Islam -- A (Jewish-) Christian Sect? (Part 2)

Islam -- A (Jewish-) Christian Sect? (Part 2)
A short history-of-dogma examination
By Peter Bruns
Translated by Anonymous
Translation edited by Ibn Warraq
Part 1

Until the middle of the previous century[20], a certain optimism prevailed about the historical applicability of Koranic as well as extra-Koranic materials. The results of Watt and the older Koranic scholarship by Nöldeke[21] and Schwally at the time appeared to be completely worthless, when the genuineness of the Koran itself and the historical existence of Mohammed were doubted. What is amazing, in fact, is the monstrous naïveté of Western students of Islam relative to the Muslim fairy tale of the redaction of the Koran established under the "rightly guided" Caliph ‘Uthmân in 653.[22] Those same exegetes who would indignantly reject the reports of bishop and church writer Eusebius on the origin of the Gospels and New Testament literature, follow much more blindly the claims of late Muslim tradition. Thus the modern juxtaposition of Bible and Koran, Jesus and Mohammed suffers from the contemporaneity of what is not contemporaneous, or put otherwise, the asymmetry of the methodological procedures: hypercriticism and basic mistrust of church tradition on one hand, blind trust in the late literary sources of Muslim historians on the other. A preliminary glance into contemporary church historical writing can teach modern historians better. In 1930, Fritsch states: "The knowledge and concomitantly the refutation of the Qoran does not begin for Christian authors until the 8th century because it was not yet literarily fixed."[23] According to Mingana's[24] investigations from the early 20th century, Christian writers of the 7th century, like Katholikus Ischojab III, the chronica minora, as well as Johannes bar Penkaje,[25] are not yet acquainted with any Muslim holy book. The same can be said of Coptic author Johannes of Nikiu. A systematic refutation of the Qoran begins only with Johannes of Damascus (died ca. 750) and the Nestorian Katholikos Timotheus I (died 785), as well as the Melkite Theodor abû Qurra (died around 800). Christian criticism aims at both a textual tradition as well as content. It had not escaped the Christians that the Koran did not have an established and generally recognized textual form from the start. The apologist ‘Abd al-Masîh (Christodoulos) al-Kindî[26] in the 9th century proves especially well informed about the origin and collection of the Koran. Al-Kindî belongs among the sharpest Koran critics. In particular, he distinguishes three forms of the law: the complete law of divine mercy and love which Christ has brought, the law of balance, which is that of Moses (eye for an eye, etc.), and finally the "satanic law of the use of violence" (see "satanic verses"!), as derived from the Koran and the "ridiculous tales" of Mohammed (Hadîth). Other refutations of the Koran, like those of Abû Nûh an-Anbârî (9th century), have not come down to us. Muslim apologists, meanwhile, brought great embarrassment to the convoluted textual history, since they were accustomed to accuse Jews and Christians of a forgery (tahrîf) the Bible[27], while they themselves were not one bit better off with their holy book.

A change of direction in Koran scholarship appeared under John E. Wansbrough[28], who made a radical break with the previous schools of thought. In his view, what is presently called the Koran developed during a time period which reached into the ninth century. This would accord approximately with the statements made by al-Kindî. Within these two centuries, the different text fragments -- differently formed -- would have grown in the framework of an anonymous editing process into a sacred text. Therefore, the Koran cannot be valid as the ipsissima vox Mahometi, to say nothing of Dei. The question Tilman Nagel posed to himself -- how to explain the abrupt transformation in Mohammed's biography from patient sufferer to power-seeker (or put another way -- how the Mecca phase relates to the Medina phase)[29] reveals pure illusion, since the figure of Mohammed is fictitious and its relation to the literary product, "Koran", is not given. Preparation for Wansbrough's hypothesis were Lüling's investigations, expanded by Luxenberg to the reconstruction of a non-Arabic, Syriac basic text. The hermeneutic key, or rather general key for this kind of Koran exegesis is the postulation of a pre-Islamic-Christian archetype, a Syriac "original text," which only became an Arabic text in the course of a long editing process. Utterly surprising is the return of an old apologetic motif in a new costume. From the history of Muslim-Christian polemics[30], it is sufficiently well-known that Arab Christians turned the tables of written proof by invoking individual Koran citations against the Muslims as proof of the truth of their own religion -- thus striking the enemy with his own weapon. For traditional Koran exegesis, of many Western Islam scholars as well, insight into the history of text and tradition of the Koran, at any rate, means a great shock which has not yet been digested.

The theories of the Oxford scholar fell on fertile ground in the French scholarly world, in the case of -- among others -- Dominique and Marie-Thérèse Urvoy. Their study, "Psychological action of the Koran", investigates the rhetorical example of Islamic propaganda and of the didactic purposes in the Koran. Regarding the Koran and its origin, the authors summarize:

"The history of the Koranic text is marked by a series of socio-political choices: progressive establishment and imposition of an official version, eliminating other versions -- rallying of intellectuals around the agreed-upon version, even if it constitutes -- in the case of the philosophers -- a simple concession in numbers; hardening by the theologians of that unanimity by means of an interpretation privileging the cultural criteria of one group (Arabs) within the unity of the Muslim world. In this respect, the Koranic text appeared as the result of a veritable collective shaping."[31]

Peter Bruns is Professor at the Zentrum für Mittelalterstudien, Otto-Friedrich-Universität, Bamberg, Germany. This article appeared in German in Forum Katholische Theologie, 26 (2010) 1., pp. 1-23.