Temporal Gaps and Textual Parallels: Investigating the Chronology of Christian Apocryphal Intertexts of the Qur’ān

Abstract

This study critically investigates the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Orientalist and Christian missionary thesis pioneered by figures such as W. St. Clair Tisdall and later C. F. Robinson, D. S. Margoliouth, and Thomas Carlyle, which posits that Qur’ānic narratives concerning Jesus (ʿĪsā) and Mary (Maryam) are direct, derivative borrowings from non-canonical Christian apocrypha and Gnostic Christological heresies. Utilizing a historical-critical and text-critical methodology, this paper evaluates the putative literary antecedents often cited in source-critical discourse, including the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and Basilidian docetism. The analysis reveals critical chronological, textual and historiographical fractures within the direct-borrowing paradigm. First, text-critical evidence demonstrates that several key apocryphal texts represent late, composite recensions or post-date the rise of Islam, while early Gnostic sects had virtually dissolved or re-assimilated into the orthodox Church centuries prior to the seventh-century Hijazi milieu. Second, drawing upon contemporary scholarship on Late Antique intertextuality and Arabic biblical translation history (notably Sidney H. Griffith), the paper demonstrates the complete absence of written Arabic biblical or apocryphal codices in pre-Islamic Arabia. Third, the study deconstructs the alternative oral transmission model, demonstrating the historical and chronological implausibility of alleged informants such as the monk Baḥīrā, Waraqah ibn Nawfal and Māriyah al-Qibṭiyyah (Coptic mary) whose arrival in 7 AH post-dates the revelation of the relevant Qur’ānic surahs. The study concludes that thematic parallels do not establish empirical literary dependence, affirming the structural and theological independence of the Qur’ānic corpus.