The Oxford Handbook of
THE PSALMS
Edited by
WILLIAM P. BROWN
1
3
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CONTENTS
Preface
List of Contributors
Abbreviations
ix
xi
v
i. T he Psalms: An Overview
1
WILLIAM P. BROWN
PART I ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN
BACKGROUNDS
2. Mesopotamian Parallels to the Psalms
27
ANNA ELISE ZERNECKE
3. Canaanite Backgrounds to the Psalms
43
MARK s. SMITH
4. Egptian Backgrounds to the Psalms
57
BERND U. SCHIPPER
PART II LANGUAGE OF THE P SALMS
5. Poetry of the Psalms
79
F. w. DOBBS-ALLSOPP
6. The Psalms in Poetry
99
PETERS. HAWKINS
7. Language of Lament in the Psalms
114
CARLEEN MANDOLFO
8. Praise and Metonymy in the Psalms
131
TRAVIS J. BOTT
9. Wisdom Language in the Psalms
DIANE JACOBSON
147
Vi
CONTENTS
PART III TRANSL ATING PSALMS
10. The Aramaic Psalter
161
DAVI D M. STEC
11. The Septuagint Psalter
173
JOACHIM SCHAPER
12. Jerome s Psalters
185
'
ScoTT G o r ns
PART IV COMPOSITION OF THE PSALMS
i3. The Levites and the Editorial Composition of the Psalms
201
SUSAN E. GILLINGHAM
14. On the Ordering of Psalms as Demonstrated by Psalms 136-150
214
YAIR ZAKOVITCH
15. Unrolling the Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls
229
PETE R W. FLINT
PART V
HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION AND
RECEPTION: A SAMPLING
16. Some Aspects of Traditional Jewish Psalms Interpretatio n
253
ALAN COOPER
17· Psalms in the New Testament
STEPHEN P. AHE A RNE K ROLL
-
18. The Psalms in he Qur'an and in the Islamic Religious Imagination
281
WALID A. SALEH
19. Reception of the Psalms: The Example of Psalm 91
297
BRENNAN BREED
PART VI INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES
20. Psalms and the Question of G e nre
WILLIAM H. BELLINGER, JR.
313
CONTENTS
2i. Psalms of the Temple
Vii
326
RICHARDJ. CLIFFORD
22. Non-Temple Psalms: The Cltic Setting Revisited
ERHARD S. GERSTENBERGER
23. The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter: Psalms in
Their Literary Context
350
J. CLINTON MCCANN,JR.
24. The Meta-Narrative of the Psalter
NANCY L. DECLAISSE-WALFORD
25. Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Psalms
377
JOEL M. LEMON
26. Rhetoric of the Psalms
392
ROBERT L. FOSTER
27. Poetic Attachment: Psycholog; Psycholinguistics, and the Psalms
404
BRENT A. STRAWN
28. Feminist Interpretation of the Psalms
424
MELODY D. KNOWLES
29. Kingship in the Book of Psalms
437
NORMAN K. GOTTWALD
PART VII CULTURALLY BASED
INTER P RETATIONS
30. Singing a Subversive Song: Psalm 137 and "Colored Pompey"
447
RODNEY S. SADLER, JR.
31. Rising rom Generation to Generation: Lament, Hope,
Consciousness, Home, and Dream
459
JOHNJ.AHN
32. Psalms in Latin America
EDESIO SANCHEZ
475
vii i
CONTENTS
PART VIII THEOLOGIES OF THE PSALMS
33. Jewish Theology of the Psalms
MARC Zvr BRETTLER
34. Christian Theology of the Psalms
499
ROLF A. JACOBSON
PART IX
ANTHROPOLOGIES OF T HE PSALMS
35. On "Being Human" in the Psalms
515
.WALTER BRUEGGEMANN
36. The Righteous and the Wicked
529
JEROME F. D. CREACH
PART X PR ACTICING T HE PSALMS
37. The Psalms in Christian Worship
545
KIMBERLY BRACKEN LONG
38. Preaching Psalms
557
THOMAS G. LONG
39. Singing the Psalms
569
MICHAEL MORGAN
40. Psalms as Resources or Pastoral Care
CAROL L. SCHNABL SCHWEITZER
4i.
The Pslms: A Monastic Persoective
.
A
EDMEE KINGSMILL SLG
42. Ecological Use of the Psalms
608
DAVID RENSBERGER
Appendix T
"Apocryphal" salms in the Psalms Scrolls and in Texts
Incorporating Psalms
PETER . F.INT
Appendix r Contens of he Psalms Scrolls and Related lanuscripts
PETER W. FLINT
Subject and Names Index
Textual Index
621
Chapter 18
The Psalms in the Qur’an
and in th e I sl a mi c
Religious Imagination
Walid A. Saleh
Who Inherits the Earth?
In the Bet Hale Disputation (c. 720 CE), a Christian disputation that records the conversation between a Muslim commander (Emir) and a Christian monk, the Muslim
Emir poses several questions about the truthfulness of the Christian faith, for which the
monk has ready answers.1 his is one of several such disputations that have now been
published and extensively studied. Written in Syriac, they ofer a robust defense of the
Christian faith against the newly forming Islam. What is of interest here is a question (or
a statement of fact) raised by the Muslim Emir, that has so far been understood by scholars as boastful military talk to which the monk gives a military response.2 However, the
matter is actually far graver and more profoundly theological, having nothing to do with
military boasting.
Let me quote the issue raised by the Emir: “But here is a sign that God loves us and
is pleased with our religion (tawdîthan): He has given us authority over all religions
and all peoples; they are slaves subject to us.” To this remark the monk states that “you
Ishmaelites are holding the smallest portion of the earth. All of creation is not subject
to your authority” (paragraphs 21–22). Sydney Griith, who discusses this debate, does
not comment on the nature of the Emir’s claim, whose background can be found in the
famous verse in Psalm 37 (“he righteous shall inherit the land, and live in it forever”
[v. 29]). he Emir gave a Qur’anic reading of this psalmic verse, a reading that Islamic
tradition, more sobered by the vicissitudes of history, would later deemphasize.
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It is not insigniicant that Psalm 37:29 happens to be the only instance of an explicit
verbatim quotation from the Bible in the Qur’an (Q.21:105). he Qur’anic verse
states: “and we have decreed in the Book of Psalms (zabūr)—ater admonition (dhikr)—
that the righteous shall inherit the earth.” It is hard to ascertain what the interjectory
phrase “ater admonition” signiies; the Arabic is not clear. he term dhikr is usually
translated “remembrance.” Angelika Neuwirth has translated it “ater the praise.”3 I am
taking the term to allude to the reverse of the statement, that it is the wicked, or those
who abandon God’s covenant, who will be dispossessed.4 I argue that the quoting of
this psalm verse is of utmost signiicance to the theology of the Qur’an, a quotation
echoed in other Qur’anic verses where inheritance and righteousness are understood
as related. he Bet Hale Disputation is one of our earliest documents that bears witness
to how Muslims understood this Qur’anic verse and what they took it to mean. Indeed,
the antiquity of this understanding is clear from the fact that it was soon displaced, and
by the time the earliest documented internal Islamic evidence does appear (e.g., Qur’an
commentaries), we see a shit in the reception of this Qur’anic verse and an attempt to
marginalize what I would consider to be the early widespread understanding. he body
of prophetic hadith (reports attributed to Muhammad), which ties conquest with righteousness, is thus a set of archaic reports that, although clearly not from Muhammad,
were circulating among the early generation of Muslims.5
hat Q.21:105 is central in the Qur’an is clear from the other reiterations of this theology of inheritance, where the Qur’an shows a spiritualizing understanding of the formula “inheriting the earth.” Q.39:74 is explicit in its juxtaposing inheriting the earth
(awrathanā al-arḍ) and dwelling in Paradise, leaving no doubt that if such a promise
was made earlier to the people of God, it meant an other-worldly salvation. Chapter 39
(al-zumar) is clearly Meccan, where salvation is deemed personal and not communal;
there is no inkling of earthly victories or dominion for the believers.6
Nevertheless, there is in the Qur’an a more worldly understanding of the phrase
“inheriting the earth.” Q.24:55 is unambiguous in declaring that the kind of inheritance
at stake is dominion on this earth: “God has promised those who believe among you and
do good deeds that He shall bequeath to them the earth just as He bequeathed it to those
before you,7 He shall make your religion irm—a religion that He is happy with—and
He shall make you safe ater being terrorized—you shall worship Me and will not put
another God near me—those who go astray ater this, those are the corrupt.” he word
for “make irm” (tamkīn) is about earthly dominion. Chapter 24 was composed later,
in the Madinan period, when Muhammad was the ruler of the city. he conditions are
diferent here; thus, the Qur’an is able to make a safe bet that Madina is an abode for the
believers. And so, according to later Madinan Suras, the Qur’an is reminding believers that they have inherited “their land, abodes and wealth, and lands you have never
stepped on before” (Q.33:27).
hat w-r-th (“inherit”) is ultimately political is clear from another cognate, kh-l-f
(“to come ater, to inherit, take over”), which is also used to promise believers custody
on earth in a phraseology that echoes the use of the phrase “inherit the earth.” his is
especially prominent in Q.24:55—“God will make you take over (yastakhlifannahum)
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the land just as He had already made previous generations take over the land [presumably the Israelites].” he kh-l-f root is a potent root in the Qur’an; humanity was made
a khalīfah (a vicegerent) on earth in the Qur’an (2:30); David the king was dubbed one
(Q.38:26), and early Muslim rulers were Caliphs (or khalīfah) as well.8 hese two terms
show the degree to which the theology of Psalm 37:29 permeated Qur’anic discourse.
here is another term in the Qur’an that played a major role in describing the nature
of the early Islamic polity and that eventually came to denote conquests—f-t-ḥ. his
term, like the two others—to inherit (w-r-th) and to take over (kh-l-f)—is also semantically lexible: it denotes physical opening, such as the opening of a gate or a sack (Q.6:44;
12:65) but also the gates of heaven from which rain, mercy, and torture pour forth
(Q.7:96; 54:11). he verb f-t-ḥ also denotes the opening of the gates of Paradise and Hell
(Q.7:40; 39:73; 39:71, 72) as well as a more abstract kind of opening, a judgment, a clariication, a separation, or a decision (Q.2:76; 34:26; 7:89; 14:15; 2:89; 7:89). Such abstract
uses indicate that the verb has already acquired soteriological meanings in the Qur’an.
Conquering (a city) becomes the ultimate soteriological summation of all these usages
in the Qur’an: the Day of Fatḥ (yawm al-fatḥ) in the Qur’an commemorated both conquest and salvation (qabl and baʽd; cf. Q.57:10). God promises Muhammad a great fatḥ,
a clear fatḥ, ater which people convert in droves (Q.48:10; 110:1). Such is the nature of
the fatḥ: it results in total absolution of sins and assures victory (Q.48:2–3). Mecca was
considered the ultimate prize.9
he adroit use of these three terms, encapsulating both eternal salvation and earthly
success, makes them foundational for understanding the politics of salvation in the
Qur’an. Together, they constitute a web of concepts that ties aspects of military success
with salvation, where the dominion of God is given to the believers.10
hese theological articulations in the Qur’an are conducted under another fundamental Hebrew Bible dilemma, that of the role of a king for salvation. Nowhere does
the Qur’an mention the opening chapters of 1 Samuel. Yet it is clear that Muhammad
decided against kingship, and salvation was, even when achieved by the arms of
believers, only God’s doing.11 he Qur’an bristles with divine anger at the notion that
anyone but God achieves victory—“you threw not when you threw, God did the throwing” (of the javelin, Q.8:17). Indeed, the only instance where the Qur’an attempts to
revoke its strict rule against miraculous explanations for Muhammad’s career is in its
attempt to rob the believers of their pride in victory. God apparently sent ighters from
Heaven to ight alongside believers (Q.9:26), the only instance of a miraculous claim
to Muhammad in the whole of the Qur’an. his was a statement that went too far, and
when it irst appeared in the Qur’an, it was more circumspect: invisible soldiers they
were (Q.33:9). Pride in numbers is useless, and God showed that he would humiliate the
believers when they are swollen with arrogance, making them run for cover (Q.9:29). It
is God alone who grants victory. Victory is received, not gained, by the believers “when
God’s Opening [fatḥ!] and victory come” (Q.110:1).
So we can see that the Muslim Emir was thus engaging in a complicated theological argument that has a very old lineage: what is the kingdom of God, and what is the
relationship of victory to salvation? he signiicance of the Emir’s statements and its
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relationship to early Muslim conquests have never been fully appreciated. he Hadith
already make a very close link between the early Arab conquests, salvation, and God’s
pleasure with the Muslims. he evidence from the Bet Hale Disputation is of great significance because it is an independent witness to the centrality of Psalm 37:29 via Q.21:105
and how it was understood by early Muslims. he Emir was elaborating on a verse from
the Qur’an by tying the success of early Muslim conquests with God’s favor and ultimately with the truthfulness of the message of Islam. One does wonder whether the
Emir also knew of the Sermon on the Mount (although such a supposition is unlikely),
yet he knew for certain how central this verse was for Christians. he monk, regardless
of whether the reference of the Emir was to the Psalms or to the Sermon on the Mount
(Matt. 5:5), would have been fully aware of the point made by the Emir even if he was
unwilling to accept it, as was the case. he earth is not yet under your command, he
emphasizes to the Emir. However, the monk is not disputing the argument that dominion and salvation go hand in hand. his was a disputation that, thanks to Psalm 37:29,
shared a common fundamental notion of how God acts: He will grant the earth to His
people.
hat this theological issue was at the heart of the Emir’s relections is clear from the
fact that the Emir comes back to this point again at the end of the Disputation, where he
states:
While I know your religion is right, and your way of thinking is even preferable to
ours, what is the reason why God handed you over into our hands and you are driven
by us like sheep to the slaughter, and your bishops and your priests are killed, and
the rest are subjugated and enslaved with the king’s impositions night and day, more
bitter than death? (Griith 2000: paragraph 36)
I am inclined to believe that although the Disputation is fashioned by Christian apologetic concerns, this emphasis on victory as soteriologically meaningful does relect a
peculiar understanding advocated by early Islam. Although the Emir himself is presented as convinced of the Christian truth, he persists, in face of historical reality, in his
theology of victory. God, the lord of history, has given a clear sign that Muslims are righteous. If anything, this Disputation points to the degree to which Psalm 37:29 was central
in understanding the meaning of history to early Muslims.
Given the complete absence of direct quotations in the Qur’an from older named
scriptures, apart from a Talmudic citation that the Qur’an seems to imply comes from
the Torah,12 we must take Q.21:105 very seriously. Why did the Qur’an depart from its
usual rhetorical style and venture to name both the source and cite the verse? he analysis given above is my answer to this question: the verse, I am arguing, is fundamental to
the theology of salvation in the Qur’an and hence the pointed reference to its lineage.
he spiritualizing understanding of inheriting Paradise (seen as synonymous to inheriting earth), as presented in several parts of the Qur’an, points to the dire predicament of
the early Muslim Meccan community, an understanding that was fully shed and indeed
negated later in the Qur’an, where conquest (fatḥ), a new term coined by the Qur’an,
soon became central.13 he prophet who at irst disputed being someone who wanted a
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wage or sought dominion, was now leading armies, collecting taxes, and issuing judgements.14 It is in light of this new theology that we can understand the sudden centrality
of the notion of jihād and its intimate connection to faith.15
The Psalms in the Qur’an
Before continuing to discuss the use of psalmic material in the Qur’an, one needs to ask
to what degree was the Qur’an or its author aware of the Psalms as a book. he term used
in the Qur’an to refer to the Psalms as the book of David is zabūr (Q.4:163, 17:55, “We
gave David the Psalms”), a term reminiscent of the Hebrew root z-m-r. he root z-b-r
is already used in Arabic poetry to refer to books or written material, and it is used as
such in the Qur’an (in the plural form, zubur, Q.26:196). he reference to the book of
David as zabūr leaves no doubt that it is the book of Psalms that is meant. Because we
have a direct quotation from this zabūr that turns out to be Psalm 37:29 makes the matter certain. Moses was given the Torah (tawrāt), Jesus the Evangelium (injīl), David the
Psalms (zabūr), just as Muhammad has now been given the Qur’ān.16 Modern scholars
have shown ainity between certain chapters in the Qur’an and certain biblical psalms,
implying that Muhammad must have been familiar with this book. All this raises the
interesting question about the availability of versions, or at least selections, of the Psalms
in Arabic.
here has been a reappraisal of the role of the Psalms and their relationship to the
Qur’an in recent scholarship. Leading the movement to place the Psalms as pivotal to
understanding the compositional nature of some of the Meccan chapters of the Qur’an
is Angelika Neuwirth.17 One should note that the importance of the Psalms for the study
of the Qur’an has long been recognized in Qur’anic scholarship; it is, however, an insight
that has lain dormant until Neuwirth’s pioneering work.18 Hartwig Hirschfeld was certain that the Psalms imprinted Muhammad’s style to such a degree that one could see
its inluence all over the Qur’an.19 Heinrich Speyer tabulated the numerous instances
where he detected Quranic material drawing upon or resembling the Psalms (Speyer
1961 [1931]: 447–49). He was already building on the insights of Wilhelm Rudolf and
others before him (Rudolph 1922). Such correspondences, however, remained without
investigation; it was not clear what to make of such resemblances or indeed how one
begins to understand what the Qur’an was attempting to achieve by using the Psalms.20
Speyer’s work was both a culmination of this trend and a stark illustration of this type
of scholarship. He simply listed a Qur’anic verse and its supposed correspondence in
the Psalms and let it at that. Beyond stating the obvious, such an approach did not tell
us much about the Qur’an. he resemblances between Q.55 and Psalm 136, for example,
have been noted from early on, yet it took at least two decades for Angelika Neuwirth to
establish a coherent analysis of this relationship. he signiicance of her work is that she
has shown us a way to compare full chapters from the Qur’an to the Psalms, thus allowing for comparisons beyond the mere statement of correspondence, as had been the case
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in much scholarship.21 Previous scholarship used examples of resemblance to state the
obvious. hus Hirschfeld, ater stating that the correspondences between the Qur’an
and the Psalms are extensive, concluded that Muhammad, having heard the Psalms, had
thought very highly of them and had used them in his preaching (1866: 32).
Angelika Neuwirth highlights several aspects about the psalmic material in the
Qur’an. First, it is the early Suras of the Qur’an that are most in conversation with the
Psalms.22 he Qur’an, moreover, turns minor rhetorical aspects of the Psalms into major
features of its own style. Nature and natural phenomenon are central to the Qur’anic
discourse and not limited to one or two Suras. In fact, almost every Sura has a nature
section. here is also a radical diference between the texts regarding the use of history
and the remembering of the past. According to Neuwirth, “the historical part of the
psalm is thus replaced by an eschatological part in the surah” (2011a: 769). “Eschatology
in the emerging Qur’an,” she asserts, is the most signiicant discourse and thus “parallels
the importance that history enjoys in Jewish contexts” (p. 771). Psalmic material in the
Qur’an has to be understood in the new historical context of the Qur’an, not as a mere
reproduction of psalmic images and concepts. Neuwirth rightly highlights the polemical emphasis on the Arabness of the Qur’an’s new revelatory language and its early liturgical use. he Psalmic material was thus molded to it this emerging Arabic national
religious language.
I would add that what we see in the Qur’an is a mode of monotheistic development
in late antiquity made possible because it was so peripheral. Instead of a saint showing
up among the barbarian unchristian tribes on the periphery of imperial rule to convert
them and translate the Bible into their language, a native prophet appears with a burning
proclamation for the nonscriptural Arabs, the ummīyūn, the Gentiles who are to join
the God of Israel. he new revelation has a shallow historical narrative to draw upon,
Neuwirth notes, and it enshrines the notions of Arabic revelation and the future apocalypse into the cornerstone of a new mode of discourse. As such, the Qur’an is profoundly
complex: it is a hymn book, a revelation, a polemical argument, and a law book all rolled
into one, attempting to give the Arabs a quick push into the complex scriptural heritage
already enjoyed by the ahl al-kitāb, the “people of the Book.” So poignantly was this
Gentile status felt that the Qur’an itself invented the expression “people of the Book,”
keenly aware that the Arabs were not but also keenly hoping that they would soon join
their ranks.
Neuwirth’s article on Q.78 (as an echo of Psalm 104) and Q.55 (as an echo of Psalm
136) is perhaps the most extensive analysis of this relationship between the Qur’an and
the Psalms, a relationship resulting in the remolding of psalmic material in the Qur’an
(Neuwirth 2011a).23 Any work on the Qur’an and the Psalms has to answer now to her
analysis and understanding of this relationship. he irst volume of her commentary
on the Qur’an highlights the centrality of the Psalms to her understanding of the early
Meccan chapters of the Qur’an (Neuwirth 2011b).24
he above investigation of Q.21:105 is my own attempt to detail an approach to understanding a psalmic quotation in the Qur’an. In this example, I chose a short quotation,
the most famous psalm quotation in the Qur’an, to illustrate my method. he Qur’an was
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287
elaborating on the notion of inheriting the earth, transferring the covenantal promise of
the Promised Land into an Arabian context. he promise made to Muslims was tentative at irst, tied to the apocalyptic phase of Muhammad’s early career, where inheritance
was tied to Paradise. While explaining the polemical use of this verse in the Qur’an is not
possible, I am inclined to understand it as a promise spoken to the believers as a form of
vindication of their faith and not directed against Jews or Christians. Neither do we have
in the Qur’an the notion of inheriting the Promised Land as a way of supplementing or
superseding Judaism and Christianity. What was at stake was a share in dominion, a
desire to be like the Rūm up north (the Romans), a sort of a monotheistic dominion for
the Arabs. he Bet Hale Disputation shows clearly how this changed dramatically due to
the early Arab conquests and how this promise made inside Arabia became understood
in the wider Near Eastern realm.
Qur’an Commentary Tradition and
the Psalms
Although the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament did not become part of the Islamic
scriptural corpus—despite the fact that the Qur’an builds on them and acknowledges
them as scripture—their presence was always felt. Both the biblical material in the
Qur’an and Islamized biblical lore assured that the biblical past was a constant in the
Islamic imagination. his has to be kept in mind when we study the subsequent history
of the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) in Islam. Because much
of the biblical material in the Qur’an is terse and referential (i.e., assuming that one
knew what the Qur’an was referring to), early Muslim exegetes relied heavily on Jewish
and Christian converts to transmit material to Muslims, hence the development of an
Islamized biblical lore. his was an extensive corpus of biblical material in Arabic that
was tailored to suit the Qur’anic material and Islamic sentiments. Access to the “biblical” past was soon mediated through this Islamized biblical lore rather than through the
Bible or through Christian or Jewish literature. his was a conscious decision, because
Muslim heresiographers, polemicists, apologists, and historians easily availed themselves of Arabic Bibles, which were soon available thanks to both Christian and Jewish
translations. If religious savants wanted to consult the Bible, they could have, and some
did, but only sparingly. hus the Psalms in Islamic history has a bifurcated history. here
is irst the Psalms as a book habituated in its Christian and Jewish Arabic environment,25
and, second, there is the Islamic use and understanding of this book, or attempts at
understanding this book, the topic of this section of the essay.
Early Muslim exegetes were not eager to admit that zabūr in Q.21:105 was simply the
Psalms, although clearly the Qur’an does mention the term enough to make it clear that
zabūr did mean the Psalms here. Moreover, the early Muslim exegetes were attempting
to sever this verse from any supersessionistic claims, or at least its messianic or salviic
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value that associated notions of dominance with true religion.26 I ind this a signiicant
development in the history of the reception of this verse, because it is the only instance
where Muslim exegetes, had they wished to, had the chance to discourse on the Psalms
and discuss issues such as what is this book, what does it contain, and so on. Muqātil
(d. 150/767), one of the earliest authors of Qur’an commentaries, glosses zabūr in
Q.21:105 as the three divine books: Torah, Evangelium, and Psalms (Muqātil 1984: 3.96).
his terse gloss is, of course, problematic. Was Muqātil trying to say that the promise
of inheriting the earth is found in these three scriptures (which would be technically
true)? here is much to recommend this understanding, that zabūr meant the totality
of pre-Islamic scriptures. Understanding zabūr in Q.21:105 as previous scripture, moreover, did not result in any attempt to seek out the exact citation from these scriptures.
he term dihkr, “admonition,” is glossed by Muqātil as the Heavenly Tablet (al-lawḥ
al-maḥfūẓ), the ur-scripture in Heaven that has everything written on it.
Al- abarī (d. 310/923) attempts to give a uniform reading for this verse and to harmonize the various interpretations he inherited in order to veer the reader toward the
meaning that the tradition now wished to import (1968: 17:102–105). Although al- abarī
records several conlicting interpretations (including a reference to one authority who
believed that the zabūr here was indeed the book of David), he took zabūr to mean not
just the Psalms but all the books of all the prophets that had copied the Heavenly book.
Moreover, he gives his full support to the interpretation that understood this verse
to mean that God had proclaimed in zabūr that the earth, meaning Paradise, shall be
inherited by the believers (17:104).
More interesting is the perfunctory manner in which al- abarī acknowledges the
interpretation that understood this verse to be a promise to the Muslims themselves,
that it is they who will inherit the earth: “some have said that it is actually the terrestrial earth bequeathed by God to the believers in this world” (17:105). To al- abarī the
earth is Paradise. He then supplies the interpretation of those who believe that this verse
referred to the Jews and cites in support of this understanding with Q.7:137. Finally, only
then does he acknowledge that a tradition from Ibn ʽAbbās understood this verse to
support the minority interpretation that the earth itself will be inherited by the Muslims.
It is remarkable how little efort or credence al- abarī wants to give to a militant understanding of this verse. Indeed, the interpretation presented by al- abarī is counterintuitive. If the tradition wanted to boast, just as the Emir had done earlier, it is here. Yet,
remarkably, al- abarī opts not to do so. I am inclined to see in this a determined shit
away from a military soteriological understanding, a clear attempt to rob the Qur’an of
its political agency.
Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), a contemporary of al- abarī, is far more willing to preserve
older material—he does give us the majority interpretation, which is the same as the
one favoured by al- abarī, but he also treats equally the interpretation that states that
the zabūr is the book of David.27 Earth, understood to mean Paradise by the majority of
interpreters, could also mean the Holy Land, arḍ bayt al-maqdis, which will be inherited
by the believers, and then he adds, “good believers will always inhabit this area.” his is
an echo of the earliest interpretation given to this verse, which we ind relected in the
psalms in the qur’an
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Bet Hale Disputation. Indeed, it is only through reading al-Māturīdī that we can judge
that al- abarī was attempting to downplay the old interpretations. Much later Islamic
commentary tradition follows in the footsteps of al-Māturīdī and not al- abarī.28
None of these exegetes seem to be interested in telling us more about the zabūr
of David. A rare instance of divergence comes from an early Shiite commentator,
al-Qummī (alive c. 260/873), who gives a summary of the content of the book of Psalms.
He cites a report on the authority of the Shiite Imams (and also of the Mahdī himself)
that al-zabūr “has apocalypse (malāḥīm), thanksgiving (taḥmīd), adoration of the Lord
(tamjīd), and supplication (duʽā’)” (al-Qummī 1991: 2:77). his is a rough summary of
the content if we understand the word “apocalypse” to mean “battles” in a loose sense. It
is not clear how the Imams came to know about the content of the work.
he perfunctory attitude of the religious Islamic religious tradition to its sources is
an interesting situation to assess.29 he hitherto historical judgement was one of regret
and censure, if only Muslims had shown more interest in the Bible. Yet, I have come to
see the virtue in this apathy. Nothing good comes out of a dominant culture taking an
interest in the religious afairs of its minorities, and as historians we should not measure
the beneits of any such encounter from the vantage point of the dominant culture. he
apathy of the Muslim majority exhibited toward the Bible was a necessary condition for
the thriving of Jewish biblical scholarship in medieval Islam. he history of the Arabic
Bible is yet to be written, and the downgrading of Arabic and the Arabic Bible ater the
discovery of Ugaritic in the early twentieth century, as an aid for biblical Hebrew, had a
detrimental efect on what was already an endangered ield. But the story of the Arabic
Bible is a fascinating story, for not only is there an Arabic Bible in this story, but also the
Hebrew Bible itself was redeined in the Islamic world, due to the philological revolution
that the Arabs brought to the study of Arabic. he discovery of Arabic philology, so early
in Islamic history, produced a radically philological culture, where the original language
of the text was paramount—not only Arabic as such but Hebrew too was understood to
have the same privilege vis-à-vis the Bible as Arabic possesses vis-à-vis the Qur’an.
Translation was thus never confused with the original text. Within this radical notion
of ur-languages, a claim over the Hebrew Bible was impossible to muster, and appropriating a translated version could never suice. Muslims, as a result, stood hamstrung by
their own intellectual arrogance; they could never appropriate the Hebrew Bible unless
they claimed a mastery over Hebrew, a language they did not care to learn. he Hebrew
Bible remained the domain of the Jews, and it is this cultural apathy that allowed the
Judeo-Arabic culture a freedom from the otherwise restrictive majority that was utterly
prevalent across the cultural sphere. he Arabic Bible is thus a misnomer if it is meant
to describe the history of the Bible in the Muslim lands, for the Hebrew Bible itself was
habituated in an Arabic philological culture that radically transformed how the Jews,
and later Europe, approached the Hebrew Bible. he grammatization of Hebrew is a
direct result of this Muslim apathy, for it allowed the Jews to absorb the Arabic philological revolution on their own terms. As such, the very success of the Judeo-Arabic experience was conditioned on Muslims’ limited capability to penetrate the cultural domain
of the Jewish minority. he Hebrew Bible, in the wake of the philological revolution that
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happened in the Near East and which engulfed Hebrew, meant that the Hebrew Bible
was no longer a midrashic Bible but an Arabized Bible, studied in the same spirit as the
Qur’an was studied.
his cultural situation meant that not only was there no Islamic typological reading of
the Psalms, but given that the Hebrew Bible was impossible to appropriate when encountered by Muslims, it remained a Jewish book and was read on Jewish terms. Muslim
polemicists did their best to undermine the Hebrew Bible (and the New Testament), but
we do have examples of more sympathetic readings. hese positive encounters are all
the more remarkable because they are encounters of a religious nature and because they
happened in a medieval setting. he impact was also signiicant because it happened in
the medium of the Qur’an commentary tradition, Tafsir, the religious genre of Islam.
I am referring here to the Qur’an commentator al-Biqāʽī (d. 885/1480), whose use of
the Bible to interpret the Qur’an remains one of the most singularly signiicant Muslim
encounters with the Hebrew Bible on the interreligious plane in the pre-Modern
period.30
Al-BiqĀʽī and the Psalms
Al-Biqāʽī is the irst Muslim exegete to inquire ater the scriptural origins of the quotation in Q.21:105. He knew where to ind it using an Arabic Christian translation of the
Psalms from the Septuagint (he gives the Psalms number as 36). Having located it, he
understood the enigmatic phrase “ater admonition” in Q.21:105 to indicate the location of the quotation in the book of Psalms: God had been discoursing for a while in
the Psalms before he declared what he declared. he location al-Biqāʽī stated comes
at the end of the irst quarter of the book of Psalms. Something strange then happens.
Al-Biqāʽī, instead of quoting Psalm 37 (or 36 according to the Septuagint), starts by
quoting Psalms 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 31, 34, 35, and inally 37, the location of the
quotation in the Qur’an. In this sense, the interpretation of the enigmatic phrase “ater
admonition” is here given in full; it is nothing but the irst quarter of the book of Psalms.31
his is not the only instance of al-Biqāʽī quoting from the Psalms. Indeed, long before
the advent of modern Qur’anic higher criticism, al-Biqāʽī realized that the language and
content of certain Qur’anic verses are “reminiscent” of psalmic rhetoric and themes.
He copied the Psalms extensively into his Qur’an commentary with the result that the
psalmic material was incorporated for the irst time in an Islamic genre, as part of God’s
divine Scripture. When he encountered Q.7:198 (“if you call them [the false Gods] to the
right path, they will not hear you. You ind them looking toward you but they cannot
see”), al-Biqāʽī quotes Psalm 115:3–5. his is an unusual way of doing Qur’an commentary, so unusual that it was never again repeated in the Islamic tradition.32
A far more radical moment of Psalms quoting in this Qur’an commentary is found
when al-Biqāʽī encounters the gloriication verses in the Qur’an. hus arriving at
Q. 17:44 (“he seven heavens and the earth and everyone in them glorify Him. here
psalms in the qur’an
291
is not a single thing that does not celebrate His praise, though you do not understand
their praise”), al-Biqāʽī gathers a veritable summary of the praise language of the book
of Psalms to illustrate that this mode of divine discourse is an old form of speech. He
starts irst by saying that this verse if oten repeated and quoted in the Book of David.
He then quotes Psalms 69:35; 68:8–10; 89:11–16; 96:1, 9–12; 97:4–5; 148; and 150:1–3, 5–6.
his is not only unprecedented in the history of Qur’anic exegesis, but such equal treatment of the scripture of Judaism is also rare. It is not that Muslims did not admit or grant
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the rank of Holy Scripture, but rather the
ambivalence of this acknowledgment—are these scriptures falsiied?—and the polemical setting of this recognition—do they acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet?—have
rendered these two texts obsolete on the religious plane for Muslims. It is not that Suis
did not sometimes avail themselves of the Bible, or that sobered historians did not dare
to defend their integrity; the Bible simply did not have a place in the interpretation of the
Qur’an.
Al-Biqāʽī had other occasions to quote from the Psalms, including the famous Psalm
137, which was quoted in full.33 In addition to quoting the Psalms, al-Biqāʽī did discuss
the Book of David as a book. In his attempt to articulate the place of David in Jewish
history, al-Biqāʽī had to address the value and substance of a new scripture for the same
religion. his is necessitated by the commentary on Q.17, which according to Muslims
mentions the Temple and David. Al-Biqāʽī stated that it is precisely because already
the Jews had the Torah, a book of law, that the Book of David is entirely homiletical
(mawāʽiẓ) (1976: 11.446–47). he aim of this style, al-Biqāʽī contended, was to prevent
people from “strutting on earth with a smirk,” to instil humility; it was a call to be sincere,
to be vigilant in judging oneself, and to be charitable to others. It is also a book illed with
praise to the Lord (tasbīḥ). he Book of David was, moreover, the only instance in the
corpus of Jewish Scripture that explicitly mentions hell and resurrection, which are not
mentioned in the Torah (11.447). Ater summarizing the aim of Sura 17 of the Qur’an,
which according to al-Biqāʽī was never to rely on any one but God for help (wakīl), he
quotes from the Book of David with a rough paraphrase of Psalm 144. he extensive
nature of the quotations from the Book of David points to an inordinate fascination with
this book and a remarkable sensitivity in approaching it. hrough al-Biqāʽī, the Psalms
have been habituated to the Qur’an through the medium of Qur’anic interpretation.
On Islamic Pseudo-Psalms
Recently, David Vishanof has rekindled academic interest in a genre of Islamic writing
that purports to be the true Psalms of David (2011: 85–99; 2012: 151–79). hese texts were
studied early in the twentieth century but have since been forgotten. Vishanof has done
extensive research on the manuscripts of these texts and on how we should understand
this literature. Because they bear little, if any, resemblance to the original Psalms—only
the irst two psalms are more or less accurately translated—the issue of their signiicance
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has been hard to fathom. he relocation of this literature from a polemical setting—in
which these texts were understood to be part of an Islamic discourse on the corruption of Jewish and Christian text, the usual mode of understanding this literature—to
an intra-Islamic literature (i.e., as a form of Islamic homiletic writing intended for a
purely Islamic context that has little to do with Muslim–Jewish or Chrisitan–Muslim
interaction) goes a long way in elucidating this form of writing, the only form of
pseudo-biblical writing in Islam. his new understanding ofered by Vishanof shows
the degree to which the Bible was more an imagined text in the Islamic realm, whose
substantive content was ultimately not an abiding concern for Muslims. A new edition
of these texts would greatly add to our understanding of this imagined world of biblical
writing. I would also add that when we tell the story of the Bible in Islam, the history of
these texts has to be incorporated. he history of the Psalms in the Islamic world, ater
the introduction of printing in the nineteenth century, is a matter that needs another
discussion.
Notes
1. For the disputation and an initial analysis see Griith 2000. For the literature on such
disputations, see the bibliography listed in Griith’s article.
2. Recently, Gerrit J. Reinink rightly argued that the issue of dominion frames this disputation,
although he was not interested in analyzing the reasons behind it or connecting it to Ps.
37:9 (2006: 153–69).
3. For her translation, see Neuwirth 1998: 388–420. Haleem reads, “As we did in [earlier]
Scripture” (2004: 208). Although Rudi Paret stated that “Die Deutung des Ausdrucks
min baʽad al-zikr is nicht sicher,” he translates it in a manner akin to my understanding
(1989: 347; 1996: 230–31).
4. he Qur’an is careful about how the covenant (ʽahd) of God is to be understood—
inheritance is only for the righteous regardless of who they are, a Pauline argument that is
made scriptural in the Qur’an and placed in the mouth of God. hus Abraham’s pleading
for his progeny is rebufed by God, “the unjust has no share in My covenant” (Q.2:124).
his and other places show a distinct sensitivity against arguments of the ilial relationship
to God, or sonship, as possible venues for God’s grace (see the famous Q.5:18, a bristling
mockery of the language of sonship in the Bible and in Jewish and Christian liturgy). his
polemical setting is presented in a wider context that is arguing for the right of the Arabs to
be included in the prophetic history of Israel. hat is why I take the dhikr here to mean the
reverse of the promise, in keeping with the clauses added to the covenantal language in the
Qur’an that qualify it. he term dh-k-r is not regularly used in negative terms in the Qur’an,
but its usage as such is not absent; see Q.26:209.
5. hese prophetic traditions are cited in Qur’an commentaries on several verses, including
Q.21:105.
6. One would not have expected the root w-r-th (“to inherit”) to be used as a synonym for
entering Paradise (instead of the more commonly used “enter,” d-kh-l)—see, e.g., Q.19:63;
23:11; 7:43; 43:72. In all these instances, the believers are said to inherit Paradise. he term
is rather odd and can only make theological sense if we understand it to be a fulilment of
the psalmic covenantal promise.
psalms in the qur’an
293
7. Cf. Q.7:128, where Moses is telling the Israelites that “God will bequeath earth to whom
He wants of His creatures.” he Qur’an is fully aware of the covenantal promise to the
Israelites (see Q.26:59, a peculiar verse that seems to imply that the Israelites took over
Egypt), though any such notion is later removed: the Holy Land is promised to Muslims, as
is clear in Q.5:21.
8. On this term, see Qadi 1988: 392–411. I do not share the author’s conclusions about the
term. he term is already political in meaning in the Qur’an.
9. he hesitation of Chase Robinson to accept the notion of fatḥ (“conquest”) as Qur’anic
is puzzling. hat Mecca was the ultimate prize is clear even from the Constitution of
Medina—that the city was conquered without a battle does not diminish the achievement
or the monumentality of the event or the military nature of the victory. It was only ten years
prior that Muhammad was driven out of the city. he turn of events is nothing short of
breathtaking. See his otherwise detailed discussion of the term in the Encyclopaedia of the
Qur’an 1:397–401. he scepticism is unwarranted unless we remove references to the Day
of Fatḥ from the Qur’an, which Robinson does not propose.
10. See also the use of the term f-l-ḥ, “success, salvation, victory.” It is also an evocative and
expansive term that should be grouped with the terms I discussed above. he most
illustrative use of this term is in Q.58:22, which culminates a discussion about the party
(ḥizb) of the Devil, which will lose, and the party of God (ḥzib Allāh), which will win.
Q.58:14–22 is a good example of the purposeful confusion between victory in this world
and entering into paradise. he term ẓ-h-r (“to appear, overwhelm, be victorious”) is
also relevant. It is used in the story of Moses, where the Egyptians were “manifest” in the
land. he term is then used three times for Muhammad’s new dīn (religion), which will
overwhelm other dīns (Q.9:33; 48:28; 61:9, all in context of conquest and wars).
11. On kingship in the Qur’an, see Saleh 2006: 261–83.
12. his is the famous Q.5:32. On this verse, see Speyer 1961 [1931]: 459; Paret 1989: 120. he
issue of the direct quotations in the Qur’an is an interesting one, since we have yet to
establish criteria for indicating whether the Qur’an was quoting (or whether the author of
the Qur’an was thinking he was quoting). here are other places where the Qur’an claims
to be quoting scripture, but these are so apologetically driven that we are not certain to
what exactly they are referring. According to the Qur’an, the coming of Muhammad is
prophesized in the Torah and the Gospels, but we are not given a verse or a quotation
apart from an airmation that his coming was attested in the Bible (Q. 61:6; 7:157, but see
also 48:29). I am thus discounting such instances of what I would call direct quotations.
Regardless of the situation, Q.21:105 remains unique in the Qur’an: it names the source and
the quotation is verbatim.
13. It is remarkable that the Qur’an does not use military terms common among the Arabs
then, such as gh-z-w (to “raid,” used only in Q.2:156)—although all of Muhammad’s
campaigns were called maghāzī, raids. here is something impermanent about a raid, and
the Qur’an clearly wanted conquest—permanence; fatḥ was thus preferred. In this sense,
the historical vision of the prophetic voice went even beyond the participants themselves.
Seeing the armies of his enemies retreat ater the ominous siege of Madina for one month,
Muhammad is quoted to have said, “Now we will raid them and they will not raid us” (see
Saleh 2008b: 181). he language is reminiscent of warring tribes, not of a statesman who
will establish an empire. he Qur’an has the model of Rome; the Qur’an’s vision was so alien
to Arabia that for the irst time in the recorded history of the Near East a political vision
came out of Arabia.
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14. See the various denials in the Qur’an of taking a wage (ajr), especially in chapter 26, where
Muhammad is distinguishing himself from poets, and Q.88:22, which denies that he is a
tyrant. he Sira (Biography of Muhammad) has him deny that he wanted to become a king.
15. On jihād and holy war, see Donner 2006.
16. his is precisely how al- abarī understood prophetic history, although he names the book
of Muhammad the Furqān. His statement comes at the irst encounter with the word in
Q.4:163.
17. See Neuwirth 1998: 388–420. his argument is fully developed in Neuwirth 2011: 733–78.
18. Perhaps the irst and strongest advocate for the centrality of the Psalms in understanding
parts of the Qur’an is Hirschfeld 1866.
19. See Hirschfeld 1866: 27, where he states that Psalms was the most inluential book on
Muhammad ater the Torah. Indeed, it inluenced the structure of the early Suras such that
they resembled the Psalms more than any other form of composition: “Das die Psalmen
einen mächtigen Reiz auf sein Gemüth ausübten, ist liecht verständlich, er citirt sie nicht
nur, sondern ahmt sie auch nach.” Ater citing several similarities between the Qur’an
and the Psalms, especially Sura 1, whose form he airms is psalmic, he asserts: “Dies alles
verräth eine verhältnissmässig frühzeitig Kenntniss der Psalmen (p. 28).
20. he entry “Psalms” in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an is indicative of the lamentable state of
scholarship on the Psalms in the Qur’an. he article has nothing to say about the Psalms in
the Qur’an, fails to mention relevant secondary literature, and misattributes Q.21:105 to Ps.
37: 9, 11, 29—it is not the poor or the meek; the Qur’an uses the term “righteous” (ṣāliḥūn),
a clear reference to v. 29.
21. Hirschfeld noted the resemblance between the initial iteen verses of Q.16 and Psalm 104.
His analysis consisted of showing the similarities between the two. Although duly noted,
one is not clear what to conclude from such an analysis (Hirschfeld 1866: 27–32).
22. Neuwirth 2010: 563–64: “So könnte man ihn von seiner Form her in seiner frühen Phase
am ehesten mit den Psalmen vergleichen. Wie der Psalter besteht auch der frühe Koran
aus kurzen, knapp formulierten Versen in dichterischer Sprache, die inhaltlich wie die
Psalmen Gotteslob, Gebete, aber auch Klage eines exemplarischen Frommen formulieren.”
23. At forty-ive pages, the article represents a major contribution to the problem. See also her
analysis of several other Suras as psalmic compositions in Neuwirth 2010: 398–408.
24. See Neuwirth’s index for psalm citations.
25. he study of this history lies beyond the scope of this article.
26. he danger of using victory and military success as a sign of God’s favor and grace must
have seemed too hazardous for these scholars, given the course of human history. Muslim
apologists were at the receiving end of such arguments in the Iberian Peninsula. See the
Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus, Vienna A. F. 58, fol. 50a, where a Muslim scholar is at
pains to deny that military victory is a sign of God’s favor shown to Christians and a clear
sign of Christianity being the true faith. His Christian interlocutor was having none of that.
27. Al-Māturīdī 2007: 9:332.
28. Indeed, in al-haʽlabī (d. 427/1035) we ind direct statements that understood the covenantal
promise of the Promised Land to be from the beginning between God and the Muslims.
his statement is attributed to a Jewish convert to Islam. See al-haʽlabī 2002: 6:313.
29. Joseph van Ess published a monumental work on the Islamic heresiographic “mind set”
(2010). his and other works will eventually shit the nature of the debate.
30. For a general assessment of al-Biqāʽī, see Saleh 2008a: 629–54.
psalms in the qur’an
295
31. My irst attempt at understanding why al-Biqāʽī quoted so extensively from the book
of Psalms here did not take into consideration the phrase “ater admonition.” See Saleh
2007: 331–47.
32. here is a poignancy in the pioneering work of al-Biqāʽī that still haunts the Islamic
tradition. As late as the 1960s, the liberal Tunisian scholar Ibn ʽĀshūr was unable to ind
the location of this verse in the Psalms on his own and had to quote an Italian Orientalist
for the citation. He did, to his credit, cite the verse, but his inability to access the Bible is all
the more telling. See Ibn ʽĀshūr n.d.: 8:162.
33. See Saleh 2007 for more references on these quotations.
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