根据早期阿拉伯地区最权威的阿拉伯语学者以及当今最杰出的专家，学界共识是《古兰经》具有独一无二的文学地位。阿拉伯语词汇比较研究《古兰经阿拉伯语》的作者马丁·赞米特教授说："尽管一些前伊斯兰时期的长篇诗歌具有卓越的文学价值……《古兰经》无疑自成一格，是阿拉伯语最杰出的书面表达。"407 英国阿拉伯文学学者阿瑟·J·阿伯利（1969年去世）在其广受欢迎的《古兰经》译本中写道："《古兰经》的修辞与韵律如此独特、如此有力、如此富有感染力，以至于任何译本，就其本质而言，都只能是原文那璀璨辉煌之美的拙劣摹本。"408

According to both the highest authorities of the Arabic language in early Arabia, and its foremost experts today, there is consensus on the literary uniqueness of the Qur’an. Professor Martin Zammit, the author of A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur’anic Arabic, says, “Notwithstanding the literary excellence of some of the long pre-Islamic poems… the Qur’an is definitely on a level of its own as the most eminent written manifestation of the Arabic language.”407 Arthur J. Arberry (d. 1969), a British scholar of Arabic literature, wrote in his popular translation of the Qur’an, “The rhetoric and rhythm of the Koran are so characteristic, so powerful, so highly emotive, that any version whatsoever is bound in the nature of things to be but a poor copy of the glittering splendour of the original.”408

在先知صلى الله عليه وسلم的时代，阿拉伯人珍视语言几乎胜过珍视生命。409 伊斯兰之前，他们会轻蔑地称非阿拉伯人为 ʿajam（字面意为沉默者或不会说话的人），暗示他人不如自己那样富有生气，或是有所欠缺，因为他们无法以同样的清晰与感染力表达。为了进一步说明这种“语言即生命”的信念，十一世纪的诗人伊本·拉希格（卒于999年）写道：每当阿拉伯部落中出现一位诗人，其他部落便会前来道贺，人们准备宴席，妇女们像在婚礼上一样弹奏鲁特琴，老少男子都为这喜讯欢欣鼓舞——因为这是他们荣誉的盾牌，是他们血统的保卫，也是他们胜利的永久纪念。阿拉伯人彼此道贺的，只有两件事：孩子的诞生，以及部落中出现了一位诗人。410

During the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم time, Arabs were people who valued language almost as much as life itself.409 Before Islam, they would derogatorily call non-Arabs ʿajam (literally: silent or speechless), implying that others were not equally alive, or were deficient, since they could not articulate with the same lucidity and emotiveness. To further illustrate this belief that “language equals life,” the eleventh-century poet Ibn Rashīq (d. 999) says, Whenever a poet emerged in an Arab tribe, other tribes would come to congratulate, feasts would be prepared, the women would play lutes as they do at weddings, and old and young men would all rejoice at the good news— for this was a shield for their honor, a defense of their lineages, and an immortalization of their triumphs. The Arabs used to congratulate each other only on the birth of a child and when a poet rose among them.410

这些庆祝活动有其可以理解的缘由，正如纳维德·克尔马尼所言，古阿拉伯诗歌是一种高度复杂的文学现象。

Ground for such festivities were understandable, since, as Navid Kermani says, Old Arabic poetry is a highly complex phenomenon.

词汇、语法上的特殊习惯以及严格的规范代代相传，只有最有天赋的学生才能完全掌握这门语言。一个人必须在一位大师级诗人门下学习数年，有时甚至数十年，才有资格自称诗人。411

The vocabulary, grammatical idiosyncrasies, and strict norms were passed down from generation to generation, and only the most gifted students fully mastered the language. A person had to study for years, sometimes even decades, under a master poet before laying claim to the title of poet.411

所有其他人的价值都在于他们记住了这些诗歌与演说，它们记载了这一原始沙漠文明的历史、道德与智慧。

Everyone else was validated by what they retained in memory of these odes and speeches that captured the history, morals, and wisdoms of this otherwise primitive desert civilization.

这就是《古兰经》降示时的历史背景。它降临在一群修辞表达已臻于巅峰的人们中间。几乎一夜之间，这些同样的人们听到了来自穆罕默德ﷺ的《古兰经》：其阿拉伯语纯正无瑕，其修辞之优美前所未有，然而它又神奇地独立于他们所熟知并精通的诗歌或散文之外。巴萨姆·萨赫博士解释道：……《古兰经》的奇迹性正在于这一悖论：它既确确实实是阿拉伯语，同时又是一种全新的语言。这看似不合逻辑。然而，奇迹的逻辑恰恰在于它超越了逻辑本身。

This was the historical context within which the Qur’an was revealed. It descended amid people at the pinnacle of rhetorical expression. Virtually overnight, these same people experienced a Qur’an from Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم that was pure in its Arabic, unprecedented in its eloquence, but mysteriously independent of the poetry or prose they knew and had mastered. Dr Bassam Saeh explains, ...the miraculousness of the Qur’an lies in this very paradox: the paradox of its being truly Arabic, and its being, at one and the same time, a new language. This might appear to be illogical. However, the logic of miracle inheres in precisely the fact that it surpasses logic.

一个建立在逻辑之上的奇迹，便不再是奇迹。412

A miracle that rests on logic ceases to be a miracle.412

那些自负的阿拉伯人无法解释,按照他们自己有偏见的评判者的标准,他们为何集体未能应对古兰经的挑战——去写出哪怕一章具有类似文学特色的经文。其最短的一章只有十个词,413 而他们是阿拉伯语的行家,穆罕默德ﷺ带来的经文却有六千多节。然而,这还不是全部。真正给这场对峙中的先知的反对者致命一击、使其再无任何怀疑余地的,是先知ﷺ本身是一个不识字的人这一事实。正如安拉所说:"在此之前,你没有诵读过任何经典,也没有用你的右手书写过任何经典,否则,造谣者就会有理由怀疑了。"414 这是一个完全无法解释的谜,最终迫使先知ﷺ的诋毁者只能指控他是一个施行魔法的人,415 这无意中承认了这部经典确实有超自然之处。

The prideful Arabs could not explain how they collectively failed the Qur’anic challenge to produce a single chapter with merely “similar” literary features, according to their own biased judges, when its shortest chapter is only ten words,413 when they were the masters of Arabic, and when Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم brought over 6,000 verses of it. But that was not all. What dealt the killer blow to the Prophet’s opponents in this standoff, leaving absolutely no room for further doubt, was the fact that he صلى الله عليه وسلم was unlettered to begin with. As Allah says, “And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe one with your right hand. Otherwise, the falsifiers would have had [cause for] doubt.”414 It was an utter enigma, one that ultimately forced the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم detractors to settle on the accusation of him being a magician,415 unwittingly conceding that there was indeed something supernatural about this Book.

一些批评者认为，尽管《古兰经》是一部文学杰作，但这并不意味着它是超自然的。他们主张，每种文明都有其无与伦比的文学作品，例如英语中的莎士比亚《十四行诗》和希腊语中的荷马《伊利亚特》，而《古兰经》也不例外。然而，这种观点忽视了先知穆罕默德ﷺ与莎士比亚之间的诸多重大差异。416

Some critics argue that while the Qur’an is a literary masterpiece, this does not mean that it is supernatural. They claim that every civilization has its unequaled works of literature, such as Shakespeare’s Sonnets in English and Homer’s Iliad in Greek, and the Qur’an is no different. However, this view ignores a myriad of major differences between the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم and Shakespeare:416

与先知穆罕默德ﷺ不同,莎士比亚接受过希腊语和拉丁语的教育,并且在他的导师们的指导下,能够接触到大量的图书馆藏书,他正是在这些书籍的基础上进行自己的创作。

Unlike the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم, Shakespeare was educated in both Greek and Latin and had, alongside his mentors, access to libraries of books that he built on for his own writings.

1. 莎士比亚靠身为职业剧作家谋生，并且随着每一部戏剧作品的上演不断打磨自己的技艺；而先知ﷺ一生中从未有人记载他吟出过一整句完整的诗句，417 他也不可能像对待作品那样，在话语说出之后为了质量把关而收回《古兰经》中的任何一个字，因为他的听众遍布广大的穆斯林与非穆斯林之中。

1. Shakespeare earned a living as a professional playwright and continued refining his craft with each dramatic production, while the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was never reported to utter a single full couplet of poetry in his entire life,417 nor was it possible for him to retract any word of the Qur’an for quality control once it was spoken to his vast Muslim and non-Muslim audiences.

2. 十四行诗在莎士比亚之前已为人所知并创作了数个世纪，而《古兰经》则有着独特的结构，不同于阿拉伯最杰出的诗人所使用的任何写作或言辞模式。418

2. Sonnets were known and produced for centuries before Shakespeare, while the Qur’an had a unique compositional structure that differed from every pattern of writing or speech used by Arabia’s master poets.418

3. 与莎士比亚不同，莎士比亚的标志性风格和词汇渗透于他的全部作品之中，穆罕默德先知ﷺ为世界带来的《古兰经》，其文风却与圣训传统——即穆罕默德ﷺ日常的言语——有所不同。这一点在他的同时代人中已为人所注意，此后又进行了十余次实验，以客观地确立这一点。文体计量学是对文学风格差异进行统计分析，从而区分不同作者的一门学科。

3. Unlike Shakespeare, whose hallmark style and vocabulary permeate all his writings, the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم brought the world a Qur’an whose style differs from the Hadith tradition—the everyday statements of Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. While this was noticed by his contemporaries, more than a dozen experiments have since been conducted to establish this objectively. Stylometry is the statistical analysis of variations in literary style to discriminate between one writer and another.

它已被用来区分新约中保罗书信的真伪，并用来证明圣训与《古兰经》必定出自两位不同的作者。后一类研究者不得不承认，任何人一生都不可能对自己的语言进行如此广泛的自我约束。

It has been utilized to distinguish between the authentic and pseudonymous letters of Paul in the New Testament, and to prove that the Hadith and the Qur’an must have had two different authors. Researchers of the latter were forced to accept that it would be impossible for any human being to employ such extensive self-policing of their language for a lifetime.