The Qur 'an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion.

• Author: Reynolds, Gabriel Said

The Qur 'an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion. By MARK DURIE. Lanham, MD: LEXINGTON BOOKS, 2018. Pp. Ivi + 337. $120.

A central idea in Mark Durie's The Qur 'an and Its Biblical Reflexes is "relexification." As applied to the Quran this idea involves the appearance of biblical forms in the text "with theological content omitted or replaced with Qur'anic Theology" (p. 258). The implication of relexification is that the Quran did not inherit a theological system from the Bible. While it borrowed certain biblical religious terms, the Quran transformed them for the sake of its own theological system, thereby creating new meaning. This newness means that the Quran--and consequently Islam--cannot be thought of as having descended from Judaism or Christianity (or Jewish Christianity). In the conclusion, and after criticizing the ways in which Angelika Neuwirth and this reviewer emphasize religious commonalities between biblical tradition and the Quran, Durie writes

[The Quran] is neither a text subsidiary to the Bible, nor is it to be attached to a genetic "family tree" alongside it. Instead it is a work which marches to the beat of its own theological drum. Drawing extensively on other sources, but not theologically beholden to them, it imposes its distinctive theological frame on everything it repurposes (p. 256). The Qur'an and Its Biblical Reflexes contains six chapters, arranged in two parts. In the first three chapters Durie introduces his principal thesis and then develops a system for rethinking the Quran's chronology independently from the reports of the sTra. In the final three chapters Durie studies biblical "reflexes," that is, those elements of the Quran that have terms or narratives in common with the Bible (but are in fact deployed for a different theological purpose).

In the first part of the book Durie begins by making a case against reading the Quran through the lens of biographical hadith. He notes correctly that there are many quranic passages that do not have an accompanying sabab al-nuzul report, and other passages for which there are contradictory reports. Durie also insists that the geographical setting for the traditional biography of the Prophet can be questioned. As has long been noted, there is no clear evidence for the city of Mecca in pre-Islamic records. In addition, and as Patricia Crone outlines in a 2005 article ("How Did the Quranic Pagans Make a Living?," BSOAS 86: 387-99), the geographical, horticultural, and agricultural references in "Meccan" passages of the Quran do not fit well with the barren city of Mecca.

Durie also contends that there are certain indicators that point to Islam's origins further north. For example, he holds that the sort of natural catastrophes described by the Quran fit better with the Levant and Palestine than with the southern Hijaz. Durie adds that many of the verifiable place names in the Quran, including Thamud, Midian, and Ad, are located to the north of Mecca and Medina (but then it should be noted that Yathrib, Q 33:13, appears in the text). And he contends that certain features of quranic Arabic reflect more the Arabic of the South Levant than that of the Hijaz. For example, the Quran does not rely on case endings for its rhyme; Nabatean Arabic had lost case endings at the time of the Quran's origins. The Quran's rhyme scheme always pairs alif maqsura with alif maqsura and long a///with long...