quran documentary
Offline Hey guys,
So a while back I watched an interesting documentary on the origin of the quran. One of the major arguments it put forward is in regards to the oldest quran ever found, which dates back to a mere 19 years after Mohammed's death. It was found in the roof of an old hut, and is written on thousands of incredibly large pages of deerskin. Written in Hejazi Arabic, the claim was that since this was a mixed form of arabic, it did not contain many of the accents used in modern arabic languages. Assuming that this was the origin of the quran, this would account for differences in the modern qurans, as accents would change the meaning of certain words and phrases.
I would really like to get an islamic point of view on this, as one of the major ideologies in islam is that the quran is the absolute word of god, and has not changed since it was first written.
S.
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Well, that is an interesting question. I will have to see what I can dig up on it.
Actually, it brings to mind one idea that I never really understood. Many moslems insist that the koran should be read in the original because any attempt to translate it into another language removes some artistic property that the original may have.
This is a somewhat common form of stress between arab and american negro moslems.
So really, it does not seem to be reasonable that muhammad could have written in modern persian. Even if he did manage to pull that one out of his ass, how would it play out for people living a few hundred years ago? Or even people living a few hundred years from now?
To say that the common language in the middle east as spoken today is somehow a special language seems to me to be, well, rather odd.
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