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

304 Sidney Griffithonly Persian pagans whom the Syriac authors depict as calling the'Nazoiaeans', but also the pagans ofSyria." 13 And what is more, de Blois goesto say, "I would suggest that when Syriac authors depict their non-Christiannents as calling the Christians 'Nazoreans', they are in fact using a literarythat is to say consciously alluding to Acts 24:5 .... They [i.e. theopponents] are depicted as aping the words of Paul's persecutors." 14 So, acc:on:lingto the logic of de Blois' suggestion, Syriac-speaking Christians did not innormally refer to themselves as "Nazoreans" because, for him, perhapsby St Jerome, the term carried a negative connotation for the Syriac writers,able to express an adversary's demeaning attitude to Christians, as was thewith St Paul's Jewish adversaries in the events reported in Acts 24:5, and ascognate Hebrew term No~rfm was used by later Jewish writers, with ademeaning intent.In this connection, as de Blois also goes on to point out, the"Nazoreans"/''Nazarenes" were used in the works of the Christian h,.,.,.oinnTriini(Nal;ropa\os)," 9.14 Ibid., 10.15 See most recently R. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity from the End of the NewPeriod until its Disappearance in the Fourth Centwy, Jerusalem: Magnes Press of tbeUniversity & Leiden: Brill, 1988. See also T. Haintbaler, Christliche Araber vor demVerbreitung und konfessionelle Zugelzorigkeit; eine Hinfiibrung, Eastern Christian Stadies;Leuven: Peeters, 2007, 54-56.16 This idea had been adumbrated already by J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidenl!tmes,G. Reimer, 1897, 232 .. It was explicitly put forward by H.J. Schoeps, Theologie und Ge;,chi.ohtedes Judenchristentums, Tilbingen: Mohr, 1949, 334-42, where, just prior to his section ontische Elemente im Islam, Schoeps speaks of "ein sektireriches Christentam teilweisechristlichen Charaketers war es, das Muhammed am Beginn seiner Laufbahn unter demN a ~ a r a - einer Sammelbezeichnung der Sekten Ostsyriens-Arabiens - kermerilennte,It has been widely popularized by Hans Kilng, most recently in his Der Islam: Ge,~chJicht;?;.Gegenwart, Zukunft, Munich: Piper, 2004, esp. 75-78 & 595-99.Al-Na~ara in the Qur 'an: a hermeneutical reflection 305likely that there was a community ofNazoraean Christians in central Arabia,in the seventh century, unnoticed by the outside world. But this is a suggeswhichwould require reopening and re-evaluating the question of specifically"Jewish Christian" influences on the original formulation oflslam. 17and as if taking his cue from de Blois' last point, Joachim Gnillca, in his-re!;earcbted study of parallel doctrines, scriptural motifs, legendary lore andverbal expression between the Qur'an and Christian texts, with reference tosuch as the Diatessaron, several apocryphal scriptures and the Pseudo­Epistles, comes to the precise conclusion that the Qur'an is. indeedin its origins to Jewish Christianity. He says that such texts as the ones11ou.LiuJ.l"u readily circulated among Jewish Christians and that many ofthemtheir origins in that milieu. Gnillca does not propose that the Qur'an, orhad direct contact with these texts. Rather, he proposes that in themilieu the language and lore of the texts circulated ~orally and that Arabic­Christians and others would have encountered them in Jewish Christiancelebrations. 18 As for the Qur' an itself, Gnilka avers that while "derWurzelboden des Koran ist das Judentum," 19 it is not the product of aor Christianized Judaism. Rather, he concludes: "So ist der im Korandokumentierende Islam weder ein Reformjudentum noch ein Reformchrissondemetwas Neues, gepriigt auf dem ·Boden Arabiens durch einen..... ttur•llan Propheten." 20for Gnillca, hermeneutically speaking, as for de Blois, thepractice of naming the Christians al-na~ara and the tenor of its Chrisisto be explained not by any inherent, religious logic or rhetorical intent onQur'an's own part, but rather in reference to earlier Jewish Christian, or•Hzllr~"'"," texts, the idiom and contents of which are postulated by them tocirculated orally in the Arabic-speaking milieu by the time of the rise ofFor Gnillca and de' Blois, then, the evidence for postulating the oral presofthe Jewish Christian or "Nazoraean" language and lore in the environswhich the Qur'an emerged does not consist of any external historicalof the presence of such groups and their texts in the Arabic-speakingbeyond that of the appearance of comparable ideas and linguistic expresinthe Arabic Qur'an itself. In other words, hermeneutically speaking,and de Blois presume, on the basis of comparability and parallelism, that·· Qur' an got what it says about Christians and their doctrines from pre-existingnot from the logic of its own religious and rhetorical purposes, based onawareness of the doctrines and practices of the Christian communitiesknown from other sources to be contemporary with it.