Once past the overstuffed first chapter and the two otiose chapters following, Mark Durie gets to the three chapters which count. These sketch out the Qaric theology and rasulology, and then the Platonic forms underlying the religious vocabulary. The Quran is, indeed, a feat of linguistic voodoo. Allâh is not God any more than either is Bondyé (the "good god") in Haiti. Gerald Hawting was wrong.
This isn't Durie's first rodeo, but Amazon has stuck Durie in the "Christian" millet; thence he's been unable to reach the Quran-Studies mainstream. Durie's sensei Andrew Bannister has, perhaps, done better. After decades of Reynolds, Akyol, and so many others arguing for a "Biblical subtext" (xxxiii-v); Durie sees most of the Biblical themes they'd chosen as supertext. Now, Durie might be able to prove his point. Pity Amazon still hasn't presented his text properly.
As of AD 600-45, many Biblical beliefs ended up in the wider milieu of what Donner has called the "Believer" movement. An Arab in Syria could maintain (say) the return of Jesus the Christ to rule in glory. Such a post-Christian Arab would even know what "Masih" meant. But the qurra never allowed such to compose a sura. The first sura to cite "Isa al-Masih" did not know what that meant (and its Jesus isn't Davidide). Instead, the qurra in their own world tried time and again to pound the Devil, Adam, Moses, Mary, Jesus and others into their worldview. It may be that a few post-Christians (or post-Jews) got some of their compositions past the Qaric net but, if they did, they too had to affect the ignorance - sincere or feigned - of the first qurra. To play their game, gotta use their rules.
The first rule of Quran is: Allâh is above. He does not manifest Himself on Earth - ever. He does not exist in, say, a burning bush. Where the Quran mentions "Sakinah", that is like "Al-Masih": it doesn't mean anything.
Allâh communicates to jinns and men through scripts relayed through rsl and nzl roots; His medium down here is the rasûl. Where another office appears, like the nabi or the caliph ("Messiah" as noted being forgotten), the Quran tries to hammer him (or her!) into the rasûl category. The rasûl is in competition with the sahir and sometimes the kahin.
Allâh is unbound by His Biblical promises. 'ahd and mithaq may look like Biblic "covenantal" phrases, but this God doesn't feel 'em. I'd add that Allâh does offer (other) promises to His Believers; but here, Allâh mainly does so by declaring various elements in heaven and/or earth as collateral. The Quran owns no theory of Covenant.
Likewise ruh and rih may look like - they ARE - the same Semitic terms for wind and breath as are in Hebrew, but unlike Septuagint / Luke pneuma these terms don't carry their Biblical weight to the Quran. In short where God breathes, Allâh commands blown. The God whom Daniel 6:26 called hayé qayamé gives life through his own breath. Allâh by contrast sends (rsl, nzl again) the wind. This too is sometimes through his jinn and angels, among which the Qurân will recruit Gabrîl (this dialect doesn't hamza).
As I look over this, Allâh looks like an Arabian wind god. (So hey - the "Moon God" meme remains a meme!) Some Arabians elevated this god over the other gods first by hailing him as "Allâh". Then the Nabati Arabs of Raqēmō-Petra, through the qurra, did their best to claim identity of this god with the God of transJordanian Jews and exiled Christians. But this lord of the air is not God. He never can be.
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