ynquirer

The editorial review says the authors are a “professor emeritus of Religious Studies and the History of Christianty” and “an expert on the historical orthography of the Koran.” Neither one masters early mediaeval history, which is all the more convenient as they choose to ignore it. Certainly, if one wants the Koran to have been written about the end of the eighth century, one must per force rewrite the general history of the seventh and eighth centuries, or else ignore it at all.

Net2004

i think this copy and paste is relevant to this discussion
"So MY methodology in REFUTING Luxenberg is as follows:


1) Let it be known that Syriac did NOT beget Arabic, but Arabic came
from Nabataean (called "an-NabaTîyyah" in Arabic) which is an entirely
different language. This is testified to thoroughly in competent
scholarship and in the Arabic lexica both classical and modern. The
similarities between Arabic, Syriac are matters of COGNATES and not
Syriac parental etymons which trickled into the Qur'ân. An example of
a cognate is the English "petrify" which comes from the Greek "petros"
for stone, but NOT from the French "petrifier"! The French did not get
it from Anglo-Saxony, nor did the Anglo-Saxons get it from the French.
They both got it from Greek. What if I were to postulate that the King
James AV 1611 Bible was originally a French romance due to these
COGNATES? What if I said Shakespeare was actually a French
revolutionary writing perverted stories to destroy the rival England?
It would be utterly preposterous. The difference between cognates and
etymons MUST be understand or else you fall victim to a fancy
imagination. Luxenberg remains absolutely clueless in this issue.


2) Refute Luxenberg ANYWAYS using his OWN methodology. This is
achieved by proving that his usage of Syriac words is absolutely
erroneous. The words he claims have a different meaning in Syriac than
as used in the Qur'ân mean the SAME THING in both Syriac and in the
Qur'ân. I've done this above by showing that the Qur'ânic "qaswarah".
So even though the entire foundation of his theory is linguistically
and historically absurd, for the sake of argument I can destroy his
theories regarding the vocabulary of teh Qur'ân ANYWAYS using Syriac
(even though it's erroneous to use it). Had Luxenberg known Syriac
beyond a layman's level none of this would even be necessary to begin
with.


Either way, Luxenberg, Luling, Mingana, etc, all lose. "

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/soc...5c8f2bc?hl=en&

Huon

perhaps, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel.

Those interested could have a look at The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book (or via: amazon.co.uk)

http://debate.org.uk/topics/books/origins-koran.html

The author, Ibn Warrak has a description in wiki.

Clivedurdle

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...#ref=ref317120

This article goes on to describe the very different forms of Islam that evolved from Persia to Spain. It discusses the interactions of many different faiths and peoples.

There is a strong possibility that the koran is a political invention to unify hugely disparate people's and practices - including arabs becoming sedentary and adoption of pre islamic byzantine and other administrative systems.

It may be much later, with the typical back story of inventing how we got from this golden age of mo riding at midnight over Jerusalem to this late eighth century world wide empire that was not that unified.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Net2004,

You assume that the address "O Prophet" at 66.1 in the Koran is aimed at Muhammed. We should perhaps look at each time the Koran uses the term "O Prophet" and do a simple structural analysis to see if this is correct.

[4.79] [8.64] [8.65] [8.70] [9.73] [33.1][33.28] # [33.45]# [33.50][33.59] [60.12] [65.1] # [66.1] [66.9] If we look at, for example, the last time the phrase "O Prophet" is used (66.9), this is an exhortation to battle the unbelievers. This seems silly that the prophet should be given an exhortation. It is the pophet who should logically be giving the exhortation, not receiving it.

Now note that this is the kind of simple exhortation that we find with the phrase "O Man" in the Koran. Here are the three times the phrase "O Man" appears:

[4.79] [82.6] [84.6]
In all of these cases the sentences are simple and clear instructions to men in general. Contrast this with the lines where the term "O Prophet," appears; there, the exhortation seems bizarre and confusing. However, if we substitute the term "O Man" in all of them, it appears clear and natural. For example, in the case of 66.1

we may substitute "O Man" for "O Prophet" and get:

The sentence now makes clear sense. Men should follow the laws of God rather than seeking to please their wives.

The correctness of this substitution can be confirmed if we look a little further into the text:

Note that in 66.5, the narrator is address wives regarding divorcing their husbands. We may assume that the narrator started off in 66.1 by addressing husband with the term "O Man" regarding their wives.

Further, in 66.4, we have the phrase "If you both turn to Allah". This would make sense as a general suggestion to an every man and his wife. it does not make sense as private advice to a prophet, who, after all, is supposed to be giving marital advise to people, not receiving it.

The conclusion is that someone has gone through the koran at some point and substituted "O Prophet" for the phrase "O Man" in most cases. The reason for this change is obscure, but the result is clear. The text which is clear and simple when the original phrase "O Man" is in place, becomes confused and incoherent with the substitution.

We may conclude that the phrase "O Prophet," in verse 66.1 is not referring to Jesus Christ or Muhammed or any other prophet, but it has no reference at all. it is probably an accident scribal error or some kind of censorship mechanism to disguise the simple "O Man" reference.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

the_cave

I'm not sure what you mean by a "developed literary clone".

Possibly this could mean most of the Quran was indeed written by the Medina-prophet (my stand-in term for "Muhammad"), and lightly edited later.

I'm not certain Muslims think Jesus was Jewish in general--Arafat declared him a Palestinian, for example.

Again, I'm not saying there wasn't an Arab prophet from that region who wrote some or even most of the suras in the Quran. I'm just not sure his name was Muhammad (though it might have been), and I'm not sure he had as exalted a notion of himself as his followers did after his death. I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm saying this idea is intriguing enough to merit some attention.

the_cave

I'm not sure that "Christian sect" would be the best way to describe this proposed hybrid religion--it clearly was not about worship of Jesus or his divinity. But that would be enough to cause enmity with Christians. And the influences seem clear--at the very least, Christianity strongly influenced the early development of Islam. Islam seems to have put the emphasis back on the heavenly god, and made Jesus into a unique prophet, but technically only one among many. That would be enough for Christians to distinguish it as a separate religion.

Roger Pearse

This seems a little overstated, and the appeals to "competent scholarship" sound like a bluff to me.

Sebastian Brock, the great Syriac scholar of our days, does not know Arabic, but he is able to make himself understood in the Middle East by simply speaking Syriac to the Arabs that he comes across.

My limited Syriac is enough to discover that the two languages share an immense quantity of common features and vocabulary.

Whether that makes it more or less likely that Syriacisms are present in the Koran which were not part of Qureshi Arabic at the time I don't know, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse