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 Topic: Qur'anic studies today

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  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #810 - May 19, 2016, 09:43 AM
    Gabriel Said Reynolds - The Islamic Christ

    https://www.academia.edu/25429993/_The_Islamic_Christ_in_F._Murphy_ed._The_Oxford_Handbook_of_Christology_183-98
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #811 - May 19, 2016, 10:51 PM
    Francisco del Rio Sanchez - "Jewish-Christianity" and Islamic Origins. The transformation of a peripheral religious movement?

    http://www.academia.edu/17849978/Paper_draft_Jewish-Christianity_and_Islamic_Origins._The_transformation_of_a_peripheral_religious_movement

    Video: Jewish-Christianity and the Origins of Islam
    Quote
    Islamic Origins: The Transformation of a Peripheral Religious Movement?
    Francisco del Rio Sanchez, University of Barcelona

    The Judeo-Christian Audience of the Qu’ran
    Robert Hoyland, New York University

    Jewish-Christianity, Non-Trinitarianism, and the Beginnings of Islam
    Stephen Shoemaker, University of Oregon

    https://vimeo.com/148186511

    In considering the nature of the Christian background to early Islam it's maybe also worth bearing in mind this point from Jack Tannous (the abstract of an as yet unpublished talk with the title 'Simple Believers')
    Quote
    Between the fourth and seventh centuries, the Middle East’s Christian community fragmented into competing churches based on disagreements over theological speculation about the mechanics of the Incarnation. Yet the population of the region lacked the theological formation to properly understand the issues that defined these rival ecclesiastical groups. To fully understand the religious landscape of the Middle East on the eve of the Islamic conquests, the consequences of this tension between an illiterate, rural population and communal definition based on sophisticated theological disagreement need to be taken into account.

    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #812 - May 20, 2016, 06:13 PM
    I've just watched the video on Jewish-Christianity and the Origins of Islam through and it's definitely worthwhile, particularly for the contributions of Hoyland and Shoemaker. The point that jumped out at me was Hoyland's argument that an Arabic translation of the Peshitta version of the Bible must have preceded the Qur'an. Obviously I'd be interested in any opinions on this.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #813 - May 21, 2016, 12:07 AM
    Podcast: Tom Holland on Islam and history

    http://www.gspellchecker.com/2016/05/ep82-tom-holland-islam-and-history/
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #814 - May 21, 2016, 09:24 PM
    On Hoyland´s assumed existence of a  pre-Quranic Arabic Peshitta:

    Wouldn´t the absence of any 7C religious Arabic post-Quran texts be an argument AGAINST the existence of this pre-Quranic Arabic Peshitta? If there already existed an elaborate use of religious Arabic in pre-Quran times, wouldn´t it be logical to have a booming Arabic religious commentary post the Arab conquests (7C)? But this is not the case, contrary, there is nothing.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #815 - May 22, 2016, 12:23 AM
    I haven't listened to Hoyland's argument for it, but it sounds very surprising to me.  I would not think a 'translation' existed, apart from simple paraphrases by bilingual speakers in the contexts of homilies and exhortations.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #816 - May 22, 2016, 03:26 AM
    Zeca,

    i have seen another video of Hoyland, i can't remember the link, but he insisted on a very simple idea, the Quran did not invent Arabic, and Arabic was well established  language before Islam, ( i know, i am stating the obvious).

    i was rather surprised by Shoemaker, who seems to adopt Donner  "believers movement theory "
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #817 - May 22, 2016, 04:05 AM
    The interesting thing about those first Arabic translations: they were done from two different forms of Aramaic. Anton Baumstark and, now, Sean Anthony have shown that Ibn Isḥāq's copy of the Gospels were done from a Palestinian Aramaic base. Meanwhile Joseph Witztum has "Ibn Isḥāq and the Pentateuch in Arabic", Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam 40 (2013), 1-72 which shows that the same man's copy of the Torah came from the Peshitta, which is in Edessene Syriac.

    Ibn Isḥāq cannot have done both of these translations himself. I just don't think he was that smart. Ibn Khaldun maybe was that smart. But not Ibn Isḥāq.

    Either al-Madina had a virtuoso translator fluent in two forms of Aramaic (but who?), or else the "Arabic Bible" got done in haphazard fashion hundreds of miles apart. Kind of like... the Hebrew Bible's translators into Greek, whose Torah came from Alexandria and whose Psalms are Palestinian.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #818 - May 22, 2016, 04:13 AM
    Fascinating.
    "Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, and hope without an object cannot live." -Coleridge

    http://sinofgreed.wordpress.com/
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #819 - May 22, 2016, 04:30 AM
    9:29 Quran
    Sahih International
    Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

    ISIS following Quran to its core !
    Warning Graphic Site !
    http://shoebat.com/2015/10/10/islamic-state-isis-to-christians-in-syria-pay-jizya-non-muslim-tax-or-you-will-be-executed-and-your-wives-will-become-our-sex-slaves/
    Quote from: mtexmuslim on May 29, 2016, 10:54 PM
    I think you have some problem.
    Every thing I post, looks weird to you.


  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #820 - May 22, 2016, 11:21 AM
    Hi Zimriel,

    What is the estimated date for these Arabic translations of the Bible? Any indication they existed before the Quran was written?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #821 - May 22, 2016, 06:20 PM
    mundi: the Peshitta absolutely did exist before Islam because lots of late-Roman Syriac saints quote from it. The Gospel in variant Aramaic is much less well attested, though. As for the Arabic translations, I don't think we have preIslamic Christian Arabic quotes (say, in a desert church mosaic or plaque) extensive enough to make that call.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #822 - May 22, 2016, 08:44 PM
    Zimriel: That´s what Hoyland suggested, that there could have been an early Arabic Peshitta, explaining the parallelisms between Quran and Christian sources. Zeca attracted attention to this suggestion earlier on in this thread.

    I think that the absence of  7th C Arabic religious texts (other than Quran) is an argument against the early (pre-Quran) Arabic translation, no?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #823 - May 23, 2016, 10:47 AM
    Clare Wilde - The Arabic Bible before Islam (review of Sidney Griffith’s The Bible in Arabic)

    http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/arabic-bible-islam/
    Quote
    Griffith does not dispute that Jews and Christians spoke Arabic before the emergence of Islam, nor that they may have conducted liturgies in Arabic. But he does refuse to posit a written Arabic Bible before the rise of Islam. The background of this claim is his decades-long engagement with Irfan Shahid, who argues that the Gospels and Psalms existed in Arabic before the rise of Islam. Locating extant parchments from late antiquity and the early medieval period that could constitute evidence in this debate is difficult, given the usually poor condition of any manuscript of such an early provenance. Nonetheless, Griffith demonstrates how the evidence we do have “argues against [the] probability” of a pre-Islamic Arabic translation of the Bible.

    This is Griffith's argument in his book (published in 2013). Hoyland specifically refers to Griffith's position in the video (from 2015) and disagrees with it. See the section of the video from about 38.00 to 44.30 for Hoyland's argument.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #824 - May 23, 2016, 03:40 PM
    Quote from: mundi on May 22, 2016, 08:44 PM
    I think that the absence of  7th C Arabic religious texts (other than Quran) is an argument against the early (pre-Quran) Arabic translation, no?

    I'm not sure that in this case the absence of evidence amounts to a particularly strong argument for evidence of absence. It seems fairly clear that a 6th and 7th century Christian Arabic scribal tradition existed. I find it hard to imagine a social and cultural context for the pre-Islamic development and spread of the Arabic script without this. The question may be more whether there was translation of religious writings from Syriac or Palestinian Aramaic into Arabic, or whether it was a case of Christian scribes only using Arabic for secular purposes, and possibly some limited religious writings of their own. If this was true it would be different from all the other written languages used by Christians in the region, but might have parallels with the early medieval Latin west. In any case it appears that no manuscripts at all survive from this tradition, secular or religious, so the evidence for what was, or was not, being written down in Arabic is limited.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #825 - May 23, 2016, 03:55 PM
    Quote
    Arabia   Edit
    Cosmas Indicopleustes, navigator and geographer of the 6th century, wrote about Christians, bishops, monks, and martyrs in Yemen and among the Himyarites.[1] In the 5th century a merchant from Yemen was converted in Hira, in the northeast, and upon his return led many to Christ.


    I think there was a lot going on in and around Arabia .

    I propose that Islam is a result of missionary activity started by Justinian .

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_6th_century

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #826 - May 23, 2016, 04:11 PM
    John Wansbrough - Quranic Studies

    http://www.almuslih.org/Library/Wansbrough,%20J%20-%20Quranic%20Studies.pdf

    The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where and to Whom?
    Studies on the rise of Islam and various other topics in memory of John Wansbrough

    http://www.almuslih.org/Library/Segovia,%20C;%20Lourié,%20B%20-%20The%20Coming%20of%20the%20Comforter.pdf
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #827 - May 23, 2016, 04:13 PM
    I have some questions concerning Hoyland´s and also Shoemaker´s arguments:

    1/ Has the discussion been concluded amongst mainstream scholars about the location where Quran originated ? The (non)presence of Christians-Jews in the Hijaz becomes non-essential in the discussion  if Quran originated in North-Arabia (Syria) and not in Hijaz.  But neither Hoyland nor Shoemaker seem to have any doubts on this and focus their arguments how stories-texts of Jewish/Christian nature could have come to the Hijaz. (Could the question not be here: did the Quran go to the J-Chr sources or did the J-Chr sources go to the Quran...)

    2/ Hoyland stresses the parallelism of the Christian stories and the Quran. He uses example 19:24 (about baby Jesus sending a rivulet under Mary). This happens to be an example Gallez highlights as being proof of Syrian-Aramean influence on the Quran since even in the DIB- Turkish official Quran this verse is translated as "your lord has made your child legitimate ([own translation from French  wacko..[/s][http://www.lemessieetsonprophete.com/annexes/Luxenberg_s19-24_turc.htm./s]
    Assuming pre-knowledge of the audience must have been, just as it is today, a tricky business. I think all teachers can confirm this... Thus, using pre-knowledge of the audience to explain a "weird" text seems to be a too easy way out.

    3/ How similar were Hebrew/Aramaic-Syriac/Arabic to each other? Cant it be that Arabic christians didnt feel the need in 6-7C to have their own Arabic translation of the bible because of the similarity of their language with Aramaic-Syriac? Just as Plat-Deutsch speakers accepted the Hoch-Deutsch Bible a millenium later? Only after Arabic gained the prestige it did later on, was the need felt to have an Arabic translation? Explaining the later indications of the existence of an Arabic Peshitta (post- Quran)?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #828 - May 23, 2016, 04:25 PM
    Quote from: zeca on May 23, 2016, 03:40 PM
    I'm not sure that in this case the absence of evidence amounts to a particularly strong argument for evidence of absence. It seems fairly clear that a 6th and 7th century Christian Arabic scribal tradition existed. I find it hard to imagine a social and cultural context for the pre-Islamic development and spread of the Arabic script without this. The question may be more whether there was translation of religious writings from Syriac or Palestinian Aramaic into Arabic, or whether it was a case of Christian scribes only using Arabic for secular purposes, and possibly some limited religious writings of their own. If this was true it would be different from all the other written languages used by Christians in the region, but might have parallels with the early medieval Latin west. In any case it appears that no manuscripts at all survive from this tradition, secular or religious, so the evidence for what was, or was not, being written down in Arabic is limited.


    I agree there must have been a certain 6-7 C scribal Arabic tradition, but if it would have been  wide-spread in the religious domain, I dont understand why only 2 C later religious commentaries and literary texts suddenly appeared. 7 C was dominated by the Arabs, no reason to hold back and not to express the existing tradition (if it existed) "full blast". But no, it seems the Quran was kept in the refrigerator (C14 indicated it is very early 7C..) for 2 centuries. Of course it is possible that everything of 7-8 C got lost (absence of evidence argument) but how likely is that? The traditional muslim writers would have picked up the traces: quid non.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #829 - May 23, 2016, 04:27 PM
    Quote
    Cant it be that Arabic christians didnt feel the need in 6-7C to have their own Arabic translation of the bible because of the similarity of their language with Aramaic-Syriac?

    That's possible. I'm not sure if the languages were close enough to be mutually intelligible, but many people, and most monks and scribes, may have been bilingual.
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #830 - May 23, 2016, 04:46 PM
    Quote from: zeca on May 23, 2016, 03:40 PM
    I'm not sure that in this case the absence of evidence amounts to a particularly strong argument for evidence of absence. It seems fairly clear that a 6th and 7th century Christian Arabic scribal tradition existed. I find it hard to imagine a social and cultural context for the pre-Islamic development and spread of the Arabic script without this. The question may be more whether there was translation of religious writings from Syriac or Palestinian Aramaic into Arabic, or whether it was a case of Christian scribes only using Arabic for secular purposes, and possibly some limited religious writings of their own. If this was true it would be different from all the other written languages used by Christians in the region, but might have parallels with the early medieval Latin west. In any case it appears that no manuscripts at all survive from this tradition, secular or religious, so the evidence for what was, or was not, being written down in Arabic is limited.


    My very limited guess is that Arabic script was probably used for commercial purposes and inventory records --- not much more.  As for why you didn't see more of a translation movement, I suspect it's because (a) Syriac and CPA were largely sufficient for liturgical purposes; (b) emphasizing Syriac helped integrate and unify Arabian Christianity with (particularly) Syriac miaphysitism, with the imposition of Syriac 'orthodoxy' being a huge part of the Jacobite expansion program in Arabian Christianity (and Syrian Christianity as well); and (c) so few people read Arabic script it wasn't worth the bother.  Recall that Syriac-Aramaic is still used, even today, for the liturgy in India among its ancient Christian churches.  Translations of the Bible into Indian languages are a modern European phenomenon, despite the long history of Indian Christianity around Kerala.  I suspect that you had a rather similar situation, at the same historical period, in the Indian and Arabian contexts.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malankara_Orthodox_Syrian_Church
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #831 - May 23, 2016, 04:50 PM
    Btw, it is partly this *foreign and imperial* character of Arabian Christianity that may have helped drive the differentiation of vernacular quranic forms, influenced by Syriac, but deriving their authority from their greater immediacy and clarity.  Instead of priests droning on in difficult Syriac, you had recitations in clear Arabic, recitations that were later overlaid with an apparatus of revelatory legitimacy to defend and advance them against the claims of Syriac orthodoxy.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #832 - May 23, 2016, 05:17 PM
    Talk by Robert Hoyland on early Arabic inscriptions
    https://vimeo.com/151771970
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #833 - May 23, 2016, 06:25 PM
    On Hoylands talk: The mixture of Arabic and Aramaic in early graffitti is interesting. It is only logical I guess that the Quran would have a lot of religious "loan-words" from Aramaic (and Hebrew?) especially in the religious domain (like all languages have English origin words for computer terminology...) ?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #834 - May 23, 2016, 09:28 PM
    Quote from: zeca on May 23, 2016, 10:47 AM
    Clare Wilde - The Arabic Bible before Islam (review of Sidney Griffith’s The Bible in Arabic)

    http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/arabic-bible-islam/This is Griffith's argument in his book (published in 2014). Hoyland specifically refers to Griffith's position in the video (from 2015) and disagrees with it. See the section of the video from about 38.00 to 44.30 for Hoyland's argument.



    Which video?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #835 - May 23, 2016, 09:50 PM
    This is the video link: https://vimeo.com/148186511
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #836 - May 24, 2016, 04:28 PM
    Christian Sahner's review of Michael Penn's Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World

    https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/21977/27923
    Quote
    Chapter 4, perhaps the best in the book, paints a rich portrait of Muslim-Christian relations from the ground up. Here, the payoff of privileging Syriac sources is at its most obvious, as Penn offers a revisionist take on the fuzzy frontier between the two religions at a crucial moment in their common history. Following the lead of scholars like Jack Tannous, Penn presents us with a world of "Christian-like Muslims" and "Muslim-like Christians," whose boundary-crossing provoked the ire and attention of clerical elites. For example, in the Book of Governors of Thomas of Marga (fl. mid-ninth c.), we meet a Muslim from northern Iraq whose faith was said to be "close to" Christianity, who endowed monasteries, who received visions from a Christian holy man, who sought the advice of a bishop, and whose son was healed by a monk's cross. Of him Penn rightly asks: "Does this man fit comfortably within our definition of a Muslim?" The answer is obviously, "No." Likewise, Penn introduces us to groups of Christians who regarded Christ as simply one of the prophets, who described Muḥammad as God's messenger, who included the Muslim shahada in their profession of faith, who took part in Muslim festivals, and who underwent circumcision like Muslims. Again, Penn asks whether such individuals fit our modern definition of "Christians," and again, our answer must be a resounding, "No." It is through these liminal characters--caught betwixt and between Christianity and Islam--that we see the formation of Islamic civilization at its messiest and most vivid.


    Talk by Michael Penn
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DxS7N1yKQQQ
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #837 - May 24, 2016, 07:58 PM
    Thanks Zeca for posting the M. Penn Utube: it´s fascinating!
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #838 - May 24, 2016, 09:21 PM
    Gerald Hawting - The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam

    http://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/140655/The_Idea_of_Idolatry.pdf
    Quote
    In this book G. R. Hawting supports the view that the emergence of Islam owed more to debates and disputes among monotheists than to arguments with idolaters and polytheists. He argues that the ‘associators’ (mushriku ̄n) attacked in the Koran were monotheists whose beliefs and practices were judged to fall short of true monotheism and were portrayed polemically as idolatry. In commentaries on the Koran and other traditional literature, however, this polemic was read literally, and the ‘associators’ were identified as idolatrous and polytheistic Arab contemporaries and neighbours of Muhammad. Adopting a comparative religious perspective, the author considers why modern scholarship generally has been willing to accept the traditional image of the Koranic ‘associators’, he discusses the way in which the idea of idolatry has been used in Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and he questions the historical value of the traditional accounts of pre-Islamic Arab religion.


    Podcast: Gerald Hawting - Were there prophets in the Jahaliyya?

    http://web.international.ucla.edu/cnes/podcast/135579
    Which side are you on?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #839 - May 25, 2016, 01:25 PM
    Podcast: Michael Cook - Was the rise of Islam a black swan event?

    http://web.international.ucla.edu/cnes/article/164625
    Quote
    A Black Swan Event is by definition a highly improbable happening with a massive impact. No one questions the impact of rise of Islam, but just how improbable was it? Two of its central features look very unlikely against the background of earlier history: the appearance among the Arabs of a new monotheistic religion, and the formation of a powerful state in Arabia. Does that add up to two Black Swans, or do they cancel out?

    Which side are you on?
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