Thursday, September 26, 2019

Daniel Brown and The Study Quran on Surah 101 and the Qur'an's occasional lack of Perspicuity


Commenting on the occasional lack of perspicuity one finds in the Qur’an, Daniel Brown wrote:

Other features of the Qur’ān fit much less comfortably with the traditional account of its hasty compilation. Around the time of its canonization, for example, some words and passages in the Qur’ān were completely unintelligible to its readers. In a number of passages the Qur’ān itself seems to acknowledge that its readers might have a hard time understanding its language by conveniently offering explanatory glosses. In twelve separate instances a difficult word is accompanied by the phrase “And what shall teach you what is the . . . ,” which is then followed by an explanation. Sūra 101 provides a double example:

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The Clatterer! What is the Clatterer? And what shall teach thee what is the Clatterer? The day that men shall be likely scattered moths and the mountains shall be like plucked wool tufts. Then he whose deeds weigh heavy in the Balance shall inherit a pleasing life, but he whose deeds weigh light in the Balance shall plunge in the womb of the Pit. And what shall teach thee what is the Pit? A blazing Fire!

Readers were simply not expected to know what the words translated here as “Clatterer” and “Pit” meant. Translators of the Qur’ān still do not know, and Arberry’s (1955) translation given here is no more than an over-confident guess. The very earliest Muslim Qur’ān commentators also had a guess. They had no idea what to do with these and many other words in the Qur’ān. Hence their guesses are often wildly different from one another and simply show that no one really knew these words, and that a good part of the language of the Qur’ān was foreign to them. If the Qur’ān was composed during Muḥammad’s lifetime and compiled within twenty years of his death, there is simply not enough time to allow for such widespread forgetfulness. The language of the Qur’ān should have been familiar to its compilers and early commentators. Clearly, it was not. (Daniel Brown, A New Introduction to Islam [Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004], 57)

With respect to surah 101, as discussed by Brown above, note the following from The Study Quran (note: they translate the term, not as “clatter” but “calamity”):

Calamity translates qār'iah, which comes from the verb qara'a meaning "to beat or strike something so that it makes a deafening sound." The repetition of the question in vv. 2-3 (which is similar to 69:2-3) is meant to emphasize the true nature of the calamity, which is thought to be the Day of Judgment, is difficult to comprehend. Thus the following verses do not define the calamity, but describe some of its marks. (The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary [New York: Harper One], Location 74421-47 of 90397 of Kindle edition)