Friends,
We are all familiar with the provenance* of the New Testament and the Christian Bible. We know that the Bible was assembled of books approved by committee overseen by individuals who had axes to grind against one another. The Nicaean Council created the Bible out of fragments and letters and documents written by those who they could not identify for certain.
The Catholic Bible contains the Apocrypha, there are Gospels left out (Thomas, Peter, Mary Magdalen, etc) The Bible was created with a literary history, a social history and even a political history. Let us for the moment set aside its spiritual history, we know that Muhammed praised the Gospel as "The Book", Baha`u'llah assures that God protects His own words.
For centuries Islam has been able to hold up the Qur'an and say: Behold! Perfectly recorded the word of God through the Lips of the Apostle, perfect in rectitude! ANd there has been none to effectively say no.
But is this the case? Does the Qur'an also possess a literary, social and perhaps even a political history that mars its perfection?
In the 1970's a packet of very old parchment was found in the eaves of the oldest mosque in Yemen** during its refurbishing. The Yemeni government took extreme steps to preserve the documentary grave (It is a custom in Islam to bury ragged and worn Qur'ans in a grave).
The earliest Qur'anic fragments date to between 700 and 750 AD. The script is a very old form of Arabic without diacriticals and matches the age of the documents. Under the words of these oldest Qur'anic verse, visible in ultraviolet light, are even older verses scrubbed from the parchmetn so it could be re-used.
Frankly it is not a perfect copy of Uthman's authorized Qur'an. There are verses here different from what Islam has considered to be the Qur'an for centuries. There are whole sections of Surahs present there that are not even recorded in Uthman's authorized version.
Suddenly the Qur'an has a literary history - there are older, substantively different versions of what we know today as the Qur'an. This creates a social history, because for the time that this version of the Qur'an was the ONLY Qur'an in that society interpretations must have been different. Perhaps there is even a political history now made evident.
What does this mean to Islam? How many new factions will chip off the Sunni and Shi'ih megaliths over the next fifty or a hundred years as the reverberations of the study of these old documents play out. Surely it will take that long to become evident. The Qumran Scrolls required decades and decades of carefuly evaluation before those new bits of data could start to become digested.
Regards,
Scott
*Main Entry: prov·e·nance
Pronunciation: 'präv-n&n(t)s, 'prä-v&-"nän(t)s
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from provenir to come forth, originate, from Latin provenire, from pro- forth + venire to come -- more at PRO-, COME
1 : ORIGIN, SOURCE
2 : the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art or literature
**
The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments thereto ("e-mail") is sent by the Johnson County Community College ("JCCC") and is intended to be confidential and for the use of only the individual or entity named above. The information may be protected by federal and state privacy and disclosures acts or other legal rules. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify JCCC by email reply and immediately and permanently delete this e-mail message and any attachments thereto. Thank you.The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments thereto ("e-mail") is sent by the Johnson County Community College ("JCCC") and is intended to be confidential and for the use of only the individual or entity named above. The information may be protected by federal and state privacy and disclosures acts or other legal rules. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify JCCC by email reply and immediately and permanently delete this e-mail message and any attachments thereto. Thank you.As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.__________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
Arnold J. Toynbee
--
"There are no poets" __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:archive@mail-archive.com Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
