Apocolyptic Prophet?
Reply #3 - March 02, 2015, 12:01 AM
That is a great observation, Just. Surah 30 is a rather beautiful example of imminent eschatological expectation, in connection with the Byzantines. Traditionally Surah 30 is interpreted as one of the last 'Meccan' surahs. But I believe it is better understood as the rising theology amongst the early believers, following Mohammed's death. Particularly important is the emphasis on (1) eschatology; (2) ecumenical monotheism (heaping contempt on those who divide religions into sects); and (3) charitable expectation of the last day. This is the earliest Believer movement in a nutshell.
BUT there is a huge complication here. Where is Mohammed? I looked at Shoemaker's book, and he doesn't mention Surah 30 during his discussion of Qur'anic eschatology. Why the-apocalypse not? Well, I suspect it's because nobody has ever given a satisfactory historical explanation for why Surah 30 seems to basically cheerlead Byzantine apocalyptic Christianity, with an anti-trinitarian twist, and Mohammed doesn't appear part of the apocalypse. That doesn't fit Shoemaker's hypothesis. It doesn't fit the traditional Muslim view. It doesn't fit Donner's view. It doesn't fit Luling's view. It doesn't fit ANYBODY's view, so far as I know, of what the Qur'an is about or where/how it was composed.
If you look at the Tesei article I just posted in Zeca's thread on Qur'anic scholarship, you will see that this point is particularly acute (he expands on van Bladel and the fact that the Syriac Legend of Alexander, composed in 629 CE, is surely the source of Surah 18's discussion of Alexander). IMO, it's almost a dead lock that Surah 18 and Surah 30 were composed in a similar historical context.
By contrast with this Byzantine apocalpyticism, the early Meccan surahs seem to be pious peripheral Christianity ... per Luling, pre-trinitarian Christianity. They don't seem to have much to do with this later Byzantine eschatological viewpoint.
It is very hard to figure out how Surah 30, with its Byzantine apocalypse parallel to Surah 18, could relate to Mohammed's life, even on Shoemaker's theory. The traditional scholarly explanation, derived from the traditional Muslim view, is that Mohammed just changed his mind once he got to Medina, and stopped obsessing about the imminent apocalypse, focusing more on the here-and-now. But this is deeply unsatisfactory, particularly when it comes to explaining why the apocalypse would take the Byzantine/Alexander Legend form -- as a surah delivered in MECCA of all places.
A better explanation, if I could speculate, would be that Surah 30 represents a slowly-rising religious consciousness amongst the Arabic speaking population of the Levant/Mesopotamia, which is copying and attempting to assimilate prevailing Orthodox Christian apocalyptic expectation, but in a much more ecumenical and broader sense (as you might expect for a broad coalition of Arabic speakers) that heaps contempt on divisive theology and attempts to unify everybody under one big, reasonable, monotheistic tent. In this sense, it tries to copy and adopt Byzantine apocalyptic expectation, but extend it to all genuine monotheists, including its Arabic speaking audience.
Several questions: What relation did Surah 30 have to Mohammed? How could such pro-Byzantine sentiment have emerged in a climate where the Arabs of Mohammed were battling the Byzantine army? How could Mohammed possibly be so positive about the Byzantines? Why is there no mention of Mohammed's leadership as part of the apocalypse, which instead seems to be left to the Byzantines? Well, there's the traditional scholarly explanation ("he changed his mind after leaving Mecca"), and my best estimation: The base Qur'an material originally had very little to do with Mohammed, and only obliquely and tentatively claimed his authority as an anonymous 'messenger' (albeit one who simply repeated the messages of past prophets). That is because the Arabs of Mohammed were only a small portion of the overall rise of the Arabs across the region. Only in the later 'Medinan' material would you see a movement of the Believers state their theology in a way that is assigned uniquely to a specific messenger, and which is now anti-Byzantine because it has become associated with a militarily powerful jihadi ideology that opposes the Byzantines. Until that point, the Qur'an is actually *embarassed* by what happened to Mohammed, and does not tie itself to him as a *specific historical figure*; it hedges its bets on claiming his prophetic authority, which is why it is so damnably vague and lacking in biographical detail.
In this sense, I think Surah 30 probably does not really reflect the historical Mohammed at all, but rather a relatively brief transitional moment in the history of the post-Mohammedan Believers, well after the archaic Christian materials that were revamped into the "Early Meccan" surahs, but shortly before they moved to a more this-wordly secular power with an Arabian prophet who gave unique messages. That is why it lacks features that can easily be explained by any of the reigning paradigms.
Topic: Apocolyptic Prophet?