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

398 Reuven Firestoneexist in a special relationship with the one great God. The New Testament seemsto represent the first moment in history when two communities, mutually identifiedas separate and discrete, argued significantly conflicting visions of monotheism(or messianism, revelation, incarnation, etc.)YWhile the Hebrew Bible posits that God can be in a covenantal relationshipwith only one religious community, the New Testament posits that God can be ina covenantal relationship with only one community at a time. First it was with theJews. Later it was with Christians. This represents a "zero-sum" equation;reflecting what seems to have been a view common to both Christians and toJews: only one religious community could be covenanted with God at one time.Divine election in the Qur'anThe Qur'an takes up the issue of divine election as well. fu fact, it is doubtfulwhether it could have avoided it, given the importance of the notion "in priorscripture, the negative response of Jewish and Christian religious leaders to thethreat of the new movement and its scripture, and the prior history of polemicsbetween Jews and Christians revolving around covenant and divine election. Andindeed, the Qur'anic references to covenant are often polemical and demonstrateboth direct and indirect parallels with the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Butthe literary and theological relationship between the Qur'an and prior scripturesdiffers significantly from that between the New Testament and Hebrew Bible, aswe shall observe in relation to the topic at hand. The overall Qur'anic expressionof divine election seems to diverge rather significantly from both prior articulations.Thi.s will be examined below, but we must first explore the lexical andmetaphorical range of divine election found in the Qur' an.Lexical range of "chosenness"Seven Arabic roots may be found in the Qur' an that have been rendered in English(and other) translations to convey a sense of preferring, choosing or singling out.They overlap in meaning, and it would be an error to assume absolute precision orconsistency in their usage within the Qur' an. It is not helpful to try to define theseterms narrowly or precisely. Their English translations vary significantly, and Imake no attempt here to restrict any specific English term to any specific Arabicterm, since the range of meaning varies not only between the synonymic choicesin both languages, but also in relation to the specific Qur' anic contexts. The sevenroots are kh.y.r. ~.j.b.y . ...+'?-, fifY· ~. r.c;l.y. ~_;, k.m.l. ~. kh.lf ~lil ~ llSJ)(Q 38:45-48). Here, as in anumber of other references that will be examined below, Biblical prophets, or atleast prophets who are referenced in a way that assumes they were known figuresamong the cultures out of which the Qur' an emerged, are singled out as special orunique.fu Qur'an 7:155, Moses singles out seventy mel?- ofhis c~mmunity to meet withGod after the incident with the calf: (~.) ~ 4.:. j§ ~ Y. .J\l;..l_j) But when they areovercome with fear, he refers to God as therr protector (or patron- .).J) and the"most forgiving" (CJ:jWI.};;:i.), through the same form of the word discussed in theprevious paragraph. fu one of a number of renderings of Moses experiencing God17 That is, this represents a different quality of competition than, say, between Sadducees andPharisees.18 In the following I mark these roots and their translations in bold font.19 Qur'iin 2:221, 263.20 That is, those who are addressed here positively by the Qur'iin.21 "Paradise" or "heaven" seems to be the intent here.