In his lecture today, Prof. Bartchy referenced an intriguing article in the NY Times about current study of the Qur’an. The Qur’an is considered by Muslims to be the very words of God, spoken through the prophet (peace be upon him) who spoke the words of God for his companions to transcribe verbatim. For Muslims, then, the Qur’an represents the actual words of God–without a hint of human authorship: the final revelation of God. Prof. Bartchy often says that many Christians (namely, conservative Evangelicals) wish the Bible was the Qur’an. That is, many Christians wish that the Bible was wholly God’s word without any human influence.

Those of us who believe in the authority and inspiration of the Bible, but also engage in true critical scholarship, must be honest about the humanity which drips from every holy page. By accepting the Bible’s (divinely inspired) humanness, I am able to tackle difficult questions of history while also living my life in accordance with the divinely inspired message of the text. This position may make me a liberal to my more conservative Evangelical friends, while it makes me a conservative to my more “secular” friends. However you categorize it, this is the sort of position that is uber-controversial for devoted Muslims to hold when related to the Qur’an.

But are things changing a wee bit at a time? A recent conference at the University of Notre Dame, “The Qur’an in Its Historical Context,” represents a burgeoning intellectual movement seeking to apply critical research to the Qur’an. The site describes the conference as “a major international conference addressing the most recent theories, controversies, and discoveries in the field of Quranic Studies.” It builds off an earlier conference held at Notre Dame, intending to be “a unique forum for a discussion of the historical circumstances in which the Quran was formed, and of its relationship to earlier literature, notably the Bible.” A glance at the conference schedule reads like sessions in the program book for SBL.

Nicholas Kistof’s NY Times article makes an interesting parallel to critical scholarship of the Bible:

“We’re experiencing right now in Koranic studies a rise of interest analogous to the rise of critical Bible studies in the 19th century,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, a Notre Dame professor and organizer of the conference.

The Notre Dame conference probably could not have occurred in a Muslim country, for the rigorous application of historical analysis to the Koran is as controversial today in the Muslim world as its application to the Bible was in the 1800s. For some literal-minded Christians, it was traumatic to discover that the ending of the Gospel of Mark, describing encounters with the resurrected Jesus, is stylistically different from the rest of Mark and is widely regarded by scholars as a later addition.

Likewise, Biblical scholars distressed the faithful by focusing on inconsistencies among the gospels. The Gospel of Matthew says that Judas hanged himself, while Acts describes him falling down in a field and dying; the Gospel of John disagrees with other gospels about whether the crucifixion occurred on Passover or the day before. For those who considered every word of the Bible literally God’s word [i.e., objective historical truth], this kind of scholarship felt sacrilegious.

This is my favorite bit from the article:

One scholar at the Notre Dame conference, who uses the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for safety, has raised eyebrows and hackles by suggesting that the “houri” promised to martyrs when they reach Heaven doesn’t actually mean “virgin” after all. He argues that instead it means “grapes,” and since conceptions of paradise involved bounteous fruit, that might make sense. But suicide bombers presumably would be in for a disappointment if they reached the pearly gates and were presented 72 grapes.

This point gets at the profound task that Quranic (or biblical) scholars have to undertake. An otherwise harmless word study has profound implications for how religious followers understand and act upon their faith. With Bartchy, I think this parallel has profound pedagogical relevance when teaching critical biblical studies to committed Christians.