Loading...My high school debate colleague (who later became a national debate champion as a sophomore in college…) used to always say: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” Boy did he ever get that right. Here’s another post connected with the Quran. The post is NOT dealing with anything at all negative with Islam or the Quran itself. It’s about horrible arguments that people make about it. They are right down there on the ridiculousness-scale as those fundamentalists sometimes make about Christianity and the New Testament. As I point out in this republished post from years ago.
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I’m always puzzled about why smart people make (and believe) such stupid arguments. We see this all the time, of course, in political discourse and family disagreements, not to mention department meetings, but since my field is religious studies I hear it the most in connection with the great religions of the world. Actually, I guess I find it less puzzling than aggravating.
A lot of conservative Christians
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Good post. Thanks
My favorite response is “we can only understand God’s word when we have God’s spirit in our hearts”. Not quite as good as “the Bible is true because it says it is true” but close.
Over two million dollars this blog has generated for those in need and your kitchen needs renovation. Don’t tell me you are not one of God’s own!
Well, I hope God’s on your side with that one… 🙂
You can find all sort of bizarre arguments in all different communities in all different times. For example, one of my teachers in school believed that the water of Zamzam (the well in Mecca) is coming miraculously from heaven. Also, there were many Westerners who thought that injecting disinfectants could cure covid-19. So, this is a cross-boundary problem.
However, this problem can be solved (or softened) by the awareness and training on recognizing the main-used logical fallacies; because bizarre arguments are actually based on clear vivid logical fallacies.
The reason for some Muslims thinking that the preservation of the Quran is miraculous is due to Quran 15:9 where there was a promise to preserve the Quran, and some people “thought” that this preservation requires a miraculous intervention. But this is not in the text, and the preservation of the Quran could be explained logically.
The recognized Scholars (ancient and current) never used the argument {The Quran is preserved therefore the Quran is the word of God}. There were many other arguments for the Quran, but the previous one is not among them.
I would like to ask about the 500k difference in the 5k Greek Manuscripts, which is a subject that was mentioned here in this post.
Let us suppose we have 5k Greek NT Books and all of them are Identical except in the Gospel of Matthew.
Let us suppose the difference between each book and the other book is just 100 unique words (which are located in the Gospel of Matthew). Therefore, the count of differences in these books is 500k. This value might seems gigantic but if we realized that the % of agreement for these books is more than 90% (1 – 18346/184600), then the 500k difference is actually misleading.
So, my questions here:
1# What is the % of agreement (if this is an accurate term) for these 5k Greek Manuscripts?
2# What terms/parameters (other than the word difference) do Scholars count in their statistical analysis of these Manuscripts?
3# I did search the net for articles about the statistical methodology and findings related to these 5k Manuscripts, but couldn’t find any, So, where could we find these articles?
It will be great if you can shed some light on this subject.
% agreement, as it turns out, is a hugely subjective question. It all depends on how you count. Those 100 words might be recorded in 800 different ways, and they may involve phrases as well as words, along with verb tenses, missing letters, reorderings and so on in various phrases etc. etc.. So is it 100 or 800 or something else?? Different answers are all possible and all possibly right.
As a Muslim myself, I completely agree with you here. That brother needs to chill out.
Hi bart
There was a study done by Colin Humphreys, where he analysed possible dates of the crucifiction on the bases of lunar eclipses. He analysed diffrent possiblities and found out that the crucifiction happened on 3 aprill 33AD friday 14 Nissan. Could he predict the jewish calander that well that he could say that 3 aprill was 14 Nissan and if so could he say that there was a visible lunar eclipse, there was one eclipse acording to nasa. He also said that the lunar eclipse happened at the rising of the moon at 6.20 pm and ended 6.40. How could he know that?
Here is the study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265114769_The_Jewish_Calendar_A_Lunar_Eclipse_and_the_Date_of_Christ's_Crucifixion
It must have been solar eclipses? In any event, yes, all that is completely hopeless for scores of reasons, among them the idea that the world really did go dark when Jesus died.
Forgive me, Bart, for making a comment not directly related to the topic of this post. I was wondering whether you’re aware of the recent book God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss? I learned of it through Brent Nongbri’s blog: see https://brentnongbri.com/2024/04/28/moss-gods-ghostwriters/.
I haven’t read the book, but from Brent’s review (which is highly complimentary) it seems quite relevant to issues of authorship, authenticity, pseudepigraphy, textual variation, etc., about which you’ve written a lot.
Yes, I did a recent podcast with her about it. (see my Misquoting Jesus Podcast if you’re not familiar with it)
Cool, I’ll check it out. Thanks.
> there are millions of copies of Das Kapital, and Mein Kampf, and The Wealth of Nations, and The Art of
> the Deal, and and and. Would any sane person argue that the fact we have copies that are all the
> same is evidence that each and every one of them must therefore be true?
No, but “The Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776, is surely one of the most insightful books that has ever been written. Who can read sentences like
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
and not see parallels in today’s world? An odd choice to wedge between “Mein Kampf” and “The Art of the Deal”. Incidentally, the Wealth of Nations went through many editions, five during Smith’s life time, and many copies were not the same.
True, and very helpful, Bart.
Though, if the accurate transmission of the Qur’an is not a ‘living miracle’ but due to ‘careful copying practices’, the question remains; how had Islamic scribes shortly following the death of Muhammad learned these practices? And how did they get so much better at them than Christian contemporaries? Partly – as other posters have indicated – this may be due to the text being easier to memorise; and maybe also a wider circle of persons who had memorised the entire text.
Nevertheless I take Marijn van Putten as giving the best summary of the current state of research: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/grace-of-god-as-evidence-for-a-written-uthmanic-archetype-the-importance-of-shared-orthographic-idiosyncrasies/23C45AC7BC649A5228E0DA6F6BA15C06 ; in which he analyses 14 manuscript Qur’ans that can plausibly be dated very early.
He says: “Such consistency can only be explained by assuming that all these manuscripts come from a single written archetype, meaning there must have been a codification project sometime in the first century. The results also imply that these manuscripts, and by extension, Quran manuscripts in general, were copied from written exemplars since the earliest days.”. ” ..the data is absolutely consistent with the traditional (Muslim) account”.
Might it be that early Muslims learned how to copy from Jews?
I”ve long wondered, in general and in particular about Masoretic and Islamic preactices, and about how they achieved such careful control and why the Christians didn’t even try!
As it happens Bart, I have come across a story in one of the Islamic collections of anecdotes about the companions of the Prophet; concerning Zayd ibn Thabit, who in the tradition was the one subsequently chosen to collect and assemble the standardised Qur’an text. Which annoyed Ubayy ibn Ka’b, a much older Companion; who then said; “I was reciting the Qur’an when this Zayd was still a boy with two hair braids (or ringlets), playing with the Jewish boys in the literacy school” (in Medina).
Clearly this story is a lot later; but maybe there could be substance to it?
The quranic traditoin is very complicated (when it comes to the transmission of the revelations), so I’m not able to say much about it.
Hi Tom,
I truly appreciate your input here, and the link for Marijn’s article. Actually, It took me a while to understand this article; as there were new terminologies for me (eg: stemmata, stemmatics, etc.), and it took me a while to recognize the Arabic equivalent of “Orthographic idiosyncrasies”. I didn’t yet go through your other link for Hythem Sidky’s article.
Now … the process of analysis used by Cook & Marijn was very smart, and I actually can utilize their results to clarify the origin of these “Orthographic idiosyncrasies”.
However, the discussion of this matter requires many comments, therefore, I preferred to put them in one pdf file and to provide the link here:
https://omr-mhmd.yolasite.com/resources/R6-Tom-Script-4.pdf
Omar: many thanks for the kind words.
I’m afraid I have no specialist expertise in Qur’anic studies, but was rather seeking to point other blog users towards up-to–date text-critical studies from those who do.
Your summary responses to van Putten’s study look good to me; and I think you may well find Hythem Sidky equally illuminating.
Where van Putten might take issue with your note, is your statement; “Othman has standardized the script (i.e. how the words are written) but he didn’t standardize the readings. There are about 10 known readings for the Quran.. “. This would appear to collapse a process which van Putten sees as extending over several centuries; which is that the later 10 recognized regional Qur’anic readings-sets derive (likely) from four different ‘Uthmanic’ copies, but that each of these traditions had by then acquired multiple further changes over time, though not by much.
“.. these patterns clearly continue in later times, only markedly deviating from it, and using classicized spellings, in the Ottoman period. The Cairo edition is an intentional and quite successful return to the form of the original ‘rasm’.”
No extensive manuscript will reproduce *exactly* its exemplar; which is the fundamental principle underlying stemmatics.
Bart-Eleison, while I agree that there’s a certain ‘stupidity’ in some arguments , I believe it/they often comes from the very protective/apologetic Islamic circles that defend verses like Surah 15:9. This verse emphasizes the Quran’s divine safeguarding from any alterations. However, it’s at the same time intriguing to see that there are actually several versions of the Quran, each with differences that go beyond mere dialects, but scholars also claim that some of these differences could alter the meaning of the text, and rather recent scholarship has revealed a historically (even theological) complicated and uncertain origin of the Quran. One out of many examples could be the ancient Sana’a manuscript with a whole lot of textual differences between the upper and lower text of some of the same verses clearly show textual alterations.
Even Islamic tradition, according to a highly regarded Hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari 4987, describes a situation where multiple Quranic manuscripts existed, and the third Caliph, Uthman, had to step in to standardize the text, resulting in many original materials being destroyed/burned.
Despite these historical and even theological complexities, it seems that many followers still uphold the Quran’s special, uncorrupted, non-altered status, often celebrating what they see as its perfect preservation as a ‘living miracle. This seems to be a tool for discouraging deep scrutiny of the texts, particularly the Quran, and questioning its divine origin is often viewed as disrespectful or even blasphemous. Well, given this backdrop, it’s understandable why such “stupid” arguments may occure.
Hi Kt,
I think we have thoroughly discussed this subject in the 3 posts of Dr. Shoemaker. The versions of the Quran are not new-news. They have been discussed thoroughly by the ancient Muslim Scholars.
The dominant version of the Quran in the Middle East is “Aasim reading” and the dominant in North Africa is “Nafia’ reading” and there are 8 more readings available.
However, the differences in all of these readings is less than 3% (i.e. less than 2000 words) and these differences are not contradictory but complementary. So, taking all the metaphysics out, we can say that the Quran was 100% preserved by the meaning with 97% of its exact wording.
For the lower text of Sana’a manuscript (according to Sadeghi & Goudarzi), there are 60 points of differences to Aasim reading, which represent less than 180 words. The readable portion of this manuscript is about 10259 words. Therefore, we have about 10079 words (98.25%) that agree with the current Aasim reading. I would like to think that this ratio does support the notion that the Quran was preserved though time, but this is my opinion.
I have discussed this subject in more details in section 3 in the following short article:
https://omr-mhmd.yolasite.com/resources/59-Notes-About-NobleQuran-19.pdf
Omar, many thanks for the link to your article; very interesting.
One specific caution, in respect of discussing the lower text of the Sana’a palimpsest; is that the 2012 reconstruction by Sadeghi & Goudarzi is *extensively* conjectural. Where they cannot clearly read the lower text, they infer the missing words from the Cairo edition of the Qur’an, supplemented from ancient reports of readings in the 10 qira’at and the two known ‘companion codices’. Asma Hilali has published, in 2017, a much more cautious reconstruction; ‘ The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur’an in the First Centuries AH’ which shows only the lower text that can established from visible remains.
For example, Sadeghi & Goudarzi identify the verse Q:85 as absent from the lower text – which they propose as being due to parablepsis as Q:84 and Q:85 are of much the same length, and have identical endings. But this is wholly conjecture; the line count shows that a verse must be missing here, but almost nothing of the lower text from verse 80 to 86 can be distinguished in Hilali’s images.
Nevertheless, a theory of Qur’anic transmission must allow that, on occasion, a verse dropped.
Hi Tom,
I couldn’t find a copy for Dr. Asma’s article, but it is in the “list-to-read”. However, you can help me clarify the following:
My understanding that the statistics provided by Sadeghi/Goudarzi were not contested. And I was only interested in two parameters from these statistics: the number of different words and the number of readable words.
I took the first parameter from the list of Sadeghi/Goudarzi where they identified the points of difference between lower-Sana’a and Aasim. There were 60 points, and many of the points included one-word difference, some included two-words, and in occasions it included three-words. For safety margin, I regarded all points to have 3 words, therefore the 180 words of difference.
For the second parameter, they didn’t put the count of readable words, but they highlighted the readable portions. They have identified the pages with 100% readability, 75% readability, etc. I looked at some copies and counted the average lines per page and the average words per line, therefore, reached the count of 10079 words.
So, Did Asma drastically contested the list of 60-points or did she drastically contested the readable portions?
If she didn’t, then Sadeghi/Goudarzi still apply in the parameters of my interest.
I believe you’re already aware of the growing number of scholars studying the origins of the Quran and Islam. I’ve understand that from a academic and scholarly perspective, this is a complex task which involves understanding the evolution of texts such as the Sira, Hadiths, and Tafsirs, which were written much later. The selection process of the Hadiths, which led to the rejection of most, and the Siras from Ibn Ishaq, now lost but revised and abridged by Ibn Hisham, are key areas of focus.
I can at least think of a few German scholars in Islamic studies can provide a broader perspective, , and definitely also including issues involving the Sana Manuscript. Another interesting and public doctoral dissertation from Daniel Alan Brubaker, Rice University in 2014, titled “Intentional Changes in Qur’an Manuscripts,” offers a scholarly examination of the complexities in the development of this religion and its scriptures. His research addresses not only textual discrepancies but also cultural adjustments and the evolution of the Arabic language from what is known as “defective” script, which lacked diacritics and vowel markings in the early stage of this religion.
Overall, I think the variations and complexities in the historical religious development and of these religious texts are more intricate than you seems to imply.
Apolgies; the Quranice verse references are to Q. 9:84, and Q .9:85.
Unfortunately, I have seen worse examples coming from a faculty member of the theology department of a Turkish university. One example: A theology professor claimed that the fact that the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story similar to the Noah’s flood in the Quran proves that the Sumerians were originally Muslims. And that later they must have lost their faith and become idolaters.
Yowser!! That’s a good ‘un!
A mentor once taught me:
(1) There is no cure for stupid
(2) You can’t teach common sense
“OK, OK. We all know why.”
We do? I haven’t been able to figure it out. The strict fundamentalist sect in which I was raised included members who were medical doctors, mathematicians, engineers, etc., reasonably intelligent people one would assume. Yet, as far as they were concerned that ole King James came down from Heaven, the inerrant Word of God, not to be questioned.
Maybe it’s a need for certainty with regard to life and the afterlife.
Hello Bart,
I wanted to express my gratitude for your insightful blog post. As a newcomer to your blog, I have been learning a lot from your articles.
I have a question about a topic that is somewhat related. Have you ever discussed Dr. David H. Sorensen’s argument regarding the falsification of Tischendorf’s discovery of Codex Sinaiticus by Constantine Simonides? Dr. Sorensen claims that Simonides disputed the dating of the Codex Sinaiticus. I am curious to know your thoughts on this matter.
Thank you.
Oh yes, there’s a lot of information on that. If you look it up online you’ll see. Simonides was an amazingly talented and even more amazingly unsrupulous forger of texts, wh claimed he produced Sinaiticus. He was irrefutably shown to be lying through his teeth (some of which Tischendorf may have been inclined to remove forcibly, had he not been such a Christian man….)
I see there is a controversy regarding the authenticity and dating of the document. Does this mean that the Codex Sinaiticus is unreliable?
No, there’s not much controversy at all about Sinaiticus. It is an authentic later fourth century manuscxript, dating to around 375 CE.
There are many people who I agree with often or most of the time on non-religious subjects, but when it comes to their beliefs about Christianity, I am just amazed at how they can believe such nonsense. It is as if they, and virtually all other religious people, have a Logic On/Off switch that gets switched to the Off position whenever the subject is Christianity. The reason I specify Christianity is that their analysis of other religions if often very good. They often correctly assess the faults, inconsistencies and impossibilities of those other religions, but don’t understand that those faults, inconsistencies and impossibilities usually apply equally well to Christianity.
The Quran makes the statement:
‘We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).’
https://quran.com/15/9
The Bible however:
‘Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!’
https://biblehub.com/luke/24-25.htm
‘How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? NRSV
https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/8-8.htm
Based on surviving manuscripts, what they both say is correct !