Chapter 3.8.Origins of the Quran?
1.STANDARD ISLAMIC NARRATIVE (sin) ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE QURAN.
What is the Islamic traditional narrative about the origin of the Quran?
- During the 23 years of Muhammad's time as a prophet, the verses of the Quran were memorized as they were revealed, and about 42 scribes wrote the verses on different materials such as paper, cloth, bone fragments and leather. (In ancient times, literacy was a skill that few people had and Muhammad himself did not know how to read or write.)
- Then (that's how the story continue) ... During the time of Caliph Abu Bakr, after 70 people who knew the Quran by heart (qari), were killed in the Battle of Yamama, Umar ibn al-Khattab became concerned and appealed to Abu Bakr to compile the Quran into a book.
- Abu Bakr formed a delegation under the leadership of Zaid ibn Thabit, one of the leading scribes. This delegation of 12 people came together in Umar's house and collected all the materials on which verses from the Quran were written.
- In addition, the verses memorized by the companions were heard as well.
- Then all the verses of the Quran that describe the creation of the universe and people, judgment day, exemplary stories of the people who lived before and the beliefs, worship, morals, and legal bases that believers should obey, were collected into a single-volume book.
- Each of the verses was exactly as taught by the archangel Gabriel and declared by Prophet Muhammad. (The verse is the name given to each sentence of the Quran and the surah is the name given to each part of the holy book. There are 6,236 verses (or is it 6666), 114 surahs and about 323,000 letters in the Quran.
- Saeed ibn al-Aas wrote them down on gazelle skin. The writing used was the Arabic script of the time, which was already old and used commonly at that time in Hejaz.
- The copy of the Quran was recited to the companions at a general meeting. There was no objection. So, a book called "Mushaf" emerged, which means written verses.
- A total of 33,000 companions agreed that every letter of the Quran was in the right place.
- Each verses was exactly as taught by the archangel Gabriel and declared by Prophet Muhammad.
It’s just amazing how Muslims just belief this without asking true questions. Without questioning any of the variabilities possible in such a narrative or ‘story’...
Or are Muslims not allowed to ask - questions that need answers that are acceptable for a thinking mind; for people that use their heads and have common sense...
2. What researchers found about the Origins of the Quran?
May be a good starting point would be to get acquainted with Isa al-Warraq and his many research work and books.
Who is Ibn Warraq? He is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism.
Warraq is the Vice-President of the World Encounter Institute.
Ibn Warraq is called by some the Godfather of the Ex-Muslim Movement. As a modern scholar of the Quran and critic of Islam, Ibn Warraq, derives his pseudonymous name from al-Warraq or Abu 'Isa al-Warraq, full name Abu 'Isa Muhammad ibn Harun al-Warraq, a 10th-century Arab skeptic scholar and critic of Islam.
The Ibn Warraq of today is a Islamic scholar and a leading figure in Qur’anic criticism and was a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry.
He is the
author of many books, including What the Qur’an Really Says (Prometheus Books,
2002) and Which Koran? Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics. You can find more of
Ibn's writings on his Facebook Page.
In his very informative Book The Origins of
the Koran, Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book by Ed. Ibn Warraq. Prometheus
Books, his introduction reads as follows... “The stereotypic image of the
Muslim holy warrior with a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other would
only be plausible if he was left-handed, since no devout Muslim should or would
touch a Koran with his left hand which is reserved for dirty chores. All
Muslims revere the Koran with a reverence that borders on bibliolatry and
superstition. "It is," as Guillaume remarked, "the holy of
holies. It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one
must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened
to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster."
-
In some Westerners it engenders other emotions. For Gibbon it was an
"incoherent rhapsody of fable," for Carlyle an "insupportable
stupidity," while here is what the German scholar Salomon Reinach thought:
"From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation,
repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared
reader at every turn.
-
It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre
literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions
of men are still wasting time absorbing it."
For us in studying the Koran it is necessary to distinguish the historical from the theological attitude. We should only be concerned with those truths that are yielded by a process of rational enquiry, by scientific examination. "Critical investigation of the text of the Quran is a study which is still in its infancy," wrote the Islamic scholar Arthur Jeffery in 1937.
In 1977 John Wansbrough noted that "as a document susceptible of analysis by the instruments and techniques of Biblical criticism [the Quran] is virtually unknown."
By 1990, more than fifty years after Jeffery’s lament, we still have the scandalous situation described by Andrew Rippin: “I have often encountered individuals who come to the study of Islam with a background in the historical study of the Hebrew Bible or early Christianity, and who express surprise at the lack of critical thought that appears in introductory textbooks on Islam. The notion that "Islam was born in the clear light of history" still seems to be assumed by a great many writers of such texts. While the need to reconcile varying historical traditions is generally recognized, usually this seems to pose no greater problem to the authors than having to determine "what makes sense" in each situation.
To students acquainted with approaches such as source criticism, oral formulaic compositions, literary analysis, and structuralism, all quite commonly employed in the study of Judaism and Christianity, such naïve historical study seems to suggest that Islam is being approached with less than academic cantor.
The questions any critical investigation of the Koran should answer are:
1. How did the Koran come to us? —That is the compilation and the transmission of the Koran.
2. When was it written, and who wrote it?
3. What are the sources of the Koran? Where were the stories, legends, and principles that abound in the Koran acquired?
4. What is the Koran? Since there never was a textus receptus no variator of the Koran, we need to decide its authenticity.
If you really want to know the factual truth, welcome to study this article further yourself.
3. Critical Question from Dr. Taha Hussein
After Uthman completed his Quran, he forced all the Islamic countries to have one Quran - and banned all other codices. He finished the matter by burning all other codices of the Quran. (Read more here)
Dr. Taha Hussein, a well-known author, college professor, and minister of education in Egypt, wrote in his book Al- Fitnato Al-Korba (The Great Sedition):
The prophet Muhammad said: "The Quran was revealed in seven dialects all of them are right and perfect." When Uthman banned whichever, he banned from the Quran, and burned whichever he burned of it, he banned passages Allah has revealed and burned parts of the Quran which were given to the Muslims by the messenger of Allah. He appointed a small group of the Sahaba (close friends of Muhammad) to rewrite the Quran and left out those who heard the prophet and memorized what he said. Therefore, Ibn Massoud was angry, because he was one of the best men who memorized the Quran. He said that he took from the mouth of the prophet seventy suras of the Quran while Zaid Ibn Sabit was yet a young lad.
Ibn Massoud objection to the burning of the other codices of the Quran.
What was the response to Ibn Massoud objection? Uthman took him out of the mosque with violence, and struck him to the ground, and broke one of his ribs (Read more about it here).
4. Where is the Origins of the Quran according to Dan Gibson?
Dan Gibson, historian, and author has been studying the earliest evidence of the origins of Islam and the Quran.
The disclosure of these discoveries of Dan Gibson are rewriting the history of Islam. Al Fadi and Dr. Jay Smith conclude their discussion of these discoveries, and how this are rewriting the history of Islam (Look video here).
Specifically in this episode Al Fadi and Dr. Jay Smith discuss the origin and history of the Quran in its earliest versions, along with the biography of Muhammad and the Hadith.
They also explore the origin of the name of Allah. Did the name originate with the god Dushara and his wife Al-Lat?
Muslims are taught that Mecca is the historical home of Muhammad and Islam began from there. Evidence, however, points to another origin, the ancient city of Petra. (Later more)
5. The Original Sources Of The Qur'an: Its Origin In Pagan Legends and Mythology.
(The Title of the Book by W St Clair Tisdall)
- Which of these were his own invention, which of them were derived from earlier systems?
- To what extent had he the means of learning the teachings of those who professed other religions than his own?
- If he borrowed from other systems, what particular parts of the Qu'ran can be traced to such sources?
- How much of the Qur'an is due to the character of Muhammad himself and the circumstances of his time?
6.New Discoveries about the Origin of the Quran
During 2021 Dr Jay Smith from Pfander Films came up with a lot of new information (discoveries) about their research - one is about looking for historical Mecca.
In their last newsletter for 2021 Dr Jay reveals the following...
Mecca just didn’t exist! Why? Because it’s in a desert, with no water, no food, no people; thus NO HISTORY! (You can read more about this in Chapter 7.4)
The other very important Discovery during 2021 that Dr Jay revealed is about the Origin of the Quran...
The Qur’an was originally made up of Christian Lectionaries, Hymns, and Homilies!
In the last few weeks another perhaps even more exciting discovery has come to light, and this one has to do with the Qur’an, and two books which suggest that the Qur’an may have come from Christian Aramaic sources (see the picture above)
CLICK HERE to watch my recent talk on these two books.
At the end of the last century, a German scholar named Dr Gunther Luling discovered that while leafing through the Qur’an he came across beautiful poetry which looked familiar to him as a Syriac scholar. When he removed the dots and vowels from the script (known as the 'Harakat' and 'I'jam' in Arabic), he then replaced them with Aramaic dots and vowels and found out that the poems were identical to 5th – 6th century Christian hymns written in Syro-Aramaic and used for worship by Christians of that time and of that place.
Another Aramaic scholar, Dr Christoph Luxenberg, building upon Dr Luling’s findings, decided to go even further by researching the ‘dark passages’ in the Qur’an. These constitute about 25% of the Qur’an made up of words, phrases, letters, and even whole verses which make no sense to an Arabic speaking scholar today, and have been a mystery for academics for over 1400 years.
Using a 7-step process of textual elimination Luxenberg was able to uncover all 25% of these dark passages by recreating their original texts in Syro-Aramaic.
What was most startling was that he found all of these supposed unreadable texts could be traced back to pre-Islamic Christian Syro-Aramaic lectionaries, as well as homilies, sermons, poems and hymns. And even more exciting…they were all about Jesus!
By referring to the original Aramaic script he was able to find some alarming discoveries.
For instance, when we observe the Qur’anic stories about what men will find in Paradise, we are told that there will be virginal women, called ‘Houris’, waiting on them (Surahs 55, 56 & 78). But when Luxenberg traced the word ‘Houris’ in the Aramaic, he noticed they really mean ‘grapes’, not women, suggesting that all of these suicidal Muslims who have been blowing themselves up over the last few years will be surprised that they did it for a bunch of grapes!
Dr Jay reported as follows: This new discovery has been so exciting that it has gone viral on my Pfanderfilms site. In the past few weeks I have uploaded 11 films unpacking the research itself with our German Scholar Thomas Alexander, and already almost 380,000 people have watched them, all in just a month, a new record for Pfanderfilms!
CLICK HERE to go to the video Dr Jay uploaded at the end of 2021 about this new research information.
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