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Loading...I often get asked questions about the Qur’an, and I almost always do not answer them, most because I can’t answer them. I’m not an expert on the Qur’an, and tend to talk only about things I have done serious and sustained research on. Otherwise I’m just spreading stuff I’ve heard, and I’m no more authoritative on that than anyone else. So what’s the point of my talking about it?
But one question that I get frequently, especially from Muslim readers, is about the manuscript tradition of the Qur’an in relation to the New Testament. Even though I’m not an expert on the manuscript tradition of the Qur’an (oh boy am I not an expert), I know enough to answer with some authority this particular question.
The question is whether it simply isn’t true that the Qur’an is more reliable than the New Testament. What the questioner almost always means by that is that the ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an tend to be amazingly similar to one another. Virtually identical up and down the line. Scribes kept it the way it was, without changing it. That’s in contrast to the New Testament, where scribes changed it all the time, often in insignificant ways and sometimes in rather startling large ways, either by accident or on purpose,
So, by comparison, isn’t the Qur’an more reliable?
In almost every instance when I get asked the question, if I pursue it with the person, what they really mean is…
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For those who are interested: A nice, popular article (to my admittedly non-expert eyes) on the textual history of the Qur’an is “What is the Koran” by Toby Lester which appeared in the Jan 1999 issue of the Atlantic.
The article is available on line, for example here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/
Bart, thanks for helping us see through/beyond the smoke and mirrors
As a believing and practicing Muslim, I completely agree with you. Textual authenticity/reliability does not mean that the claims within the texts are also true. The two are separate matters. Both Muslim and Christian apologists – most often Christian apologists in my experience – frequently fail to realise this difference (ie textual reliability does not equal historical reliability).
I appreciate the fact that you’ve accurately summarised the state of Quranic textual criticism ie that the Quranic mss tradition is far more vast, uniform and early compared to NT mss tradition (which, again, does not therefore follow that the Quran is also historically reliable; the latter is a separate topic). But my question is, why do several of your friends, chief among them Prof Wallace, fail to come to terms even with this basic fact and happily spread outright disinformation on this matter when they comment on the Quranic mss tradition in the passing in their talks on NT textual criticism? Why is it that another colleague of yours, Craig Evans, ventures much further ahead of Wallace and simply propagates fictitious polemical claims about the Quran in a recently coauthored book of his (Jesus and the Jihadis)?
I don’t know about their specific claims with respect to the Qur’an, so I can’t comment on that. But they are, of course, both committed evangelical Christians who are convinced that the NT views of God, Christ, and so on are absolutely true and other religious views are not true, and they are interested in convincing others to think so as well. Surely that affects many of the things they say about these other traditions.
First of all, we will never know the precise original text of the Qu’ran, because there was no such book at the time of Muhammad’s death. Muhammad was illiterate. He dictated his revelations, and they were written down on whatever was at hand, often just bones or reeds. We don’t have any of these original texts. What we have is what was compiled after his death by his successors, who were at that time in charge of a state structure (and eventually, an empire) inspired by Muhammad’s vision. So once they had come up with what they felt was a correct rendition of his revelation (how likely is it that Muhammad would have agreed?), then there was an agreed-upon text, that could be more or less flawlessly recreated and distributed, over and over again. And what would happen to anyone who (by accident or design) altered the Word of Allah? We really don’t want to know.
Christianity was much more freeform and anarchic, from its very origin. It did not have any temporal power, any state support, for centuries, so there was no one to impose a unitary text, or to regulate how the texts were replicated. Even after it became the dominant religion of Rome, there were many other traditions surviving elsewhere, with their own texts, their own manuscripts.
Islam developed its own divisions, which endure to this day, but by that time there was at least agreement over how the Qu’ran should read, and that remained the uniting factor. Interpretation, of course, was another matter. And let’s not even try to get into the Hadith.
Muslims may, as Jews and Christians sometimes still do, say “God wouldn’t allow any error.” Well, they’re free to believe that, but they can’t prove it. And realistically, looking at how the Qu’ran was first preserved, the odds of there being no errors are basically nil. If anything, the original conditions of transmission were much worse. But once Islam had conquered the Arabian peninsula, they got much better, and that’s why the earliest surviving texts agree. The ones that didn’t agree–well, they probably weren’t so much lost as intentionally destroyed. That’s one way of solving the problem.
Surprised you didn’t bring up the Book of Mormon. Absolutely no textual conflicts there. The One True Faith! (Or is that Scientology?)
Not completely accurate. There are many variants in the Book of Mormon from it’s earliest editions.
There’s an important point that needs to kept in mind in any discussion about the Qur’an, especially when comparisons are made to the New Testament.
That is, Christianity, generally speaking, has the model of 1] God, 2] His fully-divine earthly representation, Jesus, and 3] a sacred text about that relationship, the New Testament. And it’s probably safe to say that most Christians assume that the corresponding entities in Islam are, respectively, 1] Allah, 2] Mohammed, and 3] The Qur’an. Specifically, that the Qur’an, while perhaps sacred, is “just a book”.
But this incorrect and can lead to serious misunderstandings.
As the Qur’an and Islamic teachings repeatedly makes clear Mohammed is “merely” the (fully-human) Prophet of Allah/God. The divine revelation and manifestation of Allah/God in the world is the Qur’an.
In short, while all analogies are necessarily approximate, in Christianity probably the figure that best corresponds to Mohammed is Paul. The more accurate analogue to the Qur’an is Christ.
hello dr Bart
you have failed to menton one particular thing about koran . is that the Quran achieved a literary status known among the Arabs as mutawatir. Mutawatir means that it was so vastly disseminated to so many different groups of people, who all had the same exact wording, that it is inconceivable that that any one person or group could have falsified it. and it was memorised by prophets companions like young people today would memorise lyrics of popular song. they used to hear the prophet again recite those verses in the mosque during daily prayers again and again every single day . in mosques muslims used to sit down and still do even today and recite koran from memory together like rehearsing song and if one makes mistake he will find out . In other words koran was constantly doubled checked and redouble daily until to this very day. so the chances that some thing can be changed is ZERO .
thanks for reading my comment
My point is that this does not mean that what it *says* is true.
Bart, thanks for your write up. I am sure you are aware that Uthman destroyed all the opposing manuscripts. Despite this attempt at controlling the variation, we have evidence of conflicting surviving manuscripts such as the Sanaa Manuscript. As well there are variant Qurans that Muslims agree upon and use that you can buy in Islamic bookstores or read on quranflash.com. This shows us that there were variants that existed pre-Uthman.
What it seems to me is that the conflicting text in the Sanaa Manscript, as well as the agreed upon variants found in the Warsh and other variant readings shows us that the Quran was not preserved letter for letter dot for dot.
If you had a chance to look into this a bit more, I would love to hear more from you on this.
I have published two videos on the topic if you would like to review them. They are quite short:
What the Sana’a Manuscript Tells Us About Today’s Quran (9mins 48secs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvPMDyBlUPA
The Seven Qiraat Demonstrate the Quran was Not Preserved (11mins 58secs)
https://youtu.be/pfoSEu3kLZk
Thanks
Abdullah Sameer
My point is that this does not mean that what it *says* is true.
Are you aware of the Birmingham Manuscript? It’s a section of the Quran that has been radiocarbon dated to 568-645 (Mohammed lived 570-632).
The most contentious argument over dating is when the ink was placed on the vellum. It’s likely the animal that the vellum belonged to was alive during Mohammed’s life, but some scholars have questioned when the ink was applied (when it was actually written).
However, as Muhammad Isa Waley, Lead Curator for Persian and Turkish Manuscripts at the British Library, has noted: “The Muslim community was not wealthy enough to stockpile animal skins for decades, and to produce a complete Mushaf, or copy, of the Holy Qur’an required a great many of them.”
If it was written during Mohammed’s lifetime, or shortly afterwards, we could have an extraordinarily early copy of the Quran. The equivalent of a gospel written within 13 years (or even during!) Jesus’ lifetime.
My point is that this does not mean that what it *says* is true.
Yes, I’m aware of and accept your point – I was simply asking if you were aware of the Birmingham manuscript.
You are objecting to a point I didn’t raise.
Yes I am.
Not sure what you mean about the early Muslim community not being wealthy or being able to afford animal skins. There is evidence the pre-Islamic Hejaz was quite wealthy and in any case one of its main exports was leather, so animals skins would have been widely available.
Professor Robert Eisenman says the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls influenced the content of the Koran. With the Apocalyptic war preparations in the War Scroll and the peacefulness of the gospels, the Koran leans more towards the War Scroll Zealots than the less aggressive Jesus.
In a freshly post-Jewish Civil War post-Jewish Revolt era, apocalypticism and messianism had better been peaceful even with the peacekeeper being crucified. So, the tone of the Koran is more reliable than the gospels.
Apparently, John the Baptist was a Zealot of the War Scroll mindset. That community was into bathing because they believed the angels would help them in their apocalyptic war. The angels could not come down to Earth, get contaminated by humans and go back to heaven. You have said Jesus thought his kingdom would get established during the time of Roman occupation by the help of God. The Bible has Jesus saying:
Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? Mt: 26: 53.
So, Jesus’ association with John the Baptist associates him with a far more aggressive and militant circle; and Herod then would be fearful of a leader of that stripe.
In this way, baptism was preparation not only for the coming judgment but for the coming apocalyptic war.
[Antiquities of the Jews 18.117] For Herod had killed this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God. For only thus, in John’s opinion, would the baptism he administered be acceptable to God, namely, if they used it to obtain not pardon for some sins but rather the cleansing of their bodies, inasmuch as it was taken for granted that their souls had already been purified by justice.
The post-Jewish Civil War and the post-Jewish Revolt sits heavily on the gospel that it turns the historical events and even the historical Jesus 180 degrees from Apocalyptic War, to no offense against Rome, no blaming Rome, and not even identifying Rome when Jesus “sees” Jerusalem surrounded by armies (Jesus does not see and identify one Roman standard, soldier, or general).
Do you agree The Koran is more reliable because it is not weighed down by the Roman subjugation, say the first decade after the war AD 70 – 80 about the time the synoptic gospels were completed?
No, I decidedly don’t. It had its *own* historical context and vicissitudes.
Definition of antinomian. 1 : one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace (see grace entry 1 sense 1a) the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation. 2 : one who rejects a socially established morality.
The Koran is the heir of Jamesian anti-antinomianism. The Koran shares the ethos of James, not the ethos of Paul. The tone of the Koran is more reflective of the messianic majority of the first 67% of the first century and more reliable than the gospels in that respect. You have informed us on this blog that Jesus only had a small following; so, far from being n the majority of zealots or a sizeable minority, Jesus’s followers would be in the single digit percentage of those seeking change, if not a fraction of 1% while the ethos of James and the tone of Apocalyptic War as opposed to Apocalyptic tribulation of destruction of Temple and defeat of people was a vocal and sizeable minority, if not larger against the pro-Roman Herodians.
Even with The Koran’s own historical context and vicissitudes, the ethos and the tone of The Koran is more reflective of zealot Christians who adhered to the War Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls and more reflective of the Jews who wanted to run Paul out of town or worse.
The Koran’s own historical context and vicissitudes are not direct counter-claims to the ethos and tone claims.
“Over the next few months, I did some research to understand who the James was whose letter I admired so much. … I realized then that I was onto something by noticing … its implicit divergence from mainstream Christianity and its curious resonance with my Muslim faith.”
Akyol, Mustafa. The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims. Introduction: “Meeting James,” p. 4. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2018.
Hi Bart,
I understand that you are not an expert about the Quran but would you have any opinion on what is mentioned within Islamic tradition about Jesus from a historical perspective? I suggest you can use the great authoritative source that is Wikipedia for a basic overview of Jesus within the Quran and Islamic tradition and if these view points are historical in any sense. It seems to me that a lot of information was borrowed from other non-canon gospels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam
Yes, that’s almost certainly right.
Dr. Ehrman,
I understand and agree with you. What fascinates me is how the Qur’an is so well preserved. From reading your books and blog post concerning scribes working with the New Testament I understand how so many changes occurred, scribes changing text for clarification or theological agendas. But we know that so many variants occurred simply from scribal errors. Do you have a clue to how the scribes of Qur’an texts avoided such issues? I know this is not your area of expertise but I feel that your educated guess would be better than my uneducated. Thanks, Jay
Short answer: they were very careful and had many checks to be sure. Similar in many ways to medieval *Jewish* scribes.
I, too, have heard that “number of manuscripts of the Bible” argument numerous times.
The Qu’ran was written in the early 7th century; the New Testament the late 1st century. Hadn’t literary arts advanced during those 500 or so years? So wouldn’t you expect a 7th century manuscript to be better preserved and copied than a 1st century one? (I’m not conceding that the Qu’ran is better preserved or more accurate than the NT, but it seems like it should be just because of the advancement of time and technology, and has nothing to do with the contents of either book, and as you point out has no bearing on the truthfulness of the contents.)
Possibly, yes. Accurate Jewish scribal practices were kicking in full steam by this time as well.
In your opinion which book of the bible was copied more accurately and which is the worse in that sense?
Worse is probably Revelation. Most accurate? Great question. I don’t know.
Thank you, Dr. Ehrman, Why do you think Revelation is the worse?
Probably because it was not copied as much and in the early years not all the copyists were convinced it was part of Scripture.
thank yo agan
Dr. Ehrman,
Interesting point. Since the 7 undisputed letters by Paul were rarely if ever in doubt, do you think they have a relatively high level of integrity?
I”m not sure what you mean by “integrity.”
by “integrity” I mean close to what the original likely said.
Oh. OK, that’s not what the word normally means. I’d say there’s no way to know for certain whether the entire Qur’an that came into circulation eventually was what was originally written or not. Same with the NT. It’s just more obviously problematic with the NT, but that has no bearing on whether the writings of the Qur’an are more trustworthy or not.
Because, unlike Revelation, Paul’s 7 letters were considered legitamate early on and copied often, would you say this makes it more likely that we have a good idea of what Paul’s originals said?
Are you asking if one book were copied more often than another, wouldn’t we have a better chance of knowing what the author originally said? Yes, I would think so. But I’d also say that no one differentiated between Paul’s undisputed seven letters and the rest (as modern scholars do) and those who copied Revelation *did* think it was authentic.
Great post, Bart.
My wife, a Christian Coptic Egyptian, was required to read the Qu’ran in grade school. But that was easy, as it was always meant to be read in its original language, Arabic, which my wife already knew. Contrast that with the New Testament, which is available in hundreds of languages today, each with its own translation problems.
And speaking of Hitler, his Mein Kampf includes
“I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
How true was that, even if not a single word had ever been mistranslated?
Yes, there’s some very interesting work dealing with the Christian theology of the Nazis….
Including (that) Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi ideologue/war criminal (justly hanged after Nurnberg), quite anti-Christian, was nonetheless a big fan of Marcion.
(Duh, wonder why.)
I realize this isn’t your area of expertise. I am beginning to see some discussions from scholars that the Quran we have today really isn’t the same as the original and these scholars are getting a lot of push back from other scholars. Several problems are often pointed out. One, until recently all scholars of the Quran were Muslim…that has just started to change. Second is that it’s only recently that anyone has looked into the issue. Where Christian scholarship has had secular investigators for ~ 200 hundred years now, secular Muslim scholars are a very rare breed and very recent.
It will be interesting to watch developments in Quran origins and transmissions going forward. It is a hard task to challenge established consensus and deal with the Muslim community resistance. We must give them time.
Interesting. Can you provide us with some bibliography?
The best one is written anonymously ( for fear of his life ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Aramaic_Reading_of_the_Koran .
If I could jump in, here are a couple references:
— The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book (ed Ibn Warraq)
— The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History (ed: Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Gerd-R Puin)
Both are available on Amazon
(A few other sources are mentioned in the article by Toby Lester I pointed to above).
The oldest Quranic text is the scripto inferior of the Sanaa palimpsest, and it is by far the most divergent Quranic manuscript and the only ancient Quranic MSS that diverges significantly enough to be a separate text-type.
I’m not finding the original scholarship at the moment…sorry.. but it seems to stem from the discovery of the Sanaʽa manuscript and the differences between the current received Quran and this, the earliest found copy, I believe. I do know the Sanaʽa manuscript is causing a relook amongst serious scholars!
The most famous scholar challenging traditional Muslim narrative about Quran and origins of Islam is Dr. Patricia Crone at Princeton University.
Oh brother, he so much as mentioned Islam. If the chatrooms during live recordings of Ehrman’s debates are any indication this comments section is going to be a *doozy*. Not one cliche from New Atheist Islamophobes, or one cliche about the alleged evils of religion in general is going to be left out. In the *best case scenario* what you see above and below this post will all be smarmy remarks about how “one fairy tale isn’t better than any other”. When will you Internet Atheists finally learn that we’ve heard everything you have to say before? *All* of it. 479 times each. (Yes, that includes what you were about to say there about how “thats what I usually say to you religionists lol.” I’ve heard *that* one 479 times. The tu quoque fallacy is the resort of a coward.) Here’s hoping I’ll be presently surprised for once.
Anyway, I do think a lot of brothers and sisters in Islam put too singular a focus on the textual history element when it comes to The Bible. Studying these matters should mean studying *all* of their aspects. There are many ways for a prophet’s words to become corrupted and textual interpolations is only one of them.
Next time your Muslim readers (invariably with an apologetics agenda) ask you about the textual criticism of the Quran, you may wish to refer them to a work by Keith E Small:
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/textual-criticism-the-new-testament-and-the-quran/
Keith Small is a lecturer at London School of Theology (an evangelical seminary), involved in evangelical apologetics. I might have met him over a decade ago when I was interested in evangelical polemics against Islam (an approach I had since learned to be flawed). From my experience, religious apologists of any tradition, as apologists, often misrepresent views and traditions outside their own. Nonetheless, this book was positively reviewed by Larry Hurtado, and more importantly by leading scholars of Islam (Fred Donner of University of Chicago, Andrew Rippin of University of Victoria):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_Criticism_and_Qur’ān_Manuscripts
You may be aware already that your books “Misquoting Jesus” and “Jesus Interrupted” are popular with Muslim apologists engaged in debates with Christian apologists over reliability of the Bible. The standard Muslim apologetical position (which may not be representative of the views of Muslim communities in the West) is that the Bible has been corrupted by Christians. In some respects, your books help the Muslim apologists advance their agenda, yet they often don’t realise or ignore the bigger picture that your view of Jesus as a biblical scholar is far from congenial to the Islamic view.
Oh yes, I know that about my books. That’s one of the reasons I get all the emails….
Dr Ehrman,
Both traditions had different methods of preserving God’s Revelation.
The Bible is a translation of revelation comprised into many books and many many versions ( not in the native tongue of Jesus ) whereas, the Quran is Revelation only 1 book ( in the Arabic native tongue of Muhammad ) not a translation, unless you read it in a different language.
Had someone recorded and protected what God revealed to Jesus ( and they might have ) we would not be having discussions about the lost Original Manuscripts, questions with regards to the authenticity and reliability of the gospels, letters, ascribed authorships and ect… The Bible was written by 40 unknown penmen over a period of ?? 1200 to 1600 years?
In contrast, records were kept when revelation descended onto Muhammad. The revelation was recited orally, memorized and recorded on parchment / leather/bones and whatever the Arabs had available over a period of 23 years. It was recorded who wrote what and when and have chains of narrations going all the way back to the original revelation.
This is with regard to reliability.
As far as truth?
One would have to in entirety read The Bible and read The Quran. Unfortunately, most won’t.
Great topic. Hope it brings forth sincere and positive dialogue to better enhance our knowledge.
I’m missing your meaning in the use of the word ‘true’. I take the intent of the original question as “is the Quran more faithful to the seminal words or events than the N. T. “. I think the answer to that is yes, in part because it was created over 500 years after the New Testament, by scribes who were better trained and more disciplined. But I take your opinion that it is not any more of a “truth”. Horse poop in the temple isn’t really a proof that Mohammed actually journeyed there.
The Quran was exclusively an oral tradition until Mohammed ‘s death. It’s a question as to how that would influence the consistency of the later commitment to paper.
Quranic manuscripts also have some unique problems that I have not come across when discussing Bible Manuscripts. One of the problem is that most early manuscripts are written in parchment. And in some manuscripts the parchment was wiped clean and written over so under UV light they can see two sets of text. For eg. the upper and lower text in Saana Manuscript. Do we have similar problems in NT ? If you are aware can you please give some examples
Yes, that kind of manuscript is called a “palimpsest,” and a number of the very important biblical manuscripts are palimpsests — meaning that they were erased and other texts were written on the top. You can usually see traces of the underneath writing, which is usually what you want to get at. In the 19th century they had to use chemical reagents to get the underwriting to come out; very bad idea (for the manuscript). These days there are much, much better techniques, including most impressively multi-spectral imaging. (Two famous examples in biblical manuscripts; a fifth century Greek codex called Ephraimi Rescriptus — designated as MS C, and one of the best ancient Syriac mss discovered on Sinai by twin sisters at St. Catherine’s Monastery at the end of the 19th century; see the fascinating account in the book The Sisters of Sinai.
Professor,
I just read an article on Dr. Seale’s ( University of Kentucky Computer Scientist) work on “reading” the Herculaneum Scrolls which were charred/preserved in ash in 79CE. A whole Roman library at a wealthy Mediterranean port. The wealth probably cuts against any Christian church there but, do you think there is any chance of NT related material?
Nothing like that that I know of among NT mss, but there are other Xn manuscripts that have survived in a charred state.
Quote: “Just because you are relatively certain that you know what an author *wrote* does not mean that what that author wrote is *true.*”
Which means that if you’ve reconsteuxted the entire NT and became certain that every word has been preserved it would lead to the same conclusion. That we cannot trust its message!
No, not quite. I”m not saying we CANNOT trust it. I’m saying that even if we can reconstruct it accurately word for word, that does not mean that it is NECESSARILY true. It may well be though. It’s textual reconstruction has nothing to do with the issue.
Hi Dr. Ehrman. This question is off topic and I apologize. Can you explain why Christians pray? Presumably an all knowing omnipotent God would know what we need and there would be no reason to pray. If I have a disease God should know I want to get better and there should be no need to beg for healing through prayer. If I pray for rain and it does rain does that mean God likes me better than my neighbor who prayed for dry weather? Thanx so much for your blog.
Different Christians have different reasons, with very different levels of theological sophistication. Many do NOT simply pray in order to get what they want thinking it will work. Often it is instead to acknowledge dependence and love for a greater, caring being.
“Just because you are relatively certain that you know what an author *wrote* does not mean that what that author wrote is *true.*”
So you saying that its more like the Sanad(chain of transmission) and Matan(meaning of the text) System in Islam for Hadith.
Like, if I say to you that, “You owe me $5k”. There would be no doubt that I said it, but it may not necessarily be that you actually owe me.
Yes, if you write me and tell me that you are going to send me $5000, which I encourage you to do, I can show you did write it, but nto that you will send it.
Muslims were politically powerful enough to establish an official version of the quran early on in the religion, which prevented variant texts from becoming popular.
By the time christians were politically powerful enough to establish an official version there were too many popular variants to make any one of them official.
But even when they were powerful enough, they still didn’t preserve their manuscripts without changing them — down to the time of the invention of printing.
But only because there was no official version – which allowed new variants to become popular.
There were lots of reasons for variants to be introduced into the manuscripts of the New Testament even at later stages (e.g., when scribes were sleepy or inattentive). But you’re right, there was absolutely not “official” version that everyone had to stick to.
Maybe the Quran was copied more faithfully after being in circulation for a certain period of time, but I believe you’ve said the same for he New Testament. I know there’s a few critical scholars of the Quran who say it was not copied reliably at all. They’ve also had their lives threatened speaking out about it. There doesn’t seem to be the same academic freedom to examine the Quran critically the way the NT is.
Interesting. Can you give us some bibliography?
Hi Bart. Ask and you shall receive 🙂 Here is an example of an intellectual by the name of Abu Zayd who was kicked out of Egypt for being critical about the Quran: http://abdullahsameer.com/blog/egyptian-freethinker-nasr-abu-zayd/
The Muslim world still doesn’t look so nicely upon those who question the status quo. ????
Keith Small’s book is worth a look:
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/textual-criticism-the-new-testament-and-the-quran/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_Criticism_and_Qur%E2%80%99%C4%81n_Manuscripts
Scholars of Islam always have to be careful with publishing their studies on the Quran and Muhammad, in case they attract the attention of religious fanatics. Some of them write anonymously under a pen name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Luxenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Warraq
What do you think about the Sanaa manuscripts? Have you read the paper
Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān by Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NLpaOILbeOb2vShBAsY321Ap8Q2KF2m1/view
Would love to know if you have any thoughts on it
No, I haven’t read it.
I understand that Muslims believe that the entire book was dictated by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammmad (peace be upon him), and therefore is literally the word of God. I got this information from the imam’s wife of our local Islamic center back in 2000 when they partiipated in our PC (USA ) peace conference at Chapman University in Orange, California. The theme dealt with how to be true to your own faith while being respectful of the faith of others.
In addition to islam, we had workshops on Judaism and Hinduism.
Dr. Ehrman, I know this is slightly off topic but you don’t seem to do the Reader’s Mailbag thing these days and I need to know this for the research I’ve been doing about the origins of the Resurrection doctrine: would you say that there’s any chance the omission of Mark 9:10 from Matthew 17:9-10 was due to copyists or is it more reasonable to conclude that Saint Quote Unquote Matthew intentionally took that verse out himself? What’s your professional opinion about that? I’m guessing the latter is kind of obvious but I figured it would be irresponsible of me not to ask somebody.
Oh, I do it; I just stopped calling it that for some reason. Maybe should start again!
Yes, the omission of the verse is normally seen as Matthew’s own redaction of Mark (along with other edits he made in the passage). And you’re right, the big question is why he would do so. It’s always useful to speculate on possible explanatoins. Did Matthew, for example, think that it made no sense for Jews (Jesus’ disciples) to wonder what a resurrection might mean?
When I did a cursory investigation into the history of the Koran I started with books by Ohlig and by Ibn Warraq. They provide sufficient bibliographic references for further investigation. At the more popular level is Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword. On YouTube you can also find Holland’s related video Islam, the Untold Story, which was quite controversial when it first came out.
Larry Hurtado blogged about Keith E. Small’s Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts (Lanham/Boulder/New York/Toronto/Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012).
From Larry’s blog:
“As to results, Small repeatedly notes that the Qur’an manuscripts exhibit a remarkable stability in the text across many centuries, from the earliest to the latest…But Small also notes that the other evidence (especially palimpsests and reports from early centuries) suggest strongly that there was, in the earliest period, a considerably greater diversity in the text of the Qur’an than is reflected in the extant manuscripts studied. Moreover, as is widely accepted, in the late 7th century, disturbed by the diversity in the text of the Qur’an, the Caliph Uthman organized a standardization of the consontantal text (early Arabic, like ancient Hebrew, was a consonantal aphabet with no written vowels), suppressing variant versions.
As often the concern of monarchs, Uthman wanted to unify his religio-political doman, and suppress potentially dangerous differences. Therefore, given the place of the Qur’an in Islam, he focused on fixing its text. Thereafter, in successive centuries, further steps were taken to fix the text and its recitation. So, as Small observes, “the history of the transmission of the text of the Qur’an is at least as much a testament to the destruction of Qur’an material as it is to its preservation . . . It is also testimony to the fact that there never was one original text of the Qur’an” (p. 180).”
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/textual-criticism-the-new-testament-and-the-quran/
Here’s a really good article that discusses some of the results of modern critical scholarship for the Quran—
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/
And, of course, Wikipedia—
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Quran
I made comments elsewhere on the blog about some having their lives threatened, but I can’t remember if it was about scholarship or just criticism of the Quran by former Muslims. I think it was both, but I can’t find the post now. And I believe it was a Blast from the Past about the recently discovered manuscript of the Quran.
Yes, this is the article I described above in the first comment on this posting.
Since you have debated Robert Price I was wondering if you ever considered writing a popular book like his Case against the Case for Christ? I know from reading most of your books you have pretty much covered everything relating to the topics but thought you could counter his point for point. I didn’t hold on to the book because it was a bit of a drab, and his counterarguments seems to rest on simply disagreeing (from what I remember) with all of the NT scholars that Stobel interviewed. I enjoyed Stobel’s book even though he’s pretending to write objective history and uses circular reasoning and theological arguments to make historiographical deductions.
(Then there’s Michael Brown’s 5-volume “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus”– 4 of which I read and are redundant, dry, apologetic and blatantly offensive!)
I’m not sure if you know my book Did Jesus Exist? That’s what it’s about. (Though I don’t deal with just his views, but a range of mythicists’)
Have it at home and have read it (a few years back). Did you write it in response to Stobel’s book? It’s amazing how many people will me I have to read Stobels book as it would “convince me”…. Oy
No no, Strobel and I agree that Jesus existed. But he’s not a scholar or an expert in any of this — his books are condensations of his conversations and readings of people who share his views. (Intentionally so: he’s a journalist who interviews people and reads their books)
Dr. Ehrman asks his students, who mostly come from the bible belt: “How many of you read the Bible?” it appears not many. Although some Bibles are written in easy to read modern English so you’d think if those students truly believed that the Bible is inspired by God, they would have read it. Or maybe there is a tiny bit of doubt in their subconscious.
The Quran is written in old mostly complicated classical Arabic scipt, yet many non Arabic speaking Muslims memorize it word for word observing the intricate pronounciation and enunciation of the anciant Arabic text. They are called hafiz. So a hafiz from Iran when reciting verses of the Quran sounds exactly like a hafiz from Algeria, Indinisia or Pakistan. Of course most of these hafiz have no idea what they are reciting, but they could bring to tears their Arabic speaking Muslims. My business travels took me to many countries around the world including Islamic majority countries where I was struck by the Quranic memorizing phenomena. Upon visiting a mosque in Algiers I observed a bunch of men sitting in a circle, each reciting a few Quranic verses then the person next to him takes up where he left off and so on. Then a new commer joins the group and does his share of recitation. No one knows the exact number of Hafiz in Algeria but it is estimated to be in the thousands. In Cairo I saw a boy of about 10 sitting in a corner of a mosque with a man of mid 20, chanting Quranic vesrses. I was told that the boy will soon memorize the complete Quran and become a hafiz.
Muslims do not have one iota of doubt that the Quran is of divine revelations. They believe it now as did their predecessors 1400 years ago. So a scribe inscribing the Quran is not afraid that some mortal will punish him for making a mistake. But he is terrified of the divine punishment in the hereafter if he does so. For God is stern in punishment.
Nice post, but I really would have used another example than Mein Kampf of all things. It could be really taken the wrong way, that is when people don’t read closely enough (or just have a bad day) they could think you’re comparing Hitler to Mohammed.
Yes, that would be SERIOUSLY misreading my point. I picked Mein Kampf precisely because no one I know believes it, as opposed, say, to the New Testament or the Qur’an or … whatever. But the copies are all identical. You don’t believe a book because the copies are all identical. … Yikes!
But Mein Kampf does have a modern Critical Edition (in German only, so far) that is truly critical — edited by scholars of a distinctly non-believing (in Nazism) bent. Would that all holy scriptures could receive such treatment. Hint, hint Herr Doktor Professor.
Hitler, Mein Kampf – Eine kritische Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/3981405234/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_3SriDb3QAKFY0
Not sure what you’re saying? Did they actually change the words of what Hitler said in this edition? Commenting on it is not hte same as altering the words.
Bart,
Your post is crystal clear that it seeks to answer only one narrow question relating to the relative truth of the New Testament and the Qur’an. In stating the question, however, your post appears to accept and assert the truth of the factual predicate of the question, rather than making it clear that you are providing an “even if” response. This matters because, like it or not, you are one New Testament scholar whose views carry weight in Muslim polemics.
The clearest example of the problem is your reference to: “the fact that scribes of our surviving manuscripts did change the New Testament a lot and did not change the Qur’an at all …” That easily is read to assert the “fact that scribes … did not change the Qur’an at all.” Given how you emphasize your limited background in Qur’anic studies, I doubt you intend to make such a factual assertion or that you reject emerging scholarship showing considerable variation prior to the Uthman standardization and some continuing variation thereafter.
Someone who writes as prolifically as you can’t spend his life looking over his shoulder for every possible misunderstanding. But I wonder if this is a case in which a clarifying comment from you would be useful.
Tom
I think it’s factually true that the scribes of the surviving manuscripts of the Qur’an did not change it much and that the scribes of the surviving manuscripts of the NT did change it a lot. Isn’t it? I wasn’t referring to what happened to the manuscript tradition *before* our surviving manuscripts were produced.
Dr Ehrman,
We are not comparing apples to apples. If we were comparing the NT to the translations of a lost Quran, that is one thing. But we are not, There are many many translations to the Quran ( and they differ from one to another ) The reason they differ is because the authors of the translations differ in scholarly work opinions and views. Each translation has its own independent authorship. We as readers can accept or reject their translation.Very similar to the NT and its content ( Mark , Matt , Luke, John …ect are all according to their views ). and are copies of copies of copies….
Dr Ehrman,
Since it has been deduced that the NT scribes changed it lot and the Quran scribes did not.
“Qur’an tend to be amazingly similar to one another. Virtually identical up and down the line. Scribes kept it the way it was, without changing it. That’s in contrast to the New Testament, where scribes changed it all the time, often in insignificant ways and sometimes in rather startling large ways, either by accident or on purpose, So, by comparison, isn’t the Qur’an more reliable? ”
If we were to suppose that both the NT and The Quran originally came with a true message. Can we say or is it fair to say that based on the quote above that one of these manuscripts could be more closer to the the truth than the other? ( meaning truer to the original message than the other).
No, that wouldn’t be safe to say.
Fair.
All you need is… Genesis 1?
If you don’t need anything but the material universe, yes!
I agree with you that the Quran being transmitted accurately does not prove what it says is true. However, I think the point that Muslims would try to make is that if a book is the last revelation from God, then, it makes sense that it has to be preserved. Otherwise, people would be lost since the last revelation is corrupted.
Meaning, while it’s true that the Quran being preserved does not prove it is the last revelation from God, it’s certainly compatible with the claim and if, like the bible, it was changed and tampered with, it would not be a candidate for being the last universal revelation.
Other Muslims would also say that the Quran being preserved is a fulfillment of the declaration in the Quran claiming that God would preserve it:
Quran 15:9 Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.