A Further Note on s Author(s): James A. Bellamy Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 122, No. 3 (Jul.

- Sep., 2002), pp. 587588 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3087526 . Accessed: 10/08/2011 05:51
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BRIEF COMMUNICATION
A Further Note on 'Isai Latest research shows that 'Isa derives from al-Masih and not from Masiyya.

I recently published in JAOS 121 (2001): 1-6, a study in which I proposed emendations and/or explanations for seven Koranic names which had so far eluded identification. Among these was the name 'Isa, the name

used in the Koran for Jesus. I proposed (p. 6) to emend 'ysy to msyy, and read masiyyd, which I took to be the Greek Messias, without the nominative ending. I now feel obliged to reject this emendation in favor of another which is better supportedby the external evidence. I now think that 'Isa is a corruption of the Arabic alMasih, from which the definite article was dropped when the prophet rejected the regular name for Jesus, Yasfl'. Readers will be quick to point out that this goes against Arabic usage in which al-Masih always takes the definite article. But it is precisely this anomaly, I believe, that caused the corruption.First I will emend the text and then go on to discuss the anomaly. First of all, as we did for masiyyd, we emend 'ayn to mim and divide the four minims into sin and yd'; then we emend the final yd' to final ha'. A minor drawback to the last emendation is that mistaking final ha' for a final yd' is apparentlyquite rare.' The rarity of the mis-

1 Though I have not made an extensive search, I have by chance hit upon one example of this error, but in reverse, that is yd' misread as ha', which is equally pertinent. In Ibn alNadim, K. al-Fihrist, ed. J. Roediger and G. Flugel (Leipzig, 1871-72), 340, we find a reference to a man named al-Hsih (preferable variant al-Hsh, pp. 177-78 of the notes), who is said to have been the founder of the sect of the Mughtasilah. His name in Greek is 'HXXaaatand he was the founder of the Elkasaites, not the Mughtasilah; see J. Pedersen, "The Sdbians," in A Volumeof Oriental Studies Presented to Edward G. Browne (Cambridge, 1922), 383. In the Fihrist, notes, p. 177f., Flugel states that the Greek cannot be the source of the Arabic, and his opinion is seconded by Pedersen, op. cit., 385. This is true, however, only if we refuse to admit the possibility of a

take, however, should not influence our decision on 'Isa. Good sense in textual emendation takes precedence over palaeography,so we do not have to decide which of the two emendationsis easier to accept, but whetherit makes more sense for Muhammadto have gotten the name from Greek or Arabic. Obviously, the better case can be made for Arabic. The best argument for Masih is, however, that we now have only one word to deal with, and do not have to assume that the Prophet vacillated between Greek and Arabic. The form without the definite article, which turned into 'Isa, is obviously Jesus' name, since we find it with the vocative particle yd, in 3:55, and 5:110, 112, and 116. Al-Masih is his title; this despite 3:45 where we find both together: inna 1laha yubashshiruki bi-kalimatin minhu ismuhu 1-Mash 'CIsibnu Maryam (We give you good tidings of a word from him, his name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary). Here al-Masih must be a gloss, since it is not really his name. One cannot say in Arabic "ya l-Masilh."The two also occur together in 4:157, 171, but in these cases 'Isa b. Maryamis in apposition with al-Masih. Turningnow to the anomaly, I shall begin by quoting Paul Maas, a well-known classical scholar and textual critic: "The typical conjecture consists in the removal of an anomaly. Now there are some anomalies which are admitted or intended by the author, while others are due to corruption.... As a rule, no writer will aspire to an anomaly for its own sake; an anomaly is a consequence of his desire to say something out of the ordinary for which the normal mode of expression was found to be In inadequate."2 our case the anomaly was intended by the Prophet. When he decided to reject Yasli', he had

mistake. 'lIhsh is a perfect transliteration of 'HXxauat if we emend the final h to final y, and read it as alif maqsiirah. 2 Maas, TextualCriticism, tr. BarbaraFlower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 11. 587

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 122.3 (2002) cretion from the two Cowper glands, which lie between the prostate gland and the bulk of the penis, and are activated by sexual excitement; the secretion occurs before ejaculation. According to Islamic law, the pollution requires wudu'. Form I of the verb sa'a/yasi'u is not attested in this meaning in the dictionaries, but we do find the imperative, which implies the imperfect, and this would be identical with the name Yasfl'. One says to a man "suC su', when telling him to mind his madhy (amrun bitacahhudi suwacadihi). However, Form IV, as noted above, is recorded: aswaca l-rajulu wa-ghayruhu (i.e., an animal) idha ntashara thummamadhd (when he has an erection then secretes madhy). The animal referredto is the ass: aswaca i-himaruidhd arsala ghurmidahu(the ass aswaCawhen he thrust forth his penis).5 The imperfect of aswaca would be yuswiu, rasm as yasicu. which has the same

only one alternative, al-Masih. Other names by which Jesus is known, such as Lord, Savior, Son of God, he could not use. Since he wanted to refer to Jesus by his given name he was further limited by the fact that Koranic usage does not admit the article before personal names,3 so he had to accept the anomaly of dropping the article before the title in order to use it to form the personal name. The word was misread by a copyist who corruptedit to 'Isa. An important question remains: why did the Prophet reject Yasuc? One cannot claim that he did not know the name, since we find New Testamentnames in the Koran, such as Zakariyya,Yahya, and especially Maryam.If he knew the name of the mother, he surely must have known the name of the son, so his rejection of it must have been deliberate, and for a compelling reason. This is not a question for which we are likely to find an answer that will satisfy everyone, since there is so much room for speculation. I will tentatively propose an answer that I think is as likely to be right as any other that might be suggested. I think that Muhammad rejected YasUcbecause of an embarrassingsexual connotation that he feared his opponents might read into the name. The word suwdC which is also the name of a pagan god (71:23)-and suwaca and suwaca' are defined by the dictionaries as madhy: al-suwad'. . . al-madhyu liadhi yakhruju qabla l-nuftfahwa-qad aswa'a l-rajulu wais mtashara idhafa 'ala dhalika (The suwa d% the madhy which comes out before the semen; a man aswa'a and has an erection when he does this).4This refers to the se-

3 An apparent exception to this rule, al-Yasac (6:86 and 38:48), is wrongly vocalized and pointed; read Alishd', which is an exact transliterationof YS 'X. the biblical Elisha, with no alif after the sin; cf. A. Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'dn (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), 68. In other early texts we find names that take the article, such as al-'Abbas, alHarith, al-Hasan, which seem to have been epithets. However, in the Koran the names Slih and Muhammad, which may have started as epithets, are spelled without the article. 4 Ibn ManzUr al-Ifriq!, Lisin al-'Arab (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1955-56), 8: 169.

In including Jesus among the prophets, Muhammad would not have wanted to risk using a name that his enemies could have perverted into an obscene insult. One can imagine the malicious pleasure that the pagans would have taken in using such phrases as "Yasii' to claim or Yasflu"' "Yuswi' Yasflu"' ridiculeMuhammad's that Jesus was a prophet.The choice of Masih prevented Muhammad'sfollowers, and subsequently all Muslims, from using Yasii'. We know that the Arabs had the habit of defaming one another and using insulting nicknames, since the practice is forbidden in Surah 49:11: la talmizii anfusakum wa-ki tanabazii bil-alqdb (Do not defame one another and do not call one another by [bad] nicknames). The substitution of acceptable words for words thought to be indecent is a well-known feature of language. Even in English, cock becomes rooster and ass becomes donkey.
JAMES A. BELLAMY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

5 Muhammad Murtadd al-Zabidi, Thj al-'Ariis min Jawahir al-Qdmiis (Kuweit: Matbacat HukUmatal-Kuwait, 1965), 21: 243.