Near the bottom of the pit of hell, Dante encounters a man walking with his torso split from chin to groin, his guts and other organs spilling out. “See how I tear myself!” the man shrieks. “See how Mahomet is deformed and torn!” For us, the scene is not only gruesome but surprising, for Dante is not in a circle of false religion but in a circle reserved for those who tear the body of Christ. Like many medieval Christians, Dante views Islam less as a rival religion than as a schismatic form of Christianity.
A handful of Western scholars now think there is considerable historical truth to Dantes view. According to the standard Muslim account, the Quran contains revelations that Allah delivered to Mohammed through the angel Jibril between 609 and 632. They were fixed in written form under the third Caliph in the mid seventh century. Islamic scholar Christoph Luxenberg doubts most of this. In 2000, he published the German edition of The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran, whose restrained title and dispassionate tone belie its explosive arguments-explosive enough for the author to hide behind a pseudonym. The book has been banned in several Islamic countries.
One of Luxenbergs central arguments is that the Quran is an Arabic translation of an original Syriac/Aramaic text. Luxenberg is able to resolve oddities in the Arabic text by treating them as erroneous Arabic translations of an original Syriac text. Words that have no Arabic source turn out to be garbled versions of common Syriac terms. Luxenberg even finds evidence in the Quran itself for treating it as a translation. By his rendering, Sura 44:58 says “we have translated [the Koran] into your language so that they may allow themselves to be reminded.”
Luxenberg has become notorious for challenging the common translation of huri, usually understood as the hot-bodied virgins with whom faithful Islamic men hope to be rewarded in paradise. According to Luxenberg, they arent wide-eyed virgins, but white grapes, “juicy fruits hanging down,” ready for picking (Sura 38:52). Its a vision of paradise similar to that of the fourth-century Christian poet, Ephrem the Syrian: “He who abstained from the wine here below, for him yearn the grapevines of Paradise. Each of them extends him a drooping cluster.”
That reference to Ephrem is not accidental, for Luxenberg argues that the Quran derives from a Syriac Christian lectionary. Again, the evidence is hiding in plain sight. It has become commonplace among scholars of Islam to recognize that the word Quran means lectionarium, but few draw the controversial conclusion: “If Koran . . . really means lectionary, then one can assume that the Koran intended itself first of all to be understood as nothing more than a liturgical book with selected texts from the Scriptures (the Old and New Testament) and not at all as a substitute for the Scriptures . . . as an independent Scripture.”
The contributors to The Hidden Origins of Islam (2010) push Luxenbergs revisionism further. The books editor, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, reminds readers that most of the biographical information we have about Mohammed doesnt come from the Quran but from texts written fully two centuries after Mohammeds death. Its not until the ninth century that Muslim writers claim that the Quran contains the revelations given to Mohammed. The year 622-which Muslims mark as the year Mohammed and his followers made the Hijira, a fateful journey from Mecca to Medina-was not originally connected with Mohammed at all. Before there is any record of Muslims dating time from the Hijra, Arabic Christians dated the beginning of the Arabic era to 622, when they gained independence from Persias Sassanian empire.
Other early Islamic texts support the notion that Islam emerged not as a new religion but as a novel development within a Syriac Christian milieu. In his contribution to Hidden Origins, Luxenberg applies his method to the inscription on the Dome of the Rock, which seems to contain a straightforward Islamic confession: “There is no god but God alone . . . Mohammed the servant of God and messenger.” Luxenberg points out that Mohammed, usually understood as a proper name, means “exalted be” or “praised be,” and also notes that Syriac Christians, who were skeptical of the Nicene doctrine of Jesus divine sonship, preferred Isaiahs title “Servant” for Jesus. He contends that the inscription should read: “There is no god but God alone . . . Praised be the servant of God and his messenger.” This makes better sense of the sequel, which explicitly identifies “Messiah Jesus, son of Mary” as “the messenger of God and his Word.” An inscription about Jesus was later reinterpreted as a confession of a different faith entirely.
When the Quran is placed in the context of Syrian Christianity and the debates over Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite Christology that wracked eastern Christianity in these centuries, its debt to Christianity becomes plausible. The Quran includes passages, for example, that reflect Syrian attacks on Monophysite Christology. Ohlig claims in his concluding essay to Hidden Origins that “most of the theological statements in the Quran-for example, the conception of God, Christology, and eschatology-arose from Syrian traditions of Christianity.”
These are today minority views, even maverick. If they prove right, they might open the possibility of fresh efforts to disentangle the knotted history of Christian-Muslim relations.
Peter J. Leithart is on the pastoral staff of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College. His most recent book is Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Wipf & Stock). His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
RESOURCES
Karl-Heinz Ohlig, The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History
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Comments:
I first encountered the Islamic take on the crucifixion when I was teaching electronics at an institute in Morocco. A Moroccan colleague informed me one day, during a discussion of religious topics, that Jesus had never actually been crucified. Instead, a look-alike had been crucified in his place, while Jesus had been assumed bodily into heaven without passing through death.
I later found the verses in the Qur'an from which this idea came:
"That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.
Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise."
—Qur'an, sura 4 (An-Nisa) ayat 157-158
In the interests of full disclosure, a minority of muslims interpret this verse as referring to the failure to kill Jesus in essence, rather than a complete absence of physical death. However, the majority view has no atoning death on the cross and no resurrection from the dead. An Islamic tract I once ran across in California had the provocative title: "Crucifixtion or CruciFICTION?"
Other verses in the Qur'an specifically attempt to rebut the notion that Jesus was the unique Son of God or that he was divine:
"The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; [other] messengers have passed on before him. And his mother was a supporter of truth....Look how We make clear to them the signs; then look how they are deluded."
--Qur'an, sura 5:75
The "delusion" referred to here is the Christian idea of Jesus as the Son of God, rather than another messenger of God like all other messengers or prophets.
It is indeed a challenge to interpret all this as a translation of a Christian text, Syriac or otherwise.
For someone who knows almost nothing about this culture and its historiography, this strikes me as profoundly odd.
Several years ago, Salman Rushdie participated in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. I asked him of the chances of critical studies on the Koran, the kind to which other Scriptures are subjected. As I recall, he said he hoped to see such research, but that it was hard (and dangerous) for scholars to buck Moslem sensibilities. He was aware of the German scholarship and mentioned it in his response.
The arguments of the German scholars are not that the Qu'ran as it exists today in its 7th century redacted form is a simple translation of an earlier text. That would be such a simplistic approach that nearly anyone could refute it, like you did in your post.
In these books what they peice together is that sections of the Qu'ranic text have earlier antecedent texts which, on the basis of philological and epigraphic evidence, belong to a Syriac Christian literature. Luxenberg's work in particular is highly complex involving expert knowledge of ancient Syriac manuscripts as well as pre-Classical Arabic inscriptions and texts. There are few scholars in the world who can do this kind of work, which is one of the things that makes his work controversial. Non-experts reading his work will not have the necessary scholarly skills to accurately judge its details. But non-experts can judge if Luxenberg's overall thesis seems to hold on the basis of his internal argument. And as Dr. Leithart has pointed out in this post, it indeed does seem to hold in this way.
The book edited by Dr. Ohlig presents several long essays on a variety of topics concerning the relation of Arab Christianity in the period just before the rise of Islam to the Jews and the Byzantine Empire. One of the most interesting features of the essays is the examination of inscriptions on coins, monuments, buildings and tombs.
Like Dr. Leithart I highly recommend reading the Ohlig book. And if you have great determination, I also recommend reading Luxenberg's book. It is a hard slog, but will open your mind to an alternative vision of the Qu'ranic origins.
The world has been presented a legend about the origins of Islam for several centuries. It's time to investigate that legend using all the tools of historical-critical scholarship to find out the truth.
Interesting article. Good day and God Bless.
There were many ideas about Jesus floating around in Mohammed's day. Also he seems to have picked up Jewish Messianic speculation and applied it to himself, or at least his followers did later on.
Here is the link: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/7025?eng=y
The problem is going to be the violence directed toward honest researchers on this issue by those who regard any challenging discoveries or conclusions along this front as assaults on Islam.
With the blatant combination of public deference and silent patronization that Westerners continue to show to Muslims (and would never show to each other), no come-back from Dr Kung was forthcoming.
The specifics of the Koran aside, Islam as a religion can be adequately interpreted as a thoroughly Arabized combination of Judaism and Christianity. A monotheistic tribal religion of holy law codes and territorial expansion, plus an assertion of universal applicability and finality.
One of the few books that I have looked at related to the general subject matter is Crone’s and Hinds’ work entitled, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam. I would recommend this book because I notice that it touches upon the evolving and changing nature of how those in the early Islamic community viewed the prophet Muhammad and his role in interpreting their faith. The book, while not directly related to the potential Christian origins of Islam, still demonstrates that these kinds of changes might hint at other ways in which early Islam had evolved and developed its historical and theological view of itself.
An important point about the origins of Islam, though, is that it was never really supposed to be a new religion, but rather a reform movement that would return the pagan ("jahiliyyah") tribes of Arabia to the truth of Abrahamic monotheism. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised to find it rife with elements of Judaism and Christianity.
Robert Spencer has mentioned Luxenberg’s work in his book, “Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins.” Spencer ties Luxenberg’s work to that of other scholars and posits the possibility that the Qur’an esteems Jesus as THE Mohammad:
Supporting this possibility is the fact that the few times the Qur'an mentions Muhammad by name, the references are not clearly to the prophet of Islam but work equally well as general exhortations to obey that which was revealed to the - praised one, - who could be someone else. Jesus is the most likely candidate, because, as we have seen, the Qur'an tells believers that - Muhammad is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him - (3:144), using language identical to that it later uses of Jesus: - the Messiah, the son of Mary, is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him - (5:75).15 This opens the possibility that here, as elsewhere, Jesus is the one being referred to as the - praised one, - the muhammad. (Spencer, op.cit., Kindle locations 876-82
Peace!
As I recall, scholars think this and other "Koranic" stories are corruptions of legends and folk tales from other non-Moslem sources, including Christian apocryphal literature.
Also, I have heard of the possible confusion of "virgins" and "grapes" (I had understood it to be raisins or dried currants) as rewards in Paradise. It makes sense for a desert people to hope for delicacies that must have been rare in their temporal lives, and as suitable as virgins if one's idea of Paradise is sensual.
Of course, as Professor of Islamic history at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, she knows what she is writing about. The book is probably an untenable position for scholarship to rest.
My point about Donner's book remains valid, I think. That he, as a go-along conventional scholar of Islam, should be venturing out a revisionist approach, means that the likelihood of the German scholarship becoming the mainstream is quite good.
I was baptized Roman Catholic and but was married into the Bzantine Catholic Rite and have baptized my seven children as Byzantine Catholics. We have no crisis in our church; our priests haven't scandalized us with homosexual behavior; our laity aren't clamoring for women priests nor do they support the perversion we see in the larger culture in which secularized "Catholics" are indistinguishable from the society at large. We are small and we strive for holiness, not compromising with the greater culture. Our liturgy has hardly changed since the days of St. John Chrysostom 1600 years ago. If that is a crisis, then I'm all for it.
Another scholar who has written similarly, if less pointedly on the origins of Islam is Fred Donner. In his recent book, “Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam” he questions several critical aspects of the "traditional origins narrative" as he calls it, leaving the legend very much in fragments. Now Donner is precisely the mainstream of Islamic scholarship, not cutting edge, and certainly not as bold as the German scholars in the books you mention. That's why it is significant that even he rejects the legend of Islamic origins that long passed for history.
If scholarly researches into the origins and background of Islam are not stifled in the West by the desire not to offend Muslim pieties, we may see the mainstream come to accept the importance and accuracy of the German scholarship.