|
|
| Line 356: |
Line 356: |
| {{main|Dhul-Qarnayn and the Alexander Romance}} | | {{main|Dhul-Qarnayn and the Alexander Romance}} |
| The Quranic story of Dhu'l Qarnayn is narrated in {{Quran-range|18|83|101}}, and is perhaps the most famous example of an intertextual relationship between the Quran and a non-biblical legend. Academic scholars consider the Quranic pericope to be closely connected to the ''Syriac Alexander Legend'', which has Alexander the Great voyaging to the ends of the earth to see where the sun sets and also describes its rising place, before he secures the Huns (including Gog and Magog) behind an iron wall. The academic consensus today is that the story was composed in the sixth century CE, with a small interpolation around 629-30 CE to make it relevant to a later context (previously, a prominent view had been that the whole legend was composed at that later date, but this is now rejected). The legend of Alexander enclosing Gog and Magog behind a iron barrier is first found several centuries earlier in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus. For a detailed discussion, see the main article. | | The Quranic story of Dhu'l Qarnayn is narrated in {{Quran-range|18|83|101}}, and is perhaps the most famous example of an intertextual relationship between the Quran and a non-biblical legend. Academic scholars consider the Quranic pericope to be closely connected to the ''Syriac Alexander Legend'', which has Alexander the Great voyaging to the ends of the earth to see where the sun sets and also describes its rising place, before he secures the Huns (including Gog and Magog) behind an iron wall. The academic consensus today is that the story was composed in the sixth century CE, with a small interpolation around 629-30 CE to make it relevant to a later context (previously, a prominent view had been that the whole legend was composed at that later date, but this is now rejected). The legend of Alexander enclosing Gog and Magog behind a iron barrier is first found several centuries earlier in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus. For a detailed discussion, see the main article. |
|
| |
| ==Jesus, Mary, and the Palm Tree==
| |
| ===Qur'anic Account===
| |
|
| |
| The Bible canon does not contain the episode of Mary, Jesus and the palm tree, which first appears in the apocrypha and later in the Qur'an.
| |
|
| |
| {{Quote|{{Quran-range|19|22|26}}|Then she conceived him; and withdrew with him to a remote place. And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!
| |
| So a voice came to her from beneath her: Grieve not, surely thy Lord has provided a stream beneath thee. And shake towards thee the trunk of the palm-tree, it will drop on thee fresh ripe dates. So eat and drink and cool the eye. Then if thou seest any mortal, say: Surely I have vowed a fast to the Beneficent, so I will not speak to any man to-day.}}
| |
|
| |
| ===Gospel of Pseudo-Mathew===
| |
|
| |
| Quranic verse 19:22-26 is a clear parallel of the account found in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. In this account Jesus has already been born, but he is still a baby during the flight to Egypt. The family are hungry and thirsty, resting under a palm tree. As in the Quran, Jesus performs the miracles of making the palm tree drop fruit and a stream appear beneath it.
| |
|
| |
| {{Quote|[http://www.gnosis.org/library/psudomat.htm The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew: Chapter 20]|And it came to pass on the third day of their journey, while they were walking, that the blessed Mary was fatigued by the excessive heat of the sun in the desert; and seeing a palm tree, she said to Joseph: Let me rest a little under the shade of this tree. Joseph therefore made haste, and led her to the palm, and made her come down from her beast. And as the blessed Mary was sitting there, she looked up to the foliage of the palm, and saw it full of fruit, and said to Joseph: I wish it were possible to get some of the fruit of this palm. And Joseph said to her: I wonder that thou sayest this, when thou seest how high the palm tree is; and that thou thinkest of eating of its fruit. I am thinking more of the want of water, because the skins are now empty, and we have none wherewith to refresh ourselves and our cattle. Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: O tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit. And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the blessed Mary; and they gathered from it fruit, with which they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all its fruit, it remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from Him who bad commanded it to stoop. Then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong, and be the companion of my trees, which are in the paradise of my Father; and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee. And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. And when they saw the spring of water, they rejoiced with great joy, and were satisfied, themselves and all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave thanks to God.”}}
| |
|
| |
| ===Dating issues and an earlier Syriac source===
| |
|
| |
| The dating of this Latin apocrypha is of uncertain date, with the oldest surving manuscript dating to around 820 CE. In 2011, Michael Berthold identified that one of its sources is the Pseudo-Ambrosian ''Life of Saint Agnes'', which is used by another work around 690 CE so this source is earlier than that. St. Agnes is thought to have lived some time from the 5th to 7th century. Other more speculative arguments suggest an earliest date of the mid sixth century for Pseudo Matthew. Considering all these insights from other scholars, Brandon Hawk gives it a date range of 550 - 800 CE.<ref>Brandon Hawk, 2020 [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Gospel_of_Pseudo_Matthew_and_the_Nat/V-nyDwAAQBAJ The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary] Cambridge, UK: James Clark & Co, pp.25-26</ref>
| |
|
| |
| Fortunately, Stephen Shoemaker has identified a precursor of the Mary palm tree story in a set of early 5th century CE texts (at the latest) known as the Dormition of the Virgin, for which we have later fifth century CE Syriac manuscript fragments as the earliest textual witnesses. This version was widespread throughout the Byzantine Near East by the end of the sixth century CE.<ref>Stephen Shoemaker, [https://www.academia.edu/1057321/Christmas_in_the_Qur%C3%A4n_the_Qur%C3%A4nic_account_of_Jesuss_nativity_and_Palestinian_local_tradition Christmas in the Qur’an: the Qur’anic Account of Jesus’ Nativity and Palestinian Local Tradition] Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28, 11-39 (2003) pp. 19-21</ref> In this version, the infant Jesus commands the palm tree to bow down and provide fruit, as in Pseudo-Matthew, but it is already located by a stream rather than the stream being a second miracle as in Pseudo-Matthew and the Quran. Nevertheless, this is proof enough that the story was developing in the region well before the 7th century CE.
| |
|
| |
| ===Leto in Greek mythology===
| |
|
| |
| Suleiman Mourad has traced the development of this story in the Qur'an and Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew through Greek and Latin literature. He writes:
| |
|
| |
| {{Quote||All the various Hellenistic and Latin variants of the original myth of Leto giving birth to Apollo by a palm tree reflect the borrowing and adaptation by groups who reshaped it for their own objectives and needs. Appropriations of ancient myths were common in the ancient world, and the early Christians were no exception. The palm-tree story that found its way to sura Maryam is a reworking of Leto's labor. It is about a distressed pregnant woman (Leto/Mary) who seeks an isolated place (Delos/a remote spot), sits by the trunk of a palm tree next to a stream (Inopos/a brook), and delivers a holy child (Apollo/Jesus). <br>
| |
| It is nevertheless unlikely that the myth of Leto was the direct source for sura Maryam. As was aforementioned, the concise version found in the latter has two parts: Mary's labor and delivery, and the miracle. We might therefore suspect that there was a stage when Leto's myth was borrowed and applied to Mary.<ref>Suleiman Mourad, “Mary in the Qur'an″, in ''The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context'', Ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds, p.169, New York: Routledge, 2007</ref>}}
| |
|
| |
| === Other details ===
| |
| {{Quote|{{Quran-range|19|16|17}}|And mention in the Book Maryam, when she withdrew from her family (to) a place eastern. Then she took from them a screen. Then We sent to her Our Spirit then he assumed for her the likeness (of) a man well-proportioned.}}
| |
| Neuwirth (2024) notes we also find other details in the birth story, such as Mary withdrawing to 'an Eastern place', which had many allegorical meanings in post-biblical traditions connecting Mary with the church in late antiquity, and the screen itself, not contained in the bible, seemingly 'de-allegorised' in the Qur'an as simple details in the story.<ref name=":6">Neuwirth, Angelika. ''The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 2.1: Early Middle Meccan Suras: The New Elect (Kindle Edition. pp. 385-386).'' Yale University Press. </ref> It is not known if these de-allegorisation readings were meant to superimpose any contemporary allegory or if they were simply circulating in a story or stories already detached from their deeper meanings.<ref name=":6" />
| |
| {{Quote|Neuwirth, Angelika. <i>The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 2.1: Early Middle Meccan Suras: The New Elect (Kindle Edition. pp. 386).</i> Yale University Press.|The detail of the curtain is also reminiscent of a symbolic apocryphal story about Mary (see TUK_0035). According to the account of the Protevangelium of James (Protev 10) already used by Bell (1937), but especially by Tannous (2019), Mary is chosen by lot to weave purple and scarlet for the temple curtain (see KKK, 323)—whose color unmistakably anticipates her son’s passion. In view of the passion story not appearing in the Qurʾan, it is not surprising that in the Qur’an the important curtain is downgraded to a rather marginal accessory, a partition protecting Mary’s private space. As in the case of the “eastern place,” so also in the case of the curtain, an image used allegorically in the Christian tradition is ‘deallegorized’; both symbolic details appear again in the qurʾanic version as everyday realities...}}
| |
|
| |
|
| ==Mary and Zechariah== | | ==Mary and Zechariah== |