Nasim Hasani, MA in Islamic Studies graduated from Shahid Beheshti University, Iran
Abstract
The Virgin Mary's birth and early life is a story narrated in the New Testament, the Qur'an, and the biblical Apocrypha, and its intertextual similarities and dissimilarities in these scriptural sources have resulted in various viewpoints between orientalists and Muslim thinkers, having particularly provoked the suspicion of the Qur'an’s adaptation from the other scriptures. Most of the available researches simply address such proximity between the verses (Ayahs) of the Qur'an (the surah Al Imran and the surah Maryam), the New Testament (the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke), and the biblical Apocrypha (the Gospel of Jacob), but there are not many studies that suggest similarities and dissimilarities using the narrative analysis.
Employing the elements of narrative theories, the present research, firstly, identifies the sequences of the virgin Mary’s birth and early life in the Qur'an (the surah Al Imran and the surah Maryam), the New Testament (the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke), and the biblical Apocrypha (the Gospel of Jacob); subsequently, it analyzes all the relevant extracted sequences and their orders taking a comparative approach. The findings show that (1) the majority of the sequences narrated by the Quran (the surah Al Imran and the surah Maryam) are in parallel with the same sequences in the biblical Apocrypha (the Gospel of Jacob); (2) the parallel sequences in the Qur’an (the surah Al Imran and the surah Maryam) and New Testament (the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke) are limited.
Very interesting paper. You might like to also consider Gabriel Reyonlds', The Qur'an and the Bible and The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext, and Emran El-Badawi's, The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions, for further references on the possible relationship between the Protoevangelium of James and the Qur'an.
Dear Abdullah, I'm so thankful for your comments and share your thoughts on my article, I've read before the references like Reynold’s, though my work’s focused on narratology and its principles to find the roots of parallel between Quran and Apocryphas narrations.
I would consider other references to more relationships.
This is an interesting analysis, Nasim. But I'd like to see you take it further. Can the narratology go on to analyse, for example, the emphases in the ways in which the stories are told, and how the stories function in their contexts? And the characterisations, and what is achieved through the dialogues etc?
In the context of this conference, the immediately obvious question is why the canonical Gospels do not mention the birth and childhood of Mary at all. However, they do have snippets of narratives about her later life. That implies that she has a very different function within the larger narrative. Your paper begs for a reflection on the function of the Mary narratives within the wider narratives of the canonical Gospels and the relevant Surahs.
I enjoyed reading your paper. Khaily mamnoon for submitting it. I agree with Ida that your analysis would benefit from engaging with wider theological debates about the impact and significance of particular narrative choices in each scripture. Here are some additional comments on your paper that came to my mind. I look forward to meeting you and engaging with your paper during the conference.
Hasani uses “narrative analysis” to discover similarities and differences between the story of Mary in the Qur’an and Christian scriptures. She finds out that most similarities are between the Qur’ān’s narrative and that of the Gospel of Jacob and that similarities between the Qur'ānic narrative and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are limited. This is an interesting finding but it would be even more interesting to read about the implications of this finding for a Muslim’s reading of the Gospels (in this case, the author’s own reading) and/or a Christian reading of the qur'ānic Mary narratives. What assumptions of intertextuality between the Qur’ān and the Bible are confirmed or contested via this comparative narrative analysis? What is the theological significance of particular narrative choices in each tradition?
For example:
· Whose voice comes through in the qur'ānic dialogues in Mary's stories? What is the impact of the narrating voice on the reader’s understanding of the story? More specifically, who is the “absent narrator” and what is the theological significance of this qur'ānic narration choice, especially when compared directly with the biblical narrative style in the Gospels?
· According to the author: “The qur'ānic stories are not historical.” I’d like to ask what is the theological significance of this from your perspective? How does it compare with the structure of stories in the Gospels?
Dear Shirin, kheili mamnoon too for your comment and interest. •honestly, when I was writing my dissertation, these similarities and dissimilarities were challenging because if these issues have been considering historically the Quranic narrative comes after the Apocrypha’s, and it may be lead to contest and strengthen them, but the most important and fascinating point in writing my paper and the dissertation was the similarity of the sequences even in precedence and latency between Quranic narration and apocryphal narration, the point that has not been mentioned in other studies. I did not see Nobody has marked this.
•About the role of the narrator in interpreting the text, I were not able to expand and consider more because of word count limitation, and if I have an opportunity I will have to extend my method.
• from my point of view, one the most considerable and classical reason for the none-historical nature of quranic stories is avoiding of arguing among Muslims and people of book, but I have to say this I do not agree with this reasoning.
I speculate that this issue has the potential and capacity for more consideration deeply and historically, and I said before to Mona, perhaps it can be said that the canonical gospels has a more intimate, emotional, and flexible function. The administrative system is less dominant. It can also be said that the informal structure is leaking and is constantly limited in its attempt to escape the narrative and therefore continues.
@Nasim Hasani Absolutely fascinating! I am actually attending your group tomorrow and am looking so much forward to discussing these ideas further during the discussion session. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Dear Shirin, during the presentation due to the shortage of time, I could not answer your question about the absent narrator clearly and straight.
•The absent narrator does not mean an absent real person is narrating the story, it means there is a voice in the narrative that he/she tells the narration,
The absent narrator is one of the features of narration.
A voice in the narrative telling the narration/it is the voice that narrates the narration.
When we say the narrator is absent it means we are hearing the narration, and it is not related to the writer.
And we do not know who is the absent narrator, we just hear his/her voice. This feature exists in Quran and gospels too. I hope I have been able to answer your question:)
This is an interesting paper. I think it would be great if you could analyze the differences of narratives more and let us know your opinion about the reason of these differences.
The other point I want to mention is that I think religious texts target emotions. Dramatic scenes of religious texts attract my attention. I think Qur'an is good at describing dramatic scenes. For example in verse 23 of Surah Maryam is mentioned that: "Ah! would that I had died before this! would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!" I found it very dramatic. Speaking of Virgin Mary's Birth and Early Life, I didn’t find another dramatic scene in other sources in your paper.
I would have liked to see which narrative on Virgin Mary's Birth and Early Life you found interesting and why?
Dear Mona, thank you for your comment and share your thoughts on my paper.
This paper is taken from my university dissertation and because of the word count limitation in this conference I was not able to expand my method and idea more than it, but to answer Your question I have to say that the most interesting point in this case for me was the similarities and similarities between Quran’s and Apocrypha’s narration and expression mode of wording this story. as you know, quranic narration emphasizes the emotions of characters, especially in this case as you mentioned that.
If there was no limitation about the word count I was going to say more about the function of narrative theory in finding out how the differences between the narrating a same and similar scheme leads to different comprehensive.
In addition, perhaps it can be said that the canonical gospels has a more intimate, emotional, and flexible function. The administrative system is less dominant. It can also be said that the informal structure is leaking and is constantly limited in its attempt to escape the narrative and therefore continues.
Thank you for this exercise in narrative criticism! I hope we can talk about the interpretive questions in the discussion.
Dear Dwight, thank you too.
Surely we do it, I will be able to have a talk about.
Hi Nasim, thanks for clarifying via email about the oral structure. What I was getting at, and I'm so sorry that my internet was so bad you couldn't hear :( is that nowadays when we do Gospel studies, there is the recognition of the oral nature of the gospels. There is also repetition, narrator presence and absence, a high amount of dialogue in some of the gospels, vividness etc. This is because these stories circulated for quite some time before they were written down. But with your explanation, I have understood the difference that you were talking about. Thanks for the narrative method - I also actually use it to interpret the gospels but come at it from an African hermeneutical perspective. I hope we can continue the conversation.
I would like to study more in the field of narratology. Unfortunately, such a possibility is not available here. In my opinion, narrative theory can be an effective method for comparative studies in the field of scriptures.