Surah 97:1–2:
Indeed, We sent it down during the Night of Decree. And what can make you know what is the Night of Decree?
The opening statement of the Surah introduces an absolute cosmic event: "Indeed, We sent it down during the Night of Decree."
The Historical Textual Shift: In recent decades, pioneering work in Quranic text-criticism and Late Antique studies (such as the research of Christoph Luxenberg and Guillaume Dye) has exposed a profound linguistic connection between Surah 97 and Syriac Christian liturgical hymns.
The Syriac Subtext: In the Syriac Christian tradition dominating the pre-Islamic Near East, Christmas and Epiphany (the birth and manifestation of Jesus as the Logos or Word of God) were celebrated during a sacred, luminous night. Syriac hymns by poets like Ephrem the Syrian repeatedly celebrate this night using a highly specific formulaic vocabulary: it is a night of unique celestial "power" or "decree," a night where the "angels and the host" descend to earth, and a night filled with cosmic "peace" (slāmā) until the break of dawn.
To a historical critic, the Quran takes this existing, highly popular Christian liturgical framework and performs a deliberate theological replacement. It strips away the Christian focus on the birth of Jesus (the flesh-bound Word) and replaces it with the descent of the Quranic text itself (the book-bound Word). The text co-opts the emotional, acoustic, and thematic architecture of Late Antique Christian festival nights to grant its own localized compilation instant liturgical gravity among listeners familiar with Syrian monotheism.