The Origins of the Quran

From this weekend's WSJ:

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

Read the whole thing. Spengler comments here. You can find Toby Lester's fantastic Atlantic piece on the "sensitive business" of Quranic interpretation here.

Comments

As a Muslim, I don't understand this completely. The fact is that there have been copies of the Quran dictated and written as the revelation progressed by the Prophet. Omar, when he became Khalif, had all the seperate texts brought to the Khalifs home and a single critical edition issued.

The Spengler comment itself was puzzling because it postulates that the Quran was what: written in another language? Put together out of old testement texts?

Islamically: the Quran is a continuation of divine revelation that began in the Torah, the Palsms of David, Sulimean, and then the Gospels of Jesus. These have been changed by man over time, so God sent down the Quran to Muhammed as furthur revelation. It is true that the Quran is one of the miracles of the prophet: there is in fact a direct challenge to mankind to produce the equivalent of a single ayah. Something that has never been done.

I welcome this text and hope it will be released to the world at large because I am secure in my faith in the word of Allah. But how this is some sort of Islamic Da Vinci code is beyond me.

Everyone knows the Quran constantly refers to previous revelation and at times corrects it: as in the birth of Christ and his death (we don't believe he died) and eventual return.

Anyway, I rambling. But thanks for the post. I've never heard of this Quran archive and hope they'll post the photographs of the texts. The Quran is in Arabic and the langauge hasn't changed beyond the addition of tas'kel (markings indicating pronunciation).

Posted by Amina | January 14, 2008 4:30 PM

Doubtless conservative Muslims will dismiss this scholarship as the efforts of a bunch of Dan Browns and Elaine Pagelses.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | January 14, 2008 4:44 PM

Following C.S. Lewis, I pay scant attention to these historical/theological matters, which actually require considerable scholarly knowledge to understand. I'm actually sympathetic to Amina who is faithful to his Koran.

Better for the faithful to follow their religious tradition as devoutly as possible and leave the difficult questions for the qualified scholars. Oh, the horror of such an abject position for a modern wise-ass.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | January 14, 2008 5:11 PM

Better for the faithful to follow their religious tradition as devoutly as possible and leave the difficult questions for the qualified scholars.

Better for the mysteries to be rolled back.

Posted by JA | January 14, 2008 5:53 PM

Amina,

You write, "The Quran is in Arabic and the langauge hasn't changed beyond the addition of tas'kel (markings indicating pronunciation)."

I believe that the gravamen of the charges is that credible evidence can be shown that this is not true. Can you respond to that? I know nothing, really, other than what I read in essay like this one and the one from the Atlantic. What would happen if it could be shown, say, that the Koran originally was partially in Syriac and that it lifted portions from earlier Christian devotional texts? At least a few serious scholars seem to think this is true. Can this idea even be entertained in Islam? And another question, probably more important in the long run: Can Islam tolerate historical-critical investigation into the Koran?

Again, my questions are naive ones. Sorry if I sound stupid (all too common).

Posted by Brent | January 14, 2008 6:01 PM

Interesting, Peter Leavitt. Is it accurate to say that you agree with Luke Timothy Johnson on that count? Also, how do you choose which religion to follow?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | January 14, 2008 6:06 PM

Personally, I follow the Episcopalian religion of my forbears as devoutly as possible and prefer not to do any navel-searching as to the true religion; also, I have scant interest in following the faux secular political religion of our time, which tends in the long run to cynicism and despair.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | January 14, 2008 7:09 PM

Leavitt,

I believe that Amina is a girl's name, but not sure.

Posted by Hector | January 14, 2008 7:50 PM

Thanks for responding, Peter.

May I ask why you've chosen to stick with the religion of your forbears? Please don't answer if that seems like prying. I grew up without religion and am curious as to how this works, and am not trying to evangelize or criticize.

I have to admit I don't know exactly what you are referring with your "the faux secular political religion" statement; do you mean nationalism?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | January 14, 2008 8:31 PM

In reality Peter Leavitt has considered leaving his Episcopal crib, most likely because the Episcopalians haven't been sufficiently brutal towards homosexuals recently. From Petey's own fingers:

"Of course, Father Neuhaus wisely (and no doubt, sadly) departed from his crater to a sunlit ancient field, despite it's occasionally egregious historical clouds. Personally, as a lifelong Episcopalian, I'm trying to muster the courage to do the same. What holds me back is the pain it would cause my family.

Posted by: Peter Leavitt | May 14, 2006 12:45:07 PM"

Then again, perhaps I have misinterpreted this, and Petey just wants to come out of the closet or get a sex change or something.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 14, 2008 9:40 PM

Moe,

It's not necessarily the homnosexuality issue. Over the last two decades the leadership of the Episcopal Church in America has trampled so much of traditional Christian belief through the mud. The current head of the Episcopal Church said on a national radio show that she had no idea what happens after you die. She refused to state clearly that she believes that Jesus Christ is the vehicle of salvation. The Episcopal Church has had (female) priests who defend abortion as the right thing to do. The "Bishop" Spong has publicly stated that he doesn't believe in a personal God, and yet he has the gall to continue to wear the same priestly uniform that was worn by men such as St. Augustine, St. Francis and St. Stephen. Episcopal priests have said that Muhammed was a messenger of God in the same way as Jesus and other similar concessions to indifferentism. Heaven only knows how many Episcopal priests today really believe in Hell, the Devil, the Virgin Birth, and other basic premises.

I'm still (by inheritance and by self-definition) an Anglican, and the direction of the Episcopal Church both saddens and angers me. At least I'm happy that there are alternative branches of Anglicanism in America for less 'modernistic' believers like me. Don't ever believe that this is about homosexuals. It's about much much more.

Posted by Hector | January 14, 2008 10:21 PM

Hector writes: "Heaven only knows how many Episcopal priests today really believe in Hell, the Devil, the Virgin Birth, and other basic premises."

This is the problem you face when you hire educated priests, Hector. Some of them may actually turn out to be rational.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 14, 2008 10:30 PM

Brent, here is a quote from wikipedia that addresses some of what you are discussing.

In the 7th century AD, the Arabic alphabet is attested in its classical form. See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic writing.

In the 7th century AD, probably in the early years of Islam while writing down the Qur'an, it was realized that deciding by context in each case did not solve all the various ambiguities that resulted when reading Arabic text, and a proper cure was needed. Writings in the Nabataean and Syriac alphabets already had sporadic examples of dots being used to distinguish letters which had become identical, for example as in the table on the right. By analogy of this, a system of dots was added to the Arabic alphabet to make enough different letters for Classical Arabic's 28 phonemes. Sometimes the resulting new letters were put in alphabetical order after their un-dotted originals, and sometimes at the end.

The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April, AD 643. The dots did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts like the Qur'an were frequently memorized; this practice, which survives even today, probably arose partially to avoid the great ambiguity of the script, as well as the scarcity of books in times when printing was unheard-of and every copy of every book had to be written by hand.

The alphabet then had 28 letters, and so could be used to write the numbers 1 to 10, then 20 to 100, then 200 to 900, then 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In this numerical order, the new letters were put at the end of the alphabet. This produced this order: alif (1), b (2), j (3), d (4), h (5), w (6), z (7), H (8), T (9), y (10), k (20), l (30), m (40), n (50), s (60), ayn (70), f (80), S (90), q (100), r (200), sh (300), t (400), sh (500), kh (600), dh (700), D (800), Z (900), gh (1000).

The lack of vowel signs in Arabic writing created more ambiguities: for example, in Classical Arabic ktb could be kataba = "he wrote" or kutiba = "it was written". Later, vowel signs and hamzas were added, beginning some time in the last half of the sixth century, at about the same time as the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots gave tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabic_alphabet

I don't know a lot about this but I do know that the tashkeel (the use of dots to distinguish letters) is one of the only changes from the original text in terms of appearance. This was done as the written language evolved for clarification in pronunciation and to retain meaning.

The text of the Quran itself is unchanged and memorization of the entire Quran is done to guard against errors.

As for stories: the Quaran has a number of stories from previous times not found in the Old or New Testament and if similar stories were found I would not be at all surprised. A frequent refrain found in the Quran is that "these are stories of people that have passed" and the like...so actually that would serve to affirm my faith.

I'm sorry to get back to you so late, I hope you see this.

Posted by Amina | January 14, 2008 10:40 PM

Both Lester and Spengler's assertions have been thoroughly debunked.
See:
http://www.theinimitablequran.com/sanafind.html
The traditional Islamic viewpoint is subscribed to by the vast majority of Western scholarship, and Puin (Variant Qurans) and Crone (fictional Muhammad pbuh)have themselves admitted that their original theories were completely off-base.

Posted by Muhammed | January 14, 2008 11:02 PM

Moe,

If any man believes that 'rationality' requires him to abandon belief in the Resurrection, the consubstantial Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the literal Hell, the Devil, etc. Then he should stop being a priest post-haste. A priest who has lost his faith is like a baseball player who loses his legs in a car crash. It should be _the_ prime criterion to be an Anglican priest that you believe, at the very least, in supernatural realities.

Actually, believing in the Virgin Birth is no more irrational than believing in liberal democracy.

Posted by Hector | January 14, 2008 11:24 PM

Hector writes: "If any man believes that 'rationality' requires him to abandon belief in the Resurrection, the consubstantial Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the literal Hell, the Devil, etc. Then he should stop being a priest post-haste. A priest who has lost his faith is like a baseball player who loses his legs in a car crash. It should be _the_ prime criterion to be an Anglican priest that you believe, at the very least, in supernatural realities."

Aw, heck, Hec - if every priest who woke up and realized he was a snakeoil salesman up and quit, you'd really have a priest shortage. Besides, they don't want to give up all of that desperate housewife poontang.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 2:11 AM

Muhammed and Amina,

Thanks for your responses.

Can you address the claims of Christoph Luxenberg?

He would put a serious qualification on your claims that "all" Western scholars accept the Muslim view of the origins of the Koran. What does that mean any way? Surely not that every scholar accepts that the Koran came down from heaven, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Luxenberg

Posted by Brent | January 15, 2008 8:14 AM

I notice that even in a thread about the credibility of the Koran, MLJ only has (extremely juvenile) bad things to say about Christianity. Another phony, like most of them. Scratch a liberal atheist, find an anal-retentive with a Jesus complex.

Posted by Deuce | January 15, 2008 9:38 AM

Brent, I read through your Luxenberg link. I don't feel qualified to address the linguistic issues but the idea that the Quran was the work of several generations is false. Over a period of I believe 23 years the verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet and then he transmitted this revelation to the people around him. The verses were memorized and concurently written down by scribes. The Khalif Omar took the the various texts of the Quran found across the empire as the Muslim ummah expanded and had a single text made and copied and sent to governors across Muslim lands to prevent loose scholarship.

The Quran was of a type of poetry never encountered and is held as a standard in Arabic literature, secularly.

The verses discussed events that happened during the life or the Prophet and situations encountered by the Muslims. Several commandments were abrogated; for example alchol was consumed during the Prophet's time and by the Prophet's companions until a revelation forbidding it came down. So I don't find it credible that the Quran was the work of any human. It was divinely inspired to the Prophet Muhammed. The stories and parables in the Quran do in fact reference stories that are actually gone today that happened in the past and the Old and New Testement consciously...being a continuation of revelation.

I hope that answers something of what you sought.

Posted by Amina | January 15, 2008 11:00 AM

Douche writes: "I notice that even in a thread about the credibility of the Koran, MLJ only has (extremely juvenile) bad things to say about Christianity. Another phony, like most of them. Scratch a liberal atheist, find an anal-retentive with a Jesus complex."

Since I was just responding to others who brought up Christianity first, Douchie, you have no complaint. Especially since your own post had jackshit to do with the Koran. I'll just add you to the list of morons who have some odd obsession with my posts, since this is the second one of yours I've answered today - and you don't seem to have anything to say about anything else.

I guess you have a MoeLarryAndJesus complex.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 11:12 AM

Luxenberg strikes me as an intellectually shallow publicity seeker. Virgins and Raisins? -- get real. Patricia Crone "Hagarism" was far more provocative, radical, and challenging to orthodox muslims. And she's much less a self-pitying character.

Amina -- Read Toby Lester's article (its pre-9/11, so not suffused with the idiocy of post-9/11 American analysis of Islam). The exact preservation of the Quran from revelation to today is the Muslim belief (dating from only the 10th centruy CE), but it may not be true.

Posted by Irfan | January 15, 2008 11:42 AM

u stink

Posted by fifi | April 30, 2008 4:49 PM

u stink

Posted by fifi | April 30, 2008 4:49 PM

u stink

Posted by fifi | April 30, 2008 4:49 PM