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

346 Devin J. Stewartconsulted in cases of pressing need, and kept in the Temple of Jupiter on theCapitoline Hill under the control of a committee of two and later ten and thenfifteen men - the only ones allowed to see them. Legend had it that one of the ··early overseers committed the error of copying parts of the books, and was thereforesubject to the ultimate punishment, being sown into a leather sack and throwninto the sea. 5 8 In Sibylline and other Greek oracular traditions, individual poeticannouncements were scratched verse by verse on oak, palm, or other leaves.Legends report that wind scattered the leaves so that the petitioners would thenbe at a loss as to the correct order of the verses and consequently the content ofthe message. 59Later, individual oracles were gathered into collections from whichoracles were meted out by traveling chresmologues or oracle-mongers, oftenkno_wn as Bakis if male and Sibyl if female- originally the given names of specific~ncien~ seers that later came to serve as generic labels. Many Greek city-states,mcludmg Athens and Sparta, came to keep books of oracles in their archives andtt:e Spartan kings also kept a collection of Delphic oracles. 60 In all cases: thedifficult access to these oracular texts served to enhance their authority.Perhaps most suggestive as a case for comparison with the Qur'an as an intangiblescripture accessed through oracular revelation is provided by the Ifa divinationsystem of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. In this complex system of divination underthe ausp~c~s o_fifa, tt:e g~d of wisdom, an Ifa priest manipulates 16 palm nuts, orcasts a d!V!natwn cham With four half-nuts of the opele tree attached to each side inorder to indicate one of256 possible numerical combinations ( 16 x 16). The combinatio~m;1ved at indicates to the priest which of256 books, termed Odus, including16 ~nncipal Odus and 240 secondary Odus, to consult. The priests do not haveco~Ies of any o~ ~ese Odus, but know them by memory, and there is in fact strongresistance to wntmg them down at all. The Odus are divided into chapters or poeticsegments termed Eses, which range from four to 600 lines in length. The number off!s~s ~n each _Odu is not fixed and depends on the knowledge and experience of them?!V!dual pnest. The priest recites to the petitioner the Ese he sees as most appropnatefrom the Odu indicated as the basis of his divination. 61 These "books" are ina sense parallel to the Qur'an before it was collected between two covers and theEses are parallel to individual Silras. While the priest refers to the books as ;uch andrecites parts of them in the course of the divination session, the books are ~everproduced as tangible objects, and their texts are generally not written down.T~e idea of a sacred text that is inaccessible as a publicly circulated codexcontmued to be upheld in various genres oflslamic literature long after the missionof the Prophet Mul;larnmad. In the Shi' ite tradition a number of sacred -texts heldto be in the possession of the Imams supposedly contain esoteric, oracular58 Parke;Siby/s and Sibylline Prophecy, 76-78, 190-215.59 Ibid., 82-83.60 Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle, 158-65.61 W.R. ~ascom, /fa J?ivinat~on: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa,Bloommgton, IN: Indiana Umversity Press, 1969; W. Abimbola, !fa: An Exposition of/fa LiteraryCorpus, Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1976.Mysterious letters and other features of the Qur'an 347knowledge that cannot be revealed, or is only rarely revealed, to ordinary believers.Irnarni Shi'ite sources refer to as many as seven books revealed by God to one ofthe Imams, or to the Prophet's daughter Fatima, and preserved by successiveImams as part of their inheritance. It is not clear how many distinct book; areenvisaged in the tradition, as the titles are confused and several may refer to oneand the same work. Perhaps the best known of these is the Jafr of 'Ali, whichsupposedly had two volumes, one white and one red, and, like the other similarbooks, is held to have contairied divine wisdom, including knowledge of pastprophets, religious law, and future trials and events. 62ConclusionThis investigation calls attention to a number of the textual features of the Qur'an,some noted in literature to date and others not, that potentially resemble theconventions of literary forms belonging to pre-Islamic pagan Arabian religioustradition. Identifying these forms and explairiing their conventions may helpprovide a more profound understanding of many Qur'anic passages that arepuzzling when approached from the point of view of Jewish and Christian tradition.Form-critical methods are particularly useful for addressing this material,since it is in many cases pre.cisely these texts' formal conventions that seem at theoutset so odd, unfamiliar, and resistant to iriterpretation. While some scholarsinvestigating this material have claimed to find in the Ur-poetry of the Semites thecommon source from which many disparate traditions arose, 63 the point here is notthat there was a genetic link between pre-Islamic and earlier forms, whether Greekor ancient Near Eastern, although many common features of texts may indeedhave been assimilated from other sources through cultural borrowing. 64 Rather,examinirig parallel oracular traditions may throw light on conventional aspects oforacular passages in the Qur' an and explairi features of the text that have puzz~edscholars to date. Just as the pre-Islamic pilgrimage and the myths ofHild and 'Ad,~alii}. and Thamild, and Shu' ayb and Midian have been integrated into the Qur' anby reinterpretation within a monotheist, Biblical framework, so too has the pre­Islamic oracular material been integrated into the Qur'an by passing through amonotheistic, Biblical filter. The pre-Islamic divine with a familiar daemon isrecast as a prophet to whom the angel Gabriel relays divine revelations. Omensthat in the pagan tradition would have referred to trade, travel, warfare, alliances,62 Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shi 'ism: The Sources ofEsotericism in Islam, trans. D. Streight, Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1994, 73-75.63 D. H. Muller, Die Propheten in ihrer urspninglichen Form.64 Parke makes the following comment regarding the possibility of connecting Sibylline oracles withthe Ancient Near East: "The conclusion to be drawn is that though ecstatic prophecy in the NearEast exhibits some interesting features which can be compared with the Sibylline oracles, there isno overall likeness at any period or place which would impel a belief in the Sibyl's derivation fromthe Orient." Parke, Sibyls, 219-20. One might make a similar statement regarding the Qur'anicmaterial's relationship to both Greek and Ancient Near Eastern material.