Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Net2004 · 11-23-2008, 01:02 PM

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/1...scription.html

Quote:

Nov. 18, 2008 -- An Arabic traveler who engraved his name on a block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago may help solve a question about the Qur'an that has vexed historians for hundreds of years: Why was the text seemingly written without diacritical marks?

Diacritical marks, which include accent marks, tildes, umlauts and other notations, help to distinguish one letter from another and aid in pronunciation. When added or removed, they can completely change the meaning of a word or sentence.

Analysis of the recently found sandstone inscription, which predates the earliest known copies of the Qur'an, determined that it reads: "In the name of Allah/ I, Zuhayr, wrote (this) at the time 'Umar died/year four/And twenty."

According to researcher Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban, who, with his wife, discovered the 644 A.D. inscription northwest of Saudi Arabia, "It is an immensely important find, since it is our earliest dated Arabic inscription."

Ghabban, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, added that it also "shows evidence of a fully-fledged system of diacritical marks."

Toto · 11-23-2008, 01:30 PM

The significance of this is that Western interpreters of the Qur'an assume that there were no diacritical marks, and that marks can be supplied which lead to different meanings. This means that Qur'anic criticism will have less flexibility in finding nice sounding interpretations, which favors the fundamentalists.

Is it a coincidence that this was discovered by a fundamentalist Saudi, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

penguinfan · 11-24-2008, 08:14 PM

What early copies of the Qur'an are from 650-680? Are they actually complete?

Edit: Apparently the Sanaa manuscripts date back that early.

avi · 11-25-2008, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the Atlantic Monthly

they were also palimpsests—versions very clearly written over even earlier, washed-off versions.

But, what if the earlier "version" was simply a collection of financial records, or poetry, or drawings of bird life? As Toto has suggested in another thread, the ratio of radioactive 14C to non-radioactive 12C, yielding a date, expressed in years before the current date, refers NOT to the date of composition of the Quranic verses, but to the date of the living papyrus.
Perhaps xray or infrared photography would reveal the nature of the "even earlier, washed-off versions."

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11-23-2008, 01:30 PM	#2
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	The significance of this is that Western interpreters of the Qur'an assume that there were no diacritical marks, and that marks can be supplied which lead to different meanings. This means that Qur'anic criticism will have less flexibility in finding nice sounding interpretations, which favors the fundamentalists. Is it a coincidence that this was discovered by a fundamentalist Saudi, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

11-24-2008, 08:14 PM	#3
penguinfan Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: DeKalb, Illinois Posts: 27	What early copies of the Qur'an are from 650-680? Are they actually complete? Edit: Apparently the Sanaa manuscripts date back that early.

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