Iasion

Greetings,

What's hilarious is that you preach faithful Muslims beliefs, without actually checking the facts.

For instance, you seem to have no knowledge of the changes to the Quran, the omissions, edits, burnings of old copies etc.

You even seem to really actually believe we have "original" MSS !

Incredible.


Iasion

WWJD4aKlondikeBar

I know I'm picking on you but you keep making it so easy by ignoring what people are saying. I will point it out again. If Mo was illiterate and God didn't write the book with some big Monty Python hand from the sky...then the Quran was written by somebody other than God or Mohammed! Now the next time you reply please acknowledge what I am saying to you and respond to it and not your equally mythical assesment of me and my mental state.

aguy2

I have been experiencing some difficulty re-referencing a passage where Gabriel relates that no man has ever had direct communication the 'Most High', but only through an annoited apostle, an authorized messager (like Gabriel), or "through the veil". My question involves the term, "through the veil"; how is term usually defined?

Insofar as this thread goes I think the supposed contradiction the ex-Xians in this forum are interested in involves the general Xian contention that Mary's Jesus is the "Son of God", and Gabriel's claim that this couldn't be true because God has no wife.

I have tried to explain to Xian friends that Gabriel clearly identifies Mary's Jesus as the "Christ", but they so identify "Christ" or "Savior" with "Son of God" they cannot see these are two different things.

I also tell them that all God need do to make any man his son is to say so, and that not even Gabriel had access to the "politics of heaven".

My personel best guess sees the possibility that Mary's Jesus represents a repentant satan. A repentant satan that had seduced all men except Job to curse God, but had in turn been manipulated to vow that it would seduce all, not all men except...

I would be presuming that part and parcel of the subsequent repentance would be what God the Father thought was appropriate restitution, and we see this restitution in the career of the Christ/Savior Mary's Jesus. What do you think?
aguy2

Blui

The Quran was compiled after Muhhamud died.
Narrated Zaid bin Thabit: Abu Bakr as-Siddiq sent for me when the people of Yamama had been killed. Then Abu Bakr said (to me): "You are a wise young man and we do not have any suspicion about you, and you used to write the Divine Inspiration for Allah's Apostle (saw). So you should search for (the fragmentary scripts of) the Qur'an and collect it (in one book)". By Allah! If they had ordered me to shift one of the mountains, it would not have been heavier for me than this ordering me to collect the Qur'an. Then I said to Abu Bakr, "How will you do something which Allah's Apostle (saw) did not do?" Abu Bakr replied "By Allah, it is a good project"
-Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, p.477

Note the bolded, it says explicitly that no collection of Muhammuds sayings was compiled (the Quran) by his own companions.
Also note, Abu Bakr is the first Caliphate, the firstleader of the Muslims after Muhammud died and the battle of Yamama was after Muhammud died.
So the Quran was created after Muhammud .
rofl, your own Muslim texts contradict you, see above.

Your own Hadiths contradict you, you should really read your own muslim texts, see above.

ROFL.
so let me get this straight, the Quran was copied on stones, leaflets, palm branches, leaves, scraps of leather.
And all of it was intact?
lol....

Sigh, so your replying to Iaisons argument.
'Other Qurans existed in the early days'
Lets look at your links.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Qur...raat/hafs.html
'How many 'versions' of the holy Quran is there today?'

So your first link doesnt address Iaison at all. Please stop googling and read your webpages.

"The majority of this collected verses met the criteria established by the Commission and there were a few that did not. They all were now superfluous. One of the criteria established by the Commission was that any verse that did not have the collaboration from another source, should be rejected. To keep such rejected verses within circulation would be to defeat the ultimate aim and purpose of this
and it's efforts. Hence, 'Uthman felt the need to destroy these superfluous copies of the verses and preserve the approved text from being tainted. "
-http://www.mostmerciful.com/reply-ans-islam.htm
Note the bolded, your website explicitly admits that there existed variant Qurans, your website deals with the issue of arguing that the Quran that Uthmun created was authentic in that it took away false verses and kept the true ones divine ones, but this is irrelevant to Iaisons claim that there did exist variants back then and your website admits it.

1.There existed no Quran when Muhammud was alive, so he could not ever have approved or authenticated the use of any Quran, see your own Hadiths above which i gave .

Your whole argument falls because you contradicted your own Hadiths.

Also note the bolded, youve got your Muslim history wrong.
it was not Muhammud->hafsha->Caliphates.
It was Caliphates->hafsha.

Then the complete manuscripts (copy) of the Qur'an remained with Abu Bakr till he died, then with Umar, till the end of his life, and then with Hafsa, the daughter of Umar. (Sahih al - Bukhari Vol. 6, p. 478).

Sigh, so your arguing against Iaisons claim that there existed variants even when and after Uthman standardised the Quran, look at your first link.

Even after the final recension of the Qur’an during Uthman’s reign disputes still came to the fore in respect to the authenticity of the text. A very good example concerns a variant reading of Surah 2 : 238 which, in the Qur’an as standardised by Uthman, that is, the Qur’an which stands today, reads : “Maintain your prayers, particularly the middle prayer (as - salaatil wustaa) and stand before Allah in devoutness”. The variant reading of this verse is given in this hadith :

Your website gives other examples of variants, your website supported Iaison

Your second website is obviously biassed because it cites no evidence, even verses from the Hadiths, it just states that Muhammuds companions memorized the entire Quran perfectly and completely.

"Historically, almost every Muslim scholar had the entire Noble Quran memorized by heart. If you live among Muslims or know well how the Muslims deal with the Noble Quran, then you would know that tampering with the Noble Quran is impossible among the Muslims. If someone recites the Noble Quran to the public (in the Mosque for instance) and makes a mistake, then he would find many who would correct him because they would have the entire Noble Quran memorized by heart."

But this is contradicted by your own hadiths, regarding its original compilation.
So I started looking for the Qur'an and collecting it from (what was written on) palm-leaf stalks, thin white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart, till I found the last verse of Surat at-Tauba (repentance) with Abi Khuzaima al-Ansari, and I did not find it with anybody other than him
-Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, p.478

PrimitiveFuture, please present your arguments yourself, and stop posting tons of googled website links because, as i have shown, your websites sometimes dont support you and support us or are wrong.

Roger Pearse

So, again, what do you mean by 'original' here?

I'd be interested. Few mss are carbon dated, though.

They have been scrutinized extensively and a "critical comparison" has been done before.
[/QUOTE]

I'm afraid that we need a bit more than your unqualified assertion, you know. Your comment raises several questions in my mind, of which these are the first couple:

1. You are not a scholar yourself, I presume, so you are presumably repeating something from somewhere. Would you identify the source on the basis of which you make this statement?

2. By whom, specifically, was this done, and what are their qualifications to do it? (Note that some Arab calling himself a scholar is not an answer, since this doesn't really convince anyone. This is not prejudice; merely an awareness of the low educational level of the Arab world. Such a study must be by someone qualified to do so).

3. In what peer-reviewed journal or series of monographs published in a major language of scholarship (Latin, English, French, German, Italian) does this study appear? (Because if it doesn't appear in any of these, it is reasonable to suppose that whoever it is is not familiar with work in these languages, and so is not familiar with the methods of editing a text developed over the last couple of centuries).

4. How many manuscripts were compared?

(You will appreciate that these are very simple questions, such as would be directed at anyone making any claim to a scholarly study of anything, and not specifically connected to the Koran).

I would again emphasise that I expect that the text is preserved fine for all reasonable purposes. I merely query the assertion that every single Koran today is identical. Is it also asserted that every copy of the Koran ever written has also been identical?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solo

Well, though my perspective is far removed from primitivefuture I do find this prejudicial and silly. There are many Arabic scholars (and they are scholars) who are non-fundamentalist in their approach to the text.

If the writer of this had a minimal, informed perspective on the textual issues of Quran he would not ask patently silly questions. Obviously, behind this call for a textual workshop is a rather simple-minded belief that the Christian and Islamic canon is basically identical in development, and therefore should be subject to the same redactional/form criticism and exegetical methodology. But, unfortunately, that is just not the case. While, the Christian Church took some three hundred years to assemble and ratify its canon, Islam had it done in twelve years. And while we have no clue - literally - what Jesus said and what was put in his mouth, and will therefore argue about it until kingdom come, there can be no rational doubt that the text of the Koran proceeds substantially from the recitations of Mohammed. No amount of foolish theorizing in which the 72 virgins actually refered to white raisins in some quasi-Nestorian scribbling from which Islam supposedly arose, will change anything on that.

Jiri

Solo

To answer the original question: Mohammed believed Jesus was a true prophet of God, but not his Son who died on the cross. As a result, theological clashes between Jesus and Mohammed occur in two places:

----
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Sura 112 God is One, the Eternal God. He begot none, nor was he begotten. None is equal to Him.
----
Mk 9: 31 For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.

Sura 4:157 They denied the truth and uttered a monstrous falsehood against Mary. They declared; "We have put to death the messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the apostle of God". The did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did. (or literally, 'he was made to resemble another for them'). Those that disagreed about him were in doubt concerning him; they knew nothing about him that was not sheer conjecture; they did not slay him for certain.
--------

Jiri

Julian

Roger's points are entirely pertinent (with the exception of his statement regarding the education level of Arab countries, which I doubt) and his list is a reasonable set of requests that I find it hard to believe hasn't already been done.

He did not ask for redactional or form criticism and he certainly did not imply that any form of exegesis should be done. All he asked about were the most basic of text critical requirements. This kind of study is necessary in order to make any type of statement regarding the status and the nature of transmission of the text. Your nonsensical reply show exactly why such an edition would be necessary. You assert but you are unable to produce a critical edition with which to back up those bizarre claims.

A critical edition does not address who originated the text nor the historical or philosophical reasons for its creation. It simply tracks variant readings, which are inevitable when books are copied by hand no matter how quickly it comes together.

It seems obvious that you have no idea what a critical edition actually is and your knee-jerk defensive reaction leaves me puzzled as to your position on this whole issue. It is also clear that you have no idea what Roger was talking about although his post was pretty straightforward.

Julian

Chili

Someone should have told Mohammed that Jesus died on the cross to set free the son of God who later became known as Christ.

Jesus is not Mary's son for Christ was the son of God and he was conceived in whe womb of Mary. Jesus was just the name given to the dual identity for as long as they were in conflict with each other, which was until the human nature of Jesus was crucified in effort to liberate Christ.

So let me say that Mohammed was not inspired or he would have known what the crucifixion was all about (it was actually Mary's idea to have Jesus crucified and appeared triumpantly to receive her son in "Mother, there is your son, son there is your mother.)"

Are Muslims blinder than blind?

Roger Pearse

I'm not sure why it is irrelevant to query the educational attainments of people coming from one of the areas of the world where illiteracy is highest, and which, during periods of near-total illiteracy, nevertheless claimed to produce scholars.

I do not say this as an excuse to dismiss scholars; I merely wish to verify that I am not being presented with some chap of less education than either of us as an authority. This could happen perfectly well in (e.g.) Iran, where the universities were closed and teaching placed in the hands of mullahs. I don't believe that I am alone in this concern. Nor will it be allayed by rhetoric; but by evidence of serious scholarship. There is, after all, no a priori reason why Moslems should not be capable of such scholarship.

I think perhaps we are at cross-purposes. I have no interest in these higher-order issues, and these questions are not specific to any book whatever, however transmitted. My question is more fundamental: "what exists?"

This is the sort of information that any modern Western critical edition of any text would tell me. It would present the text, with an apparatus of variants, and a list of all the manuscripts consulted, and methods of dating them, etc.

This is the information that I wish to see for the Koran, and I don't take very seriously the claim that no variants exist, in the absence of this information. Do you? Without this scientific study of the corpus of manuscripts of a text, no-one is entitled to pronounce authoritatively what that corpus contains. Surely?

I agree that the Koran as we have it is substantially what proceeded from the mouth of Mohammed; just as the NT is the same for Jesus and his apostles. Such is the nature of books, and we should not suppose corruption without reason (although we do have such reason for the Koran, thanks to the creation of a standard by Uthman, or so I am told; but I still doubt that he really interfered with it much).

But we are presented with a simple, testable statement: that all the mss of the Koran contain exactly the same words in the same order with the same spelling. Is it really so unreasonable to ask those who make this claim to substantiate it in an objective manner?

All the best,

Roger Pearse