Questioning Prophetic Knowledge in the Qur’ān
Arguments about human knowledge of God form a recurrent and prominent theme in the Qur’ānic corpus. One of the Qur’ān’s most recognizable tropes is the figure of the dutiful prophet, rejected by his people even though they ought to have known better.1 In such narratives, the people often debate with their messenger over his knowledge and truthfulness. The Qur’ān’s perspective on these debates is ironic, for it knows the denouement of each case: the punishment for rejection of the message. In short, the peoples question their prophets’ knowledge: how can we be certain that you know what you are talking about? And generally, the Qur’ānic prophets claim a special, albeit circumscribed, knowledge: they know from God what others do not know and they have been taught “the wisdom” as part of their being given the gift of prophecy,2 but they also explicitly disclaim access to the heavenly treasures—specifically treasures of knowledge, as contextual clues suggest—which their peoples seem to have expected of them.3
In the case of Jesus, the Qur’ān amplifies the recurrent pattern. It places in his mouth a stark admission of his own ignorance of God. Speaking in response to God’s rhetorical question to Jesus whether Jesus had bidden his followers to adopt him and his mother as gods, Jesus replies:
Glory be to you! It is not appropriate for me to say what is untrue. If I had said that, you would definitely have known it. You know what is in me (lit., my soul), and I do not know what is in you (lit., your soul). You are assuredly the Knower of the Unseen. (taʿlamu mā fī nafsī wa-lā aʿlamu mā fī nafsika. Innaka anta ʿallāmu al- ḡuyūbi. Q 5.116)
The rhetorical symmetry of this statement merely serves to highlight the harsh asymmetry of its doctrine, thereby rejecting all the more emphatically the idea that Jesus is divine. It is not simply that Jesus is ignorant of when God will punish people or when the resurrection will take place; he asserts wholesale ignorance of God himself.4 The final portion of the just-cited passage is rather unusual compared with the other narratives because when the Qur’ān wishes to identify the prophets’ human limitations, it typically focuses on their mortality and their ordinary human activities, such as frequenting the market or eating regular food (activities which are duly asserted of Jesus as well).5 But what might account for the amplification of the pattern as regards Jesus, to the point that his ignorance of God is so stridently expressed? And why in general do Qur’ānic prophets insist that they lack access to the treasures of God?
I argue that these aspects of the Qur’ānic corpus, that is to say, its view of prophetic knowledge and ignorance, form a deliberate partial rejection of a distinctively Syriac theological tradition regarding the role of knowledge in salvation history.6 Both the Qur’ān in the early seventh century, and the Syriac tradition, in the sixth century, give special prominence to salvific knowledge, and they share an abundance of the same imagery for the knowledge of prophets and messengers, above all the image of the heavenly treasury and its keys. Yet the two traditions reach radically different conclusions because of their different premises as regards knowledge. For the Syriac tradition, human access to the heavenly treasury of divine knowledge and wisdom (often described as radiance) is vitally important. By it, via Christ’s mediation, God divinizes us and bestows life and intimacy with himself. For the Qur’ān, such access to God’s inner knowledge is an exaggeration both audacious and superfluous. Mortal prophets and messengers suffice to impart to mankind the knowledge necessary for true religion. Thus, the former insists on the symmetrical knowledge of the Father and Jesus, while the latter necessarily rejects it. In short, the Qur’ān’s own distinctive position on this point emerges out of a dialogue with Syriac speaking Christians, who would have known and used the ideas and imagery of Jacob of Serugh († 521) and Philoxenus of Mabbugh († 523).
In pursuit of this claim, the first half of the argument turns to the Qur’ānic accounts of prophets and their debates with their peoples. In these accounts, the Qur’ān relies principally on its own prophetic typology: the sequential pattern of prophets and messengers, as an argument for how one ought to recognize the truth of their message. This pattern serves, moreover, to rebut expectations that the proof of prophets’ veracity is found in their quasi-angelic access to heavenly treasuries of divine wisdom. Such expectations, the Qur’ān seems to argue, amount to a misreading of the pattern. Thus, the Qur’ān’s rejection of Jesus’ knowledge is not simply, in negative terms, an anti-Christian reaction. Rather, the Qur’ān proposes an alternative pattern of salvation history that has no need for and does not culminate in intimacy with God’s own knowledge. Finally, both aspects, the prophetic typology more generally and the denial of heavenly treasures of knowledge more specifically, exhibit the Qur’ān’s tendency to ironic reduction, that is, it often reduces its opponents’ positions to exaggeration, an example of which appears to be its portrayal of Jesus’ ignorance.
The second half of the argument looks to the Syriac authors of the sixth century, with roots in Ephrem’s writings in the fourth. This tradition thematized the question of knowing about God by articulating a distinctive symbolic theology. Consonant with that view, Ephrem, Philoxenus, and Jacob all elaborate and develop the symmetry of knowledge argument: namely, that Jesus’ divinity is proved not only by miracles, but especially by the perfectly symmetrical knowledge shared by Father and Son. In the case of Jacob’s mêmrê in particular, (again with roots in Ephrem) he situates this thesis within a rich and variegated tableau in which prophets and messengers have access to the treasuries of heavenly wisdom via the keys given by Christ. In Jacob’s account of the pattern of salvation history, in fact, the prophets’ possession of the treasury culminates in the imagery of Christ himself as the treasury of prophecy and the source of our divinization.
The Qur’ān calls attention to its own numerous similarities with other theological and scriptural traditions of Late Antiquity. Yet the Qur’ānic accounts often differ significantly from what adherents of the selfsame traditions expressly profess. What is one to make of these similarities in difference? The argument just proposed depends on the approach one takes to answer that question.7 Hence, the present essay proves to be an opportunity to test a particular hypothesis about the best way to interpret such similarities: namely, the hypothesis of critical engagement. Before analyzing the opposing arguments and shared imagery between the two traditions, it is necessary briefly to discuss this hypothesis: that one can read the Qur’ān as knowing about and engaging in theological debate with adherents of other traditions in its milieu, and in particular the theological debates and ideas current in the Syriac tradition.
The Hypothesis of Critical Engagement, with Some Notes on Prior Scholarship
The attempt to illuminate the historical, literary, and theological context of the Qur’ān by appealing to the similarities between it and other religious traditions has a long history. Indeed, many have turned to Syriac Christianity in particular as a useful resource, to the point that one scholar has identified such authors (not entirely sympathetically) as the “Syriacist school of the Qur’ān’s origins.”8 But the arguments of this diffuse Syriacist school have taken many directions. Some have looked to Syriac for loanwords and other clues to philological puzzles.9 An extreme version of this view posits a sort of Mischsprache of Syriac and Arabic to explain the idiosyncrasies of the Qur’ān.10 In some cases, these efforts claim or suggest that the Qur’ānic text was originally Christian, or at least not directed at what we now regard as orthodox Christianity.11 Some regard its original form as substantially different from the later redacted form that we now possess, in which polemics against Christianity are a late addition.12 The hypothesis of a Jewish-Christian background for the Qur’ān remains evergreen.13 Others, such as El Badawi and Reynolds, have focused in particular on the distinctive features of the Syriac biblical canon and para-biblical literature as a sub-text14 or something between an intertext and sub-text of the Qur’ān.15
The hypothesis I test here instead may be outlined as having the following components:
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1) It is likely that the Qur’ānic milieu would have been permeated by ideas, images, and religious expressions characteristic of miaphysite Syriac Christianity, among other traditions,16 perhaps orally via missionary, mercantile,17 or liturgical contact.18
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2) The Qur’ān seems to have ironically and critically19 reduced some Christian positions to what it views as their logically consequent absurdities or exaggerations. Such irony helps to explain the more striking divergences from what Christian factions known to have existed in its milieu expressly claimed.
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3) It is better to conceptualize this critical engagement in terms of intersection, dialogue, and confrontation between Syriac Christianity and Qur’ānic monotheism than to think of parallels and borrowing from the former by the latter. This has the methodological advantage of allowing the Qur’ān to speak in its own voice as a participant in the debates rather than as a sort of Eranistes adorned with a patchwork of ill-fitting Christian or Jewish hand-me-downs.20
In short, the Qur’ān, particularly its interesting claims about prophetic ignorance, can be better understood if we see it as responding in an informed way to late antique theological arguments, particularly Christological debates in Syriac.
And as regards the first point of the hypothesis, it is unclear that one can go so far as to claim miaphysites in Mecca—at least as a persistent organized group. But it is certainly credible to think that ideas like those of Jacob of Serugh and Philoxenus of Mabbugh would be known in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly since we know that Philoxenus ordained bishops for South Arabia and that Jacob wrote to the community in Najran,21 with the result that oral contact in missionary, mercantile, and liturgical contexts is conceivable. In any case, it is true that we have the sources for “the composition of a more or less continuous narrative of a Christian presence in Arabia and its environs from the fourth century to the time of Muḥammad.”22
Although the approach taken in the present argument is essentially synchronic, the plausible chronology of the surahs also lends some weight to the hypothesis of critical engagement. Most of the Qur’ānic disputes over prophets’ knowledge and ignorance occur in late Meccan surahs, and the same is true of the imagery of the heavenly treasure and its keys.23 It is also noteworthy that such surahs (particularly 6, which is one of the principal witnesses to the imagery of the treasure and its keys) are, as Nicolai Sinai has noticed, more “heavily tinged with a polemical quality.”24 Though such surahs, he thinks, are not obviously “in direct conversation with Jews and Christians” he also notes that surahs 19 and 43, also late Meccan, do begin to take aim at Christ’s divine sonship (the same is also possible for surah 18, since it is filled with Christian lore25 and also takes aim at those who claim “God has adopted a son”26 while not mentioning Christians by name). Indeed Q 6 is an example, Sinai thinks, of Meccan/Medinan “hybridity”: that is, it appears to exhibit the later polemical features more typical of Medinan surahs. He suggests “the possibility that certain thematic and phraseological features that come to prominence in the Medinan texts may well have an embryonic presence in earlier surahs.”27 Given that the prophetic typology rising to prominence in the late Meccan surahs also underlies Medinan texts such as surahs 2, 3, and 5, as the argument will show, it seems that the Qur’ānic discourse gradually engages more and more directly with its opponents, among whom were those familiar with Christian ideas and traditions. The specific passages of interest in the present argument seem to belong to the beginning of that process of engagement.
Knowledge and the Qur’ān’s Prophetic Typology
Knowledge of God is central to theological debate as the Qur’ān represents it. It is the cardinal point that the Qur’ān expects its audience to comprehend and the principal topic about which it accuses them of willful ignorance, with the typical refrain: “But most of them do not know.” (akṯarahum yajhalūnā; Q 6.111; see also Q 7.138.) or “they are unaware” (wa mā yašʿurūnā; Q 2.9, 2.12). The Qur’an is often quite direct about this ignorance, which is also longstanding: “They have no knowledge thereof, nor do their fathers” (mā lahum bihi min ʿilmin; Q 18.5). Sometimes, the Qur’ān expresses it as an admonitory question: “Don’t you get it?” (aflā taʿqilūnā; Q 2.44). It often adds the ironic jab that such disbelievers will eventually figure it out, once the judgment comes: “For every event there is a fixed time, and you shall certainly know” (wa sawfa taʿlamūnā) (Q 6.67). It even describes disbelievers as deaf, dumb, and blind, lacking in knowledge (lā yaʿqilūnā; Q 2.171; cf. Q 3.66.).
In making the argument that people ought to know better, the Qur’ān appeals to its own distinctive prophetic typology. By this phrase I mean the pattern of prophets as it occurs throughout salvation history from Adam up to the Qur’ānic prophet himself. According to the Qur’ān, people should recognize a prophet or messenger precisely because he fits the “type” or pattern to which the Qur’ān appeals, and it is the failure to recognize prophets who clearly fit the type or pattern that elicits its condemnation. In what does this pattern consist? In fact, the pattern is self-referential. Its principal feature is coherence relative to the message that preceded it. The Qur’ān both expresses the coherence in positive fashion and appeals to it to criticize those who fail to recognize the pattern, and those who make distinctions between the prophets and messengers. In the Qur’ān’s view, all prophets and messengers are functionally equivalent.28 Finally, the pattern of prophetic typology allows the Qur’ān to reject as superfluous the supposition that prophets can access the heavenly treasuries. For such access is not needed as a confirmation of the truth.
Of course, I am hardly the first to recognize that the Qur’ān relies on a pattern of messengers and prophets, although the character of this pattern seems more often acknowledged than expressly studied in its own right.29 Mohsen Taghanaki has recently challenged the consensus that the Qur’ān’s account of that pattern is cyclical or repetitive: a succession of basically equivalent prophets or messengers delivering a fundamentally equivalent message. He argues instead that it is “bimodal”: that is, the pattern is punctuated by two uniquely comprehensive revelations: the Torah of Moses and the Qur’ān of Muhammad that confirms it.30 All other revelations, he thinks, are only partial, including the prophetic work of Jesus and other prophets in the Qur’ān. On the one hand, Taghanaki’s proposal, if true, would tend to confirm the argument below, inasmuch as it provides further evidence for why the Qur’ān would want to de-emphasize the comprehensiveness of Jesus’ knowledge. In Taghanaki’s account, what makes the Mosaic and Qur’ānic kitāb respectively unique is the comprehensive character of the wisdom and guidance they impart to mankind.31 His work also highlights (following Madigan) the importance of knowledge and guidance for the Qur’ānic view of salvation history.32 Taghanaki’s concerns, however, are different from the present argument, inasmuch as he is concerned with the “scripturology” of the Qur’ān: what, in other words, it considers to be divine scripture in the proper sense. Thus the argument I make here about prophetic typology would stand regardless of whether Taghanaki’s proposal is ultimately correct, because the pattern of a confirming prophetic sequence is not itself in question, only whether certain parts of the sequence play a special role. As I argue below, Jesus’ role in the sequence is clearly made equivalent to other prophetic figures whom Taghanaki would consider minor. Ultimately, prophetic typology, I argue, has the specific function of assuring us of the veracity of the message, but it does not seem necessarily to imply anything about the relative rank of prophets and messengers, or their scriptures and messages.
The following survey examines the argumentative function of the sequence across its various and sundry manifestations: prophetic name series, prophetic story series, explicit affirmations of confirmation, and what one might call prophetic confirmation dialogues, in which prophets or messengers argue directly in favor of the pattern.33 One notices that such dialogues extend beyond the canonical boundaries of the Tawrāh and Injīl to include the Arabian prophets and that they employ the technique of repetitive storytelling to make the point.
Expressions of Prophetic Typology in the Qur’ān
Sometimes, the Qur’ān’s reliance on this argument leads to a kind of shorthand, a prophetic name series of varying lengths. For instance, Q. 4.163 connects the Qur’ānic prophet to a list of predecessors: “Noah and the prophets after him,” and then “Abraham, Ismāʾīl, Isaac, Jacob and the tribes, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, Solomon” and David. Other examples are, Q 42.13 or Q 6.84–86, which lists Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah, John, Jesus, Elias, Ismāʾīl, Elisha, Jonah, and Lot. One infers that the exact chronology matters less than the pattern itself.34 That is to say, the prophets are alike in being given “Book, wisdom, and Prophethood” (Q 6.89) and guidance on the “straight path” (Q 6.87). In many other cases, the Qur’ān presents a prophetic story series rather than a bare list of names. Q 21 forms such a series of stories of the prophets: Q 21.51ff (Abraham), 21.71ff (Lot), 21.76ff (Noah), 21.78ff (David and Solomon), 21.83ff (Job), 21.85 (Ismāʾīl, Idrīs, Dhū Kifl), 21.87 (Dhū Nūn, i.e., Jonah), etc.35
Other passages explicitly emphasize the prophetic sequence’s coherence:
After them, we sent Jesus, son of Mary, confirming what he had before him of the Torah, and We gave him the Gospel, wherein is guidance and light, confirming what he had before him of the Torah. (Q 5.46; cf. 2.87–89, 5.48, and 13.43)
Jesus also expresses this confirmatory sequence in his own words: “O Children of Israel, I am God’s messenger to you, confirming what came before me of the Torah, and announcing news of a messenger who will come after me” (Q. 61.6). In 6.92, the Qur’ān describes itself as “confirming what is before it” (muṣaddiqu llaḏī bayna yadayhī). A little later in the same surah, after reflecting on the stubbornness of peoples who insist: “We will not believe until we are given the like of what God’s messengers have been given” (Q. 6.124), the Qur’ān reaffirms the sequence: “this is the path of your Lord, perfectly straight. We have expounded the revelations to a people who take heed” (Q. 6.126). In this way, the people are convicted, because the message is indeed “the like” of what was given before, but in their stubbornness, they refuse to heed the correct exposition of the pattern.
The ideal of prophetic typology as evidence for prophetic truthfulness, however, is clearest in stories where the prophets themselves argue directly with their audiences. In fact, Q 21, just alluded to above, presents its story list as part of such a dialogue. The people object: “Is this not a mortal (bašarun) like you?” (Q 21.3) They continue in the same vein: “It is just a load of dreams… . Let him bring us a sign, just as the former were sent with” (Q 21.54). But the Qur’ān insists that no sign will be given, only the pattern of prior punishment:
And they say: “When will this threat come to pass if you are truthful?” … Many messengers before you were mocked; then those who scoffed at them were afflicted by that which they used to mock. (Q 21.38–41)
It is at this juncture in surah 21 that the Qur’ān tells its sequence of prophetic stories to prove its point. Past rejection of prophets fits the pattern.
Another combination occurs in Surat Yūnus Q 10.37–39 (cf. 10.94). When challenged, the Qur’ān doubles down on the confirmatory sequence as its evidence:
Or do they say: “He has forged it.” … No. They deny that whereof they have no knowledge (yuḥīṭū bi-ʿilmihi), and whose interpretation (taʾwīluhu) has not yet come to them. In the same way those who were before them made it out to be false. So pay attention to how it turned out for those wrongdoers. (Q 10.38–39)
In other words the fact that the Qur’ān and its prophet experience rejection is but evidence of its truthfulness, just as the other prophets were rejected before (see also Q 13.32). People have not understood the interpretation (taʾwīl) of their own scripture. That is, they fail to grasp the prophetic typology operative within it.
The pattern of prophetic typology in earlier scriptures is even called a “clear proof” in one such debate:
They say, “If only he would bring us a sign from his Lord.” Has not a clear proof come to them in the previous scriptures? And had We destroyed them with a punishment before him, they would have said: “Lord if only you had sent us a messenger, we would have followed your Revelations before we were humiliated and disgraced.” Say: “Everybody is waiting, so wait; and then you will know who are the people of the Straight Path (aṣḥābu aṣ-ṣirāṭ as-sawiyyī.) (Q 20.133–135)
The testimony of the prophet’s truthfulness resides in the pattern of fulfillment of prior threats of punishment. To the extent that a prophet conforms to this pattern, his people ought to have known better.
The same notion occurs in the stories of Hūd, Sālih, and Shuʿayb. The Qur’ān recounts their stories in repetitive terms to make the coherence obvious. First Hūd’s debate with his people:
They said: “O Hūd, you have not brought us any clear proof, and we will not abandon our gods …” He said: “I call God to witness and call you to witness that I am innocent of what you associate … Then if you turn away, I have actually delivered to you what I was sent forth to you with, and my Lord will raise up as successors a people other than you… . And when Our decree came, We saved Hūd and those who believed in him, by a mercy of Ours and delivered them from a harsh punishment.” (Q 11.53–58; cf. the shorter but otherwise similar narrative of Hūd in Q 7.65–72)
Shuʿayb’s experience is nearly identical, conforming to the prophetic pattern:
O my people, let not my disagreement with you bring upon you what the people of Noah, the people of Hud or the people of Salih brought upon themselves. The people of Lot are not far away from you … They said: “O Shuʿayb, we do not understand much of what you say; and surely we see you weak in our midst …” O my people … wait and see, and I shall be waiting with you.” … And when our decree came, We delivered Shuʿayb and those who believed in him by a mercy of Ours, and the wrongdoers were overtaken by the Cry, and they lay prostrate in their own homes, as if they never dwelt therein. Away with Midian. [It perished] as did Thamud before. (Q 11.89–95)
In the prophetic dialogue, the Qur’ān appeals to an ongoing story of salvation history, often in identical terms of fidelity and patience to a path that has existed before (indeed, it goes back to Adam—see Q 7.16), and a pattern of punishment that serves as the principal witness to the truthfulness of the message (cf. Q 12.110–111). Always, the people profess some sort of ignorance, to which the Qur’ānic response is that they had every means of guidance in the straight path of prophetic typology and ought therefore to have known better. Their ignorance is culpable.
Formally speaking, therefore, the Qur’ān’s account of prophetic typology, with the interlocked elements of story series, confirmation assertions, and confirmation dialogues offers many different angles of vision on the same reality. Inasmuch as the revelations of later prophets confirm their predecessors in the chain, each prophecy’s truth lies hidden in what came before, a fact which is as true of Muhammad as it is true of Jesus. They are all “the companions of the straight path” (Q. 20.135). That is, they have been given “a direction and a path” (šariʿatan wa minhājan; Q 5.48; cf. 16.125) to follow, a path whose termination or “return” (marjiʿukum) is God himself in the eschaton (Q 5.48). Indeed, the Qur’ān puts into the mouths of the prophets themselves an awareness of this basic dynamic, and so they argue with their peoples using the examples of punishments in bygone times to warn those in the narrative present.
As a warning the prophetic typology has a critical function. In commending the pattern of the prophets, the Qur’ān also ironically convicts those who reject them. Such descriptions are hardly mere reports of what the rejecters say, but highly charged retellings that reveal to the Qur’ān’s hearers the hypocrisy of previous generations. In Q 8.31, for instance
When our revelations are recited to them, they say: “We have heard. Had we wished, we would have uttered the like of this; this is nothing but the fables of the ancients.”
From the perspective of the Qur’ān’s prophetic typology it is precisely the fact that its admonitions are consistent with the “ancients” that they ought to be believed. So the refusers are condemned out of their own mouth. Indeed, elsewhere, in 15.13, the Qur’ān laments that people still do not believe despite having the “sunnah of the ancients.”
Another form of ironic reduction via prophetic typology is effectively to flatten the distinctions between the various messengers, and therefore of the groups to which they belong. Despite the differences of their prophetic careers, they conform to the same pattern, and thus the Qur’ān concludes one of the prophetic name series quoted above with saying “we make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit” (lā nufarriqu bayna aḥadin minhum Q 2.136). In the preceding verse it is no accident that the Qur’ān also rhetorically conflates Jews and Christians. In reporting its opponents’ speech, the Qur’ān unrealistically describes them saying “become Jews or (aw) Christians.” The Qur’ān’s Jewish and Christian opponents, of course, would not themselves say this: one expects the Jews to say, “be Jews,” and the Christians to say, “be Christians.” Yet the critical summary the Qur’ān offers suggests ironically how both Jews and Christians commit the equivalent error of privileging some portion of salvation history over another.36 Rather, the Qur’ān commends the fundamental equivalence of messengers in the story of salvation: “Those who believe in God and his messengers and do not discrimate (wa lam nufarriqū) between any of them, those He will grant them their rewards” (Q 4.152). As a result, the Qur’ān’s prophetic typology not only expresses how people should come to know God’s truth, it also rebukes those who disregard the pattern of the ancients or treat one prophet as more truthful than another.
Prophets and the Treasury
A key part of these debates over the prophetic pattern touches on whether prophets have access to a heavenly treasury. In the same prophetic confirmation dialogues that articulate the pattern of revelation, the Qur’ān often describes arguments between prophets and their peoples about the knowledge and status such prophets are expected to have. The peoples seem to expect prophets to be angelic or to possess some sort of superhuman access to divine mystery. G. R. Hawting summarizes this expectation of angelic status in the following way:
God’s messengers or apostles (rusul Allāh) were frequently rejected on the grounds that they were merely men or human beings … In response, God’s messengers are presented as disavowing any claim to a superhuman status, sometimes expressed as a denial that they were angels (malak, pl. malāʾika).37
He also analyzes the motives that appear to underlie the expectations of the prophets’ opponents. According to him,
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1) on the one hand, it seems that the ability to produce angels would be a miracle attesting to the truth of the prophet’s message.
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2) On the other hand, it seems that some expected the coming of the angel to the mortal messenger should transform him into something more than a human being.38
What then do the Qur’ānic prophets or messengers typically say when their peoples complain that they are mere mortals? The response sheds light on the thought world of the people the Qur’ān addresses. For instance,
“I do not tell you that I have the treasures of God (khazāʾinu llāh), and I do not know the unseen (wa lā aʿlamu l-ḡayb); nor do I tell you that I am an angel (malakun). I only follow what is revealed to me.” Say: “Are the blind man and the one who sees alike? Do you not reflect at all?” (Q 6.50)
The Qur’ānic messenger not only disclaims angelic status, but the things that he expects accompany it: the treasury of God and knowledge of what is hidden. In the Qur’ān, the knowledge of what is hidden often seems to refer to God’s future plans, but in any case, it is reserved to God alone. Thus, a few verses later in the same surah, the prophet retorts to a request for revelation of when the future punishment will occur:
With him are the keys of the unseen (wa ʿindahu mafātiḥu l-ḡayb); only He knows them, and He knows what is on land and in the sea. (Q 6.59)
These two passages together attest that the prophet rejects knowledge of the ḡayb. To that metaphorical treasury only God has the keys. The treasure itself seems to refer to knowledge, specifically of God’s own proper secrets.
The imagery of a prophet having access to the treasury of revelation also appears in the prophetic confirmation dialogues of Surah 11. The Qur’ānic prophet fears
lest they should say: “If only a treasure was sent down upon him (lawʾlā unzila ʿalayhi kanzun) or an angel accompanied him!” You are only a warner (naḏīrun), and God is the guardian of all things. (Q. 11.12)
The imagery of a treasure being “sent down” along with an angel clearly suggests that the treasure itself is that of divine knowledge conveyed by revelation, since the language of sending down (tanzīl) normally applies to revelation. The Qur’ān’s audience expects this as part of a messenger’s quasi-angelic status. As with the Qur’ānic prophet, so too, Noah is said to make a similar protestation of ignorance when his veracity as to the coming judgment is questioned:
I do not say to you that I possess God’s treasures (khazāʾinu llāh), and I do not know the unseen (wa lā aʿlamu l-ḡayb). I do not claim to be an angel. (Q 11.31)
Clearly then, a crucial part of the prophetic typology itself is that a genuine prophet does not have the keys to the treasury of revelations. That is, he does not know the divine secrets.
One of the most telling passages illustrating this aspect of prophetic typology is found in surah 25. At issue is the authenticity of the Qur’ān itself:
Unbelievers say: “This is nothing but deceit which he has invented and was assisted therein by other people.” … And they say “Legends of the ancients (asāṭīru l-awwalīnā) whose writing down he solicited.” … And they say: “What is the matter with the Messenger? He eats food and strolls in the markets. If only an angel had been sent to him to be a warner with him; or a treasure had been cast upon him (yulqā ilayhi kanzun), or he was given a garden (jannatun) from which he could eat.” (Q 25.4–8)
The insistent anaphora of this passage “and they say … ” seems to collect the various criticisms to which Muhammad’s claims were subjected, namely that
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1) a messenger should not eat normal human food, but is expected instead to eat the food of paradise;
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2) a messenger should be, if not angelic, at least the companion of angels;
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3) a messenger is expected to possess a divine (or perhaps paradisiacal) treasure cast from above.
That the audience speaks ironically of legends of the ancients, in whose stories according to the Qur’ān’s typology they ought to have seen the prophet’s message foreshadowed, strongly suggests that these are not merely pagan idolaters, but Christians who would have been expected to know the earlier stories. Indeed, the surah opens (Q. 25.2) with a protestation that “God does not adopt a son” (lam yatakhiḏ waladan) and that “he has no partner in dominion” (lam yakun lahu šarīkun fī l-mulk), which can certainly be read as a critical rejection of Christian assertions about Jesus. These same Christians expect heavenly messengers to have access to heavenly treasures and paradisiacal food.
Here too the typology is operative in the argument. The Qur’ān contends that the prophet’s opponents have not recognized the pattern, made fallacious comparisons, and as a result lost their way:
See how they invent parables for you (ḍarabū laka al-amṯāla), and so they err, and then cannot find their way (fa-lā yastaṭīʿūnā sabīlan). (Q 25.9)
These Christians or Christian sympathizers have gone astray from the true path of prophetic typology precisely by their erroneous comparisons (amṯala). That is, they haven’t read the similarities of the typological pattern correctly and thus expect angelomorphic messengers with access to the treasuries of heavenly wisdom and food. In another passage, the Qur’ān turns the Christians’ own critique upon themselves: They claim not to have heard about this “in the latest religion” (fī l-millati l-akhira; Q 38.7),39 to which the Qur’ān retorts: “Or do they possess the treasuries (khazāʾinu) of your Lord’s mercy?” to which it subjoins an ironic challenge that they should “ascend the rungs” (fa-l-yartaqū fī l-asbābi) of heaven and earth (Q. 38.9–10).40 Clearly the language of the heavenly treasury suggests some sort of prophetic or apocalyptic ascent. A similar rhetorical question about whether its opponents possess the treasuries of God appears in Q 52.37–38. Rather, from the Qur’ān’s point of view, only God is the knower of the ḡayb and possesses the keys to the heavenly treasury of his knowledge (see Q 39.63 and 42.12, both with maqālīd; cf. Q 6.59: mafātīḥ al-ḡayb). Indeed, as Walker points out the Qur’ānic epithet knowledgeable (ʿālim) refers only to God, specifically his knowledge of the ḡayb.41
In the passages above, the peoples never identify the exact character of the heavenly treasure (kanz) or the treasuries (khazāʾin). One has the impression that everyone in the conversation knew what these shorthand expressions would have meant. Nevertheless, the contextual clues strongly point to reading the term metaphorically as knowledge of divine mysteries. The Qur’ān almost always associates the treasure and the keys with al-ḡayb, that is, the hidden or unseen, which is described as the preserve of God’s knowledge. The language of “sending down” (tanzīl) also strongly suggests the same domain. Even the language of “eating” in Q 25.8 is most likely cognitive, as the discussion of the Syriac tradition will show.
Prophetic ignorance is not absolute, of course. Prophets often describe themselves as knowing what others do not. Thus Noah insists “I know from God what you do not know” (Q 7.62). Abraham makes a similar point in Q 19.43: “To me has come knowledge (ʿilm) that has not come to you.” The Qur’ān describes Joseph in similar terms: “He was full of knowledge (innahu la-ḏū ʿilm) from our teachings, but most people don’t get it (akṯara an-nāsi lā yaʿlamūnā)” (Q 12.68). Jacob too in Q 12.86 claims “I know from God what you do not know.” Indeed, in one of the prophetic name series, the Qur’ān describes the prophets as being “men of might and perception (abṣāri)” (Q 38.45). That the Qur’ān regards this perceptive knowledge as characteristic of prophets even occurs in the case of the anti-prophet as-Samīrī:
He said: “I perceived what they did not perceive (baṣurtu bimā lam yabṣurū bihi), and so I grasped a handful of dust from the messenger’s trail.” (Q 20.96)
That is, Samīrī claims to have a special knowledge and inspiration. As Michael Pregill argues, the expression “grasping a handful of dust” suggests that he has deliberately claimed for himself prophetic authority.42 We might translate it into the contemporary idiom by saying that Samīrī claimed to follow in Moses’ footsteps. Even a false prophet, that is, couches his claim to prophecy in terms of special insight.43
There exists, therefore, a tension between prophetic wisdom imparted from God that clearly surpasses the ordinary capacities of mankind, and perhaps even angels, and knowledge of God’s inner being and secrets, which the Qur’ān repeatedly implies is irrelevant to the prophetic mission. Yet prophetic ignorance of divine secrets, while striking, is not absolute. God makes exceptions. Indeed, He says to the Qur’ānic prophet that the story of Noah is “part of the tidings of the unseen (tilka min anbaʾi l-ḡayb) that we reveal to you. Neither you nor your people knew it before this” (Q 11.49). A nearly identical expression appears in Q 12.102, with reference to the story of Joseph. In Q 53.35–36, there is a hint that perhaps Muhammad has received knowledge of the ḡayb along with being told about what is in the “scrolls of Moses” (ṣuḥuf mūsā). All these cases suggest that occasional prophetic knowledge of al-ḡhayb includes special revelations of what is in prior scriptures, but not necessarily of God’s future plans or inner being.
Just as the Qur’ān’s prophetic typology allowed it to pursue ironic reductions of its opponents’ positions, and to insist on the equivalence of all prior confessional groups, so too the imagery of divinizing treasure as part of that typology serves a similar argumentative purpose. It should not surprise one, then that the Qur’ān says that, in effect, both Jews and Christians claim divinized status via the claim to adoptive sonship (Q 5.18), even though Jews at least would not expressly claim this. Even more to the point, the Qur’ān’s stark assertion of Jesus’ ignorance is but another way of taking its prophetic typology to its logical conclusion. The knowledge of all messengers is functionally equivalent, and none can claim privileged access to the divine treasury and the divine status it would imply.
The Qur’ān’s approach to the question of knowledge can therefore be summed up as follows. First, in arguments about knowledge of God prophetic typology has three functions: confirming the truth of revelation by rendering it knowable and recognizable to those of good will, refuting those who fail to see the pattern, and criticizing those who privilege one prophet or messenger over another in the sequence. Second, a key part of the typology is the limitation of prophetic knowledge. The Qur’ān directs its typological argument to Christians who clearly expect prophets to have a quasi-divine or angelic status, and access to the heavenly treasuries of wisdom. In the same vein, it rejects the Christian claim that Jesus should have any special intimate knowledge of God that would distinguish him from the rest. Qur’ānic prophets do enjoy a special knowledge and wisdom from God, but it does not extend to knowledge of God’s inner life or explicit future plans. Whatever knowledge they possess, prophets remain mortal. There is no need to exaggerate by claiming a divinizing knowledge.
Christology and Knowledge in Syriac Theological Literature
Thus, the Qur’ān’s insistence on Jesus’ ignorance compared to other prophets fits within its overall view of divine knowledge, to whose treasury the prophets do not have the keys. And in this way, it also suggests that it knows Christians who place a special emphasis on Jesus’ uniquely comprehensive knowledge of the Father, the same Christians who also expect prophets and apostles to have access to that treasury of knowledge in a dependent way. For the Syriac Christological tradition as expressed in the writings of Philoxenus of Mabbugh, and Jacob of Serugh, with deep roots in the writings of Ephrem the Syrian, one of the foremost arguments for Jesus’ full divinity was distinctly cognitive—that is, it is based on Jesus’ knowledge. These authors argue that we know Jesus is divine because he alone is fully and intimately knowing of what is in his Father, whereas God’s messengers do not have natural access to that knowledge, and can only receive it, in limited form, from Christ. Just as the Qur’ān’s argument in favor of Jesus’ ignorance coheres with its typology, Syriac Christian arguments in favor of Jesus’ perfect knowledge cohere with the cognitive emphasis of the Syriac symbolic theological tradition taken as a whole.
Background: Ephrem’s Symbolic Theology and the Equality of Knowledge Argument
The articulation of a symbolic theology, particularly in relation to the Christological debates of the sixth century, in fact constitutes the Syriac tradition’s distinctive achievement. This symbolic theology revolves around the basic problem of how a God who is in himself infinite and inaccessible nevertheless comes to be accessible in human language and thought. Ultimately, the Syriac tradition came to offer an entire paradigm of thought conducted in symbols (rāzê) pointing to Christ, the Lord of the rāzê. The symbolic paradigm dominates the whole conception of Syriac theology from Ephrem the Syrian onward to his heirs in the fifth and sixth centuries. Griffith sums this up best,
These symbols and types, names and titles, which for Ephrem are the very contents of the scriptures, are also the idiom of his own religious discourse. They are the basic elements of the narratives of the patriarchs and prophets read through the lens of the Gospel… . In turn they become the paradigms for the Christian’s own understanding of God and the world, the terms of one’s theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation, of Christology, sacramentology, ecclesiology, anthropology and eschatology… . For this reason some scholars have used the expression “symbolic theology” to characterize Ephrem’s approach to religious discourse, and they often contrast it to Greek or Latin modes of thought.44
Such signs and symbols, the elements of the narrative of nature and scripture, constitute “the very idiom of human thought” itself.45 They also “point forward from Nature and Scripture to Christ, who in turn reveals his Father to the eye of faith, or they point from the church’s life and liturgy back to Christ, who in turn reveals to the faithful believer the events of the eschaton.”46 A rich sequence of types and symbols that exist in the scriptural narratives and in creation itself culminates in Christ who fully reveals the Father’s hidden divinity by reason of his equality with him.
Given the cognitive emphasis of symbolic theology, the Syriac tradition’s interest in Jesus’ perfect knowledge comes as no surprise. The interest seems to begin with Ephrem, who combines Matthew 11.27 with Matthew 16.17. The former affirms that “no one knows the Father except the Son.” The latter exclaims, “Blessed are you Simon, Son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Matthew 16 appears numerous times in Ephrem’s poetry, particularly his mêmrê, almost always with reference to Peter’s revelation and blessing rather than the founding of the church per se.47
Speaking of the Son, Ephrem says that the Father and the Son are equally incomprehensible to creatures: “All go astray in the knowledge of him, whom one alone knows (d-haw d-ḥad [h]û yādaʿ leh).”48 Indeed, Ephrem goes on to point out with some irony that “If you can investigate the Father, then in him and with him you can investigate the Son… . The one alone is adequate to the other (ḥad [h]û l-ḥad sāp̄eq balḥôd).”49
Importantly, however, just as the Father creates through his Son, so too he imparts knowledge of himself only through the Son:
The powers of heaven are all commanded by him
They cannot see the Father without the Firstborn, the Commander
…
Thus in the Son who is from his bosom, the Watchers see the Father.50
In fact, for Ephrem, the Son is to the world as the senses are to the body. The human race experiences the light of divine wisdom via the Son. For this reason, the prophet Moses serves as a likeness for the intense and incomprehensible radiance of the Son:
The Watchers cannot look on him. Moses who became radiant (ezdhî) will persuade you.
If the people could not look on Moses though he was human,
who can look on his Essence? Only one who is of him can look on him (ḥad d-menneh mṣê ḥāʾar beh).
Since the Father’s radiance (zîweh) is intense, only the one can see the other (ḥad [h]û l-ḥad ḥāzê balḥōd);
only one is able to see the other (ḥad [h]û l-ḥad meškaḥ ḥāzê), and through him all creatures (kôll beryātâ) see.
…
By him he teaches (mallep̄) and by him he enriches (mʿattar); his wisdom (ḥekmṯeh) is with all his possessions.
By [that Wisdom, the Father] distributes to the needy his good things from his treasury (ṭābāteh men bayt gazzeh).51
Moses thus opens the treasury of radiant wisdom via the Son, who appears both as key and the treasury itself. The Son alone, by virtue of his sonship, knows the Father, but by that same token, it is the Son that distributes God’s enriching knowledge. Notice that Moses shares in the radiance in such a way as to become unbearably like God. Ephrem carefully adds the qualification “even though he was human (kad barnaša [h]w).”
Christ, then, is an epistemological paradox, incapable of being investigated, yet also the treasury of divine riches. Ephrem applies the paradox to interpret Matthew 16.17, a move that both Philoxenus and Jacob will significantly develop. Ephrem points out that Jesus’ divine identity required a divine revelation for Simon to know it. He could not have inferred it naturally.
Our Lord did not presume to teach his generation to Simon.
He became a stranger to himself and instead his Father revealed him.
It is not that our Lord was incapable of revealing himself,
but in order to give an example in his own self for the audacious
that if he were silent concerning his own generation, who would dare [to talk] about his generation?
And if he were quiet about his own revelation, who would inspect his being begotten?
He was confirming that word [of scripture]: that the Father knows the Son
…
The Father in whose bosom is his offspring, knows how to teach about him.52
For Ephrem, creatures have no ability to reach up to the hidden mystery of divine generation, to the point that Jesus himself emphasized such knowledge had to come via divine gift. But for Ephrem that gift is not simply the revelation of a fact, it beatifies and nourishes the person in a paradisiacal way:
The revelation which flowed from above quenched [Simon’s] great thirst.
The sweet stream that came to him has streamed from him and come to you.
It is greater than the wellspring of Eden.53
This knowledge that Christ is the Son of God is “too great for any being whether higher or lower”54 and yet it beatifies its recipient: “That blessing which our Lord gave makes him [truly] blessed.”55 But such a divine revelation is also the means whereby an honest enquiry comes to know who Jesus truly is: “The enquirer finds him by the revelation which was revealed to Simon.”56 This is not a just a position taken on a single occasion. Ephrem elsewhere, in two separate passages, treats this heavenly blessing given to Simon as the paradigm of how one ought to know God: HdF 84,57 refrain, and also in HdV 15.5–7.58 In this latter passage, Ephrem describes the Word’s generation as a treasury (bayt gazzâ) to which John and Peter were both given the keys and through whom “the revelation of the Father (gelyānâ d-men âbâ) is heard” in the church.
Ephrem’s exegesis of the mutual knowledge of Father and Son thus has three characteristics:
-
focus on the Son’s unique incomprehensibility (only the Father can reveal the Son), and hence the Son’s divine status;
-
conversely, only the Son can reveal the Father;
-
Christ is thus uniquely the treasury for knowledge of the Father.
Ephrem finds each of these three aspects illustrated in the Father’s beatifying revelation to Simon, a treasure that the Father bestows and that the Son alone can consequently interpret for Simon.59 In this way, he sets the stage for the more detailed Christological discussions of Philoxenus and Jacob, both of whom are more explicit, and who develop one or more of these three aspects, while also amplifying the imagery of a nourishing heavenly treasury and its keys.
Philoxenus on the Implications of the Symmetry of Knowledge
Philoxenus († 523), in his fragmentary Commentary on Matthew engaged in controversy with the thought of Theodore of Mopsuestia, against whom he is keen to insist on Jesus’ fully divine status. Like Ephrem, he takes up the argument for Jesus’ divinity in cognitive terms, finding an indication of it in the unique character of Peter’s confession. Even more than Ephrem, Philoxenus insisted that Peter’s ability to recognize Jesus’ divinity required the paternal revelation, which in turn required Jesus’ own explanation of that heavenly blessing.
First, he sharply distinguished Peter’s divinely revealed confession of Jesus from all other confessions, which rely on an interpretation of Jesus’ miraculous actions. Many of his disciples, such as Nathaniel, the Samaritan woman, Andrew, and Martha, confessed that Jesus was the Christ. But, according to Philoxenus, “he was confessed by Simon Peter not in the same way as these confessed but rather by revelation (ak da-b-gelyānâ). For these [others] had confessed him to be Christ and Son by choice and grace… . exalted above all mankind by his way of life (dûbbārê), his knowledge (îdāʿtâ), his revelations (gelyānê), and his honor (îqārâ).”60 In short, Philoxenus sharply distinguishes between Simon’s confession (subsequently identified explicitly as “orthodox” – urtûdûksû) from confessing Christ as, in effect, a righteous prophet. Even Jesus’ other disciples confessed him in this way. Confessing Jesus as a prophet comes from the natural observation of his actions. Confessing him as Son of God comes by paternal revelation.
Indeed, Philoxenus sees Peter’s “blessing” as marking the key difference. None of these other disciples, he notices, received the blessing for their confessions, in spite of the fact that Martha uses nearly identical words (“son of the living God” – John 11.2761), which Philoxenus identifies as the confession of a merely human Christ. For Philoxenus the paternal revelation was “necessary” (metbʿê) for the confession of Christ’s divinity.
But in reciprocal fashion, just as the Father’s revelation was necessary, only Christ was competent to explain the paternal revelation about himself. Such explanation was needed to ensure that Peter’s confession was not simply classified with the other confessions of Christ as prophet:
Because the revelation and way of thinking that Simon had did not come from his own mind, but rather from the revelation of the Father, and lest they should think [that] as they had proclaimed him up to that point in time as Christ, and son of God, and king of Israel, so also Simon had proclaimed him in the same way, Jesus bestowed upon him a blessing at the same time as he straightened out the thinking (mtarreṣ l-tarʿyātâ) of those who heard it.62
Jesus’ special intimate knowledge of the Father’s mind makes him also the solely adequate communicator of it. Philoxenus sharply contrasts the apostles, who do not see the unseen Father, and Christ, who does:
For the Father who gave it is unseen (lâ metḥzê), and the disciples did not see (lâ ḥāzên [h]waw), and Simon who received [the revelation] did not perceive (lâ argeš). For this reason the “Blessed are you, etc.” was necessary (etbaʿyat).63
Such imperception constitutes in fact the general state of the world, specifically ignorant of the “mysteries of the new economy” (rāzê da-mdabbrānûtâ ḥdattâ) of the Son of God by nature:
For mankind knew nothing (lâ meddem) of spiritual things, and everything was entirely hidden from us of the knowledge of the world to come (koll kolleh mkasyâ mennan îdāʿtâ d-ʿālmâ da-ʿtîd), just as is hidden from an infant the knowledge of this world.64
As the imagery of gestation suggests, Philoxenus hints that the new birth of baptism is necessary to be able to see the knowledge of the world to come. Inaccessible to natural vision, it requires grace.65
Thus Philoxenus appears to concede that were it not for this special paternal revelation, the logical conclusion would be to reduce Jesus to a prophet, which he sees as the position, in fact, if not in name, of the Jews, Nestorians, and pagans (ḥanpê). In other words if one denies the symmetry of knowledge, the logical result is that one views Christ as prophet, and further that one makes no distinction between Jews, pagans, or even Jesus’ own disciples during the course of his earthly path.
Philoxenus develops the symmetry of knowledge between Father and Son in various ways that appear significant for the Qur’ānic arguments and discussions. First, he sharpens the distinction between confessing Jesus as Son of God and confessing him as a prophet, describing the latter as the position of pagans, and even of many of Jesus’ own disciples. Second, having drawn the contrast so starkly, he additionally characterizes the latter view as that of the world afflicted by ignorance, and with inability to see the unseen God, one requiring the special beatitude of revelation from the Father and only explicable by Christ. Thirdly, he spells out the reduction of various Christological views to the same ignorant result. As we have seen, the Qur’ān offers much the same language, but given its prophetic typology, rejects the need for Christ’s special knowledge or the beatitude it confers. The Qur’ān’s position on Jesus as a prophet looks rather like it has, in polemical fashion, accepted Philoxenus’ logical alternative to the fully knowledgeable divinity of the Son.
Jacob on the Symmetry of Knowledge
Philoxenus’ explanations of Matthew 16 owe a clear debt to Ephrem’s symmetry of knowledge thesis, refracted through Christological struggle against the partisans of Theodore. But the surviving evidence for Philoxenus is fragmentary. Jacob of Serugh († 521) by contrast, dedicates an entire homily to this pericope, the Homily on the Lord’s Revelation to Simon, in which he not only addresses the Christological issues, but he also substantially develops the imagery of heavenly treasure that had also marked Ephrem’s interpretation of the symmetrical knowledge of the Father and the Son. Nor is this an isolated case in Jacob’s writings. His reflections on Christ as the treasury of the Father’s revelation appear throughout his extensive corpus. In what follows, I look at the Homily on the Lord’s Revelation to Simon and then at further examples selected from his works.
In the Homily on the Revelation to Simon, Jacob begins by insisting, just as Ephrem had, on the symmetry of divine knowledge between Father and Son:
Whoever confesses that he knows the Son (yādaʿ la-brâ), let him explain his name. For except for the Father (d-ellâ abâ), no one knows who the Son is.
And regarding the Father, who is it that rushes to speak? For the Son alone knows the Father who is like him (da-brâ balḥôd yādaʿ l-abâ d-akwāteh [h]u)66
And when he turns to explain the paternal revelation itself in Matthew 16, Jacob returns to the same symmetry of knowledge, arguing, much as Philoxenus and Ephrem, that only the Son could reveal the Father:
The Father revealed to the elect Simon regarding his beloved,
But hidden was the identity of the one who had revealed to him the great mystery.
The Son who knows the hidden Father and his revelations (brâ d-yādaʿ l-abâ kasyâ wa-l-gelyānaw[hy]),
showed Simon who had revealed to him the character of his name.
…
“It was not your own knowledge that knows (law îdāʿtāk dîlāk yedʿat) to proclaim me in this way.
It was my Father that revealed to you, for if it were not he, you would not know me (d-ella en hû lâ yādaʿ lî).”67
In this way Jacob stresses the symmetry of knowledge between Father and Son. But he also draws the explicit conclusion that, therefore, they are equal: “He showed that he was equal with his father, in revelations (da-šwê ʿam yālôdeh b-gelyānê), / in hidden secrets, in explanations of every sort of wisdom (wa-b-kasyātâ, wa-b-pûššāqê d-koll ḥekmātâ).”68
These are but the most salient passages illustrating ideas that recur throughout the homily. But what is of particular interest for Christian intersections with the Qur’ān’s own prophetic typology is that Jacob does not merely amplify Ephrem’s thesis of symmetrical knowledge. Rather, in pursuing that argument he frames the entire homily to focus imaginatively on how mortals can access the treasury of the Father’s wisdom. Peter becomes the paradigm for accessing that treasury, a paradigm Jacob then applies to himself, as poetic teacher. He positions himself as a prophet seeking and obtaining access to the heavenly treasury like Peter did. And of course, he carefully discusses Christ’s super-prophetic status. In short, the theologoumenon of symmetrical knowledge has blossomed into a whole theological epistemology explaining how prophets, even contemporary ones, access the treasury of divine wisdom through Christ.
Peter as Heavenly Messenger With Keys
Jacob reminds his listeners that the purpose of Jesus’ dialogue with Peter and the apostles was to contrast his identity with the prophets:
One said he was Elias because of his miracles, and another said that he was Jeremiah because he was elected [by God].
…
But others called him one of the prophets who was unnamed.69
Indeed, Jacob also highlights the fact that people were in profound debate about Jesus’ prophetic status,70 thinking that he is “another prophet from among the ancients” and that everyone “thinks of [Christ] according to his own surmise” (aykān da-sbar) leading to “disputes and divisions” (ḥeryānê ap pûlāgê).71 But even as Jacob denies that the Son is a prophet, he appeals to the typological consistency of salvation history to explain why the omniscient Jesus is asking questions: “Things hidden and things revealed,” he says, “are equivalent, and one and the same are those things which are past and which are coming.”72 But the continuity has to be read correctly.
Jacob sees Christ calling his disciples to such a correct typological reading, namely “the way of thinking of messengerhood” (ḥušābāh da-šlîḥûtâ) to prepare them all to receive “the key of the treasury of God’s house” (qlîdâ d-gazzâ d-bayt allâhâ).73 But it is Peter above all whose mind makes the heavenly trip and enters into dialogue with the Father:
He ascended from the earth and from created things which can be seen,
and he left behind him all that is subject to becoming, the worlds and all that is in them.
In his mind he stepped from the building of the temple of this world,
and he left even heaven to those lower down while he was further exalted.74
Once Peter enters into the presence of the Father, he addresses him as “Lord,” seeking the name of his Son. As a result of this dialogue Peter obtains what he seeks, not only for himself but for the whole church:
He opened to her the gates unto the radiance of messengerhood (zahrâ da-šlîḥûtâ),
that she might come to dwell in the brightness of the light (b-zîwâ d-nûhrâ), mightily.
…
He gave her the “blessed” as a gift filled with wealth (ʿûtrâ)
that she might be constantly delighting in his divine light (b-nûhreh allāhāyâ).75
The gift in the treasury is the divine light itself, the same zîwâ that has brightened the face of Moses. In fact, the Father’s heavenly blessing of revelation and divine light is a sort of downpayment of the bridal dowry of the church: “The Gracious One [i.e., the Father] saw that she loved the Heir [i.e., the Son] and that she was not dissuaded, / and immediately he gave her all his treasuries and their keys (kollhôn gazzaw[hy] wa-qlîdaw[hy]).”76 The Son in his turn reciprocates: “He saw what she had taken from the Father’s house by that revelation / and he gave to her the keys of great wealth and of the whole treasury (d-ʿûtrâ rabbâ w-gazzâ kolleh).”77 The language is reciprocal, evoking the symmetry of the knowledge and action of the Father and the Son, but it is also quite bold: Jacob emphasizes that the church possesses everything that is in fact the proper possession of God.
Jacob as Prophet With Keys
Since this was a gift to the whole church and not simply a special prerogative of Simon, Jacob envisions his own teaching in the homily itself in terms of accessing the treasury.
Only One, who has given us the entire wealth (kolleh ʿûtreh) of his Father,
by the wealth of your symbols (b-ʿûtreh d-[ʾ]rāzayk), may my word be stirred up for those who listen.78
In this connection, he even calls upon the “Spirit, treasury of prophethood and messengerhood” (gazzâ da-nbîyûtâ wa-šlîḥûtâ) to grant him “riches” (ʿûtrâ) from his “stores” (sîmātāk).79 The ability to speak of such “riches”80 comes from the incarnation itself. More precisely, it comes, as Jacob explicitly acknowledges, from his adoptive share in the divine sonship. Jacob puts himself in the position of the Son, asking the Father to give him this revelation:
Father who sent his beloved son to become our brother,
open my lips to speak of him, your unique one.81
Jacob’s view that mankind, both the ancient prophets, and the contemporary church, can share in the treasury of heavenly radiance appears throughout many of his mêmrê, and it often appears that the divine brightness has a divinizing effect on those who receive it.
Heavenly Treasure in Jacob’s Overall Typology
Jacob does not limit himself to using the language of treasuries only because Matthew 16’s mention of keys has suggested it. For him, treasury language is the traditional way of speaking about prophets and their ascent to divinization through knowledge of God. It has become a constitutive part of his symbolic theology in, among other texts, his Homily on the Transfiguration of our Lord, the Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face, the Homily on Moses’ Saying: The Lord Will Raise Up a Prophet, the Homily on the Adultery of the Congregation82, and the Homily on the Canaanite Woman.83
In the first of these, Jacob considers Moses’ keys—subsequently bestowed on the Church. Jacob speaks of how our Lord wished to give the “keys of Moses” (qlîdê d-môšê) to John the Apostle “in order that he write spiritually” and become “the great scribe of the hidden mysteries of the divinity.”84 In fact, Jacob connects Elijah with Peter’s keys, and Moses with John’s:
That authority which Elijah had, he gave to Simon
to loose and to bind in god-like fashion (alāhâʾît) as stewards.
He joined the people of Simon (bayt šemʿôn) to the people of Moses (bayt môšê)
so as to make equal in proclamation the new and the old.
He sought to exchange the stewards and bring them
that the elder stewards might give the keys (qlîdê) to the younger.85
In this passage, Jacob combines the idea of prophethood and messengerhood as stewards of the keys of the heavenly treasuries.86 He connects them typologically while also giving them quasi divine status.
In his Homily on The Lord will Raise Up a Prophet, Jacob focuses abundantly on Moses himself. First he personifies Prophecy as “the ancient nurturer who bears your wealth (ʿûtrayk)” and Jacob asks God to be enriched “out of the store of your treasures (men sîmātāk)”87 Moses himself possessed this “deep of prophecy” (thômâ da-nbîyûtâ) in his soul. In possessing this treasure, Moses resembles God and thus foreshadows the divine status of Christ who was to come. Specifically, the token of Moses’ divine status is his key. Moses, Jacob says,
became a god to Pharaoh even though he was a man,
in the same way that the Son became a man, even though he was God.
He received from God power to become a god (men allāha d-nehwê allāh),
and so he became and worked mighty deeds, striking things, and wonders.
…
And he gave to the synagogue the bread of Watchers (laḥmâ d-ʿîrê)
…
And wherever his glance fell, Moses shook creation,
and however he wanted, he changed them and commanded them.
With the rod of mysteries (ḥûṭrâ d-rāzê) he struck the sea and made it dry,
and he commanded the ground to become a sea for the assemblies.
He drew up onto dry land and he plunged the audacious into the sea,
and in his hands was placed the great key of all creation (qlîdâ rabbâ d-koll beryātâ).88
Notice that Moses’ key gives him access to heaven (so that he has the bread of angels) and to earth, such that he controls all that is on it. In this latter case, keys become an image not only of wisdom but of the power of divine providence. Indeed, there is evidence that the Syriac tradition, going back to Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise especially, even viewed the light of divine revelation as a kind of provision of heavenly food.89 Jacob takes a similar position. In Jacob’s Homily on the Adultery of the Congregation, he explicitly describes the revelation of divine brightness as food and drink. “Thus it is written that they saw God and ate and drank. Seeing him is food. His radiance is drink. His light is life.”90 For this reason, Jacob points out that “Moses resembles the Son of God, in the totality of his path (dāmê môšê l-bar allāhâ b-kôllah ûrḥeh), in the same way that a shadow imitates the size of the body.”91 In other words, for Jacob, the imagery of the heavenly treasury and its keys is the way to express both divinization and the path of prophetic typology from Moses to Jesus. In his status, Moses himself becomes “the treasury of prophecy” (gazzâ da-nbîyûtâ)92 The Qur’ān used the same imagery to affirm God’s power over all creation, and to reject a heavenly, divinized status for its prophets.
Of course the ultimate owner of the treasury is Jesus himself, and the divinized status of Moses or any prophet for that matter, finds its source and typological fulfillment in Jesus. Thus, in the Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face Jacob says,
Apart from [Jesus], there is neither word nor revelation (gelyānâ)
in the prophets, for he himself is the treasury of prophecy (gazzāh da-nbîyûtâ).93
The prophets possess the heavenly treasure, that is, Christ, who in turn fulfills the pattern of the divinized prophet. In the Homily on the Canaanite Woman Jacob puts it once again in cognitive terms, describing Christ as
the great treasury (gazzâ [h]w rabbâ) on which all the needy grow rich,
[and] the path (ûrḥâ) on which someone progresses to the vision of his Father.94
In this way, Jacob unifies the imagery of the path of prophetic types, which leads to the vision of God, and the treasury of that knowledge.
Summative Analysis
Having examined the two accounts of divine knowledge: the arguments of Qur’ānic monotheism, and of sixth century Syriac Christianity, the latter clearly sheds light on the arguments and concerns recorded in the Qur’ānic corpus. The Syriac tradition on the heavenly treasury of knowledge emerges with a high probability as one of the Qur’ān’s most significant interlocutors in debates on knowledge and ignorance of divine mysteries. This debate between Christians and the Qur’ān on divinizing knowledge also helps to explain to whom the Qur’ān responds when it strongly asserts Jesus’ ignorance. The two traditions appear to be arguing in the same intellectual space.
The Qur’ān proposes a patterned sequence or path of disparate prophets and messengers (its prophetic typology) as the ordinary means by which humankind accesses knowledge of God. This typology extends into the narrative present. In making that case, it has to argue against people, some of them clearly Christians or Christian sympathizers, who hold that mankind is capable of being at least quasi-divinized by a special access to and intimacy with divine knowledge, and who symbolically express that divinized access in terms of ascending to the heavenly treasury, opening it with a key or keys, and partaking of a divine knowledge that also nourishes the human person like food does. These same people seem likely to have emphasized the symmetry of knowledge between Jesus and God, to the point that the Qur’ān adjusts its typical characterization of prophets and messengers in order to deny that symmetry.
The Syriac tradition, particularly as it developed in the sixth century christological disputes in the writings of Philoxenus and Jacob, proposes a pattern of mystic symbols as the content of prior scriptures, but extending into the narrative present, according to which humankind progresses toward intimate, divinizing knowledge of God. It symbolically expresses that access as ascending to the heavenly treasury, opening it with a key or keys (which have been entrusted to the Church), and receiving from the treasury the divinizing light and radiance of divine knowledge which also serves as a kind of spiritual food and drink. Prophethood and Messengerhood hold the keys to this radiance. Whereas the Qur’ān denied that such knowledge (and its consequence: becoming like God) was necessary, the Syriac tradition held firmly that it was, and that a divine Jesus is necessarily the source and goal from which the radiance of God is shed upon his servants. Hence, the Syriac tradition of Christological reflection developed an exegesis of Matthew 16.17 that was, as far as I can tell, unique to it, and which highlighted the perfect symmetry between the knowledge of the Father and the Son, such that he becomes the path and way to vision of the Father.
One must emphasize that, in the Qur’ān, the Christians who expected the keys to the heavenly treasuries, and who seem to have regarded Jesus as the unique instantiation of divine knowledge, have not been presented neutrally, but rather as making exaggerated claims, such as the claim that there are others beside Jesus who are also gods or godlike, which the Qur’ān tends to condemn as a claim of adoptionism (see in particular Q 39.3–4 and 21.26–36).95 They are also presented as having failed to comprehend the true pattern of prophecy and messengerhood in which divinization is superfluous. The Qur’ān even reproaches Christians for presuming to hold the keys, something it regards as proper only to God. It seems likely therefore that the Qur’ān’s reports that its interlocutors expected angelic messengers may also be a sarcastic paraphrase of their claim to divinized status. Such a claim, from the perspective of the Qur’ānic worldview, would amount to being quasi-divine, that is, something like an angel.96
And within the Syriac tradition, particularly as represented by Philoxenus, failure to accept Christ’s full divinity, and hence his symmetrical knowledge with the Father, necessarily results in an amalgam of the Jewish, Nestorian, and pagan position to the effect that Christ is an exalted prophet noteworthy for his revelations, but ultimately a man like the rest. Such a position is not dissimilar to that of Qur’ānic monotheism. Though it cannot be pursued here, one wonders if the Qur’ān’s positive commendation of ḥunafāʾ in contrast to Jews and Christians represents an awareness of what the logically available alternatives were. This would open the way to assigning to pagan supporters of Jesus a more positive valence and regarding even Abraham in this light since he predates the Mosaic covenant.97 On this admittedly speculative point, one must ask why the Qur’ānic ḥanīf is opposed to Jews as well as Christians, whereas Philoxenus associated the pagans with the Jews. One could hazard that Qur’ānic criticism of the Jews applies to those who rejected Jesus as prophet, but those described by Philoxenus actually approved of him.
The evidence offered above strongly suggests the fruitfulness of reading the Qur’ān as a late antique document,98 and hence as a knowledgable participant in the theological debates of Late Antiquity. As with other literature from that time, it can be challenging to distinguish what an author or text reports from what its opponents themselves would expressly claim. But in this respect the Qur’ān is unremarkable. Indeed, exploring the engagement between the Qur’ān and Syriac Christian tradition (among other interlocutors) presents us with a more reasonable picture of the Qur’ān overall, as a text with a coherent argument of its own. But like any such argument, it is constituted by reflecting upon and responding to what has gone before, a procedure the Qur’ān expressly adopts as its own and invites its hearers also to do. Taking this invitation seriously permits us to read the Qur’ān not simply as a hodgepodge of “borrowings” from other traditions but as a theological position in its own right. The articulation of this theology need not have had an especially erudite or academic setting. As Griffith has pointed out, “the ‘interpreted Bible’ as we find it in these homiletic compositions [i.e., the Syriac mêmrê] bears an uncanny resemblance in many of its details to the reminiscences of Bible history as we find them in the Qur’ān”99. In short, the homily, and liturgy in general is also a site for theological dialogue, perhaps even in practice its ordinary site. The evidence offered above serves to bear out features of the “uncanny resemblance” between competing typologies.
What is one to make of the theological position itself? Qur’ānic monotheism rejects certain key theses of the Christian faith. But it does not reject them per accidens, nor simply in cursu as it eyes other goals. Rather the rejection emerges from a thoughtful, if tendentious, dialogue with Christians of the Syriac tradition. The Qur’ān’s dialogic genesis must be taken seriously as an integral part of its thought if we are to reflect on contemporary opportunities for dialogue. It may be that a better understanding of the Qur’ān’s dialogue with Syriac Christianity could support contemporary attempts to revive or articulate a Christian hermeneutic of the Qur’ānic text,100 which would, of necessity, involve articulating a new typological reading of it. In any case, such a better understanding certainly delineates with greater clarity the kinship and distance between the two traditions.
Selected Bibliography
Akhrass, Roger, and Imad Syryany. eds. 160 Unpublished Homilies Jacob of Serugh. Volume I (Homilies 1–72); Volume II (Homilies 73–160) (Damascus Department of Syriac Studies, Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate, 2017).
Beck, Edmund, ed. Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Fide. vols. 154–155 (CSCO, Louvain: Sécretariat du CorpusSCO, 1955); Sermones de Fide. vols. 212–213 (CSCO, 1961); Hymnen de Virginitate. vols. 223–224 (CSCO, 1962); Sermones in Hebdomadam Sanctam. vols. 412–413 (CSCO, 1979).
Bedjan, Paulus, ed. Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I (Leipzig; Paris: Otto Harrassowitz, 1905).
Block, Corrie. “Expanding the Qur’anic Bridge: Historical and Modern Interpretations of the Qur’an in Christian-Muslim Dialogue with Special Attention Paid to Ecumenical Trends,” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2011).
Block, Corrie. “Philoponian Monophysitism in South Arabia at the Advent of Islam with Implications for the English Translation of ‘Thalatha’ in Qur’an 4. 171 and 5. 73.” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2011): 50–75.
Bou Mansour, Tanios. La Théologie de Jacques de Saroug (2 vols.) (Bibliothéque de l’Université Saint-Esprit. L’Université Saint-Esprit, 1999).
Brock, Sebastian, ed. Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face (Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2009).
Crone, Patricia. “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān (Part One)” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74, no. 2 (2015): 225–253.
Griffith, Sidney. Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian (Marquette University Press, 1997).
Griffith, Sidney. The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Hawting, Gerald. “‘Has God Sent a Mortal as a Messenger?’ (Q 17:95): Messengers and Angels in the Qur’ān.” In New Perspectives on the Qur’an: The Qur’an in Its Historical Context 2, edited by Gabriel S. Reynolds, 372–389 (New York: Routledge, 2011).
Hayes, Andrew J. “The Transfiguration of Moses: A Survey and Analysis of St. Ephrem’s Interpretation of Exodus 34,29.” Oriens Christianus, 2013, 67–99.
Kollamparampil, Thomas, ed. Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Transfiguration of Our Lord (Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2008).
Neuwirth, Angelika. “The Qur’an’s Enchantment of the World: ‘Antique’ Narratives Refashioned in Arab Late Antiquity.” In Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew Rippin, edited by Majid Daneshgar and Walid Saleh, 125–144. (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
Reynolds, Gabriel Said. The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge Studies in the Qur’an; London: Routledge, 2010).
Sinai, Nicolai. The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Taghanaki, Mohsen Goudarzi. “The Second Coming of the Book: Rethinking Qur’anic Scripturology and Prophetology” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2018).
Watt, J.W., ed. Philoxenus of Mabbug: Fragments of the Commentary on Matthew and Luke. Vols. 392–393 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1978).
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a fellowship from the Institute of Christian Oriental Research at the Catholic University of America, which made this research possible.
The sequence nearly always exhibits the stages of admonition, dispute, rejection, and punishment.
Such language and imagery appears in Q 2.129, 2.151, 2.231, 2.251, 3.48, 3.79, 3.81, 3.164, 4.54, 4.113, 5.110, 6.89, 12.22, 19.12, 21.74, 21.79, 26.21, 26.83, 28.14, 33.34, 38.20, 43.63, 45.16, and 62.2. Translations of the Qur’ān are generally taken from that of Majid Fakhry: An Interpretation of the Qur’an: English Translation of the Meanings: A Bilingual Edition (New York: New York University Press, 2002), though I have occasionally chosen to offer my own rendering instead.
These passages will be fully commented on below. They include Q 6.50, 6.59, 11.12, 11.31, 25.4–8, 38.7, 52.37–38.
At first, this appears to contrast with Q 43.57–64, which could be taken as saying that Jesus is “knowledge of the hour”: that is, knowledge of when the final judgment will occur. Strictly speaking, however, the passage is ambiguous because the reference of the pronoun in the sentence in question (innahu la-ʿilmun lis-sāʿati) is vague. Given that the larger context of the passage emphasizes Jesus’ status as an example for the Israelites (43.59: maṯalan li-bani isrāʾīl), the point seems not to be that Jesus knows when the hour will occur, but that his prophetic activity should have instructed them, but they did not heed it.
Gerald Hawting, “‘Has God Sent a Mortal as a Messenger?’ (Q 17:95): Messengers and Angels in the Qur’ān,” in Gabriel S. Reynolds, ed., New Perspectives on the Qur’an: The Qur’an in Its Historical Context 2 (New York: Routledge, 2011), 375–377.
It may be possible to see this also in connection with the E. Syrian school system, but that is too large a topic to explore in this chapter. For the importance of knowledge in the E. Syrian worldview, see Adam H. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
See Sidney Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qur’ān: A Hermeneutical Reflection,” in Reynolds, New Perspectives on the Qur’an, 305, for a hermeneutical reflection on this problem as related to the naṣārā or “Nazorenes” described in the Qur’ān. In analyzing the views of François de Blois and Joachim Gnilka on the likely Syriac origin of the term naṣārā, he points out that they “presume, on the basis of comparability and parallelism, that the Qur’ān got what it says about Christians and their doctrines from pre-existing sources, not from the logic of its own religious and rhetorical purposes, based on its own awareness of the doctrines and practices of the Christian communities actually known from other sources to be contemporary with it.”
Süleyman Dost, “An Arabian Qur’ān: Towards a Theory of Peninsular Origins” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2017), 232. A convenient and relatively recent overview of the inquiry into the role of Syriac in relation to the Qur’ān can be found in Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013), 18–23. It is hardly my intention here to offer a complete bibliography, but only to highlight some relevant features of previous discussions against which my own hypothesis may be delineated.
Walid A. Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy and Qur’anic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity,” in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx, eds., The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 649–698, has summarized this research and cogently exposed its past foibles. More positively, Joseph Witztum, “Joseph Among the Ishmaelites: Q 12 in Light of Syriac Sources,” in Reynolds, New Perspectives on the Qur’an, 425–448, helps to illuminate both vocabulary and narrative features, as well as examining their rhetorical function in the Qur’ānic corpus.
This, most famously, is the position of Christoph Luxenberg, The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran (Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiller, 2007). See also Christoph Luxenberg, “Al-Najm (Q 53), Chapter of the Star: A New Syro-Aramaic Reading of Verses 1 to 18,” in Reynolds, New Perspectives on the Qur’an, 279–297. In the latter study, Luxenberg summarizes his approach in the following way, on 296, note 46: “By ‘Syro-Aramaic,’ the Syro-Aramaic elements of the ‘Arabic’ [sic] language of the Qur’ān is intended. The philological analysis of the Qur’ān’s language has thus far led us to the following conclusion: the language of the Qur’ān is composed, apart from Arabic, in part of Aramaic elements of different eras, some of which stem from ancient Aramaic (Altaramäisch), imperial Aramaic (Reichsaramäisch)—like Biblical Aramaic (Biblisch-Aramäisch)—and others (the great majority) from the Aramaic of the Christian era, above all Syriac, but also Judaeo-Aramaic and late Babylonian Aramaic dialects such as Mandaean and other Neo-Aramaic dialects (including vernacular Eastern Syriac). Consequently we designate those linguistic elements of the Qur’ān that have references in Syriac literature ‘Syro-Arabic,’ and those elements that we find among other Aramaic speaks or literatures ‘Arabo-Aramaic.’ Hence the term, the ‘Syro-Aramaic’ Reading of the Qur’ān.”
See Corrie Block, “Philoponian Monophysitism in South Arabia at the Advent of Islam with Implications for the English Translation of ‘Thalatha’ in Qur’an 4. 171 and 5. 73,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2011): 50–51, 56–60; Corrie Block, “Expanding the Qur’anic Bridge: Historical and Modern Interpretations of the Qur’an in Christian-Muslim Dialogue with Special Attention Paid to Ecumenical Trends” 2011, 291–292. See also Manfred Kropp, “Tripartite, but Anti-Trinitarian Formulas in the Qur’ānic Corpus, Possibly Pre-Qur’ānic,” in Reynolds, New Perspectives on the Qur’an, 247–264. If it is true that the Qur’ān is responding to or influenced by heterodox Christian or Jewish Christian groups, that fact has obvious implications for contemporary dialogue, not least of which is that some of the Qur’ān’s criticisms of Christianity might not apply to contemporary adherents.
Carlos Andrés Segovia, The Qur’ānic Jesus: A New Interpretation (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation 5; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), chap. 3.
See Joachim Gnilka, Die Nazarener und der Koran: eine Spurensuche (Freiburg: Herder, 2007); François De Blois, “Islam in Its Arabian Context,” in Neuwirth, Sinai, and Marx, The Qur’ān in Context, 615–624. De Blois summarizes much of his previous research on the Jewish-Christian hypothesis. More recently, see Patricia Crone, “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān (Part One),” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74, no. 2 (2015): 225–253; Patricia Crone, “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān (Part Two),” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 75 (2018): 1–21. Crone’s two-part article lucidly summarizes the history of scholarship on the question of a putative Jewish-Christian background. It is not principally my purpose in this article to argue for the utter absence of Jewish-Christian elements in the Qur’ān’s milieu. Nevertheless, one should note that Crone’s list of Qur’ānic features that are “extremely hard to explain without recourse to the hypothesis of a Jewish Christian contribution” (228) contains at least three that are, in my view, adequately explained by my hypothesis of critical engagement with Syriac Christology. These are, as Crone describes them: the subordination of Jesus to Moses, the rejection of Jesus’ divinity, and the divinization of Mary. In fact, I suspect that all of the features Crone offers on behalf of the Jewish Christian hypothesis might be at least equally well explained by critical engagement with Syriac (and perhaps also Ethiopic) Christian traditions on the eve of the Qur’ān’s formation.
Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge Studies in the Qur’an; London: Routledge, 2010).
See Emran El-Badawi, The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge Studies in the Qur’an; London: Routledge, 2016); Emran El-Badawi, “The Impact of Aramaic (Especially Syriac) on the Qur’ān,” Religion Compass 8 (2014): 220–228.
See Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 11–15 and the literature cited there.
On the likelihood of mercantile contact between Mecca and the larger Near Eastern world, see Mikhail D. Bukharin, “Mecca on the Caravan Routes in Pre-Islamic Antiquity,” in Neuwirth, Sinai, and Marx, The Qur’ān in Context, 115–131.
Irfan Shahid, “Islam and Oriens Christianus: Makka 610–622 AD,” in Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark Swanson, and David Thomas, eds., The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9–31.
The Qur’ān should not be separated out from the great theological debates and conversations that dominated the Late Antique Near East. The fact is that theological arguments in late antiquity did not typically adopt the irenic tone that modern sensibility might now prefer. Describing the Qur’ān as critical of other traditions, however, does not here imply any particularly negative judgment against it, but only that it deserves to be taken together with the literature of its age.
The engagement is a matter of arguing about similar topics, often couched in similar language or imagery, but without sharing all the same premises and thus coming to different and largely opposite conclusions. Lexical similarities between the Qur’ān’s Arabic and Christian Syriac undoubtedly exist, but that linguistic similarity alone is inconclusive in most cases. Instead, one must seek in the Qur’ān a conjunction of characteristic formulae and imagery with characteristic theological ideas that belong to them, in order to defend critical engagement with the Syriac tradition. The theological ideas need to be sufficiently distinctive to assure us more particularly that they mark a particular Christian liturgical, doctrinal, or literary tradition and argumentative context rather than simply characterizing late antique Christianity as a whole. This, in turn, yields a better sense of the Qur’ān’s distinctive emphases and arguments.
Irfan Shahid, “Byzantium in South Arabia,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979): 23–94.
Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 12.
In classifying surahs, I follow Sinai’s views. See, in particular, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 124–32, and 176–192.
Ibid., 176–177.
Sidney Griffith, “Christian Lore and the Arabic Qur’ān: The ‘Companions of the Cave’ in Sūrat Al-Kahf and in Syriac Christian Tradition,” in Gabriel Said Reynolds, ed., The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context (London: Routledge, 2007), 109–137.
Q 18.4.
Sinai, The Qur’an, 127.
This does not mean that the Qur’ān regards prophets (anbiyāʾ) and messengers (rusul) as exactly the same. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the latter may have a more exalted status than the former. See Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 208–209, and Hawting, “Has God Sent a Mortal as a Messenger?” 385–386. But it does mean that as far as humankind’s knowledge of God is concerned, any differences of rank or divine favor between them do not affect the fundamental sameness of the message.
For a recent brief reprise of the pattern, see Todd Lawson, “Duality, Opposition and Typology in the Qur’an: The Apocalyptic Substrate,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 10, no. 2 (2008): 35–41. Lawson focuses on typology closely akin to the phenomena of duality and apocalypticism in the Qur’ān. My focus in the present context is quite different. One key difference is that Lawson argues that typology in Q 12 exposes or uncovers that there is “no end of the world.” On the other hand, my approach is undoubtedly influenced by that of Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 54–96, who generally prefers to speak of prophetology or the “typology of Qur’ānic prophetology” where I have used “prophetic typology.” As Griffith notes, the prophetology of the Qur’ān “exemplifies the features of prophetic experience that … determine which specific aspects of a given biblical story are selected for recollection” (64). I certainly agree with this, but wish also to show that the Qur’ān’s prophetic typology elucidates its views on theological epistemology and its hermeneutic of prior scriptures.
Mohsen Goudarzi Taghanaki, “The Second Coming of the Book: Rethinking Qur’anic Scripturology and Prophetology” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2018), 324–330.
Ibid., 279–272.
Ibid., 85–89, and 261–275.
See Majid Maaref, “Various Types of Dialogues and Features of a Corrective Dialogue in the Qur’an,” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 74, no. 3 (2018), for an effort to categorize Qur’ānic dialogue forms more generally.
Other such lists include Q. 57.25–27, and 33.7–8.
Names with commonly recognized biblical spellings will be spelled accordingly. Non-biblical prophets’ names will be spelled using the Arabic transliteration employed throughout the chapter.
Edouard-Marie Gallez, “Gens du Livre et Nazaréens dans le Coran: qui sont les premiers et à quel titre les seconds en font-ils partie?” Oriens Christianus 92 (2008): 176, sees the expression “or Christians” (aw naṣārā) as a later polemical redaction in an originally anti-Jewish context. That’s certainly possible, but it seems to me that Gallez has not accounted for the possibility that the Qur’ān is critically adapting the speech of its opponents from its own vantage point within salvation history. In any case, as written, the received text clearly flattens the differences between Jews and Christians. Given the emphasis in the next verse, it is difficult not to regard the conflation in verse 235 as tinged with sarcasm.
Hawting, “Has God Sent a Mortal as a Messenger?” 372.
Ibid., 377.
Given the chronology, the “latest religion” most likely refers to Christianity.
These “cords” or as Fakhry translates “rungs,” have been studied by Kevin Van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords and Prophetic Authority in the Qur’ān and Its Late Antique Context,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 70, no. 2 (2007): 223–246. He shows that the imagery and cosmology of heavenly cords suggests the notion of heavenly ascent via these pathways.
Paul E. Walker, “Knowledge and Learning,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an: J-O (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 102.
Michael Pregill, “‘A Calf, a Body That Lows’: The Golden Calf from Late Antiquity to Classical Islam,” in Eric F. Mason and Edmondo F. Lupieri, eds., Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 284–288.
David and Solomon are also singled out as the recipients of a super human knowledge: “And We gave David and Solomon knowledge (ʿilman). They said: ‘Praise be to God who preferred us over many of his believing servants.’ Solomon inherited David, and he said: ‘O people, we have been taught the speech of birds (ʿulimna manṭiqa ṭ-ṭīri) and have been given part of everything’” (Q 27.15–16). The Qur’ān even illustrates Solomon’s knowledge with a lively narrative in which Solomon speaks to the Hoopoe and uses it as a messenger to the Queen of Sheba. David too seems to have been given the capacity to understand birdsong (Q 21.79). Adam had knowledge of the animals’ names, because God himself taught him (see, e.g., Q 2.30–34), a knowledge that explicitly surpasses angelic knowledge.
Sidney Griffith, Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1997), 28–29.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 31.
There are at least five instances in Ephrem’s genuine works and another in the disputed mêmrê on Holy Week: SiHS 5.97–101. The undisputedly authentic references are SdF 2.67–110 (an extended treatment), SdF 4.154, SdF 6.130, HdF 84, refrain, and HdV 17.5–7. See Edmund Beck, ed., Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Sermones de Fide (CSCO 212–213; Louvain: Sécretariat du CorpusSCO, 1961); Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Fide (CSCO 154–155; Louvain: Durbecq, 1955); Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Virginitate (CSCO 223–224; Louvain: Sécretariat du CorpusSCO, 1962); Ephraem Syrus. Sermones in Hebdomadam Sanctam (CSCO 412–413; Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1979). Citations of Ephrem’s works employ the line or stanza numbers of Beck’s editions for the CSCO. Each edition will be cited in full at the first reference. Translations of all Syriac sources are my own.
SdF 1.25–28.
SdF 1.73–78.
SdF 1.41–54.
SdF 1.83–104.
SdF 2.67–84.
SdF 2.43–47.
SdF 2.103–104.
SdF 2.109–110; also emphasized in SdF 4.154.
SdF 6.129–130.
Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Fide.
Beck, Hymnen de Virginitate.
Note that this argument for Jesus’ divinity relies on biblical testimony in a way that the argument from miracles does not. It requires us to accept the premise from Matthew 11 interpreted in a particular way, namely that only the Father knows the Son comprehensively and vice versa. Jesus’ divinity follows as a logical consequence of that view. Such an argument is plausible only to “insiders” who antecedently accept the validity of the Gospel.
J.W. Watt, ed., Philoxenus of Mabbug: Fragments of the Commentary on Matthew and Luke (CSCO 392–393; Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1978), 24, text volume.
Note that Philoxenus even adds the word “living” to the Peshitta text to make it identical to that of Peter. See ibid., 26.
Ibid., 27.
Ibid., 27.
Ibid., 28.
Throughout his writings, Philoxenus appears to reject or at least severely limit the role of rational inquiry in coming to knowledge of God. See Edmund Beck, “Philoxenos und Ephräm,” Oriens Christianus 46 (1962): 66.
Paulus Bedjan, ed., Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I (Paris: Harrassowitz, 1905), 463–464.
Ibid., 474.
Ibid., 475.
Ibid., 466.
Debates over Jesus’ status are also alluded to many times in the Qur’ān. See, for instance, Q 19.34ff.
Ibid., 470.
Ibid., 468.
Ibid., 472.
Ibid., 472–473.
Ibid., 479.
Ibid., 480.
Ibid., 481.
Ibid., 461.
Ibid., 461.
Ibid., 463.
Ibid., 460.
Recently edited for the first time: Roger Akhrass and Imad Syryany, eds., 160 Unpublished Homilies Jacob of Serugh, 2 vols. (Department of Syriac Studies – Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate, 2017).
Tanios Bou Mansour, La Théologie de Jacques de Saroug, 2 vols. (Bibliothéque de l’Université Saint-Esprit (Kaslik: L’Université Saint-Esprit, 1999), vol. 2, 95–101, has studied this image from a broader perspective in Jacob’s work as a whole. Consonant with the conclusions offered here, his research shows that Christ himself is ultimately the salvific treasure, but that this is rooted in his relation to his Father. The Son as Treasure is “au coeur du mystère de la Trinité” (100). Though Bou Mansour does not seem to accent the fact, many of the examples he adduces attest to the cognitive and contemplative character of the Christ Treasure in Jacob’s thought.
Thomas Kollamparampil, ed., Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Transfiguration of Our Lord (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008), 31; This undoubtedly goes back to Ephrem’s HdV 15.7, where he explicitly links Peter and John with this image.
Ibid., 31.
Cf. also the “great treasure” (gazzâ rabbâ) mentioned on ibid., 45.
Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I, 104. The evidence found in this homily goes some part of the way toward answering the objection of Crone, “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān (Part One),” 230, that mainstream Christian sources would not present Jesus as a prophet to the Israelites. Indeed, it seems to me that this is precisely what Jacob is saying: that Moses presented Jesus as a prophet to and for the Israelites, even though he was of course much more than that, and Moses knew it. The point is that when discussing salvation history, particularly in terms of typological confirmation, describing Jesus in this way is hardly strange. Since the Qur’ān offers its own competing typology, it isn’t surprising that it might wish to accept Moses’ portrayal of Jesus as a prophet to the Israelites and reject him as incarnate Word. Apparently “Jewish-Christian” doctrines in the Qur’ān might simply be a logical consequence of its typological reading reacting against putative excesses of Christianity. It is probably impossible to rule out some sort of prior Jewish-Christian influence on Qur’ānic typology, but the evidence can also be read as a reaction to known Christian positions.
Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I, 109. See Q 42.12: “To him are the keys of the heavens and the earth. He extends provision to whomever he wills and measures it. Surely he has knowledge of everything.” A similar expression occurs in Q 39.63.
See Andrew J. Hayes, “The Transfiguration of Moses: A Survey and Analysis of St. Ephrem’s Interpretation of Exodus 34,29,” Oriens Christianus, 2013, 67–99.
Mardin Orth. 130f. 18rb, l. 17–18va, l. 1. For a complete discussion of the mss. see Andrew J. Hayes, “The Manuscripts and Themes of Jacob of Serugh’s Mêmrâ ‘on the Adultery of the Congregation’,” in Jeffrey Wickes and Kristian S. Heal, eds., Studia Patristica LXXVIII: Papers Presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2015. Volume 4: Literature, Rhetoric, and Exegesis in Syriac Verse (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), 61–71.
Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I, 112.
Ibid., 568.
Sebastian Brock, ed., Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Veil on Moses’ Face (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 45.
Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis. Tomus I, 443.
Both passages refer to multiple entities as “adopted” by God. What is particularly interesting here is that in the former passage, the Qur’ān’s opponents protest that they do not literally place them on the same rank as God himself, and that these quasi-divine beings serve as a means to help their adherents become closer to God in rank, that is, quasi-divine as well. This strikes me as more likely to reflect Christian notions of divinized saints than what one usually thinks of as a pagan pantheon.
Here further research into the presentation of angels or “Watchers” as they are called, in the writings of Ephrem and Jacob may prove to be illuminating, but space does not permit pursuing it here.
François De Blois, “Naṣrānī (
Cf. Pregill, “ ‘A Calf, a Body That Lows’,” 265–267. After finishing this paper, I had the good fortune to discover and read Angelika Neuwirth, “The Qur’an’s Enchantment of the World: ‘Antique’ Narratives Refashioned in Arab Late Antiquity,” in Majid Daneshgar and Walid Saleh, eds., Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew Rippin (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 125–144. Her remarks on typology offer a sketch of a more expansive setting in which the argument I have made might be placed. My argument, one might say, reveals only a part of the typological thinking of the mind of the Qur’ān.
Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 94.
Consider, e.g., the pioneering work of Louis Massignon. See Sidney Griffith, “Sharing the Faith of Abraham: The ‘Credo’ of Louis Massignon,” Islam and Christian – Muslim Relations 8, no. 2 (1997): 193–210. The phrase “Christian hermeneutic of the Qur’ān” was recently used in a paper by Elias Kattan at the inaugural Conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association in Iasi, Romania, to represent the point of view of Sidney Griffith. The phrase seems so apt that I have elected to borrow it here.