Let's admit Nöldeke was wrong

We've been saddled with Nöldeke's and Schwally's (buncombe) chronology of the Qurân for something like a sesquicentennium by now.

So far this blog has dealt with Aziz al-Azmeh and Sean Anthony; now I must add Mark Durie to the roll of shame (although writing before Anthony). Anthony somewhat had an excuse: he was writing about the post-Muhammadan tradition, so perhaps was simply pinching some incense to the regnant idol. Mark Durie can claim no such excuse; he sets his work (in the Introduction and first chapter) as a corrective to Gabriel Said Reynolds. Durie imagines he is based.

I was worried for Durie over that first chapter. I had hoped that Durie would move on, like Anthony had moved on. No such luck.

Durie's second chapter concerns the Eschatological Crisis, which happens to all apocalyptic religions when the end of the world does not arrive. Stephen Shoemaker and David Cook (for two) have written several (excellent) books between them on Late Antique apocalyptic and on early Islam's (and not-so-early) place within it. Durie, on the assumption that the Qaric community was unitary, assigns each sura to Before and After sides of the (one) Crisis. "Before" means the sura still anticipates the Hour; "After" means the sura concerns itself with laws and rules for the community on assumption the Hour is far off, or maybe fulfilled in the founding of an Islamic state. UPDATE 12/9: The third chapter brings "lexical distance" (LD) and "formulaic distance" (FD) as a statistical tool to the job. MORE: On the assumption of Andrew Bannister that Neuwirth, Sinai, and Witztum, in arguing for the Quran's literary intertext, are all wasting their/our time.

Warmed-over Mecca / Madina, in short.

But... if we are no longer assuming Muhammad as the one author (or revelator) of all the canon suwar... why are we still doing this? If the suwar have several authors, and if we're not assuming Muhammad anymore then why should the authors all agree with each other? Maybe there's a caliphate already. In which case we should not only allow, but expect, that qurra on the outs with the "fake" caliphate will compose their own suwar. Such will not accept the caliphate as fulfilling God's Promise; a qari may, in fact, see the caliphate as dajjal in which case the Hour is even more imminent.

Which is what I find, with "Madina" and "Mecca" intermingling amongst each other right up to (I think) the second Hijri century.

To read the chapter requires, therefore, to interpret Before and After as states of mind. Frankly "Mecca" and "Madina" are better frames to view this phenomenon; they are spatial terms, not temporal. [UPDATE: Same goes for LD/FD.] Durie's temporal frame renders these chapters barely-readable.

At what point should we quit indulging scholars who rely upon Nöldeke-Schwally? I reached that point by New Year's Eve 2003. Every year I grow less patient with scholars who won't break out into their own.