Phoenix From Ashes

Can someone help me out with this subject?

It is quite easy to find website after website about the most ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and their variations on the Bible, but what about the Quran?

If anyone knows of some good books on Quranic textual criticism or of any good websites which lists the earliest manuscripts of the Quran (and more importantly lists any variations found between them), can you post them please?

Is there an "original" manuscript of the Quran?

Thanks!

wiccan windwalker

phoenix, I have tried to start threads like this, you wont get much input, atheists are fixated on and against Christianity only, though they will say otherwise....

Roger Pearse

This information has never been compiled in a scholarly manner, to the best of my knowledge. All the material that one sees online is derived from suspect sources. There is no comprehensive list of early mss. of the Koran.

I presume you mean a copy compiled by Mohammed? No. Indeed no autograph manuscript of any literary work exists before the 13th century. But there are some very early copies of the Koran, as might be expected for a 7th century text, written within the first century of its circulation. Indeed fragments of Korans in Kufic script from the following century are found for sale on the internet.

If any of what I have just said is mistaken, or someone knows a good reference, I would be most interested to hear about it.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Phoenix From Ashes

I sort of understand this "fixation" since, I would think, Christianity is the majority religion around most of the people who post here.

However, I think more attention should be paid to such a rising religion as Islam, especially with the radical elements being at least as nasty (and seemingly much more nasty to many westerners) than radical Christian elements.

Some good skeptical scholarship of the Quran seems much overdue, in spite of any perceived dangers. Though such scholarship may initially induce more radicalism among some of the uneducated (as well as some of the educated), it might eventually produce a moderating effect of sorts that would mellow the more radical branches.

Roger Pearse

I believe scholars in the field routinely receive death-threats.

The lack of any proper studies means that Moslems routinely claim that all copies of the Koran are identical (most unlikely; but how do they know, in the absence of any studies) and then adopt the most obscurantist forms of atheist polemic against the bible (or any other text) on the basis that of course it doesn't apply to their Koran.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Phoenix From Ashes

I find this absolutely amazing, especially with the knowledge and scholarship that once (admittedly long ago) played such a significant role in Arab society. On the other hand, criticism of religious texts seems to really only have begun as a science (art?) a mere 3 centuries or so ago.

I dearly hope that more research is done. I would love to be able to pick up a critical edition of the Quran and note the variances between collated manuscripts.

Yes, that is what I meant. I could swear having read on some Islamic website once that there was an original somewhere, though I must admit being quite skeptical of the claim at the time.

Interesting. The only things of interest, so far, that I have been able to glean from google searches are the following pages:

Single images of early manuscripts (w/ some approximate dates). I do not know if the first one listed as 1AH is actually the earliest known, but it seems to be.
http://www.usna.edu/Users/humss/bwhe...ran_index.html

Rather a jumble of information on this website, and it is difficult to know how far to trust it.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/

I sincerely hope that someone else has some good information that they can share on the subject. In fact, it would be great if there was some way to create a research project of sorts to bring this information freely to the internet (if it is not already there).

wiccan windwalker

phoenix......its psyhcological really, really it is....no one is all that interested in debunking Islam, or at least spending a lot of resources to do so, because they know Islam isnt trrue, on the other hand, Christianity....I know some atheists who have spent thousands of dollars buying Bible encyclopedias, concordances and commentaries, so they can study the Bible more.....its kind of humorous when you think about it, almost as if God gets the last laugh! seriously, you will find very very little skeptical work on Islam.

Roger Pearse

Not least because (a) you need good Arabic (b) good oriental languages (c) bravery and (d) to be either very obsessed or very bitter. Few westerners command all these qualifications. I'd be somewhat tempted (as a manuscripts person) but I really don't think that I'll ever learn Arabic. (Depends how I find Syriac, which I'm going to have a go at).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Blui

Yes there are some works, even online, that give a critical analysis of Islam, there are works by academics on the Quran.

The one i am most acquinted with is by Arthur Jeffery who was a professor of semitic languages.

He wrote a book 'Materials for the history of the text of the Qur'an: the old codices and The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an'

Some other works are by Theodor Noldeke and David Samuel Margoliouth, although all these people did it awhile ago, when there was very little political and life-threatening pressure not to do it, as there is today.

It is not hard to find websites that go into an analysis of the Quran, which should be sufficient, although these websites are considered to be Islamophobic.

For example, this site, hosts much of Arthur Jeffery's material.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Jeffery/index.htm

Phoenix From Ashes

Many seem to "know" that Judaism and Christianity aren't "true", but that doesn't stop them from investigating. Their reasons for doing so seem mainly to be the "debunking" of these religions so that their own political views will prevail in their countries, but that is just an opinion.

They may not be interested now, but as Islam grows in this country (as it currently is), they will find that they are quite behind and becoming submerged under a flood that they cannot stem or even slow because they do not understand it.