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

92 Robert G. HoylandIs there any evidence external to the Muslim tradition that we can use? The onlyclassical reference we have, in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities (15:9:3), mentionsthat Herod dispatched 500 chosen men from his personal bodyguard to go with·· ·Aelius Gallus on his march through western Arabia to conquer the Yemen in:26-24 BCE, but we know nothing of their fate or even if they were necessarilyJews (Herod had non-Jews among his bodyguard). The Palestinian and 'Babylonian Talmud make occasional allusions to Arabia. For example, there area number of occasions when rabbis note that "in Arabia they call x y", that is,instead of the usual Hebrew word they use a different term. As has reasonablybeen argued, this is best explained by supposing "the settlement of a colony of ·Jews in Arabia". 3 Oddly, however, the proponent of this solution never for amoment considered where exactly might be meant by "Arabia." Since these state-.ments mostly originate with Palestinian authorities (tannaim and amoraim) of the .first to fourth centuries CE, we might suppose that they chiefly intend southernPalestine and the Transjordan, that is, the Nabataean hea1ilands and subsequently,after their annexation in I 05/106 CE, the Roman province of Arabia. Thus whenone sees that in support of Rabbi Levi's assertion, "in Arabia they call a lambyobla" (Berakot 9:1), the saying of Rabbi Aqiba of Jerusalem is quoted, "when Iwent to Arabia, they were calling a lamb yobla'' (Rosh ha-shanah 26a), onesuspects that that part of Arabia just across the Jordan from Jerusalem is meantrather than faraway Hijaz. 4 Yet it cannot be doubted that occasionally the southernmostreaches ofNabataea/Roman Arabia are intended. For example, in the thirdcentury CE the Galilean rabbis Hiyya the Great and Simeon ben Halafta consideredit worth their while making the journey to "Hegra of Arabia" (Mada' in Salih)in order to "learn again" the meaning of some Aramaic words that they hadforgotten. 5There are also some scraps of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry composed bynorthwest Arabian Jews in the sixth and early seventh century. The mostfamous of these Jewish poets was Samuel b. 'Adiya', a resident of the oasisof Tayma, to whom a whole corpus of poems is attributed and who helped theheroic Imru' al-Qays (d. c. 550 CE), a prince of the ruling clan of Kinda, onhis journey to Constantinople in pursuit of justice for his murdered father. Butthese, like those of more minor Jewish poets such as ai-RabT' b. Abi 1-I;Iuqayq,Shurayl). b. 'Imdin, Shu'ba b. Ghari9, Abii Qays b. Rifii'a, Dirham b. Zayd and3 A. Cohen, "Arabisms in Rabbinic literature," Jewish Quarterly Review 1912/13, 224. See furtherS. .Krauss, "Talmudische Nachrichten tiber Arabien," ZDMG 70, 1916,321-53, and J. Retso, The ·.Arabs in Antiquity, London: Routledge, 2003, 526-32, which do consider the geographical ·implications.4 Certainly Josephus uses the term "Arabians" when he is talking about Herod's battles with hisNabataean neighbours, and it seems sure that St Paul had in mind the Nabataean kingdom when hewrote "I went off to Arabia and later I came back to Damascus" (Galatians I: 17).5 Midrash Rabbah 79.7, re: Genesis 33.19; ed. J. Theodor (revised edition by Ch. Albeck; Jerusalem:Wahrmann, 1965), 946; trans. H. Freedman (London: Soncino, 1951), il2-33 (who mistranslatesEgra as Agora I "market"). I am grateful to Dr Oded Irshai for this reference.The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qur 'an 93> 'Abii 1-Dhayyal, are comparable in sentiment and style to pre-Islamic Arabic"poetry in general, and lack any specific historical detail or concrete religiousexpression. 6·. Lastly there is the epigraphic record. This has produced quite rich and informa­••: tive results for the land of South Arabia during the fourth to sixth centuries, as hasbeen ably demonstrated by Christian Robin. 7 Here I will try to do the same for the· · · Jews of northwest Arabia. The inscriptions from this region have not received., .much attention. Only two are mentioned by Gordon Newby in his History of the'.J'ews of Arabia, 8 and only three are cited in J-B. Frey's Corpus Inscriptionum1udaicarum (nos. 1421-23 =nos. 1-3 below). The record is somewhat meagre, it is·true, but in a situation where any evidence at all is hard to come by, it seems worthinaking the best of what we have got. I will first review the texts themselves, andthen consider at the end what conclusions we might draw from them; Only no. 1 isa self-confessed Jew; the rest rely on indicators that are regarded to be typical ofidentity: Jewish names, Jewish expressions and the Hebrew script; these areindicators, but it goes without saying that they are not infallible. 9>Texts by self-confessed Jews· Place: Mada' in Salih (=ancient Hegra I al-I;Iijr)······Type: Tomb inscriptionDate: 42/43 CE:Script/Lang.: Nabataean Aramaic· Euting 1885, 64; CIS 2.219; JS Nab4; Healey 1994, H4; Noja 1979, I.Text: "This is the tomb which Shubaytu son of 'Ali'u, the Jew (yhwdy'), 10 made· .. :for himself and for his children and for 'Amirat, his wife. They may be buried in6 H.Gh. Mustafa, Religious Trends in Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry, Bombay: Aligarh MuslimUniversity, 1968, I I 9-24; Jawad. 'A IT, Al-Mufa!f!ja[ fi Ia 'rikh a/- 'arab qabl al-is/am, Beirut: Daral-'Ilm, 1976-78, 9:768-91; Newby, Hist01y, 55-57., 7 For example, see his "Lejudai'sme de I:Iimyar," Arabia. Revue de Sabi!ologie I, 2003, 97-172, andhis "l:limyar et Israel," Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Let/res, Comptes rendus 2004,831-906., 8 Newby, History, 40.. 9 For some useful general discussion on the problem of using names for historical reconstruction seeM.C.A. Macdonald, "Some reflections on epigraphy and ethnicity in the Roman Near East,"Mediterranean Archaeology II, 1998, 177-90. As regards script, what is today called the "Hebrewscript" is in fact th~ Aramaic script, which replaced the old Hebrew script as the main script of theJews, but since common usage identifies the script in which Hebrew has been written since thefourtb/third century BCE as "Hebrew script" I will adhere to that for the sake of clarity.Professor Christian Robin has suggested to me that this term may, at this time, have signifiedJudaean, i.e. native of Judaea, rather than member of a community sharing the same religiousconvictions.