- Q 53:4–12 & Isaiah 6:1–11: The historically embedded, dynastically dated first-person report of Isaiah’s calling as a Prophet contrasts with the Qur’anic report of the communication of divine teachings to the proclaimer, which is told in the third person and not set into historical time. The proclaimer’s vision is not reported for its own sake, but is embedded within an argument that sets out to authenticate the transcendent origin of the proclamation as such. But the two throne visions differ in some crucial characteristics: in contrast to Isaiah, the divine appearance in the Qur’an is not static, but seems rather to move toward the onlooker. The two prophet visions also part ways in further details: unlike the speech of God in Isaiah, the “inspiration,” waḥy, in the Qur’an does not form part of a prophetic calling, even if the inspired speech is identical semantically with the proclamation whose transcendent source the report of the vision is meant to confirm. Above all, the biblical image of God undergoes decisive changes in the Qur’an that does not allow for anthropomorphic traits.
- In contrast to these scriptures, the Qur’an presents itself at first as a new formation in altered verbal dress, as a new message that follows, and confirms, the earlier scriptures. But above all, already in the earliest community, the conception took shape that the oral Qur’an stemmed from the “preserved tablet” that is with God, al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ, an original and heavenly writing (See Jeffery, The Qur’an as Scripture; Madigan, The Qur’an’s Self-Image); cf. Q 85:21–22.: bal innahu qurʾānun majīd / fī lawḥin maḥfūẓ, “Truly, it is a glorious reading [qurʾān] / on a preserved tablet.” The Qur’an thus has its origins and roots in a transcendent original writing, from which excerpts are “sent down,” so to speak, as divine messages for recitation (Q 56:77–78: innahu la-qurʾānun karīm / fī kitābin maknūn, “Indeed, it is a generous reading [qurʾān] / preserved in a hidden writing”). The Qur’anic references to the writing, al-kitāb, presuppose a kind of archive, a store of narratives that exist already fixed in writing to be communicated to the proclaimer by the sender in the form of clearly defined pericopes, resembling the textual units read out in the services of Jews and Christians. In the Qur’anic proclamation, these pericopes are framed by introductory and closing parts and are set into a Qur’anic unit of recitation, a sura, which includes various sorts of texts.
- That the insistence on the transcendent character of the Qur’an as an exclusive feature of Islam is in no way an inherited tradition but rather something new, and that it represents a withdrawal into essentializing self-isolation that is obviously politically conditioned, is shown by the tradition of the Qur’an interpretation through the past 1,300 years. Throughout history, the Qur’an was in fact always of two natures: a scripture of transcendent origin and the inner-worldly focal point for a form of life, and thus the object of wideranging theological reflection. Above all, to give a monopoly to the transcendent origin of the Qur’an contradicts the text itself, which insists on the shared origin of all three monotheistic scriptures and invites Jews and Christians, as older “possessors of scriptures,” ahl al-kitāb, to acknowledge the shared genealogy of the three monotheistic religions, which according to the later evidence of the Qur’an all stem from one and the same transcendent archetype.
- The Qur’anic sign theology, according to which God manifests his presence in creation and intext, is refined, so that the successive oral communication of transcendently written pericopes adapted to the respective situations of the hearers comes to be understood as a specifically Qur’anic privilege—this is quite different from the scriptures of the Jews and Christians, which are presented as having been revealed all at once. When labeling both kinds of texts, the term “revelation” is used for the Qur’an despite the preliminary problems with the term, since it most clearly relays the transcendental origin. Cf. chap. 5, passim.
- The Islamic equivalent of the tablets, the heavenly writing, is a source of cultic rather than moral authority. It not only manifests God’s transcendence but also remains transcendent itself. For that reason, not only is there no image of the handing down of the tablets in Islam, but there is also no historic precedent for such a representation in written form of the divine word such as is so common in Western reception—an even stronger challenge to the imagination of the believers to take possession of this ultimately heavenly writing through art. For according to the Qur’an, not only letters or the Qur’an verses but indeed all created things are “signs,” āyāt, of God. Creation is understood as a sign system in analogy to writing, which man is constantly called upon to “read” in the Qur’an. These signs of creation, such as the cosmic order, the blessings of nature, and the historical fortunes of the community, are unfolded narratively in the Qur’an, and thus take on a verbal form through the prophetic proclamation. But since they had already existed in written form in the original Qur’an, the “mother of the writing,” umm al-kitāb, they are at the same time coded in writing. Without this coding, things could be represented figuratively without problem— as they are in other cultures. Instead, in view of their anchoring in the heavenly writing, it is the form of writing that suggests itself as their visual, inner-worldly presentation; in place of the image, we thus have the “script image.” Language and writing unite in this image, which, as in Ahmad Shawqi’s poem, glorifies the majestic name of God.
- The argument for the reality of the Final Day, proffered from an inner-worldly perspective, is strengthened and imbued with greater authority by reference to the transcendent God watching over mankind.
- The Qur’an is the “I” and “we” speech of a speaker perceived as transcendent, toward a “you” that is within the world, the proclaimer, who in turn addresses a hearership—even if this communication scenario is not yet entirely complete in the earliest suras. The voice of the “I” or “we” speaker, which jolts the drama, does not come from the stage itself, but rather from the “offstage” of the transcendent.
- Despite the differing frameworks—in the psalm, the praises enumerated are an integral part of a great hymn, while in the sura they are framed as eschatological descriptions—the two texts nonetheless show significant commonalities. Most striking is the image that occurs nowhere else in the Qur’an of the earth as a tent64 (Q 78:6–7), set on pillars (Ps 104:2; cf. Q 78:7), holding up the heavens as a roof (Ps 104:2), held in place by pegs (Q 78:7). In both texts, however, the image of the tent is not exclusive: in the sura text, the “seven firmly established,” which presuppose the Ptolemaic cosmology with the sun as light source (Q 78:12–24), cannot be united without tension with the metaphor of the tent; in the psalm, the image of the tent runs counter to the conception of the cosmos as a multistoried house of God, from whose upper “chambers,” ʿaliyot (Ps 104:3; 13), God provides for his creation.65 Furthermore, in both texts, clouds (Ps 104:13, Q 78:14), mountains (Ps 104:13, Q 78:7), sun and moon (Ps 104:19; 22, Q 78:13), and night (Ps 104:20, Q 78:10), as well as the nourishment through the growth of plants (Ps 104:14, Q 78:15–16), are presented as divine supports. The time of mankind is the bright day for earning his living (Ps 104:13, Q 78:11), a thought that is not taken up elsewhere in the Qur’an. In the Qur’an, this anthropomorphism is “corrected,” so to speak, in that the perspective of God is directed away to humans. The cosmic metaphor thus does not need to be relinquished; it is transferred to the human couple. Not only through the strategy of “correcting anthropomorphisms” that was current in contemporary Bible exegesis as well but also through the reference to the contemporary state of knowledge, the cosmic structure based on seven planetary spheres, the Qur’an text shows itself as a document of Late Antiquity.
- Psalms often give anthropomorphic attributes to God. However, Q78 changes this and gives the anthrompomorphic attributes to humans/mankind.
