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

476 Adam Silversteinto build a ~arb; Sulayman succeeds whereas Fir'awn fails; Solomon's sarh is themeans by Which the Queen of Sheba embraces Allah; Fir' awn's ~arb is .the. meansby which Pharaoh expresses his rejection of Allah. 42Thus, Sulayman and A.l:}.Iqar successfully complete challenges that involvebuilding an edifice that reaches the heavens, whereas Fir'awn fails to meetGod's chall_enge to reach the asbab by building a ~arb. Unexpectedly, in aMesopotamian context these successes and failures may be explained in terms ofthe three characters' respective levels of intelligence. Sulayman and A.l:}.Iqar aresynonymous with Wisdom; Fir' awn is not. In fact, in questioning the existence of~he God ~fMoses (and in thinking that he himself is divine) Fir'awn displays whatm Islamic terms may be deemed to be obtuse stupidity. The relationship betweenWi~dom and building towers - or craftsmanship more generally - is a feature ofancient Near Eastern culture. The Akkadian term ummanu refers equally to amaster-craftsman and to a Sage. 43 The term entered the lexicon of monotheiststhrough the Hebrew Bible where in Proverbs 8:22 "Mother Wisdom" is referredto as a master craftsman, using the cognate term amon, and in the Book of Esther2:7 where the term omen is applied to the wise Mordecai beneath whose characterlurks the Babylonian Marduk, creator of the world. 44The story of A.l:}.Iqar, of course, emanates from and is set in the ancient NearEast, which would explain why Pharaoh's intellectual challenge to Haman entails~uilding a ~ower b~twee~ the heavens and the earth in both the story of A.l:}.Iqar andm the Qur an. This ancient Near Eastern idea passed through various stages ofdevelopment before reaching the Qur' an. In fact, Jesus-who is distinctly referredto as "wise" in both Romans 16:27 and in Josephus'sAntiquities of the Jews 45 - isalso described in Late Antique Syriac sources as ardekh!Ci, 46 "the architect." Similarly,in Manichaean Psalms from this period the equivalent term Ban rabba~meaning "great builder") is used for God. 47 We should not be surprised, then, thatm Ephrem the Syrian's hymn De Nativitate, we find that Jesus is expected todescend to earth and erect a tower reaching up into heaven. 48Having explored the ~arb in some detail, we may return to the question posedat the beginning of this chapter and ask: what does this case study teach us aboutThe Qur'anic Pharaoh 477the relationship between the Qur'an's Fir'awn and the Bible's Pharaoh? Asidefrom the obvious fact that Fir' awn's ~arb and association with Haman have noequivalent in Pharciah's biblical career, the most interesting answer in my viewcomes from the exegetical materials that support both the Bible and the Qur' an. Itis striking that the classical Qur'anic exegetes, in describing Fir'awn and Nimrodin similar terms and in conflating their respective ~arbs, followed the pre-Islamiccommentaries on the Bible more closely than they followed the evidence of theQur'an itself. Had they stuck to the Qur'an, they would surely have revealedlayers of intertextuality that connect Fir' awn's ~arb with that of Sulayman ratherthan the old midrashic connection between Pharaoh and Nimrod. On this basis, Iwould even suggest that Fir' awn, or "the Qur' anic Pharaoh," may be distinguishedfrom "the Muslim Pharaoh." What they have in common, though, is that bothFir' awn and the Muslim Pharaoh owe their existence to Mesopotamia: the latter isthe product of cross-pollination'-and scholarly interaction between Muslims andother monotheists in Late Antique and early Islamic Iraq; the former is the productof an earlier Mesopotamian tradition in which wisdom and tower-building wereintertwined with divine favour, ever since the days of ziggurats and A.l:}.Iqar thesage. Thus, what unites the Qur'anic and Muslim Pharaohs, and what distinguishesboth characters from the Biblical Pharaoh, is that they are less "Egyptian"than we might have thought.42 Cf. EQ Ill: 487, s.v. "myths and legends" (A. Neuwirth).43 Thus, in the Epic of Atra(tasis, Mami, the creator of mankind, is repeatedly referred to as "wise"(~.g. _I: ~~O.in W:?· ~amber! and A.R. Millard, Atra(tasis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, 61),hkenmg Wisdom with the act of creation.44 Cf. A. Silverstein, "The Book of Esther and the Emima Elish," BSOAS 69,2006,209-23, esp. 222.45 F. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, ed. and trans. W. Whiston, Peabody, MA: HendricksonPublishers, 1987, XVIII: 63.46 Th~ term, which o~curs ~venin Modern Hebrew as adrikhiil ("architect"), is itself a vestige of theancient Near East: II denves from the Akkadian 'arad ekalli' meaning "servant of the palace" andby the New Babylonian period it specifically referred to a builder (cf. CAD, A2:210-11).47 In R. Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition London:Cambridge University Press, 2004 (1st edition 1975), (219-28) 223-24.'48 Cf. T. Kronholm, Motift from Genesis 1-11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, Lund,Gleerup, 1978,211-12.