The rabbânîya, rabbânîyûn in the Koran, an extract from:
Günter Lüling, A Challenge to Islam for Reformation. The
Rediscovery and Reliable Reconstruction of a Comprehensive pre-Islamic
Christian Hymnal hidden in the Koran under earliest Islamic Reinterpretations,
Trad. Text 96,18: sa-nad‘u z-zabâniyata سندع
۱لزّبانية
Trad.Interpret.: We
shall (for our part) call for the bailiffs (of hell) (?). (Rudi Paret)
We shall call the imps
of hell. (Richard Bell)
To this verse Richard Bell gives the
commentary: "Zabâniya,
a word the sense of which is not clear; it is usually taken as denoting the
guards of hell; or the angels which carry off the soul at death." Indeed
it is a curious, even an enigmatic word. According to the Arabian
lexicographers the word zabâniya
is said to be the plural of zibniya, a likewise strange word the significance of which
is paraphrased as "police soldier, watchman". But this explanation
seems to be not so much theory as a flight of the imagination, since according
to the rules of Arabic word formation the word form zabâniya looks exactly like the
formation of the abstract (similar to the English abstract created by the word
extension -ship) from a
basic word zabân.
But such a basic zabân
is unknown in Arabic, old or new. Beyond the Koran this word zibniya, zabâniya is
therefore extremely rare. In the Koran itself this doubtful "plural" zabâniya appears
only in our verse Sura 96,18
and is therefore a Koranic hapax
legomenon as theologians call a word which only
appears once in the whole Bible. When Islamic tradition understands by this
personal "plural" (although it seems to be an abstract) the custodian angels of hell, this
interpretation is not to be turned down per se, since in a verse of the Old
Arabian poetess al-Hansâ‘ (Aghânî XIII.136,7) where this really rare zabâniya is to be found (if its rasm is not much better to be
read in the same way as we reconstruct it for 96,18: rabbâniya) it denotes most probably warlike
angels mounted on horses (compare also Ibn Hishâm. ed. Wüstenfeld, I,201,4).[73]
Nevertheless, although the general direction of
traditional Islamic interpretation, – namely that the plural object of the verb
"calling for" in 96,18 is "angels"
– , seems approximately to fit the context, this traditional meaning, taking
into consideration our hitherto conclusive and plausible reconstruction of the Sura, is unsuitable. Instead of malicious angels of hell we
need for our hitherto reconstructed scenario the opposite: angels benevolent
and helpful towards devout believers, if angels are to be looked for in this
passage at all. But indeed, the word nâdî, the "High Council of God's highest angels as his counsellors" of Sura 96,17, cries for these high. benevolent
and peaceful angels of God to come up in 96,18.
It is not a random coincidence that just this
word az-zabâniya ۱لزّبانيةof 96,18 is suspicious because it is
so rare – according to the untenable frame-narrative allegedly meaning
"the custodian angels of hell". Yet a very slight change in the
diacritical punctation of the rasm of this word brings to light
just the thing which is needed to continue the line of thought of our
reconstructed Sura 96 from verse 1 to our crucial
point 96,18: if we read, removing one point and setting one additional doubling
sign, ar-râbbaniya
لرّّبّانية, [74]we have these "ruling or
governing or powerful angels" (the short German expression "Herrschaftsengel" seems most fitting) before us which are commonly called
the rabbânîyûn
(plural) "the great or masterly
ones" a term which corresponds to the Greek NT expression kyrioi
"Lords". It can be counted as a small but nonetheless further element
in our evidence that these "Herrschaftsengel"
appear in 96,18 in the word formation of an abstract
or collective noun: "Governing-Angel-ship" fitting well the
collective expression nâdiyah
"His (God's) High Council (of the highest angels)" of verse 96, 17.
For the traditional zabâniya
"imps or bailiffs of hell" we had to reject the grammatical abstractum since there are, as a rule, no institutional
councils or groups or classes of fallen angels or imps or devils of hell known
from biblical literature and beyond, while the angels of heaven are
institutionally arranged in special classes and legions etc. Therefore only for
the angels of heaven and especially for the "Herrschaftsengel",
the rabbânîyûn,
the abstract rabbâniya,
meaning the institution of these "Herrschaftsengel" per se, is a fitting expression. And
only this abstract is suitable to be understood as a hypostasis or a synonym of
God, which accounts to the same thing, as seems to be the case in Sura 96, 18.
Excursus on the rabbânîyûn, the Angels of the
High Council of God in early Near Eastern theology and in the Koran as well as
in the early Islamic religious literature.
It is clearly not possible to submit the
angelology of the Koran as well as the angelologies
of the preceding religions Judaism and Christianity as a whole to a thorough
critical investigation merely on the basis of our discoveries as to the usage
of Sura 96,18. This is the more so because there has
been no ambitious research on this topic for decades and especially not from
the point of view of liberal historico- and dogma-critical
theology. So we can only point to some essential insights which lend credence
to our proposed interpretation of Sura 96,18.
It is only because of the dominance of trinitarian Christian confessions in our theological
faculties at all universities that clear evidence is ignored as to why the (Greek) title kyrios "Lord" is
applied to the Messiah. It is a title which he holds originally only on account
of his status as one (the highest) of the ruling angels.[75]
Even the Greek transcription of the Aramaic and Arabic title of an Angel of the
High Council of God rabbouni
is encountered twice in the NT (Mark 10,51 and John 20,16) when Jesus Christ is
addressed.[76]
The church-theological hindrance to this insight into the special
Christological aspect of general angelology, – if Christ is an angel he is a
created being; an aspect which had to be expunged from trinitarian
Christianity – , is at the same time an impediment to a greater interest in
general angelology. Only at narrowed down points, where the church-dogmatical interest is not immediately menaced, are things
comparatively clear and undisputed (but also in the sense of being not disputed
though), namely that Late Judaism ("Spätjudentum")
and ur-Christianity understand the world of angels as
a world of certain classes of angels and that they name and invoke the highest
class of them (in Greek) by
the abstractum kyriotäs "Lordship, Herrschaft" (see e.g. Eph. 1,21; Col. 1,16; 2. Peter 2,10; Jude 8). Each member of this abstract kyriotäs "Lordship" is a kyrios "Lord" the
Arabic equivalents of which are obviously rabbâniya (collectivum) and rabbânî
(singular), rabbânîyûn (plural).
Of those further classes of angels[77]
only that one is relevant to our problem, the members of which are called in
the Greek NT the exousiai,
"the authorities or powers" (see Eph. 3,10; 6,12; Col. 1,16; 2,15; Tit.
3,1; 1. Pet. 3,22). Obviously these NT exousiai appear also in the
Koran, so for instance in Sura 30,35:
am anzalnâ ‘alaihim sultânan fa huwa
yatakallamu bi mâ kânû bihi yusrikûn
"or have we sent down on them a power/authority, that he would have
spoken about what they have been associating with Him?" If we examine this
text closely it is unmistakable that the sultân
"the power or authority" is understood as a speaking person although
the Islamic and Western Orientalist tradition passes over
this given speciality. Undoubtedly, in this Arabic sultân "Power" (in Sura
69,29 occurring also in the form of an abstract: sultâniya), corresponding to Greek exousia, we have before us a further trace of the last
concrete vestiges of the Late Judaic and ur-Christian
angelology tangible in the Koran.
But let us now turn again to our word rabbânîya. This abstractum does not occur in the Koran except in Sura 96,18 as we have quite
reasonably reconstructed it. But there are three places (Sura
3,79; 5,44; 5,63) where the cognate rabbânîyûn turns
up, and to this rabbânîyûn
must be added the hapax legomenon
ribbîyûn
(3,146). If one approaches these references from the working hypothesis "rabbanîyûn = kyrioi =
"Angels of the High Council of God" (in the sense of the Late Judaic
and ur-Christian angelology), it turns out that these
passages clearly had originally this specific angelological
meaning but were later reinterpreted and considerably reworked by Islamic redaction.
Of these four texts the most conclusively reconstructable
one is that of Sura 3,79f. Before, in 3,78, the theme of "the falsification of scripture by
Jews and Christians" is touched upon. Then, with 3,79f, the text reads (we put our
reconstruction mirror-symmetrically opposite the traditional text and its
interpretation):
Mirror-symmetrical representation of Sura 3,79-80
Reconstruction |
Verses |
Traditional
Interpretation |
ما كان لبشر
أن يؤتيه
ألكتاب
والحكم
والنبوّة |
(a) 79 |
ما كان لبشر
أن يؤتيه
ألكتاب و
الحكم و
النبوّة |
ثمّ يقول
للناس كونو
عبادا لى من
دون الله |
(b) |
ثمّ يقول
للناس كونو
عبادا لى من
دون الله |
ولكن كانوا
ربّنيّن بما
كنتم
تَعَلَّمُون
الكتاب وبما
كنتم
تَدَرَّسُون |
(A) |
ولكن
كونوا
ربّنيّن بما
كنتم
تَُعَلَّمُون
الكتاب وبما
كنتم
تدْرُسُون |
ولا يأمركم أن
تتّخذوا
الملئكة
وانّبيّن
أربابا |
(B) 80 |
ولا يأمركم أن
تتّخذوا
الملئكة
وانّبيّن
أربابا |
We have arranged the text in the sections a-b and
A-B to make the· logical structure of this text transparent. For the
reconstruction we have only to change, what concerns the rasm-text, the كونو or (defectively
written) كنو kûnû "be you (imperative plural)" in the first line of (A) on the
right side, that is of the Islamic reinterpretation, which is obviously an
"emendation" of the original text because the original text (see left side
first line of A) had
undoubtedly had at this place, as we shall see, كان or كن kâna "it was" or even better كانوا or كنوا kânû "they were" as the logically
required resumption of the كان
or كن kâna "it was" of the first line of (a) (first line right
and left). We shall
return to this issue later on.
Translation of Sura 3,79-80
Reconstruction |
Verses |
Traditional
Interpretation |
It
was not for a
human being that Allah should give him the book and the powers of judgement and the prophetic office |
(a) 79 |
It
was not for a
human being that Allah should give him the book and the powers of judgement and the prophetic office |
and
that man then could say to the people: "Be ye servants to me
apart from Allah", |
(b) |
and
that man then culd say to the people: "Be
ye servants to me apart from Allah", |
It
was/were[78]
rather Ruling Angels |
(A) |
Be ye rather rabbis |
And
He (God) does not command you to take the Angels and the Prophets to be
(your) Lords. |
(B) 80 |
And He (God) does not command you to take the
Angels and the Prophets to be (your) Lords. |
To understand this text the reader has to
remember similar passages of the NT: Acts 7,53:
"You received the law given by God's angels ..."; Acts 7,38: "(A
prophet like me ...) It was he who kept company with the angel, who spoke to
him on Mount Sinai, and with our forefathers, and received the living
utterances of God to pass on to us"; Ga1. 3,19:
"(The law ...) and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a
mediator"; Heb.2,2: "For if God's word spoken through angels had such
force that ...". But see also Sura 83,20f:
"A book inscribed which the Near-Standing (angels) are witnessing."
Our reconstruction proves to be correct if one
follows this clear line of thought: The idea (a) that man is not allowed to
receive the Book and the powers of right judgement
and prophecy from God directly is counterbalanced in (A) by the positive statement
on this matter: that it is only the High Angels who get all this power directly
from God by which to teach mankind. The same clear logical structure is
inherent in the sentences (b) and (B): In (b) is explained why God chose his
High Angels to teach mankind, namely because otherwise a human being vested
with these powers might become cocky and desire to be worshipped by his fellow
human beings. This idea is continued in (B) in the sense that neither human
beings nor angels should be worshipped, even if, clad with the power of right judgement and prophecy, they had taught mankind the Book. (This is obviously
a conscious opposition to the Christian trinitarian
conception of Jesus Christ!)
These structurally neat lines of thought teach
us exactly the same central idea of the prophet Muhammad's message: that Christ
should not be worshipped as God although Christ is, according to the
self-understanding of Jesus and to the ur-Christian
and the ur-Koranic belief, the Angel of the High
Council of God, an idea which is also expressed in Sura
4,172 although in this Koran verse a much more frequent recurring (8 times in the
Koran) Arabic word is
used for the Angels of the High Council of God: al-muqarrabûn "those posted near
(God)".[80] On the other hand the
statement of Sura 3,79f is also a presentation of the
earliest Islamic conception of prophetology (every
prophet has been and is still an angel; see A. J. Wensinck,
Muhammad und die Propheten. Acta
Orientalia II [1924],168-198)[81] as well as being the credo of the
prophet Muhammad as to his own prophetship: He
undoubtedly believed, as we have already pointed out (see here p. 28f with note 3), that he is himself an Angel of the
High Council of God, preexistent in this High Council of God before his
lifetime and destined to return to this eminent place in afterlife (see H. Wehr, Muhammads letzte Worte. WZKM 51 [1952],283-286). This conception was done away with by growing Islamic Orthodoxy and
finally replaced by the image of the prophet Muhammad as a mere human being. Looking
at the text of Sura 3,79f from this point of view, it
is impossible that the prophet Muhammad himself was the redactor who garbled
the original version of this text 3,79f and left us with the flimsy incoherent
sentences of 3,79f we read now according to orthodox Islamic and Western Islamicist tradition.
How corrupted the traditional text is can
easily be seen from the fact that after these late redactors had reinterpreted
the word rabbânîyîn
"ruling archangels" as "rabbis" in the sense of
exceptionally erudite human beings, any reason for the closing statement
"and He (God) does not command you to take the Angels and the Prophets to
be (your) Lords" had disappeared. After these redactors had given up the
meaningful contrast between (a) "It was not for a human being
..." and (A) "It were rather Angels of the High Council of God
..." they construed their own new and deviating contrast by a change of
the rasm-text
because they made out of the original كان kâna "it was" or كانوا
kânû "it were (plural)" an imperative كونوا
kûnû "be ye" which
should accord with the imperative in (b) "be ye servants to
me". This alteration of the rasm-text (see later the same reworking operation in Sura 2,65 and 7,166 here p. 86f
with note 92) is not as
serious as one might at first think because we know from the oldest Koran
codices that in the oldest period of writing Koranic
texts the vowels in the middle of a word were defectively written, that is
without matres lectionis. that is without the insertion of the rasm-sign ا for long -â as well as of a و for long -û
and of an ي
for a long -î.[82]
So these words here had originally been written كن and كنوا.
In our case both of these different readings kânû (active voice perfect tense) and kûnû (imperative) had usually been written with the
same rasm: كنوا. It was therefore easy to read out of this rasm the meaning one was inclined
to prefer. But when the writing of long vowels within the words by matres lectionis (ا و ى) became
obligatory, the reading was already fixed once and for all, although wrongly in
this case.
So when the Koran editors deliberately read
into the rabbânîyûn-Angels
of (A) erudite rabbis or theologians or scribes, they opposed these rabbis of
(A) to the cocky human beings of (b) who, in consequence of their weak human
nature, are usually prone to yeam to be worshipped
because of their endowment with judgement and
prophecy. But this new contrast is a very disputable one since these invented[83]
rabbis of (A) are human beings like the cocky human beings eager to be worshipped
on account of their pretended right judgement and
prophecy as depicted in (b). Is not there in the Islamic reinterpretation just
this danger, which the original Prophetic version of this text tends to
exorcise, that the rabbis/‘ulamâ’ as human beings
want, because of their knowledge and "right judgement",
to be if not worshipped (although this sometimes happened and happens!), nevertheless to be classed higher
than their fellow citizens and fellow believers? Regard in this context the
condemnation of the rabbis and the attitude called for by Jesus Christ towards
them as articulated in Matth. 23 of which only verse
7f may here be cited: "They like to be greeted respectfully in the markets
and to be called by people 'Rabbi! Rabbi!'. But be not
ye called Rabbi, for only one is your master and all ye are brethren."
From this point of view the essential message of the crude orthodox Islamic
reinterpretation of the original, obviously Prophetic text Sura
3,79f appears to be in its kernel of the same significance as that contained in
the diametrical reversal of the original meaning of Sura
35,28 where the original sentence "Behold, as for
his servants God is most worried (worried that they might not earn paradise!) about the ‘ulamâ’ (= rabbis)" has by untenable editorial
devices (although
not altering the rasm) been recast into the clearly wrong
and, until now, uncontested form: "Behold, among his servants it is the
theologians who fear (= revere; although the underlying Arabic
verb means clearly "are worried about") God most" (we shall discuss this
obviously post-Muhammadan reinterpretation later in
its broader context). A further clear circumstance which testifies against the
orthodox Islamic interpretation of Sura 35,28 is that
at the time of the Prophet there were no Islamic ‘ulamâ’ = theologians yet, so that the prophet Muhammad`s
original text was undoubtedly directed against the Christian or Jewish
theologians (‘ulamâ’) of his day. But that did not hinder
these early orthodox Islamic Koran experts forging self-praise out of this
disapproving saying of their Prophet, certainly against his intention. The
Prophet held the position of Jesus as cited above.
Beyond these arguments, our interpretation is
corroborated by the oldest Islamic Koran scholarship itself: In his collection
of non-canonical Koran variant readings the well-known Arabian philologist Ibn Hâlawaih (died 370 H.
/ 980 CE) lists as a transmitted old variant reading for our text Sura 3,79 instead of the
traditional and therefore canonical active voice bi-mâ kuntum tu‘allimûna l-kitâba wa bi-mâ kuntum
tadrusûn "in what you (the rabbis!) are teaching the Book and in what you are studying"
just this former reading of the passive voice: bi-mâ kuntum ta‘allamûna l-kitâba wa bi-mâ kuntum
tadarassûn "by what/whom you have
been taught the Book and by what/whom you have been given lessons".[84]
This reading listed as an old version of the text is therefore without any
doubt just that reading we are obliged to read the rasm-text with, if we are to
retain the correct old understanding of rabbânîyûn as "the Angels of the High Council of
God". By the way: we did not know of these early variant readings until a
long time after establishing the reconstruction of the text with the logical,
grammatical and theological arguments already displayed above. However, as long
as this earlier reading was valid, this earlier text must have had also the
writing كان
kâna or كانوا
kânû "It was/were (the ruling angels)" instead
of the imperative كونوا kûnû "be ye (rabbis)" of the later
deviating and obviously wrong orthodox Islamic interpretation (see above about
the earlier defective writing of both of these variants as كنوا).
This is the first time in our critico-exegetical research that there occurs a corroborating,
alternative, non-canonical reading for a problematic part of the Koran text,
recorded by trustworthy old Islamic authorities. It is in content ur-Islamic, Prophetic and pre-orthodox. Its essential
meaning has been deliberately neglected by Islamic Orthodoxy and has from then
on never again been recognized as to its significance for the ur-Islamic and Prophetic dogma. The great many variant
readings of the Koran text handed down to us by Islamic Koran scholarship have
been regarded since the time of orthodox Islamic canonization of the Koran text
as mere orthographic slips of the pen.[85]
But in many cases of our dogma-critical reconstruction still to be performed,
it will become clear that we have in a great deal of these transmitted Koranic variant readings the trustworthy markers to an
older, and in its dogmatical content essentially
other Koran: We shall see, although we cannot deal with the problem here in
detail, that those variant readings, which have been transmitted or have anyway
survived at all within the stream of transmission, are those which yield the
least insight into the former meaning of the concerned problematic passages and
especially not the dogma of the former Christian ur-Koran
in general. This becomes apparent especially when we come across a series of
similarly deviating reinterpretations of a certain, as to theme one and the
same set of textual problems involving a series of texts scattered all over the
Koran. If there is then a variant reading transmitted at all, it is always only
transmitted for that similar text of this series of texts of the same theme,
where this transmitted variant reading makes the least sense or gives the least
insight into the original meaning of this text (see for this especially here
Chapter III,2). It is therefore also not surprising that we
have here for our text Sura 3,79
the reading of passive voices ('you were taught and you were given lessons) transmitted as old variant readings
although this old reading does not make sense unless this text was read also
with the variant كان
kâna or كانوا
"it was/were (the ruling angels)" instead of the later orthodox
Islamic reading (كونوا
kûnû "be ye (rabbis)". But this
certainly once extant variant reading كان or كابوا
instead of today's كونوا is not
transmitted by Muslim tradition, understandably, because the established
Islamic Orthodoxy was naturally here as everywhere keen to stamp out the
erstwhile Christian strophic form and the formerly Christian meaning of
considerable parts of the Koran, and on blocking all possibility of a rediscovery
of this Christian Koran and of a return to it. And we shall later on always see
that the most important variant readings, as to their value for the unmasking
of the opinionated Islamic reinterpretation of the original Koran text, have
always purposely been done away with and not transmitted. It is always the less
important or even insignificant and negligible old variants which have
preferably been transmitted until our present time. But fortunately they
suffice in principle as evidence for the reconstruction of the original text.
Sura 3,79f had therefore undoubtedly dealt with the
rabbânîyûn,
with the "Angels of the High Council of God", although the word rabânîyûn does
not occur unreinterpreted in the Koran and beyond it,
with the consequence that the great National Arabic Lexica (see for instance
Lane s.v.) normally list for this rabbânî only the meaning "one who devotes himself to
religious services; who possesses a knowledge of God" because of having
identified it with the Jewish term Rabbi (but see here note 83). But if we consult critical
European Arabic lexica the original angelological
meaning clearly comes to light, as when Reinhart Dozy lists in his "Supplement aux Dictionnaires Arabes" the following meanings: rabbânî = "transcendant" (three times): hikmat rabbânîya = "providence"; al-qudrat ar-rabbânîya = "sympathie"; as-sirr ar-rabbânî = "sympathie"; ilhâm rabbânî = "inspiration céleste"; rabbânîyât = "cantiques a la louange du Seigneur". And under the word root bsbs
Another old Arabic text shows that the original
meaning of rabbânîyûn
lived on in the circles of Muslim mysticism so often accused by orthodox Islam of
being heretical. The book of the Sûfî Abu Sa‘îd Ahmed Ibn ‘Îsâ al-Harrâz al-Bagdâdî with the title Kitâb as-Sirr (The Book of the Secret) was condemned, – so that it has not
come down to us – , and he was obliged to emigrate to Transoxania
and later to Egypt where he died in 286 H./899 CE. But some of the sayings of
his condemned book are transmitted by later authors. And so we find in the book
of ‘Abdallâh as-Sarrâg at-Tûsi (died 378 H/988 CE) Kitâb al-luma‘ fi t-tasawwuf (Book of Eminent Citations on
Mysticism; ed. Reynold A. Nicholson [Gibb Memorial
Series XXII] London 1963; p. ٣٦٨ 1, 6ff)
the following sentence of Abu Sa‘îd al-Harrâz: "God has drawn the spirits of His
Saints unto Himself and has granted them the delight of being able to continue
His praise and of having become near to Him (al-wusûl ilâ qurbihi; which clearly recalls the term al-muqarrabûn "the near standing
angels"). But He
had also been engaged in preparing already as beneficial to their (mortal)
bodies delight of every kind, because the life of their bodies is the life of
animal beings (‘ais
al-hayawânîyîn)
and the life of their spirits is the life of the rabbânîyûn (‘ais ar-rabbânîyûn
which word can at this place not be interpreted otherwise than "the Master
Angels of the High Council of God"!)".
But we have still to comment on the remaining Koranic references to the rabbânîyûn (Sura
5,44; 5,63 and 3,146), other than Sura
3,79f analysed earlier. The Koranic
theme al- rabbânîyûn
= "the Angels of the High Council of God" deserves a separate
treatment in view of its central significance for the reunderstanding
of the ur-Christian and ur-Islamic
angel-Christology and angelology as much for the Koran as for the Bible, but we
can only touch here in passing on these further Koranic
references, offering only for one of them, for Sura 5,63, a more detailed analysis.
Both the word rabbânîyûn in 5,44
as well as that in 5,63 have a wa-l-ahbâr "and
the scribes (or: rabbis)" placed after it, which is an addition. Since
already rabbânîyûn
denotes rabbis or scribes in the
Islamic reinterpretation, this produces a tautology. This wa-l-ahbâr
"and the scribes/rabbis" placed immediately after ar-rabbânîyûn is obviously
nothing else but a commentary inserted by the post-Muhammadan
Koran redactors to underpin the new Islamic interpretation of rabbânîyûn
deviating from the original meaning "Ruling Angels of the High Council of
God", a procedure which unavoidably produces this rather meaningless
tautology. That this manipulation was once undertaken in 5,63 can be
corroborated by an analysis of the structure of the broader context 5,60-64 and
we shall display these highly problematic verses in a mirror-symmetrical
juxtaposition of the traditional and the conclusive reconstruction of its
original meaning. But we should comment first on the rabbânîyûn references in Sura 5,44 and 3;146 accumulating thereby some evidence
valid also for the reconstruction of the third highly complicated reference in
5,63 within its considerably distorted context.
The context of the reference to rabbânîyûn in Sura 5,44 was probably even more
distorted at the hands of orthodox Islamic redactors than the text of Sura 5,60-64 to be discussed next but one. But here in Sura 5,44 we can deal with the
problem only by a general disqualification of the meaning which results from
the editorial insertion of the word wa-l-ahbâr after
the word ar-rabbânîyûn
to underpin the wrong meaning of the word ar-rabbânîyûn as
"Rabbis", creating by this manipulation a questionable tautology.
This obviously wrong meaning, of which we can be sure that it has never been a
reading of the Prophet Muhammad, but that the later Koran editors are to be
charged with it, consists in the fact that the now existing text reworked by
the Koran editors reads (we cite only the central words): innâ anzalnâ t-taurâ
... yahkumu
bihâ l-nabîyûn ... wa r-rabbâniyûna wa-l-ahbâr ... wa kânû ‘alaihi
(‘alâ
l-kitâb = ‘alâ t-taurâ) suhadâ’ "Behold! We have sent down the
Torah ... by which the prophets make their judgments ... and the rabbâniyûn and
the ahbâr scribes (theologians) ... and they bear witness to it
(the kitâb
=Torah)" and this sentence is immediately followed by the admonition:
"Fear ye not the people (an-nâs in the sense of "human beings") but fear
ye Me!"
This text, reflected on in a sober light,
reveals that there are two categories of beings of which the first is the class
of celestial beings, namely the prophets who are altogether angels according to
old Islamic conception (s. here note 3; by the way: "angel" means
"messenger" = rasûl = prophet!) and the rabbânîyûn if we take them for
what they are understood to be in the older Jewish, Christian and Islamic
religious literature. For these, and only for these celestial beings the idea
is appropriate that they "bear witness" to (the wording of) the Holy Scriptures. And there is
the other category "human beings" to which in this text alone belong
the ahbâr "the
scribes". To say with regard to them that "they bear witness to (the wording of) the Holy Scriptures" is from
the point of view of the older conception a blasphemy established by the Muslim
Koran editors = ‘ulamâ’
= ahbâr themselves for the sake
of enhancement of their religio-politcal position in
early Islamic society. We can be sure that the prophet Muhammad would have
angrily rebuked such a self-evaluation of the scribes. We can even clearly
recognize his Prophetic position from the transmitted text in the following
words "Fear ye not human beings but fear ye Me", and we have to
imagine the prophets and angels of the High Council of God at the side of God
in sharp contrast to human beings, "the scribes". So this last
sentence, which obviously belongs to the original text, is a glaring
contradiction in adjecto
to the preceding main statement of the Koran text. We have therefore to cancel
the words wa l-ahbâr of
this main text and to restore the original meaning of the word ar-rabbânîyûn:
"the Archangels of the High Council of God". And again, as already in
of Sura 3,80 and 35,28 (See here p. 74ff), we can perceive the spirit of the
post-Muhammad early Koran editors who produced this text elevating themselves
to the level of prophets and angels if not even higher.
Our next and last but one Koranic
reference to rabbânîyûn
to be analysed is Sura
3,146[90]
although the word at this place is not rabbânîyûn but ribbîyûn "thousands". This reading of the rasm ربّيّون
must be dismissed because of its untrustworthy meaning in this context, for the
traditional interpretation of the immediate context is: "How many a
prophet (has there been) along with whom many thousands fought ..." (transl. Richard Bell), a statement which seems very alien to the
Koran as well as to the Bible, because throughout Koran and Bible the
loneliness and forlornness of the prophets in the midst of their nations is a
common characteristic of their lives. We therefore have to change the rasm slightly by
the addition of a "water wave" to get ربّنيّون
instead of the transmitted ربّيّون and then to
read rabbânîyûn:
"How many a prophet (has there been) alone with whom many Angels (of the
High Council of God) fought ...". The idea that
angels are fighting side by side with the prophets was very familiar at the
time of early Islam[91]
91 and it fits the general opinion of that early time that the prophets
themselves were angels – and in some extraordinary cases even angels of the High
Council of God. Under these circumstances it should now have become clear that
we have here in the traditional text an editorial manipulation before us
eliminating the rabbânîyûn-angels
from the original Koran text.
And
now to our last Koranic reference to the rabban~yun ,
as far as we can recognize them in the Koran thus far.
The
broader context of 5,60-64 is very distorted in the
same way have shown the text of Sura 5,44 to be. This
distortion is already signalled from the fact that
Richard Bell tried a rearrangement of the sequence of the verses of this
section without a convincing result, and Rudi Paret
gives in his not-assuring-translation a lot of comments and bracketed
insertions, trying thereby to make clear that the text is extremely difficult
to interpret. Furthermore, old Islamic Koran scholars have transmitted no less
than 20 variant readings just for these five Koranic
verses (MQQ No. 1930-1949).
Some of these variant readings indicate (e.g. MQQ No.
1932) that some words after all have been inserted by later
Koran editors. Our opinion is that these Koran editors inserted a lot more
words than even the transmitted variant readings show today which have survived
in the mainstream of tradition. We cannot expect that the orthodox guardians of
Islamic tradition would have allowed the key words for the restoration of the
former text to be transmitted and so, as a rule, the really crucial variant
readings were not transmitted but instead diligently eliminated from the stream
of tradition. To make the distortion of this section clear we should proceed in
such a way that at first we display the text in a mirror-symmetrical
juxtaposition of the transmitted text and its probable earlier meaning and
shall discuss the problems afterwards (we shall underline the transmitted
old variant readings of special importance [left side] and underline with a
dotted line the late changes of the text by the post-Muhammadan
Koran editors [right side]; the Arabic characters of the problematic words will
only be discussed at places of importance):
Mirror-symmetrical Representation of Sura 5,60-64
Reconstructed |
Verses & verselines |
Traditional |
qul hal anbiyâ'ukum basarun |
60 |
qul hal unabbi'ukum
bi-sarrin |
wa min dâlika matâbatan
`inda llâh |
2 |
min dâlika
matûbatan `inda llâh |
man gadiba llâhu
`alaihim |
3 |
man la`anahu llâhu wa gadiba `alaihim |
wa ga`alahum al-qiradata |
4 |
wa ga`ala minhum al-qiradata |
wa Insertion `ubbâda t-tawâgît |
5 |
wa l-hanâzîra wa `abada t-tâgûta |
ulâ'ika sarrun makânan |
6 |
ulâ'ika sarrun makânan |
wa adallu
`an sawâ'i s-sabîl |
7 |
wa adallu
`an sawâ'i s-sabîl |
wa ida gâ'ûkum
qâlû âmannâ |
61 |
wa ida gâ'ûkum
qâlû âmannâ |
wa qad dahalû
bi l-kufri |
2 |
wa qad dahalû
bi l-kufri |
wa hum qad haragû
bihi |
3 |
wa hum qad haragû
bihi |
wa llâhu a`lamu bimâ kânû yaktumûn |
4 |
wa llâhu a`lamu bimâ kânû yaktumûn |
wa tarâ minhum katîran yusâri`ûna |
5 |
wa tarâ minhum katîran yusâri`ûna |
fî l-itmi wa l-`udwâni wa akli
s-suht |
6 |
fî l-itmi wa l-`udwâni wa akli
s-suht |
la-bi'sa
mâ kânû ya`lamûn |
7 |
la-bi'sa
mâ kânû ya`lamûn |
lau lâ yanhâhumu l-rabbânîyûna |
63 |
lau lâ yanhâhumu l-rabbânîyûna |
Insertion |
|
wa l-ahbâru |
`an qaulihimu
l-itma |
2 |
`an qaulihimu
l-itma |
wa aklihimu s-suhta |
3 |
wa aklihimu s-suhta |
la-bi'sa
mâ kânû yasna`ûn |
4 |
la-bi'sa
mâ kânû yasna`ûn |
wa qâlati l-yahûdu |
64 |
|
yadu llâhi maglûlatun ..... |
2 |
New
section with new line of thought |
…………………….. |
64 |
wa qâlati l-yahûdu |
|
2 |
yadu llâhi maglûlatun |
Recovered |
Verses & verselines |
Traditional |
Say: Aren't
your prophets flesh |
60 |
Say: Shall
I tell you of something worse |
and therefore with God in reputation
of those |
2 |
than that
in the recompense (that awaits)
with Allah? The one |
|
3 |
whom (singular) Allah has
cursed and |
against
whom (plural) He is angry |
|
against
whom (singular) He is angry |
and whom
He made bloodsuckers |
4 |
some
of whom He hath made apes |
[cancel "swine"] and servants of idols? |
5 |
and
swine and servants of Tâghût – |
They
are wicked as to (their)
standing |
6 |
they
are in the worse position |
And
most erring from the right way. |
7 |
and
further astray from the direct way. |
And
when they come to you people say "We have believed". |
61 |
And
when they come to you they say "We have believed". |
But they
have entered in unbelief |
2 |
though
they have entered in unbelief |
and in
it they have departed. |
3 |
and in
it have departed. |
Allah
knoweth very well what they have been concealing. |
4 |
Allah
knoweth very well what they have been concealing. |
Many
oft hem does one see vying |
62 |
Many
oft hem does one see vying |
in
guilt and enmity |
2 |
in
guilt and enmity |
and
how they consume ill-gotten wealth |
3 |
and in
their consuming of what is prohibited ( |
Surely
evil is what they have been working. |
4 |
Surely
evil is what they have been working. |
Why
do the rabbânîyûn
not restrain them |
63 |
Why
do the rabbis and scholars not restrain them |
from
their speaking of guilt |
2 |
from
their speaking of guilt |
and
of consuming ill-gotten wealth |
3 |
and
their consuming of what is prohibited? |
Surely,
evil is what they have been doing. |
4 |
Surely,
evil is what they have been doing. |
The Jews
say: |
64 |
|
The
hand of Allah is fettered. |
2 |
New
section with new line of thought |
|
64 |
The Jews
say: |
|
2 |
The
hand of Allah is fettered. |
This section starts with the address in the
preceding verse 59 (we left it aside because of no further significance for the theme of 5,60-64) yâ ahlu l-kitâb
"Oh people of the Book". It contains therefore an Islamic
confrontation with the Jews and Christians. Because we know beforehand that the
rabbânîyûn
in verse 63 of this context have been seriously misinterpreted, we have to ask
ourselves what might be wrong with the traditional interpretation of this
context in general.
The first and general thing is that in the
traditional reading of 5,60 there is a queer
opposition between "that in the recompense" and "the one whom
Allah has cursed". We would and should expect the juxtaposition of two kinds
of the same category: two different persons or groups of people. And the second
and main peculiarity is that, when in verse 61 line 1
it says "when they come to you", the context remains totally obscure
as to the question of who these people are, being cursed by Allah and coming
sometimes or often or always to the Jews and Christians.
Fortunately, the Islamic tradition has
transmitted a string of variant readings especially for the opening lines of
this text which show on principle that the beginning of this section had
formerly been read in another way. So, for instance, the rasm بشّر أنبّئكم هل hal unabbi'ukum bi-sarrin "shall I tell you of something
worse" was formerly not read in this way with a doubling of the b in the verb unabbi' but without (MQQ No. 1930). So we feel entitled to read this rasm in a totally
different way: بشر أنبيكم هل hal anbiyâ'ukum (or: anbiyâkum) basarun "aren't your
prophets flesh?" This statement touches then exactly on the central theme
which the Prophet is stressing just before in the context around verse 5,44 with its rabbânîyûn there (see above p. 81f). And with this reading we get rid of the main
problem of the context 5,60-64 namely the obscurity of
these people who come sometimes or always to the Jews and Christians: It is their
prophets. We must obviously conclude that all the mostly anonymous leading
Jewish and Christian theologians over the centuries who propagated such
doctrines as the trinity and the equality to God of Ezra as well as those who
falsified the scripture of the Bible are included in this Koranic
term "prophets", at least in this instance.
Once we have decided on this reading. all the other transmitted variants hintind
at an earlier alternative content for this section fit our opening text
exactly: "Aren't your prophets nesh". But
for our reconstruction we have to insert a wa
"and" after this introductory statement (see verse 60 line 2 double
underlined). And then
instead of matûbat
"recompense" there is transmitted the former reading matwabat
(MQQ No. 1931) which runs with matâbat "rank, reputation, recognition,
appreciation, estimation etc." It is also very important that the
traditionally given la`anahu llâhu wa "Allah has cursed him
and" was formerly not read at all, – it would indeed have been laying it on
too thick against what are nevertheless prophets of the Jews and Christians!
And likewise conspicuous is that the former readings (MQQ No. 1932) have here in 5,60
twice plural pronouns instead of the singular pronouns of the traditional
Islamic reading which therefore have to be cancelled.
But the greatest blunder the post-Muhammadan Koran editors made was in declaring that Allah
had made some of these, in their reinterpretation, "obscure" enemies
apes and swine which is again laying it on too thick and almost certainly not
the language of the Prophet. The transmitted variant readings (MQQ No. 1932) from the really great authorities Ubai ibn Ka`b
and Abdallâh ibn Mas`ûd, late contemporaries of the Prophet, indicate that
they had read this passage in a considerably different way although there is
nothing transmitted as to whether they omitted "apes and swine". But
I doubt decidedly whether these old Koran authorities actually did have
"apes and swine" in their text to be edited, even though the rasm for the word
for "apes" at least was present (although with a totally other
meaning) in the
original text as the Prophet and his contemporary companions knew it, while the
word "swine" is certainly an insertion by the later Koran editors and
would therefore not have been read by Ubai and Ibn Mas`ûd as we shall now
reveal.
The Arabic word qiradatun here in Sura 5,60 line 4 is a plural and can be derived from two
different Arabic words namely qird "ape" and qurd "tick (sticking to the
skin of camels, cattle and sheep etc. and sucking blood from these animals)". The plural of "apes"
is aqrud (pluralis paucitatis) and aqrâd (nomen
collectivum) or qurûd.
As far as a plural qiradatun
is listed in the old Arabic lexica for "apes" the references for this
plural are on principle taken from the misinterpreted Koran, and I am very
doubtful whether this plural would occur in any of the texts of old Arabic
profane literature without reference to the Koranic
religious vocabulary. So it is also highly questionable whether qiradatun
was originally a plural of qird "ape". Now to the other alternative: The word
qurd
"tick" has the nomen collectivum
or pluralis multitudinis qurâd or qirdân and the pluralis paucitatis aqridatun.
But although the plural qiradatun
is not listed in Lane's exhaustive dictionary, Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883) quotes
in his "Additions" a qirâdatun "tick(s)" which is, with
regard to its word formation, obviously a pluralis paucitatis (an assessable number of ticks). It is quite possible that in the
three extant Koranic references of qiradatun
we should always read this qirâdatun. But this is a difficult question to
decide because the old Koran was written defectively with no indication from matres lectionis as to whether
vowels were short or long. Anyhow, at this place had undoubtedly stood either qiradatun
or qiradatun
with the meaning "(an assessable number of) ticks". So we can now conclude: While the
ape was for
There are in the Koran only two more references
for qiradatun
allegedly "apes" (Sura 2,65 and 7,166) in
both of which these "apes" are spoken of similarly in a curious way:
R. Bell renders the traditional compound kûnû qiradatan hâsi'îna,
similar here and there, as "be ye apes slinking away" and R. Paret tranlates this, though not
without expressing his grave doubt with a big question mark: "Werdet zu menschenscheuen
Affen (become ye apes shy as to human beings)". But great old authorities read, as
their transmitted variants reveal, at both of these places the adjective of qiradatun
not as hâsi'îna
"shy" but hâssîna
"low, ignoble, vile, mean. paltry" (MQQ No. 211 and
2759). This description
fits the tick, but not the ape. So it becomes clear that all the three Koranic references of qiradatun (or qirâdatun)
originally meant "ticks" and all of these references and their
context have been distorted by post-Muhammadan Koran
editors as to their quite natural original significance, namely the judgement of the Prophet about his adversaries: "They
were paltry bloodsuckers/parasites!"[92]
But since we have come now to the conclusion
that 5,60 line 4 reads originally "whom He made
parasites (= ticks)", – as a parallel expression to "who consume
ill-gotten wealth" in verse 63 line 3 –, the following "and
swine" in 60 line 5 can easily be recognized as a late insertion because
"bloodsuckers and swine" cannot pass as compatible in a saying.
At long last we are coming to the crucial
sentence of verse 5,63 concerning the rabbânîyûn for which the discussion of verses 5,60-62 has
only been the overture: After we have uncovered the original meaning of verses
5,60-62 it becomes clear that in verse 5,63 the wa l-ahbâr
"and the scribes" also has to be cancelled as a late misleading
gloss, as we have shown to be the case for the context of Sura
5,44 (see
above p. 81f). This
passage now has to be interpreted, – exactly according to the traditional
interpretation while omitting the gloss "and the scribes" and taking ar-rabbânîyûn for
what this word had originally meant – , "Why do
the angels of the High Council of God not restrain them from their speaking of
guilt and their consuming ill-gotten wealth?" This is clearly the
continuation of the line of thought starting from verse 5,60:
"Why do the mighty angels of God and real prophets not hinder these false
prophets from doing evil?"
Since the post-Muhammadan
Koran editors had disfigured the text of 5,60-63 the
last verse 64, "the Jews say: 'The hand of Allah is fettered'", no
longer had any relation to the distorted line of thought from 5,60 to 63. And
since they had in this way reinterpreted the broader context to pieces, they
let verse 5,64 be the beginning of a new section with
a new line of thought. So also the Western Islamicists
trusting to the traditional blurred reinterpretation also allow a break here,
Richard Bell even giving this new section a (misleading) special headline:
"Retort to a Jewish gibe, probably occasioned by demands for contributions
But verse 5,64 is actually the neat
continuation of the line of thought from Sura 5,60-63
since the sentence in verse 64 "The Jews say: The hand of Allah is
fettered" is the direct answer to the question of verse 63 "Why do
the mighty angels of the High Council of God not restrain the false
prophets?" One has only to understand that within the old conception of
God and his highest angels, both of them and they together are the same, – God
and his hypostasis – , so that we could change the
subjects of both of these verses: "Why does God not hinder the false
Prophets" and the Jews would answer '"The hands of the angels of the
High Council of God are fettered".
We have come to the end of the road in our
excursus on the original meaning of rabbânîyûn in the Koran and elsewhere. But we should remark
that with the last reference to rabbânîyûn in Sura 5,63 we have
for the first time analysed in minute detail and
reconstructed an Islamic single-sense text in the rasm-groundlayer of which had
never been hidden a formerly Christian strophic hymn, because this text was
obviously a text dictated by the Prophet himself. And so we have here our first
example of how horribly the post-Muhammadan Koran
editors garbled texts of their own Prophet and how their misinterpretations
spread like the metastases of a cancer through the whole body of the Koran. The
reader might now understand why from the time of the "redaction" of
the Koran under the guidance of the third caliph Uthman
onward all old pre-Uthmanic Koran codices, even those
of most honoured companions of the Prophet, were as
completely as possible confiscated and burned.
End of the excursus on
ar-rabbânîyûn.
[73] According to the reasonable thesis
of S. G. F. Brandon (Jesus and the Zealots. 1967, 320f shared by many New
Testament scholars (see Brandon's note 2) Christ is himself the apocalyptic
"terrible Rider on the White Horse, whose eyes are like a flame of fire
... He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is
The Word of God" (Rev. 19,12ff). Since Christ is on the other hand
undoubtedly one (and the highest one) of the Angels of the High Council of God
all the apocalyptic Riders together seem to belong to the High Council. If this
is the case then it is possible that the warlike angels in the cited verse of
the poetess al-Hansâ‘ are themselves the apocalyptic Riders or at least are
depicted according to an image of the apocalyptic Riders who were certainly
well-known in Pre-Islamic Arabia. The reading rabbâniya is therefore preferable
here to the linguistically more phantastic zabâniya.
[74] If regarded as a classical Arabic
word it should be written rabbânîya. But because the pre-Islamic Christian texts of the
Koran were written in vernacular Arabic, and also for rhythmic and strophe
metrical reasons, we should write the word in the form rabbâniya to accord with the
rhythmic pattern mawâliya.
[75] See for this M. Werner, Die
Entstehung des Christlichen Dogmas, 1954, 302-321 the Chapter "Das Wesen des Christus nach der
urchristlichen Lehre (Engelchristologie)" esp. p. 307. The arguments brought forward by M. Werner have
never been disproved. They are hushed up instead, understandably because
otherwise these arguments would bring the end of 19 centuries of
"Christian" trinitarian theology and
belief.
[76] Both of these epithets addressed to
Jesus occur where his angelic quality is important if not central: in Mark 10,51 Christ is healing a blind man and in John 20,16 Christ
appears at his open grave and reveals himself unexpectedly as the Resurrected
One. This address is uttered by Mary Magdalene in a somewhat frightened way, so
that her exclamation could have been indeed an astonished: "My Lord!"
in the sense of "My Lord-Angel!" Significantly Jesus answers
immediately: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father!"; an exhortation which is to be understood as a
consequence of his appearing here in his celestial i.e. his angelic apparition.
[77] About these classes of angels in
the early Christian literature see Theologisches Wörterbuch zum NT, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Stuttgart 1933ff. s.v. angelos and there
the given references to the scholarly discussion. Attention should also be paid
to Fridolin Stier. Gott und sein Engel im Alten Testament, Münster 1934. See here also note 72 although J.
E. Fossum sticks to the old and as against the
evidence amassed by Martin Werner, untenable view that the NT title "kyrios" for Jesus Christ was an adoption of the OT
appellation of Yahweh as "Lord" under the influence of the trinitarian creed.
[78] In Arabic the introductory verb is
normally not congruent in number and gender so that in Arabic here is
word-for-word said "it was rather Ruling Angels ..." .This is
important to estimate appropriately the parallelism of the two kâna "it
was" introducing the first line of (a) as well as of (A).
[79] For mâ "what" as relative
pronoun referring to persons see J. Blau, Grammar of
Christ. Arab., § 441.
[80] In Sura 3,45 Jesus Christ is clearly classed as "one of the muqarrabûn"
that is "one of the near (to God) posted angels". Compare the
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a where Jesus is classed qarôb le-malkût near (posted) to the Kingdom
(of God)".
[81] The conception that prophets are
angels is already to be found in the OT. See 2. Chron.
36,15f; Isa. 44,26; Hag.
1,12f.
[82] On the defective writing (= without
matres lectionis) in the
oldest Koran codices see Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, Observations on Early Qur'ân Manuscripts in San‘a’, in: S. Wild [ed.], The Qur'an as Text.
[83] What has hitherto been written (see
the literature pointed at by Paret, 1971, on Sura 5,63) about the etymology of rabbâni is hard
to endure, namely that rabbâni
should be derived from the Aramaic mode of addressing a teacher rabban "our
Master/Teacher!". But this enclitic -an
"our" has, as to its morphology, a short a and
not a long one! And all these writers knew that such an interjectory address
"Our Master", per se even semantically untenable as source for rabbâni, could
never adopt the Arabic nisbet-
or descent-ending -î:
"'one who belongs to 'our Master!'"! Karl Ahrens chracterizes
therefore rightly (ZDMG 84 [1930], 21) this rabbânî as "the peculiar
Arabic form with the ending -î"! Indeed, rabbî and rabbânî are according to the
rules of semitic word formation two different words
with consequently different meanings like in Hebrew âhar "other" and âharôn "last"
(this word-forming element -on or -an is akin to the postpositional Old
South Arabic article –ân
!) So when Adolf Wahrmund
in his Handwörterbuch gives rabbânî = "divine" he
is right. But when he adds "plural rabbânîyûn = "theologian. rabbi"
this is pure fantasy, although a fantasy since more than a millennium sold by trinitarian Christianity and Islamic Orthodoxy as a sound
and alledgedly well founded meaning ! rabbânîyûn
meant and means "the divine angelic masters or governors" and nothing
else.
[84] Gotthelf Bergsträßer,
Ibn Halawaihs
Sammlung nichtkanonischer Koranlesarten. p. 21. These variant readings, as we have
reconstructed them as the original text of this Koran text, are listed also in
the new voluminous compendium of transmitted early Koranic
variant readings MQQ, vol. 2, p. 46 = No. 1104 as having been read by the early
Islamic Koran experts Abû ’Amr.
Nâfi‘, Ibn Katîr, ’Âsim, Mugâhid, Abû Hâtim and al-Hasan.
[85] This orthodox traditional view has
again and hopefully for the last time been advocated by John Burton. The Collection of the Qur'an.
[86] J. Levy, Chaldäisches
Wörterbuch über die Targumim, s.v. rabbân; see also
William F. Albright, Recent Discoveries in
[87] M. Dunlop Gibson. An Arabic version
of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles .., London 1899 Studia Sinaitica VII), p. 60,9.
[88] rabbûnîyûn
or rabbônîyûn
or even rabbônîn
instead of rabbânîyûn
are only variations in pronunciation and orthography of one and the same word
related to different languages (vernacular, classical etc.).
[89] The word "pharisee" has on principle not been adopted in Arabic literature. This would explain why the Koran redactors did never arrive at the deviating interpretation rabbânîyûn = pharisees.
[90] There may be some additional
places in the Koran where most probably the redactors have not commented on an
existent rabbânîyûn
placing after it an al-ahbâr or
something similar, but they have replaced the word rabbânîyûn in general by such
commenting words.
[91] See e.g. J. Wellhausen. Muhammed in Medina. p.49f and 54ff.
[92] At both of these places (2,65 and 7,166) the sentence is kûnû qiradatan hasi'îna
"be ye apes slinking away" (R. Bell). But this kûnû "be ye" has
obviously to be read as kânû
"they were" just like it has been the case in Sura
3,79-80 (see here p. 74ff) and all adduced evidence for the alteration of the rasm of this kûnû unto kânû is valid
also for these references in Sura 2,65 and 7,66. The
sentence has therefore to be read as "they were ignoble bloodsuckers"
and this was a statement of the Prophet about the teachers of the unbelievers
about whom he was speaking.