The Qur"Anic Sarah As Prototype of Mary 193

the qur"anic sarah as prototype of mary 193

THE QUR"ANIC SARAH AS PROTOTYPE OF MARY

GABRIEL SAID REYNOLDS

In the autumn of 2000 a Greek Orthodox friend of mine in Bei- rut, Lebanon, showed me an image of his favorite icon: a fifteenth century Russian depiction of the visitation, described in Genesis 18, of three men to Abraham and Sarah.1 The beauty of the icon, he explained, is that the artist used this scene to represent the Holy Trinity. The angel to the right, wearing a sky blue garment, is the Holy Spirit. The angel in the middle, in an earth-toned garment, is the Son, and the angel to the left, wearing a garment the color of which changes with the light, is the Father. This Trinitarian interpretation of Genesis 18 seems to be en- couraged by the very opening of the biblical account: ‘Yahweh appeared to him at the Oak of Mamre while he was sitting by the entrance of the tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up, and there he saw three men standing near him’ (Gen 18.1-2, New Jerusalem Bible). Accordingly, this interpretation is an ancient one. Saint Augustine (City of God, 29) defends it with the observation that while three men are said to visit Abraham and Sarah, the voice that speaks from their midst in verse 13 is that of the Lord.2 The resonance of this mysterious narrative can even be heard in Luke’s Gospel, in the famous depiction of Christ on the road to Emmaus (ch. 24). Here too a heavenly figure, appearing in human form, is received at a meal.3 Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, see the anthropo- morphic theme of Genesis 18 as a reflection of the immanent God of the Pentateuch’s Yahwist source. Meanwhile, the story itself is an etiology. It accounts for the name of Isaac, Hebrew yiíÈ§q, with the report that Sarah laughed, tiíÈ§q, in verse 12.4

1 Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 2 On patristic exegesis of Gen 18 cf. W. Miller, Mysterious Encounters at Mamre and Jabbok, Chico CA, 1984, ch. 2. 3 Cf. also Heb 13.2. 4 Cf. Gen 17.17. The name Isaac is more likely an abbreviation of yiíÈ§q-"¿l, God

thomas_HCMR6.indb 193 13-11-2006 22:14:31 194 gabriel said reynolds

Nevertheless, to both Christians and Jews this account has a basic didactic purpose. To Christians it teaches the mysterious (in the best sense of the word) triune nature of God. To Jews it teaches the inscrutable divine election of Abraham and Sarah, elect by God’s mercy, not by merit. Sarah’s lie in verse 15 makes this point in unmistakable fashion. In several passages the Qur"an, too, refers to messengers, or guests, who visited Abraham and delivered news of Isaac’s birth. The tone of these passages, however, is more homily than narrative. The Qur"an, it seems, is not providing an alternative version of Genesis 18, but rather a commentary on it. In the present chapter I will argue that this commentary is influenced by a Christian reading of Genesis 18, not the Trinitarian reading mentioned above, but rather a typological reading that has Sarah as the prototype of Mary. Muslim commentators, however, read the Qur"an as both homily and narrative, although with stories such as the present one it is quite sparing with details. In fact, the Qur"an seems to assume that the audience already knows the details of the story, such as the reason for Abraham’s wife’s laughter. Yet the medieval Muslim commentators either no longer knew those details, or, if they did, they knew them from non-Muslim sources whose reliability was ever-suspect. They therefore relied instead on a close and speculative reading of the Qur"an to fill in the missing details. This would lead them to a very different explanation of Abraham’s wife’s laughter.

The qur"anic account

The reference to that laughter occurs in Qur"an chapter 11 (Sårat Håd) vv. 69-72, where the Qur"§n relates: 69. Our messengers came to Abraham with good news. They said, ‘Peace’. He said, ‘Peace,’ and hastened to bring them a roasted (ÈanÊdh) calf.5 70. When he saw that their hands did not touch it, he became

laughs; cf J. Barton and J. Muddiman, eds, The Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford, 2001, p. 52. 5 \anÊdh is an enigmatic term that confuses the commentators. The reading of the rasm might be reconsidered, as many possible forms could be applied to the scriptio defectiva.

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