What is the relationship between the Qur'an, and therefore Islam, and the biblical tradition? Angelika Neuwirth turns to these and other questions with criteria already proven in neighbouring philologies, such as typological interpretation and the antinomy of attraction and repulsion.
What is the relationship between the Qur'an, and therefore Islam, and the biblical tradition? Is the Qur'an part of the Mediterranean culture that was formative for later Europe, or is its message dominated by its own, pre-monotheistic heroic, even combative, Arabian culture? Historically and semantically, the Qur'an is - not differently to the Mishna or the New Testament - part of the biblical tradition. Our perception of the Qur'an is however governed by scholarly constructs established by schools which are split over the issue of the Qur'an's participation in the Jewish-Christian hermeneutics. It is only by substituting the literal reading which is prevailing today by a typological reading that the Qur'an can be recognized in its scriptural dimension, i.e. as a new exegetical reading of the Hebrew Bible based on late antique hermeneutics. Angelika Neuwirth turns to these questions with criteria already proven in neighbouring philologies, such as typological interpretation and the antinomy of attraction and repulsion. Her consideration takes into account, for the first time, the fact of the Qur'an's oral composition and thus the simultaneous emergence of text and belief community.
Jürgen Kampmann
ist Professor für Kirchenordnung und Neuere Kirchengeschichte an der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Tübingen.
Bibel-Hermeneutik Typologie Mythopoesis Abraham Akedah