این مقاله با بررسی سه واژه از قرآن نشان می‌دهد که چطور عربی امروزین می‌تواند بر فهم ما از قرآن تأثیر نامطلوب بگذارد. این سه واژه عبارت‌اند از واژه تابوت، اقلام (آل‌عمران، 44) و دین (آل‌عمران، 19).

http://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/quran-and-modern-standard-arabic/

On the Qur’an and Modern Standard Arabic
Posted on August 4, 2014

by Gabriel Said Reynolds*

Qur"an 20:39 recalls how God instructed Moses’ mother to place her infant son in a tabutand set him upon a river, that he might escape Pharaoh. In Modern Standard Arabic, tabutcan mean “box, case, chest, coffer” or “casket, coffin, sarcophagus,” and many translators render tabut in the Qur’an in light of one or another of these meanings. Asad (“chest”), Hilali-Khan (“a box or a case or a chest”), Yusuf Ali (“chest”), Hamidullah (“coffret”), and Paret (“Kasten”) all choose the first meaning; Quli Qara?i (“casket”) chooses the second    .

The awkward image of the infant Moses floating on the Nile in a casket illustrates the problem of understanding Qur"anic terms in light of their meanings in Modern Standard Arabic. Not all translators do so. Pickthall and Arberry, among others, render tabut, “ark.” This dramatically different translation presumably reflects the influence of Qur"an 2:248, where the Qur"an uses tabut for the Ark of the Covenant    .

In fact, Q 2:248 is the key to understanding tabut in Q 20:39. Tabut reflects the Hebrew term teba (itself a borrowing from Egyptian), the term used for the basket in which Moses" mother places him (Exodus 2:3; teba evidently means “basket” here because it is made out of reeds).Teba is also used for the ark that Noah builds (Genesis 6:14, 15, passim). As Arthur Jeffery (Foreign Vocabulary, 88-89) notes, Qur"anic tabut is closer in form to Aramaic tibu (used in Targum Onkelos for both Noah’s ark and Moses’ basket) and even more so to Ethiopic tabot. The connection with Ethiopic tabotmight be particularly important since it (like Syriac qebuta) is used for Noah’s ark, Moses’ basket, and the Ark of the Covenant .

In any case, my point here is not to make an argument about a particular etymology for tabut but rather to illustrate the danger of relying on Modern Standard Arabic in our reading of the Qur"an. The way in which the Qur"an uses tabut for both Moses’ basket (Q 20:39) and the Ark of the Covenant (Q 2:248) reflects the Biblical background of this term. Therefore, in Qur"an 20:39, tabut might be understood in light of this background to mean simply “basket” (even if this meaning is not found in Hans Wehr’s dictionary).

Tabut is not the only example of the problem of Modern Standard Arabic understandings of the Qur"an. Qur’an 3:44 alludes to the account of the contest between the widowers of Israel over Mary. In the version of this account in the (2ndcentury) Protoevangelium of James, all of the widows hand their staffs (as lots) to the priest Zechariah, in whose care Mary has been kept in the Jerusalem Temple. From the last staff, that of Joseph, a dove emerges, indicating that he is God’s choice. The term that the Qur"an uses for these staffs is qalam (pl. aqlam), from Greek kalamos (“reed”). Yet qalam also came to mean “pen,” and indeed this is its common meaning in Modern Standard Arabic. Thus if one reads the Qur"an in light of Modern Standard Arabic, Q 3:44 would seem to involve throwing pens around.

A final case, the term din, has theological consequences. As Mun"im Sirry points out in his recent work Scriptural Polemics: The Qur"an and Other Religions (esp. 66-89), many modern commentators understand Qur"anic occurrences of din to denote “religion,” and indeed translators almost always render din “religion” (for Q 3:19 I did not find any cases where it is translated otherwise). This has important consequences, especially with verses such as Q 3:19 and 85, which can be read to mean that Islam is the only acceptable religion. Yet in light of Semitic and non-Semitic cognates (such as Syriac dina), Qur"anic din might have—in some instances at least—a more general meaning of “judgment” (hence the phrase yawm al-din). In other instances, din might mean something closer to religious disposition, rather than religion in the modern sense of a communal system of faith and worship. Accordingly, students of the Qur"an should be wary of reading din, or any Qur"anic term, through the lens of Modern Standard Arabic.

* Gabriel Said Reynolds researches the Qur’an and Muslim/Christian relations and is Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at Notre Dame.

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