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

260 Manfred KroppHaving in mind now the three categories of the tripartite and anti-Tri.nitariatn;formula, we recognize ittalchadha waladan as the second (placed third for theofthe rhyme); ittakhadha .ya/:zibatan-'- which still has to be discussed in itsreading - represents in fact the third (shar'ilc) if we take for the moment"consort" as "partner." Thus we have to discover the first category (abad,or la-hzl l-mullc or similar) in the remaining words - and we easily do thiscancelling the dot in the presumed "majesty, fortune,"jadd lJad, "the one," isfact the required word and concept, no matter that it is apparently in an =·"lll"'"form. 44 This leads irnrnediately to the discovery of the tripartite structure ofpassage, indicated by the - not perfect 45 - rhyme in -ad. Thus we presentreconstructed reading 46 and translation:. . . innahzl- ta 'ala- bad! Rabbina ma (i)ttakhad- .yababa wa-la walad!..:_ I -I ..:_ I_:_ I -I ..:_ I ..:_ I -I ..:_ 1 47" ... He- exalted be He- is One! Our Lord did not adopt- neither(in his sovereignty) nor a son!"The very concrete and human idea of a consort for having a son from thebeginning seems too banal and in any case unacceptable as a theologicaleven when willingly misunderstood by an ideological adversary. In the contextthe passage with the expression ittalchadha-waladan it is simply not needed,it is adoption which is presumed, discussed and naturally rejected. This leadscally to the reading .yababa, 48 "companions, company," which is furthermoreperfect semantic parallel to sharllc, "partner," and- as has been demonstratedkufu'! laifw, "equal, on the same level," in Q 112:4. This "partner," or"partnership," does not refer to the Holy Spirit, 49 as has been speculated,S 0 but44 One could think of a kind of haplography or other reasons for the elision of the a/if of al;ad;that would lead back to the discussion of this word in verse 1 ofQ 112.45 Unless we consider a dialectal form, ittakhad, for this verb which anyway is multi-faceted inQur'an.46 Here I include some linguistic features (not in accordance with Classical Arabic) and thereading 0a[laba, "companions, partuers," instead of 0ii[liba, "consort." These cannot bedetail, which would require a separate study. Thus some short remarks must suffice. The shorti in rabbinii is not a case marker, since we assume original Qur' iinic Arabic to be caseless. It is inan epenthetic vowel caused by the structure of the syllables as it exists in many of the modemants of spoken Arabic (cf. J. Owens, Linguistic History, 107...{)8). The form of ittakhad, asindicated, includes an initial a/if, dictated by the rhythm of the sentence. The final diilcould well be a vulgar form of the word, or it may come from t;lanirat al-shi 'r, "poetic MOoa••''h• "' ·4 7 The very regular and pregnant rhythmic structure is remarkable: seven syllables andrically placed accents in each verse. The structure of the formula in Q 112 is lessfollows at least the rule of increasing syllables (i.e. the longest one at the end), as the threehave a pattern of 5 - 7- 9 syllables, with two accents in every phrase.48 There are other morphological forms for the plural or collective of 0ii[lib, "companion;" 0al;aba1chosen here for rhythmical reasons.49 Which is, in fact, grammatically feminine in Arabic.50 Cf. Ambros, "Analyse von Sure 112," 244--45.Tripartite formulas in the Qur'anic corpus 261second part of qualities and epithets referring to the "Son" in the (Nicene)very God of very God, of one essence with His Father, by Whom the worldsestablished and everything was created. 5 1 •further conclusions can be drawn on the basis of a new analysis of these. If it is true that kujw, .yababa, and sharfk are references to the "homoouandits paraphrases in the Christian (Nicene) creed, then shirk is nothing elseassuming, believing and defending this tenet; consequently the omni-presentin the Qur'an must be Trinitarian Christians. 52point has to be stressed. Al-Jinn is a remarkable piece in the Qur'an,from the literary point of view. The partial transfer of the religiousand the preaching of God's message from the human world to that ofspirits (jinn) is an ingenious literary device which does not lack someand irony- qualities not always present with this text and its author(s) .~ w.wv.llll'J'" this device needs to be analyzed under the aspects and premises ofspeech-act theory. The discourse in this Sura involves different speakers, and.,-·-··-····J of the narrator is unclear. This is a most complicated text, where thereligious medium builds up his own world, which could be quite remotethe concrete historical situation he actually lives in. 53recycled passage in Q 72:3comparison between the reconstructed formula and its canonical readingden10n:stra1tes that there are rnisreadings (e.g. bad as a foreign word designatingof the essentials of God's nature), or better, changes which can be explainedby ignorance or by an intention to hide the original wording. Others, such,.,, ... ,., •• _ .... J the Qur'an is anti-binarian (not anti-Trinitarian), since it insists on refuting the Son as. by God the Father, and the Son as equal in essence and as a partuer in the creation of the· . :world. Theological utterances and tenets about the Holy Spirit, which have clear echoes in the• Qur'an (e.g. Q 2:87; 2:253; 4:171, etc.), are acceptable because they enter into the normal frame­. ·,work and character of anthropomorphic metaphors of God's nature.It is true that the term sh.r.k. is attested in epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions in the - very-sense of"paganism; polytheism". This, in fact, does not affect the result of our analysisthis word means in the Qur'an. A word in context has not its etymological or historicalbut its specific one required by the context and meant by the authors of the text. On the. contrary, the one who chose, perhaps very consciously, this special term for designating his reliadversaries,could well have meant that Trinitarian Christians are nothing better thanis in fact a program for a whole series of studies to be made on the Qur' anic corpus. Ifor my ignorance of relevant English literature and cite only three German,;mtonclgratphs which opened for me new horizons in Qur'anic studies: P. von Polenz, DeutscheSatzsemantik: Grundbegriffe des Zwischen-den-Zeilen-Lesens, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1985; P. Kilhn::: 'Mehrfachadressienmg: Untersuchungen zur adressatenspezifischen Polyvalenz sprachlichen'c '.·naJ7aems,TUbingen: Niemeyer, 1995; A. Wagner, Prophetie a is Theologie. Die so spricht Jahwe­Fonneln und ihr Beitrag fUr das Grundverstlindnis alttestamentlicher Prophetie, Gottingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004.