A “Totally Typological” Christian Qur’ān: Northrop Frye’s Triple Mirror
The Qur’ān and Kerygma - Biblical Receptions of the Muslim Scripture across a Millennium - Jeffrey Einboden
Jeffrey Einboden [+ ]
Northern Illinois University
Description
While the Qur’ān’s forgotten translation into biblical idioms is treated in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 explores the Qur’ān’s hidden contributions to the literary study of the Bible, considering the Muslim scripture’s impact on ordained United Church minister, and leading 20th-century critic, Northrop Frye. Marking the present study’s last step westward, as well as its final advance towards the present-day, Chapter 6 concludes in Canada, reading not only Frye’s published allusions to Islam, but also his Qur’ānic appeals voiced in venues more private, from Frye’s pedagogical lectures to his personal marginalia. Revealed as both a catalyst and a complicating factor for his famed “Bible and Literature” studies, the Qur’ān exemplifies for Frye the “genuine kerygmatic”, while also threatening to disrupt the closed coherency of the two biblical Testaments, occupying a third position that reinforces, yet also reverses, his critical intent.