The Qur'an in its historical context (pdf - Islam and Christian-Muslim ...

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE QUR’AN
syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran (The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur’an), 7
was a new starting-point. It led me to re-examine the traditional Muslim accounts
on the history of the Qur’an and to analyze whether these sources contain
elements in favor of Luxenberg’s thesis.
The present paper is a kind of partial inventory or a summary of several articles
and contributions, both published and unpublished, wherein the reader will find
more details, sources and studies. Here I will address evidence for collective
authorship of the Qur’an first in Islamic tradition and second in the Qur’an itself.
Thereafter I will consider, in light of this evidence, the importance of the
proposals that the Qur’an was particularly shaped by Syriac Christian tradition.
The Islamic tradition and another history of the Qur’an
uphill, or “the obscure beginnings” 8
I proposed the distinction between “the reconstruction of the Qur’an uphill” and
its “reconstruction downhill” within a panel organized by Manfred Kropp during
the first World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES), 9 in a paper
delivered in French: “Une reconstruction critique du Coran est-elle possible?”
(“Is a critical reconstruction of the Qur’an possible?”) In our perspective “the
Qur’an uphill,” means the lectionary (qur’an) or parts of a lectionary, before
the Islamic Qur’an. Our concern will be here above all with that lectionary.
In the same way the expression “the Qur’an downhill” 10 means the Qur’an after
the collection and arrangement of the so-called ‘Uthmanic Qur’an, whose critical
reconstruction was planned and begun in some way by Gotthelf Bergsträsser
(1886–1933), 11 Otto Pretzl (1893–1941) 12 and Arthur Jeffery (1888?–1959). 13
The Qur’an itself contains several, and the Islamic sources many, indications of
another history of the Qur’an that is different from, and in some way opposed to,
the official Islamic theological representation of the genesis and development
of this qur’an.
The informants of Muhammad
The question of whether Muhammad relied on informants is connected to the
scholarly discussion of the origin of the Qur’an. 14 Many of the Qur’anic narratives
must not have sounded new to the Meccan opponents of Muhammad. They used
to say, gibing him: “This is naught but falsehood he has forged, and other folk
have helped him to it [...]. They say: Fairy-tales of the ancients (or perhaps:
scriptures of the ancients, asatir al-awwalin) 15 that he has written down, so that
they are recited to him at the dawn and at the evening” (Q 25:4,5).
The locus classicus where the question of informants is dealt with in the
Qur’anic commentaries is Q 16:103: “And We know very well that they say: Only
a mortal is teaching him. The speech of him at whom they hint is barbarous; and
this is speech Arabic, manifest (lisan ‘arabi mubin).” 16 We shall see below that the
usual translation of the end of this verse is: “speech Arabic, manifest,” which is
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