Reading the Qur'an

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 22, 2010 at 08:37

Our dear iam wrote

># Something cannot drop from the sky when the evidence on the ground contradicts this: the Quran contains precedent descriptions and this had to come from the Hebrew bible. No alternatives exist.

The Qur'an is a strange book and the style of the Qur'an is not uniform as for the sources of the Qur'an is a long list and it includes:

1. The first five books of the Bible

2. al-Isra'ilyyat or the stories and traditions of the Biblical figures more so that comes from sources external to the Bible

3. The NT and the non canonized Gospels as in the case of the Gospel of Thomas

4. The secular literature of the Greeks and the Syrians (eg: Qissat ahl al-kahf and qissat dhul Qarnain)

5. The Avesta as in the case of the story of al-isra' wa al-mi3raj (see Arta Viraf)

6. Very old texts that are not extant and we do not know very much about them as in the case of ahl al-ayaka or layka

7. There is so much Syriac in the Qur'an but we reaaly do not know what this really means? Is it Garshouni or is it the fact that the Qur'an was really written in Syriac as claimed by Luxenburg? and is it Qur'an 3arabi or is it quryana gharbiya We really do not know

8. The Qur'an is full of foreign words (Syriac, Hebrew, Ethiopic, Greek, Latin, Persian) and what does this mean? we really do not know

9. What is most puzzling is to identify what is really Arabic or from Arabia in the Qur'an and there is hardly anything

Now we have great advances in reading this opaque revelation and here are two examples

1. And I quote here Michael Cook: "the qur'an despite the prominent part it plays in muslim life is used only to a limited extent in liturgy in marked contrast to the bible among jews and christians. why should it be so and was it always so Angelika Neuwirth who highlighted the problem found in meccan material of the qur'an indications that it took shape in liturgical contexts which subsequently disappeared"

Now could this be why we have the likes of the story of ahl al-ayka? We may never know

2. Now we know that Allah seems to be in the habit of repeating himself ad-nausem as in the case of the Shu3ayb tradition and the two garden tradition and the Muslim ulama explain such strange phenomenon on the basis of the so called asbab al-nuzul or reasons of revelations but a more interesting reason comes from John Wansbrough who calls such phenomenon variant traditions that this could be the result of "independent possibly regional traditions incorporated more or less intact into the canonical compilation" which means that the Qur'an has multiple authors

You see our dear iam nothing is ever black and white

Oh and check my post addressed to Omar about Q17:1 or the ridiculous claim by Muslims about al-masjad al-aqsa must be located in Jerusalem

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