Ibn Warraq's New Book - "Christmas in the Koran"
OP - September 08, 2014, 01:12 PM
I just finished reading this new book and put a review up on Amazon. Since Warraq is a subject of some interest for these boards, I thought others might be interested in that review, so I'm posting a cut-and-paste of my review here. Let me know if anybody has questions about the book!
___________________________________________________________________
A Gigantic Volume of Old and New Essays on the Qur'an's Background -- Fascinating, But Disjointed and Exhausting
At 800 pages of small-print text, this is a massive compilation of scholarly articles, with the general common theme being the Syriac/Aramaic background of the Qur'an, as reflected in its subtitle "Luxenberg, Syriac, and the Near Eastern and Judeo-Christian Background of Islam." This is one of Warraq's best efforts, and certainly provides bang for the buck, but it suffers from flaws in the selection of materials and their arrangement.
Warraq introduces the book with his best essay to date -- albeit unfortunately entitled -- "In Search of Avocado." As an overview of the *general* phenomenon of Semitic translation/interference in Near Eastern religious texts, it's a great way to start the book, because it situates Luxenberg's method within a much broader context. As Warraq points out, modern linguistic research has upended the traditional accounts of Arabic, seeing Classical Arabic as a *derivative* of the Arabic dialects that were already spread throughout the region prior to Mohammed, an end-point, not a starting point. Warraq gives a fine summary of the various arguments made by scholars regarding Qur'anic Arabic. The ultimate point being that the language reflected in the base Qur'anic script was likely far more dialectal in character, and far more suffused with Aramaisms, than the socio-linguistic ideal that was much later defined as Classical Arabic, through which Muslims now read the Qur'an, and which purposefully distanced the Qur'an from its originating context(s). As a result of that dislocation, there is a considerable linguistic, orthographic, and theological gap between the Qur'an's text and its later Muslim interpretation, which has led to many misunderstandings and puzzles that can theoretically be resolved by peeling back the later misreadings. On a cautionary note, however, Warraq cites scholars explaining that it is incredibly difficult to do a `retroversion' that recovers an original Semitic text from its later translation into another language; even establishing the fact of interference can be very hard.
The next section of the book, entitled Aramaic and Syriac, kills off momentum, and is rather tedious. There are a couple obscure articles, a recent article by Sidney Griffith, and a looooong article by Robert Kerr about Aramaisms in the Qur'an (available for free on the Internet, btw). Despite its title, the Griffith article is rather traditional, and downplays the role of Syriac/Aramaic in the Qur'an's composition. The Kerr article, by contrast, argues that the Qur'an reflects the Arabic dialect, script, and theology prevalent in "Arabia Petraea" (essentially modern Jordan, Syria, and Western Iraq). Kerr attempts to show this through analyzing the Qur'an's foreign vocabulary. Although Kerr is probably right, his essay is pretty limp.
Another section follows, consisting of several arcane old essays by Anton Baumstark, as translated from the German by Elisabeth Puin. Most readers will find these a chore. The overall gist is that Muslim liturgy was derived from Christian predecessors.
At this point, page 350, many readers will be dozing, and some will have dropped off. That's unfortunate, because the Christoph Luxenberg section is next, and brings 250 pages of spectacular pyrotechnics, including the 'Christmas' essay which this book is named after. Warraq's limited introduction is followed by a series of sensational Luxenberg articles. For this book, Luxenberg rewrote several of his older articles into a new omnibus article entitled "Christmas and the Eucharist in the Qur'an." He cut out fat, tossed his weaker/erroneous arguments, improved his better arguments, and the overall impact is much stronger than that of his 2004 book. You certainly won't be convinced by all his new readings, but even when his "Syriac" readings are weak, he generally leaves the traditional "Classical Arabic" interpretation in tatters; I literally laughed-out-loud at many of the attempted traditional explanations of the Qur'an's thorny grammatical, orthographic, and lexical problems. Paret's translations, in particular, are revealing. Luxenberg's ventures into early Qur'anic orthography are fascinating, and it's downright criminal more scholars aren't doing this work. How can scholars have paid so little attention to the Arabic misreading of the name "Yahya," rather than the correct "Yoḥannan," and what that implies about the Qur'an's original language and orthography more generally (though many other scholars have concluded the same about "Yahya," the point's broader significance has largely been ignored). Or the egregious misreading "gadd" rather than "had" in Surah 72:3? What is wrong with Qur'anic studies that such howlers have been so readily overlooked or marginalized? Qur'anic studies have been preserved in theological amber, guarded by uncritical dogma; this is part of why the field is now becoming so exciting, there is so much work to be done and so many discoveries to make - great new articles come out every year. Finally, Luxenberg's explanation of the Qur'an's "mysterious letters" as signifying liturgical recitations to be used in conjunction with recitation of the following Surah is far and away the best hypothesis I've seen, even if his own suggestions of specific liturgical candidates are (by his own admission) very speculative.
Unfortunately Warraq fails to give the reader much useful material in the way of assessing Luxenberg's arguments, his rather chaotic methodology, or the broader thesis that portions of the Qur'an's text should be read as Aramaisms rather than Classical Arabic. This is a shame. For example, the scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds has rather conclusively shown that many of the Qur'an's references *presuppose* that its audience already knows and is familiar with Syriac Christian Biblical texts and traditions; without reading the Qur'an in that context, these references are incomprehensible, and Muslims thus have misread them for centuries. Similarly, Fred Donner's article "Qur'anic Furqan" is a powerful Luxenberg-type analysis, making a compelling argument that the Qur'an's use of the term 'Furqan' is actually a Syriacism that was mistranscribed into the Uthmanic Qur'an text and badly misunderstood by later Muslim scholars; it is available for free on the Internet, just google "Donner" and "Furqan." Muslims have traditionally understood Surah 8:41 as a reference to the alleged "Battle of Badr," but Donner demonstrates that 8:41 is actually a reference to God's salvation of the Israelites by parting the Red Sea. That supports Luxenberg's argument in this book about `no battle of Badr.' So why not include such cutting-edge essays, which are far more interesting and compelling than the archaic material, and tie in beautifully with Luxenberg's arguments?
Furthermore, many readers will surely want to know what Luxenberg's general reception has been among modern scholars; itself a fascinating subject. But Warraq's introduction gives only a weak and superficial summary of that reception, leaving the reader uncertain. So you'll have to go elsewhere. By far the most detailed scholarly review of Luxenberg to date is by the Syriacist Daniel King at Cardiff University; this wonderful essay is available for free on the Internet (google "Cardiff" "King" and "Luxenberg"), and helpfully includes a summary of all the previous scholarly reviews of Luxenberg at its end. King provides a sobering corrective to Luxenberg's methodological excesses, particularly his fast-and-loose approach to the alleged meaning of Syriac and Aramaic terms.
Likewise, some excellent validation for Luxenberg's readings has come from Guillaume Dye, a wonderful scholar, but the book contains none of his essays. Warraq briefly explains that Dye has written a "superb" article which definitively proves Luxenberg right about Surah 97 as a Christmas reference. Well, what does Dye say then? We don't find out! Considering this book's title, why doesn't it contain at least a decent paraphrase of Dye's arguments in support of Luxenberg's thesis? Warraq also cites a 'forthcoming' Dye article that rebuts King and shows that Luxenberg is correct about the Qur'an's use of the 'waw' of apodosis. That Dye article has since forthcame, and is available for free on the Internet under the title "Traces of Bilingualism/Multilingualism in Qur'anic Arabic" (slated for publication in a new volume entitled "Arabic in Context.") And it's sensational, the best article on Syriac/Aramaic influence on the Qur'an that I have ever come across. Go read it!
Finally, the rest of the book consists of a long section entitled "Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew Into Arabic." I found many of these essays outdated (for example, constant arguments based upon the tendentious traditional Muslim biography of Mohammed) and dull. Two penultimate essays by Munther Younes are pretty decent, however and present Luxenberg-inspired analyses of Surah 100. Finally, the book concludes with a short essay by Gross and Warraq on the Qur'an's references to "Bakka" and "Makka," concluding (correctly I think) that the Bakka verse (Surah 3:96) is actually a straightforward reference to Psalm 84:6-7, and rightly rejecting both the traditional Muslim reading (as reference to Mecca) and Luxenberg's attempted Syro-Aramaic reading.
Overall, the book is solid value for the money, and the Luxenberg section is pretty sensational. But I still have difficulty recommending it except as a resource for true specialists. For most generalist readers, the book is probably too cryptic, exhausting, and inaccessible (thus Qur'an-like, I suppose). Amazon describes the book as if it was chock full of Luxenberg-type essays, but it's not. I tentatively give the book 4 stars on the condition that it is read alongside the Dye, King, and Donner articles cited above, which are available for free on the Internet. You should read them even if you don't buy this book!
Topic: Ibn Warraq's New Book - "Christmas in the Koran"