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The Quran and the apostles of Jesus1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2013

Gabriel Said Reynolds
Gabriel Said Reynolds*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
*
reynolds@nd.edu
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Abstract

According to Islamic tradition the companions of Jesus in the Quran, the ḥawāriyyūn, were faithful disciples. Critical scholars largely agree that the Quran means to present the ḥawāriyyūn as such, and generally translate ḥawāriyyūn as “apostles” or “disciples”. Some add that ḥawāriyyūn is related to ḥawāryā, the Geʿez term used for the apostles in the Ethiopic Bible. In the present article I argue that while the Quran indeed means to signal the apostles of Christian tradition with the term ḥawāriyyūn, it does not consider the ḥawāriyyūn to have been faithful. The Quran praises the ḥawāriyyūn for their belief in Jesus (a belief that distinguishes them from other Israelites, i.e. the Jews) but reprimands them for abandoning his message. Hence emerges the exceptional position of Christians in the Quran: they are not condemned but rather exhorted to return to their prophet's teaching.

Keywords

QuranJesusApostlesBibleProphetsCompanions
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 209 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2013 

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Patricia Crone, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, Christopher Melchert, Munʿim Sirry, Emmanuelle Stefanidis and Hamza Zafer for their insightful comments on, and corrections of, an earlier version of this paper.

References

2 All Quran translations are those of Arberry unless noted otherwise. The present study is principally based on the internal evidence of the Quran. For an illuminating study on the antecedents to the Quran's teaching on the apostles of Jesus (focused on the Syriac Christian Didascalia), see H. Zellentin, “Islām among Jesus' disciples: The Qur'ān's legal culture and the Didascalia Apostolorum”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, forthcoming.

3 Farrā', Maʿānī al-Qur'ān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1423/2002), 1:155 ad Q. 3:52; Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān fī ta'wīl al-Qur'ān, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī Bayḍūn (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1408/1988), (part) 12:86, ad Q. 61:14.

4 al-Maḥallī, Jalāl al-Dīn and al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, ed. Siwār, Marwān (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1410/1995)Google Scholar, 46, ad Q 5:22.

5 Riḍā, Muḥammad Rashīd and ʿAbduh, Muḥammad, Tafsīr al-Qur'ān al-ḥakīm (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1427–28/2007)Google Scholar, 1:218, ad Q. 3:52–8.

6 al-Ṭabāṭabā'ī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn, al-Miẓān fī tafsīr al-Qur'ān (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-ʿĀlamī li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1418/1997)Google Scholar, 2:235, ad Q. 3:42–60.

7 Rashīd Riḍā, here quoting Muḥammad ʿAbduh, comments regarding this verse: “Here is the proof that Islam is the religion of God, proclaimed by all of the prophets, even if there are differences among them in certain outward matters, appearances, regulations, and practices”. Tafsīr al-Qur'ān al-ḥakīm, 1:218, ad Q. 3:52–8.

8 My translations. In the first case (Q. 3:52) Arberry translates “witness thou our submission” and in the second case (Q. 3:64) “Bear witness that we are Muslims”.

9 E.g. Sulaymān, Muqātil b., Tafsīr, ed. al-Shaḥāta, ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad (Beirut: Dār al-Turāth al-ʿArabī), 2002Google Scholar (reprint of: Cairo: Mu'assasat al-Ḥalabī, n.d.), 1:517, ad Q. 5:111; Yaʿqūbī, Ta'rīkh (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1999)Google Scholar, 1:62; Thaʿlabī, ʿArā'is al-majālis fī qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā', ed. al-Raḥmān, Ḥasan ʿAbd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1425/2004)Google Scholar, 343; Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, 56, ad 3:52. Muḥammad ʿAbduh disagrees: “I do not speculate on their number, because the Quran does not specify this”. Tafsīr al-Qurān al-ḥakīm, 1:218, ad Q 3:52–8.

10 On this see See R. Dvořák, “Über die Fremdwörter im Korân”, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Phil.-Hist. Classe. Sitzungsberichte 109, 1 (1885), 481–562, at p. 542; Nöldeke, T., Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (Strasbourg: Trübner, 1910)Google Scholar, 48; Jeffery, A., The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938; reprint: Leiden: Brill, 2007)Google Scholar, 116.

11 A tradition, attributed to Ḍaḥḥāk, explains that ḥāwārīyyūn means ghassālūn in Nabataean. Ṭabarī, 12:86, ad Q. 61:14.

12 Tafsīr Muqātil explains that the ḥawāriyyūn “were bleachers (qaṣṣārūn), whiteners of clothing”. Tafsīr Muqātil, 1:517, ad Q. 5:111; Tafsīr Mujāhid glosses the term ḥawāriyyūn with “washers” (ghassālūn), and explains that their profession was to “whiten (yuḥawwirūna) clothing”. Tafsīr Mujāhid (ed.), al-Asyūṭī, Abū Muḥammad (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1426/2005)Google Scholar, 39.

13 Farrā', 1:155 ad Q. 3:52. In light of such traditions it is surprising that more modern translators of the Quran (many of whom claim to present the literal meaning of the Quran with reference to the classical mufassirūn) do not translate ḥawāriyyūn in light of the connection that the mufassirūn make between this term and “whiteness”. The only translator to do so, to my knowledge, is Muhammad Asad, who translates ḥawāriyyūn as “the white-garbed ones”. Asad explains: “It is, however, most probable – and the evidence provided by the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls strongly supports this view – that the term ḥawārī was popularly used to denote a member of the Essene Brotherhood, a Jewish religious group which existed in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and to which, possibly, he himself belonged. The Essenes were distinguished by their strong insistence on moral purity and unselfish conduct, and always wore white garments as the outward mark of their convictions”. Asad, M., The Message of the Qur'ān (Bitton, England: The Book Foundation, 2003)Google Scholar, 89. I am indebted to Emmanuelle Stefanidis for calling my attention to this translation.

14 Ṭabarī, 3:287, ad Q. 3:52.

15 Ibid., 12:86, ad Q. 61:14.

16 Saleh, W., “The etymological fallacy and Qur'ānic studies: Muhammad, paradise, and late antiquity”, in Neuwirth, A. et al. (eds), The Qurʾān in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 649–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Saleh's concern with this scholarly habit, however, seems to lead him to an extreme position (indeed, one which the early mufassirūn did not entertain) of rejecting even a judicious use of non-Arabic languages in the study of the Quran; he does not, to be clear, deny the presence of foreign vocabulary in the Quran, but he suggests that all such vocabulary had already been Arabized. Such a position seems to be unjustified in light of the peculiar nature of the vocabulary of the Quran (in comparison with, for example, the vocabulary of the ḥadīth) and in light of the dynamic relationship of Arabic, Aramaic and Ancient South Arabian dialects and languages (evident, for example, in epigraphy) in the late antique period.

17 Zellentin (“Islām among Jesus' disciples”) notes that an exception to this case is found with some manuscripts of the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum. In the oldest manuscripts Christians are referred to as krīsṭyānē but in later manuscripts they are nāṣrāyē mshiḥāyē. As Zellentin notes, however, it is possible that the nomenclature of the later manuscripts is influenced by the Islamic Arabic use of naṣārā.

18 On this etymology see Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary, 280–21.

19 Griffith, S., “Al-Naṣārā in the Qur'ān: a hermeneutical reflection”, in Reynolds, G.S. (ed.), New Perspectives on the Qur'ān: The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context 2 (London: Routledge, 2011), 301–22Google Scholar at pp. 303–5. The term nāṣrāyē is used by Christians writing in Syriac when they quote the derisive manner in which non-Christians (usually Persian Zoroastrians) refer to them. This use of the term is reminiscent of Acts 24:5 in which the Jewish attorney Tertullus, speaking against Paul, comments: “We have found this man a perfect pest; he stirs up trouble among Jews the world over and is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect”. Later Ναζωραιοι is used by Christians such as Epiphanius (d. 403), Theodoret of Cyrrhus (d. c. 458) and John of Damascus (d. 749) as a term for heretical “Judaizing” Christians.

20 See, among other works, Wellhausen, J., Reste arabischen Heidentumes (Berlin: Reimer, 1897), esp. pp. 230–34Google Scholar; al-Ḥaddād, Yūsuf Durra, Al-Qur'ān daʿwā naṣrāniyya (Jounieh: Librairie pauliste, 1969)Google Scholar; al-Ḥarīrī, Abū Mūsā, Qass wa-nabī (Beirut: n.p. 1979)Google Scholar; French trans.: Azzi, J., Le prêtre et le prophète, trans. Garnier, M.S. (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001)Google Scholar; De Blois, F., “Naṣrānī (Ναζωραιος) and Ḥanīf (εθνικος): studies on the religious vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam”, BSOAS 65/1, 2002, 1–30Google Scholar; Gnilka, J., Die Nazarener und der Koran: Eine Spurensuche (Freiburg: Herder, 2007)Google Scholar.

21 “From the hermeneutical point of view, the biggest problem in discerning the identity of the Christianity reflected in the Qur'ān has been the construction scholars have put upon those passages that either give a name to the Christians, i.e. calling them al-naṣārā, or reflect their beliefs and practices. For the most part these passages, even when they report the Qur'ān's own Christology, have been interpreted as reflecting or reporting the actual idiom of local Christians and even their creedal formulae, as if the Qur'ān were incapable of composing its own views of Christian doctrine. On that assumption, the hunt was then on to discover somewhere in Christian sources some report of a Christian community that had voiced such convictions as those found in the Qur'ān.” Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qur'ān”, 320.

22 Thus, for example, Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary, 319–20. Renderings of al-ḥawāriyyūn in English, French and German translations of the Quran include:

Sale: apostles

Savary: apôtres

Kasimirski: apôtres (or, Q. 61:14, “ses disciples”)

Palmer: apostles

Pickthall: disciples

Yusuf Ali: disciples

Blachère: Apôtres (or, Q. 5:110, “[Douze] Apôtres”)

Hamidullah: apôtres

Paret: Jünger

Asad: white-garbed ones (regarding which see n. 13)

Berque: apôtres

Fakhry: disciples

Abdel Haleem: disciples

Khalidi: Apostles (or, Q. 5:110, 111, “disciples”)

Monotheist Group: disciples

Abu-Sahlieh: apôtres

Bobzin: Jünger

23 A.H.M. Zahniser, “Apostles”, EQ 1:123; the article opens with the remark, “The disciples of Jesus. The word for the apostles ḥawāriyyūn (sing. ḥawārī), occurs four times in the Qur'ān”. Both McAuliffe and Robinson translate ḥawāriyyūn as “disciples” without discussing at length the reason for doing so. See McAuliffe, J., Qur'ānic Christians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 261; Robinson, N., Christ in Islam and Christianity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 30–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Accordingly the Arabic term rasūl, applied frequently to the Prophet Muḥammad in the Quran, is rendered into English as “apostle” by some translators. Sale, and Palmer (who frequently follows Sale) translate both rasūl and ḥawāriyyūn with “apostle”. The Quran also uses the term rasūl to refer to the angels. On the Quran's use of this term, and on what that use suggests of the Quran's understanding of revelation (and the role of prophets therein), see Fossum, J.E., “The Apostle concept in the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Near Eastern literature”, in Mir, M. (ed.), Literary Heritage in Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993), 149–67Google Scholar.

25 In chapter 1 of Acts the remaining eleven apostles choose Matthias to take the place of Judas among their number. In other New Testament passages the term “disciples” is synonymous with “apostles” (thus Matthew 10:1, which speaks of the “twelve disciples” of Jesus, who are named the twelve “apostles” in the following verse). Cf. Matthew 28:16, which refers to the “eleven disciples” (after the treason and suicide of Judas). The author of the Gospel of John regularly refers to himself as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. Elsewhere, however, the “disciples” are a larger group of Jesus' followers, as in Luke: “When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’” (Luke 6:13). In Matthew 28:19 the risen Jesus commands his followers to “make disciples (μαθητεύσατε) of all nations”.

26 In his letters Paul regularly refers to himself as an apostle, as in 1 Corinthians 9:1: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?” The term “apostles” is also used generally in the New Testament, as in the expression “apostles and elders” that appears six times in Acts 15 and 16.

27 See Hishām, Ibn, Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, ed. Wüstenfeld, F. (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1858–60)Google Scholar, 286 English trans.: Isḥāq, Ibn, The Life of Muḥammad, trans. Guillaume, A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955)Google Scholar, 199.

28 Thus Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ed. ʿAbduh, Maḥmūd Muḥammad (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1999)Google Scholar, 3:307–8, ad Q. 61:14, and Ṭabarī, 12:86, ad Q. 61:14.

29 Ibn Hishām, 293–302; trans. Guillaume, 201–07.

30 Ibid., 297; trans. Guillaume, 201–04.

31 Q 5:12 alludes to Numbers 13, which has God command Moses to send out twelve men, one from each Israelite tribe (13:12), to reconnoitre the land of Canaan. On this see Cuypers, M., Le Festin (Paris: Lethielleux, 2007)Google Scholar, 105.

32 Ibn Isḥāq, 299; trans. Guillaume, 204.

33 Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 3:307–8, ad Q. 61:14, and Ṭabarī, 12:86, ad Q. 61:14.

34 “All of the ḥawāriyyūn were from the Quraysh: Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ḥamza, Jaʿfar, Abū ʿUbayda b. al-Jarrāḥ, ʿUthmān b. Maẓʿūn, Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf, Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbayd Allāh, and Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām.” The report that the ḥawāriyyūn were from the Quraysh – a tradition evidently meant to underline Meccan privilege on questions of leadership – is related to a second report that one Qurashī in particular, Zubayr, was known as Muḥammad's ḥawārī: “The ḥawāriyyūn were the privileged companions (khāṣṣa) of Jesus. Similarly the privileged companions of the messenger were called ḥawāriyyūn. Zubayr was known as ‘the ḥawārī’ of the messenger of God.” Farrāʾ 1:155 ad Q. 3:52. A ḥadīth in the Prophet's own words, to the same effect, is found in Bukhārī: “Every prophet has a ḥawārī, and my ḥawārī is al-Zubayr”. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 56, “Al-Jihād wa-l-Siyar”, 40–41 (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1420/1999), 2:235; also Ṭabarī, 3:287, ad Q. 3:52. A second ḥadīth – based on the traditional etymology of the term ḥawārī – explains instead that al-Zubayr was named the ḥawārī of the Prophet due to the whiteness of his clothing (Bukhārī, 62, “Faḍā'il al-Ṣaḥābā”, 13; 2:480).

35 This idea is suggested by A. Wensinck, “Ḥawārī”, EI 2, 3:285b. More typical is the position of D. Masson, by which things took place the other way around. The Quran gave the name anṣār to the “apostles” in light of the historical use of this name for Muḥammad's Medinan companions. Masson, D., Le Coran et la révélation judéo-chrétienne (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1958)Google Scholar, 334.

36 On this see van der Velden, F., “Kotexte im Konvergenzstrang – die Bedeutung textkritischer Varianten und christlicher Bezugstexte für die Redaktion von Sure 61 und Sure 5,110–119”, Oriens Christianus 92, 2008, 130–73Google Scholar. Van der Velden relies on Jeffery, A., Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurʾān. The Old Codices (Leiden: Brill, 1937)Google Scholar, 287.

37 Cf. Exodus 24:1 and 9, whereby God designates seventy Israelites to join Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu on the top of Mount Sinai.

38 Companion to the Qur'ān (Oxford: Oneworld, 1994)Google Scholar, 50. Penrice defines the term as “Disciples or apostles of Jesus” in A Dictionary and Glossary of the Ḳor-ân with Copious Grammatical References and Explanation of the Text (London: King and Co., 1873)Google Scholar, 58; Ambros defines them as “Apostles of Jesus”, in Ambros, A.A. and Procházka, S., A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar, 308.

39 Masson, 334. At the risk of sounding pedantic, I may add that the Quran does not report that the miracle of al-mā'ida (la table servie) took place; it only has God announce His intent to accomplish it (Q. 5:115).

40 I do not follow, here or elsewhere, the method of dating Quranic passages according to the traditional biography of Muḥammad. Regarding this see Reynolds, G.S., “Le problème de la chronologie du Coran”, Arabica 58, 2011, 477–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 This conviction that Āl ʿImrān (3) 54 could not be a criticism of the ḥawāriyyūn is reflected in a number of translations. Pickthall adds a parenthetical note in his translation here in order to keep his readers from thinking that the ḥawāriyyūn were false friends of Jesus: “And they [the disbelievers] schemed”. Yusuf ʿAlī and Abdel Haleem do the same. Hamidullah writes: “Et ils [les autres] se mirent à comploter”. To their credit, the authors of the anonymous Quran translation, The Message, who aim (in light of their Quranist convictions) to translate the Quran without the interference of medieval tafsīr, refrain from adding a parenthetical note here. For his part Abu-Sahlieh seems to build on the traditional Islamic view when he writes in a footnote to his translation that this verse refers to Judas' act of delivering Jesus to the Jewish authorities (he includes also references here to the relevant passages in the four Gospels of the New Testament). Abu-Sahlieh, S.A.A., Le Coran (Paris: L'Aire, 2008)Google Scholar, 425, n. 2.

42 Thus Tafsīr Muqātil, 1:278, ad. Q. 3:54; Farrāʾ, 1:155 ad Q. 3:52. Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) explains the phrase “they devised (makarū)” as a reference to the unbelievers (cf. Q. 3:52) among the Israelites who sought to kill Jesus. Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqā'iq ghawāmiḍ al-tanzīl, ed. Aḥmad, Muṣṭafā Ḥusayn (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987)Google Scholar, 1:366, ad Q. 3:52–4; The same opinion is found with Tafsīr Jalālayn, 57 ad Q. 3:54 and, in the modern period, with Tafsīr al-Manār, 3:219, ad Q. 3:52–8.

43 Noting the exact correspondence of their final lines, F. van der Velden argues that Q. 5:111 is a verse developed on the model of Q. 3:52 (which he considers to be chronologically earlier). By his reading, Q. 5:110–19 was composed through the incorporation of formulaic refrains, and according to the structural model, of Q. 3:45–59 and Q 61:4–13 (Van der Velden, “Kotexte im Konvergenzstrang”, 148–54). Van der Velden draws a contrast between his approach and that of Cuypers, who (even while contending that al-Mā'ida is the definitive proclamation in the Quran) focuses on rhetorical relationships within particular Quranic units here as elsewhere (and not on theories of the Quran's diachronic development). See Cuypers, Le Festin, 321–58.

44 The demand of the ḥawāriyyūn might be compared to that of Abraham in Q 2:260: “And when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, show me how Thou wilt give life to the dead', He said, ‘Why, dost thou not believe?' ‘Yes,' he said, ‘but that my heart may be at rest'.” If both the ḥawāriyyūn and Abraham seek to have their hearts set at rest (ṭuma'nīnat al-qalb), the ḥawāriyyūn openly doubt that Jesus is truthful, while Abraham does not doubt that God is truthful. I am grateful to Emmanuelle Stefanidis for drawing my attention to this important parallel.

45 Asbāb; Arberry translates “cords”.

46 On Haman in the Quran see Silverstein, A., “Haman's transition from the Jahiliyya to Islam”, JSAI 34, 2008, 285–308Google Scholar.

47 On this see Reynolds, G.S., “On the Qur'ān's Mā'ida passage and the wanderings of the Israelites”, in Lourié, B., Segovia, C.A. and Bausi, A. (eds), The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam in Memory of John Wansbrough (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011), 91–108Google Scholar; Cuypers, Le Festin, 340; E. Grypeou, “The table from heaven: a note on Qur'an, Surah 5,111 ff.”, Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 2, 2005, 311–16.

48 Cf. Abu-Sahlieh, who includes here a cross-reference to John 14:1: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me”.

49 See especially Exodus 16–17; Numbers 11: 20–21.

50 The Hebrew word shulḥān is translated in the New Jerusalem Bible (from which I have otherwise quoted) as “banquet”, but literally means “table”. The Ethiopic Bible translates mā'edd, cognate with Arabic al-mā'ida. On this see Reynolds, “On the Qur'ān's Mā'ida passage”, 102–3.

51 A tradition reported by Ṭabarī (on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās) explains that the phrase: “We confirmed those who believed against their enemy, and they became masters”, refers to: “the victory of Muḥammad above … the religion of the infidels. And [the Muslims] became masters”. Tabari 12:87, ad Q. 61:14.

52 Tafsīr Muqātil, 1:279: ad Q. 3:55.

53 ʿAbd al-Jabbar, for example, relates that Jesus' followers split into those who made a pernicious alliance with the pagan Romans against the Jews, and those who remained faithful to his Islamic teaching (and held on to his Islamic scripture, al-Injīl). The first party sought the help of the Romans against the faithful party. He continues: “The [faithful companions] concealed themselves from the Romans and fled throughout the land. The Romans wrote to their agents in the regions of Mosul and the Arabian Peninsula. They were hunted down. A group of them fell [into the hands of the Romans] and were burned. Another group was killed”. al-Jabbār, ʿAbd, The Critique of Christian Origins (from Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa), ed. and trans. Reynolds, G.S. and Samir, S.K. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Press, 2009)Google Scholar, part 3, vv. 70–72. Thereafter the unfaithful party abandoned the (Islamic) religion of Jesus and embraced pagan Roman religion (for which reason ʿAbd al-Jabbār comments elsewhere: “The Romans did not become Christians, the Christians became Romans [al-rūm mā tanaṣṣarū … bal al-naṣārā tarawwamat]) Ibid., part 3, verse 309.

For his part Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373) reports a tradition on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās which describes the tragic fate of the faithful Muslim followers of Jesus in a different manner. After the Crucifixion (of a companion who took the place of Jesus on the cross), the Christians split into three groups: Jacobites (who thought Jesus to be God), Nestorians (who thought him to be the Son of God), and the true believers who thought him to be a servant of God (cf. Q 19:30). The tradition continues: “The two disbeliever groups joined together against the believer group and killed them, and so the real teachings of Islam taught by Jesus became obscure till God sent the Prophet Muḥammad.” Kathīr, Ibn, Stories of the Prophets, trans. Azami, R.A. (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2003)Google Scholar, 572.

54 In a similar manner the Syriac Didascalia, a text written from the perspective of the twelve apostles, has the apostles describe themselves as “His disciples from among the Jews”. On this see Zellentin, “Islām among Jesus' disciples”. The citation of the Didascalia is from: The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, ed. and trans. Vööbus, A., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 401–2, at 407–8 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO 1979)Google Scholar, ch. 26, 248.

55 I am particularly obliged to Patricia Crone for her insights on this (and other relevant passages). However, all of the opinions expressed here are my own, and I am responsible for any mistakes or errors of judgement.

56 On this see Paret, R., Der Koran, Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971)Google Scholar, 345.

57 Q. 21:92 and Q. 23:52 are almost identical:

Q 21:92 inna hādhihi ummatukum ummatan wāḥidatan wa-anā rabbukum fa-ʿbudūni

Q 23:52 wa-inna hādhihi ummatukum ummatan wāḥidatan wa-anā rabbukum fa-ttaqūni

58 The mufassirūn – who generally presume that the ḥawāriyyūn were not prophets – are accordingly eager to clarify the Quran's use of this term here. To this end Zamakhsharī paraphrases the Quranic phrase “I revealed to the ḥawāriyyūn”, with, “I commanded them through the tongues of the prophets”. Zamakhsari, 1:692, ad Q. 5:111–15. Ibn Kathīr, for his part, explains that waḥy here is used in a limited manner: “What is meant by this use of waḥy is illumination [ilhām]”. In order to illustrate this explanation he quotes a tradition from al-Suddī: “He cast this into their hearts”. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 2:113, ad Q. 5:110–11. Rashīd Riḍā agrees with Ibn Kathīr and explains: “In its original meaning waḥy is ‘a quick, hidden, indication’”. He continues, “If the telegraph had existed in the days of the pure Arabs, they would have called its communication waḥy”. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ḥakīm, 7:179, ad Q. 5:109–15.

59 Elsewhere the Quran has God awḥā to Moses' mother (Q. 20:38). This example might be taken to show that the Quran uses awḥā: first, for divine revelation to “prophets” (when it uses this verb in regard to Moses or Muḥammad); and second, for something other than divine revelation to “non-prophets” (when it uses this verb in regard to Moses' mother or the apostles). Alternatively, it might be taken to show that the Quran does not teach – as later Muslim scholars do – that divine revelation is given only to those who are generally held by Islamic tradition to be prophets.

60 In his detailed article “Islām among Jesus' Disciples”, Zellentin arrives at a different conclusion. In light of the Syriac Didascalia he argues that the Quran's positive references to the apostles (as anṣār and muslimūn) may reflect the continued historical presence of a group who professed belief in Jesus but maintained certain Jewish practices (what Zellentin refers to as an “observant” faction), or at least the continuation of those practices within certain Christian communities.