Lost in Translation? Or Lost in Editing?

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 12, 2021 at 06:59

You wrote

>To be sure, when contemplating this exercise in determining just exactly what was being said here, as has been demonstrated by DNM before, the real analysis is required to be understood from the perspective that much, if not most, of what is being written by the sages of Islam here, is not necessarily original.

Let us examine the word Inhar or انحر in the Arabic text of today's Qur'an and this is what happened:

1. This is the word in Arabic as edited by al-Tabari: انحر He added a dot above the second letter N which did not exist in the original Rasm

2. Now, we have to take a detour and examine the word يَعْصِرُونَ in Surat Yusuf: 49 and if you read al-Tabari's Tafsir you will realize that he was not sure how to read the word يَعْصِرُونَ and he provides 3 different readings where he not only changes or add short vowels but he also changes the consonantal text which is supposed to be the words of Allah. Another example is the word ملك in Surat al-Fatiha and is it ملك or مالك and al-Tabari who is a Persian not an Arab was editing an Arabic text that must be a translation of a Syriac text.

3. So back to the word انحر (A-N-H-R) and notice that the second letter ح (H) could be edited as ج (G) and this is what most likely what happened is that the letter was read as ح when it should have been read as ج

4. al-Tabari was clearly editing the Quranic text. So where did he get the text from and where is the text now? We just are not told. However, the Islamic literary tradition tells us about the story of Muhammad receiving مخططات (read this as;Texts, may be papyri, ostraca, codices etc..) and he instructed his young Jewish "secretary" to learn Aramaic/Syriac and or Hebrew so he can read for him what is in these مخططات. We are told that his secretary "learned" Hebrew or Aramaic/Syriac in 17 days and was able to read these مخططات

5. Could these مخططات be the Syriac NT and OT and this is indeed the main source of the Biblical narratives in the Qur'an? And could it be that a Persian man al-Tabari was trying to decipher (2-3 centuries after the death of Muhammad) what was a mix of Arabic and Syriac text and this is why he read the Syriac Ngar as Arabic Inhar? I suspect this is most likely what happened

PS: It is not only the Syriac NT and OT but in the case of Q5:32 this is Talmudic (Talmud Sanhedrin) and a very good translation to Arabic.

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