A significant advance in the scholarly investigation of religion
A Review of Dr. G�nter L�ling's book "A Challenge to Islam for
Reformation"By Dr. Michael Conley (Dec 15, 2001; revised July
2003)
In our age of superlatives in which the public relations
industry and clever ad-man of a poetic bend elevate the newest
egg beater, sport's event or, if you will, salve to be rubbed
into one's navel up, up to the plain of the cosmic and labels it
`brilliant,' it becomes extremely difficult to call the reader's
attention to something very special, to a scholarly
investigation which in due time shall surely make a lasting
impression upon thinking man. But, nevertheless, with this bit,
I'll attempt to respond to the norms of the trade in our day and
times. At issue stands a work of G�nter L�ling, "A Challenge to
Islam for Reformation; The Rediscovery and reliable
Reconstruction of a comprehensive pre-Islamic Christian Hymnal
hidden in the Koran under earliest Islamic Reinterpretations,"
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, India, 2003, lxviii,
pp.580. The initial encounter, perhaps the first half hour, once
the volume has been opened, may well cause many a reader a
shock: The principal components in the scenario seem out of
place. Despite our instruction in matters of monotheism in our
youth, we are confronted with a highly unfamiliar religious
world. It is a world, which interrelates the Jewish, Christian
and Islamic faiths as they have flourished by increments for
well over the better part of millennium plus, but this time
suddenly we behold the juxtaposition of forces not as we
accustomed to understand them in the twenty-first century, but
rather back at the very outset of the tale. The
interrelationships between and, indeed, even within these
several ways of thinking, are subject to re-definition.
The primeval intent of that which we today label `Christianity'
in a grossly altered form, is to be found in the popular
pagan/tribal religion of the peasantry, the old Semitic, Israeli
- but likewise Arab(!) - tribal religion. (Let it be stress here
emphatically that the Arabs ,as well, were not only likewise
Semetic but co-existed in close contact with the Israeli since
at least a millennium.) This ancient Semetic faith was
celebrated at `High Places' in Holy Groves where the cult at the
shrines of the primeval Messianic Heroes of the tribes had
blossomed.
Back then, one was dealing with a tribally segmented ethnic life
(not entirely dissimilar to the social order of life in rural
areas of Afghanistan and Iraq) in which one understood honoured
administrative/military leaders as `messiahs.' The inability of
the US Pentagon to achieve its intent follows, not least of all,
from its total ignorance of history's bequeath to the
twenty-first century. This old Israelite pagan religion was
initially persecuted with all- consuming hate by the Jewish
imperialistic Yahwe religion (2 Kings, 23: 4-20; Deut. 12: 1-3)
only to be revived, much much later, in the movement of Jesus.
We know it, historically, in the form of the archaic
non-Trinitarian (!) angel-Christology, the Semite and Judaic
concepts of the Jewish Christians, i.e. the `Ebionites' and the
Arian Christians of the sixth, seventh and eight centuries.
Once again, this ur-Semitic, pagan religion was eliminated
throughout the Mediterranean, the Near and Middle East
(including verily even the town of Medina and Mecca in Arabia !)
by the developing Hellenistic and Roman "Christianity" of Peter,
Paul and John in the course of its magico-sacramental
Trinitarianism which totally disfigured and transformed the
spirit of the movement of Jesus which, in turn, was a
resuscitation of the Old Semitic and Old Israelite popular and
pagan/tribal religion.
A Juggernaut intent upon spiritually colonizing the world, an
imperialism to blanket the Mediterranean, Near East and Middle
East spread out over a period of five, six centuries. A
Hellenistic superstructure totally alien the to the ancient
Jewish controlled the lands of Palestine, following brutal
conflicts in the latter portion of the first and the early
second centuries. The Jewish population was reduced by a third
during the first war. As Tacitus reports, six hundred thousand
died in the first war. And during the later Bar Kochba war, the
population was effectively liquidated. The Byzantine historian
Dio Cassius (155-235 C.E.) wrote in his Epitom de Xiphilin LXIX.
15, "Fifty of the best fortresses and 955 of the more important
villages were destroyed. Some 580,000 men fell in combat and the
numbers of those who died of hunger, sickness and fire is beyond
estimate. Judea, as had once been prophesied, was turned into a
desert."
(Across the greater portion of the affected region, the ur-
Christianity of the movement of Jesus, rooted in the laic
pagan/tribal messianism and eschatology of Palestinian peasant-
religion retreated before invincible pontifical Hellenism which
broadcasted a mythical tale quite divorced from the attributes
of the ancient, Semetic `messiah.' The initial Jesus movement,
was, seemingly, but a passing phenomenon. Even the Kaaba at
Mecca - served as a Hellenistic Church; this many centuries
before Mohammed appeared on the scene! In the rural areas of
Arabia, however, it was different. The remnants of that
primeval, Semitic tradition which indisputably advocated an
archaic ur-Christian angel-Christology had found in far away
"Arabia haeretica" the requisite tribal environment and
therefore its best and probably only chance to resist and to
continue.
It is this honourable "heretic" Arabian ur-Christian
pagan/tribal spirit - hated by the imperialist Church - which
was destined finally to flow into the new main stream of
"heretic" Arabian "Islam." And therewith we reach the Crucial
Step: It was Mohammed who seized upon and sought to re-assert
this faith once again, including its primeval, Christian
substance. But empirically demonstrate this surprising assertion
presuppose 1) the expurgation of the Hellenistic excrescence
that had grown over several hundred years, even in Mecca and
Medina as elsewhere and 2) distillation of Muhammed's initial
sources from those that followed.
Muhammed did not live long enough to oversee the collecting,
editing and further elaborate of the Koran. Those who followed
introduced elements foreign, in part, to Muhammad's original
intent. Thus Guenter Lueling is obliged to distinquish between
four distinctive layers of text in the Koran: 1) a pre-islamic
Christian strophic hymnody hidden in the ground layer, 2) a
historically later text of a wilful new Islamic interpretation
pressed upon the ground layer, 3) text of a pure Islamic nature,
contemporary with the second layer of text intended for the
expression of the revelations of Muhammad (These elements of the
text without an erstwhile Christian sense make up approximately
two thirds of the Koran.) and 4) post- Muhammad reinterpretation
of the prophet's intent, totally losing the latter's original
purpose in the process while rendering the sense on occasion
incomprehensible.
Nevertheless it is demonstrated that approximately one third of
the Koran as we know it today reveals itself upon close,
philological examination, to be ur-Christian in its origin.
Guenter Lueling through his brilliant analysis has now provided
the reader with the analytical capability of determine this fact
for himself. Let it be stressed that G�nter Lueling does not
dictate a new `revealed truth' to set that staled cycle into yet
another gyration; he rather places the requisite linguistic
means for independent investigation into the hands of the
reader, leaving it to the latter to pursue empirically the steps
that make his conclusions inevitable and conclusive. It is my
conviction that his contribution to the re-thinking of crucial
inter-religious issues in our twenty-first century - leaving the
public relations technician and his ad-man to the side - is
nothing short of brilliant. Surely no one - with the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the clash between Sunnis and
Shiites in Iraq in mind, will deny the inherent importance of
the matter with which Lueling concerns himself.
A solidly based understanding of the inseparable interdependence
of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions, products of a
continuing spiritual adventure stretching out over more than
three thousand years, must necessarily affect the fashion in
which the peoples resident between Gibraltar and Glasgow, Cairo
and Jemin, St. Petersburg and Teheran and the Anglo-Saxon
community of nations shall evaluate themselves respectively and
plan a future, more harmonious life in common.
L�ling's volume may be acquired at any of the following
addresses: The publisher (India) Motilal Banarsidass Publishers
(P) Ltd. 41 U.A. Bungalow Road Jawahar Nagar Delhi 110 006 India
www.mlbd.com Tel (011) 2391 1985, 2391 8335, 2397 4826, 2396 2747
Fax (011) 2393 0689 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] United States South Asia
Books P.O.Box 502 Columbia MO 65205 www.southasiabooks.com Tel.
(573) 474 0116 Fax: (573) 474 8124 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
England Motilal Books P.O. Box 324 Borehamwood Herts, WD6 1NB
www.mlbduk.com Tel. (44)(0) 208-905-1244 Fax: (44)(0)
208-905-1106 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australia Oriental Book Distributors Suite No-4 Leichhardt
Business Centre 481 Parramatta Road Leichhardt NSW 2040 Australia
www.orientalbooks.com.au Tel (02) 9572 6942 Fax (02) 9572 7942
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