firedragon
Veteran Member
Textual Criticism conundrum of the Qur’an
Textual criticism of the Qur’an began maybe around a 1,000 years ago to the level of professional analysis and scholars like Ibn Mujahid who lived earlier in his work on the readings or recitations of the Qur’an in the 9th century is extensive in approach. In the recent years it has taken a different twist in the non-muslim circles where they apply biblical criticism methods to the Qur’an, though not very extensively, they have done a decent job and it takes a different route to what people have been thinking in the 20th and 21st century. Textual criticism of the Quran was silent for some time when biblical textual criticism arose in the west, thus the west didn’t hear much about the Quranic criticism during this period beginning from Wellhausen to times of Gunkel, Baukham, Skeat, arlands and ehrman. Well, Muslims seem to have forgotten this area of study or at least, the majority of Muslims. I would probably tend to think that scholars tend to not get people involved in the subject because they think people are dumb and are not capable of analysis. This is a phenomena in both worlds, the Christian and Muslim although the Christians began this journey in two centuries ago. But what should not be forgotten this has been a well-known subject, far and wide, practiced by many Islamic scholars throughout history. Also what surprises many is the fact that even Christian scholars have had work done on Quranic manuscripts in the beginning of the 20th century with people like Bernhard Mortiz and Russian Shebunin.
One problem I noticed is that whenever someone uses this word “Criticism” there are some people in this forum (as elsewhere) who get affected in the wrong way. Please understand that criticism does not mean insulting or finding faults with a book but it is the exercise of applying existing methods of criticism to a book. I once opened a post called form criticism of the Quran and people questioned if I am finding faults with the Qur’an, but no, form criticism is a scientific application of a method of criticism upon a book or a text. It is not like two kids finding fault with each other because one was jealous of the other.
The other problem I see is the learning about the Quranic textual criticism from complete amateurs in the subject. Or even those who have never ever studied Quranic textual criticism. People like Jay Smith and David wood with their polemics say a lot of things as evangelists and anti-islamic propaganda for whatever reasons have created a new wave of people who think from what they hear from these people. Well, the fact remains that they are complete amateurs in the subject with absolutely no knowledge in it so people are actually learning from the wrong people. Yeah, they make it sound good to their audience but its foot-sock to scholars.
Anyway, one major mistake or blatant error in scholarship is when people quote a palimpsest and say the upper text is different to the lower text. This mistake is absolutely due to lack of scholarship. Even a layman in the subject would know that pages are not bound and stapled like a book and verses are not marked in one single page exactly where they were to identify mistakes or even to begin talking about it. Ill give you an example. Lets say you have a book with 10 pages. You write a story starting from page 1 to 10, 10th page being “the end”. This is your practice book. So you erase everything, and since the pages are not bound, you just pick up all the pages again and start to write the same story. Which page would you begin with?
The pages are not bound, nor are they marked, so you may have begun with the original 10th page which for you now has become your first page. Thus, if you take one page and analyse the older text and the new text it would be different. It is obvious now because you learned this, but to someone who never did, it looks like a eureka moment. Yey. Bottomline is, this is the type of silly mistake these pseudo scholars do and the internet, social media consumers believe these things because it sounds good.
Any palimpsest that has been used twice is the same. Same goes to the Bible. Codex Nitriensis is a very well-known manuscript and has the same characteristic. But the thing is when scholars analyse this if they take an academic approach, they will never do that silly mistake of making claims like “The upper text and the lower text are different so its an edit job”, such a kindergarten level error in judgment.
Ill give you a direct example from the most famous Quran manuscript all of these people use. The San’a manuscript.
Folio 30B contains the lower text which is chapter 9:81-90 and the Upper Text of chapter 30:40-54. Thus can you see? Its 21 chapters away from each other which is normal practice. When these people claim its two different texts and is an “edit job” it is actually a childish remark for shock effect of an unscholarly layman.
Another error is the lack of understanding in textual variants and a rendition variant. A rendition variant is a difference of a vowel mark. A textual variant is the difference of a letter in the manuscript. These people like Jay present all kinds of variants like a difference in a Madhwajib which is just a drag in pronunciation.
Where does one think it has all gone wrong or right?
Textual criticism of the Qur’an began maybe around a 1,000 years ago to the level of professional analysis and scholars like Ibn Mujahid who lived earlier in his work on the readings or recitations of the Qur’an in the 9th century is extensive in approach. In the recent years it has taken a different twist in the non-muslim circles where they apply biblical criticism methods to the Qur’an, though not very extensively, they have done a decent job and it takes a different route to what people have been thinking in the 20th and 21st century. Textual criticism of the Quran was silent for some time when biblical textual criticism arose in the west, thus the west didn’t hear much about the Quranic criticism during this period beginning from Wellhausen to times of Gunkel, Baukham, Skeat, arlands and ehrman. Well, Muslims seem to have forgotten this area of study or at least, the majority of Muslims. I would probably tend to think that scholars tend to not get people involved in the subject because they think people are dumb and are not capable of analysis. This is a phenomena in both worlds, the Christian and Muslim although the Christians began this journey in two centuries ago. But what should not be forgotten this has been a well-known subject, far and wide, practiced by many Islamic scholars throughout history. Also what surprises many is the fact that even Christian scholars have had work done on Quranic manuscripts in the beginning of the 20th century with people like Bernhard Mortiz and Russian Shebunin.
One problem I noticed is that whenever someone uses this word “Criticism” there are some people in this forum (as elsewhere) who get affected in the wrong way. Please understand that criticism does not mean insulting or finding faults with a book but it is the exercise of applying existing methods of criticism to a book. I once opened a post called form criticism of the Quran and people questioned if I am finding faults with the Qur’an, but no, form criticism is a scientific application of a method of criticism upon a book or a text. It is not like two kids finding fault with each other because one was jealous of the other.
The other problem I see is the learning about the Quranic textual criticism from complete amateurs in the subject. Or even those who have never ever studied Quranic textual criticism. People like Jay Smith and David wood with their polemics say a lot of things as evangelists and anti-islamic propaganda for whatever reasons have created a new wave of people who think from what they hear from these people. Well, the fact remains that they are complete amateurs in the subject with absolutely no knowledge in it so people are actually learning from the wrong people. Yeah, they make it sound good to their audience but its foot-sock to scholars.
Anyway, one major mistake or blatant error in scholarship is when people quote a palimpsest and say the upper text is different to the lower text. This mistake is absolutely due to lack of scholarship. Even a layman in the subject would know that pages are not bound and stapled like a book and verses are not marked in one single page exactly where they were to identify mistakes or even to begin talking about it. Ill give you an example. Lets say you have a book with 10 pages. You write a story starting from page 1 to 10, 10th page being “the end”. This is your practice book. So you erase everything, and since the pages are not bound, you just pick up all the pages again and start to write the same story. Which page would you begin with?
The pages are not bound, nor are they marked, so you may have begun with the original 10th page which for you now has become your first page. Thus, if you take one page and analyse the older text and the new text it would be different. It is obvious now because you learned this, but to someone who never did, it looks like a eureka moment. Yey. Bottomline is, this is the type of silly mistake these pseudo scholars do and the internet, social media consumers believe these things because it sounds good.
Any palimpsest that has been used twice is the same. Same goes to the Bible. Codex Nitriensis is a very well-known manuscript and has the same characteristic. But the thing is when scholars analyse this if they take an academic approach, they will never do that silly mistake of making claims like “The upper text and the lower text are different so its an edit job”, such a kindergarten level error in judgment.
Ill give you a direct example from the most famous Quran manuscript all of these people use. The San’a manuscript.
Folio 30B contains the lower text which is chapter 9:81-90 and the Upper Text of chapter 30:40-54. Thus can you see? Its 21 chapters away from each other which is normal practice. When these people claim its two different texts and is an “edit job” it is actually a childish remark for shock effect of an unscholarly layman.
Another error is the lack of understanding in textual variants and a rendition variant. A rendition variant is a difference of a vowel mark. A textual variant is the difference of a letter in the manuscript. These people like Jay present all kinds of variants like a difference in a Madhwajib which is just a drag in pronunciation.
Where does one think it has all gone wrong or right?
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