The Qur'Än in Christian Thought - Saint Benedict Catholic Church

More documents

Recommendations

Info

scripture, and especially in the Meccan sūrahs, one finds echoes of and allusions to theJewish and Christian scriptures, both canonical and apocryphal, and to their religiouslanguage and lore. There is a high quotient of inter-textuality between these scriptures.Indeed it seems that one could even credibly speak of a biblical subtext for the Qur’ān, 14so implicated are the earlier scriptural traditions in its narrative. The eminent Frenchscholar of Islam and the 20 th century’s leading Catholic thinker in Catholic/Muslimrelations, Louis Massignon (1883-1962), once wrote that from his point of view theQur’ān may be considered “une édition arabe tronquée de la Bible. . . . Le Qor’ân,” hewent on to say, “serait à la Bible ce qu’Ismaël fut à Isaac.” 15 The Qur’ān adopted many ofthe biblical personalities, the patriarchs, Joseph, Moses and Aaron, and from the NewTestament, Zachary, John the Baptist, Jesus, and his mother Mary. More than that, theQur’ān and Islamic tradition even honors Christian saints and martyrs, as in the instanceof the hagiographic legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, whom the Qur’ān calls ‘theCompanions of the Cave’ (al-Kahf (XVIII):9-26), 16 and Alexander the Great, whose storywas a staple of the Late Antique literary tradition. 17More recently, in the Medinan sūrahs, and especially in Christological passages,some scholars have been uncovering intriguing evidence of the interplay betweenmainline Syriac Christian (i.e., Melkite, Jacobite, and Nestorian) thinking and nascent,14 See Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and its Biblical Subtext (Religious Studies in the Qur’ān;London & New York: Routledge, 2009).15 Louis Massignon, Les trois prières d’Abraham (Paris: Cerf, 1997), p. 89.16 See Sidney H. Griffith, “Christian Lore and the Arabic Qur’ān: the ‘Companions of the Cave’ in Sūratal-Kahf and in Syriac Christian Tradition,” in Gabriel Said Reynolds (ed.), The Qur’ān in its HistoricalContext (Routledge Studies in the Qur’ān; London & New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 109-138.17 See Kevin van Bladel, “The Alexander Legend in the Qur’ān 18:83-102,” in Reynolds, The Qur’ān in itsHistorical Context, pp. 175-203.6
developing Islamic positions. 18The evidence consists of instances of convergence anddivergence in the texts that disclose what one might call a ‘Medinan milieu’ ofintertextuality and interreligious conversation and controversy. It suggests a redactionprocess in the Qur’ān that may well have extended beyond Muammad’s lifetime,reaching into the early eighth century and extending geographically from the ijāz intothe wider realms of the early caliphate. Be that as it may, given the high profile ofChristianity in the Qur’ān, it is no wonder that very soon after the rise of Islam; theArabic scripture quickly came to the attention of the Christians living outside of Arabia,in the territories brought under Muslim control by the Arab conquest and occupation.IIThe Qur’ān and Arab ChristiansWhile there is some evidence that Greek-speaking Christians in Palestine aroundthe year 700 CE were already familiar with verses from the Qur’ān, 19the Arabicscripture is first mentioned by name in a Christian text in a Syriac, apologetic work thatwas in all probability originally composed not long after the year 720. 20In it a monkapologist for Christianity speaks to his Muslim interlocutor of the “Qur’ān, which18 See especially the work of Frank van der Velden, “Konvergenztexte syrischer und arabischerChristologie: Stufen der Textentwicklung von Sure 3,33-64,” Oriens Christianus 91 (2007), pp. 164-203;idem, “Kontexte im Konvergenzstrang – die Bedeutung textkritischer Varianten und christlicherBezugstexte für die Redaktion von Sure 61 und Sure 5, 110-119,” Oriens Christianus 92 (2008), pp. 181-224. See also Michel Cuypers, Le festin: une lecture de la sourate al-Mâ’ida (Rhétorique Sémitique; Paris:Lethielleux, 2007; English translation: The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qur’ān (Miami,FL: Convivium, 2009).19 See Sidney H. Griffith, “Anastasios of Sinai, the Hodegos and the Muslims,” Greek OrthodoxTheological Review 32 (1987), pp. 341-358.20 See Sidney H. Griffith, “Disputing with Muslims in Syriac: The Case of the Monk of Bêt ālê with aMuslim Emir,” Hugoye 3, no. 1 (2000), http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol3No1/HV3N1/Griffith.html.See also Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewishand Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13; Princeton, NJ:The Darwin Press, 1997), pp. 465-4727
Page 1: The Qur’ān in Christian Thought:
Page 4 and 5: Islamic scripture was first address
Page 8 and 9: Muammad taught you.” 21It would h
Page 10 and 11: Christian teachings. Alternatively,
Page 12 and 13: the choice of words and phrases ech
Page 14 and 15: passages in which God speaks in the
Page 16 and 17: canonical scripture; throughout the
Page 18 and 19: entrée to the company of both civi
Page 20 and 21: Toward the beginning of his subsequ
Page 22 and 23: monk named Baīrā who, as the stor
Page 24 and 25: And I wrote for him: ‘In the name
Page 26 and 27: Lord, the true Messiah.” 70But th
Page 28 and 29: While Arab Christians did not credi
Page 30 and 31: In the Cribratio, Nicholas of Cusa,
Page 32 and 33: And in respect to the verses critic
Page 34 and 35: particularly Muammad as the “the
Page 36 and 37: These same Medinan sūrahs are neve

The Qur'Än in Christian Thought - Saint Benedict Catholic Church

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?

The Qur'Än in Christian Thought - Saint Benedict Catholic Church