IntroductionFootnote ¹

A reasonably well-established process for the intertextual study of the Quran has now gained widespread currency. An ever-greater number of studies approach the text through a bifocal reading, attempting to do justice to a close reading of the Quran on its own terms, while simultaneously paying close attention to the antecedent traditions with which the text is engaged (especially biblical, rabbinic, or Syriac and Byzantine Christian). The question of how to negotiate the tension between these two aforementioned perspectives, the intra-quranic and the intertextual, remains a serious challenge, however. Part of the problem is that the intertextual study of the Quran remains undertheorized. This need not necessarily be an issue – an intuitive grasp of how the Quran might be engaging with particular late antique traditions is often sufficient to produce a convincing reading of the text. However, where one has a sense that an intertextual reading of the Quran has failed to adequately explain a passage in the scripture, a theorization of the various intertextual strategies that the Quran employs may be helpful in clarifying the issue.

The present study begins, therefore, by providing a rudimentary taxonomy of how quranic intertextuality proceeds as a precursor to the main subject at hand, the Sūrat al-Baqara pericope on Adam. More specifically, this study examines the naming episode within the story, in which God teaches Adam “the names, all of them” (v. 31), to counter the angels’ objection to the creation of the human creature on the basis that he will “spread corruption … and will shed blood” (v. 30). I will try to show that the traditional understanding of this narrative in Western scholarship, which connects it ultimately to the Genesis episode in which Adam names all the creatures of the land and sky (Gen. 2: 19–20), does not do justice to a close reading of the text itself, from both a narrative and grammatical perspective. Instead, I will argue for an alternative reading of the passage already suggested by early mufassirūn, in which God teaching Adam the “names” in Q. 2 should not be taken to mean the names of all birds and land animals on the basis of Genesis 2, but rather refers to – or at the very least includes alongside the names of the other creatures – Adam being introduced to his future offspring. I will show that this not only fully accounts for otherwise puzzling elements of the story, but that this reading too has antecedent intertexts that are ultimately more relevant than the Genesis 2 naming incident. Before looking at the Q. 2 pericope, let us first consider the nature of the Quran's intertextuality.

The Quran and intertextuality

The first serious engagement with the Quran in Western scholarship was Abraham Geiger (d. 1874) and his work Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen, translated in 1896 as “Judaism and Islam”. Geiger's engagement with the Quran was firmly intertextual and rooted in source criticism – tracing quranic stories to their biblical and rabbinic antecedents.Footnote ² His work set the trend for Western scholarship on the Quran, and his methodology continues to be influential even today, albeit with an increasing prominence given to Christian sources.Footnote ³

While this endeavour to connect quranic stories to their antecedent intertexts has undoubtedly brought into sharper relief both the text and the milieu in which it was proclaimed, firmly anchoring the Quran into its late antique historical space, the past few decades have also witnessed scholarly dissatisfaction with the “parallelomania” such an approach has encouragedFootnote ⁴ – a term we may borrow from biblical studies, where it describes the past “extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction”.Footnote ⁵ There is now widespread acceptance that it is not, of course, sufficient when trying to interpret the Quran to trace its stories and motifs to their “sources”. Rather, the Quran's own creativity in drawing upon a common late antique heritage and deploying it for its own theological and rhetorical purposes has to be appreciated.Footnote ⁶ The scholarship of the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century that frequently dismissed discrepancies between quranic narratives and their intertexts as resulting from the Prophet having received garbled versions of, or himself having misremembered, the pristine original narratives of the Bible is a relic of the pastFootnote ⁷ – though it should be acknowledged that even this early scholarship at least occasionally granted that the quranic versions of biblical narratives may have been purposefully adjusted to suit the Quran's own theology.Footnote ⁸ This greater sophistication in conceptualizing the Quran's engagement with the late antique milieu has been accompanied by the recognition that in fact many of the previously identified parallels between the Quran and the post-biblical traditions do not stand up to scrutiny: the quranic version could well have arisen independently of its late antique parallels, or else it may predate its sister traditions, particularly in rabbinic writings.Footnote ⁹ Most interestingly of all, as Michael Pregill has argued building on the work of John Reeves, there may be instances in which the Quran records a version of a biblical story that reflects the concerns and background of the latter more accurately than the various retellings and interpretations of the story in intervening literature.Footnote ¹⁰

Despite the acceptance of such complexity in the relationship between the textual traditions of antiquity and late antiquity, there remains some reluctance in modern scholarship, when examining a quranic pericope that has biblical resonances, to depart too far from the narrative structure of the biblical, patristic, or rabbinic stories that seem to lie behind quranic retellings.Footnote ¹¹ Stories of biblical figures in the Quran are still read in a manner that ensures that the original biblical and/or post-biblical plots remain at least recognizable in the Quran's retelling, albeit with an allowance for subtle reformulations that renders the story theologically relevant to the new scriptural community. Thus, while the web of relationships between the aforementioned textual traditions has been shown to be more complex than previously recognized, the nature of those relationships remains to be explicated. Broadly, and somewhat simplistically, I suggest the following non-mutually exclusive categories as a useful starting point for sorting how the Quran engages with antecedent traditions: (1) intertextual continuity; (2) intertextual polemics; (3) intertextual repurposing.Footnote ¹²

By intertextual continuity, I refer to those passages in which the Quran straightforwardly reproduces or alludes to a well-known biblical story in such a way that the Quran assumes and, crucially, does not seek to subvert, the audience's previous familiarity with the story. Indeed, the frequent allusiveness of the Quran's references to biblical stories demonstrates that the audience was expected to know the broad outlines of the latter, without which the Quran's narrative would hardly be comprehensible.Footnote ¹³ One example will suffice. In Jonah's story, which is recounted in most detail in Q. 37: 139–48, after we are told that he fled to a ship (v. 140), we are next told that he cast lots and lost (v. 141), and so was swallowed by a fish (v. 141). We are nowhere told why he engaged in casting lots, or with whom. The biblical background necessary to understand the story is simply assumed: the ship in which he was fleeing was overwhelmed by a storm, and the sailors decided to cast lots to determine which of them had brought this danger upon the ship and should thus be discarded into the sea.

We must concede an element of subjectivity in classifying this, or any other quranic story, as an instance of intertextual continuity, as the theological message derived from the Jonah story in the Quran has clearly changed. The biblical book continually contrasts the reluctant Israelite prophet Jonah with the God-fearing gentiles, whether the sailors who were terrified of throwing a man of God into the waters, or the penitent gentile city of Nineveh to whom Jonah is sent. Evidently, the moral of the biblical story is that righteousness is not proprietary to any given nation, even God's chosen people.Footnote ¹⁴ In the Quran, however, the story is used to warn the Prophet not to abandon his preaching as Jonah had done. Nonetheless, the core narrative is the same.Footnote ¹⁵ Additionally, in employing the story to communicate a theological or moral lesson different to (although not necessarily at odds with) the familiar pre-quranic story, the Quran is well aligned with Christian or Jewish homilies that might similarly draw on a biblical story for a variety of moral exhortations.Footnote ¹⁶

A very different type of quranic engagement with its antecedent traditions may be termed intertextual polemics, or alternatively “dogmatic re-articulation” (Emran El-Badawi), “polemical corrective” (Sidney Griffith), or “counterfactual intertextuality” (Zishan Ghaffar).Footnote ¹⁷ Here again the Quran's audience is expected to be aware of the biblical story or the post-biblical reception that lies behind the quranic narrative, but rather than accept it and build upon it, the Quran subverts it for some polemical motivation. An example of this may be the angelic veneration of God in Q. 2: 30: “We glorify You with praise and declare You holy”. As Zellentin has shown, the vocabulary of praise and glorification in the parallel account of the Cave of Treasures is directed by the angels at Adam, who, as the typological precursor to Jesus, is the object of angelic veneration.Footnote ¹⁸ The Quran retains the scene of the angels bowing down to Adam, yet, by directing their praise and glorification to God rather than Adam, the Quran polemicizes against the element of the Cave of Treasures narrative it finds unacceptable.

In both of the aforementioned techniques, the quranic message can be appreciated in full only synoptically alongside the corresponding biblical or post-biblical narratives. However, in intertextual repurposing,Footnote ¹⁹ the Quran appropriates familiar biblical characters and motifs, and then creates a new story from them. The biblical characters and motifs function as a literary hook to draw the audience into the story, but, crucially, contribute relatively far less to the narrative structure of the new quranic story than is the case with intertextual continuity or polemics. In these instances, if as readers we impose the biblical narrative structure onto the new quranic story, the latter will be fundamentally misconstrued. As with “intertextual continuity” and “intertextual polemics”, the Quran redeploys a biblical or post-biblical story to serve its own message, but now the redeployment is more radical. It is also easier to miss,Footnote ²⁰ and there are serious interpretive difficulties that arise as a result; where intertextual repurposing is taken to be an instance of intertextual continuity, a narrative framework is imposed on the quranic story that hinders rather than aids interpretation.Footnote ²¹

Though it has not always been explicitly theorized in this manner, several quranic stories have in fact been understood in recent scholarship through the hermeneutic of what I am calling intertextual repurposing. Reynolds describes the same phenomenon in his appraisal of several case studies in which the Quran engages with the biblical tradition:

To take a specific example, as Sinai has argued, the Israelite Exodus story in the Quran strongly suggests that the Israelites took over Egypt, rather than conquered Canaan.Footnote ²³ It is clear why this may have been a more appropriate narrative for the early believing community, as the story is reshaped to a tale of overcoming opponents in one's hometown (i.e. Mecca), rather than abandoning it for a previously promised holy land. There does not appear to be any reason to suppose that the Quran is polemically rejecting the notion of the Israelite conquest of Canaan – rather, the new storyline better fits the Meccan Quran's kerygma. I would argue, however, that while the quranic story resembles its biblical counterpart, it has at the same time been radically reshaped in a way that would be missed were we to impose the biblical plotline onto the quranic account.

A more complicated example is Zellentin's study of the Quran's Lot narratives and their biblical and rabbinic counterparts. Before the angels go to Sodom, they first go to Abraham to deliver good news of a son to be born to Sarah (Gen. 18; Q. 51: 24–37, 15: 49–77, 11: 69–83 and 29: 28–35). Expanding on this story, whereas the midrash has angels fearing Abraham, the Quran reverses the situation, and has Abraham fearing the angels.Footnote ²⁴ This would appear to be a polemical move that portrays the angels and Abraham's reaction to them in a manner more in keeping with the Quran's angelology. Intriguingly, however, the Quran retains a midrashic detail mentioned in connection with the fear motif, but repurposes it. Zellentin observes that:

What Zellentin identifies as “the Qurʾān's liberty in integrating … rabbinic elements”, I suggest can be categorized variously as intertextual continuity (e.g. the angels visit Abraham to deliver news that his wife will bear them a child, before going on to the cities associated with Lot), intertextual polemics (e.g. it is Abraham who fears the angels, not the reverse), and intertextual repurposing (e.g. the use of the term “hand” to introduce the fear motif).Footnote ²⁶

Such intertextual repurposing may even be in play within the Quran's own later retellings of chronologically earlier quranic stories. As Witztum has observed, again in relation to Abraham's visitors, several motifs in the story seem to float freely around the various quranic iterations, such as when exactly Abraham started to fear his guests: when he first encountered them, or when they did not partake of the food he laid out for them.Footnote ²⁷ Here, quite clearly, as we are dealing with intratexts rather than intertexts, the variations have to do with textual repurposing rather than textual polemics. And as with intertextual repurposing, we could attempt to harmonize the intratextual readings by imposing the plotline of any one pericope on the others,Footnote ²⁸ but this risks missing the desired literary and thus theological effect of each variant of the story in its surah context.Footnote ²⁹ Now, if the Quran takes liberties with motifs in earlier versions of its own narratives, we should a fortiori be open to it doing so as it incorporates and “quranicizes” biblical and post-biblical stories. With this possibility in mind, it is to these various versions of the Adam story that we now turn.

The Adam story in Sūrat al-Baqara: problems with the traditional interpretation

The Quran's creation story of Adam in Sūrat al-Baqara (Q. 2) is given below:

Although the pericope is replete with details that invite intertextual analysis,Footnote ³⁰ in the present paper I shall address two questions only: (1) What were the names that Adam was taught (v. 31); (2) What were the angels accused of “hiding” (v. 33)?

The naming incident is at least in some ways clearly grounded in Genesis 2:

A second text that is clearly relevant for understanding the quranic story, on account of its closeness to the narrative, is a passage from Genesis Rabbah that comments on Adam giving names to all creatures:

Western scholarship has universally read the naming motif in Sūrat al-Baqara as an intertextual continuation of the biblical and rabbinic accounts, and the overlaps are quite evident. Indeed, it can seem as though the naming motif cannot be understood without the biblical and rabbinic backgrounds, with the Quran thus inviting us to draw on such traditions to fill in gaps in the passage, reinforcing the sense of intertextual continuity. Specifically, according to the widespread reading in modern academic scholarship, we should understand God's teaching Adam all the names to mean that He taught him the names of all the “cattle and … the birds of the air and … every animal of the field” (Gen. 2: 20).Footnote ³¹ Additionally, scholars have noted a degree of intertextual polemics in the Quran's story – it is no longer Adam who names the creatures, but rather God who teaches Adam the names. Such a move, it is argued, emphasizes the sovereignty of God over all creation, and is in line with the Quran's eschewal of describing Adam as created in the “image” of God, which might have suggested a quasi-divinization of Adam.Footnote ³² Instead, the Quran describes him as God's khalīfah (“vicegerent”),Footnote ³³ again drawing attention to his ultimate subordination to the Creator.

But there are good reasons to believe that scholars have taken a wrong turn, as a result of which various interpretive mistakes are being compounded. I will make the case for Q. 2: 31, “He taught Adam the names, all of them”, being an intertextual repurposing of the well-known biblical naming motif, rather than a straightforward continuation of the Adam story in Gen. 2: 19–20. If this is correct, the quranic naming episode appropriates the naming motif in the biblical and post-biblical Adam stories to create a different story, for which the Genesis 2 pericope becomes much less relevant, indeed a hindrance to correct understanding of the quranic account.

Let us first consider the shortcomings in reading the quranic naming episode as an instance of intertextual continuity/polemics. First, imposing the biblical or rabbinic narrative as the background does not make for a wholly satisfying response by God to the angels’ objections. It is undeniable of course that the quranic story has clear overlaps with the Genesis Rabbah account: in both, the angels are concerned about the nature of this new creature, and in both Adam's knowledge of the names – a knowledge that surpasses that of the angels – serves to counter their objections, whether actual or potential. However, the rabbinic account highlights Adam's inherent ability to name the animals as a demonstration to the angels of his superior wisdom, and thus forestalls any objections they might put forth to God's decision to create him. In the Quran, on the other hand, as it is now God who teaches man the names, the nature of God's demonstration to the angels is significantly different; it is no longer Adam's superiority that is being demonstrated, but the angels’ lack of knowledge (and indeed man's dependence on God for whatever knowledge he has). On this reading, the angels’ reasonable and insightful question goes unanswered – we are left none the wiser about why God is creating a creature “who will spread corruption … and will shed blood”, only that God knows best, and the angels (and by extension the Quran's audience) have no business asking such questions. This is particularly frustrating as later in the same surah humankind will be described as doing exactly what the angels predicted. For example, the Quran accuses the Israelites of shedding each other's blood using the same vocabulary as the angels (yasfiku l-dimāʾ [v. 30] vs tasfikūna dimāʾakum [v. 84]), an observation to which we will return below.

It is of course possible that the purpose of the story remains a demonstration of Adam's superiority to the angels, or at least his worthiness in being created (rather than an insistence that the angels’/audience's knowledge pales in comparison with God's, and thus they should not concern themselves with such questions), yet the aforementioned adjustments the Quran makes to produce a more theocentric narrative would leave the story with an unresolved tension as an unintended byproduct: Adam, as in the rabbinic account, has knowledge that the angels do not, yet this knowledge no longer actually demonstrates Adam's inherent worthiness.Footnote ³⁴ While we cannot logically rule out such a reading, and there may be ways to try to resolve the tension,Footnote ³⁵ I would argue that the narrative difficulties generated by such an interpretation give us all the more reason to consider carefully whether we have understood the story correctly in the first place.

The second, and more significant, shortcoming with the commonly held interpretation is that the grammar of the passage probably does not allow for the “names” to refer to the names of animals. The masculine plural pronoun suffixes -hum/him in vv. 31 and 33 (“Then He displayed them [-hum] before the angels …, He said, ‘Adam! Tell them their [-him] names’; and when he had told them their [-him] names …”) are not used in Arabic for animals or inanimate beings. The recent study of adjectival agreement in the Quran by Simone Bettega and Luca D'Anna confirms that this sort of agreement “never occurs in the Muʕallaqāt”.Footnote ³⁶ The authors then consider three verses in the Quran, including Q. 2: 31, in which this rule is seemingly contravened, and conclude that they “represent the first (and very limited) instances of a situation that is also found in contemporary dialects”,Footnote ³⁷ whereby “masculine plural agreement occurs with non-human controllers”.Footnote ³⁸ Yet, the two examples they cite besides Q. 2: 31 seem to be instances of anthropomorphizing of inanimate objects, or necessity of rhyme scheme, or conjoining of human and non-human controllers:Footnote ³⁹

As the mufassirūn point out, Q. 24: 45 conjoins humans (the probable referent of the phrase “some of them walk on two legs”) and non-humans. Note that dābbah (“creature”) clearly includes the human creature in Q. 16: 61 and 35: 45. The inclusion of humans in the list of creatures in Q. 24: 45 is also suggested by the use of the indefinite māʾ (“fluid”), used repeatedly in the Quran to refer to the seminal fluid from which the human being was created (e.g. Q. 32: 8, 77: 20, 86: 6). Note also that Q. 21: 30 refers to the creation of all living things through māʾ, which again suggests that the creatures listed in Q. 24: 45 include humans. The verse points out the continuity between the animal and human worlds, building on the imagery from vv. 41–42 that “all those who are in the heavens and earth praise God, as do the birds with wings outstretched … Control of the heavens and earth belongs to God, and to God is the final return”.

As for Q. 21: 35, the masculine plural verb yasbaḥūn to refer to the sun and the moon could be the result of anthropomorphizing, or to maintain the surah rhyme scheme, as the authors acknowledge.Footnote ⁴⁰ We likewise see an anthropomorphizing of heavenly bodies in Q. 12: 4, where Joseph describes the sun, the moon, and eleven stars, “I saw them (-hum) prostrating (sājidīn) to me”.

None of these explanations for the use of masculine plural pronouns adequately explains their use in Q. 2: 31, 33, however. The mufassirūn were well aware of this problem, and offered a variety of solutions: perhaps Adam was taught the names of all the angels (the sound masculine plural, being reserved for rational beings, may be used for angels too); or perhaps he was taught to name the genus of everything (which would include the genus “human”, and as this is thus included in the referent, the relevant pronouns and adjectives can be sound masculine plural); finally, they suggested that Adam was taught the names of his offspring.Footnote ⁴¹ Note that while all these suggestions resolve the grammatical issue, the first two solutions leave the problem of how the angels’ objections are addressed unresolved. We will return to the final suggestion, that Adam was taught the names of his offspring, below.

Finally, the usual interpretation of the naming episode in the Quran leaves unexplained God's somewhat cryptic final remark to the angels: “I know what you disclose and what you have been hiding”. What is it that the angels were supposed to have been hiding? In what follows, I will offer an alternative reading of the story that addresses these various concerns.

A neglected reading of the Sūrat al-Baqara Adam story

If we take seriously the implications of the aforementioned masculine plural pronominal use (which, as mentioned above, can only be used for rational beings), Adam is not taught the names of all animals, but the names of all people, i.e. he is introduced to his future descendants.Footnote ⁴² Note the emphasis in v. 31 created by the right dislocation of kull (“all”) – “He taught Adam the names, all of them (al-asmāʾa kullahā)”, rather than “He taught Adam all the names (kulla ism)” – emphasizing that whereas the angels’ criticism may prove true of some of humanity, they were wrong to suggest that it would be true of all.Footnote ⁴³ Adam was thus made aware in particular of his righteous descendants, who are then presented to the angels, with God challenging them to “tell Me the names of these [people] if you are truthful”, – i.e. if you are correct in your assessment that mankind will “spread corruption” and “shed blood”. Adam then introduces the angels to those righteous descendants, thus directly addressing their concern regarding the human creature's behaviour. As we will see, this reading of the Q. 2 passage is attested in tafsīr literature and can be traced back to at least the second century Hijri.

The primordial gathering

Beyond grammatical and narrative considerations, in further support of this reading, we may note that in an earlier, Meccan proclamation, the Quran had already depicted Adam and his descendants arraigned before God for the primordial covenant:Footnote ⁴⁴

I suggest that Q. 2 is building upon this image, with Adam introduced to his progeny at the time of their covenant with God. This notion of Adam being shown his righteous offspring has a clear antecedent in several rabbinic traditions, often in commentary on the Genesis verse, “This is the list of the descendants of Adam” (Gen. 5: 1).Footnote ⁴⁵

This notion of a primordial gathering of Adam's future progeny is clearly widespread in late antique rabbinic literature, occurring in both Palestinian and Babylonian texts, and spanning tannaitic to amoraic rabbis. Intriguingly, the passages from the Babylonian Talmud (henceforth the Bavli pericope) and ʾAbot de Rabbi Nathan (henceforth the ARNa and ARNb pericopes) seem to be recast in a cluster of ḥadīths using diction from both the Q. 7 and Q. 2 pericopes, strongly suggesting that at least some early Muslims (I will consider the dating of the ḥadīth below) made precisely the connection that I am suggesting, namely, that both the Q. 7 and the Q. 2 pericopes relate to the same motif: a primordial gathering of souls. The following is al-Tirmidhī's wording:

This ḥadīth is usually cited by the mufassirūn in relation to Q. 7: 172 (given above). At least one detail in the ḥadīth clearly does not align with the Quran: whereas the Quran suggests an image of a cascading emergence of all of humanity, one generation after another (“your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed”),Footnote ⁴⁸ the ḥadīth suggests the collective emergence of all of humanity from Adam in one fell swoop. Yet, the ḥadīth serves as an important witness to the link (at least in the mind of whoever put the ḥadīth into circulation) between the rabbinic texts and the two Quranic verses. Even apart from the ḥadīth, there are intriguing direct overlaps between the rabbinic texts and Q. 2 and Q. 7. The complex network of connections between these various texts is detailed below.

The various points relating to the Bavli in these lists are worth pausing over. The pericope in b. San. 38b presents us with a progression of ideas: a confrontation between God and the angels regarding the wickedness of man at the time of his creation and Adam being introduced to his righteous offspring (one of whom is introduced by name). If we understand the “names” in Q. 2 to refer to the names of Adam's offspring, then Q. 2 follows the same progression. Note that in the Bavli pericope the angelic concern is vindicated: “When He came to the men of the Age of the flood and of the division [of tongues] whose deeds were corrupt, they said to Him, ‘Lord of the Universe, did not the first [company of angels] speak aright?’ ‘Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoar hairs will I bear’, He retorted”. In Q. 2, on the other hand, the angels’ concerns that mankind will be a shedder of blood are directly addressed, the response being that not all humanity will be thus.

Excursus: The tafsīr of Ibn Zayd and dating the Adam ḥadīth

That there were early Muslims who recognized that the aforementioned Q. 2 and Q. 7 passages are connected both to each other, and to the rabbinic stories of the primordial gathering of souls, is evident from the existence of the ḥadīth that is a reworking of the rabbinic texts (especially the Bavli and ARNb pericopes) utilizing diction from both Q. 2 (Adam, ʿaraḍa, and hāʾulāʾ) and Q. 7 (dhurriyyah and ẓahr). We can determine how far back we can safely date this opinion by the fact that both the narration of the ḥadīth, which draws on the Q. 2 and Q. 7 pericopes and in which Adam is introduced to his offspring, and the opinion recorded in tafsīr literature that “names” in Q. 2 refers to offspring, independently go through the same family of transmitters, namely the household of Zayd b. Aslam. The common link for the Adam ḥadīth is Hishām b. Saʿd,Footnote ⁵⁰ who reports from Zayd b. Aslam (from whom the ḥadīth is traced back to the Prophet thus: Zayd b. Aslam < Abū Ṣāliḥ < Abū Hurayra < the Prophet). The opinion in al-Ṭabarī at Q. 2: 31 that the “names” refer to Adam's offspring is attributed to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the son of Zayd b. Aslam, whom al-Ṭabarī refers to as Ibn Zayd. Given that Zayd b. Aslam is a tābiʿī, whose death date is commonly given as 136 ah,Footnote ⁵¹ the terminus ante quem for the emergence of an exegetical opinion that connects the two verses with each other and with the rabbinic stories appears to be the early second century ah.

For the validity of this dating method, which draws on the observation that the aforementioned tafsīr opinion and the ḥadīth pass through the same family, we would need to accept that the ḥadīth can be attributed to the tradent above the common link, namely, Zayd b. Aslam. In fact, the presence of the tafsīr opinion is evidence of the accuracy of the attribution. Otherwise, we would have to accept that it is a coincidence that the ḥadīth that simultaneously recasts the Bavli/ARNb narratives and connects the Q. 2 and Q. 7 passage was attributed to Zayd b. Aslam, and the tafsīr opinion (which does not cite the ḥadīth) that supports the same network of connections was attributed to his son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd b. Aslam. It is far more likely that these connections were being transmitted by the tābiʿī scholar Zayd b. Aslam, including to his own son.Footnote ⁵²

Intriguingly, there are two more verses in the Quran that may refer to this primordial existence of the human creature. In Q. 40: 11, the disbelievers are depicted as saying before God on the Day of Judgement, “Our Lord, twice You have brought us to death (amattanā) and twice You have brought us to life (aḥyaytanā)”. What is this first death? Several mufassirūn connected the verse to Q. 2: 28, almost immediately prior to the Adam pericope: “How can you ignore God when you were dead (amwātan) and He gave you life (aḥyākum)?”Footnote ⁵³ It seems this verse, like Q. 40: 11, can be read as affirming a state of existence before this worldly life, which both verses call a death, but which (on this reading) is not the same as non-existence. (Note that the death following this worldly life is also not a state of non-existence in the Quran, but a type of sleep – see Q. 36: 52, 39: 42). If these interpretations are correct, it is surely no coincidence that one of these two verses occurs prior to the Q. 2 Adam pericope, which also depicts – on the reading presented here – a primordial gathering of souls. Tellingly, this interpretation of Q. 40: 11 is attributed to none other than Ibn Zayd, who describes the first death as the moment when “He created them from the back (ẓahr) of Adam, and took their covenant from them, and he [Ibn Zayd] recited, ‘And when your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins (ẓuhūrihim), their seed’ (Q. 7:172)”.Footnote ⁵⁴ Whatever the plausibility of this interpretation of Q. 40: 11 and Q. 2: 28, we see a consistent association of Ibn Zayd with the notion of a primordial existence of souls, strengthening the likelihood that the attribution of the ḥadīth to his father Zayd b. Aslam is historical.

The “Names” of Adam's offspring

For the reading presented here to be viable, we must consider the plausibility of the term “names” being used as a reference to Adam's offspring. We can approach this from several perspectives: how the term is used elsewhere in the Quran; the structure of Sūrat al-Baqara; and the relationship between Sūrat al-Baqara and other related surahs that have a naming motif. We should note upfront that the reading defended here is not so much that Adam was taught the individual names of his offspring; rather, it is that he was taught either the characteristics or identities of his offspring, and in particular the righteous among them, that being necessary to meet the angels’ objections.

From its occurrence elsewhere in the Quran, it seems that “names” can be used metonymically to refer to the essence of a thing. Thus, where the Quran proclaims, “Glorify the name of your Lord (isma rabbika)” (Q. 87: 1), it is evidently the Lord Himself who is to be glorified. The Quran decries both those who make the angels female (Q. 39: 19), and also those who “give the angels female names” (Q. 53: 27). When Jesus prophesies the coming of Muḥammad, he describes him as “a messenger coming after me whose name is most praised”, in other words who himself is most praised.Footnote ⁵⁵ When Zechariah is told that he is to have a son called John (ismuhu Yaḥyā, Q. 19: 7), he is also told that God has not made a samiyy, or “namesake”, for him. This latter word, from the same root as ism (“name”), can also mean “competitor for superiority”, again demonstrating the name/characteristic duality of the root; the Quran here both recalls Luke 1: 61 (“There is no one among your relatives who has that name”), and at the same time offers an elevated praise of John.Footnote ⁵⁶

This conflation between the name of something and its essence or identity is broadly attested in the Ancient Near East.Footnote ⁵⁷ Indeed, in Genesis Rabbah 17 (cited above), it appears that Adam is able to name all creatures as he, unlike the angels, understands their essential characteristics. This is suggested by how he, after naming the animals, names himself and God:

As for the evidence provided by the structure of Q. 2, we may begin by noting that several surah studies have consistently shown a connection between surah openings and the concerns expressed later in the surah.Footnote ⁵⁸ Sūrat al-Baqara begins with a contrast between the believers (vv. 1–5) and the unbelievers, the latter including those who merely feign belief (vv. 6–21). This is followed by an address to the whole of humanity to “worship your Lord who created you and those before you” (v. 21). The two groups are again contrasted in vv. 23–25. The Adam story commences in v. 30, by which point the contrast between the believers and unbelievers has been well established in the surah. The Adam pericope concludes the introduction to the surah, following which Q. 2 will become a surah of two halves: a castigation of the Israelites and their failures, and an address to the believers as the new Abrahamic community. In between these two sections, the legacy of Abraham is recounted, including a discussion of his righteous and unrighteous offspring (vv. 125–6).Footnote ⁵⁹ In other words, like the opening of the surah, we repeatedly have a contrast between those who are not (true) believers, and the believers. An interpretation of the Adam story that contrasts the wicked and righteous seems more in keeping with the surah's concerns than a reading in which God shuts down angelic questioning about why He is about to create man: the former motif aligns perfectly with the rest of the surah, both before and after the Adam story, while it is difficult to find examples of the mysterious unknowability of God's reasons to act as He does attested anywhere in the Quran.Footnote ⁶⁰

Furthermore, as Marianna Klar and Neal Robinson have demonstrated,Footnote ⁶¹ diction and motifs from the Adam story may be heard throughout the surah after the prologue. Klar traces the themes of “gardens”, “parable”, “prostration”, “covenant”, “wrongdoing”, and “blindness” from the Adam story through to the rest of the surah.Footnote ⁶² Robinson argues for the relevance of the Adam story in each of the surah sections into which he divides Q. 2. While such observations have been used to demonstrate the aesthetics and literary unity of the surah, they have rarely been used to solve interpretive difficulties, which I propose here to attempt. For instance, the angelic concern that mankind will “cause mischief” and “shed blood” (v. 30) are precisely two of the crimes that the Israelites are accused of later in the surah (vv. 60, 84).Footnote ⁶³ (The connection between the sin of Adam and Eve and the subsequent transgression of the Israelites is a motif occasionally encountered in late antique rabbinic and Christian literature too.)Footnote ⁶⁴ Similarly, the angels’ hiding (taktumūna, from the root k-t-m, v. 30) the mention of the righteous (on the interpretation presented herein) mirrors the repeated accusation that the Israelites are hiding (from the same k-t-m root) evidence of the truth of Muḥammad's prophecy, and thus preventing people from joining the ranks of the believers.Footnote ⁶⁵

A number of these concealment passages simultaneously invoke multiple other motifs from the Adam pericope. For instance, immediately after the Adam pericope, the Israelites are exhorted to believe in this revelation (v. 41), following which they are warned against hiding the truth (lā taktumū l-ḥaqq), and encouraged instead to “bow down with those who bow down” (v. 43). We have here several of the elements in the Adam pericope: the hiding motif, the bowing motif (albeit with the root r-k-ʿ now rather than s-j-d, the two roots in any case closely related and frequently collocated in the Quran),Footnote ⁶⁶ and – if my reading of the “names” motif in the Adam pericope is correct – a juxtaposition between believers and those who reject God's revelation.

Again, in v. 72, the Israelites are accused of hiding some matter (in context, the identity of a murderer). God brings the dead to life, probably to reveal the identity of the true murderer (v. 73), which brings to mind the story of the creation of the first man (c.f. v. 28 discussed earlier, “you were dead and He gave you life”). The hard-heartedness of the Israelites is then unfavourably compared to rocks who “fall down” (yahbiṭu) out of fear of God (v. 73), recalling the angels’ prostration and Iblīs's refusal to prostrate. Crucially, this is then followed by a contrast between unbelieving Israelites and the true believers, in which once again themes of concealing and revealing loom large:

Note that the opening of v. 76 here is identical to v. 14 in the surah's opening section.

Most compellingly, in vv. 140 and 146, those who have scripture are again accused of hiding the truth (yaktumūna l-ḥaqq). As with v. 43 considered above, here also concealment is linked with correct prostration, in that the passage establishes the sacred mosque, literally the “sacred place of prostration” (al-majid al-ḥarām) as the prayer direction for the believers (vv. 144, 149–50). Intriguingly, the Quran accuses those who have scripture of knowing the truth of what they are concealing “as they know their own sons” (v. 146), which appears to be an echo, along with the motifs of concealment and prostration, of the Adam pericope in which he is introduced to his progeny.

Examining the aforementioned passages in light of the Adam story, the Israelites variously exhibit the characteristics of Iblīs who refuses to prostrate, or the angels who concealed, or are presented as the fulfilment of the angels’ dire predictions regarding humanity. We thus have a complex web of images in the Adam pericope that recur throughout the surah in relation to the Israelites, always to the detrimental portrayal of the latter. What is clear is that in each case their concealment is designed to prevent recognition of the true believers, whom they know “as they know their own sons”, just as, as I have argued, the angels failed to mention the righteous children of Adam.

The final connections between the Adam story and the remainder of Sūrat al-Baqara are more circuitous, as they involve interpreting the Adam pericope in light of similar passages in other Medinan surahs. First, Sūrat al-Baqara appears to have significantly overlapping content with at least parts of Sūrat al-Ḥajj (Q. 22).Footnote ⁶⁷ In particular, both surahs are concerned with Abraham's legacy in constructing the Temple in Mecca, calling people to pilgrimage, and teaching them the rites thereof. Both surahs may thus be considered as inaugurating a new Abrahamic community. Sūrat al-Ḥajj concludes with what this new community is to be called:

Much of this verse is echoed in various parts of Sūrat al-Baqara.Footnote ⁶⁹ Of particular interest is the proclamation that God has named this community who follow the way of Abraham muslims. Sūrat al-Baqara will confirm this message; Abraham prays for himself and for his future progeny to be muslims. It seems to me that, given the plethora of connections between the two surahs, the names motif in Q. 2 is likely also to be a direct continuation of the naming motif in Q. 22. Note that Q. 22: 78 does not say that it was in previous scripture that God called Abraham's community muslims – it says simply that this was the name God gave the believers beforehand, i.e. possibly to the angels at the dawn of human creation. In response to the angels’ objection that this new human creature would sow corruption and shed blood (Q. 2: 30), God countered by having Adam introduce them to those of his offspring who have a particular name or characteristics (asmāʾ) that counters their claim. This then perfectly lays the ground for the structure of the main body of Q. 2: we are first introduced to those who “spill blood” and “spread corruption” (Q. 2: 30), before the Quran turns to Abraham and his new community, who are to be muslims (the verb aslama and its active participle muslim repeated six times in the range Q. 2: 128–36, which concerns Abraham), a term we learn in Q. 22 is the chosen way God has named (sammā) the righteous. Note also that Q. 2: 140 and 146 discussed above – two verses in close succession in which the concealment of those who have scripture is denounced – are preceded just a few verses earlier by believers being told to proclaim to Jews and Christians that “we are muslims to Him” (v. 136).

The second surah of potential significance here is Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (Q. 3), which again has multiple connections with Sūrat al-Baqara, the two plausibly forming a surah pair.Footnote ⁷⁰ Just as in Q. 2 the Adam pericope serves as a bridge between the introductory section and the extended address to those with scripture, particularly the Israelites, so similarly in Q. 3, at the conclusion of the introductory section and approximately at the same number of verses into the surah,Footnote ⁷¹ we have mention of the election of Adam (“God chose Adam, Noah, Abraham's family, and the family of ʿImrān, over all other people” [v. 33]) followed by a section in which the past behaviour of those with scripture is of central concern. Indeed, much of the diction between the two sections in the two surahs relating to the previous scriptural communities is identically phrased, such as Mary being told in Q. 3: 43 to “bow with those who bow down” (c.f. Q. 2: 43 discussed above). Intriguingly, in the Q. 2 Adam pericope, which led into the Israelite section, we had an allusion to the creation of the male and the female (i.e. Adam and his spouse, v. 35), a reference to Satan (al-shayṭan) as a misguiding force (v. 36), a reference to God's knowledge of what is hidden (ghayb, v. 33), instruction to Adam to inform the angels (anbiʾhum, v. 33) of a part of what was hidden from them and, significantly, a naming and offspring motif (vv. 31, 33) (again, if the interpretation of Q. 2 offered here is correct). We now find these very motifs at the start of the Q. 3 Israelite section:

Moreover, whereas in the parallel annunciation narratives in Sūrat Maryam (Q. 19) it seems to be God who addresses Zechariah (Q. 19: 7) and God's Spirit who addresses Mary (Q. 19: 17), in Q. 3 it is the angels (malāʾikah) who address both (Q. 3: 39, 42, 45), creating another parallel with the Q. 2 Adam story, which commences with a dialogue between God and the angels. Further, whereas in Q. 19 the annunciation to Mary does not include a naming motif, in Q. 3: 45 the angels announce “a word from Him whose name (ismuhu) will be Jesus Christ, son of Mary”.Footnote ⁷² Thus, in Q. 2, God introduces the angels, through Adam, to “names” whom they had failed to mention, who would be a counter to the angelic objection that the human creature will “spread corruption … and will shed blood”, and in Q. 3 the angels tell Mary the name of the child she is to have, who, in contrast to the angels’ predictions about mankind at the dawn of creation, “will be held in honor in this world and the next, who will be one of those brought near to God. He will speak to people in his infancy and in his adulthood. He will be one of the righteous” (vv. 45–6).

From the perspective of Quranic semantics, ancient and late antique Near Eastern (including rabbinic) linguistic use, surah structure, and intra-surah references, there appears to be good support for interpreting “names” to mean the identities of Adam's offspring. The question remains why this language is adopted in the first place. There are several possibilities. First, we need to recall Zellentin's proposal that in the Q. 2 Adam story the Quran creatively merges and responds to multiple rabbinic and Syriac Christian discourses in a trialogue.Footnote ⁷³ It is no surprise then that the Quran also combines multiple rabbinic stories (or rabbinic and biblical motifs), specifically those in which Adam is introduced to his offspring, with vocabulary taken from a quintessential Adam story, that of his naming the creatures. This repurposing allows the story to remain recognizably one about the biblical Adam, while at the same time communicating the Quran's own theology. We see the same technique in the Quran's use of the term “word” (kalimah) to describe Jesus (Q. 3: 45) (albeit that here the motivation is clearly polemical) – as with Adam and the “names”, the Quran's acceptance of the term “word” ensures that a familiar Jesus narrative is produced, yet the significance of the term is entirely different now: it no longer refers to God's eternal logos, but his command “Be” that brings Jesus into existence.Footnote ⁷⁴

Second, there may also be a polemical motivation. In Genesis Rabbah 17, a text closely related to the Q. 2 story as we have seen above, Adam names not only the creatures, but also himself and God. By adopting the naming motif to describe Adam's introduction to his children, the Quran is possibly not just repurposing a well-known motif, but simultaneously polemicizing against the notion that Adam gave God His name.

Finally, it is possible that when Adam is taught “the names, all of them” (v. 31), what is intended is indeed the names of all creatures, including both animals and Adam's own progeny. It is then only in the following verses (especially v. 33), with the use of the masculine plural pronouns, that the focus shifts squarely and unambiguously to his progeny.Footnote ⁷⁵ Interestingly, there is some evidence of a movement already in the Palestinian rabbinic texts towards conflating the presentation of the animals to Adam in Genesis with the presentation of his offspring to him. Genesis has God bringing the animals to Adam (Hebrew: wayyābēʾ el hā-ādām, Syriac: w-ʾyty ʾnwn lwt ʾdm), with the cognate phrase replicated in the Babylonian Talmud (hbdyʾ-n ʾl ʾdm, b. Ḥul. 27b), Targum Onqelos (ʾyt-h lwt ʾdm), and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (ʿyyty lwt ʾdm). In Genesis Rabbah, on the other hand, as we have seen above, the animals are not simply brought to Adam, but made to pass before him (hʿbyrm l-pny ʾdm, Gen. Rab. 17: 4). A cognate phrase is given in the Cave of Treasures (wʿbrw klhwn qdm ʾdm, Cav. Tr. 2: 20).Footnote ⁷⁶ It is this same image, with the same verb, that is given in ʾAbot de Rabbi Nathan (B), both in relation to the animals (hʿbyr l-pnyw, ʾAbot R. Nat. [B] 8),Footnote ⁷⁷ but also in relation to Adam's offspring, who are likewise made to “pass before him” (mʿbyrn l-pnyw).Footnote ⁷⁸ Further, the Quran's language that God “displayed them” (ʿaraḍahum, Q. 2: 31) is arguably closer to this Palestinian rabbinic allusion to a parade (whether of animals or Adam's offspring), than it is to the biblical language of the animals being brought to Adam.

Revealing what the angels concealed

Several rabbinic antecedents to the Quran's Adam story clearly exhibit a concern with theodicy:

God is aware of the capacity this new creation will have for evil, but also sees the good that man will do. He sees both the righteous and the wicked, and reasons that the inevitable emergence of the wicked is not sufficient cause to abstain from creating the righteous. The situation with the angels is more complex: they are variously presented as either unaware of what man's nature will be, or else unsure whether he should be created on account of the inclusion of the wicked in his midst. God responds in the two stories by either informing (hwdyʿ, from the verb hôdîaʿ) them only of the righteous and withholding information about the existence of the unrighteous (cf. ʾAbot R. Nat. [A] 31 cited above: “Some say God showed him only the righteous”), or else by pre-empting the matter and creating man despite the objection of the angels.

The question of theodicy is central in the Quran's introduction of Adam, too. Yet here we have a telling variation not yet seen in the rabbinic accounts: rather than (1) God concealing the future existence of the wicked so as not to give the angels of the divine council a reason to object, and thus revealing (hôdîaʿ) only the existence of the righteous, or (2) the angels disputing the appropriateness of a creation that will include both the righteous and the wicked, in the Quran we now have the angels disclosing (tubdūna, from abdā, v. 33) only the unrighteous, and God commanding that they inform Him – and then eventually asking Adam to inform them – (anbaʾa, vv. 31, 33) of the “names, all of them”, i.e. to recognize alongside the wicked the existence of the righteous that the angels had been concealing (taktumūn, v. 33). The C-stem verbs in both the Hebrew (hôdîaʿ) and the Arabic (anbaʾa and abdā) meaning “to inform” or “to reveal” are used in the various texts in connection with revealing the reality of Adam's offspring to the angels. In many ways, the Quran uses the deliberations of the divine council at the time of Adam's creation to respond to concerns of theodicy in the same way as Genesis Rabbah does, yet the God of the Quran is recognizably more sovereign: He announces his decision to create man rather than consult the angels, and it is they who conceal (i.e. fail to mention or recognize) the totality of human moral possibility to Him rather than the reverse, an omission on their part that He corrects.