The Qur’ān and Kerygma; Jeffrey Einboden

Jeffrey Einboden [+–]

Northern Illinois University

Jeffrey Einboden is Professor of 19th-century American Literature and Comparative Literature at Northern Illinois University, and author of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature in Middle Eastern Languages (Edinburgh University Press 2013); Islam and Romanticism: Muslim Currents from Goethe to Emerson (Oneworld 2014); and The Islamic Lineage of American Literary Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016). His research into Islamic sources and the Western canon has appeared in journals including Milton Quarterly, Translation and Literature, Middle Eastern Literatures, and the Journal of Qur’anic Studies; in 2006, his “The Genesis of Weltliteratur: Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan and Kerygmatic Pluralism” (Literature and Theology; 2005) was named by OUP as one of the “100 seminal articles” published by Oxford Journals in the past century.

Structured chronologically, the study’s span of more than a millennium is sustained by case studies selected from representative areas and eras, exploring innovative adaptations and translations of Qur’ānic diction undertaken by biblical authors from 9th-century Andalucía to 20th-century North America. Mirroring its subject matter, the book engages a literary critical approach, offering close-readings of targeted texts frequently neglected and never before synthesized in a single study, highlighting the stylistic, as well as spiritual, influence on exegetes of the Bible exercised by Islamic writ.

Series: Themes in Qur'anic Studies

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements [+–] ix-x

The Qur’ān’s biblical foregrounds have long formed a controversial concern within Qur’ānic Studies, with field-leading scholars debating the Muslim scripture’s complex relationship and “response” to the Judeo-Christian canon. This contentious subject has largely overshadowed, however, a reciprocal, yet no less rich, textual relationship which forms the focus of the present study. Rather than read the Muslim scripture in light of its biblical antecedents, The Qur’ān & Kerygma adopts the inverse approach, situating the Qur’ān as itself the formative foreground to pivotal acts of biblical translation, composition and commentary. The book argues, in particular, that Qur’ānic receptions have provoked and paralleled key readings and renditions of the Bible, enriching acts of creative authorship and interpretation that have contoured the legacy and language of Judeo-Christian “kerygma”. Structured chronologically, the study’s span of more than a millennium is sustained by case studies selected from representative areas and eras, exploring innovative adaptations and translations of Qur’ānic diction undertaken by biblical authors from 9th-century Andalucía to 20th-century North America. Mirroring its subject matter, the book engages a literary critical approach, offering close-readings of targeted texts frequently neglected and never before synthesized in a single study, highlighting the stylistic, as well as spiritual, influence on exegetes of the Bible exercised by Islamic writ.

Introduction [+–] 1-8

Enveloped by an Introduction and a concluding “Coda”, the book traces a narrative of Qur’ānic impact on biblical readings and renditions spanning more than a millennium, with its six body chapters unfolding chronologically, from the 9th century to the 20th.

Chapter 1

From al-Fātiḥah to Hallelujah: The Qur’ānic Psalter of Ḥafṣ al-Qūṭī [+–] 9-34

Addressing the Qur’ān’s early impact on Christian scripture, the book begins with a sustained case study, reading closely the 9th-century psalm translation of Ḥafṣ ibn Albar al-Qūṭī. Amplifying the Islamic echoes throughout this Andalucian rendition, Chapter 1 spans paratexts and poetics, isolating the pivotal Qur’ānic phrases that punctuate al-Qūṭī’s psalter. Marrying Christian versification with Qur’ānic verses, al-Qūṭī’s translation emerges in Chapter 1 as a sacred text that straddles Hebraic original, Christian interpretation, and Islamic idioms, culminating in a “kerygmatic pluralism” that resists clear creedal distinctions.

Chapter 2

“Verily have I Found Allāh Oft-Returning”: The Qur’ānic Poetics of Sulaimān al-Ghazzī [+–] 35-55

Shifting from poetic translation to personal autobiography, Chapter 2 advances forward two centuries, reading the 11th-century Dīwān of Palestinian lyricist and Orthodox bishop, Sulaimān al-Ghazzī. Confessional in poetics and polemics, al-Ghazzī’s qaṣā’id are yet shaped by Qur’ānic contributions, voicing their Christian apologetics in verses that ironically echo the Muslim scripture. Recalling al-Qūṭī’s psalter in their ecumenical audacity and aesthetics, al-Ghazzī’s Arabic compositions are, however, uniquely individual, inscribing Qur’ānic fragments into Christian odes that are not only doctrinally concerned, but also intimate in experience.

Chapter 3

“The Religion of the Messiah in Multitudes”: Echoes of the Qur’ān across Christian Schisms [+–] 56-80

Building from the case studies of Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3 unfolds a broader survey, considering Qur’ānic influences amid early Christian schisms, reaching from the medieval Middle East to the early-modern West. The Muslim scripture features in this chapter as a formative vocabulary for intra-religious dialogue and debate, linking Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Western Protestantism, merging landmark Christian Arabists and Arabic writers, from Sa‘īd ibn Baṭrīq to Gregory Bar Hebraeus, from Edward Pococke to Ezra Stiles. Conveying Qur’ānic echoes forward in time and westward in space, the writings of Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians in the Middle East are shown to supply Western Orientalists with covert sources for Islamic reception, ushering the Muslim scripture into tumultuous environs of political revolution and religious rupture extending from England to America.

Chapter 4

“Adheres to the Arabic Idiom”: Ludovico Marracci’s Qur’ānic Vulgates [+–] 81-101

Reaching up to early-modern Europe in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 of The Qur’ān & Kerygma stays centered in this era and area, offering a sustained case study involving the 17th-century papal confessor and Qur’ān translator, Ludovico Marracci. Now known for his Alcorani Textus Universus – a Latin rendition of the Muslim scripture published in 1698 – Marracci’s career also included another scriptural translation which forms Chapter 4’s primary focus, reading the 1671 Biblia Sacra Arabica. Translating the Vulgate for Middle Eastern Christians, the Biblia Sacra Arabica emerges as a mirror for Marracci’s Alcorani Textus Universus, not rendering Qur’ānic Arabic into Latin, but rendering Latin into Qur’ānic Arabic, ironically infusing Muslim idioms into this proselytizing Christian translation.

Chapter 5

“By Origin and Language an Hebrew”: The Genesis of a Judaic Qur’ān [+–] 102-123

Distinct from The Qur’ān & Kerygma’s previous treatments of Christian readings and renditions, Chapter 5 addresses al-Qōrān ō ha-Miqrā – the ground-breaking Hebrew rendition of the Muslim scripture, published by Hermann Reckendorf in 1857. A Judaic translation produced for Jewish readers, al-Qōrān ō ha-Miqrā yet emerges in Chapter 5 as intersecting broad trends of 19th-century European exegesis, both reflecting and resisting the hermeneutic priorities of contemporary Christendom. Triangulating the three Abrahamic traditions, Reckendorf’s rendition extends The Qur’ān & Kerygma’s complex trajectory of inter-scriptural exchange, generating fresh biblical readings through Qur’ānic translation, with Judaic idioms and identities from both the Tanakh and the New Testament assuming new significance in the Hebrew sūras of Reckendorf’s al-Qōrān.

Chapter 6

A “Totally Typological” Christian Qur’ān: Northrop Frye’s Triple Mirror [+–] 124-143

While the Qur’ān’s forgotten translation into biblical idioms is treated in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 explores the Qur’ān’s hidden contributions to the literary study of the Bible, considering the Muslim scripture’s impact on ordained United Church minister, and leading 20th-century critic, Northrop Frye. Marking the present study’s last step westward, as well as its final advance towards the present-day, Chapter 6 concludes in Canada, reading not only Frye’s published allusions to Islam, but also his Qur’ānic appeals voiced in venues more private, from Frye’s pedagogical lectures to his personal marginalia. Revealed as both a catalyst and a complicating factor for his famed “Bible and Literature” studies, the Qur’ān exemplifies for Frye the “genuine kerygmatic”, while also threatening to disrupt the closed coherency of the two biblical Testaments, occupying a third position that reinforces, yet also reverses, his critical intent.

End Matter

Coda: “Synthesis of the Word” [+–] 144-147

Bibliography [+–] 148-156

Index [+–] 157-160

Reviews

Einboden’s The Qur’ān and Kerygma opens the door for new opportunities in the study of Christian-Muslim relations. While recent scholarship on the Qurʾān has focused on its ‘context’, ‘biblical subtext’, and biblical impressions in the Qurʾān, Einboden’s fresh study flips this relationship by investigating the impressions of the Qurʾān on Arabic Christian commentaries and translations of the Bible. The Qur’ān and Kerygma provides exciting new insights into the intertextuality of the Bible and the Qurʾān.
David D. Grafton, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, Hartford Seminary

The Qur'an and Kerygma is wondrously creative and an intellectual delight of the very highest order. Jeffery Einboden has given us a truly exciting study of the Qur’an’s influence in the so-called West. Eschewing humdrum and stale constraints, Einboden addresses notions of "the Bible" and "the Qur’an", their identities, cross-fertilizations and, above all, their profound kerygmatic kinship. The result is utterly dazzling. The supremely diligent and perspicacious chapter on Northrop Frye is destined to impact both Biblical and Literature Studies. Words with power, one might say.
Todd Lawson, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought, University of Toronto

These six snapshots of various moments in the relationship between the Bible and the Qur’an provide an important corrective in that they re-mind us that, like all relationships, this one has been a two-way street. One direction of that road, the one that considers the Bible’s possible influence on the Islamic text, has been well traveled. Einboden is to be commended and thanked for pointing us in the opposite direction so we can better appreciate the Qur’an’s role in shaping how the biblical literature has been presented and understood. He is an able and informative tour guide on this fascinating journey.
American Journal of Islam and Society

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

The Qur'an and Kerygma

Biblical Receptions of the Muslim Scripture across a Millennium

Jeffrey Einboden [+–]

Northern Illinois University

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