In Search of the Original Koran: The True History of the Revealed Text (15 page)

t is clear that the dominant representation that we have today of the nature and identity of the Koranic text (as of its history) is largely a product of orthodox Muslim doctrine. It has succeeded in imposing a simplistic vision of the Koranic oeuvre, as well as covering up the real processes of its production and its transmission.

We can detect several dogmas about, and mythical reconstructions of, the history of the Koranic text that have contributed to this simplification: the notion of the originality of the Koran; the identification of Koranic revelation with the archetype contained in the celestial tablet; the literal revelation; the collection of the Koran as attributed to Muhammad and/or the first caliphs; the divine preservation of the Koranic text in the course of its transmission from generation to generation; the absolute trustworthiness of oral and written transmission; and finally, the myth of the inimitability of the Koranic discourse.

Among the prejudices that fashion the consciousness that Muslim orthodoxy has of the Koran is the notion of an original text bringing forth ideas and information that are unprecedented since the beginning of time. This popular prejudice belongs to a movement of apologetics that has touched everything related to the apostolate of Muhammad, with no concern to respect either the letter or the spirit of the Koran. Thus the language of the Koran is considered to be the most perfect there can be-vis-a-vis all other human languages, or even other kinds of Arab speech. Nevertheless, Koranic language is sometimes far from respecting the most elementary rules of grammar or style. Muslim Tradition has detected a certain number of faulty uses, on which it has lavished a treasury of ingenuity in order to justify them. Any borrowing from foreign lexicons is admitted only with difficulty, for Muslim doctrine has taken literally the Koranic assertion of the perfect Arabic-ness of the language of the Koran, and it has seen in any foreign terminology a denial of this assertion.

In addition, any application of the critical historical method to religious stories was considered out of place. Doctrine has been suspicious of parallels that might be drawn with the Bible, not to mention possible correlations with legal and religious texts of Oriental antiquity. In doing so, orthodoxy ignores that it is openly impeding Koranic doctrine, which has claimed high and loud its fidelity to stories reported in revealed books. Generally speaking, biblical texts are ignored by Muslims. The Bible is in fact censured; it is not admitted into homes, and still less into mosques.

The pretext invoked to justify this situation is the alteration that is thought to have affected the Bible in the long course of its transmission. However, the developments that we have just reviewed regarding the obstacles that really precluded a faithful transmission of the Koranic text invite a much greater indulgence toward the biblical text.

We can only regret this distrust on the part of Muslim doctrine toward the Bible, even if the sentiment is sometimes reciprocal. Some Koranic passages find their explanation or their source of inspiration in the biblical text. Let us cite a concrete case recently discovered by a monk, Lucien-Jean Bord, regarding the source of inspiration for the Fatiha, or "The Opening," the surah that opens the Book of the Koran.' Brother Bord has shown the astonishing affinity of the first Koranic text with the first psalm of the Bible. Here it is in the New International Version: "1) Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2) But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3) He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4) Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5) Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6) For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." And now here is the Fatiha, in Dawood's translation for Penguin: "Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help. Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have favored, not of those who have incurred Your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray." One immediately sees the similarity of the two texts, especially regarding the essential theme contrasting the path of the righteous with the path of the sinners, with the idea of the Day of Judgment in the background.

This comparison between the two texts is certainly not due to chance, for the Koran has given the theme of the psalm a choice place. First, in the Koran the term "psalm" (zabur) is relatively more frequent than the one that designates the essential text of the Torah (nine, as opposed to eighteen for the latter). Second, the Koran considers that the text revealed to Muhammad was already existing "in the psalms of the ancients" (26:196), an allusion to biblical writings.

We may provide another justification for the intuition of Brother Bord when the Koran returns to the theme treated in verses 3 and 4 of the same first psalm that inspired the Fatiha: "3) [He] is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4) Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away." The Koran reprises the same parable: "Do you not see how God had given this parable: a good word is like a good tree, whose root is firm and its branches are in the sky; it yields its fruits in every season.... But an evil word is like an evil tree torn out of the earth and shorn of all its roots. God will strengthen the faithful with His steadfast Word, both in this life and in the life to come. He leads the wrongdoers astray. God accomplishes what He pleases" (14:24-27). It is unnecessary to insist here on a striking similarity between the two parables, down to the details. This last Koranic verse takes up the theme of straying (dalla) that we find mentioned at the end of the Fatiha-an additional support for the hypothesis of a redactional link between the latter and the first psalm.

But it is not only biblical literature that furnished redactional elements to the Koran. Let us mention here the discovery made by Isidore Levy3 of the affinity that exists between the Koranic story of the legend of the Seven Sleepers4 and the story of the end of Pandavas in the next to last episode of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.5 Jean Lambert, who has compared these two stories in more detail, has highlighted their astonishing similarity.' It is likely this epic Indian story was transmitted through Persia, only later to find itself in the hands of Arab scribal circles.

It is on the theological level that the Koran brings the clearest denial of the myth of the literal "authenticity" of the revealed text, since, as we have seen, the revealed text is presented as a product derived from an original preserved on a heavenly tablet; thus it is not the authentic text. Between the two, there is the work of the prophetic and scribal transmitters who were charged with putting the text at the disposal of humans. Humankind does not receive the divine message contained in the kitab except in the form of the qur'an, that is to say, in the form of a liturgical lesson or recitation. The authenticity of the Koran does not reside in its identity with the original, but only in the fact that it is a discourse inspired in an authentic messenger.

In effect, the nature of the prophetic function shows us that the message to be transmitted is only rarely a solemn announcement or a declaration of principles, the sort of thing that would legitimately find a place in a heavenly tablet. In fact, the transmitted material often concerns particular affairs, issues often relating to situations that are contingent and specific to the Prophet or to the community. In short, Koranic discourse is essentially engaged-politically, polemically, and pedagogically but it is only very marginally normative in the sense that it enunciates norms or laws that must be respected and that refer back to an original text, as is the case with the Mosaic law inscribed on the stone tablets. In fact, the conserved heavenly tablet constitutes a guarantee of the authenticity of the prophetic apostolate and of the spirit of the message to be transmitted, but not of its letter. This is what allows God to change-or to abrogate-the oracular signs transmitted by the Prophet without thereby betraying the heavenly tablet.

It is clear, in these conditions, that the words revealed to Muhammad are not the result of some dictation of the original words, but of a more complex process of wahy, or "inspiration." Arthur Jeffery has studied the nature of this phenomenon through the two most technically important Koranic terms, tanzil (descent) and wahy, which are in practice interchangeable.7 The notion of tanzil was current in the ancient Orient as it was in the biblical world, designating the mode of transmitting or moving the spirit of revelation from on high to down below. The word wahy, which is found in the Ethiopian term wahaya, signifies precisely "to indicate, to set in motion, to push, to incite, to inspire." The idea of dictation is absent from the Koran and from ancient or biblical cultures. Generally, it is a spirit "inspired" (42:52) in the Prophet that "reveals" a discourse to him-of course, the best one that can be conceived.

In a previous book, I have given the example of the Babylonian poem "Erra/Nergal," where a scribe named Kabti-ilani-Marduk plays the prophetic role of an inspired person who, having had a vision in the night, was able to "compose" a poem under the inspiration of the god Ishum to honor the god Erra. Ishum is the equivalent of the archangel Gabriel, since he is the inspirational spirit delegated by his tutelary god Erra. Kabti-ilani-Marduk tells us that as soon as he awoke, he "composed" the poem in such a way that he "omitted nothing of it, nor added a single line!"8 We see here the duality of the act of revealed writing: a text written by a scribe who knew it by means of inspiration and who, in order to justify the divine character of this "composition," attributes its merit to the inspiring genius down to each comma.

The Koran obeys this way of transmitting revelation, but without making the claim for a literal fidelity-a claim that arises more from apologetics than from the realm of historical truth. What is important is that the text is revealed, never dictated, and done so through a chain of transmitters that ends with the scribe, who takes on the "composition" of the text and its shaping into form. This is the function assumed by the "secretaries" of Muhammad who were responsible for the redaction of the Koran.

Of course, the Tradition that gives us information about these scribes has worked hard to make us believe that they merely wrote under the Prophet's dictation. And so it nabs some dishonest secretaries who took malicious pleasure in writing according to their own inspiration: we are told that when they die, the earth refuses to receive them. In fact, these edifying stories, associated with the thesis clearly admitted by Tradition of a revelation according to the spirit and not according to the letter, are probably reconstructions of older stories that did acknowledge the active and normalized role of scribes in the "composition" of the Koran. These scribes were primarily entrusted with elaborating a style in accordance with the genre of the oracle, with its preambles and closing and doxological formulas. They also had to identify other genres, such as stories, parables, legal stipulations, prayers, glorification of the divine, and so on, by employing particular stylistic norms drawn in part from sectarian religious communities.