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466 Emran El-Badawipre-Islamic Arabian milieu of the Qur'an by Syriac-speaking Christian groupslike Christian Arabs, perhaps evenjiihilf poets such as 'Adi b. Zayd (sixth toseventh century), al-A'sha (d. c. 625), and others. However, what course did theactual imagery and words of Matthew's Gospel in Syriac take in order to getthere? One should generally note, as Mingana and Griffith have, that the majorityof Syriac scripture, lore, or "Syriacisms" (or collectively "Syriac wisdom") thatbecame replicated in the Qur'an are not verbatim, but rather an elaboration,response to, or paraphrasing of the original text. 88 This has been evident throughoutour present investigation. A word or phrase is scarcely reproduced in the Qur'anprecisely as it is in Syriac Matthew, but has rather gone through a process of"morphological change" which suggests a long period of transmission andlinguistic development.Furthermore, the staunch monotheistic and iconoclastic language of the Qur'anand its vivid imagery does not allow for Jesus to play the role of savior and divinebeing as he does in the Gospels. Instead, where the Qur' an saw fit it replaced "theSon of Man" with the "Lord" (rabb) as a theological corrective measure. Thissuggests a level of intense sectarianism and "theological debate" ambient in themilieu ofthe Qur'an. ·This exposes another phenomenon at play. It is likely that certain bodies ofSyriac Christian wisdom that impacted the theological outlook of the Qur'an, likeverses from the Hebrew Bible or Gospels, 89 became popularly consumed byChristian Arabs and later Arab oral tradition via intermediary channels. Suchintermediaries include religious poetry, Biblical commentaries, and Syriac homileticworks by famous authors like Aphrahat, Ephrem, Isaac of Antioch, Jacob ofSarug, and others. 90 It is plausible that the Syriac language of Matthew graduallyentered into the Qur'an's milieu through the agency of the liturgical chants,prayers, and preaching based on popular Syriac Christian literature.It seems, therefore, that the incorporation of Syriac Gospel wisdom into themilieu of the Qur' an took place long before the existence of Muhammad or hisrevelation - through centuries of oral exchange, transformations m' language, andconfessional discussion. And out of this milieu, the Qur'an proved to be a potentforce of both preservation and innovation.In the present chapter I focused on Syriac Matthew, but in future studies I hopeto extend my research to the remaining Syriac Gospels. I also plan to examine theshared language of the Qur'an and the Syriac Gospels on topics other thancondemnation, such as spiritual and ritual rnatters. For its part the present studysuggests that an appreciation of the Syriac Gospels might help bring the murkyorigins of the Qur'an to light.88 Mingana, "Syriac influence on the style of the Kur'an," 80; Griffith, "The Gospel, the Qur'an, andthe presentation of Jesus in al-Ya'qubi's Tarikh," 136-37.89 S.K. Samir, "A reconsideration of the Qur'an and its relationship to Christianity," QHC, 145-61.90 Andrae, Les origines de /'islam et le christianisme, 132-89, lists numerous Syriac authors;Griffith, "Syriacisms in the Arabic Qur'an," 104-05.20 The Qur)anic Pharaoh 1Adam SilversteinPharaoh is one of the few characters who figures equally prominently in both theQur' an and the Bible; and it is reasonable - and in my view correct to assumethat there is a close relationship between the Biblical and Qur'anic Pharaohs.After all, the term "Pharaoh," or par 'o, means "Great Palace" in ancient Egyptian.It is an idiosyncratic Biblical usage to refer to the ruler of Egypt by this term-justas one nowadays might say that "the White House" has issued a statement whenreferring to the US president. 2 The fact that this quirky usage of the term "Pharaoh"recurs in the Qur'an suggests that the Qur'anic Pharaoh is to be interpreted withreference to an originally Biblical context rather than an ancient Egyptian one.(I leave the question as to the relationship between the Bible's Pharaoh andancient Egypt to the Egyptologists). And yet, it would be misguided to assumethat the Qur'anic Pharaoh is no more than an Arabic version of his Biblical namesake.In fact, we shall see that there are significant differences between the twoPharaohs.For the sake of convenience, I will refer to the Biblical and post-Biblical characteras "Pharaoh", and to the Qur'anic Pharaoh as "Fir'awn". There are twoimportant ways in which Pharaoh and Fir' awn differ. One difference is that thereare many Pharaohs in the Pentateuch but only one Fir'awn in the Qur'an. ThePharaoh with whom Moses deals is not the same Pharaoh with whom Joseph deals.In fact, the Bible states explicitly that there were at least two Pharaohs who reignedduring Joseph's career. 3 In the Qur'an Fir' awn is a single ruler, who deals withMoses and Aaron. The Joseph story, to be sure, is recounted in detail in Yzlszifbutnot once in that context is the ruler of Egypt called "Fir' awn"; instead he is knownsimply as al-malik, "the king." Similarly, Pharaoh is sometimes referred to as "theIcing" (ha-melek) in the Bible, just as he is - on occasion - called mi:}rayyim orI This article is a sort of appendix to my previous article on "Haman's transition from the Jiihiliyyato Islam" JSAI 34, 2008, 285-308. In that article I discussed the identity of Fir' awn's 0ar/.z inpassing; here that issue is the main topic of discussion. I would like to thank John Baines for hiscomments on an early draft of this chapter.2 On this, see "Pharaoh" (D.B. Redford) in D.N. Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, NewYork: Doubleday, 1992, 5:288-89.3 Exodus I :8.