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- Kathisma Church that has been discovered between Bethlehem and Jerusalem had the Tradition of Mary giving birth under a Palm Tree with dates and a spring. the Lection of Jeremiah was read in that Church that mentions Aaron, Parallel to the Quran.
Kathisma church and the Dome of the Rock are buildings of similar dimensions, so it’s plausible to believe that the Kathisma church is the architectural model of the Dome of the Rock. Essentially, the two screenshots above label the discovery, we’re gonna dive deep into the intertextuality of the Kathisma church and how it shows the large knowledge of the Qu’ranic author in Islam.
Tons of intertextuality here, references/elements seemingly from Hebrews 9-11, Ezekiel 44, and more.
Here are the following points of contact between the Kathisma church and Q19:1-63:
(1.) The Kathisma church is attached to the feast of the Memory of Mary. (2.) Kathisma Church before the Qur’an, connected the traditions of the Protoevangelium of James and the palm miracle, the Qu’ran not only repeats the traditions of the Kathisma, but also presupposes them. The Qu’ran goes further and merges the episodes, creating a creative homiletic variation. (3.) Calendar is central, indentification with the Ark is made, Hebrews 9.1-10 has something. (4.) The very curious “mary sister of Aaron” has it’s essence. (5.) Muslims knew the building, and transformed a part of it into a mosque.
- What the author/profiling had to know
- 1. The author is familiar with Luke 1 and related traditions (compare Luke 1.13, Q19.3-4; Luke 1.13-22 and Q19:7.11; Luke 1.28-38 and Q19.17-21). This is extremely implausible for someone like Muhammad to know in an area like this, he would have to know extreme literary tactics which again, seems implausible. 2. He has an intimate knowledge of the traditions related to the Kathisma church – including the Protoevangelium of James and the palm miracle – and he presupposes the connection between these independent traditions. He knows, one way or the other, the Lection of Jeremiah, a text which was clearly not widespread outside the Hagiopolite communities. 3. He is familiar with other aspects of the Jerusalem Marian liturgy and with the Dormition narratives. In fact, relying on the network of subtexts constituted by the Hagiopolite liturgy is the best explanation for most of the content of Q 19-1-33* 4. He follows a Christian usage in composing a section on Zachariah and John the Baptist as a preparation for the section on Mary and Jesus, following a Christian usage. Besides, the striking parallels between both sections (2-15 and 16-33) [see Annex 2, pp. 31-32] suggest that Q 19:1-33 is not the shortcoming of a complex editorial process, but a text with a striking unity, and whose organization follows a very precise intention. 5. He practices Christian typological exegesis. If we include the section on Abraham, we shall conclude that he also knows the “cycle of Abraham”. 6. He has a remarkable homiletic talent, being able, for example, to merge episodes like the questioning and presentation of Jesus in the Temple in a unique narrative, using the literary device of Jesus speaking from the cradle. This implies that he knows at least some of such “cradle miracle” traditions, which are attested about Jesus and other prophets. 7. He certainly has some knowledge of Aramaic (at worst indirect, but more probably direct). This is confirmed by a play on words made on the name of John the Baptist (19:13). The text reads wa-̣anānan min ladunnā, “and a mercy from us”. The word hanān (an hapax in the Qur’ān) does not mean here “grace” or “tenderness” but “mercy” like in Hebrew or Aramaic. And note the name of John in Hebrew: Yọanān, i.e. “Yo-̣anān” “God is mercy”. The word for “mercy” is visible also in Aramaic Yụanan, but it is of course absent in the usual reading of John’s name in the Qur’ān, i.e. Yạhyā, and it seems a bit far-fetched to look for it in the Christian reading of the same rasm, Yụhannā. When the Qur’ān speaks of “mercy” elsewhere, and especially in this surah, it uses rạma (Q 19:2, 21, 50, 53).
- He HAS to know Aramaic and Hebrew.
- He has to know Greek as well.
11. Thanks to his intimate knowledge of Palestinian Marian liturgical traditions, he composes a dialogue hymn, following the model of hymns which were sung or recited in a (Christian) liturgical setting. It is highly unlikely, to say the least, that a scribe corresponding to such a profile could have belonged to the Meccan or Medinan circle of Mụhammad – or more generally to the Ḥijāz, except if we are ready to imagine Mecca or Medina as an Arabic Edessa, Antioch, or Jerusalem. The most likely explanation is that this author should be situated elsewhere than the Ḥijāz – most probably, indeed, not too far from Jerusalem, since he was extremely familiar with the Hagiopolite liturgy. Besides, such a skillful text requires various specific competencies, and we should wonder how they could have been acquired. The obvious explanation is that our author belongs to the class of the religious literati. In other words, he was certainly a Christian monk who “converted” to the Jewish faith at the service of the newcomers – certainly, therefore, after the conquests.
So I’ll recap, the author has to know 4 languages: Hijazi Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. He would have to live near Jerusalem, have extreme literary skills, know the Hebrew bible well enough, be extremely familiar with the Hagiopolite liturgy, familiar with gospel traditions and other texts, VERY good with the essence.
Dye creates a false dichotomy to compel his readers to conclude Q19 MUST post-date the conquests and come from Palestine anyways, as said by Sean Anthony. Q19 is in the earliest manuscripts. It seems implausible it’s a later addition.
Pictures
- The Kathisma Church and Jesus’ Birth in the Qur’an (Goudarzi)
- Stephen Shoemaker and Guillaume Dye have argued that the liturgical traditions of the Kathisma church have influenced the qur’anic story of Jesus’s birth in surah 19 (Shoemaker 2003; Dye 2022). According to this story, the impregnated Mary withdrew to “a remote place” (makānan qaṣiyyan, v. 22) and, while giving birth, was miraculously provided for by a spring and a date palm (vv. 24–26). The remote location of delivery is reminiscent of the Protevangelium of James’s claim that Mary gave birth in a cave between Jerusalem and Bethlehem (and not in Bethlehem itself), while the second element resembles miraculous provision for Mary (including through a date palm) during the flight to Egypt according to some Christian traditions (Shoemaker 2003, 18–21). In the view of Shoemaker and Dye, the Qur’an’s distinctive combination of elements previously associated with the separate events of the Nativity and the flight to Egypt had a sole precedent in the liturgical traditions of the Kathisma church, a site of pilgrimage that they claim was associated with both the Nativity and the flight to Egypt (Shoemaker 2003, 22–31; Dye 2022, 168–9). Both Shoemaker and Dye contend that not only does the qur’anic story of surah 19 reflect the traditions of Kathisma but that the author(s) of the story must have been physically present at this site. Assuming further that this alleged physical presence must have happened during or after the Islamic conquests (Dye 2022, 182), Shoemaker and Dye conclude that the account of Nativity in surah 19 is post-prophetic. According to Dye, the author of surah 19’s account must have been so familiar with the Jerusalem liturgy that he was “certainly a Christian cleric, active around Jerusalem, who ‘converted’ to the new faith, or put his pen at the service of the newcomers – all this happening, therefore, certainly after the conquests”.
There are several problems with this series of increasingly tenuous claims. First, whether or not the Kathisma’s site was initially associated with the site of the Nativity mentioned in the Protoevangelium of James, it is not clear if this association was operative in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Avner notes that “to date no material evidence has been found to support the theory that the Kathisma was identified by Christians at any time as the birthplace of Jesus” (Avner 2011, 18). She argues that the celebration of Mary at the Kathisma “emerged from local veneration of Rachel as a mother and a successful intercessor that had been popular in the rural area north of Bethlehem” (Avner 2015, 48). After all, the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem was firmly established in the Christian tradition and anchored securely in place with the construction of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Avner 2011, 18, “to date no material evidence has been found to support the theory that the Kathisma was identified by Christians at any time as the birthplace of Jesus.” The available sources from the sixth century do not claim that the Kathisma was the place where Mary gave birth to Jesus. For example, in reference to the site of the Kathisma, Theodosius the Pilgrim (writing in the early 6th century) mentions the stone which Mary “blessed when she dismounted from the ass on her way to Bethlehem and sat down on it” (Wilkinson 1977, 70).
- However, Theodosius does not claim that Jesus was born near this stone. Presumably he thought that Mary sat on the stone but then left the area and reached Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Jesus as told in the Gospels of Matthew (2:1) and Luke (2:4–7). In his Lives of the Monks of Palestine, Cyril of Scythopolis (d. after 557) mentions the construction of the church of Kathisma by a certain Ikelia (AKA Hicelia), who “led the way in having the Presentation [in the Temple] of God our Saviour celebrated with candles” (Cyril, Lives, 263). Again, Cyril does not connect the Kathisma to the Nativity. Despite the absence of references to the Nativity in these sources, Dye views the Feast of the Memory of Mary (celebrated at the Kathisma) as involving “the commemoration of the role of Mary in the Nativity”, while Shoemaker describes the feast more broadly as “a commemoration of the Nativity and the Virgin’s role in the incarnation and birth of Christ”. Dye and Shoemaker base this putative connection with the Nativity on the readings associated with this feast as well as the fifth-century homilies of Hesychius and Chrysippus for the occasion. However, the feast’s scriptural readings are not about the Nativity as such but rather about the incarnation and Mary’s unique contribution to this process.
- The homilies of Hesychius confirm this impression. While the Nativity is naturally relevant to the incarnation, the focus of reflection and celebration for Hesychius is not the Nativity in particular but rather Mary’s crucial role in Christ’s incarnation in general (including her miraculous conception, her pregnancy without pain, and her giving birth without losing virginity) (Pittman 1974, 61–90). Avner thus seems to provide a more accurate description of the feast’s significance when she notes that “the central theme of the celebration was the glorification of the Theotokos, focusing on Mary’s virginal motherhood, as most scholars have observed” (Avner 2011, 19). Avner adds in fact that “the Kathisma was the only strictly Marian locus sanctus devoted solely to the figure of Mary, as the Theotokos, and it was not a locus sanctus shared with the figure of Christ.”
- In fact, Shoemaker himself suggests that “an effort was made to dissociate the Kathisma church from its hoary Nativity traditions”. However, he proceeds to assert that this putative effort was meant to “reinvent [the Kathisma] as a shrine commemorating Mary’s rest during the flight into Egypt.” Yet the connection of the Kathisma with the Flight to Egypt is itself tenuous, as it is based on the witness of the so-called Piacenza Pilgrim alone. Shoemaker admits that this witness is “unique,” but he still infers from it “that in the sixth century there were some who adhered to this interpretation” of the Kathisma (Shalev-Hurvitz 2015, 135). While it is possible that others also had come to link the Kathisma with the flight to Egypt, there is no actual evidence that this was the case. Indeed, Avner (like some scholars before her) argues that the Piacenza pilgrim “conflated the site of Mary’s rest … during the flight into Egypt with her rest before the Nativity.” In support of this possibility, it is worth noting that the Kathisma is located to the north of Bethlehem and hence an unlikely site for a stop during the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. To sum, it is far from clear that the Kathisma had a strong association with the flight to Egypt, and there is little reason to believe that in the sixth century (or even earlier) it was widely considered the site of the Nativity.
- It is therefore questionable to claim that the Kathisma represented a unique site where “the two early Christian traditions of Christ’s birth in a remote location and Mary’s encounter with the date palm and spring are brought together”—especially because even in Shoemaker’s own thinking one tradition (flight to Egypt) became prominent at the expense of the other (Nativity), not to mention that the Piacenza Pilgrim makes no reference to a date palm at all. So far, these traditions have met only in Shoemaker’s and Dye’s hypothetical reconstructions of the Kathisma’s festivities. It seems unwarranted to use this inferred meeting of traditions as some sort of smoking gun that shows the Jerusalemite and post-conquest origin of the Qur’an’s Nativity account. As for the distinct elements of the qur’anic story, one does not need to posit a physical site to explain why certain motifs are joined together in this story. The early life of Jesus and Mary’s role therein constitute a distinct conceptual site that could facilitate the movement of topoi from one part of the site to another. We can only speculate about the purpose and logic of the palm tree and spring episode in the Qur’an’s Nativity account.
- First, it is worth noting that the Qur’an does not mention the flight to Egypt, so the birth of Jesus serves as the next best occasion for relating the divine provision of water and dates for a vulnerable Mary. Some factors that may have facilitated the addition of this episode include God’s miraculous feeding of a younger Mary when she was in the care of Zachariah (mentioned in Q 3:37) and miraculous provision of water and food in the desert for the Israelites after the exodus (e.g., Q 2:60, 7:160). A second reason for the inclusion of feeding in the account of surah 19 may have been to emphasize the helplessness of Mary. By portraying her in agony (“would that I had died before!” v. 23) and subsequently showing that God provided her with water and dates (vv. 24 26), the story of surah 19 underlines both God’s care for Mary and her human limitations and needs (“Christian Elephant,” 39–42). This emphasis may have served in turn to undermine the common perception of Mary as an especially potent intercessor in heaven and protector on earth (The Life of Saint George, XXVIII-XXIX p. 60). It is perhaps not a coincidence that a verse in the fifth surah rejects supra-human conceptions of Jesus and Mary by noting that “they used to eat food” (Q 5:75), before proceeding to criticize the worship of those who “have no power to bring you any benefit or harm” (Q 5:76).