Friday, February 03, 2012

Interesting Diagram of the Qur'an's Textual history



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12 comments:

Sam said...
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2:29 PM, February 03, 2012
Sam said...
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2:30 PM, February 03, 2012
Sam said...
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2:31 PM, February 03, 2012
Sam said...
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2:31 PM, February 03, 2012
otto said...

Neat diagram. But to posit an "original text" like some sort of full Qur'an existed at the time of Muhammad seems wrong to me. Didn't all the compilers gather the Qur'anic saying from word of mouth, from bark, from very fallible memories, and from whatever else they could find?

Regardless, here are some interesting quotes from some scholars of the Sana manuscripts that I discovered just the other day on Wikipedia (you all probably know about these):

"Dr Gerd R Puin, a renowned Islamicist at Saarland University, Germany, says it is not one single work that has survived unchanged through the centuries. It may include stories that were written before the prophet Mohammed began his ministry and which have subsequently been rewritten.

Puin's conclusions have sparked angry reactions from orthodox Muslims. "They've said I'm not really the scholar to make any remarks on these manuscripts," he said.

The semitic philologist, who specialises in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic palaeography, has been studying Sa'na manuscripts, ancient versions of the Koran discovered in Sa'na, the capital of Yemen.

So controversial are his findings that the Yemeni authorities have denied him further access to the manuscripts." [bold mine, and this article was written in 2000!]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2000/aug/08/highereducation.theguardian

and here is another interesting article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/4024/

The Islamic governments will not even let us study the scripts because they contain so many errors and variants. Muslims will blame this on the "7 mushhaf," but once we study and find the hundreds, nay, thousands of variants, contradictions, errors, readings, etc., the Islamic view of revelation will not have a leg to stand on. Let the studies begin!

2:34 PM, February 03, 2012
Sam said...

This is now my fifth attempt to get this right.

Ken, I noticed that you are going at with those militant right wing Muslim fundamentalists. Here is what Paul Williams' god and savior James Barr wrote about Matthew 5:17-18:

“But, although Jesus insists that he fulfils the law and the prophets and does not abolish them, this does not mean that they in themselves constitute the final and absolute criterion or source for his teaching. ON THE CONTRARY, Jesus proceeds to expound the ancient law in a way that makes it plain THAT HE INTENDS TO GO FAR BEYOND IT AND ITS NATURAL MEANING.

You have heard it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil … (Matt. 5:38).

“The ancient law says one thing, JESUS SAYS ANOTHER; what he says IS NOT IDENTICAL with what the ancient law had said. ‘I say to you’ IS A CLEAR ASSUMPTION BY JESUS OF AUTHORITY OVER THE LAW. HE IS NOT SIMPLY EXPLAINING THE LAW, HE IS NOT SETTING HIMSELF UNDER THE LAW AS A MERE EXEGETE, HE IS SAYING SOMETHING HE CONSIDER TO BE NEW, TO GO BEYOND WHAT THE LAW ITSELF HAD TO SAY. It is precisely because this was his intention that he warned his hearers in advance that his purpose was not to abolish the law. The law and the prophets, though they remained the word of God, were no longer in themselves the supreme authority for Christianity. THE SUPREME AUTHORITY LAY IN CHRIST HIMSELF. For Christianity, though the Old Testament remained entirely the valid word of God, it was no longer in itself the comuunicator of salvation: salvation came through the new acts of God in Jesus Christ, his life, teaching, crucifixion and resurrection. The Old Testament, it as understood, had prefigured and foreseen these acts, it confirmed them and validated them, it provided a basis through which they could be rightly identified, understood and discussed; but it did not in itself constitute that new revelation. The new revelation was not a mere interpretation of the old: it was a new substance, which had not been there before.

“With Jesus, then, there came something new, something that burst the limits of what the Old Testament knew about; and for the expression of that something new it was both necessary and right that Jesus’ teaching should go far beyond what the then existing scripture authorized and should also be, whether openly or implicitly, critical in its attitude to scripture. To depict Jesus as if he was merely a submissive follower of scripture IS TO DAMAGE THE CREATIVITY AND ORIGINALITY OF THE INCARNATION. The people of the time, as the Gospels depict them, recognized the difference:
The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes (Matt. 7:28-29).

“The scribes had the authority of scripture, as well as of tradition, behind them: what they did not have was authority of their own.” (Barr, Beyond Fundamentalism, [The Westminster Press, 1984], pp. 8-9)

Hence, James Barr proves that both Williams and Dunn are simply wrong and have misread Jesus’ point in Matthew 5:17-19. Please share it with Barr's slave and devotee, Williams. Perhaps after he reads it he will offer a salat to his savior Barr seeking his forgiveness and favor.

2:35 PM, February 03, 2012
otto said...

I have learned so much stuff from Sam's writings and the answering-islam site. Thank you Sam.

2:56 PM, February 03, 2012
otto said...

Here are some more quotes from a book i'm reading:

Contrary to the general Islamic view, the Qur'an does not accuse Jews and Christians of altering the text of their Scriptures, but rather of altering the truth which those Scriptures contain. The people do this by concealing some of the sacred texts, by misapplying their precepts, or by "altering words from their right position." However, this refers more to interpretation than to actual addition or deletion of words from the sacred books. Mahmoud Ayoud in Studies in Islamic and Judaic traditions (Atlanta; Scholars Press, 1986). 5

Many non-Muslims are still firmly of the belief that the Jews and Christians are accused in the Qur'an of having tampered with the texts of the revelations to the prophets now collected into the Old and New Testaments of their Bible. This is because they regularly encounter such charges in their reading. The accusation is a commonplace charge leveled against the people of the book by the Muslims, not, however, because of what the Quran says, but because of what the Muslims say the Quran says. In other words, it is mere exegesis. The Corruption of the Scriptures by John Burton in Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies 4 (1994). 95. [bold mine]

2:58 PM, February 03, 2012
otto said...

Few more:

The question which must be posed is whether it is possible to speak of the meanings of the Qur'an apart from what its readers or listeners have understood it to mean. In other words, is it possible to speak of "what the Koran says" apart from the tradition of Qur'anic commentary? Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Quran by Gordon Nickel (Brill: 2011) 8.

Surely one of the most important scholarly insights in the Qur'anic studies in recent years is that the style of the Qur'an is allusive and elliptical. The Qur'anic text frequently lacks words or units of information which might otherwise be considered essential to a clear expression of meaning. Muslims Scripture gives the impression of being addressed to an audience which could supply missing details to which the text only refers. Even narrative in the Quran is "often unintelligible without exegetical complement." [Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 131] In the case of the tampering verses, the reader usually encounters ambiguity about many parts of the sentence, including the identities of the subject and object, and the nature of the central action. [FN: the Qur'an almost never mentions by name those who ask, challenge, seek guidance, doubt, or abuse, which is one of the reasons the Qur'an has been named a 'text without a context' (Stefan Wild)] Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Quran by Gordon Nickel (Brill: 2011) 8.

Looks like Quran = man made tradition, or at least it is unintelligible without tradition. All those quotes came from a book I just rented which was recommended on the aomin blog. The title is Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qur'an by Gordon Nickel. So far I have only read the intro, first chap, and half of the second chapter, but while skimming through it, the Qur'an seriously seems like nothing more than a giantic polemic against Jews who did not want to follow Muhammad.

3:08 PM, February 03, 2012
Ken said...

Neat diagram. But to posit an "original text" like some sort of full Qur'an existed at the time of Muhammad seems wrong to me. Didn't all the compilers gather the Qur'anic saying from word of mouth, from bark, from very fallible memories, and from whatever else they could find?


Otto - you make a good point; originally it was all oral mostly and they were afraid that the Qara (those that cited the Qur'an out loud) were going to be killed in battle, and many already were killed in battles; and unless they wrote it all down, it would have been lost. This is brought out in the Hadith in Al Bukhari.

But, it does seem there was a lot of written down on pieces of materials at the time of Abu Bakr and Omar.

I think the diagram is just assuming something from the Muslim's point of view; or maybe it should have "oral reciting's" first, then something written down.

6:15 PM, February 03, 2012
Ken said...

Otto,
Thanks for the quotes on the Sana manuscripts! Indeed; Muslims don't seem to allow much open and free criticism of the Qur'an and letting the evidence decide.

6:22 PM, February 03, 2012
Ken said...

Thanks Sam,
Indeed, what Barr says in the quotes you gave goes against what he has been saying about Matthew 5:17-20.

Good work!

Have you read all of Barr's book?

I read some of it years ago in seminary, but confess I cannot remember much of it.

Please send me an email on other details of Barr's book, if you have anything significant that you want to share.

6:28 PM, February 03, 2012

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