A Review and Criticism of Gabriel Sawma's Viewon Ayah "wakaffalahā zakariyyā Kullamādakhala ‘alayhā zakariyyalmiḥ‌rāba" (Al-e Emran: 37)

In 2006, Gabriel Sawma wrote the book The Qur'an: Misinterpreted, Mistranslated, and Misread. The Aramaic Language of the Qur'an. He claims in this book that the language of the Qur’an is Syro-Aramaic and tries to prove the adaptation of the Qur’an from Jewish-Christian sources. In order to prove his claim by investigating Qur’anic surahs, he mentions many words as evidence and analyzes them. Examining the ayah, "wakaffalahā zakariyyā Kullamā dakhala ‘alay hā zakariyyal miḥ rāba" (Al-e Emran: 37) (Zachariah taking charge of her whenever Zachariah went into her in the Sanctuary), and according to Syro-Aramaic language, Sawma has translated the phrase "wakaffalahā zakariyyā Kullamā dakhala ‘alay hā zakariyyal miḥ rāba" as "When Zacharias went to go to Mary, he bowed to him and bowed with fear". In the present article that aims to meticulously examine the ayah's meaning, we propound Sawma's viewpoint from the perspective of comparative historical linguistics in the three languages of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic to see to what extent the linguistic evidence coming from kaffala and dakhala confirms his opinion. Evidence based on derivations of kaffala in Jahiliyyah literature and its structural and semantic similarities in Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic indicate that although this root has a Syriac origin, it has witnessed its own semantic development in each of Syriac branches. There are also plenty of evidence related to derivations of dakhala in Jahiliyyah poetry that besides the multiplicity and diversity of the usage of this root in the Qur’an along with its non-existence in Hebrew, Syriac, and the Bible corroborate the possibility that it is a pure Arabic root and that Arabs have correctly understood its structure and meaning. The analyses performed thus go contrary with Sawma's claim