The intertwined world of the oral and written transmission of sacred traditions in the Middle East

这个项目的目的是汇集与神圣文本传播的各个方面有关的研究。本课程旨在深入了解中东三大宗教在伊斯兰教早期形成时期的相互交织的世界。阿拉伯文的《古兰经》、叙利亚文的《圣经》和希伯来文的《圣经》，分别是伊斯兰教、东方基督教和犹太教的圣典，都以口头和书面形式传播。这些传统的传播方式在中世纪的中东达到了惊人的程度，反映了不同宗教团体之间的密切联系。两个特别引人注目的趋同现象包括：(1)符号系统的发展，主要由添加到文字的辅音骨架上的点组成，代表了早期伊斯兰时期的口头阅读传统；(2)10世纪和11世纪希伯来语圣经的传播模式与阿拉伯语古兰经的传播模式的同化。早期古兰经手稿（8世纪）和当代叙利亚语圣经手稿同时证实了这种符号系统的萌芽发展。希伯来圣经与古兰经传播模式的融合在希伯来圣经手抄本的语料库中达到了极点，这些手抄本是由犹太卡拉特社区在10世纪和11世纪用阿拉伯语抄写的。除了对个人神圣传统的理解做出重要贡献外，该项目还将提供机会来识别这些传统之间的相似之处。在阿拉伯语和叙利亚语的符号系统发展中发现的相似之处很可能反映了当代的直接接触。（ii）和(i)之间的相似之处将在很大程度上具有类型学性质，并将作为(i)中接触假设的重要启发和加强。

The purpose of this project is to bring together strands of research related to various aspects ofthe transmission of sacred texts. This aims at reaching a deeper understanding of the intertwinedworld of the three major religions of the Middle East at their formative periods of developmentduring the early Islamic centuries.The Arabic Qur'an, the Syriac Bible and the Hebrew Bible, the sacred texts of Islam, EasternChristianity and Judaism respectively, were all transmitted in oral and written form. The modes oftransmission of these traditions converged to a remarkable degree in the medieval Middle East,reflecting close contact between the various religious communities. Two particularly strikingphenomena of convergence include (i) the development of notation systems consisting mainly ofdots added to the consonantal skeleton of the script representing the oral reading traditions in theearly Islamic period and (ii) the assimilation of the mode of transmission of the Hebrew Bible inthe 10th and 11th centuries to that of the Arabic Qur'an. The embryonic development of suchnotation systems is attested simultaneously in the early Qur'an manuscripts (8th century) andcontemporary Syriac Bible manuscripts. The convergence of the transmission modes of theHebrew Bible with the Qur'an reached its extreme point in a corpus of Hebrew Bible manuscriptswritten in Arabic transcription by the Jewish Karaite community in the 10th and 11th centuries.In addition to making important contributions to the comprehension of the individual sacredtraditions, the project will provide the opportunity to identify parallels across these traditions.Parallels identified across Arabic and Syriac in the development of their notation system wouldbe likely to reflect direct contemporary contact. Parallels across (ii) and (i) would be largely of atypological nature and would serve as an important heuristic and strengthening of hypotheses ofcontact within (i).