the scholarly criticism you want to throw at it...just don't subject the bible to it, either old or new testament.
Why have I been unable to find a review of "The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation"? I can't even determine when it was published. I suspect that it's a piece of junk.
As far as Arabic being written early on, it is well-known that South Arabians around Yemen started writing around 3,000 years ago. The oldest Mudari Arabic (the ancestor of Classical Arabic) inscription dates from 328 C.E. This language is known to have had Aramaic borrowings ("bar" for "ibn"). Very few Mudari inscriptions are known to exist.
Al-Azami claims that Aramaic is descended from Arabic and not the other way around. Guess what? These languages come from different branches of the Semitic tree. Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language, related to Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Arabic is a Southern Semitic language, related to the languages of Yemen and Ethiopia. Luxenberg claims that Aramaic influenced Qur'anic Arabic, not that Arabic is descended from Aramaic. I have also cited earlier Aramaic influence on pre-Qur'anic Arabic.
I have seen many spurious claims of this sort and know them all to be bogus.
I have just answered my own question. "The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation" IS a piece of junk.