I give below seven verses 20:1-7 from:
Collections:Mingana-Islamic Arabic-Islamic Arabic 1572a
[al-Qurʼān]
Two leavesfrom a Hijazi Qurʼān containing verses from Surah 18 (Al-Kahf, ‘The Cave’), verses 17–23; Surah 19 (Maryam, ‘Mary’), verses 91–98; and
Surah 20 (Ta-Ha, 'Ta-Ha'), verses 1–40.
Probably mid-7th century.
http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/Collections/M...na_Islamic_Arabic_1572a_folio_1_verso/viewer/
[20:1]In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.
[20:2]Ta Ha.
[20:3]We have not sent down the
Qur’an to thee that thou shouldst be distressed,
[20:4]But as an exhortation for him who fears
God,
[20:5]
And a revelation from Him Who created the earth and the high heavens.
[20:6]
He is the Gracious
God Who has settled Himself on the Throne.
[20:7]To Him belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth, and whatsoever is between them, and whatsoever is beneath the moist subsoil.
http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?ch=20
Who could have written/dictated the above verses?
Whether a Jew, a Christian, a Meccan idolatrous, a Zoroastrian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an Atheist etc.? Please name the religion/sect/denomination and quote from such religion’s basic books for an evidence.
Regards
Whether the Quran is the word of God or not can never be 'proved' for or against, and I have no desire to attempt to 'prove' anything as regards the nature of the Quran. I'm more interested in the historical nature of Arabia in late antiquity. So please don't interpret anything I say as an 'attack'. Even if it is all true, it doesn't rule out Divine revelation as the source of the Quran, and discussions about the ultimate source of the message don't lead anywhere anyway so I will avoid discussing it. I'm more interested in the
audience, rather than the author.
Hopefully what we can agree on though is: Muhammed was a historical person, he lived in a real place, this place had a reality, his message, direct from God or otherwise, likely reflected this environment. God would have sent a message that the audience could understand and relate to, so it would likely reflect the environment even if it came from God. Outside of the Quran, much of Islamic history is the work of men, men are fallible, therefore, outside of the Quran, Islamic History is open to revision based on evidence.
Can you agree with this?
Anyway, onto the topic
Surat Ta Ha, as you know, is a commentary on the story of Moses and, to a lesser extent, Adam. Their stories are used to promote the greatness of God, and what happens to those who disbelieve or disobey God. It is not simply telling the story of Moses, it is making a theological argument using the story of Moses and Adam as an example
The start, which you quote is like the 'introduction' and it reflects the 'conclusion' of the Surat:
"So be thou patient under what they say, and proclaim thy Lord's praise before the rising of the sun, and before its setting, and proclaim thy Lord's praise in the watches of the night, and at the ends of the day; haply thou wilt be well-pleasing. (
130)Stretch not thine eyes to that We have given pairs of them to enjoy - the flower of the present life, that We may try them therein and thy Lord's provision is better, and more enduring.(
131)And bid thy family to pray, and be thou patient in it; We ask of thee no provision, but it is We who provide thee and the issue ultimate is to godfearing.(
132)They say, 'Why does he not bring us a sign from his Lord?' Has there not come to them the clear sign of what is in the former scrolls? (
133)Had We destroyed them with a chastisement aforetime, they would have said, 'Our Lord, why didst Thou not send us a Messenger, so that we might have followed Thy signs before that we were humiliated and degraded?'(
134)Say: 'Everyone is waiting; so wait, and assuredly you shall know who are the travellers on the even path, and who is guided.' (
135)"
The Surat is clearly aimed at an audience who are familiar with the Biblical stories, rather than an audience of isolated pagans unfamiliar with Christian/Jewish scripture.
As regards the context, the following passage is relevant:
"From a literary point of view, we should talk of Qur’ānic Psalms, as well as Qur’ānic madrāšē, memrē, and soḡiyāthā72.
I don’t mean that the texts I am inclined to call Qur’ānic Psalms, madrāšē, and so on, are a servile borrowing of Syriac literary traditions – far from that: they are adapted, not without creativity, to the context of Arabic language and literature (e.g. Syriac verse is based on syllabic count, contrary to Arabic poetry and Arabic saǧ‘). But – and this is crucial –,
they share compositional features with their Syriac/Aramaic homologs, they draw from them a good part of their verbal, phraseological and thematic repertoire, and, also, they play a similar role: they are suited for narrative or paraenetic compositions, and they are used in homiletic or liturgical settings. Indeed,
a good number of Qur’ānic pericopes look like Arabic ingenious patchworks of Biblical and para- Biblical texts, designed to comment passages or aspects of the Scripture, whereas others look like Arabic translations of liturgical formulas.
This is not unexpected if we have in mind some Late Antique religious practices, namely the well-known fact that Christian Churches followed the Jewish custom of reading publicly the Scriptures, according to the lectionary principle. In other words, people did not read the whole of the Scripture to the assembly, but
lectionaries (Syriac qǝryānā, “reading of Scripture in Divine Service”, etymon of Arabic qur’ān), containing selected passages of the Scripture, to be read in the community. Therefore,
many of the texts which constitute the Qur’ān should not be seen (at least if we are interested in their original Sitz im Leben) as substitutes for the (Jewish or Christian) Scripture, but rather as a (putatively divinely inspired) commentary of Scripture. And
since this Scripture was not in Arabic, we understand better the role of the Qur’ān, and we also understand better why it insists so much on Arabic (Q 12:2; 13:37; 14:41; 16:103; 26:195; 39:28; 41:3, 44; 42:7; 43:3; 46:12): stressing that there is an Arabic qur’ān supposes that there might be non-Arabic scriptures."
Guillaume Dye - Traces of Bilingualism/Multilingualism in Qur’ānic Arabic
And as regards the rest of the Birmingham Quran, al-Kahf and Maryam also reflect a commentary on Christian/Jewish scripture and non-scriptural mythology.
As I said, I have no desire to comment on whether the Quran is the word of God, the Islamic tradition clearly argues that the Quran was needed to correct distortions in scripture anyway, so none of this should be problematic from an Islamic perspective.
When looking at the Quran in its historical context, it clearly reflects an environment in which Abrahamic monotheism was present and known. Who the author was can never be 'proved', but the
audience of the author is a group familiar with Christian and Jewish stories and theology.
