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

GERHARD BÖWERING
origins of Islam. 34 The subject also drew the scholarly attention of such scholars
as Tor Andrae and Richard Bell as well as more recently, J. Spencer
Trimingham. 35 M.P. Roncaglia affirmed this connection explicitly in a 1971
survey article. 36 On the basis of this assumed link, which identifies the Ebionites
with those Christians who are called Nasara in the Qur’an, Azzi presses an
audacious claim that has yet to be substantiated. His thesis is based on the figure
of Waraqa b. Nawfal, 37 the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, who is
portrayed by Azzi as Muhammad’s teacher and mentor. 38 According to Muslim
tradition, Waraqa was literate and became a Christian in pre-Islamic times. He
copied down passages from the Christian scriptures and recognized Muhammad’s
prophetic mission immediately after his first Qur’anic revelation. Azzi, however,
depicts him as a priest who prepared Muhammad to follow him as the leader and
head of the small Ebionite community of Mecca. Muhammad betrayed this
project when he migrated to Medina and there became the head of the new
Islamic state. The separation of the pupil from the teacher explains the change
that took place between an original Qur’an and the codex of ‘Uthman. The
original Qur’an, assembled by the priest, was intended to serve as a lectionary for
the ritual worship of the Christian Arab community of Mecca. The codex of
‘Uthman, on the other hand, put together as a book after Muhammad’s death,
incorporates the agenda of Muhammad’s Islamic state and constitutes the basis of
our present-day Qur’an.
While being educated by his mentor, so Azzi proposes, Muhammad became
familiar with the contents of the Gospel of the Ebionites, known as the Gospel of
the Hebrews. 39 This apocryphal gospel was current among the Nazareans, that is
the Aramaic speaking Jewish-Christians of Syria-Palestine, and was translated
into Arabic by Waraqa. The Ebionites were known for ritual washings and
a Eucharistic celebration using bread and water rather than wine. They were
anti-trinitarian, denied the divinity of Christ and saw Jesus as created, begotten
from the semen of a human being. They rejected the christological teachings of
Paul and denied any redemptive role for Jesus. For them Jesus was a prophet
following in a line of prophets leading from Adam to Moses. Jesus would rule
the future age while the present age is ruled by the Devil. To sum up, Azzi’s study
is highly speculative and poorly documented, but it nevertheless points in
the direction of the kind of historical–critical research that would have to be
undertaken to support Luxenberg’s purely philological studies.
Other new voices in the debate
In addition to the far ranging theories of Lüling, Luxenberg and Azzi, a number
of genuinely scholarly articles have appeared in the past decade that are focused
on clearly defined issues surrounding the origins of the Qur’an. Following up on
his study of Tabari’s exegetical achievements, C. Gilliot wrote a series of articles
focusing on the possibility of the Qur’an as a collective work that drew on a great
variety of informants. 40 F. de Blois pursued a line of research that disentangles the
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