As much as they might love this book for showing clear examples of muslim toleration of xtians and jews at least at the beginning it is analysis like this which will get the fatwas and rocks flying. Muslims are no longer "tolerant."
Quote:The Quran tells many familiar biblical stories, featuring Abraham, Moses, and other key figures of the Old Testament, in addition to lengthy passages concerning Jesus and Mary, and of course the Quranic focus on the Last Judgment strongly recalls biblical texts. But generally, the most potent outside influences seem to have come from Eastern forms of Christianity. Most of the Quranic stories about Mary and Jesus find their parallels not in the canonical four Gospels but in apocryphal texts that circulated widely in the East, such as the Protevangelium of James and the Arabic Infancy Gospel. The Quran cites the miracle in which the infant Jesus shaped a bird out of clay and then breathed life into it, a tale also found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Quran also presents the death of Jesus in exactly the language of those heretical Eastern Christians known as the Docetists, who saw the event as an illusion rather than a concrete reality: “They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them.” One sura includes the common Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the saintly young men who escaped a persecution by sleeping many years in a cave.18
So strong are these connections that over the past half century scholars have questioned whether the Quran could even have originated in Arabia, or whether it was collected or constructed somewhere else with a prominent Christian and Jewish population, perhaps in Syria or Mesopotamia. In a controversial work, German scholar Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the Quran is a confused translation from earlier Syriac Christian texts, at a time when Syriac was the lingua franca of the Middle East. Significantly, given the radical implications of the work and the possibility of an angry Muslim reaction, the name “Luxenberg” is a pseudonym, and his real identity remains secret. When the Quran was constructed, he notes, the only Arabic schools were in southern Mesopotamia, at al-Anbar and al-Hirah, where “the Arabs of that region had been Christianized and instructed by Syrian Christians.” Often, obscure Quranic phrases make sense when understood in the Syriac context, and can be elucidated from the well-known works of Syriac writers like Ephraem the Syrian.19“In its origin,” claims Luxenberg, “the Quran is a Syro-Aramaic liturgical book, with hymns and extracts from Scriptures which might have been used in sacred Christian services.” The very name Quran, he thinks, derives from the root qr’, “to read,” and it is equivalent to the Syriac qeryana, the church lectionary used to proclaim the gospel in public readings. In his view, “the Quran intended itself first of all to be understood as nothing more than a liturgical book with selected texts from the Scriptures (the Old and New Testament) and not at all as a substitute.” Some of Luxenberg’s detailed readings produce jaw-dropping results. In the conventional translation, Sura 96—commonly thought to be the oldest part of the Quran—ends with the verse “Nay! obey him not, and make obeisance and draw nigh [to Allah].” Luxenberg’s retranslation reads: “You ought not to heed him at all, perform instead your divine service, and take part in the liturgy of Eucharist.” Or again, Syriac Christian visions of paradise promised the believers exotic fruits such as white raisins, or hur. For Luxenberg, when Syriac texts were absorbed into the Quran, translators made many errors, and believers were now promised not raisins buthouris, virgins. Hence the seventy-two virgins that martyrs will reputedly receive on entry into paradise.20
Luxenberg’s work has been much criticized, and not just by defenders of strict Islamic orthodoxy. Some critics think he underplays the influence of Jewish texts, particularly the Targums, while overplaying Christian elements. Others attack his linguistic knowledge. But whatever the scholarly verdict on Luxenberg’s theory, there is no doubt that Eastern Christians were a well-known presence in the Arabian world, and influenced the early development of Islam.
