In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqa'i's Bible Treatise.

• Author: Vishanoff, David
• Position: Book review

In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqa'i's Bible Treatise. By WALID A. SALEH. Islamic History and Civilization, 73. Leiden: BRILL, 2008. Pp. viii + 223. $158.

Walid Saleh's careful edition of al-Aqwal al-qawima fi hukm al-naql min al-kutub al-qadima, by the Qur'an commentator Abu l-Hasan Ibrahim b. 'Umar al-Biqa'i (d. 885/1480), overcomes some significant hurdles to establish for the first time a coherent text, following the author's final version while indicating how it differed from earlier drafts. This achievement will enrich scholarship on Muslim uses of the Bible, but should not transform it as dramatically as Saleh hopes. Its principal importance will be to draw attention to al-Biqa'i's commentary on the Qur'an, Nazm al-durar fi tanasub al-ayat wa-l-suwar (Hyderabad, 1976), which al-Aqwal al-qawima defends against al-Biqa'i's critics. In this treatise, al-Biqa'i condemns the motives of those who attacked his commentary, cites scholars who approved of it, and then argues at length that it is permissible to quote from the scriptures of the Jews and Christians, even where their authenticity is uncertain, as long as one does not use them as a basis for religious and legal doctrine. He quotes the views of jurists, and in section six (pp. 99-123) gives a long list of examples of previous scholars who have quoted the Bible, which is valuable as a contribution in its own right to the history of Muslim uses of the Bible. Al-Biqa'i concludes with several extended samples from his commentary, demonstrating his special concern for each verse's relationship to the verses that precede and follow it.

The editor's detailed presentation of his four manuscripts provides an illuminating lesson on both the composition and the editing of Arabic texts, and it justifies his astute decision to use an error-ridden manuscript (Escorial 1539) as his guide to the final structure and content of the treatise, while relying on a much better but disorderly draft manuscript (Dar al-Kutub tafsir 49) for his readings of individual words. The edition retains parts of the draft that were omitted from the final version, but these are placed in brackets, so that the development of the text remains clear. The editor's grasp of the language of the text appears excellent, as far as this reader is able to discern. The type is small for a book of this price, and handles poorly the shadda and the sequence alif lam alif, but there is only one...