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

312 Sidney Griffiththis manner the Qur'an appropriates and re-contextualizes earlierMany stUdies have highlighted this phenomenon, as they have examinedQur'an has appropriated earlier Jewish or Christian narratives. ButQur'an's own polemically-inspired, commentarial, critical and corr~ctivetoward the narratives it appropriates, many of the scholars who havethese studies, themselves usually following only the historical-criticalhave concluded that the Qur'an had misunderstood, misconstrued or~istaken Jewish and Christian narratives. They have often missed the Qur'JUdgmental posture and have then looked for earlier "sources" for thethey actually find in the Qur'an, a process which sometimes then leadspostulation of the presence in the Qur' an's milieu of some otherwiseunattested text or community known to feature the belief tum ofpractice in question.'Finally, given the Qur'an's critical posture towards Jews, Christians andits polemical strategies, and the presumption of its more or less accurateledge of the beliefs, the creedal formulae, and even the ecclesiastical lore itcizes or rhetorically caricatures, the contextua~ method employed herethe presence of contemporary, even Arabic-speaking communities ofPeopl~" in its milieu and even in its audience and that these presumablyspe~kmg Jews and Christians are therefore within the active purview of ··Qur an. The further implications of this assumption are developed as thisproceeds, addressing the questions: who were the Christians whom thereco,rd attests to have actually been in the Arabic-speaking world, and why didQur an choose to call them "Nazoreans"? .Who are the Qur'an's Nazoreans?Heretofore researchers have identified a number of different Christianties as the likely Chri~tians whose views they have found reflected in the Qur'For the most part, therr methodology has been first to articulate what theyb~ the Qur'an's own Christology, and consequent theology, and then towit~ the cr~e~al formulae and reports of the beliefs of some historicallyearher·ChristJan c~mmunity, usually much earlier than the seventh centuryusu~~Y, not otherwise known to have been in the Arabic-speaking milieu oQur an s own day. The problem for these scholars has then been torationale for how the chosen community could have been present to theIslamic co~unity, whose scripture then, on the usual hypothesis, adoptedchosen Christian community's Christo logical and theological position. ·the two most frequently proposed groups are the Jewish-Christians ret>re~:entedby the Nazarenes described in Epiphanius of Salamis's Panarion, 2 ~ and a28 See the studies cited in nn. 7, 15 & 16 above, particularly and most seriously the studiesFran9ois de Blois and Joachim Gnilka.'Al-Na~ara in the Qur'iin: a hermeneutical reflection 313postulated group of Arabized, Syriac-speaking upholders of a supposed,:e"NIICene. Syrian theology. 29the historical point of view, a significant problem for the suggestion thatan's Christo logy derives from a group of Jewish Christians, and speci:fitheNazarenes in its milieu is, as Remi Brague has pointed out most, "Nous n'avons pas de traces d'un lien direct entre le groupe judeoexpulsede Jerusalem vers 66 et les evenements situes six siecles plusIt is a problem that caused Fran9ois de Blois to be somewhat circumspect.... u•"u·-c his conclusion that "There was a community ofNazorean ChristiansArabia, in the seventh century, unnoticed by the outside world." 31 As forGnilka's hypothesis that Jewish Christianity more broadly speaking wasof contact between Christianity and the Qur' an, the well-marshaledhe puts forward to support the hypothesis consists mainly of the "interparallelsbetween the Koran and Jewish Christianity,'m which parallels hetexts, many of which, he says, "are of Jewish Christian origin.'m But thehere is that many if not most of these texts, and especially the Diatesalongwith motifs otherwise found in apocryphal Gospels, had a long life inliterature of the decidedly non-Jewish Christian churches, mostlyand "Nestorian," actually known to have been actively present in theuatnc-soe:akmg milieu in the seventh century. There is a similar problem withUirl·J:ie:mz Ohlig's suggestion that there was some sort of pre-Nicene, Syriancurrent among some Arabized, Syriac-speaking communities in theimmediate milieu. As we shall see, all the actual traces of Syriac­Christianity among the Arabic-speaking peoples reflect language andotherwise found only in texts by resolutely Nicene Syriac writers, such asthe Syrian or Jacob ofSarug.addition to their inability to :find immediate historical evidence for stiputhepresence of Jewish Christians, Nazarenes or pre-Nicene, Syriac­Christians, be it in Arabia or elsewhere in the seventh or eighth centuries,problem with these hypotheses, articulated solely on the basis of theTsmnc:lt-c:nrlcaJ method's search for sources, is that their proponents ignore theum