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Excellent podcast interview of @emrane by @BottldPetrichor. It begins with a discussion on history of the academic study of Qur’an, a brief synopsis on the variety of arguments & debates/pendulums over the last few decades, with some recommendations, & > https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bottled-petrichor/id1463223629?i=1000485257248
> the conclusion that it is by now certain that Qur’an is a product of 7th century Hijaz. Then it moves on to the central discussion over the influence of post-Biblical literature on Qur’an. To most Muslims, the scriptures of Christianity & Judaism are limited to the canonical >
>Torah & Bible (canonized much later than original compositions), but what would be novel to them is how much Qur’an (& the Islamic tradition as it later developed & itself became canonical) is actually influenced by the post-Biblical literature, the Syriac Christian literature >
> & the Jewish Rabbinic literature, the Talmud & Midrash & pseudepigrapha. As professor Emran says, Qur’an is indisputably a product of Late Antiquity, & it is in discussion with these preceding texts that were widely diffused & popular throughout Qur’an’s contemporary Near >
> Eastern world. He goes over many many examples that show clear parallels, stylistic & thematic connections, calques, rhyme schemes, rhetorical devices like internal repetition, at “almost every single page & every single line” of Qur'an (including the famous surah ar-Rahman). >
> As he says, all students of Qur’an must study hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, (who wrote over 400 hymns called madrāšê; these were superhits of the time, indeed for centuries), sung or read rhythmically much like Qur’an is supposed to be sung ( https://twitter.com/shahansean/status/1167092238486134784?s=21). >
> We know now via the epigraphic evidence from pre-Islamic Arabia that these liturgical patterns were already established there ( https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1274372345277415424?s=21). Late Antiquity was the time when monotheism began to establish itself in a significant way for the first time in history, >
> & simultaneously Arabs & Arabic began to emerge out of Nabatean tradition in the place we call Arabia, Syriac out of Aramaic in the Levant & Iraq, mystical proto-Sufi Christian Gnostic sects & Jewish Merkabah ones with emphasis on mi’raj, & ( https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1035500473212649473?s=20) >
> simultaneously the 6th century Roman Persian wars in which holy war/jihad was for the first time central on both Roman & Persian sides (Arabs were a significant part of both armies), Heraclius began to portray himself as the new messiah in the image of Davidic/caliph & >
> Alexander/Dhulqarnain ( https://twitter.com/shahansean/status/1131588182804443138?s=21). For these Christians, Persians were the new Yajuj Majuj, & unsurprisingly contemporary Christians saw even the newly rising Arabs/Muslims as the armies of Yajuj Majuj. There was a widespread belief in the imminent End >
> Times among the 6th century Roman Christians, & the threat was also very much present in Qur'an & hadeeths ( https://sunnah.com/bukhari/68/50 ). By the end, Professor Emran rightly says that we need to look at the history of the creed of the supposed miraculous nature of Qur’an & >
> compare it with the development of the tradition of miraculous nature of Jesus, & how these were used by their respective communities to establish authority, & we need to introspect on what it means to be a Muslim in the 20th century with a critical commentary on Qur’an & the >
>knowledge of Qur’an’s clear textual precedence. IMHO we need to look at how Jewish & Christian denominations developed along these lines, as greater critical light were focused on Torah & Bible & their clear Mesopotamian, Canaanite, & Greek parallels ( https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1183774626742190080?s=20). >
> A book, a text, regardless of the nature of its authority, is always a product of history. Every book, every text, builds on the texts before it, & in case of Near/Middle East that textual tradition goes back to the earliest Sumerian texts & literature, & we can trace this >
> development in time, which is why I believe every student of Qur'an & Islam's beginnings must also study ancient Mesopotamia, Syriac Christianity, Talmud, & Zoroastrianism (much of the imagery & words for afterlife in Qur’an also have Zoroastrian/Persian precedence >
> https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1106040129142046720?s=20). What I’d add is that there is also definite influence of the Ethiopic/Axumite Jewish & Christian tradition in Qur’an, not surprisingly because of the proximity of Hijaz & the ancient trade connections with East Africa including slave trade (the names >
> of the only slaves almost all Muslims know of are Bilal & Maria, both Africans), along with the campaign over Hijaz by the Axumite slave/general Abraha mentioned in Qur’an. Also I wonder how much of the history of pre-Islamic Arabia constructed via Qur’an is valid, & how much >
> of it was Qur’an merely reproducing Judeo-Christian themes? Did pre-Islamic Arabs sacrifice children/girls ( https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1240286198410743808?s=20)? Is this argument valid anymore that pre-Islamic Arabia was a wild land where rich ruled over the downtrodden & clans fought perpetually & >
> Islam was a response to it when we now know that both Christianity & Judaism were established among Arabs by the time of Islam, & both had similar themes (clear even in 4th century hymns of Ephrem, & in fact among Arab polytheists even before Christianity >
> https://twitter.com/gypsy_heart6/status/1033580845486010368?s=20), then why the need for Islam? What did Islam bring to the table that the Jewish & Christian traditions didn’t besides being proudly Arabic, even though Jews & Christians of Qur'an were no foreigners but natives of Hijaz?
