John Wansbrough

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Edward Wansbrough (born February 19, 1928 in Peoria (Illinois) , † June 10, 2002 in Montaigu-de-Quercy , France ) was an American historian at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies .

With his fundamental criticism of the credibility of the classical Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam and the attempt to develop an alternative, historically more credible version of the emergence of Islam, Wansbrough founded the so-called "revisionist" school of Islamic studies.

Life

Wansbrough graduated from Harvard University and worked until retirement at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, of which he was Pro-Director. His students include a. Andrew Rippin , Norman Calder and Gerald R. Hawting , Patricia Crone and Michael Cook .

research

Wansbrough began studying early Islamic manuscripts and the Koran. It struck him that the early Islamic texts speak to an audience that is familiar with Jewish and Christian texts, and that Jewish and Christian theological problems are negotiated. Criticism of "unbelievers" was apparently directed at monotheists whose monotheism was not "pure".

This did not fit with the Islamic tradition from the beginnings of Islam, according to which Islam is said to have originated in a polytheistic society. Wansbrough examined the classical Islamic traditions, which only emerged 150 to 200 years after Mohammed, with the historical-critical , and especially the literary-critical method. He found countless indications that these texts are not historical reports, but later literary constructions in the style of an Old Testament salvation story, the historical core of which is small or can no longer be determined.

From this, Wansbrough developed the theory that Islam did not emerge as an independent, new religion, but rather emerged from a conflict between various Judeo-Christian sects. The Koran was a text that was created over a 200-year process and could therefore not come from Mohammed. The person of Mohammed as the prophet of the Koran would therefore be a later invention, or at least Mohammed had nothing to do with the Koran. For later times, the person of Mohammed only had the function of giving the newly created religious community its own identity based on the role model of an Old Testament prophet.

Reception and criticism

With his fundamental criticism of the credibility of the classical Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam and the attempt to develop an alternative, historically more credible version of the emergence of Islam, Wansbrough founded the so-called "revisionist" school of Islamic studies. Its influence on modern Islamic studies cannot be overestimated.

However, today many consider Wansbrough's theory to be too radical in detail, specifically the complete separation of the origin of the Koran from the person of Mohammed. On the other hand, Wansbroughs' rejection of the classical Islamic traditions as historical reports is widely accepted. His realization that Islam must have developed in a Judeo-Christian milieu also meets with broad approval today.

Works

  • Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford, 1977) Online at archive.org
  • The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition Of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford, 1978)
  • Res Ipsa Loquitur: History and Mimesis (1987)
  • Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean (Curzon Press 1996)

See also

Remarks

  1. Oliver Leaman (Ed.), The Qur'an, an Encyclopedia , 2006; P. 477
  2. Harald Motzki et al., Analyzing Muslim Traditions , 2010; P. 285 ff.
  3. Andrew Rippin (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Qur'an , 2006; P. 199 f.
  4. Michael Cook, Review of: The Sectarian Milieu by Wansbrough , in: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 2 (1980), pp. 180-182