reynolds-the-quran-in-its-historical-context-2

254 Marifred KroppA third point is rather surprising and must be raised and discussedPhilological and theological idiosyncrasy is found in the learned speculationinterpretation of the second statement lam yz7lad, "He was not begotten. " 27 Butposition of the two elements shows (once again in this study) the imnn1rt~,,,.prhyme to the Qur' an, as the logical sequence would be lam yz7lad wa-lamAmbros comes near to the point, when he states lam yiilad may be aparallel motivated by the rhyme. But he fails to cite the relevant stylisticthe figura etymologica figuring in this passage as well as in many others inQur'an and generally very frequent in the Arabic language: expressiomerismum. With this device the two extreme parts are meant to represententire range of meaning in between; the interpreter should not give anymeaning or weight to the two extremities.2 9 Thus the appropriate translation,trying to imitate the specific Arabic (and Semitic) style, could be: "And Heabsolutely nothing to do with begetting!"Verse 4: the consequences of non-initial hamza insertedinto Qur'iinic languageThe original language offue Qur'an is characterized by the loss of hamzastop) in nearly every instance offue non-initial position, as clearly rer1ecteacomplicated orthographical rules of canonical Qur'anic Arabic and later vu1~~''""'Tripartite formulas in the Qur'anic corpus 255for representing this consonant in the non-initial position. 30 Now, the hapaxkufu ', in the presumed indefinite accusative lalfit 'an, is derived,to the canonical reading, from a verb ill', a class which is not regularly""""lP.rlm•" by Arabic grammarians. For the sake of brevity suffice it to say thatverbs ill' merge with ill w or y. 31 They may leave traces of their originalfield, but as a general rule all of these three classes are closely related(fil•orpbologj'callii and semantically) and may ultimately go back to one proto-class;·cor!SectueJltly there is one proto-root for each of the three possible roots. Semanticlitliere:ncnaJltalrasm, between the (Classical Arabic) roots --iKF', --iKFW, and --iKFY.this point let us look at the syntactical structure of verse 4 proposed by fuereading:la-hz7prepositional complement(to the following object)abad(un)subject27 The current Muslim explanation is that God is without beginning from all eternity. Butrather banal and would not require the metaphorical use of the image of begetting for hisinto existence.28 On this cf. Ambros, "Analyse von Sure 112," 244. "Die Frage, was kufu' in v. 4bedeuten soli, graviert deshalb so sehr, wei! bei der Annahme von 'Gefahrtin' die drei Ne~mticmenin v. 3-4 exakt den drei Personen der christlichen Trinitiit nach islamischer Au:ttassun:~·.entsprechen (lam yalid- 'Vater', lam yz7lad- 'Sohn,' lam yakun lahii kufo 'an al;ad­Leider sehen wir keine Miiglichkeit, durch intem-koranische oder exteme (philologischelinguistische) Beibringungen zu einer Entscheidung bezUglich kujit' zu gelangen. Halt mandaB lam yalid ebenso gut die Allah-Kindschaft anderer Wesen (insb. von al-Lat usw.; vgl.53, 19f.) in Abrede stellen kann (wie in der koranwissenschaftlichen Literaturausgefiihrt wurde) und daB lam yzilad sehr wohl auch bloB parallelistisch und durchmotiviert sein kann (bzw. ganz allgemein die Urewigkeit Allahs emphatisieren soil), daBebenso vie! dafiir, das der 'negative Reflex' derTrinitat aufKoninzidenz, nicht Intention(Ambros, "Analyse von Sure 112," 245). His argument comes out of his very bnefcon'Sid•eration.of laifu '. His first agnostic skepticism about latfo' will be shown to be unn.ecessru:yfollowing discussion of verse 4. Moreover, his parallel between ~al;iba ("The female cornpanio1n;"c'Q 6: 10 l; 72:3) and kujit 'reveals a false reading in two Qur' iinic passages, as will be den1onstraied .below.29 For another example I cite only Q 85:3: wa-shahid wa-mashhzid, which means simply "by theof an absolute/absolutely true testimony."rather unusual sequence of the elements may well be explained by