The Study of Islamic Origins: New Perspectives and Contexts addresses theoretical and methodological issues in the study of early Islam, investigates the formation of the Qur’an in light of Semitic languages––biblical and rabbinic literatures, as well as Christian and other ancient Near Eastern sources––and studies the social, political, and religious contexts in which the Qur’an emerged and developed. This volume, edited by Mette Bjerregaard Mortensen, Guillaume Dye, Isaac W. Oliver, and Tommaso Tesei, advance the argument that the more we situate the study of Islamic origins in a Jewish or Christian context, and less in an Islamic one, the more we avoid some of the problems that have beset this topic in the larger field of Islamic studies. For instance, Aaron W. Hughes situates the study of Islam’s emergence in the context of Iranian and Roman rivalry in and around Arabia and against the backdrop of the “complexity of ascertaining the identity of the Jews of South Arabia and the Hijaz prior to the time of Muhammad” (13). Hence, Islam emerges not simply as the sum of other, more-established monotheisms in the area, but as an active player in shaping monotheistic identity or self-definition. Hughes’ goal here is to show that the academic study of the late antique period and the religions of late antiquity “can illumine the study of Islamic origins and vice versa” (13).
Stephen J. Shoemaker argues in his essay that the Qur’an is a collection of late antique textual materials, revealing diverse and complex beliefs and expressions that existed in Jewish and Christian monotheism “that otherwise would be invisible from the sources of those two traditions alone” (30). For Shoemaker, the Qur’an is “the gathering of texts” that were not meant to be put together in a codex. Furthermore, he writes, if the Qur’an represents a homiletic text, then one can also assume that the text was composed prior to oral delivery since “homiletic tradition demanded texts that had been carefully composed prior to oral delivery and were not spontaneous oral deliveries” (35). He argues that if the Qur’an were to be understood as an extension of the memra (word, decree, literature, writings) tradition, then it must have been a written work prior to its oral delivery. Another argument Shoemaker advances is that understanding the Qur’an’s formation within the environment of late ancient Judaism and Christianity and their scriptures elevates the Qur’an to the status of sacred scripture, hence becoming a biblical apocryphon and a contributor to the production of apocryphal texts along with Judaism and Christianity.
In Manfred Kropp’s chapter on body parts nomenclature in the Qur’an corpus, he applies a methodology that has been used effectively for purposes ranging from the study of the Old Testament to the study of body parts within the Qur’an. He writes that because Arabic is close to the Old Hebrew and the corpus of the Qur’an shows parallels with the Old Testament, it becomes feasible to apply instruments and methods that clarified body conception in the Old Testament to the Qur’anic text. Kropp suggests that much of the Qur’an’s vocabulary shares identical terms with Hebrew and other semitic languages and that there are clear loans from the Hebrew Bible or its environment. He then asks: To what extent do these parallels represent innovations by the author(s) of the Qur’an or attestations to pre-existent texts already in Arabic? He further argues that the most common words relating to body parts (i.e., head, tongue hand, chest, heart) in the Qur’an are identical to terms or correspond to the parallel use of words in the Hebrew Bible.
In a chapter titled “The Queen of Sheba in the Qur’an and Late Antique Midrash,” Jillian Stinchcomb discusses the parallel between the Qur’anic and Biblical accounts of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon. In the Hebrew Bible, the Queen comes to test Solomon with riddles, whereas in the Qur’an, Solomon tests the Queen with the help of the jinn. However this chapter focuses on the Queen of Sheba’s account in late antique Jewish writings titled Targum Sheni Esther, or Second Targum of Esther. According to Stinchcomb, scholars have noticed significant parallels in the account between the Qur’an and the Targum and adduced this parallel to support a model of dependence linking early Islam with late antique Jewish materials. She adds that late antique scholars cite this parallel to argue for Muhammad’s dependence on Rabbinic Jewish literature in the creation of the Qur’an. However, Stinchcomb disagrees with this conclusion and argues that despite the accounts’ similarities, “the form, details, and structure of both do not suggest dependence in either direction” (91-91). Her objection to the latter is the uncertain dates of the composition of the Targum. Both the Targum and the Qur’an, the author writes, can be situated in a 7th- or 8th-century milieu, and these parallels could be the result of common discourses and shared concerns.
The remaining chapters discuss various themes and accounts in the Qur’an to demonstrate how the text is informed in one way or another by Jewish and Christian materials. The biblical stories narrated in Jewish and Christian writings, according to the volume’s authors, were not copied and pasted into the Qur’an; rather, they were effectively repurposed in the Islamic text to serve the needs of a new community attempting to establish its identity. For Isaac W. Oliver, the Qur’an is both “Jewish” and “Christian” because many of its contents stem from Jewish writings and rabbinic tradition and for its confession of Jesus as the Messiah and the son of the virgin Mary. Oliver concludes that “the time is coming to view the Qur’an as a ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ text just as many documents of the New Testament are now appreciated as Jewish writings” (144).
The volume’s chapters attempt to demonstrate that the Qur’an has rabbinic and Christian origins, and many of the biblical accounts were repurposed in the Qur’an to give the new religion its own identity. It offers new perspectives on early Islamic history by situating the Qur’an in a late antique environment and by studying the text as a biblical apocryphon written in Arabic.
This volume is a groundbreaking work as it attempts to offer a new spin on the origin of Islam. While most studies on the origin of Islam consider the Qur’an as the source of the tradition’s origin, this volume attempts to demonstrate that Islam’s origins go back to literatures that precede the Qur’an itself, viz. to Jewish and Christian literatures. This thesis will greatly impact the way we understand the Qur’an and Islam and will have profound implications on interreligious studies as well as on future research on the origins of Islam.
Hussam S. Timani is a professor of philosophy and religion at Christopher Newport University.
Hussam S. Timani
Date Of Review:
October 11, 2024