Discussing/Subverting Paul: Polemical Re-readings and Competing Supersessionist Misreadings of Pauline Inclusivism in Late Antiquity: A Case Study on the Apocalypse of Abraham, Justin Martyr, and the Qur'ān [2014] / Conference Paper – Book Chapter

DISCUSSING/SUBVERTING PAUL POLEMICAL RE-READINGS AND COMPETING SUPERSESSIONIST MISREADINGS OF PAULINE INCLUSIVISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY – A CASE STUDY ON THE APOCALYPSE OF ABRAHAM, JUSTIN MARTYR, AND THE QUR’ĀN Carlos A. Segovia Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus, Spain segoviamail@gmail.com My purpose in this paper is to explore the negative of the image we are trying to build. For Paul was often read in antiquity as no longer being a Second-Temple Jew. More specifically, Paul’s Abrahamic argument in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, which he originally put forward to substantiate his core claim to the inclusion of the gentiles in God’s people, was polemically reworked and reframed in a number of texts, both Christian and Muslim (or rather, proto-Muslim), to substantiate the opposite claim, namely: that Israel had been excluded from God’s salvation plan. In broad terms this is well known to everyone, at least as regards the Christian supersessionist reworking(s) of Paul’s argument. So I will focused my paper on its less-known Quranic (or proto-Quranic) reworking. Additionally I will tried to show that the Quranic supersessionist reworking of Paul’s argument, which heretofore has not been sufficiently analysed, paradoxically drew on its polemical rereading within post-70 Judaism – to which the Apocalypse of Abraham witnesses in my view – whilst simultaneously building on the traditional Christian distortion of Paul’s message. Therefore, I think it is legitimate to speak of different cultural contexts that produced various intertextual re-workings of Paul’s Abrahamic argument ranging from polemical re-readings to supersessionist misreadings in early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, respectively; re-workings whose fascinating interconnections should be examined afresh if we want to understand why and how Paul’s message came to be appropriated and subverted, and thereby neglected as a 1st-century Jewish conceptual construct that only very recently we have started to unravel by questioning its ongoing traditional misrepresentation – to which, in short, I hope to have added here a new, though seldom explored, (inter)textual site: Muslim scripture. Accordingly, I will undertake a symptomatic and intertextual rereading of several Quranic verses, including v. 124 in sūrat al-baqara and v. 5 in sūrat al-qaṣaṣ, where Abraham is introduced as a “guide” and every guide’s followers labeled as “heirs,” and vv. 1-56 in sūrat al-wāqi‘a, which in turn display the very same spatial, numerical, and axiological distinctions set forth in the vision contained in chs. 21–2 of ApAb, but polemically contend that God’s people is to be identified with the ‘foremost’ in faith and monotheism, not with Israel. Moreover, I suggest this may contribute to explain the reason why the Quranic prophet is described in the Qur’ān as al-rasūl/al-nabī al-ummī, #1 i.e. “the apostle/prophet to the gentiles,” in a time when the construction of a new ethnic/cultic category (the “Arabs/Muslims”) was at stake. 1. Religious identity making builds upon a number of peculiar power/knowledge strategies that tend both to emphasise distinctiveness as the outcome of an exceptional founding event and to heighten a group’s sense of uniqueness and stability. Selective remembering of the past, mythical and hyperbolic reworking of elusive historical data, ethnic and genealogical self-legitimation, artificial distinction between sameness and otherness and more or less systematic historisation of dogma conspire to inscribe religious renewal as divinely sanctioned rather than politically achieved due to more mundane reasons – and thus contribute to (re)present self-identity as an unproblematic notion. Likewise adaptation of previous textual materials in a polemical fashion often plays a particularly significant role therein and stands as a means to obliquely but effectively enhance identity claims. My purpose here is to briefly analyse one of such strategies, namely Paul’s Abrahamic argument in Rom 4 and Gal 3, and to examine the different ways in which it was polemically reworked, reshaped and reframed in post-70 Judaism, early Christianity and proto-Islam so as to create, validate and strengthen religious in-group/out-group discourse. 2. In Gal 3 and Rom 4, Paul (re)uses the story of Abraham (against those fellow Jews and/or proselytes who claimed that belonging to the γένος of Abraham was “characterized and conditioned by observance of the Mosaic law”?)1 to provide his Gentile audience with an authoritative (counter-)model for inclusion in the people of God. As Caroline Johnson Hodge puts it, Paul’s major argument in both sections is that “righteousness before the God of Israel depends not on practicing the Law . . . but on the faithful actions of Abraham and Christ and God’s resulting promises of blessed descendants.”2 In other words – she adds – “Paul employs the story of Abraham as a model to illustrate how the God of Israel works in the world, a model which operates within the logic of patrilineal descent: he chooses a faithful person to receive his blessings and pass them on to future generations. . . . For Abraham, this meant that life would come to his 1 Birgit van der Lans, “Belonging to Abraham’s Kin: Genealogical Appeals to Abraham as a Possible Background for Paul’s Abrahamic Argument,” in Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites, ed. Martin Goodman, George H. van Kooten, and Jaques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten (TBN 13; Leiden and Boston: Brill) 312. On proselytes as Paul’s eventual opponents in Galatia see Mark D. Nanos The Irony of Galatinas: Paul’s Letter in First Century Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002) 193-283. I find Nanos’s reasoning most compelling; for who else could be “jealous” of Paul’s Gentile converts (notice the wording in Gal 4:17; 6:12-3)? 2 Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 86. #2 seed and to the womb of Sarah, despite their old age. For Christ, this meant that peoples who had previously been alien to the God of Israel would become adopted sons. Abraham’s faithfulness resulted in the guarantee that God’s promise would come to all his descendants, both Jews and Gentiles. Christ’s faithfulness implements this promise for the Gentiles.”3 This new reading of Paul’s Abrahamic argument challenges both the traditional interpretation of the Apostle to the nations and the so-called “new perspective on Paul.” For as I have elsewhere argued Paul’s views on Gentile inclusion are quite well-rooted in Jewish tradition.4 Moreover Paul’s own explicit claims that God’s election of Israel is irrevocable (Rom 11:1, 29) and that he has only been commissioned to bring the Gentiles through Christ into God’s allegiance (15:16, 18) are easier to understand in light of this new reading.5 None the less several late-antique Christian authors reframed Paul’s aforementioned argument in order to completely subvert its inclusive scope by explicitly transforming Gentile inclusion into Jewish exclusion from God’s people; thereby Rom 4 and Gal 3 became the cornerstone of Christian supersessionism and a major topos in Christian anti-Jewish controversy, as shown by the works of Barnabas, Aristides, and Justin Martyr. In addition the author of the Apocalypse of Abraham, a Jewish pseudepigraphon written in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, seems to argue with Paul by reusing Abraham’s story in a way that implicitly minimises the significance of Gentile inclusion, thus emphasising Israel’s election and physical descent from Abraham against Paul’s universalistic claims. In short, supersessionist misreadings and polemical re-readings of Paul’s Abrahamic argument produced new interpretations and textual adaptations of the story about Abraham and the Nations in late antiquity.6 Occasionally, however, such reinterpretations intertwined with one another; and strangely enough they coalesced to produce a different kind of supersessionism which opposed both Judaism (initially) and (later) Christianity. In what follows I shall try to reread some excerpts from the Apocalypse of Abraham, Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, and the Qur’ān in light of this preliminary observations. 3 Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 91. 4 Carlos A. Segovia, Por una interpretación no cristiana de Pablo de Tarso: El redescubrimiento contemporáneo de un judío mesiánico [A Non-Christian Interpretation of the Apostle to the Nations: Rereading Paul as a Messianic Jew] (published online by the author, iTunes Store, 2013) 90-106. See also Terence L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007). 5 On whose implications and context see now Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). See also Magnus Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul: A Student’s Guide to Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009). On the politically subversive aspect of Paul’s message to the nations see Neil Elliot, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (PCC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008); Davina Lopez, Apostle to the Conquered: Reimagining Paul’s Mission (PCC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008); Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (PCC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). 6 On its progressive decline within Rabbinic Judaism see Moshe Lavee, “Converting the Missionary Image of Abraham: Rabbinic Traditions Migrating from the Land of Israel to Babylon,” in Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites, ed. Martin Goodman, George H. van Kooten, and Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, 203-22. #3 3. ApAb – which is only extant in Church Slavonic after a Greek text very likely made from a now lost Hebrew (or, less probably, Palestinian Aramaic) original – divides into to two main, perhaps once independent, sections: (1) chs. 1–8, which deal with Abraham’s conversion to monotheism, and (2) chs. 9– 31, which focus primarily on Abraham’s ascent to heaven and on the visions of the cosmos and of the future of mankind that he is granted there.7 Its anonymous author wrote in the decades following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Like the authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, s/he aimed at reflecting upon the causes of so profound a crisis and recalled Israel’s pre-Mosaic founding myth (i.e. Abraham’s election) to give new hope to Israel and to help her overcome the present evil age. His/her reasoning goes as follows: Abraham had searched for God and had in fact become God’s “friend.” An angel called Yahoel had helped him to escape from Azazel (the Prince of darkness who had tried to dissuade him from offering sacrifices to God) and had later assisted him in his heavenly journey. Once in heaven Abraham sees the divine throne, the firmaments and the earth, and inquires God about the presence of evil on earth. He is taught about the history of God’s people and about what has gone wrong with them: they have gone astray because they have fallen to idolatric practices.8 That is why their Temple has finally been destroyed by the idolatrous Gentiles, who, all this notwithstanding, will be delivered to eternal punishment by God’s Messiah in due time. Then too Israel will be gathered from the nations and will be restored. So there is new hope for Israel, provided she does not err again in cultic matters. In short, Abraham’s faithfulness is used by the author or ApAb as re-founding myth to comfort Israel (i.e. Abraham’s descendants) in times of sorrow. However their obvious differences in genre, content, and purpose, Gal 3, Rom 4, and ApAb are unique amongst the Jewish writings from the Second Temple period and its immediate aftermath in that they both appeal to Abraham as the sole forefather of the faithful. This alone suffices to point out a likely thematic relationship between the two texts. Yet whilst in Gal 3 and Rom 4 Paul’s Abrahamic argument entails a model for Gentile inclusion, as I have formerly argued, in ApAb Abraham’s model works for Israel alone. For although those lacking Abrahamic kinship are there divided into wicked and righteous people (22:4), the righteous amongst them cannot be compared to Abraham’s descendants, who have been set apart for God (22:5). To put it differently: only Israel can be legitimately called “God’s people” (22:5) – i.e. Gentiles should not regard themselves as Abraham’s true sons/heirs. Whilst not denying righteousness and redemption to at least some Gentiles, this overtly contrasts with Paul’s claims about their inclusion in the people of God – as also with his view on Israel’s sanctity/ distinctiveness but not radical separateness. Hence in my view it would not be too ventured to affirm 7 On ApAb, its date, context, contents, versions, and manuscript witnesses, see Alexander Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (SBLTCS V.3; Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004) 1-3; George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 285-8. 8 ApAb explicitly recalls Manasseh’s sins (2 Kgs 21:2-7; 2 Chr 33:2-7). Cf. 2 Kgs 21:10-5, whose author points to Manasseh’s defilement of the Temple cult as the cause of the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. #4 that the author of ApAb probably was acquainted with Paul’s message, which urged by the tragic events that had led to Israel’s destruction a few decades earlier and trying to give her new hope by emphasising her special status before God, he tacitly intended to oppose. After all it is hard to imagine Paul’s message as an isolated phenomenon unable to attract the attention and eventual criticism of his fellow Jews, albeit hitherto most scholars have looked at it as though it went virtually unnoticed amongst his Jewish contemporaries. Elsewhere I have tried to show that a careful “symptomatic” rereading of 4 Ezra 8:32, 36, and Rom 4:5; 5:6, 10 may in fact lead to the opposite conclusion.9 Perhaps the same logic ought to be applied – in spite that it cannot be fully proved – here. 4. New though obviously different polemical readings of Paul’s Abrahamic argument were produced within the earliest Gentile-Christian communities as well. Drawing on it and seemingly following the footsteps of the intra-Jewish controversy set forth in the Fourth Gospel – which presents the Johannine community as the genuine children of Abraham – two significant Gentile-Christian texts written prior to Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, namely the Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st–early 2nd century) and the Apology of Aristides (early 2nd century), introduce Abraham either as a Christian himself (Barnabas) or else above all as the spiritual forefather of the Gentile Christ-believers (Aristides), hence implicitly downplaying Israel’s Abrahamic filiation. Justin goes even further: he argues that, contrary to what they claim, the Jews must not be regarded as Abraham’s true children, and thus expressly “renders [them] orphaned”:10 “we, who have been led to God through this crucified Christ are the true spiritual Israel and the descendants (γένος) of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, who, though uncircumcised, was approved and blessed by God because of his faith,” he writes (Dial. 11.5) therefore transforming Paul’s original concern for Gentile inclusion into the banner of Jewish exclusion from the people of God – or almost.11 The story of early Christian supersessionism is, of course, well documented.12 And Justin Martyr’s contribution to it is no mystery, as it was he who actually coined the expression verus Israel as 9 Carlos A. Segovia, “Some Brief Suggestions for a Symptomatic Rereading of 4 Ezra in Light of P. Sacchi’s and E. P. Sanders’s Contributions to the Study of Early Judaism, with a Final Note on the Hodayot from Qumran and Paul,” paper presented to the 6th Enoch Seminar: “2 Baruch - 4 Ezra: 1st Century Jewish Apocalypticism” (Milan; June 26–July 1, 2011). 10 Jeffrey S. Siker, Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early Christian Controversy (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991) 163. Since they only mention Abraham occasionally I will not analyse here the two other primary sources studied by Siker, i.e. Ignatius’s Epistle to the Philadelphians and the Gospel of Philip, which therefore are of little relevance to this survey. 11 Cf. e.g. Dial. 119.6; 120.2, on which see also Denise Kimber Buell, Why this New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) 105-6. 12 See for an overview Michael J. Vlach The Church as a Replacement of Israel: An Analysis of Supersessionism (EI 2; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009); Terence L. Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Interpretations (London: SPCK, 2010). #5 a signifier for the Church.13 On the other hand it is interesting to note that, quite probably, Justin’s biased reading of Gal 3 and Rom 4 is dependent upon a likewise distorted reading of Gal 6:15-16 (where Paul simply states that in spite of their eventual ethnic differences Christ-believers form a single community before God [v. 15], and then blesses both them and Israel [v. 16]),14 and Rom 9:6 (where albeit somewhat ambiguously Paul merely seems to suggests, within the overall argument of chs. 9–11, that those fellow Jews who refuse to admit the arrival of the messianic age and the need to carry out a mission to the Gentiles in order to facilitate their ingathering refuse to fulfil Israel’s role as ‘light to the nations’ and cannot be counted, therefore, amongst the spiritual leaders of Israel, a concept that Paul now somehow expands to include the faithful gentiles as well,15 thus emphasising the crucial role played by God’s promise in the formation of all new lineages [vv. 8-9]).16 Be that as it may Justin clearly betrays Paul’s explicit warning against Gentile boasting in Rom 9:4; 11:1, 18, 26, 29. Ultimately Paul’s Abrahamic argument made good sense in the Second Temple period; for Jerusalem was physically there to eventually open its gates to the Gentiles. After the destruction of the city in 68–70 and 132–5 CE, however, the ingathering of the nations became a difficult task to fulfil. Furthermore those who Paul invited to join Israel became Israel’s enemies. There is, to be sure, something truly awkward in this! Yet one must understand that Paul’s mission presented the risk of requiring too little from its addressees; that many Gentile-Christians feared to self-represent themselves as philo-Jews in the face of Rome’s overweening state power, given that Rome had successfully defeated two major consecutive Jewish revolts; and that Jews, in turn, felt the need to struggle for their own identity by increasingly differentiating themselves from the Christians. As Daniel Boyarin has pretty thoroughly shown, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity only emerged as two separate religions around the 5th century.17 Yet hostilities on both sides commenced very early due to political reasons, and Paul’s message was explicitly transformed into the keystone of the Church’s supersessionist claims, which would later 13 On Justin, his world, writings, tentative project, and conceptual complexities, see Judith L. Lieu, Image & Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996); William Horbury, Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998); Timothy J. Horner, Listening to Trypho: Justin Martyr’s Dialogue Reconsidered (CBET; Leuven: Peeters, 2001); Tessa Rajak, “Talking at Trypho: Christian Apologetic as Anti-Judaism in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew” (1999), in idem, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (AGAJU 48; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001) 511-33; David Rokéah, Justin Martyr and the Jews (JCP 5; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001); and especially Boyarin Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (DRLAR; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and Buell, Why this New Race? 14 That is, he does not make Christ-believers “the Israel of God” (ΙΣΡΑΗΛ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ). See Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,1987; reprint. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006) 90. 15 Hence the assertion in v. 6b: ΟΥ ΓΑΡ ΠΑΝΤΕΣ ΟΙ ΕΣ ΙΣΡΑΗΛ ΟΥΤΟΙ ΙΣΡΑΗΛ; . . . ‘Ισραιλîται. in several mss. from the 6th century onwards (see Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary [ed. Eldon J. Epp; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007] 570). Cf. the “remnant” motif in 11:5. 16 On the overall argument of Rom 9–11 see Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) 285-316. 17 Boyarin, Border Lines. #6 play a heretofore overlooked but remarkable role in the shaping of Islamic supersessionism, as well. I should now like to draw your attention to this intriguing point. 5. The 5th-century Church historian Sozomen (EH 375) witnesses to the influence that the Jews exerted upon certain pre-Islamic Arabs, who were convinced by them of their Abrahamic lineage.18 In turn Islam contributed to further develop that very notion amongst the Arabs of late Antiquity – and beyond. As it is well known, the Qur’ān makes Abraham the father of the only true religion that deserves such name: Islam. Accordingly early Muslim authors made Abraham Muḥammad’s spiritual forebear – and in fact his sole complete prophetic model.19 Yet there is much more behind the Quranic and early Islamic reuse of Abrahamic motifs and legends, which has been studied in recent years by Heribert Busse (1988),20 Reuven Firestone (1990),21 Gerald Hawting (1999, 2010),22 François de Blois (2002),23 Ro- 18 On the rather uncertain pre-Islamic identity and history of the Arabs see Jan Retsö, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). On Sozomen see Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) 161. 19 On the making of the Islamic prophet see Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims – A Textual Analysis (SLAEI 5. Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1995); John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (LOS; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; reprint. with a foreword, translations and expanded notes by Andrew Rippin [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004]) 53-84; Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginnings of Islam (DRLAR. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Carlos A. Segovia, The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet: A Study of Intertextuality and Religious Identity Formation in Late Antiquity (JCIT 4; Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2015). 20 Heribert Busse, Die theologische Beziehungen des Islams zu Judentum und Christentum: Grundlagen des Dialogs im Koran und die gegenwärtige Situation (G 72; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988). 21 Reuven Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 22 Gerald R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (CSIC; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 23 François de Blois, “Naṣrānī (Ναζωραΐος) and ḥanīf (’εθνικός): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and Islam.” Bulletin of SOAS 65 (2002): 1-30. #7 berto Tottoli (2002),24 Brian Hauglid (2003),25 Shari Lowin (2006),26 Friedmann Eißler (2009),27 and Gabriel Reynolds (2012b).28 It must be stressed, however, that these authors have mainly explored the Biblical, Rabbinic, and Christian precedents of such early Islamic and/or proto-Islamic traditions. Albeit somewhat disappointing, this is just normal. When examining the Jewish and Christian connections – I would prefer to say the Judaeo-Christian setting – of early Islam, scholars of Islamic origins have seldom paid enough attention to the OT Pseudepigrapha. In fact an analysis of the OT pseudepigraphic subtexts of the Qur’ān is still wanting. This does not only apply to the Qur’ān as a whole, but to its Abrahamic and cryptoAbrahamic legends and motifs as well, although Geneviève Gobillot has rightly emphasised the role presumably played by ApAb and by the Testament of Abraham in the composition of several key-passages of the Qur’ān (e.g. 17:1, 5, 7; 20:133; 53:33-41; 87:16-9)29 and in the development of some equally significant Muhammadan legends (including Muḥammad’s celestial journey). In the next section I will try to offer an intertextual approach to a passage in the Qur’ān (namely, Q 56.1-56) which I will read in light of a strikingly similar passage contained in ApAb that displays the very same spatial, numerical, and axiological distinctions. Then I will try to show that ApAb may have played, together with Rom 4 and/or Gal 3, a significant role in the founding myth of Islam, which, I shall argue, is also to be envisaged as a supersessionist myth.30 6. 24 Roberto Tottoli, The Biblical Prophets in the Qur’ān and Muslim Literature (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002). 25 Brian M. Hauglid, “On the Early Life of Abraham: Biblical and Qur’ānic Intertextuality and the Anticipation of Muḥammad,” in Bible and Qur’ān: Essays in Scriptural Intertextuality, ed. John C. Reeves (SBLSS 24; Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003) 87-105. 26 Shari L. Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (IHCST 65; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006). 27 Friedmann Eißler, “Abraham im Islam,” in Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, ed. Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eissler (Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) 116-88. 28 Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext (RSQ; London and New York: Routledge, 2012). 29 Geneviève Gobillot, “Apocryphes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament,” in Dictionnaire du Coran, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Paris: Robert Lafont, 2007) 58-61. See however my remarks on Gobillot’s cross-references, which at times fail to be exact, in Carlos A. Segovia, “Thematic and Structural Affinities between 1 Enoch and the Qur’ān: A Contribution to the Study of the Judaeo-Christian Apocalyptic Setting of the Early Islamic Faith,” in The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Various Other Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough, ed. Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié (OJC 3; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012) 237-8 n. 41. 30 A more detailed study of such parallels can be found in Carlos A. Segovia, “‘Those on the Right’ and ‘Those on the Left’: Rereading Qur’ān 56:1-56 (and the Founding Myth of Islam) in Light of Apocalypse of Abraham 21–2,” Studia Islamica. Forthcoming. #8 Chapter 56 of the Qur’ān (i.e. sūrat al-wāqi‘a) opens with an announcement of the end of time and with a vision of the cosmic events that will follow (56:1-6). As I have elsewhere argued,31 such vision resembles the one contained in ApAb 21:4g, which presents similar though not identical cosmic traits. Then we read in that in that day mankind will be divided into “three groups” (56:7): (a) some will be placed “on the right” (56:8) = Q G1; (b) some will be placed “on the left” (56:9) = Q G2; (c) in addition we are told that there shall be a third group different both from the group “on the right” and the group “on the left”: “the foremost” (al-šābiqūn) in faith and monotheism, who will stand “near to God” (56.10-1) = Q G3. The Quranic text goes on to describe the fate of each group: the fate of the “foremost” (56:12-26) and the fate of the righteous standing “on the right” side (56:27-40), who shall all enter Paradise, is mentioned in the first place; then we are told of the fate of the wicked standing “on the left” side (56”41-56), who shall be thrown to the Gehenna. This clearly parallels the account in ApAb 21:7 and 22:1, 3-5, where we find a similar picture and a similar group division: 21:7 22:1 22:3 22:4 22:5 . . . I saw there a great crowd of men, and women, and children, and half of them <on the right side of the portrayal, and half of them> on the left side of the portrayal. ... And I said, “Eternal Mighty One! What is this picture of creation?” ... . . . “ . . . Who are the people in the picture on this side and on that?” And he said to me, “These who are on the left side are a multitude of tribes who were before and who are destined to be after you: some for judgment and justice, and others for revenge and perdition at the end of the age. Those on the right side of the picture are the people set apart for me of the people [that are] with Azazel. These are the ones I have destined to be born of you and to be called my people.”32 Some brief remarks might prove useful at this point: a. The Quranic narrative follows the spatial order provided in ApAb 21:7 (right to left) instead of the one provided in ApAb 22:4-5 (left to right). b. Those placed “on the left side” in ApAb (including both the “righteous” and the “wicked”) are divided in the Qur’ān into two separate groups: Q G1 and Q G2, which stand “on the right” side and “on the left” side of the picture, respectively. c. In spite of this spatial shift, the twofold order present in ApAb 22:4 is well preserved. 31 See once more Segovia “‘Those on the Right’ and ‘Those on the Left.’” 32 Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 26-7. #9 d. At the same time those labelled in ApAb 22:5 as “God’s chosen people” are set apart as Q G3. Their designation is quite similar in both texts: they are said to be “those set apart for God” (ApAb 22:5a), ‘God’s chosen people’ (ApAb 22:5c), and those brought “near to God” (Q 56:11). And interestingly enough they close the list of the different kinds of people that each text mentions. e. As in ApAb 21:7 and later in ApAb 22:5 there is a big line that makes such people (the “foremost,” i.e. God’s chosen ones) stand apart from everyone else. f. Yet whilst in ApAb God’s chosen ones are said to be Abraham descendants, the Qur’ān does not further qualify them in any other way: they are simply said to be God’s chosen ones, though we later read that many amongst the “older people” and only few amongst the ‘later people’ will join such group (56:13-4; cf. ApAb 22:4a, where a somewhat different chronological distinction is also made). I shall examine this rather rough contrast in the next section. g. The Quranic account about fate of each group also parallels, and expands, ApAb 22:4b. h. Finally it should also be noticed that – if we leave aside ApAb 21:7 – both texts begin by questioning about the identity of the groups standing on the right side and on the left side of the picture: in ApAb 22:3 it is Abraham who asks the question about their identity. In the Quranic text the question is outlined four times, twice apropos those standing “on the right” (56:8, 27) and twice apropos those standing “on the left” (56:9, 41); without anyone asking such question, however, for the Qur’ān puts it forth as an impersonal question addressed to its readers, just as the whole vision is. In spite of their differences a similar scheme can therefore be found in both texts: ApAb Q the righteous on the left on the right the wicked on the left on the left on the right, apart from everyone else apart from everyone else God’s chosen ones It goes without saying that the central image in them – i.e. the opposition between the right and the left side – is relatively frequent in early Jewish and Christian imagery. Yet to my knowledge it is only applied to the fate of the righteous and the wicked in ApAb, the apocryphal Acts of John (2nd half of the 2nd century CE), and the Qur’ān. The author of the Acts of John used it, however, in a narrower and metaphoric way to merely announce that those on the right side would stand fast and those on the #10 left side would be removed in the end of time (114). Unless I am mistaken, therefore, the only authoritative and extensive parallel to the Quranic story is to be found in ApAb. 7. To sum up: in the Qur’ān “God’s chosen ones” are transformed from Abraham’s carnal descendants via Isaac (i.e. from Israel) into a new, purely spiritual group – “the foremost” in faith and monotheism. Cf. also Q 2:135 and 3:67, were Abraham is presented as a ‫ ﺣﻨﻴﻒ‬ḥanīf in the sense that he’s neither a Jew nor a Christian (which obviously adds something to his simpler presentation as just a ḥanīf in 3:67, 95: 4:125; 6:79; 6:161; 16:120, 123), on the one hand, and Q 2:124, on the other hand. For even if in the latter case he is not explicitly described as a ḥanīf, he is implicitly described as the father of a people that can no longer be equated with his own carnal descendants (the Jews). Now, this is but the typically Christian anti-Jewish supersessionist argument (on which see Section 2 above). To be sure, the Church intended to replace Israel, whereas Muslims regard themselves as being elder than the Israelites (and the Christians) in matters of faith due to their presumed Abrahamic (i.e. pre-Mosaic) lineage. If, however, one brackets this latter conviction as a mere self-legitimising claim one may take the founding myth of Islam to be a supersessionist myth as well: a new supersessionist myth which was polemically read backwards as a restoration myth.33 Quite probably, however, the Qur’ān, or at least its pre-canonical Grundschriften,34 belong to an earlier chapter in that development – a chapter that should be labelled as “proto-Islamic” rather than Islamic, i.e. a chapter prior to the establishment of Islam as (the referent of) a new religious (id)entity.35 Now, which was the role played by ApAb in the early proto-Islamic shaping of such myth? In my view ApAb provided the editors of the Quranic text – or its Grundschiften – the very core of the 33 On the supersessionist nature of the founding myth of Islam see Camila Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (IPTS 22; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1996) 192-3; John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978; reprint. with a foreword, translations and expanded notes by Gerald R. Hawting [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006]) 109ff.; Guillaume Dye, “La théologie de la substitution du point du vue de l’islam,” in Judaïsme, christianisme, islam: le judaïsme entre “théologie de la substitution” et “théologie de la falsification,” ed. Thomas Gergely (Brussels: Didier Devillez EME, 2010), 83-103; Geneviève Gobillot, “Des textes pseudo clémentines à la mystique juive des premières siècles et du Sinaï à Ma’rib. Quelques coïncidences entre contexte culturel et losalisation géographique dans le Coran,” in The Coming of the Comforter, ed. Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié, 8ff.; Aaron W. Hughes, Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) 39ff. 34 On which see Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 1, 12, 20ff., 33-52. See also Manfred Kropp, ed., Results of Contemporary Research on the Qur’ān: The Question of a Historio-Critical Text of the Qur’ān (BTS 100; Beirut and Wurzburg: OrientInstitut Beirut and Ergon Verlag, 2007); Gabriel Said Reynolds, ed., The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context (RSQ; London and New York: Routledge, 2008). 35 Which, in my view, took place around the turn of the 8th century under ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwān’s rule; see my essay “Identity Politics and Scholarship in the Study of Islamic Origins: The Inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock as a Test Case,” in Identity, Politics, and Scholarship: The Study of Islam and the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Sheffield, UK, and Bristol, CT: Equinox. Forthcoming). #11 myth itself. It also provided them its precise apocalyptical form. And, once readapted, it offered them a place to inscribe their ideological construction. It provided them, quite possibly together with Rom 4 and/or Gal 3, the core of the myth itself; for there is no other text – either Jewish or Christian – that presents Abraham as the sole forefather of the faithful. To be sure, ApAb would hardly have had such a great impact upon them had they not be formerly inclined to read it in that way. But it seems safe to deduce that the traditional Christian interpretation of Rom 4 and Gal 3 was already at hand to instruct them. There is, of course, no way to prove this. Yet such hypothesis need not be a priori discarded in my opinion, as there is no better one that helps us make sense of why the editors of the Quranic text used the Abraham story as they did. Furthermore, Abraham’s designation as “guide” (‫ ﺇﻣﺎﻡ‬imām) in Q 2:124 might reflect an adaptation of his role as “father” of the faithful regardless of their ethnicity in Rom 4. Cf. the relationship suggested in Q 28:5 between “leaders” (‫ ﺃﺋ ّﻤﺔ‬a’imma) and “heirs” (‫ ﻭﺍﺭﺛﻮﻥ‬wāriṯūn). Besides, the rather unclear distinction between Q G1 and Q G3 could perhaps be reminiscent of that found in Rom 4:11-2, where the difference between groups 1 (“all who have faith”) and 3 (“those who walk in . . . faith”) is likewise unclear in my view.36 Finally, if Guillaume Dye is correct about the Christian liturgical background of Q 19:1-6337 – and I take it he is – then it is clear that the editors of the Qur’ān – or its Grundschriften – knew of Gal 3 and were moreover familiar with its traditional Christian reading; I would like to thank him for kindly drawing my attention to this issue.38 Be that as it may, it is clear that ApAb functioned as a subtext for them and as a source for – perhaps even as the main source of – their own founding myth. As said above ApAb also provided the myth its precise apocalyptic form, which is in fact lacking both in Rom 4 and Gal 3. The Qur’ān is surely more than an apocalypse, but if it may also be defined as an apocalypse – and I think it should due to the revelatory and eschatological concerns that lie at its very centre – I see it as an apocalypse entirely based upon ApAb. For all that we can found in the Qur’ān (its non-negotiable monotheistic claims and polemics, which are in fact traced back to Abraham; its many allusions to a revelation received from above whose first witness was Abraham; the announcement of God’s judgment as inevitable and the distinction between Abraham’s followers and everyone else in both the present and the future life, etc.) is already present in AbAb. At first sight, on the other hand, it would appear that the aforementioned mainstream Christian interpretation of Rom 4 and Gal 3 contributed to shape in some way the supersessionist framework of the new myth. Moreover the Quranic reuse of ApAb 22:5 shows that such supersessionist framework, 36 See James Swetnam “The Curious Crux at Romans 4:12,” Biblica 61 (1980): 110-5; Maria Neubrand, Abraham, Vater von Juden und Nichtjuden: Eine exegetische Studie zu Rom 4 (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1997) 234-ss.; Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary. Ed. E. J. Epp (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 319-21. 37 Guillaume Dye, “Lieux saints communs, partagés ou confiqués: aux sources de quelques pericopes coraniques (Q 19:1-63),” in Partage du sacré: transferts, dévotions mixtes, rivalités interconfessionnelles, ed. Isabelle Dépret and Guillaume Dye (Brussels-Fernelmont: EME, 2012) 100. 38 On Paul’s Abrahamic argument in Rom 4 and the early Islamic concept of ḥanīf (pl. ḥunafā’), see also de Blois, “Naṣrānī and ḥanīf,” 16-27. #12 wherever it came from, resulted in a textual adaptation (and corruption) of the contents of the Jewish apocalypse: the Jews are no longer God’s chosen ones (as it was claimed in ApAb 22:5), they have been replaced by the “foremost” in faith and monotheism (Q 56.10). This is the only verse in the Qur’ān where such replacement explicitly takes places. Some may object that there is no true supersessionism in the Qur’ān, that the Qur’ān accepts all prior revelations whilst simultaneously denouncing their intrinsic limitations and their eventual corruption by their own followers.39 The Quranic reuse of ApAb proves that this is not so: the new Umma is expressly said to substitute Israel. But then, it could be legitametelly argued that the “sectarian milieu” out of which Islam emerged was a Christian milieu. Exploring the contour-lines, intellectual background, geographical location, and timeframe of the latter belongs to an altogether different study that I cannot undertake here40. Yet it is fascinating to see that within a single text as yet of unclear provenance, such as the Qur’ān,41 Paul’s Abrahamic argument as reframed by the Church is subliminally (re)used against the Jews in a passage that puts forth a new founding myth that literally draws upon the post-Pauline Jewish discussion of that very argument in ApAb, to which the Quranic myth therefore is fully indebted (!). The quite vexing fact that the apparent distinctiveness of such new myth conceals a Christian reinterpretation of an intra-Jewish argument – as well as the textual corruption of the latter – prevents from assigning too much distinctiveness to the myth itself. Hence my hesitation to label it as Islamic, for there still is nothing especifically Islamic in such myth. Aside: perhaps this could help us understand the reason why the Quranic Prophet is mentioned in the Qur’ān as ‫ ﺍﻟﺮﺳﻮﻝ\ﺍﻟﻨّﺒﻲ ﺍﻷ ّﻣﻲ‬al-rasūl/al-nabī al-ummī (7:157-8; 62:2), i.e. the “Apostle/Prophet to the Gentiles”!42 Bibliography Camila Adang. Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm. IPTS 22. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1996. 39 See e.g. Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2010). 40 I intend to develop this and the preceding section in a future book co-authored with my colleague from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Guillaume Dye. It is provisionally entitled Re-Imagining Islam in the Late 7th century, and a preview of its contents is available at https://www.academia.edu/7050551/Re-Imagining_Islam_in_the_Late_7th_Century_with_Guillaume_Dye_2017_Upcoming_Book. See also Segovia, The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet; idem, “A Messianic Controversy behind the Making of Muḥammad as the Last Prophet?,” paper presented to the 4th Nangeroni Meeting of the Enoch Seminar / 1st Nangeroni Meeting of the Early Islamic Studies Seminar (EISS): “Islam: The Sectarian Milieu of Late Antiquity” (Milan; June 15–19, 2015). 41 On whose elusive origins see once more Wansbrough, Quranic Studies. 42 Cf. the later Muslim polemics against Paul, who came to be regarded by several mediaeval Muslim authors as the corruptor of Christianity; see now Ryan Szpiech, “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) of ‘Juan de Andrés,’” La Corónica 41.1 (2012): 317-43. On the designation of the Quranic prophet as rasūl al-ummī see Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, 23ff. #13 Daniel Boyarin. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. DRLAR. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. 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Guillaume Dye. “La théologie de la substitution du point du vue de l’islam.” In Judaïsme, christianisme, islam: le judaïsme entre “théologie de la substitution” et “théologie de la falsification,” ed. Thomas Gergely, 83-103. Brussels: Didier Devillez EME, 2010. –––– “Lieux saints communs, partagés ou confiqués: aux sources de quelques pericopes coraniques (Q 19:1-63).” In Partage du sacré: transferts, dévotions mixtes, rivalités interconfessionnelles, ed. Isabelle Dépret and Guillaume Dye, 55-121. Brussels-Fernelmont: EME, 2012. Pamela Eisenbaum. Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Friedmann Eißler. “Abraham im Islam.” In Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, ed. Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eissler, 116-88. Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Neil Elliot. The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire. PCC. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. Reuven Firestone. 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