Different Traditions in the Qur’an: Wansbrough's Analysis of Shu'aib Story in The Qur’an, A Critical Study

According to Wansbrough, the text of the Qur'an came into existence out of short, separate units that have been developed and put together in a gradual process. Based on this assumption, the purpose of literary analysis of the text of the Qur'an is to identify these independent units, which Wansbrough calls prophetic logia, and to study their related forms and the historical stages of their development. Accordingly, he analyzes the different versions of Shu'aib's story in the Qur'an and considers the different versions of this narrative to suggest the preexistence of different and independent traditions incorporated into the Qur’anic text. This difference, in his view, is such that it takes more than just a single generation to emerge. Thus, he counts it as evidence for the late canonization of the final text of the Qur'an at the end of the second century. This article explains and evaluates Wansbrough's literary analysis of related verses of the Shu'aib’s story in the Qur'an and its results.