Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (27 page)

Nonetheless, the diacritical marks were ultimately introduced without causing any major conflict. Thereafter the text was largely frozen in meaning. That canonical text, however, is the one in which, as the philologist Gerd-R. Puin notes, “every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense.” Consequently, some scholars speculate that perhaps the diacritical marks themselves caused the incoherence of the Qur'an. If these marks were added incorrectly or with some polemical or dogmatic objective in mind, it may be that by stripping them out and applying different ones, we can discover the true meaning of difficult and borderline nonsensical Qur'anic passages.

It is by no means an arbitrary practice to strip out diacritical marks and reevaluate the Qur'anic text: The Qur'an contains numerous indications of a non-Arabic derivation, or at the very least considerable non-Arabic influence. As we have seen, even the word
Qur'an
itself may be a Syriac word for a lectionary.
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Furthermore, Muhammad's first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, uses language that otherwise, according to scholar Alfred Guillaume, appears only in a “Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels which will conclusively prove that the Arabic writer had a Syriac text before him.”
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Some Qur'anic passages that are puzzling or contain odd locutions become clear once the canonical diacritical marks are stripped out and the text reread in light of the Syriac language. The Qur'anic account of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son contains this verse, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's rendering: “So when they had both submitted their wills (to Allah), and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead (for sacrifice)…” (37:103). Pickthall renders the same verse as: “Then, when they had both surrendered (to Allah), and he had flung him down upon his face…” The passage translated as “laid him prostrate on his forehead” or “flung him down upon his face” is
wa-tallahu li'l jabin.
But this is the only time the word
jabin
appears in the Qur'an. Although Muslim scholars interpret the word to mean “forehead” or “face,” the philologist Christoph Luxenberg reads
jabin
as a corruption of the Syriac
habbin
, firewood. The
j
in
jabin
(
) and the
h
in
habbin
(
) differ by only one dot. Luxenberg reads
wa-tallahu
not as
“laid him” or “flung him” but, in light of the Syriac
tla
, “bind.” Thus he renders the verse in a way that is much more consonant with the biblical account: “He bound him to the firewood.”
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A Christian Lectionary

Numerous scholars have noted traces of a Christian text underlying the Qur'an. In line with the meaning of the Syriac word
Qur'an
, that Christian text may have been a lectionary. The Qur'anic scholar Erwin Gräf declares that the Qur'an, “according to the etymological meaning of the word, is originally and really a liturgical text designed for cultic recitation and also actually used in the private and public service. This suggests that the liturgy or liturgical poetry, and indeed the Christian liturgy, which comprises the Judaic liturgy, decisively stimulated and influenced Mohammed.”
¹¹

Similarly, the German philologist Günter Lüling posits that “the text of the Koran as transmitted by Muslim Orthodoxy contains, hidden behind it as a ground layer and considerably scattered throughout it (together about one-third of the whole Koran text), an originally pre-Islamic Christian text.”
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Earlier Qur'anic scholars such as Alois Sprenger and Tor Andrae have also identified a Christian substratum to the Qur'an.
¹³

Luxenberg states that if
Qur'an
“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
themselves, i.e. as an independent
Scripture.”
¹⁴

But what, then, of passages in which the Qur'an seems to refer to itself as exactly that, an independent scripture? Consider, for example, Qur'an 12:1–2, which Abdullah Yusuf Ali renders this way: “These are the symbols (or Verses) of the perspicuous Book. We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an, in order that ye may learn wisdom.” Referring to Syriac to elucidate the Arabic, Luxenberg translates the
passage in this way: “This is the written copy of the elucidated Scripture: We have sent it down as an Arabic lectionary so that you may understand it.”
¹⁵

Luxenberg explains the implications: “It is thus not surprising that Jesus
(Isa)
is cited 25 times in the Koran and that he is there referred to as the Messiah
(al-Masih)
eleven times. Thus it is only logical to see other Syro-Christian passages being a part of this foundation which constitutes the origin of the Koran.”
¹⁶

Luxenberg is among the scholars who have pioneered the critical examination of the
rasm
—that is, the basic form of the Qur'anic text without diacritical marks. Because diacritical marks are not found in the earliest Qur'an manuscripts, these scholars posit that the Qur'an originally had a meaning quite different from that of the now-standard Arabic text. Luxenberg notes that many of the Qur'an's linguistic peculiarities vanish when one strips out the Arabic diacritical marks, which were added later, and reads the book as a Syriac document. He even contends that Syriac was the original language of the Arab conquerors; although other scholars dispute this claim, it is plausible given that Syriac was the chief literary language of the Middle East from the fourth to the eighth centuries.

By referring to the Syriac and examining the
rasm
, Luxenberg solves the difficulties of a passage that has perplexed readers of the Qur'an for centuries. Just as Mary gives birth to Jesus in the Qur'anic account, there is this: “Then (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee” (19:24). It is unclear from the text who is speaking (the newborn Jesus or someone else?) and what the nature of this rivulet is. Luxenberg, however, finds that this passage has nothing to do with rivulets. Rather, it refers to Mary's delivering a Virgin Birth. In Luxenberg's philological reconstruction, the infant Jesus (who speaks elsewhere in the Qur'an) tells Mary: “Do not be sad, your Lord has made your delivery legitimate.”
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Raisins, Not Virgins

Luxenberg's investigations won international attention for his reinterpretation of Qur'anic passages referring to the virgins of Paradise (44:51–57, 52:17–24, 56:27–40). These passages are among the most famous in the entire Qur'an, promising “perfect…spotless virgins, chastely amorous” (56:35–37) to the inhabitants of Paradise. Most notably, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks many news stories focused on the Qur'anic promise of virgins in Paradise as the reward for Islamic martyrs.

The Arabic word
hur
, which is usually translated as “virgins,” is central to the canonical understanding of these passages (it appears in 44:54 and 52:20). But
hur
does not actually mean “virgins,” as even Arabic philologists acknowledge. Rather, it is the plural form of an Arabic feminine adjective that means simply “white.” Qur'an commentators and Arabic scholars often explain that it actually means “white-eyed,” an expression that Qur'an translators have taken as an expression of the beauty of these virgins, translating it as “large-eyed,” “wide-eyed,” “with lustrous eyes,” and similar expressions. Luxenberg argues that this interpretation not only contradicts Arabic usage but doesn't even make sense as a sign of beauty:

When one describes the beauty of eyes, it is said as a rule, and not just in Arabic, “beautiful
black
, beautiful
brown
and beautiful
blue
eyes,” but never “beautiful
white
eyes,” unless of course one is
blind.
For instance, in the Koran it is also said of Jacob that from all his crying over his son Joseph his eyes have become “white” (Sura 12:84), i.e. they have been
blinded.
The further explanation given by the Arabic commentators that the white particularly emphasizes the beauty of (big)
black
eyes is only an invented makeshift explanation.
¹⁸

According to Islamic tradition,
hur
is the equivalent of
houri
, which does mean virgin, but Luxenberg argues that this is a clear misreading
of the text. For starters, the idea of the virgins contradicts the Qur'an's promise that the blessed will enter Paradise with their wives (43:70), unless the earthly wives are supposed to watch in rage and sorrow as their husbands cavort with the heavenly virgins.
¹⁹
And a closer philological analysis indicates that the Qur'an does not offer such a contradictory promise. After examining the
rasm
, the other contexts in which
hur
appears in the Qur'an, and the contemporary usage of the word
houris
, Luxenberg concludes that the famous passages refer not to virgins but instead to white raisins, or grapes.

Yes, fruit. Strange as that may seem, given all the attention paid to the Qur'an's supposed promises of virgins in Paradise, white raisins were a prized delicacy in that region. As such, Luxenberg suggests, they actually make a more fitting symbol of the reward of Paradise than the promise of sexual favors from virgins. Luxenberg shows that the Arabic word for “Paradise” can be traced to the Syriac word for “garden,” which stands to reason, given the common identification of the garden of Adam and Eve with Paradise. Luxenberg further demonstrates that metaphorical references to bunches of grapes are consonant with Christian homiletics expatiating on the refreshments that greeted the blessed in Heaven. He specifically cites the fourth-century hymns “on Paradise” of St. Ephraem the Syrian (306–373), which refer to “the grapevines of Paradise.” The fact that the Syriac word Ephraem used for “grapevine” was feminine, Luxenberg explains, “led the Arabic exegetes of the Koran to this fateful assumption” that the Qur'anic text referred to sexual playthings in Paradise.
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Similarly misleading is the standard translation of the famous Qur'anic passages regarding the boys of Paradise (“Immortal youths shall go about them; when thou seest them, thou supposest them scattered pearls” [76:19]; “and there go round them youths, their own, as if they were hidden pearls” [52:24]; “immortal youths going round about them” [56:17]). Luxenberg shows that these passages refer not to boys but, again, to grapes—the refreshment of the blessed. For example, he renders Qur'an 76:19 as: “Iced fruits pass around among them; to see them, you would think they were loose pearls.”
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This imagery, too, harks back to the hymns of Ephraem the Syrian, in which the symbols of Paradise include not white grapes and iced fruits but also wine. Luxenberg concludes: “Through the philologically based misinterpretation, until now, of both the
huris
or
virgins of Paradise
and the
youths of Paradise
, one can gauge the extent to which the Koranic exegesis has become estranged vis-à-vis the original Christian symbolism of the wine of Paradise.”
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Luxenberg also looks at the Qur'anic verses (44:54 and 52:20) in which, according to the typical understanding, Allah promises that virgins will be given in marriage to the blessed. He suggests that the word understood to mean “marriage,”
zawwagnahum
, could be a misreading of
rawwahnahum
, which refers to giving rest to the departed in heaven, for without diacritical marks, the differing letters, such as the
r
and the
z
, are interchangeable. Here again, then, the verses would have nothing to do with virgins. Instead, they would be prayers for God to grant eternal rest to the souls of the deceased. Such prayers are part of Christian memorial observances. Other evidence supports Luxenberg's position. For instance, ancient North African inscriptions use
r-ww-H
, the root of
rawwahnahum
, in exactly this Christian liturgical context of praying for God to give eternal rest to the souls of the departed.
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