Book Reviews

The Qurn and its Biblical Subtext. By Gabriel S. Reynolds. New York:
Routledge, 2010. Pp. 320 + xxii. 80.00.
Gabriel Said Reynolds work The Qurn and its Biblical Subtext is a new and
challenging voice in the concert of scholarly debates about the status of the Quranic
text vis--vis its traditional exegesis. The author laments, rightly so, that the study of
the Quran as text has, for a long time, been sidelined in favour of a reading as
Qurancumcommentary. To unravel this anachronistic entanglement, the author, in
his introduction, The crisis of Qurnic Studies (pp. 336) proposes to contextualise
the Quran with its Biblical subtext, i.e. to read the Quran in the light of related
Biblical and post-Biblical traditions. Reynolds exemplies this project of
contextualisation by juxtaposing thirteen (mostly short) Quranic sections or
discussions of themes with their related Biblical and post-Biblical traditions (case
studies, pp. 39199). This procedure is preluded by a reading of the same Quranic
texts through the lens of traditional exegesis a somewhat surprising step considering
the authors severe verdict that traditional Quranic exegesis contributes little to the
understanding of the text. Yet the inclusion of Islamic exegesis is apt to support his
argument that the consultation of commentaries leads to quite different conclusions
from those to be drawn from the comparative readings of Biblical tradition. (This
would, perhaps, not have required proof since the Quran and tafsr constitute two
completely different discourses, as different as, say, the Bible and patristic or rabbinic
literature, which no modern scholar would seriously consider as instruments of a
scholarly explanation of the Bible. They are distinct textual corpora in their own
right that should not be played off against each other, and so is tafsr.
1
) A third section
of the work (pp. 20029) summarises Reynolds observations on the approaches of
traditional exegesis. The last chapter (pp. 23058) presents a plea for reading the
Quran as homily.
The case studies which form the core of the work mark in particular a relevant
progress in Quranic scholarship, not only as exempla for a fruitful analysis apt to
shed light on Quranic texts, but equally seen from the historical perspective that
Reynold himself rejects as useful contributions to our knowledge about the
discourses that should have occupied the attention of the Quranic community during
Journal of Quranic Studies 14.1 (2012): 131166
Edinburgh University Press
#
Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS
www.eupjournals.com/jqs
the proclamation process, see below. They concern the following Quranic sections or
thematic discussions:
(1) The prostration of the angels (Q. 2:30ff. etc)
(2) al-Shayn al-Rajm (Q. 15:34, Q. 38:37 etc.)
(3) Adam and the feathers (Q. 7:26)
(4) Abraham, the Gentile monotheist (Q. 26:705)
(5) The laughter of Abrahams wife (Q. 11:6972)
(6) Haman and the tower to heaven (Q. 28:5)
(7) The transformation of the Jews (Q. 7:163)
(8) Jonah and his people (Q. 10:98; Q. 37:13948; Q. 21:87)
(9) The nativity of Mary (Q. 3:357)
(10) Our hearts are uncircumcised (Q. 4:1536; Q. 2:87)
(11) Do not think those who were killed in the path of God dead (Q. 3:169)
(12) The Companions of the Cave (Q. 18)
(13) Muammad (Q. 3:144; Q. 33:40; Q. 47:2; Q. 48:29; Q. 61:6).
What is impressive about Reynolds discussions of the Quranic texts in the light of
Biblical and post-Biblical traditions is his command of a wide range of multi-lingual
material, which in some cases is apt to evoke important theological questions.
Although Reynolds is aware of proceeding in the footsteps of Heinrich Speyer
2
he
surpasses Speyers discussions in some respects. Reynolds adduces a number of
newly discovered testimonies and frequently engages in detailed linguistic discussions
of individual lexemes. His familiarity with Syriac texts proves particularly useful.
Moreover, he occasionally touches on relevant theological questions that had been
outside Speyers range, such as the imago Dei discourse which surrounds the story of
the prostration of the angels (case study 1). His work is thus a relevant new
contribution to Quranic Studies.
Yet the work also raises serious questions: The testimonies discussed seem to have
been chosen randomly, they usually do not connect to each other, nor does the author
make efforts to position them within the Quranic corpus, which is simply taken as a
textual continuum. They would of course be much more relevant were they not treated
as isolated case studies but integrated into their proper Quranic discourses. This
would also have helped the author to valourise the peculiarity of the newly emerging
Quranic interpretations of individual traditions as against the earlier versions. To
adduce an example, in the case of al-Shayn al-rajm (case study 2) Gerald
Hawtings important article Eavesdropping on the Heavenly Assembly and the
Protection of the Revelation from Demonic Corruptions is briey mentioned. No
attention, however, is paid to Hawtings most relevant conclusion, namely that the
132 Journal of Quranic Studies
Quranic construction of the heavens as a fortress guarded against demons serves the
purpose of keeping the Quranic revelation unrivalled by other trajectories of celestial
knowledge. Furthermore, decisive differences between the Quranic version and the
earlier traditions are not always clearly realised. Thus, the perception of those killed in
battle (case study 11) certainly resembles that of martyrs in early Christianity; there is
indeed a reguration of martyrdom in the Quran but it is equally true that the term
martyr (shahd), though familiar in the Quran, is nowhere applied to these dead, but
is reserved to historical martyrs of the (Christian) tradition (see Silvia Horsch).
3
This
suggests that an explicit identication of the Medinan warriors slain in battle with
martyrs in the Christian vein has been avoided intentionally, even though both
groups are rewarded in a very similar fashion. The Quranic discourse seems to have
rejected the familiar Christian concept of martyrdom (see my earlier discussion).
4
In
view of the authors negative attitude towards the imagination of a Quranic Sitz im
Leben, i.e. a real historical context, it is a little surprising that Reynolds does not
consider diachronic studies such as the present reviewers
5
article on the Adam/Ibls
story worth mentioning. Reynolds neglect of the peculiarity of the Quranic re-
readings and re-shapings of the older traditions and moreover the occasional Quranic
refusals to accept particular meanings of earlier traditions may be due to his disinterest
in the Quranic strategies of self-authorisation in general, whose consideration would
not t into the scheme of non-historically-oriented scholarship. It is for the same
reason perhaps that he fails to realise the strong tendency of de-allegorisation in
Quranic storytelling, i.e. the re-reading of Biblical stories by eliminating the
allegorical supertext that had been introduced by a Christian intermediate reading a
Quranic strategy which has been discovered and seminally demonstrated by Joseph
Witztum.
6
Such a de-allegorisation is particularly evident in the stories of Mary.
Consideration of previous scholarship would have led Reynolds to a more coherent
interpretation of the two Mary stories in case study 9 (see also Michael Marx
7
and
Neuwirth
8
). In one case Reynolds simply neglects earlier philological scholarship,
consideration of which would have derailed his proposed interpretation: in his nal
case study he prefers to follow a speculative interpretation of the name Muammad
which grammatically cannot stand up to examination so as to be able to sever
the Quran from its accepted historical context. A few further studies disregarded
by Reynolds would be relevant to individual case studies, such as Busses
9
(case
study 6, Haman) and Bobzins
10
(case study 13, Muammad).
Reynolds demands that the Quran should be read in strict separation from not only
traditional exegesis but essentially from the biography of the Prophet. This is a
principally sound stipulation which has been articulated repeatedly in a number of
recent publications. But is it really the biography of the Prophet that Reynolds wishes
to sever from the Quran? Or is it not rather the entire time-and-space-frame, i.e. the
heuristic assumption upheld in historical research that the Quran has emerged in the
Book Reviews 133
rst third of the seventh century in Mecca and Medina, having been promulgated by a
charismatic speaker articulating himself in Arabic? It is true that in order to understand
the Quran we ought not to rely on the details of Muammads life, about which after
all we know very little (see Crone
11
) and which in its traditional shape is the product
of later communal imagination. What we certainly do need however, is a working
hypothesis as to the overarching genre of the Quranic speech. Scholarship offers two
options: either an oral proclamation addressing a growing and probably changing
audience (and thus an open text), or an authors (or collectives) premeditated
compilation of earlier traditions with instructional or paraenetic intent (and thus a
closed corpus). The relation between the text and its subtext in each case would be
substantially different: if we assume that the Quran has emerged as a proclamation
involving listeners rooted in Late Antique thought (option one), we will have to
expect continuous negotiation of earlier traditions as to their appropriateness to t the
convictions of the new movement. The Quran would emerge as a non-homogeneous
text, as the document of permanent re-workings of earlier ideas and theologumena. If
we, however, assume an (anonymous) authorial compilation (option two) since the
Quran is no creation ex nihilo, but has to be imagined as originating somehow we
would have to postulate a premeditated text which may converse with older
traditions, as Reynolds puts it, but which ultimately re-uses and partly absorbs them
without revealing traces of negotiations. To simply fade out this basic alternative blurs
the insight into the relation between text and subtext. The Quran has to be placed
in some historical context, the one or the other.
The hypothesis of John Wansbrough (whose authority is often adduced by Reynolds),
who in his time, due to the scarcity of manuscript evidence, could be led to question
the Qurans traditional time-and-space-coordinates and to leave the problem of its
historical genesis open, can no longer serve as a model today: we are in the favourable
position of possessing codicological evidence from the seventh century at hand
12
that
makes the hypothesis of a later compilation extremely implausible. Furthermore, a
later compilation of the Quran can be fully excluded once we apply literary critical
methods systematically. The same holds true for the hypotheses put forward by
those unfortunately not fully unbiased researchers who claim that the Quran is an
originally non-Arabic text that has only subsequently been Arabised. Here we arrive at
the essential problematic of Reynolds approach: a textual study needs to be based on
clearly dened methodological and text-historical premises. Reynolds dispenses with
such conceptual preliminaries. He thus leaves important problems unresolved: he
owes the reader an attempt to accommodate at least the most striking traits of the
text in his particular concept of the Quran, such as (a) the varying structure, length
and complexity of the Quranic verses traits that according to historical research
(lower literary criticism) owe their diversity to historical development;
13
(b) the fact
that recurring motifs bear different functions in their individual contexts, functions
134 Journal of Quranic Studies
which according to historical research (form criticism) are due to gradually
developing theological insights of the speaker and his audience;
14
or (c) the
concentration of particular discourses within individual groups of suras that have been
traced back to gradual liturgical developments in recent scholarship (genre
criticism). Last but not least, (d) there ought to be an explanation for the
numerous additions or interpretaments, found inserted in more than half of the suras
of the corpus (lower literary criticism, redaction criticism)
15
which hardly make
sense in an authorial text. There is, obviously, not only an extra-Quranic but also an
intra-Quranic intertextuality that can hardly be explained apart from the assumption
of a historical process, i.e. the continuous and lively feedback on the proclamation
by the listeners which made these amendments mandatory. Reynolds might also have
paid attention (e) to the unit of the sura whose existence in no way is due to Islamic
tradition, but as is well-known is a fait accompli already in the most ancient
extant manuscripts (redaction criticism). To try and accommodate these phenomena
in a theoretically grounded concept of the Quranic text would surely have been a
demanding task which would rst of all require a thorough review of Reynolds
presumption that there is something like a homogenous unit called the Quran. The
Quran on closer examination is not a homogeneous text, but entails a variety of sub-
genres. These, however, can only be determined on the basis of a literary analysis
taking the formal and structural elements of the sura seriously. Reading the Quran
as homily as Reynold proposes may t with particular text sections,
16
but the text
as a whole, which is primarily a mantic text, hardly allows for such a general
classication.
It is here that we are indebted to Theodor Nldeke, the chief target (besides the present
reviewer) of the somewhat excessive polemics that Reynolds lays down in his
introduction. It was Nldeke who has laid the basis for a reection on the historical
development of the Quranic text, a concept that rst opened scholars eyes to the
problems sketched above, and who was also the rst to pay full attention to the basic
unit of the sura. Though the chronology proposed by Nldeke today needs
reconsideration, a re-examination that has to rely on literary as well as intertextual
observations, to continue his approach cannot be dismissed as relying entirely on
traditional notions of Islamic and orientalist scholarship. Nldekes chronology is not
equal to the dating of Quranic text units to a certain period of Muammads
biography, but, on the contrary, Nldeke often arrives at placements of text units that
overtly contradict the traditional positioning of a given passage. To look for a
chronology then does not mean to follow given traditions but to deliver the
methodologically propaedeutic work that according to the canon of Biblical
scholarship ought to precede general judgements about fragments of the text. A
closer look at the Quranic text with respect to its complex structure would quickly
reveal that the Quran is much more a process than a xed text (see Sinai,
Book Reviews 135
The Quran as Process). Reynolds, whose concern is with how the canonical text of
the Quran might best be read (p. 13), focuses on a stage of textual development that
has been achieved only at a later period through the efforts of the very agency that
he most vehemently rejects: Islamic tradition. It is, however, the pre-canonical text,
which addresses recipients educated in Late Antique thought and familiar with
Biblical tradition a status which can be assumed for the earliest listeners, whose
negotiations of earlier traditions have left so conspicuous traces in the nal shape of
the Quran. By contrast, the canonical text, the muaf presumably xed some
decades after the death of the Prophet addresses a quickly growing community of
Muslim recipients whose background as the most ancient commentaries clearly
reveal was substantially different and who moreover pursued new tenets, namely to
theologically corroborate their new status.
17
We may speak here of two different
discourses that have generated different hermeneutics: the pre-canonical Quran views
the religious landscape of its milieu as a familiar one, where one is free to subscribe to
or to debate, even to reject, the various views expressed in the individual religious
traditions that form part of general education. Late Antique religious views are
considered at least by denominationally uncommitted pagans as something like
a common heritage. For a long time there is no outright polemics against Jews or
Christians in the Quran; polemics crops up only during the confrontation with the
real heirs of Biblical lore in Medina, where individual groups are quoted for
particular opinions which are debated and often refuted. But even then the controversy
takes place at eyelevel.
By contrast, the discourse of later discussions (in the Prophets biography as well as in
exegetic literature) is based on an emerging elitist Islamic identity. The
representatives of the older traditions are now counted among the vanquished
opponents whose theology is no longer a challenge but is already deemed inferior.
This fundamental difference enables us to separate between two strains of
hermeneutics: the integrative understanding (in Late Antiquity) of neighbouring
traditions on the one hand, and the dialectical and moreover polemical
understanding (in Islam) of those traditions on the other. If one is interested in the
intertextuality of the Quran, in how the Quranic message responds to earlier
traditions, one ought not to immediately focus on the Islamic canonical text, the
muaf, which has little to do with the premises of the earlier debates of the Quranic
community, but try to come as close to the Late Antique Quran, the pre-muaf
proclamation as possible.
Perhaps what has been noted by Nicolai Sinai about Wansbroughs synchronic
approach applies to Reynolds work as well:
18
In view of the great admiration that Wansbrough expresses for the
methodological sophistication of biblical studies, it is particularly
136 Journal of Quranic Studies
ironic that his assumption of the composite character of the Quran is
never properly demonstrated and is arguably based on a agrant breach
of the sequence of methodical steps that is de rigueur in biblical
analysis: Wansbrough never subjects the Quran to what biblical
scholars refer to as literary criticism in order to examine in a
methodically principled way whether it really does constitute a
secondary compilation of divergent sources or whether its literary
make-up is more plausibly to be explained by the traditional
assumption that it constitutes the literary fallout from a linear
process of growth and development.
Reynolds has demonstrated anew that Biblical traditions prove extremely useful in
Quranic research, but at the same time he has reminded us that completely neglecting
the canon of methodological steps developed in Biblical scholarship is highly
problematic. As long as we deal with texts, historical work has to be grounded in
methodically sound literary criticism.
ANGELIKA NEUWIRTH
DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2012.0040
NOTES
1 The author could have beneted considerably from consulting Peter Heath, Creative
Hermeneutics: A Comparative Analysis of Three Islamic Approaches, Arabica 36 (1989), pp.
173210; and even more from Nicolai Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung. Studien zur frhen
Koraninterpretation, Diskurse der Arabistik, 16 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009); and
Nicolai Sinai, The Quran as Process in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (eds),
The Quran in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2009 and 2011), pp. 40739.
2 Heinrich Speyer, Die biblischen Erzhlungen im Qoran (G. Olms: Grfenhainichen, 1931;
reprint Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1988).
3 Silvia Horsch, Tod im Kampf: Figurationen des Mrtyrers in frhen sunnitischen Schriften
(Wrzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2011).
4 Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Sptantike: Ein europischer Zugang (Frankfurt
& Main: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010 and 2011), pp. 54860.
5 Angelika Neuwirth, Quran, Crisis and Memory. The Quranic Path towards Canonization as
Reected in the Anthropogonic Accounts in Angelika Neuwirth and Adreas Pitsch (eds),
Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies (Wrzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2001), pp. 13352.
6 Joseph Witztum, The Foundations of the House (Q. 2:127), Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 72:1 (2009), pp. 2540.
7 Michael Marx, Glimpses of a Mariology in the Quran: From Hagiography to Theology via
Religious-Political Debates in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (eds), The
Quran in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2009 and 2011), pp. 53364.
8 Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Sptantike, pp. 52841, pp. 5905.
9 Heribert Busse, Herrschertypen im Koran in Peter Bachmann (ed.), Die Islamische Welt
zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlndischen
Gesellschaft, 1979), pp. 5680.
Book Reviews 137
10 Hartmut Bobzin, The Seal of the Prophets: Towards an Understanding of Muhammads
Prophethood in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (eds), The Quran in Context
(Leiden: Brill, 2009 and 2011), pp. 56584.
11 Patricia Crone, What do we actually know about Muhammad?, Open Democracy News
Analysis, (10/6/2008), on http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_
3866.jsp (accessed 1/08/2011 at 13:37).
12 Franois Droche, La transmission crite du Coran dans les dbuts de lIslam (Leiden: Brill,
2009); and Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bermann, The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet
and the Quran of the Prophet, Arabica 57 (2010), pp. 343436.
13 Sinai, The Quran as Process, pp. 40740; Nora Katharina Schmid, Quantitative Text
Analysis and its Application to the Quran in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx
(eds), The Quran in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2009 and 2011), pp. 44160.
14 Marx, Glimpses of a Mariology, pp. 53364.
15 Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Sptantike, pp. 31013.
16 Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Sptantike, pp. 498590.
17 Uri Rubin, Muhammads Message in Mecca: Warnings, Signs, and Miracles [The Case of
the Splitting of the Moon (Q. 54:12)] in Jonathan E. Brockopp (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Muhammad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 3960.
18 Sinai, The Quran as Process, p. 9.

Der Koran neu bertragen. By Hartmut von Bobzin. Mnchen: Verlag C.H. Beck,
2010. Pp. 831. e38.00.
Since the emergence of the rst full translation of the meanings of the Quran into any
Western language by the Englishman Robert of Ketton (d. 1157) at the behest of Peter
the Venerable (d. 1156), there has been no shortage of efforts in the translation
enterprise up till today. The work under review is one of the latest. Bobzins
intellectual background and training, which have propelled him into exploration into
the general scholarship on the Quran, particularly the history of its translations, puts
him in a vantage position to venture into a challenging exertion as a translation of this
arcane and highly revered scripture of Islam.
1
The question which may then arise will
be whether we really need a new German translation or indeed another translation into
any European language now. One obvious answer on the part of anyone who
subscribes to the dynamism of epistemological and hermeneutical perspectives, is that
there can never be a surfeit of interpretations of sacred, foundational, religious
scriptures, especially the Quran which commands such a remarkable reverence
among Muslims for its devotional and legalistic values, among others. The attempt by
the poet Friedrich Rckert (d. 1866), later Professor of Oriental Languages at
Erlangen (182641), to translate poetic chapters of the Quran into German has
remained a torso, and at best an adventurous and incomprehensive effort that was
largely intended to satisfy a literary curiosity and passion, so it offered no insight into
138 Journal of Quranic Studies