Günter Lüling i “starochrześcijańskie” hymny Koranu

Abstract

PL. Günter Lüling (1928-2014) należy do grona czołowych niemieckich badaczy Koranu przełomu XX i XXI w. W islamistyce reprezentuje nurt naukowców nastawionych sceptycznie wobec wartości historiograficznej piśmiennictwa wczesnomuzułmańskiego. W jego pracach, począwszy od lat 70-tych XX w., przewija się zasadnicze przekonanie, iż święta księga islamu wywodzi się historycznie z pism gnostycznych pierwszych wieków chrześcijaństwa. Lüling nie jest pierwszym islamoznawcą, który stawia taką tezę. Badania niemieckiego uczonego, teologa z wykształcenia i gnostyka z zamiłowania, wpisują się w szeroko pojęte poszukiwania narodzin islamu w spuściźnie religijnej i kulturowej Bliskiego Wschodu okresu późnego antyku. Lüling analizuje tekst koraniczny przy użyciu szeregu narzędzi i kryteriów badawczych wywodzących się głównie z dziedzin teologii dogmatycznej, historii religii, filologii i literaturoznawstwa.

ENG. Günter Lüling and the "Old-Christian" Hymns of the Qur’ān

Summary

One of the pioneers of non-normative academic research on the genesis of Islam is the German scholar Günter Lüling (b. 1928). Starting from the 70s of the XX century his works exhibit a firm belief that the Qur'an should be un-derstood as deriving from writings of the Christian traditions historically pre-ceding the Muslim scripture. The German researcher postulates that the Qur’an is a multi-layer textual structure built upon an original core of old-Christian non-Trinitarian strophic body of text (mostly hymns) used for liturgical purposes. These strophic compositions count for one-third of the stand-ardized text of the Qur'an making for its first hidden layer. Later, along with the development of the Muslim dogmatics, onto this pre-Islamic Christian layer new textual layers were applied. According to Lüling, the oldest fragments of the Muslim scripture consist of Christian hymns and strophic poetry of the Christian community of Mecca, dating back to a period even precedent to the commencement of Muhammad's activities. As Lüling believes it, the Meccan Christians of the late Antique were divided into the pro-Byzantine ones re-maining faithful to the doctrinal teachings of the Council of Nicaea (325) in-cluding its Trinity dogma and into pre-Chalcedonian Christians rejecting its decisions with subsequent teachings of the following Councils. The latter Non-Trinitarian group was rejecting Christ's deity believing that he was a created incarnate angelic messenger sent down onto earth to strengthen the hierarchical monotheistic faith. For the German scholar, the second textual layer of the Qur’an consists of fragments of hymns edited and subsequently islamized at the time of the prophet Muhammad. The third layer also includes hymns composed during Muhammad’s lifetime, however with the difference that these were originally Islamic in its character. The last and youngest layer of the Qur’anic text are fragments of suras which have been modified by Muslims after the death of their prophet, as part of the process of drafting the scriptio defectiva of the Qur’an, and later editing its scriptio plena. The Sura 80 (He Frowned), as ex-amined by Lüling from the philological and historical perspective, may serve as an example for such a multi-layer composition of the text. For the German scholar, it was originally a Christian strophic hymn primarily preoccupied with and concentrated around one main idea  the situation of believers and unbe-lievers before the throne of God on the Day of Judgment. The early redactors of the Qur’anic text were to modify the textual layout, form and meaning of the sura, dividing it semantically into four distinct parts. This editorial inter-vention, perhaps driven by a desire to reinterpret the meaning of the sura for certain purposes after the death of Muhammad, has completely altered the meaning of the text. According to Lüling, the same goes for many other texts which were in this way transformed into Qur’anic suras. Modifications intro-duced by their editors were to include, inter alia, changing their form from po-etry to prose, interpolations and contamination.