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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2012
This article examines the attitudes of the Quranic mushrikūn to the resurrection and the afterlife, focusing on those who doubted or denied the reality of both. The first part of the article, published in a previous issue of BSOAS, argued that the doubters and deniers had grown up in a monotheist environment familiar with both concepts and that it was from within the monotheist tradition that they rejected them. This second part relates their thought to intellectual currents in Arabia and the Near East in general, arguing that the role of their pagan heritage in their denial is less direct than normally assumed. It is also noted that mutakallims such as Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and al-Māturīdī anticipated the main conclusions reached in this paper.
1 Cf. Bravmann, M. M., “‘Life after death’ in early Arab conception” in The Spiritual Background of Early Islam (Leiden, 1972)Google Scholar, ch. 10; Smith, J. I. and Haddad, Y. Y., The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany, 1981)Google Scholar, appendix A; Homerin, R. E., “Echoes of a thirsty owl: death and afterlife in pre-Islamic poetry”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44, 1985, 165–84CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, esp. 167; Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. McAuliffe, J. D. (Leiden, 2001–06)Google Scholar, s.v. “Death and the dead” (507 f.).
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3 Goodman, “Time in Islam”, 138.
4 Ringgren, Fatalism, 30 ff.
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7 Thus Muqātil, Ṭabarī and Zamakhsharī, for example.
8 Ṭabarī, xxv, 152, ad 45:24 (wa-dhukira). The ḥadīth is discussed in Goldziher, I., Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1889–90)Google Scholar, i, 254; Tamer, Zeit und Gott, 199 ff.
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18 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Athār, Beirut, 65, 69 f. For the authorship, see Nagy, I. Kristó, “On the authenticity of al-Adab al-ṣaghīr attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and problems concerning some of his titles”, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 62, 2009, 199–218, and the literature cited thereCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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26 Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 27b–c; Pe'ah; 16b; Hagigah 77b; BT, Sanhedrin 90a; cf. Setzer, C., “‘Talking their way into empire’: Jews, Christians, and Pagans debate resurrection of the body”, in Bakhos, C. (ed.), Ancient Judaism in Its Hellenistic Context (Leiden, 2005)Google Scholar, 159, cf. 163; Becker, H.-J., “‘Epikureer' im Talmud Yerushalmi”, in Schäfer, P. (ed.), The Talmud Yerushalmi and Greco-Roman Culture (Tübingen, 1998), 400 ffGoogle Scholar.
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30 BT, Sanhedrin 91b.
31 BT, Rosh Hashana 17a, with a version in the note construing the statement differently.
32 Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures (Syriac text tr. Dean, J. Elmer, Chicago, 1935)Google Scholar, par. 17. He is speaking of Symmachus, the Bible-translator, claiming that he was a Samaritan who became a Jewish proselyte.
33 All the versions are translated in Vermes, G., “The Targumic versions of Genesis IV 3–16”, The Annual of Leeds University Oriental Society 3, 1961–62, 81–114Google Scholar; the most helpful discussion from the present point of view is Bassler, J. M., “Cain and Abel in the Palestinian Targums: a brief note on an old controversy”, Journal for the Study of Judaism 17, 1986, 56–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with reference to earlier literature at 58n.
34 Thus Targum Neofiti (and its marginal variants) and the Fragmentary Targum.
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37 Novella 146 (peri Hebraiōn), cap. ii, ed. and tr. Linder, A., The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit and Jerusalem, 1987), 406 f. = 409Google Scholar.
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42 Juster, J., Les Juifs dans l'Empire (Paris, 1914), i, 374–7Google Scholar.
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44 Juster identifies the heresy in Justinian's novella as a claim that the angels were not divine creatures, a formulation which implies, perhaps unintentionally, that the heretics saw the angels as mere humans. The Sadducees certainly cannot have explained the angels in the Hebrew Bible along those lines, but they could perhaps have explained them as shortlived appearances of God rather than created beings in their own right.
45 Avi-Yonah, Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, 250.
46 Origen, in Matthiam 23:22 (MPG xiii, col. 1564); Homily 25 ad Numeri (MPG xii, 763).
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48 Masseket Kutim, par. 28, in Montgomery, J. A., The Samaritans, the Earliest Jewish Sect (Philadelphia, 1907)Google Scholar, 203: Samaritans will be received into the community if they deny Mt Gerizim and accept the resurrection.
49 Clement (attrib.), Recognitions (Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. Roberts, A. and Donaldson, J., iii, Edinburgh, 1867)Google Scholar, I.5.4; cf. I, 57.
50 E.g. Koni, Theodore Bar, Livre des scolies (recension de Séert), ed. Scher, A. (Paris, 1910)Google Scholar, 1912; tr. R. Hespel and R. Draguet (Louvain, 1981–82), mimrā V, 25; Qurra, Abū, Mīmar fī wujūd al-khāliq wa'l-dīn al-qawīm, ed. Dīk, I. (Rome, 1982)Google Scholar, 203, where the seeker after truth encounters the Samaritans, whose description of their own faith includes this: “And when we leave this world, it is perdition forever [al-halāk ilā 'l-abad]. There is no resurrection”. Cf. also Rubin, M. Levy (ed. and tr.), The Continuatio of the Samaritan Chonicle of Abū 'l-Fatḥ al-Sāmirī al-Danafī (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar, 236 = 87, for the presence of Dositheans in 3rd/9th-century Palestine.
51 Mere confusion of the two is assumed by Klingenberg, “Justinians Novellen”, 160n, following A. Sharf, “Justinian”, in Encyclopedia Judaica x, 478.
52 Rutgers, L. V., “Justinian's novella 146 between Jews and Christians”, in Kalmin, R. and Schwartz, S. (eds), Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Leuven, 2003), 387Google Scholar.
53 Cf. Stuckenbruck, L., Angel Veneration and Christology (Tübingen, 1995)Google Scholar.
54 Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, ix, s.v. “Domnus”.
55 Goulet, R. (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques (Paris, 1994–2000)Google Scholar, s,v, “Ges(s)ios” (R Goulet); cf. Magoulias, H. J., “The lives of the saints as sources of data for the history of Byzantine medicine in the sixth and seventh centuries”, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 56, 1964, 130, 132 f.Google Scholar; Watts, E., “The enduring legacy of the Iatrosophist Gessius”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 49, 2009, 113–33Google Scholar.
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60 Gregory, On the Soul, cols. 53, 129 ff., 152 f.; tr. Roth, 51, 103 ff., 117.
61 Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of Man (tr. Sharpless, R. W. and van der Eijk, P. J., Liverpool, 2008)Google Scholar, 213 f., 217.
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64 Theodoret, Providence, 1:13 (with the editorial notes), 2:21.
65 Nemesius, Nature of Man, 206.
66 Theodoret, Providence, 9:23 f. The English translator has “persuaded by natural reason” for tē physeipeithomenous (MPG 83, 729), an embroidery started by the Latin translator and reproduced in the French translation by Y. Azéma as well (my thanks to Heinrich von Staden for confirming that nothing additional is implied).
67 Theodoret, Providence, 9:34 f.
68 Theodoret, Providence, 9: 36–42.
69 Theodoret, Providence, e.g. 1:37; 3:21, 23; 4:34; 5: 6.
70 Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in the older Syriac prose version, tr. Ryssel, V. in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 93, 1894, 263 f.Google Scholar; cf. Griffiths, S., “Christian lore and the Arabic Qurʾān: the ‘Companions of the Cave’ in Sūrat al-kahf and in Syriac Christian tradition”, in Reynolds, G. S. (ed.), The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context (London, 2008), 109–37Google Scholar.
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75 John of Phenek, Book of the Main Points of the History of the Temporal World, MS Mingana Syr. 179, mimrā 9, kindly supplied to me by Richard Payne.
76 EI 2, s.v. “Dahriyya”; EIr., s.v. “Dahrī”; EI 3, s.v. “Dahrites”; P. Crone, “The Dahrīs according to al-Jāḥiẓ”, forthcoming in Mélanges de l'Université de St Joseph; P. Crone, “Ungodly cosmologies”, forthcoming in S. Schmidtke (ed.), Oxford Companion to Islamic Theology.
77 For atheism as a pagan characteristic, see Bar Penkaye see above, note 75. Theodore Bar Koni, Scolies, mimrā I, 29.
78 Thus EI 2, s.v. “Dahriyya” (Goldziher and Goichon); EIr, s.v. “Dahrī” (Shaki); McDermott, M. J., “Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq on the Dahriyya”, Mélanges de l'Université de Saint-Joseph 2, 1984, 387 (but not everyone agrees)Google Scholar.
79 Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq in ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī, v, ed. M. M. al-Khuḍayrī (Cairo, 1965), 156.
80 He tells us that there were akhbār about ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Zayd b. ʿAmr and Quss b. Sā’ida indicating that they believed in the creator and the resurrection; whether he envisages them as mushrikūn is not clear, however (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī, v, 156).
81 Māturīdī, Taʿwīlāt, xv, 44, ad 58:9.
82 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiv, 339, ad 57:8.
83 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xi, 405, ad 34:7.
84 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, x, 28.
85 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xvi, 309, ad 75:36.
86 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiii, 336 (ad 45:24).
87 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xv, 81 (ad 59:13).
88 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, iv, 94 (ad 4:150).
89 al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal wa'l-niḥal, ed. Cureton, W. (London, 1842–46), 432Google Scholar; ed. M. S. Kaylānī (Cairo, 1961), ii, 235; tr. Gimaret, D. and Monnot, G., Livre des religions et des sectes, UNESCO 1986Google Scholar, tr. ii, 497. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Malāḥimī, the best source for Abū ʿĪsā, does not have a section on the pre-Islamic Arabs.
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94 al-Maʿarrī, Risālat fī ’l-ghufrān (Beirut, n.d.), 294 (radd ʿalā Ibn al-Qāriḥ, al-Mutanabbī, shakwā ’l-dahr).
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