Qumrān and Qur'ān

Abstract

Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the dominant paradigm of the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible was the quest for the original form of each of its books—the source texts (Urtext) from which all subsequent editions were copied. Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a number of scholars have proposed significant revisions to this paradigm. These proposals are presented by means of an analogy with David Living-stone's expeditions to find the source of the River Nile, and then evaluated by means of a comparison of the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible with the history of the text of the Qur'ān. According to Ibn Abī Dāwūd (d.928), the widespread oral memorization and recitation of the Qur'ān in the first Muslim generation led to the emergence of a multiplicity of textual and oral versions of its ‘original’ suwar. This, in turn, led to a series of (ultimately successful) attempts to standardize the text of the Qur'ān through the repression of all readings that differed from the one ‘official’ text. Applying a ‘Livingstonian’ text-critical model to the Qur'ān suggests that ongoing research into the earliest forms of the Qur'ān could be revolutionized if it sought to recover the early plurality that was consequent from its popularity. Applying an Ibn Abī Dāwūd text-critical model to ongoing research into the Talmudic and Masoretic periods of the Hebrew Bible suggests that it could be revolutionized if it sought to recover the history of the standardization of the variant texts. Under these paradigms, the purpose of textual criticism must be transformed from the pursuit of an imagined ideal text to become an enquiry into the nature of the texts that have been declared canonical.