Publisher's Synopsis
English summary: What is the relationship between the Qur'an, and therefore Islam, and the biblical tradition? Is the Qur'an part of the Mediterranean culture that was formative for later Europe, or is its message dominated by its own, pre-monotheistic heroic, even combative, Arabian culture? Historically and semantically, the Qur'an is - not differently to the Mishna or the New Testament - part of the biblical tradition. Our perception of the Qur'an is however governed by scholarly constructs established by schools which are split over the issue of the Qur'an's participation in the Jewish-Christian hermeneutics. It is only by substituting the literal reading which is prevailing today by a typological reading that the Qur'an can be recognized in its scriptural dimension, i.e. as a new exegetical reading of the Hebrew Bible based on late antique hermeneutics. Angelika Neuwirth turns to these questions with criteria already proven in neighbouring philologies, such as typological interpretation and the antinomy of attraction and repulsion. Her consideration takes into account, for the first time, the fact of the Qur'an's oral composition and thus the simultaneous emergence of text and belief community.
German description: In welchem Verhaltnis steht der Koran zur biblischen Tradition? Ist er Teil der fur das spatere Europa formativen spatantiken Mittelmeerkultur, oder dominiert in seiner Botschaft das Eigene, die vor-monotheistische heroische, ja sogar kampferische Kultur Arabiens? Obwohl die enge semantische Verwandtschaft zu den judischen und christlichen Schriften der Spatantike ausser Frage steht, wird dem Koran die Teilhabe an der aus der biblischen Tradition entwickelten Hermeneutik zumeist bestritten. Erst die Ersetzung des gegenwartigen Literalsinns durch eine typologisch bewusste Lekture kann den Koran als eine arabische Fortschreibung der hebraischen Bibel erkennbar machen.
