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Mary, Sister of Aaron: Difference between revisions
→Complete Picture of the Mistake: Made a note that large scale changes have occurred elsewhere, making this one potentially more likely with an academic reference. I've also removed 'likely' meaning of Imran to 'Potential' as this line of scholarship does not seem to be widely accepted - with most agreeing it was written in the Hijaz.
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(→Complete Picture of the Mistake: Made a note that large scale changes have occurred elsewhere, making this one potentially more likely with an academic reference. I've also removed 'likely' meaning of Imran to 'Potential' as this line of scholarship does not seem to be widely accepted - with most agreeing it was written in the Hijaz.) |
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Since Mary and Miriam are both pronounced Maryam in Arabic, it's possible that Muhammad, based on the Christian stories he heard,<ref>For example from Waraqa ibn Nawfal.</ref> mixed these two women into one person when he was composing/relaying the Qur'an. | Since Mary and Miriam are both pronounced Maryam in Arabic, it's possible that Muhammad, based on the Christian stories he heard,<ref>For example from Waraqa ibn Nawfal.</ref> mixed these two women into one person when he was composing/relaying the Qur'an. | ||
'''Circumstantial evidence''' | |||
It is also worth noting that despite the taking of biblical and narratives, there are large differences between them (that many devout Christians and secular historians would [[Historical Errors in the Quran|consider mistakes)]], as Durie (2018) who argues the knowledge was obtained through oral tellings of popular stories rather than a deep studying of scripture, hence the specific timelines are not kept to, notes: | |||
{{Quote|Durie, Mark. <i>The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion (pp. xxiv - xxv)(Kindle Edition. p. 27).</i> 2018. Lexington Books.|..Another riddle of the Qurʾan is the combination of remarkably numerous and diverse reflexes of Biblical materials, as well as extra-Biblical Christian and Jewish literature, alongside a striking unawareness of basic facts concerning the sources of this material. Let us consider some examples: | |||
• The Qurʾan conflates Maryam (Miriam), the sister of Mūsa¯ (Moses) and | |||
Ha¯rūn (Aaron) and daughter of ʿImra¯n (ʿAmra¯m) (Num. 26:59) with Maryam (Mary) <sup>5</sup> the mother of ʿĪsa¯ (Jesus) (Q19:27–28; Q66:12; Q3:33–36).<br>• The Qurʾan refers to Hāmān as a senior official of Firʿawn (Pharaoh), mentioning him six times (Q28:6, 8, 38; Q29:39; Q40:24, 36). The Biblical Hāmān—the name is identical—was a vizier under Ahasuerus (Xerxes) in Esth. 3–6. <br>• In the Qurʾan’s version of the story of the golden calf, someone called al-Sāmirī “the Samaritan” leads the Israelites into error in the wilderness (Q20:85–88, 95). However, in the Bible the Samaritans are the remnant people of the northern Kingdom of Israel. This ethnonym arose centuries after the time of the Exodus, being derived from the name of the city Samaria (Hebrew shomron “watch mountain”), which was only founded in the time of Omri (1 Kgs 16:24), around 870 BCE (van Beek 1962a, 1962b). <br>• In other respects the Biblical timeline has been flattened, so the Qurʾan displays little awareness of stages in the history of Israel. For example, in Q5:20–21 Mūsa¯ addresses his people before they enter the holy land, telling them to remember that Alla¯h had appointed prophets and kings among them in the past, even though in the Biblical account there were no kings of Israel until some time after Canaan was settled. In spite of this previous account, elsewhere the Qurʾan describes how the people of Israel, after Alla¯h had drowned “Pharaoh’s people” (and not just his army) in the sea, did not move on toward a promised land, but took over the farms, gardens, and buildings of the Egyptians, succeeding them (Q44:25–28; cf. Q7:136–37).<br> | |||
• Another puzzle, given the large volume of Biblical reflexes in the Qurʾan, is | |||
the surprising rarity of accurate citations of actual text of the Bible (Griffith | |||
2013, 55–56). | |||
These puzzles are a paradox of how to understand both the Messenger and his intended audience...}} | |||
We can infer from this that such a big change (and therefore mistake such as Mary/Mariam) is more likely to occur if these kinds of changes are made elsewhere. | |||
==Modern Scholarly Interpretations== | ==Modern Scholarly Interpretations== | ||
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{{Quote|The Lection of Jeremiah|“And the prophet [Jeremiah] said: ‘His coming will be a sign for you, and for other children at the end of the world.57 And nobody will bring forth the hidden Ark from the rock, except the priest Aaron, '''''the brother of Mary'''''. And nobody will unveil the tables therein, nor be able to read them, except the lawgiver Moses, the chosen of the Lord. And at the resurrection of the dead, the Ark will be the first to rise from the rock and to be placed on Mount Sinai, so that the word of the prophet David will be fulfilled, in which he said: ‘Arise, O Lord, to your resting place, You and the Ark of Your holiness’, which is the Holy Virgin Mary who passes from this world to the presence of God, she to whom the apostles proclaimed in Zion the praise of Myrrh saying: ‘Today the Virgin is being guided from Bethlehem to Zion, and today from earth to heaven’, and all the saints are gathered together around her and wait for the Lord, putting to flight the enemy who aims to destroy them.”}} | {{Quote|The Lection of Jeremiah|“And the prophet [Jeremiah] said: ‘His coming will be a sign for you, and for other children at the end of the world.57 And nobody will bring forth the hidden Ark from the rock, except the priest Aaron, '''''the brother of Mary'''''. And nobody will unveil the tables therein, nor be able to read them, except the lawgiver Moses, the chosen of the Lord. And at the resurrection of the dead, the Ark will be the first to rise from the rock and to be placed on Mount Sinai, so that the word of the prophet David will be fulfilled, in which he said: ‘Arise, O Lord, to your resting place, You and the Ark of Your holiness’, which is the Holy Virgin Mary who passes from this world to the presence of God, she to whom the apostles proclaimed in Zion the praise of Myrrh saying: ‘Today the Virgin is being guided from Bethlehem to Zion, and today from earth to heaven’, and all the saints are gathered together around her and wait for the Lord, putting to flight the enemy who aims to destroy them.”}} | ||
The use of "sister of Aaron" (here reversed as "the brother of Mary" for Aaron) is being invoked here deliberately by the Georgian author, who always uses "Mary" for the mother of Jesus and "Miriam" for the actual sister of Aaron. The Qur'an is thus not showing its ignorance here; rather the reference to Mary as Aaron's sister is a reference to the celebration of the cult of the virgin Mary in Palestine. It is thus unlikely that an uneducated pagan audience in Mecca or Medina might have understood this verse; there are several explanations for how such a complex reference could have made its way into the Qur'an, and none of them align with the traditional narrative: | |||
#The Arab audience of the northern Hijaz was not actually illiterate and pagan as the sirah and tafsir literature would have us believe, but was rather already in Muhammad's time largely Christian and intimately familiar with the literate, multi-lingual Grecophone and Syriac-speaking culture of the Byzantine near east. | #The Arab audience of the northern Hijaz was not actually illiterate and pagan as the sirah and tafsir literature would have us believe, but was rather already in Muhammad's time largely Christian and intimately familiar with the literate, multi-lingual Grecophone and Syriac-speaking culture of the Byzantine near east. | ||
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#Muhammad did not compose and preach this surah in the Hijaz, but rather in or around Palestine for an audience that would understand it; if Shoemaker in his book ''The Death of a Prophet'' is to be believed, this could have been after he personally conquered Jerusalem itself. | #Muhammad did not compose and preach this surah in the Hijaz, but rather in or around Palestine for an audience that would understand it; if Shoemaker in his book ''The Death of a Prophet'' is to be believed, this could have been after he personally conquered Jerusalem itself. | ||
=== | ==== Potential Meaning of Imran ==== | ||
When the Qur'an states that Mary is the daughter of 'Imran, it is likely using typology, an approach to scripture that sees later figures as reflections of their biblical forebears. Thus what the Qur'an is here saying, through the mother of Jewish interlocuters, is that Mary and her family were pre-figured by the family of Aaron and Miryam. This pre-figurement further plays into the links established between Mary and Miriam at the church of the Kathisma, and once again demonstrates the author’s knowledge of the Palestinian cult of the virgin Mary.<ref> Guillaume Dye, “The Qur’ān and its Hypertextuality in Light of Redaction Criticism,” The Fourth Nangeroni Meeting Early Islam: The Sectarian Milieu of Late Antiquity? (Early Islamic Studies Seminar, Milan) (15-19 June 2015): 9.</ref> | |||
When the Qur'an states that Mary is the daughter of 'Imran, it is likely using typology, an approach to scripture that sees later figures as reflections of their biblical forebears. Thus what the Qur'an is here saying, through the mother of Jewish interlocuters, is that Mary and her family were pre-figured by the family of Aaron and Miryam. This pre-figurement further plays into the links established between Mary and Miriam at the church of the Kathisma, and once again demonstrates the author’s | |||
==See Also== | ==See Also== | ||