Holybooks Int CD-rom

holy books have a

history

holy books have a

historytextual histories

of the new testament

& the qur’an

k e i t h e . s m a l l

holy Books have a history: New testament and Qur’an Manuscripts

Copyright © Keith E. SmallAll rights reservedISBN 978-1-4507-3994-8Printed in USA

Design by Thinkpen Design, Inc., www.thinkpendesign.comCopy Editor, V. Kathleen Draper

Printed by Snowfall Press, Monument, Colorado

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form withoutwritten permission from Keith E. Small.

Permission to reproduce the photographs contained in this book were obtained from the following:

Bibliothèque nationale de France for pictures of text from manuscripts BNF Arabe 326a, 328a, 331, 333c, 334c, 340c and 370a. These are found on pages 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37;Fondazione Ferne Noseda for pictures of IST TIEM SE 54 and the portion of a Qur’an palimpsest on pages 28 and 47;A private collector GRP for pictures of the Sanaa manuscripts 01-29.1 and 01-20.x on pages 27, 32, and 34;The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland for the image of Codex Leicestrensis.

The picture from Codex Sinaiticus was obtained from the Codex Sinaiticus website and is used according to its provision of permission for the reproduction of its images for educational and non-profit use.

ContentsAcknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i

introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii

Chapter 1: holy Books have a history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Chapter 2: textual Criticism on the Bible and the Qur’an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 TheBackgroundofBiblicalTextualCriticismandQur’anic TextualCriticism EarliestIdentifiableTextoftheQur’an? Anearly,strongstandardizationoftheQur’antext? preciseversiongoingbacktoMuhammad? Astrongparalleloraltradition?

Chapter 3: Kinds of Variants in Nt and Qur’an Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . .31 OrthographicVariants ProperNames VariableSpelling ZonesofVariableSpelling GrammaticalVariants ChangesofPerson ChangesofNumber Substitutionofconjunctions DiacriticalMarksVariants CopyistMistakes DifferentWords Corrections

Chapter 4: Comparisons and Conclusions from textual Criticism . . . . . . 53 EarliestIdentifiableTextoftheNTandQur’an? Anearly,strongstandardisationoftheNTandQur’antext? OnepreciseversiongoingbacktoJesusorMuhammad? Astrongparalleloraltradition?

Chapter 5: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Appendix one: textual Criticism and the inspiration of scripture . . . . . . 83

Appendix two: Common Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many ministry colleagues through the years who have helped me develop the ideas in this book. Also, I’d like to thank the many Muslims who shared their convictions with me, most as thoughtful statements from the heart, but even when they came as challenges and provoking statements. I have appreciated their conviction that truth should be proclaimed and debated in the public arena.

Special thanks are due to the publisher Hans Schiler, who granted permission for the use of material that originally appeared in the book Schlaglichter: Die beiden ersten islamischen Jahrhunderte, 2008, edited by Karl Heinz Ohlig and Markus Groß. Material from the chapter, “Textual Variants in the New Testament and Qur’anic Manuscript Traditions” (pp. 572-593), appears in chapters three and four of this book. The pictures

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used in that article and in this book are very partial processed pictures of the full pictures found in the author’s PhD thesis, Mapping a New Country: Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manu-scripts, and in the forthcoming book, Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts (Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland, USA, late 2010). The thesis contains a more extensive compar-ison of textual variants in the New Testament and Qur’an manuscript traditions. The academic book, Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts, is a more developed study of the textual variants in just the Qur’an manuscript tradition, and how the variants illumine issues regarding the textual history of the Qur’an and the recovery of its original text. :

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introduction

One might well ask, why study ancient manuscripts of other people’s Scripture? Why meddle with someone else’s religious heritage? Why must you ask questions of who is right and who is wrong? Doesn’t such study only lead to unedifying argu-ments? These questions express a tension anyone involved in mission must deal with on a very personal level. The answer to all of these questions is that in the end, critical study of sacred texts is an exercise in simple intellectual honesty. It is an expression of loving my neighbour as myself by seeking to understand his beliefs. How can one gain a true understanding of someone else’s beliefs without asking these kinds of ques-tions? Perhaps the better question is, since such studies in the

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end are necessary, what attitudes are the most helpful to use in pursuing them?

Many people of all faiths and no faith have come to realize that religious tradition cannot be followed blindly. If a religion is to commend itself in this age, it must be open to the hardest and best questions put to it. We no longer live in a world where religious communities can keep themselves aloof from the criticism and scrutiny of others who don’t share their beliefs and values. Christians of all denominations have had to face this because of challenges from Secularism and scrutiny from people of other faiths around the world. Muslims, in particular, have taken for themselves a role as commentators and critics of Christianity and the Bible. For them too, the challenge is there of being on the receiving end of criticism. One scholar has written: 1

Islam and the Qur’an do not belong any longer exclusively to Muslims, but they belong to mankind, and mankind will henceforth demand the right to interfere in the interpretation of the Islamic heritage – as will be the case with regard to the religious history of all religions of the world.

One Muslim has wisely written: 2

1 Günter Lüling, A Challenge to Islam for Reformation. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003, 514-515.

2 David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers. Richmond: Curzon, 1999, 5-6.

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“Sooner or later Islam must, like its monotheistic rivals, face the tribunal of secular reason and patiently endure ‘trial by modernity’”, and asks: “Are Islam and its scripture…capable of patiently tolerating disciplined investigation?”…Later he argues that “Any constructive engagement between Islam and modernity must involve the rejecter [i.e. the non-Muslim]: the rejecter must reserve the right to examine critically the contents of the Koran”…

For the believer in Islam, for the intellectually curious, and even for the outright rejecter, it is a basic exercise of intellec-tual honesty to thoroughly investigate the history of the text of the Qur’an using the best available tools of historical research.

Recently, an exhibition sponsored by diverse religious groups was held at the British Library in London where ancient manuscripts of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scrip-tures were displayed together, visually illustrating the histo-ries of the transmission of these texts. In the exhibition catalog, the following statement was given as the purpose of the exhibition: 3

The main questions this exhibition asks of all of us are: what do these three faiths have in common, and how have they in their very separate and diverse histories created or received their holy texts? How and where have they become standardized, and what do they signify for us – of whatever faith or none – in the twenty-first century?

3 John Reeve, Sacred. London: British Library, 2007, 12.

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These are excellent, honest questions that need to be faced by everyone. Stuart, as a devout Christian, also comments about the necessity of these kinds of studies, and some fears they might cause:4

Some people may feel that textual criticism will expose weaknesses in the ancient versions of the Bible or the translations made from them. This is not really the case. What textual criticism shows is that no single version can claim to be perfect, since there are evident differences in the ancient copies. In this sense, strength comes with diversity. Since we have available to us a great variety of ancient texts, we must whenever possible place them before us and analyze them. The results will give us a far greater security as to what the original may have been than the credulous certification of any one text could ever do. We are therefore obliged not to reject whatever complicates the picture, but to enter into a careful and responsible analysis of the texts we have in an attempt to decide what was most likely the original wording actually inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Textual criticism and the study of ancient manuscripts so as to construct critical Greek New Testaments and critical Hebrew Bibles are responses to these challenges in the most basic and essential way possible. They are attempts to answer the question: have the traditional scriptures received by Chris-tians and Jews been reliably preserved? As I have pursued these studies, I have had my faith challenged at many points, but overall, I have found my convictions in the Bible’s reli-

4 Douglas Stuart, 'Inerrancy and Textual Criticism', Douglas Stuart, Inerrancy and Common Sense. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980, 97-118, 110-111.

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ability, sufficiency, and authority strengthened and deepened. I find more than ever I can share in the following words from the British Coronation service:5

This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God.

One Christian scholar has shared a similar conclusion to his studies in stating:6

…the end result of such studies has confirmed that we have every reason to trust the Bible. It has the right books, it has the right words, it does make sense, you can understand it; it contains all the words of God we need to know Him, to trust Him, and to obey Him; and it is where we should go to find the words of God to us.

This book is written from these same convictions arrived at after many years of study and experience.

The Aim of this BookThe aim of this book is to critically examine some founda-tional claims that Muslims make concerning the Bible and the Qur’an. There is a widespread and long held belief among Muslims that the text of the Bible was corrupted so much

5 http://www.oremus.org/liturgy/coronation/cor1953b.html, accessed 1 August 2010.

6 Notes from Dr. Wayne Grudem, “The Importance of the Bible”, lecture given at the European Leadership Forum, Eger, Hungary, in May 2009.

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that a new revelation, the Qur’an, had to be sent. Also, with this claim is often tied a claim that the text of the Qur’an has been preserved perfectly. This book will not be an exhaustive treat-ment of the subject but will instead focus on how textual criti-cism of manuscripts can help answer these questions and some other questions concerning the Qur’an’s textual history. This is done so that discussions of this topic between Christians and Muslims can be conducted in a more fair and even-handed way.

Though these two ideas, the preservation of the Bible and the preservation of the Qur’an are presented by Muslims as logically connected, they actually are not connected in the same way for both Muslims and Christians. They are two separate issues for Christians that really have no logical connection between them. If the Qur’an is preserved perfectly, it has no logical bearing on if the Bible is corrupted or not, and it has no logical bearing on whether or not the Bible is the authentic revelation claimed by Jews (Old Testament) and Christians (Old Testament and New Testament). For Muslims, the two are connected, because if the Bible has been corrupted the way they assert, then it does provide some logical ground for their claim of the Qur’an’s authenticity as revelation. But the Qur’an still needs to makes it claim to be a revelation that replaces the prior books on its own terms. Just claiming the prior books are corrupted so the Qur’an must be authentic is not good enough and is not a logical connection.

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Also, in this claim there is the unspoken and mistaken assumption that the Bible and Qur’an are the same kinds of scripture and that claims for the same kind of inspiration are made for both that makes perfection of textual transmission necessary. This is not true. Christians have never claimed that the Bible has been preserved perfectly, and such a claim is not necessary for it to be considered inspired and even inerrant. At most, perfection is claimed for the original autographs of the individual books of the Bible. Because of the acknowledged human element in inspiration, and the recognized human means of preservation and transmission, the most Christians have claimed is that it is reliable and sufficient in preserving and transmitting God’s truth to mankind.

To force a standard of perfection on its textual history is to force a Muslim view of scripture onto the Bible, a view that Christians have never really held. Also, forcing this standard is often done by Muslims without actually demonstrating its truth for the Qur’an. If perfection is claimed for the text of the Qur’an, its perfect transmission ought to be demonstrated, so that the Qur’an can be evaluated on its own merits. It is usually assumed by Muslims to be true, and often asserted to be true, but the careful work of examining manuscripts to see if it has actually occurred is usually not brought into the picture. This book is the fruit of such an examination on a limited portion of the text of the Qur’an. The basic research under-

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lying this book was done to examine the manuscripts of both the New Testament and the Qur’an traditions using the same established methods of textual criticism that have been applied to many ancient literatures by scholars worldwide. Any claims for the inspiration of the Bible or the Qur’an ought to be set against a basic knowledge of the results of this kind of study in order to assess the truth and consistency of such claims.

For Christians, our claims to the inspiration of the New Testament are consistent with the results of three centuries of such study. One man has rightly said,7

“Modern biblical criticism…belongs among the greatest intellec-tual achievements of the human race. Has any of the great religions outside the Jewish-Christian tradition investigated its own founda-tions and its own history so thoroughly and so impartially?”

Ideally, we should hold onto this hard-won strength with confidence, humility, reverence, and sympathy towards others who do not share our strength of conviction, knowing that building convictions on sound foundations takes hard thought and work, and is emotionally and spiritually demanding. Also, we must recognize that reasoning and arguments do not necessarily create faith in the hearer, but that God is often pleased to use them to help gain a hearing for the Gospel, and

7 Küng, Hans, Judaism: The Religious Situation of Our Time, London: SCM Press Ltd, 1992, 24.

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He uses them to strengthen our own faith. As you read this book, please keep in mind 2 Timothy 2:24-26:

And the Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held by him to do his will.

As a devout Christian, I try to take Jesus’ words seriously that I should love my neighbour as myself. I am attempting to deal with these issues concerning the Qur’an and Islamic belief with a sympathy and objectivity that I would want extended back to me in my search for truth. I would like to commend this book to you with some wise words that I have borrowed and paraphrased (my additions in boldface) from a scholar whose work I have come to appreciate:8

I hope I can suggest without impertinence that Muslims and ourselves not allow polemical convenience to dictate our estimates of historical probability; rather to recognise, as Islamic scholarship and Christian scholarship traditionally have, that we in the world are bound to work with probabilities, even when it comes to the relation of the available Qur’an and Bible to God’s transcendent knowledge. :

Keith E . small, PhD, August 2010

8 Melchert, Christopher, ‘The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another’, JQS 10 (2008), 73-87, 84.

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1holy Books have a history

“Your Bible has been changed. You need to read the perfectly preserved Word of God, the Holy Qur’an.”9

Holy books have a history. There is always a process in which the sayings and teachings that inspire and define a religious movement are recorded, collected, and then put into an autho-rized version. This can happen over many centuries, as with the Old Testament scriptures, over a relatively short time of a few decades to three centuries, as for the New Testament, and an even shorter time, between 23 years and three centuries for the Qur’an. Theories of inspiration of scripture are devel-oped in the interaction between historical circumstance and theological dogma. Among Christians, verbal plenary inspira-

9 Quotation from an email read by the author.

2 holy books have a history chapter 1: holy books have a history 3

tion seeks to hold the two facets of Divine intent and guidance as to meaning, content and word choice together with human involvement as to style, vocabulary, and construction of argument. Among Muslims, mechanical models of inspiration have been consistently chosen so as to minimize the human element and maximize the Divine credentials of the Qur’an. The Islamic dogma that the Qur’an was sent down from a heavenly tablet has in effect locked Muslims into a mechanical view of inspiration. One scholar has noted:10

…as a way to enhance the status of a canonical text, it is hard to trump the doctrine of its eternity. Non-Muslim monothe-ists made little attempt to compete. The view that the Torah had existed for two thousand years before the creation of the world was found among the Jewish rabbis; but compared to the pre-eternity of the Qur’an, such a claim was modesty itself. Taken together, the doctrines which developed around the Koran accorded it a more elevated status than that of the Bible in either Judaism or Christianity.

When you first hear a Muslim view of the Qur’an’s textual history, it seems relatively straightforward. Through a combi-nation of written and oral transmission, we are told, the text has been preserved perfectly since the time of Muhammad. Many will go on to say that in its present form it perfectly represents the text of the Qur’an on a tablet next to Allah’s

10 Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 2000 112-113.


throne in paradise. If you are a Christian, and your Muslim friend is making comparisons to the Bible, he will usually state at some point that whereas the Qur’an has been preserved perfectly, the Bible was changed by Jews and Christians at some point in its history, and changed so much, that Allah had to send the Qur’an to restore the truth about religion. This conclusion is presented as a settled fact of history, though usually no significant historical evidence is provided.

Often, these comparisons are carried out by our Muslim neighbours with little knowledge of the actual history of the Bible. Sometimes, they are made with a sophisticated under-standing of the practice of textual criticism as it has been carried out on the text of the Bible over the last few centuries in the West.11 It should be noted, though, that Muslims have never applied these methods to the text of the Qur’an, and as a point of fairness and integrity, if any comparison using these methods for the New Testament is attempted by Muslims, they ought to be similarly applied to the Qur’an.

Fideism vs. EvidentialismAt the outset, it is important to note that this belief is based mainly on what the Qur’an teaches and the view of historical reality Muslims believe it presents, as well as being what Muslims believe is revelation about the past from Allah.

11 For instance, one critical Western book by the scholar Bart Ehrmann, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, (Oxford, 1993) has been translated into Arabic because it asserts intentional change to the text of the New Testament.


One prominent Muslim debater once said to me in a debate concerning the historical eyewitnesses to the event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ: “We have the eyewit-ness that counts. We have Allah, and He said in the Qur’an that the crucifixion did not happen!”12 In saying this, he was pointedly repudiating the historical integrity of the Gospels in the New Testament, as well as the historical integrity of Jewish and Roman sources that affirm the crucifixion took place, and also five centuries of consistent historical testimony of the centuries preceding the birth of Muhammad. He did all this in one sweeping statement without giving one reason why his view was better. This was a clever debate tactic, but it in no way demonstrated the truth of his confident but wrong assertion.

Tragically, I have had to conclude from many sincere conversations, that these kinds of convictions among Muslims are not usually a conclusion arrived at after a sober, thorough, and objective survey of the history of the collection of the books of the New Testament and the events presented therein. They are rather held as articles of unquestioned faith and a key justification for asserting the authenticity and necessity of the religion of Islam. Questioning these things, instead of bringing out a serious discussion often brings about emotional, and even angry responses. However, if we really believe that our eternal destinies and those of other people are depen-

12 Debate between Keith Small and Shabbir Ally, March 5th, 2000, Bradford, UK. He was referring to the Qur’an passage Surah 4:157 which denies the crucifixion occurred.


dent on the teaching of any of these holy books, then we owe it to ourselves, to other people, and to God Himself to look into these issues as carefully and objectively as possible. Any religion that requires people to make a choice of faith must also allow the investigation of difficult basic ques-tions and issues if that choice of faith is to be meaningful and honourable.

Muslims and Christians usually start from different points when it comes to considering and defending the authenticity and integrity of their scriptures. Muslims tend to work from a position known as “fideism” that the truth of a religion rests ultimately on your faith in that religion. Christians have tradi-tionally worked from a position known as “evidentialism”, that the truth of a religion can be demonstrated by appealing to evidence, and especially historical evidence.

One effect of this is that Muslims are very hesitant to examine the Qur’an critically. They are taught that to doubt it in any way is to sin and to start down to the path to hell. Many are taught to follow the advice of Surah 5:101 for these kinds of questions:

O you who believe! Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble.


How different this is from the advice to all Christians in 1 Thessalonians 5:21:

But examine everything carefully; hold fast that that which is good.

The ways Muslims defend the Qur’an often end up empha-sizing things that strengthen their faith in the Qur’an, rather than carefully examining the foundational issues and demon-strating their truth to outsiders. Rather, things that are actually irrelevant like the beauty of its sound in Arabic,and the inimi-tability of its Arabic rhetorical style are what are emphasized. Also, things will often get mixed in that appear at first to be evidences but which after a deeper look actually become irrel-evant or insufficient. Some of these are the supposed scientific knowledge in the Qur’an, the perfection of the transmission of its text, and asserting there are no contradictions in it.

Also, Muslims often try to defend the Qur’an by attacking the Bible. The standards they use for their attacks are all ones that are based on what the Qur’an teaches the Bible hypo-thetically was. It is not in a form that the Qur’an presents as its true one (66 books rather than the Torah, Zabur, and Injil). This is also seen in their attacks that its text must be corrupted because what it teaches disagrees with Qur’anic teaching (the Trinity, that Jesus is God in the flesh, that He was crucified and raised from the dead, and one must believe in Jesus’ sacrificial death


and resurrection in order to be forgiven). It is also seen in their assertion that the existence of textual variants for the text of the Bible necessarily means it’s corrupted (“50,000 errors in the Bible!”). None of these “proofs” prove the Bible was changed and the Qur’an was not, and all of them are ultimately based on the Muslims’ faith in the Qur’an, not on a careful and dispassionate examination of available evidence.

Christians, on the other hand, defend the Bible on the history of its preservation that shows it does contain the authentic and authoritative sayings and teachings of Jesus and His Apostles (the Christian Scriptures), as well as the Scriptures given by God to the Jews. Since it does stand up to historical scrutiny, we know it is a solid basis for our faith and we can defend it and present it in relevant ways to those outside the faith.

Muslim and Christian Views of ScriptureOne basic theological difference between the Bible and the Qur’an as books of scripture ought to be explained at the outset. Though similar in many respects, the Islamic and Christian views of scripture are very different in their funda-mental emphases of conception and use. The Qur’an presents an idea of scripture that is very different from any that can be derived from the Bible itself. It presents an idea of a dictated


book delivered by miraculous means from a heavenly original.13 Though some Jews at the time of Jesus had come to a view of the Torah being created 2000 years before the universe, the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian scriptures themselves present no such idea of being direct representations of a celes-tial book. Rather, the claim is made that they are the writings of people on earth who were directed in their writing by God. But the Qur’an’s view is very different from the views of scrip-ture that have been held by the majority of Christians through history, and to the beliefs that are considered sound to Protes-tants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. The Qur’an’s view and later theological formulation concerning it came about in situations of comparison, debate and competition to what had come to be the Christian and Jewish views of scripture in the 7-9th centuries AD.

TahrīfThe technical term for these changes to scriptures is tahrīf, or “corruption”. It is a word found in the Qur’an in verses that are often used to explain this belief that the text of the Bible was changed.14 As traditionally conceived, tahrīf has two main meanings. The first is changing the sense of the text, misrep-resenting it as it is presented or explained, as in interpretation

13 Surah 85:21, the “Preserved Tablet” (“al-Lauh al-Mahfūz”).

14 Surahs 2:75-76; 4:46; 5:13 and 41 especially.


or translation.15 All of the verses in the Qur’an alleging tahrīf in the Bible can legitimately be interpreted as this misrepre-sentation of the text, not actual change to the text. This is the view held by such Islamic scholars as Tabari, Razi and even Ibn Taymiyyah.16 This then is used to legitimately support the conclusion that the Qur’an actually affirms the textual integ-rity of the Bible, but also recognizing that it criticizes some people for misusing it at the time of Muhammad.

Another view of tahrīf is that intentional change was made to the text of the Bible itself to obscure its real teaching, involving the substitution of different words on the page for what was originally there. This is a much more severe charge, because it asserts the intentional corruption of revelation, a deliberate and perverse attempt to distort the Word of God by the very people it was sent to guide and direct. This is the prominent view one hears today, though it was not the majority view of the earliest Islamic commentators. Transla-tions of the Qur’an into English are even influenced by this view so that the assertion is made from the Qur’an when actually the Arabic supports other interpretations of tahrīf.17

15 H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974, 560-561.

16 Tabari: al-Tabari, The Commentary on the Qur’an. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1:403-404. Razi, in Mahmoud Ayoub, The Qur’an and its Interpreters. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984, 121. Ibn Taymiyyah from his Ibn Taymiyyah, A Muslim theologian’s Response to Christianity. New York: Caravan Books, 1984, 226, 229.

17 Compares the translations of Pickthall Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., to Hilali and Khan, M. Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali and M.M. Khan, Interpretation of the Meanings of the Noble Qur’ân. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 2001 at S. 2:75; 4:46, 5:13, 41. Pickthall keeps the original ambiguity of tahrif. Hilali and Khan strengthen it to mean change to the written text.


In the early Islamic Qur’an commentators, the first sense is usually how the word is interpreted in the Qur’an. In the ninth century, however, belief in the second meaning grew and was applied increasingly to Muslim understandings of prior scriptures.18 Today, the second view is the one normally used when Muslims speak of the text of the Bible. Most Muslims I have met sincerely believe as fact that at some point, both Jews and Christians changed their scriptural texts away from what was originally given. They sincerely and passionately believe that Islam was given to restore the true faith originally given to Abraham, but which was later corrupted by rebellious Jews and Christians.

The Big QuestionsThe big questions behind this study are:1. Was the New Testament ever changed in the ways that

Muslims assert?2. Has the Qur’an been preserved as faithfully as

Muslims claim?3. Why should answering these questions make a difference to

Christians, Muslims, and others?

This book is an attempt to answer these by comparing the textual histories of the New Testament and the Qur’an as

18 Steven Masood, The Bible and the Qur’an: A Question of Integrity. Carlisle, Cumbria: OM Publishing, 2001, 75-79, and Colin Chapman, Cross and Crescent. Nottingham: IVP, 2007, 216-220 have useful sections for this point.


carefully as possible. The unique thing about this study is that it applies the same basic method of textual criticism to the earliest available manuscripts of both the New Testament and the Qur’an manuscript traditions.19 The foundation for this study is the analysis of actual manuscripts to see what kinds of textual variants they contain, and what these variants can show about the original texts of these books and their ensuing histories.

The entire practice of NT textual criticism is based on the inescapable observation that manuscripts have textual variants, and that one precise form of the text has not been preserved in writing. This can also be said for the Qur’an manuscript tradi-tion, even though its manuscript tradition has not been studied on its own terms to the same degree as the New Testament. Bishop Michael Nazir Ali gave a crucial insight on how Chris-tians can view textual variants:20

The survival of variant manuscripts is regarded as a strength by Christian scholars in establishing a critical text of the New Testa-ment. The variations do not appear to compromise either the historical integrity of the New Testament or its reliability as a canon of Christian doctrine in any substantive way. The existence of a large number of manuscripts in different ancient languages, with their origins in widely separated churches yet in substantial agreement

19 It is based on a PhD thesis, Keith Small, Mapping a New Country: Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts, Brunel University, London, UK, 2008.

20 Michael Nazir-Ali, Frontiers in Muslim-Christian Encounter. Oxford: Regnum Books, 1987, 48.


with each other, is an argument in favour of the integrity of the Scriptures.

The variants mentioned in Islamic literature for the Qur’an is extensive and useful,21 especially for approaching questions concerning the oral transmission of the text of the Qur’an. The parallel transmission of the Qur’an from the earliest era through both oral and written transmissions is a unique feature of the Qur’an tradition. Though both the New Testa-ment and Old Testament had features of oral transmission in their historical development, they both ended up relying more on written transmission of their texts, as a result of the cultural settings in which they were recorded and transmitted which were more dependent on written literary conventions than oral ones. The Qur’an, initially occurring in an oral setting also quickly came to be treated as a book to be transmitted through normal conventions of manuscript transcription and transmis-sion that were in use in late near eastern antiquity.

This BookOverall, the purpose of this book is to give the reader the best grasp possible for a comparison of the outlines of textual history for both the New Testament and the Qur’an. When considering supporting arguments for both sides, what often

21 The three most important collections of these are Abd al-Latîf Al-Khatîb, Mu’jam al-Qirā’āt. Damascus: Dār Sa’d al-Dîn, 1422/2002, Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān. Leiden: Brill, 1937, and Abd al-’Âl Sâlim Makram and Ahmad Muktār ‘Umar, Mu’jam al-Qirā’āt al-Qurānīyah, Ma’a Maqaddimah fî Qirā’āt wa Ashhar al-Qurrā’. Cairo, Egypt: ‘Âlam al-Kitab, 1997.


gets lost is the big picture. After reading this book, the reader should have a good grasp of the big picture so that they can then evaluate individual arguments. Since the New Testament text has been studied in such detail over the last three centu-ries, reference will be made to standard texts which explain its textual history in more detail. Emphasis will be on the textual history of the Qur’an, and the comparison of its textual history to that of the New Testament.

The similarities and differences in kinds of variants are explored, taking into account the differences in kinds of script, the development of orthography, the effects of oral tradition on written transmission, and the role of centralized ideological control on the texts. These comparisons are then examined in regard to recovering the earliest possible forms of the texts of both traditions and illuminating the histories of the develop-ment of these texts into standardized text-forms. Intentional variants in both traditions are given special attention.

Because of limitations of space, this book examines what this author thinks are the most significant foundational issues, so it will not be an exhaustive presentation of these issues. However, direction will be given for further study, and it is hoped that the careful reader will obtain a sufficient overview so as to discern what is foundational and what is peripheral when these issues are discussed. :

15

15

2textual Criticism on the

New testament and the Qur’an .

“You’re a Christian? You know, your Bible has been changed.”22

All discussions on this topic, whether polemical, apologetic, or irenic ought to be based on facts, but what precisely are the facts here? Has the Bible been changed? In addition to Muslims, some current New Testament scholars are saying yes, it has been changed for dogmatic reasons. Are they right? Has the Qur’an been perfectly preserved? Most Muslims believe this passionately and it is the usual unspoken assumption. Is there a factual basis for this belief?

Many Evangelical Christians are familiar with the Bible side of things, especially with statements like, “24,000+ New Testament manuscripts contain the same basic text”, or “A

22 A common opening comment when I was introduced to a Muslim for the first time.

16 holy books have a history chapter 2: textual criticism on the new testament and the qur'an 17

critical text for the New Testament based on 200+ years of concerted research”, or “We have an extremely reliable version of the original text”. These are all things we assert and use to ground our faith. We are used to thinking about such issues for the New Testament because so much work has been done on its text. We have facsimiles of manuscripts, a multitude of reference works, a critical text based on hundreds of represen-tative manuscripts, and an enormous discipline that has grown up around the questions of textual variants in manuscripts. And even with challenges from scholars like Bart Ehrman and popular books like the DaVinci Code that call a concept of the “original text” into question, we have a firm basis for believing that the New Testament text has been kept until our day with an extremely high degree of reliability.

But what about the Qur’an? Are there textual variants in Qur’an manuscripts? How can we make sense of claims like “Seven ways of reciting the text were given to Muhammad”, or “There has always been a parallel oral tradition protecting the written text”, or “So many people had the text memorized from Islam’s earliest times that the text could not be corrupted”? Also, with manuscript discoveries like those from Sanaa in the 1970’s, more questions come to our minds. What kind of textual variants do the Sanaa manuscripts actually contain? What do we make of stories of collections Muhammad’s Companions had that supposedly contained substantial textual variants? Are these


in manuscripts? Has a single, precise text of the Qur’an been kept through a parallel oral tradition?

There are some books that address these kinds of issues, but once you start looking for firm answers to questions about the history of the text of the Qur’an on a level that has been done with the New Testament, one finds almost a black hole. Contemporary Muslim scholars recognize that the kind of work done on the New Testament, at least for gathering and collating the texts of manuscripts, has not been done in Islamic scholarship.23 And the blackness of this hole is then inten-sified with confusing issues raised about multiple systems for reciting the Qur’an, the Companions’ Collections of the Qur’an, alleged Shi’ite variants, a parallel oral tradition, and the dogmatic and constantly asserted claims that the text has been preserved perfectly from the eternal tablet until today. And there is also the even blacker background of the threat of violence to anyone who tampers with Islam’s holy text.

All Christian ministries explicitly or implicitly rely on this factual information concerning the New Testament. When one turns to look for similar information concerning the Qur’an, however, there is a dearth of information concerning the actual development of its text as can be traced in manuscripts. Instead, one is left with contradictory accounts of the reliability of Islamic tradition which in the end cannot be fully verified or fully falsified.

23 M. M. Al-Azami, The History of the Qur’anic Text. Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003, 317.


A number of years ago I started a research project to try to find answers to these questions.24 For this research, I took narra-tive portions of the New Testament and the Qur’an from 20 representative manuscripts from each tradition. I then examined them for textual variants. I used the established methodolo-gies for textual criticism and applied them to both books. For the Qur’an, I was able to use the oldest Qur’an manuscripts in European collections as well as three of the earliest manuscripts from Sanaa, Yemen. Together, these manuscripts are representa-tive of the oldest Qur’an manuscripts in the world.

Textual criticism as a discipline seeks to explore two main issues: recovering the earliest form of the text; i.e. the “original text” if possible, and to also trace the historical development of that text from the earliest times until today. As I applied the methods to the New Testament manuscripts I had chosen, I came away with a stronger conviction that we can and have recovered an extremely reliable form of the original text the New Testament.

As I applied these methods to the Qur’an, I came away with a much greater understanding of the state of the text of the Qur’an in its manuscript tradition. Concerning the recovery of the earliest form of the text of the Qur’an, I came to conclu-sions that challenge many normal assumptions held in the West and among Muslims. Overall, I have found that there

24 A summary of this research can be found in Keith Small, “Textual Variants in the New Testament and Qur’anic Manuscript Traditions”, Keith Small, Schlaglichter. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2008, 572-593. This is a summary of some of the findings in the author’s PhD thesis, Keith E. Small, Mapping A New Country: Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts. Brunel, London School of Theology, 2008. The Qur’an side of this comparison is to be published in late 2010 by Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, under the title, Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts.


are facts to be gleaned from early manuscript studies have a very direct and practical bearing on even the most popular level discussion concerning the relative reliability of the New Testament and the Qur’an. These are things that I believe need to be a matter of public record, and need to be easily accessible for any inquiring person to be able to investigate.

The Goals of Textual CriticismTextual criticism of manuscripts has been pursued concerning classical Greek and Latin texts in general, and the Greek New Testament text in particular. Two primary goals of such study have emerged:

To establish the original text with as much precision as possible;To trace the historical development of the text.In order to pursue these two goals in a comparative study

of the New Testament and Qur’an, certain research questions were adopted. The questions were chosen to highlight the most important comparative issues, taking into account features that are unique to each textual tradition as well as those features that are shared between both of them.

The Key Research Questions1. What is the earliest attainable text for the Qur’an that can

be discerned through applying textual criticism to existing manuscripts?


2. What kinds of variants do the New Testament and Qur’an traditions have in common and what kinds are unique to them respectively?

3. Can the idea of one precise version of the Qur’an going back to Muhammad be supported from the manu-script evidence?

4. Did a parallel oral tradition act as a strong protection to the precise content and pronunciation of the text of the Qur’an from the time of Muhammad?

The Research ProjectManageable portions of text from both books were chosen as a basis for comparison, portions of similar length, style, and subject matter. For the Qur’an, a portion was found that was available in twenty manuscripts. Seven were of Hijazi script, eleven were Kufic, one was Eastern Kufic, one was an Ottomon Pre-1924/1342 Cairo text, and one was the current Warsh text. The portion chosen was Surah 14:35-41 which features Ibrāhīm, Ismā‘īl and Ishāq.25

After determining the Qur’an portion, a portion of similar length and genre was chosen from the New Testament, Acts 7:1-8. It features a retelling of Abraham’s call to come out

25 The manuscripts used are: Istanbul, Museo delle arti turche e islam, Eserleri Muzesi manuscript: IST TIEM SE 54, pictures of which were obtained from Prof. Sergio Noja Noseda; Sanaa manuscripts 01-28.1, 01-29.1, and 01-20.x pictures of which were obtained from a private collector; British Library manuscripts Or. 2165, Or. 12884, and Or.70.a.31; the Samarkand Kufic Qur’an, the 1905 facsimile version by Pissaref , obtained on microfilm from Princeton University, Paris Bibliotheque Nationale manuscripts Arabe 325a, 326a, 328a, 330c, 331, 332, 333c, 334c, 343, and 370a; the Meknes manuscript pictured in the Bergsträsser photo-archive at the Freie Universitat in Berlin; and a printed copy of the Warsh text obtained in Morocco.


from Mesopotamia. It mentions Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This portion was then located in 20 representative manu-scripts from the New Testament tradition consisting of papyri, Majuscule/Uncial script manuscripts, and Minuscule script manuscripts.26 These also were manuscripts that were representative of the major text-types discerned through text-critical study: the Western, Alexandrian, and Byzantine Text-types.

The portions of text from all of the manuscripts were collated in order to highlight any textual variants. The variants observed were then examined, categorized, and analysed. The method of analysis was the main method used in New Testa-ment studies which is called Reasoned Eclecticism.27 This method has been developed over the last two centuries and is the method that has been used for assembling the most widely accepted critical text of the New Testament.28 It balances external evidence of manuscript age, materials, script style, provenance (if known), and scribal features with the internal evidence of which reading grammatically and stylistically best accounts for the origin of any variant readings.

The primary goal of textual criticism in all branches of the discipline whether regarding biblical, religious, or other ancient

26 Using the Gregory system of designating manuscripts, these manuscripts are: p33, p7 4, , A, B, C, D, E, P, 33, 69, 104, 203, 326, 614, 1175, 1505, 1739, 2495, and Mt. Sinai Arabic Manuscript 151. The texts for these were obtained from either the manuscripts, photographs, facsimiles, and published collations.

27 Bruce M. B.M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament. New York: OUP, 2005

28 Eberhard and Erwin Nestle and Barbara and Kurt Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001


literature is to recover the original reading of the texts that are now extant. Elliott and Moir give this concisely:29

Textual criticism is, primarily, the study of any written work, the original of which no longer survives, with the purpose of recovering that original text from those copies which have chanced to survive…A textual critic works back from extant sources to the supposed original text from which all surviving copies ultimately descend.

Recovering the original is the primary goal, but recent scholarship has shown that the concept of the original text can be a complicated one in the context of ancient book produc-tion and textual transmission.

There are also additional purposes for textual criticism. With other sacred texts, it has proved particularly useful for illu-minating the history of the transmission of the text, and for discerning evidence for the influence of historical and theo-logical issues in textual transmission.

What is the Original Text of the Qur’an?On the face of it, the question “What is the original text of the Qur’an?” may seem a simple one. However, it is actually a complicated issue deserving precise definition. This is espe-cially true when one is dealing with a literary tradition that operates with a mixture of oral and written literary conven-

29 Keith Elliott and Ian Moir, Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1.


tions. For ancient books produced in cultures that preserved, maintained, and distributed their cultural and religious litera-tures through predominantly written means, the Original Text can be viewed as the state of the text when the document left the author’s desk to be published and circulated. When oral dynamics are introduced, one may have a variety of oral perfor-mances preserved and distributed through oral and written means that could all compete for status as “original texts”.

The progression of the writing of a published written text in the ancient world can be described with the following five categories.30 These describe the process of writing and acceptance of the text from its beginnings to widespread and official acceptance.

Sources: these are the sources, written and oral, that were used to write the text. They might be quoted, paraphrased, refashioned, or used simply as research sources.

Author’s text: this is the text as it left the author’s desk for publication and distribution.

Official version(s): these are versions that after publication achieved an official status of some sort in a defined geographic area or in a particular group of people.

Canonical version: this is a published version that achieves an official status over a wide geographical area and a large group of people setting it above and distinct from other versions.

30 This is a simplified and expanded version of the categories described by Eldon Epp in Eldon Jay Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism”, HTR, 92, 3, 245-81.


Revised versions: these are official and canonical versions that are edited or refined to a further degree, while retaining a clear relationship with their predecessor.

Original Text Issues for the Qur’anWhatever portions, oral and written, existed in Muhammad’s lifetime would belong to category 1) Sources. They made up a loose collection of original material though it had not been put into an authoritative version.

After Muhammad’s death, there were collections of this material in use among his Companions that became official versions in their own right. This is seen in that they were recited and used in different geographic areas where the Companions went during the early Islamic conquests. These can be considered Official versions, each an official text in its own geographical sphere. It was the use of these different versions that allegedly caused conflicts so severe they threat-ened the unity of the new Islamic empire and prompted Uthman to create a single version. The traditions recount that Uthman did this using one companion’s version for his basic text- Umar’s which he obtained from Umar’s daughter Hafsa. Uthman had this version, (at the time considered one of many official versions), edited and then declared it to be the one Canonical version. Any later versions of this text, such as by al-Hajjaj and Ibn Mujahid, or any others that added dots to


consonants or vowels, can be considered later revised versions. Uthman’s action, while providing one text, destroyed access to more original versions of the Qur’an, both the Official versions of the Companions, and the loose body of material from within the lifetime of Muhammad.

According to some Islamic traditions, within Muhammad’s lifetime his recitations were recorded in both writing and by memorization, but not in a complete, organized collec-tion.31 There are traditions that assert Muhammad did leave a complete collection, but there are many reasons which make this unlikely. For instance, if there was such a collection, with Muhammad’s full personal authority behind it, there would have been no need for Uthman to form a committee to collect versions and edit one of them, and then to disbar and destroy the collections of Muhammad’s companions. Uthman would have had the complete and authoritative copy from the start and there would have been no question of competing collec-tions from the Companions. The earliest available Qur’an manuscripts confirm this general scenario as well, as this book will bring out.

While the New Testament original text can be largely recov-ered through textual criticism, only a later edited version of the Qur’an’s can be recovered. Muslim scholars can only point to a precise text of the Qur’an that is supported by written docu-

31 See Bukhari Sahih, Kitāb 61, Bāb 3


mentation and the consensus of Muslim scholarly opinion dating mainly to the third and fourth centuries of Islam. For documenting the history of the text of the Qur’an before this they depend on the indirect testimony of isnads associated with hadith about the collection of the Qur’an, and lists of names of oral transmitters contained on recitation certificates.32 There is little written documentation verifying the history, preserva-tion, and transmission of the precise text of the Qur’an for this crucial early period. Modern textual criticism on manuscripts can go a long way toward filling this gap. Without such work being done, specific claims for the transmission of the text of the Qur’an are difficult to prove or disprove. With this work, many questions can be definitively answered.

One reason for the importance of this study is that in much current Islamic literature a partial and misleading picture is given as to the existence of textual variants in the Qur’an’s manuscript tradition. One will find these in both popular treatments and serious academic studies.33 These tend to only acknowledge the unintentional errors of scribes. This is puzzling in that early and medieval Islamic scholarship openly acknowledges textual variants for the Qur’an that are inten-tional. One modern acknowledgement of this lack of study is

32 Al-Azami, History, 192-193.

33 For instance, Mona Abul-Fadl, Introducing Islam From Within. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1991, 92 and Al-Azami, History.


by scholars who have produced a photographic facsimile of the famous Topkapi Qur’an in Istanbul:34

Until the present day, none of the Mushafs which Caliph Uthman had ordered to be copied and sent to the major centers of the Islamic world was brought to light and constituted the subject of a study. In other words, until the present day such an ancient copy had not been the subject of a comparison between the Mushafs that were copied in the early centuries and those that are read today.

In their volume, they make an important start by having a chart that shows textual variants between the Topkai Mushaf, the Cairo Mushaf, and the Samarkand Mushaf, and they are variants that cannot be attributed to simple scribal error.35

This study, too, is just a start, and hopefully an impor-tant one. It is a limited one, and it is hoped that others will do similar and more extensive studies. However, even with its limitations, this study does present representative textual variants from the Qur’an’s manuscript tradition and the New Testament manuscript tradition.

34 Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, Al-Mushaf al-Sharif, Attributed to ‘Uthmān bin ‘Affān. Istanbul: IRCICA, 2007, 82.

35 Altikulac, Al-Mushaf. , 87-89.


Table 2.1 New Testament Manuscripts MS Name Date Type Text-type1 Aland Category2

p33 P. Vindob. G. 17973 VI Papyri Alexandrian II

p74 Bodmer Papyrus XVII VII Papyri Alexandrian I

01 Codex Sinaiticus IV Majuscule Alexandrian I

A 02 Codex Alexandrinus V Majuscule Alexandrian I in Acts

B 03 Codex Vaticanus IV Majuscule Alexandrian I

C 04 Codex Ephraemi

Syri Rescriptus

V Majuscule

Palimpsest

Alexandrian and Byzantine

II

Dea 05 Codex Bezae V Majuscule Western IV

Ea 06 Codex Laudianus VI Majuscule Western and Byzantine

II

Papr 025 Codex Petropolitanus XI Majuscule

Palimpsest

Byzantine in Acts V in Acts

33 Paris BN Gr. 14 IX/X Minuscule Alexandrian and Byzantine

I for Acts

69 Codex Leicestrensis XV Minuscule Family 13

Caesarean and Byzantine

V

104 Harley 5537 AD 1087

Minuscule Byzantine V for Acts

203 Add. 28,816 AD 1111 Minuscule Byzantine?

326 Lincoln College Gr. 82 XI Minuscule Alexandrian III

614 Milan B.A. E 97 sup. XIII Minuscule Western and pre-Byzantine

III

1175 Ioannou, 16 XI Minuscule Alexandrian I

1505 Lavra, B’ 26 1084? Minuscule Byzantine III

1739 Lavra, B’ 64 X Minuscule Alexandrian II in Acts

2495 St. Catherine’s Monas-tery Gr. 1342

XIV/XV Minuscule Byzantine III

Arab 151 Mt. Sinai Arabic Codex 151 AD 867 Kufic Related to Syriac and Western

none

1 These categories are taken from C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994, I:2-7; David A. Black, Textual Criticism. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994, 63-65; Metzger and Ehrman, Text. 52-122. 2 Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament. Leiden: Brill, 198983-158. The Alands explain their categories on pp. 335-337. Categories I-III contain varying degrees of the early text, I containing the most. Manuscripts categorised as IV contain forms of the ‘Western Text’. Manuscripts in category V contain text that is predominantly of the Byzantine text-type.


Table 2.2 Qur’an Manuscripts Manuscript3 Date4 Script

Style5Manuscript Orienta-tion6

Manuscript Material

Ortho-graphic Features7

Verse markers8

Istanbul 9 Tiem SE 54

I H.I Vertical Parchment sd, nsv, cd 1,5,10

01-28.1 I B.Ia Vertical Parchment sd, nsv 1,5,10

01-29.1 I H.I Vertical Parchment sd, nsv 1

01-20.x I A/B.Ia Horizontal Parchment nd, nsv 10

Or. 2165 I H II (H) Vertical Parchment sd, nsv 1, 10

SamK II D I? CI? (K)

Horizontal Parchment fd, nsv 1,10

BN 325a II B Ib (K) Horizontal Parchment nd, cd 1,5,10

BN 326a II H I (H) Horizontal Parchment sd, nsv 1,10

BN 328a I H I (H) Vertical Parchment sd, nsv 1,5,10

BN 330a II H III H) Horizontal Parchment sd, nsv 1,10

BN 331 II B Ia (K) Vertical Parchment sd, nsv 1,10

BN 332 II C I (K) Vertical Parchment fd, nsv 1,10

BN 333c III C III(K) Horizontal Parchment fd, cd 10

BN 334c III H IV (H) Horizontal Parchment sd, cd 1,5,10

Manuscript Date Script Style

Manuscript Orientation

Manuscript Material

Ortho-graphic Features

Verse markers

BN 340c III B II (K) Horizontal Parchment fd, cd 1.5.10

BN 343 IV D c (K) Horizontal Parchment sd, cd 10

BN370a IV C (K) Horizontal Parchment fd, cd 10

Meknes III B II (K) Horizontal Parchment sd, cd 1,5,10

Or. 12884 IV NS I10 (K)

Vertical Paper fv 1,5,10

Sharif XI Naskh Vertical Paper fv 1,10

Warsh XV Maghri-bi

Vertical Paper fv 1,10

3 This is the manuscript number used in their respective catalogues.4 These are the hijri (AH) dates given in the respective catalogues for these manuscripts as to the century according to the Islamic calendar. For the Paris manuscripts, since Déroche does not generally give dates, they are from the earlier DeSlane catalogue. 5 Generally, these are the categories devised by Déroche in François Déroche, Catalogue des Manuscrits Arabes. Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1983 and François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition. London: Nour Foundation, 1992 unless noted otherwise. The more general categories of H&ijāzi and Kufic are noted in parentheses as (H) and (K) respectively.6 This refers to the orientation of the page as to a vertical book format or a horizontal one.7 Abbreviations used are: nd- no diacritics, fd- few diacritics; sd- some diacritics; md- many diacritics; nsv- no short vowels; cd- coloured dots for some vowels; fv- fully vocalised with diacritics and short vowels.8 These are verse separators, usually seen as single verse, 5 verse, and 10 verse separators.9 This manuscript will be referred to as the ‘Istanbul’ manuscript for convenience.10 Déroche designates this style ‘New Style I’ Déroche, Tradition. 136-137. :

31

31

3Kinds of Variants in New testament

and Qur’an Manuscripts

It must follow that any history of the book- subject as books are to typographic and material change- must be a history of misreadings.36

The practice of textual criticism on manuscripts is based on the inescapable observation that all manuscript traditions contain textual variants, and that one exact form of any ancient text has not been preserved in writing. Variants do enter the process of textual transmission, and even the earliest manuscripts in both the New Testament and Qur’anic traditions show variants that cannot be completely reconciled. Hence there is the need for scholarly evaluation to determine and suggest the best text that explains the origin of the variants.

36 D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. London: The British Library, 1986, 16.

32 holy books have a history chapter 3: kinds of varients in new testament and qur'an manuscripts 33

Within the limited portions of text that were surveyed, many textual variants were encountered in both textual tradi-tions. For the New Testament, a wide variety of written variants was observed. These included:37

Copyist mistakes- normal kinds of unintentional errors observed in scribal practice. These can be things like the accidental duplication of letters or words or lines, acci-dental omissions, and variable spelling of words, especially involving vowels.

Intentional variants- variants which seem to have been made in an effort to correct grammar or spelling, to improve style, or even strengthen or establish a particular reli-gious belief.

These variants ranged in length from individual letters to phrases.

Whereas the New Testament manuscripts surveyed presented a variety of written variants, comparatively, the Qur’an manuscripts presented a much more restricted variety of written variants. They were fewer in number and kind, though unintentional and intentional variants were found. Usually, these Qur’an variants were no more than a letter in length or at very most a short word. No variants were observed in the chosen manuscripts that were the length of a phrase or longer. Emphasis was given to variants of the consonantal

37 These will just be summarised in this book. Complete details are available in the thesis, and treatments of the normal kinds of variants encountered in New Testament manuscripts are available in all of the major New Testament introductions.


line of the text, since the earliest Qur’an manuscripts have very sporadic and inconsistently placed consonantal diacritical marks and no short vowel notation marks.

Proper NamesOne category of consonantal variant encountered in the Qur’an manuscripts were variants in the proper names. Variants were encountered for all three of the names in the selected portion, Ibrāhīm, Ismā‘īl, and Ishāq. Concerning Ibrāhīm, it was observed that two forms, Ibrahim and Ibrahīm which differ by one consonant, the omission or addition of the final yā’ (both did not contain the medial alif). These forms were used interchangeably in the earliest manuscripts surveyed. These variations were sometimes found within the same surah, and even on the same page. This is different from the current accepted text of the Qur’an which has one consonantal form in Surah 2 (Ibrahim) and a slightly different one in all other locations (Ibrahīm). Here are examples:

At Surah 14:35, in the manuscript BNF 328a, the form is found which in the current text is only found in Surah 2, Ibrahim.38

38 BNF Arabe 328a, folio 53a, line 10.


At the same place, Surah 14:35 in the Sanaa manuscript 01-29.1, the form is found which is the form found at this place in the currently accepted text and everywhere else in the Qur’an except Surah 2, Ibrahīm.39

These forms were found in many manuscripts and were used interchangeably in the earliest manuscripts surveyed.

In one of the earliest manuscripts used, a similar variant was observed for the name Isma‘īl, with the yā’ omitted, which made the word read Isma‘il (short final “i”) instead of Isma’īl (long final “i”). Here is how the word looks in a Hijazi script manuscript from Istanbul:40

39 Sanaa 01.29-1, line 17.

40 Istanbul, Museo delle arti turche e islam, Eserleri Muzesi manuscript: IST TIEM SE 54, f. 11b, line 2.


Here is the way it normally looks in these early manuscripts and in all later manuscripts. This example is taken from the manuscript BNF Arabe 326a:41

In a later manuscript, probably from the third Islamic century, an additional alif is found in the spelling of Ishāq. The current text of the Qur’an does not contain this full form of alif, though it is usually represented by a dagger alif so that the long “a” sound of the alif is pronounced. Here is the way Ishāq is normally found in the early manuscripts, without a full alif. This is how it is written in the manuscript BNF 370a:42

41 BNF Arabe 326a, folio 3 verso, line 2.

42 BNF Arabe 370a, folio 3 recto, line 6.


Here is Ishāq with the full alif as found in BNF 333c:43

In order to understand how these variants compare to the

spelling of other names in early Qur’an manuscripts, a survey was done in various manuscripts of some other prominent names. While some names were spelled in consistently one form, four names were found to be spelled in variant ways in the earliest Qur’an manuscripts.44

Tawraīt: Can be found in 2 forms: Shaītān: Can be found in 3 forms: Isrā’īl: Can be found in 2 forms: Dāūd: Can be found in 4 forms:

43 BNF Arabe 333c, folio 42 recto, line 7.

44 Some of the names that were spelled consistently one way are Musa, ‘Isa, Yunus and Miriam. Details of the manuscripts in which these variant spellings can be found are in the thesis. Two prime sources were Efim A. Rezvan, The Qur’ān of ‘Uthmān. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Centre for Oriental Studies, 2004 and the CD-ROM from UNESCO which contains 300 pictures of early Qur’an manuscripts from Yemen: San‘ā’ Manuscripts, Memory of the World, UNESCO, Cairo, Egypt: Ritsec Cultureware.


Sometimes, variants in the spelling of names are described as copyist mistakes if they are described at all. However, their frequency of use in manuscripts which in all other respects show extreme care in scribal practice lead one to believe that they were acceptable alternative forms of spelling at the time they were inscribed. James Barr, in a book on spelling variation in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), coined a useful phrase for this phenomenon, that they are “zones of variable spelling”.45 They are words that at one time were written in multiple ways that were all considered acceptable spelling. Later, their spellings were standardized to one particular form.

Diacritical Mark VariantsUnlike the New Testament tradition, the Qur’an manuscript tradition has diacritical mark variants. These are variations in the placement of dots used to distinguish one conso-nant from another. There were two kinds of diacritical mark variant observed:1. Diacritical marks that demonstrated that slightly different

systems of diacritical marks were in use, and 2. Diacritical marks that were used according to a particular

system but that designated different consonants from what has become the standard reading of the text.

45 James Barr, The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 204.


Variable Diacritical Mark SystemsThe earliest manuscripts in Hijazi script seemed to employ a fairly uniform system, but the system was inconsistently applied. This system is identical to the current system in use, except for a small degree of variation. For instance, two of the earliest Hijazi manuscripts, British Library Or. 2165 and Paris Bibliotheque Nationale 328a used the basic system of desig-nating consonants that is still in use today. However, they did not always mark the same consonants, and neither of them marked all of the consonants. One letter, nun, is representa-tive. In the sample portion obtained from Or. 2165, 67% of the nuns were dotted with one dot over the consonant. In the same portion of Paris BNF 328a, 30% of them were dotted.

Different systems of using dots were also observed for certain consonants. Four methods for designating fa and qaf were observed among the manuscripts surveyed.46 Two methods for designating jim, ha, and kha were observed.47

The earliest Qur’an manuscripts in Kufic script were either completely without consonantal diacritics, or they contained some that were sporadically applied. Here are examples of both:

46 The four systems observed are: 1) fā’ one dot above, qaf two dots above: BN 325a, BN 326a, 01-28.1, Hafs, and Sharīf; 1a) (only fā’s dotted) BN 330a, BN 331, and BN 334c; 2) fā’ one dot underneath, qaf one dot above: Istanbul, Warsh; 3) one dot above for the fā’ and one beneath for qaf: 01-29.1; and 4) neither dotted: (neither dotted) Or. 2165, 01-20.x, Samarkand Kufic, BN 328a, BN 332, BN 333c, BN 340c, BN 343, BN 370a, Meknes Qur’an.

47 If these letters were designated, all but one of the manuscripts used the current system for distinguishing these letters. 01-29.1, from Sanaa however, used single dots above some letters so marked in the current system: and . Letters with a single dot below match letters that currently carry no dot: . is noted with one dot below rather than two above. is distinguished with a dot to the right side. and are not distinguished with dots at all.


None: Kufic Script in Sanaa 01-20.xThis early manuscript from the first Islamic century is devoid of consonantal diacritical marks.

None: Kufic Script in Paris BNF Arabe 340cThis manuscript, dated to the third Islamic century has coloured dots to indicate vowels and a pattern of vocalzation, but the consonants are devoid of diacritical marks.


Some: the Paris Manuscript BNF Arabe 331This manuscript, dated to the second Islamic century, like many manuscripts from this period has some but not all of the consonantal letters pointed. They also seem to be applied at the discretion of the individual scribe, because there is not a set standard of the amount of application between manuscripts.

Diacritical Variants Specifying a Different MeaningOccasionally, one will find that the diacritical marks that are designated indicate a different form of the word than has come to be the accepted standard text. The New Testament tradi-tion does not have this kind of variant because of the nature of Greek script. The case and grammatical relationships often expressed by these diacritical marks are represented in the New Testament through letters added to words as prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. Comparatively, this facet of the scripts results in


more numerous variants within the New Testament tradition. However, in Qur’an manuscripts, if the dots are not there, the text can be read in a variety of ways without there being clear evidence of a textual variant. For the Qur’an, one is left with a comparatively more ambiguous text with an internal unwritten potential of containing many textual variants. These can have an effect on the meaning as is seen in the following example:

Tā’ instead of yā’ 14:41 Sanaa 01-29.1- instead of the standard reading

48 (here in BNF 334c49): ‘When you reckon the account’ rather than ‘when it is reckoned’Sanaa 01-29.1

Omitted WordOccasionally one will find a word missing that is found in what has come to be the standard text.14:37:2 BNF 340c-

(bridging the second and third lines in this image),50

48 Sanaa 01-29.1, line 27.

49 BNF Arabe 334c, folio 34 recto, line 20.

50 BNF Arabe 340c, folio 36 recto, lines 13-14.

BNF 334c


instead of what is now the standard (bottom line of this image from BNF 370a).51

Different WordOccasionally one will find a different word from what is found in the current standard text. Here is an example of a correction which substituted the conjunction wa for fa:

S. 14:37 BNF 328a- instead of :52

51 BNF Arabe 370a, folio 2 verso, line13.

52 BNF Arabe 328a, folio 53a, line 15.


Here’s the normal reading from BNF 331:53

In English, this is like substituting and for then. This is similar to substitutions found in New Testament manuscripts of kai for de.

Physical Corrections in Qur’an ManuscriptsThese are physical corrections made either by the original scribe or a later one. This is a common feature in the New Testament tradition and is a relatively frequent feature in early Qur’an manuscripts. There does seem to be, however, a significant difference in why the corrections were made to the respective texts.

With the Qur’an manuscripts the corrections were mostly to cause the text to conform to what is now considered to be the standard Uthmanic consonantal text. Out of nine of correc-tions observed in these manuscripts, six of them, 67%, were apparently for this reason. The most significant of this kind of

53 BNF Arabe 331, folio 24 recto, line 6.


correction was found in Paris BNF 370a at 14:39 involving what is now the standard phrase-

, ‘Who has given me in my old age, Ismā’īl and Ishāq’.

It bridges lines two and three in this image.54

Apparently, at this point of the text there was originally a different phrase. This original phrase was completely defaced and replaced with what is now considered to be the standard text, which itself has since become mostly defaced through the ink flaking off the page. The interesting thing to note is that what remains of this added text is in a slightly different script style and the words and letters are squeezed into the space that was made available by defacing the original text. This is an indication that the original phrase was probably a different reading from what the later scribe inserted, one that was a shorter form of wording. There were also a number of smaller corrections on this particular manuscript page that had

54 BNF Arabe 370a, folio 3 recto, lines 4-5.


the same net effect of adjusting the reading of the text to the Canonical form.

Corrections in New Testament ManuscriptsThe physical corrections found in the New Testament manu-scripts were mostly to correct obvious scribal mistakes, or to improve grammar or style, or to conform the text to the reading of another manuscript, thought to be more trust-worthy. Here is a typical example of a grammatical correction found in Manuscript 69 at Acts 7:4, where the Greek word tēn for land is inserted above the line of text to make the text read ‘land of the Chaldeans’.55 This is in the same script style and ink as the main text and seems to have been done by the original scribe.

This kind of correction seems to be the most prevalent type in the manuscripts surveyed for this study comprising twelve

55 69, Codex Leicestrensis, folio 168 recto, line 24.


of seventeen, 71%, of the observed corrections. What is also significant is that none of the seventeen corrections observed seem to have been to conform the text to a recognized standard text-form. The closest was if a correction was made to adjust the text of one manuscript to the text of another thought to have a better reading. This was not, though, an understanding of a “better” text that was considered a universal or official standard but was instead a judgement made in the mind of the individual scribe according to his knowledge of Greek grammar and scribal practice.

The most extensive set of corrections to a page of the Bible this writer has observed is below, a portion of a page from the book of Esdras (Ezra in current Bibles) in the Old Testament portion of Codex Sinaiticus.56 It has a collection on one page of almost all the ways Greek biblical texts were corrected- notes between the lines and in the margins, minor erasures, dots marked over letters and words needing correction. What is not done is the major erasure of a portion of text for it to be replaced with a more official or standard form of text. They are individual corrections made by various scribes on their own personal authority, not on behalf of some political or ecclesias-tical authority.

56 Codex Sinaiticus, Quire 36, folio 4r. Accessed at: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=8.



Intentional Changes for Orthographic ConventionsThis kind of variant is where as a language and its spelling conventions change over time, manuscripts are updated to reflect this development. These are intentional changes to keep the reading of a manuscript relevant to its latest generation of readers. Both traditions had significant numbers of these. It was the single largest category by far in the Qur’an tradition. Both traditions had variable spelling with proper names. Both traditions exhibited a limited degree of spelling variation in a variety of kinds of words, mainly with the spelling of vowels and vowel combinations. With the earliest Qur’an manuscripts these reflect the development in the standardization of the use of the long vowels alif, yā’ and wāw. For the New Testa-ment, similar sounding vowels were often interchanged, and in some, there appeared to be a tendency to conform spelling to a perceived better and more classical standard of spelling. These changes occasionally have an effect on the meaning of the text, especially in the Qur’an manuscripts. For the later Qur’an manuscripts, the improvements to the script were more substantial to make it more precise both in meaning and pronunciation. There was a series of improvements to completely remove phonetic and interpretive ambiguity from the Arabic script itself by standardising the use of long vowels, adding diacritical marks to consonants, adding short vowels,


and the invention and introduction of the letter hamza. The New Testament manuscripts did not contain a range of devel-opment that corresponded to this in the Qur’an manuscripts, neither in degree or kind.

Intentional Changes for Grammatical CorrectionBoth traditions had examples of intentional grammatical corrections. With the New Testament tradition, this took the form of different grammatical forms of the words and a few different words that were viewed as being grammatically superior to the more original reading. With the Qur’an tradi-tion, this was found mainly in the alternative placement of consonantal diacritical marks. Changes of person and number were observed. There were also examples of conjunctions being substituted for one another. These have a more significant effect on changing meaning than the corrections to improve the spelling.

Intentional Changes to Standardize the Text to an Official VersionOne category the Qur’an manuscripts contained that the New Testament ones did not was to change the text to make it match what was viewed as the official or Canonical text. The improvements to the text observed in the New Testa-ment manuscripts appeared to be made by individual scribes


working on individual manuscripts to correct and improve the manuscript before them according to their personal under-standing of grammar, and whatever other manuscripts they might have had immediately available to them. Ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian tradition were concerned with the inclusion or exclusion of complete books that were thought to be authentic or inauthentic, not with establishing the precise form of the text of each individual book.57

With the Qur’an, though, if Islamic tradition is to be accepted as reliable, there was from the time of the third Caliph Uthman a strong official effort to control the precise form of text found in written manuscripts. Evidence of this was observed in the corrections involving erasure and also in much of the updating of the orthography. Over the first four Islamic centuries there was an overarching concern to establish a precise form of text that Muslims could unite on. In the end, one main form of consonantal text was estab-lished and a limited degree of variability of its pointing allowed in the approval of the Ten reading systems. Also, it should be mentioned that some of these canonical reading systems among the Ten do contain a few small consonantal textual variants.58

57 Two excellent books on the selection of books for the Bible are F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988 and B.M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

58 See Brother Mark, A ‘Perfect’ Qur’an. Privately published, 2000and Yasin Dutton, “An Early Mushaf According to the Reading of Ibn ‘Āmir”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, III, 1, 71-90 for examples of these consonantal differences.


Overall, both textual traditions demonstrated that their respective scribes worked diligently to accurately transmit the texts that were before them. They were concerned with high degrees of precision in their work, and they maintained a tremendous standard of textual fidelity through the centuries for their respective traditions. They were human, though, and subject to personal shortcomings as well as linguistic, political and religious developments of their times. Their devotion and diligence are to be admired and commended as they reverently handled what to them were holy objects of scripture. :

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4Comparisons

The pen is the plough which cultivates the field of truth.– A n o n y m o u s

Custom, though ever so ancient, without truth, is but an old error.

- C y p r i a n 59

Comparisons between two very different textual transmissions need to be made carefully. The New Testament and the Qur’an have very different kinds of scripts, and were preserved and transmitted with very different proportions of oral and written transmission dynamics. However, by keeping these distinc-tives in mind, and comparing the kinds of written transmission conventions the two traditions have in common, meaningful comparisons can be made in regard to their respective original texts and their transmission histories. When one carefully examines the minutiae of these respective traditions in iden-

59 Thomas Fielding, Select Proverbs of All Nations. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, 207.

54 holy books have a history chapter 4: comparisons 55

tifying textual variations, and then one steps back to gain a bigger picture, certain significant comparative observations can be made.

Major Observations1. The Qur’an variants from the early manuscripts demon-

strated a level of variability in the Arabic spelling that existed before the script and the Qur’an text were phoneti-cally standardized in the tenth century AD/fourth century AH. In these early centuries, there was a degree of impreci-sion, flexibility and latitude in certain features in the text.

2. The degree of ambiguity of meaning in words that contained no consonantal diacritical marks or only partial ones were lessened but not solved by examining the immediate literary context of the word in dispute. There was still ambiguity observed in regard to person and gender of certain forms, as well as the precise meanings available from the unpointed consonantal text.

3. There were examples of omitted and different words in Qur’an manuscripts. These were rare in the surveyed manu-scripts, and there were no instances of omitted or different words involving two or more words or phrases. This lack of such variants is very different from the New Testament and other ancient textual traditions, and points to a more formal and official effort to establish a unified text. This is


also reflected in the lack of textual variants that consisted of radically different consonantal pointing. One further feature that strengthens this is the presence of verse ending markers in the very earliest available manuscripts. These testify to deliberate collection, arrangement, and organization of the text by an editor/compiler. Together with the witness of Islamic tradition as to such projects, these textual features provide strong evidence of an early standardization of the Qur’an text even before the inscription of the earliest avail-able manuscripts. This is especially true if the first-century AH dates assigned to many of the Hijazi and some of the Kufic manuscripts are accurate.

4. The larger range of New Testament variants does not substantially affect the content or message of the text. Often, the variants expressed in additional or omitted words were the kind of grammatical variants that were allowed by the ambiguity of the unpointed consonantal text, or through alternative pointing of consonants. Likewise, the variants observed for the Qur’an do not radically affect the meaning of the texts involved. They would have, however, affected recitation and precise interpretation of the Qur’an.

5. The New Testament textual variants show a more normal variety of variants compared to other literary traditions. This is seen especially in the presence of variants involving words and phrases in the manuscripts surveyed. These features


point to an informal attitude toward textual standardization, one that occurred without an official authority prescribing a particular form of the text, but rather one that occurred over centuries because of outside influences like persecution. Also, through the general dynamics of the copying practices employed in various scriptoria in monasteries.

6. The significance of all of these observations is heightened by what is being discovered in Qur’anic palimpsests.60 Palimp-sests are manuscripts in which the original text written on the parchment was washed off and the parchment was then re-used for the writing of a new text. Depending on how thoroughly the manuscript was washed, and other factors like the kind of ink used and conditions of preservation, the original reading can sometimes be read using the naked eye or with the help of infrared and ultraviolet light. Palimp-sests exist in many manuscript traditions, including the New Testament tradition. Until recently, only one Qur’anic palimpsest was known to Western scholarship,61 but now at least four more are known, two of which have been examined and described academically.62 Here is a partial picture of one page of a Quranic palimpsest.63

60 Alba Fedeli, “Early Evidences of Variant Readings in Qur’ānic Manuscripts”, Karl Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, Die dunklen Anfänge. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2005, 293-316; Keith E. Small and Elisabeth Puin, “UNESCO CD of San’ā’ MSS: Part III”, Manuscripta Orientalia, 13, 2, June 2007, 59-71

61 Alphonse Mingana and Agnes Smith Lewis, Leaves From Three Ancient Qur’āns, Possibly Pre-’Uthmānic. Cambridge: CUP, 1914,

62 Fedeli, “Evidences”, 293-316, examines two of these, folios which passed through the Bonhams and the Fogg auction houses in London. Two further ones are known to exist in Sanaa and are mentioned in Small and Puin, “UNESCO CD III”. These two manuscripts have not been published.

63 Sam Fogg, Islamic Calligraphy. London, 2003. This manuscript is one of the palimpsests examined by Fedeli.


Though no palimpsest manuscripts are yet known that contain the text of Surah 14:35-41 used in this research, when one examines the kinds of variants found in palimpsests that have been examined, one finds variants of a substantially different nature from those found in the rest of the Qur’anic manuscript tradition. Qur’anic palimpsests contain a closer sampling of the variety of variants as found in the New Testa-ment manuscripts, especially including variant words, phrases, and even sentences. Physical corrections in manuscripts and palimpsests provide substantial evidence of the standardization and suppression of variant texts which Islamic tradition has long recognized.

Informal vs. Formal StandardizationIn contrast to the Qur’an’s situation, the New Testament text came to be standardized through an informal process which occurred over centuries. There were external forces such as the Diocletian persecution which placed a limiting factor on the


variety of text-types that were being copied. This, together with imperial edicts to replace destroyed Bibles gave promi-nence to a form of the text which was one of few before the persecution. This had the cumulative effect of narrowing the scope of variants exhibited in manuscripts as this type of text was copied and stylistically improved as it was adapted for use in liturgy. Also, since the Western church had embraced a Latin translation of the text as their official text, the Greek tradition was mainly preserved in the Eastern portions of the Roman Empire where Greek was the dominant language. The Greek New Testament manuscript tradition was no longer cross-pollinated with Greek manuscripts from throughout the Christian world, as had been the case in the first three Chris-tian centuries. One scholar has made the general comparative statement concerning the Qur’an, 64

But while it may be true that no other work has remained for twelve centuries with so pure a text, it is probably equally true that no other has suffered so drastic a purging.

This statement is certainly true for the comparison between the New Testament and the Qur’an. Though New Testaments were destroyed in one state-sponsored persecution under Diocletian in the early 300s, the Qur’an went through at least

64 L. Bevan Jones, The People of the Mosque. London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1932, 62.


two and possibly three formal efforts to standardize its text under Islamic leadership.

Major DifferencesThough there were similarities, the differences in kinds of variants between the two traditions were more pronounced. It is also in these differences that the most important compari-sons concerning their textual histories are found. The three most significant had to do with 1) the amount of concern demonstrated for establishing a precise form of the text, 2) the role of oral tradition in the preservation of the text, and 3) the place of longer textual variants in the respective manuscript traditions.

The longer variants involving complete words and phrases are perhaps the most noticeable kind of textual variant. They also have the greatest effect on the meaning of the text. They are found in the New Testament manuscript tradition. Just in this sampling, Acts 7:4 has an additional phrase in some manuscripts. Longer variants in the New Testament tradition that extend from a phrase to multiple sentences, as with the long version of the ending of Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20 or the story of the women caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 are well known and documented in actual manuscripts.

None of the Qur’ān manuscripts collated for this study contained variants of even a phrase. Though longer variants are


reported in Islamic tradition,65 the only Qur’ān manuscripts discovered during this research that had longer variants were the palimpsests and two manuscripts in Scottish university collections.66 The Islamic literature concerning textual variants occasionally includes longer variants.67 These kinds of variants would have been portions in the Sources for the Qur’an, the Authorial version and later official text-forms of the Compan-ions, though they have been excluded from the Canonical one of Uthman and al-Hajjaj. None of the manuscripts examined and collated for this study had the longer variants.

The Qur’ānic tradition showed itself to have much more concern with the precise form of the text than the New Testa-ment tradition. This was evident from the earliest available forms of these texts. The earliest available Qur’ānic manu-scripts contained a very precise consonantal line of text. Only the Qur’ānic palimpsests showed a degree of variability in the consonantal text that approached the degree of flexibility exhibited in the New Testament manuscript tradition.

However, there was potentially more semantic ambiguity in the unpointed Qur’ānic script than the more flexibly spelled and worded New Testament script because of the charac-teristics of their respective scripts. Even though there was a

65 See Hossein Modarressi, “Early Debates on the Integrity of the Qur’an”, Studia Islamica, 77, 5-39 for a list of these.

66 These are mentioned and pictured in the appendix of Adrian Alan Brockett, Studies in Two Transmissions of the Qur’ān. University of St. Andrews, Department of Arabic Studies, 1984.

67 See Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān. Leiden: Brill, 1937; Abd al-’Āl Sālim Makram and Ahmad Muktār ‘Umar, Mu’jam al-Qirā’āt al-Qurānīyah, Ma’a Maqaddimah fî Qirā’āt wa Ashhar al-Qurrā’. Cairo, Egypt: ‘Ālam al-Kitab, 1997; and Abd al-Latīf Al-Khatīb, Mu’jam al-Qirā’āt. Damascus: Dār Sa’d al-Dīn, 1422/2002 for many such examples.


more flexibly spelled and worded New Testament text, the meaning it conveyed was more precise than that which could be conveyed through an unpointed Arabic text because the grammatical relationships of the words in the New Testament text were explicitly notated. One scholar has noted that the development of Arabic orthography in Qur’ān manuscripts “was largely due to the need to precisely interpret Qur’ānic texts.”68 The orthographic development observed in the collated Qur’ān manuscripts made the script both a script that could be precisely pronounced for a unified recitation and a script that could be precisely interpreted for instruction and dogma.

ConclusionIn conclusion, the New Testament, having a wider range of variants, shows a lack of active standardization of the text and a lack of organized suppression of variant texts. Its manuscript tradition with small exceptions presents an informal stan-dardization process of the text, and one which allows access to most of the Author’s text through conventional methods of textual criticism.

Concerning the Qur’an, one written form of the consonantal text has been kept extremely well, but the process for estab-lishing and keeping this form of text meant the destruction and suppression of variant written texts, and the initial and

68 E. Rezvan, “The First Qur’ans”, E. Rezvan, Pages of Perfection. St. Petersburg: ARCH Foundation, 1995, 108-117, citing 108-109.

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repeated editing and improvement of the remaining text over a 300 year period to make the orthography of the Qur’an a complete phonetic system which could precisely present seven (or ten) recitations. :

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5Conclusion

He who conceals an useful truth, is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood.

- A u g u s t i n e 69

It is better to know things than to not know things. – M o r o c c a n p r o v e r b

The entire practice of textual criticism with manuscripts is based on the inescapable observation that manuscripts have textual variants, and that one precise form of the text has not been perfectly preserved in writing. From very early times, there was an awareness of textual variants in the Qur’an’s tradi-tion which was accompanied by a desire to bring them under official control. As a result, over the centuries what emerged for the Qur’an was a compromise between “the exact text”, the originals of which could not be recovered, and a “general-ized variant” regularizing the consonantal text and allowing a

69 Thomas Fielding, Select Proverbs of All Nations. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, 208.

64 holy books have a history chapter 5: conclusion 65

limited latitude of variation, all which would meet with broad acceptance from a wide variety of groups within Islam.70

A simple picture for comparison between the New Testa-ment and the Qur’an is provided by shopping for groceries in the West. There is often a distinction made between something organically grown and food that is commercially produced using methods of mass production and chemical and genetic intervention. To extend this picture to the New Testament and Qur’an manuscript traditions, the New Testament tradi-tion is more like the organic side of the supermarket, where the original form grew into a tradition with very little outside intervention. The only major exception to this was the Diocle-tian persecution which ordered the destruction of all Chris-tian books, not just ones of a particular text form. There were informal controls on the transmission process in the form of normal scribal practices and book production and distribu-tion, but there was not an overarching religious or political authority deciding that a particular form of the text ought to be preserved at the expense of others. That is why there are textual variants of a wide spectrum of types can be found in manuscripts.

The Qur’an, however, is more like the other kind of food produced for the supermarket, food that has been improved in order to make it conform to a desired ideal— like a super-

70 Efim A. Rezvan, “Mingana Folios: When and Why”, Manuscripta Orientalia, 11: 4: 2.


market accepting only carrots of a certain length and colour, or oranges of a certain size, variety and colour, these without visible blemishes, and then the suppliers being told to only plant and supply these ideal versions. The rest of the produce that does not make the grade is destroyed and suppressed, and can even go out of existence as a variety of that food. Instead of the most original forms of the text of the Qur’an being preserved, what has been preserved and transmitted for the form of these texts that was chosen from amidst a group of others, which was then edited and canonized at their expense.

A picture from forestry can provide another useful illus-tration. Coppicing is a practice where certain kinds of small trees are regularly pruned back to the stumps so that they can grow again and provide a steady supply of material for crafts, small poles and firewood. For the New Testament, there were individual books that were planted that came to be gathered into the New Testament. Within the first century two major trunks, especially for the Gospels and Acts had sprouted from the same root and these trunks grew new major branches, often called the Western and Alexandrian text-types. The Diocletian persecution had an unforeseen effect in that it cut one of these trunks down, and trimmed a lot of the smaller branches away from the other. The remaining trunk grew and was pruned over the centuries into a distinctive textual shape.


The Qurān had a different beginning and a different program of cutting. Instead of one tree, it was like many trees sprouting from the same root, like a cluster of oak sprouts from a buried hoard of acorns. From these sprouts, a few grew into the authoritative text-forms of the Companions’ collections. There were many trunks sharing the same root of material planted within Muhammad’s lifetime. At Muham-mad’s death these trunks became independent trees still sharing the same root system. Uthman pruned these back to one trunk, and then shaped this trunk through grafts and prunings into a distinctive shape. This became a strong tree, but the root continued to send out shoots, and the main trunk continued to grow new branches so that within three hundred years there were fifty+ trunks or major branches sharing the same root system. Ibn Mujahid and others then pruned these back to ten major branches from the main trunk and trimmed away all of the other trunks or shoots coming independently from the root. These branches have been maintained but have also been allowed to sprout ten branches each. Two of these eighty branches have been put into print in this last century. Recovering the Author’s text-form of the New Testament has become a trimming job on minor branches. The trunk and main branches are in place. The smaller branches are what need pruning.


For the Qur’an, the original forms of the trees cannot be recovered. One trunk of many survives which was heavily pruned and grafted onto at the outset. It has since been subject to two further major pruning exercises. Also, this metaphor breaks down in the complexity of the pruning/editing that was done to the Qur’an. The earliest Canonical text-form that can be recovered is a consonantal text in its basic outline without diacritical dots or vocalization marks. The set patterns of diacritics and the precise vocalization of the short vowels are later Interpretive texts. They were not fixed until the third/tenth century when Ibn Mujahid legitimised the Seven reading systems. The two forms of text in print today are Interpretive texts of two of the seven readings. These two texts might date back to before the time of Ibn Mujahid to the lives of Hafs (d. 796/180 ) and Warsh (d. 812/197), but this cannot be confirmed by manuscripts of those early dates. Instead, we have only the indirect testimony from later tradition that their oral versions attributed to them started within their lifetimes.

Can an Early, Strong Standardization of the Qur’an Text Be Discerned in the Manuscript Tradition?

Yes, an early and strong standardization of the Qur’an text can be discerned in the manuscript tradition. Three phenomena make it plainly evident. First, there is the degree of agreement in the form of the consonantal text seen across all of the manuscripts that were collated. The degree of agreement


is truly phenomenal when it is compared to other textual tradi-tions such as that of the New Testament. The relatively small numbers of unintentional and intentional variants are quite noteworthy. In and of itself, this degree of agreement does not prove standardization. It could be testimony to extremely careful scribal practice and a higher concern for precise verbal accuracy in transcription than other manuscript traditions. But taken with the next two phenomena, it becomes clear that while there was extreme care taken in the transcription process, there were also extraordinary external forces ensuring a level of standardization well above that of the New Testa-ment tradition.

The second factor is the kinds of textual variants observed in Qur’anic palimpsests. These were found to be more of the same kinds found in the New Testament tradition. They demonstrate a concern for accuracy to convey meaning with a degree of flexibility in word choice that also marks the early New Testament textual tradition. That these kinds of texts were erased demonstrates that strong external forces were brought to bear on the textual transmission of the Qur’an to edit the text and ensure uniformity, even at the cost of the irre-vocable loss of early Qur’anic material. This view is strength-ened further when one considers the corrections found in manuscripts that conform the text to a Canonical text-form.


The third factor is the extensive testimony in Islamic tradi-tion and literature to textual variants for the text of the Qur’an. With this is also the open acknowledgement of two official efforts to standardize the text of the Qur’an which involved the physical destruction of variant texts. At least two attempts to standardize the text and destroy variant texts are reported to have been made by central religious authorities, one attrib-uted to Uthman (c. 653/33), and one attributed to Al-Hajjaj (c. 705/86). Also, after the description of seven systems by Ibn Mujahid (c. 934/323) authorities punished the use of reading systems that contained rare textual variants, or of constructing ones recitation from known variants, which prior to this appears to have been allowable.71 And a similar attitude of preventing alternative forms of the text by the use of suppres-sion or destruction of texts continues to the present day.

In the 1920’s the German professor Gotthelf Bergsträsser was prevented from photographing a manuscript because allowing a Western scholar to view and document its unique features “was not consistent with orthodoxy.”72 A more recent example occurred in relation to the manuscript finds in Sanaa, Yemen during the 1970’s. Over concerns that Western scholars might find something detrimental to traditional Islamic dogma concerning the Qur’an, the following request appeared

71 Christopher Melchert, “Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Qur’anic Readings”, Studia Islamica, 91, 5-22, 20-21.

72 Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān. Leiden: Brill, 1937, 10.


in the letters to the editor of the English language version of the Yemeni Times,73

Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents. Also, please rebury them or if they are not exact repro-ductions, please burn them. Allah help us against our enemies.

It would be difficult to attribute such a high degree of uniformity of text to anything less than the involvement of a strong, centralized religious authority. This is especially true when one considers the kind of texts that are reported to have existed prior to the efforts to unify the text. There were various collections of Qur’anic material all being read and recited as authoritative scriptural texts. There was not one initial, original text from the period of Muhammad’s career which was preserved with this high degree of precision. Instead, at best, one of the collections from among the various versions available was chosen to be the one text everyone would use. It was then edited heavily, and the others were forcibly suppressed, not because they were less authentic per se, but because they presented rivals to the one chosen text and could provide a basis for political and religious competition. This is in fact the role the collection of material attributed to Ibn Masud played in the first three Islamic centuries until it was finally suppressed in the wake of Ibn Mujahid’s reforms. It

73 Abul Kasim, “Conspiracy against Islam: Muslims being cheated”, Yemeni Times. Issue 46- Nov 13 through Nov 19 2000, Vol. X.


was a competing official text to the Canonical text attributed to Uthman.

Can the Idea of Seven or Ten Versions of the Qur’an Going Back to Muhammad be Supported from the Manuscript Evidence?

Since it cannot be demonstrated that there was one version going back to Muhammad, it also cannot be demonstrated that seven or ten went back to him. What can be maintained is that one form of the consonantal text has been very well preserved from the seventh/first century, and that oral tradi-tions have developed which reinforce a particular under-standing of, and a set number of recitals of, that one conso-nantal text. These recitals do perhaps survive from an early time in Islamic history, but not to before the fixing of the Canonical text-form or to Muhammad himself. Also, there is no available method of testing how early their precise features were practiced, other than the very few consonantal markers that some of these systems contained. Some have sought to argue that all of these versions were somehow present in or contained by the flexibility of this orthography.74 A more accurate way of stating this is to say that the flexibility and ambiguity inherent in the unpointed text allowed their devel-opment, and the development of other systems as well. In these early Islamic centuries, the oral transmission was as static

74 Adrian Alan Brockett, Studies in Two Transmissions of the Qur’ān. University of St. Andrews, Department of Arabic Studies, 1984, 94, 142.


as the written text required, and as organic and creative as the ambiguous orthography permitted.

At this point, the earliest that precise and complete versions of the Seven or Ten reading systems can be dated is to when the script was written with full consonantal diacritics and vocalization symbols in the fourth/tenth century. It can be demonstrated that, from what is written concerning the variants in these systems, they arose after the fixing of the Canonical form of the consonantal text. Also, from what is recorded concerning their precise vocalization features there was a degree of permitted flexibility in how exactly one repro-duced the version learned from their teacher. Though oral tradition was present and used extensively, the oral text-forms grew in precision and decreased in flexibility over these three centuries.75

Did a Parallel Oral Tradition Act as a Strong Protection to the Precise Content and Pronunciation of the Text of the Qur’an from the Time of Muhammad?

That an oral tradition of the recital of the Qur’an exists from a very early period is not contested. What is contested is how complete, strong, and organized this tradition was to preserve a precise pronunciation of the text as it was received. The manuscript evidence best supports a view that though it was a necessary feature accompanying the written text, an oral tradi-

75 Christopher Melchert, “The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another”, Journal of Quranic Studies, 10, 2, 73-87, 80-82.


tion of the precise pronunciation of the text was never strong enough or developed enough to unify the earliest Muslim community on a standard recitation of the text. The mechanics and systems were not in place to establish and maintain a strong enough oral tradition to provide an indisputably precise oral pronunciation of the ambiguous consonantal text of the Qur’an. The textual mechanics were not in place in that there were multiple official texts after Muhammad’s death which would have each required a separate strong oral tradi-tion. Otherwise, a written recension, like the one attributed to Uthman, would not have been needed. The time frame for when this standardization took place was in Islam’s first century, and it was possibly a two-stage standardization of the consonantal text, with those two steps occurring toward the middle and end of the first Islamic century. The attributions of an edition to Al-Hajjaj, the presence of corrections and alter-native texts in the palimpsests, the existence of manuscripts with variant surah orders, all support this scenario.

Second, there seems to have been in this period an attitude of flexibility of oral pronunciation that matched the flexibility of the written text. With the standardization of the Canon-ical text-form and the suppression of the official text-forms, the oral traditions for those text-forms would have also been suppressed or conformed to the new standard. Also, though this early standardization of the consonantal text did provide


a basis of unity that still exists in Islam, it was not precise enough to prevent the development of rival recitation systems, even of its own consonantal text, nor did it completely displace the use of different recitation systems based on other forms of the consonantal text attributed to other companions of Muhammad, which can be viewed as competing official texts.

The most comprehensive explanation for the complexity of the records of textual variants and the Companions collections is that a historical situation of competing recitals and written versions of the Qur’an did in fact exist. This is seen in the existence and extent of the Qira’at literature with the systems of the Seven, the Ten, and the Fourteen reading systems, the various historical records concerning the existence and content of the Companions’ collections, and the records of other portions that were known to have existed in the earliest period. If these variants were real, then the oral tradition was not strong enough to keep them completely in check.

Then, after the Canonical text was in place, there was a degree of flexibility allowed concerning its precise pointing and pronunciation that grew to the multiplicity of systems that were being practiced two hundred and fifty years later when Ibn Mujahid found it necessary to try limit them to seven in the 930s AD/320s AH. Some of these were possibly tied to official texts that preceded the Canonical one, but most of them seem to have been based on different ways of applying


diacritical and vocalization marks to the Canonical conso-nantal text. The manuscripts from this period would have allowed this degree of flexibility, and the systems of coloured dots for vocalizations confirm that more systems than the seven or ten were being practiced. The growth in the precision of the oral recitations confirms the conclusion reached from observing the development of orthography in the manuscripts that the ambiguity fostered by the unpointed consonantal text was gradually improved so that the precise pronunciation and interpretation of the text could be achieved.

As the oral tradition became more precise it advanced the need for a more precise Arabic script, and at the same time the more precise Arabic script enabled the oral tradition to be recorded and maintained with greater precision. A strong, unified oral tradition was not preserved from the seventh/first century.

Arguments that this entire edifice of records of textual variants and the Companions collections of the Qur’an are a pious fabrication,76 though, as some Western scholars have held, cannot be maintained in that there are manuscripts that preserve discernible features of distinctive readings of the Qur’an.77 Also, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence of the survival of one form of recitation with a strong written and

76 A. Fischer, “Grammatisch schweirige Schwur- und Beschwörungsformeln des Klassichen Arabisch”, Der Islam, 28, 1-105

77 Yasin Dutton, “An Early Mushaf According to the Reading of Ibn ‘Āmir”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, III, 1, 71-90, Yasin Dutton, “Some Notes on the British Library’s ‘Oldest Qur’an Manuscript’ (Or. 2165)”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, VI, 1, 43-71 Intisar A. Rabb, “Non-Canonical Readings of the Qur’an: Recognition and Authenticity (the Himsī Reading)”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, VIII, 2, 84-127


oral pedigree traced directly back to Muhammad, which, if it ever existed, would have commanded a high degree of use and allegiance. Also, though political and religious motives may have been sufficient reasons for people to abuse a system and create recitations that served their sectarian purposes, these are not sufficient reasons to cause the creation of the entire system or reading systems in the first place. More sufficient reasons are at hand, for instance the ambiguous character of the unpointed Arabic script and the transition from an oral literary environment to one that operated according to the more precise and fixed conventions of written literature.

Though the colored dot systems in some manuscripts do give an indication that some of these recitation systems may have existed earlier, they do not present the short vowels with enough precision to make definitive conclusions, nor do they contain consonantal diacritical marks with enough preci-sion. Before the 10th/4th century, the text is simply not in a state containing the degree of precision required to record and transmit even one full reading system. The chains of names of transmitters of these systems are also not enough of a guar-antee of the precise pronunciation of these systems since in the early period there was a degree of flexibility allowed in creating the precise features of the recitation systems.

Comparatively, a similar oral tradition never developed for the New Testament text. Orthographically there was not


the need for one to safeguard pronunciation or the meaning of the text because of the relative phonetic completeness of the Greek script. Such a tradition never arose concerning the New Testament because of the completeness of the script and perhaps the differing conception of the use of it as a scripture to be read more for its meaning than recited for its blessing. Though an early oral tradition has been claimed for the Qur’an, and there is excellent evidence for its existence, it was never strong enough to guard one form or pronuncia-tion of the text, and the oral traditions that have existed since have always been tied to particular versions of the written text, particularly after orthographic improvements were added to the consonantal text to make it more precise syntactically and phonetically. The uniformity of the majority of the manuscript tradition cannot be viewed as evidence of one text going back to Muhammad because of the degree of textual variation in the palimpsests and the extensive records of textual variants in secondary Islamic literature.

The Major ComparisonThe primary task in New Testament textual criticism has

been to recover one text from among many— to recover the first published text of each New Testament book from among the textual variants and text-types that have accumulated throughout the history of the transmission of the text. The


primary task in Qur’anic textual criticism, as practiced histori-cally in Islam has been instead to justify one form of the text against many others. These efforts to establish and justify one text from among a group of collections of material, both oral and written, has resulted in the irreparable loss of the earliest authoritative forms of the text. The entire shape of the text of the Qur’an shows it to be an intentionally developed text.

This contrast demonstrates that, comparatively, there is much more of a possibility of recovering the earliest auto-graphic forms of the New Testament texts, and discerning a reliably preserved representation of them from within the extant manuscripts, than there is for recovering the earliest text-forms of the Qur’an. And while the form of the text of the Qur’an that survives contains authentic material, it is a partial, edited selection of what was once available, and the materials are not available to precisely discern how reliably preserved of a representation of the original it is.

With this in mind, it can be confidently asserted that the original text of the New Testament has been transmitted more accurately than that of the original forms of the Qur’an. More of the New Testament’s original material is available in the breadth of variants observable in the extant manuscripts than can be observed for the Qur’an. Islamic efforts from almost the earliest periods of the history of the text of the Qur’an have been directed toward establishing and promoting one


version of the text at the expense of others which possibly contained authentic material.

These comparative situations also demonstrate the impor-tance of the second goal of textual criticism- tracing the historical development of the text. In the case of the Qur’an, it actually becomes the main goal available for study. The effect of these un-intentioned and well-intentioned textual changes, however, can be cumulative and significant. They can obscure the original form and meaning of the text. Ehrman adds a significant observation:78

…by physically altering the words, they (the scribes) did some-thing quite different from other exegetes, and this difference is by no means to be minimized. Whereas all readers change a text when they construe it in their minds, the scribes actually changed the text on the page. As a result, they created a new text, a new concatena-tion of words over which future interpreters would dispute, no longer having access to the words of the original text, the words produced by the author.

For the New Testament’s text, that there are so many manuscripts available for study gives current scholars a much better opportunity to evaluate textual changes than any prior generation. Ehrman’s observation is mainly about the sporadic, occasional changes made by scribes in individual manuscripts. His comments cannot be taken as evidence of

78 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford: OUP, 1993, 280.

80 holy books have a history

an official conspiracy or effort to change the text. However, for the Qur’an, Ehrman’s observation has great significance in that such an official editing effort is reported in Islamic history under Uthman and al-Hajjaj. By making these versions, promoting them over against other ones, and by destroying prior materials, these efforts have denied later generations access to more original forms of the text. Indeed, the history of the Qur’an’s textual development can legitimately be viewed as a prolonged attempt to conform the text of the Qur’an, which came into existence and was collected through human agencies in very earthly circumstances, to a divine ideal presented in what came to be Islamic dogma. While there were original texts of the books of the New Testament, there never was one original text of the Qur’an, and with the recognition of the validity of the Seven and Ten reading systems, there still is not just one text of the Qur’an. There has been careful concern for passing on the complexity of the situation and preventing further multiplication of reading systems. But there also seems to have been an abandonment of any attempt to recover one text, even though there has been widespread implicit belief in its theoretical existence. :


83

83

Appendix oneinspiration of scripture

Currently in the West, Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists are often equated as having the same basic kinds of beliefs and attitudes, even leading to the same kinds of violent fanatical results. This lecture will explore one of the most important foundations of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism- doctrines concerning scripture. It will be demonstrated that even the most fundamental Christian views are qualitatively different from Muslim views, and that equating them is quite wrong and leads to quite different results in belief and action. One scholar has helpfully observed, 79

The issue of scripture marks a key difference between Muslim and Christian fundamentalisms. Virtually all Muslims are “fundamen-

79 Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, 2005, 194.

84 holy books have a history appendix one: inspiration of spripture 85

talist” in their attitude to scripture… Likewise, while Muslim funda-mentalists stress political goals and implementation of religion in all areas of life, Christian fundamentalists can go either way and some become secularists by Muslim standards.

As an example of the misguided fallacy equating the two, note the following quotation:80

The orthodox Muslim view of the Koran as self-evidently the Word of God, perfect and inimitable in message, language, style, and form is strikingly similar to the fundamentalist Christian notion of the Bible’s “inerrancy” and “verbal inspiration” that is still common in many places today. The notion was given classic expression only a little more than a century ago by the biblical scholar John William Burgon.

The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne! Every Book of it, every Chapter of it, every Verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it…every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High!

This quotation, found in what is otherwise an excellent article, makes the fallacy of equating Christian and Muslim views. He is actually misquoting Burgon, only looking at one side of the traditional Christian view of the inspiration of scripture, that it is a fully divine process, but also a fully human one. Even Burgon acknowledges this in the same book quoted above: “the Human Element no doubt is there; no doubt our

80 Toby Lester, ‘What is the Qur’an?’ Atlantic Monthly, January 1999, 43-56, 45.


Maker acts through our faculties in every respect.81 Burgon’s rhetoric, intended to emphasize God’s role in inspiration, however, is used by Muslims to describe their normal belief.

Here is a comparison of how the Evangelical Christian and Muslim doctrines of the inspiration compare:

The Bible: Verbal Plenary InspirationThe traditional description of the inspiration of the Bible is that it is a model of Verbal Plenary Inspiration. “Verbal” means that the words of Scripture are inspired by God; “plenary” means that every word is inspired by God; and “inspiration” means that it was “God-breathed”, that it had its origin in God and comes from God. With this understanding has also always stood the understanding that the words were spoken and written by people, using their full personalities and facul-ties. This model is what the Bible presents for Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16,17 and 2 Peter 1:21:

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of god may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16,17)

For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:21)

81 John W. Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation. Collingswood: Dean Burgon Society Press, 1999, 269.


With these verses and throughout the Bible the clear asser-tion is made that God himself speaks through prophets, and the principle continues that he can inspire Scripture through humans writing according to His direction and will.

Also, this technical view is one that was arrived at in retro-spect, as the Church used and reflected on the writings left by the Apostles and their companions. The books that make up the writings of the New Testament were recognized by the Church as having an intrinsic authority and authenticity that apocryphal works did not have. They were not books that the Church at some point arbitrarily, for political or dogmatic reasons, granted authority. They were recognized as having an intrinsic authority that had been proven through centu-ries of use, not as inauthentic books needing the boost that an authoritative pronouncement would give them.82

Also, concerning perfection of the text, the most that has ever been claimed for the New Testament by Christians is that the original autographs were in a perfect form. There has been since the times of the earliest church fathers at least an implicit recognition that copies can contain mistakes of transmission, and that translations are the Word of God only insofar as they accurately represent the meaning of the original. Reliable, sufficient transmission has always been what was viewed as required, not perfect transmission.

82 B.M. Metzger has an excellent discussion of this very point in his book, The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, 282-288.


Qur’an: Mechanical DictationThe Islamic view of the inspiration of scripture starts from a different point than the Christian view. Finding its origin in the reported experiences of Muhammad and the words of the Qur’an rather than the prior teaching in the Bible, a consistent statement distilling the major Islamic view is:83

The Qur’an is the Speech of God, written in copies, remembered in the hearts, recited by the tongues, and sent down to the Prophet. Our utterance of the Qur’an is created, our writing of it is created, our reciting of it is created, but the Qur’an is uncreated.

While this particular statement recognizes that written copies of the Qur’an are created, it also speaks of the Qur’an as being “sent down”, from the Arabic word “tanzil” the word chosen to describe the inspiration of the Qur’an. The picture is that the actual words of the Qur’an were sent down to Muhammad through the agency of the angel Gabriel. They were taken from an eternal tablet, delivered to Gabriel, who then over 23 years as occasion demanded, delivered the precise words to Muhammad.

The words of the Qur’an are not then viewed as the product of Muhammad’s mind and Allah’s mind. They are strictly viewed as only the words of Allah. One Sunni statement even asserts that these words are “from eternity subsisting in God’s

83 William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Creeds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, 63. This is described as a Hanafite Creed, in line with the teaching of the Sunni law school of Hanafi.


essence”.84 With this view, Allah’s Speech is an eternal attri-bute, and human involvement in the production of scripture is viewed as anathema and a necessarily corrupting influence. In the Christian/Biblical view, Speech is not an eternal attribute of God and human influence does not necessarily corrupt. Speech is instead an extension of God’s knowledge and is personified in the second person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son. This makes the Bible as the Word of God a derivative, subordinate Word, and the deeper view of the nature of God allows for full human involvement in its production.

For the Qur’an, inspiration is viewed as extending to the exact letters and words in Arabic. It is viewed as being divine only, as if spoken or written by God Himself and delivered without human contamination. Having its origin in an eternal tablet which is somehow separate from but linked to the eternal knowledge of Allah, this Islamic view of the Qur’an makes an even greater demand that copies of the Qur’an be preserved with a precision extending to the Arabic letters of the original. Perfection of transmission of the text in copies is needed if the claim is to be made that that the text in the hand and that is recited is the actual and full Word of God. And this is the kind of thing that many Muslims claim:

84 Al-Ghazzali, quoted in Watt, Creeds. , 76.


The Holy Koran differs from any other religious text in that it was not written or edited by any human author; no word has been added to it or subtracted from it. 85

Qur-aan is the word of Allah and retains its pristine purity without the least change, alteration, distortion, division, amendment or annulment since it was revealed to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.).86

Actually there is no religious literature other than the Last Divine Scrip-ture which has escaped contamination--addition, deletion and deforma-tion, etc. 87

The Holy Koran differs from any other religious text in that it was not written or edited by any human author; no word has been added to it or subtracted from it. 88

Implications for Interfaith DiscussionsMuslims tend to read their view on the Bible, and Chris-tians can tend to read their view on the Qur’an, rather than comparing views and achieving a more realistic understanding.

One result of this is that Muslim views of corruption of the Bible tend to not be based on actual historical or manuscript evidence of what the Bible has always been, but rather, on the fact that the Bible as it exists does not match what is described in the Qur’an- one Injil from Jesus, a book called the Taurait

85 From: What Every Christian Should Know About Islam, pub. The Islamic Foundation, Leicester UK, cited in The Daily Telegraph, 10 Dec. 2005, page 24.

86 Hafiz M. Adil, Introduction to Qur’an. Delhi, India: Adam Publishers and Distributors, 1990 5.

87 Kamal Omar, Deep Into the Qur’an. Delhi, India: Noor Publishing House, 1992302.

88 From: What Every Christian Should Know About Islam, pub. The Islamic Foundation, Leicester UK, cited in The Daily Telegraph, 10 Dec. 2005, page 24.


that Moses received, and a book that David received called the Zabur. Early Muslim apologists developed the idea that the Christians and Jews changed the text of their scriptures and this false belief has persisted through the ages.

The really significant questions are:Does the Qur’an live up to its claims that there is no human

contamination of the text by Muhammad or others? Does the New Testament live up to its claims to be a histor-

ically reliable text and a sufficient witness to the teaching and claims of Christ?

Textual criticism on manuscripts provides the best evidence available to evaluate these claims.

The New Testament: the Earliest Available VersionFor the New Testament, a reliable, sufficient form of the original text can be discerned from within existing manu-scripts. This can be seen in that variants of various kinds can be seen relating to a basic form of text shared across thousands of manuscripts. Also, these variants can be evaluated and sorted to discern the more original reading, the product of which are the various available critical texts of the New Testament.89 Also, since the manuscripts before the Diocletian persecution (306-315 AD) and after show the same basic forms of text,

89 The New Testament Critical Texts- UBS 3rd ed., Nestle-Aland 27th ed. are the most recognized.


and this form of text goes back into the second century, there is good reason to believe on textual, literary, and historical grounds that they are accurate copies of more original texts dating back to the times of the Apostles.90

The Qur’an: the Earliest Available Version For the Qur’an, mainly one early heavily edited version is available in the manuscripts. If Islamic tradition is correct, to achieve this text alternative and more original versions of the text were destroyed and suppressed. With the manu-scripts with this edited text, one finds various kinds of variants revolving around a basic text, but there are fewer kinds of variants and fewer numbers of variants comparatively to the New Testament. This edited basic Qur’an text is more stable than the New Testament, which did not go through such an editing process. The Qur’anic palimpsests are the only manu-scripts that might give us a significant look into the form of the text before this initial editing project.

With the variants that do exist in the mainstream of the Qur’an manuscripts, these can be evaluated and sorted to discern a more original form of the text, and the kinds of variants point to the basic text being standardized to a remark-able degree in even the earliest manuscripts. Since there is historical testimony in Islamic sources of a very early editing

90 There are more than 200 manuscripts of portions of the New Testament that predate the Diocletian persecution, which was more than three centuries before Muhammad died.


project which involved the destruction of earlier forms of the text and variant forms of the text, then the degree of stability of the basic text in the earliest Qur’an manuscripts is evidence that this editing project and ensuing suppression of variant texts did actually take place.91 Qur’anic palimpsests, because of their rarity and the large numbers and kinds of variants they contain in their underlying texts, are additional and strong evidence of the extent of this early project.92 The evidence from the palimpsests also suggests that the fluidity of the text was much greater in the earliest period of the Qur’an’s collection than current Islamic belief might suggest.

The Qur’an: the Version Available NowThis early edited form of the text was improved and edited to make it the form now in use. The early form was a conso-nantal text which was ambiguous in many ways. One conso-nant was invented (the letter hamza), and diacritical marks and vowels had to be added to make the pronunciation and interpretation clear and precise. This took about three hundred years to accomplish. Even with this improvement, multiple ways of reciting and writing the Qur’an are allowed which involve different consonants, pronunciations, and grammatical

91 A story considered reliable by Muslims is that the third Caliph after Muhammad, ‘Uthman, established a committee around AD 653 to standardise the text of the Qur’an. After this text was made, the order was given to destroy the original and variant texts from which it was constructed and to which it had been compared. This is recorded in the collection of traditions called Sahih al-Bukhāri, Kitāb 61, Bāb 28.

92 See Alba Fedeli, “Early Evidences of Variant Readings in Qur’ānic Manuscripts”, Karl Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, Die dunklen Anfänge. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2005, 293-316 for the best presentation currently in print of textual variants in Qur’anic palimpsests.


constructions. These differences are very small, but they are there, and if a standard of perfection of transmission of an unaltered original is being claimed, then there are serious issues that work against this view.93

ConclusionsChristians can have every confidence that the Bible has not been changed the way Muslims and others might assert. This is supported by historical evidence and textual evidence, in addition to theological agreements between the Old and the New Testament, like concerning the identity and role of the Messiah (Isaiah 53).

The Qur’an does not live up to the claims currently being made for it. While one early form of the text has been preserved very well, it took an enormous amount of human effort to create this form of text, to destroy and continue to suppress alternative forms of the text, and then to refine the preserved text into what Muslims use today.

The Muslim view of the inspiration of the Qur’an in many ways is at odds with the actual history of its text for how it came to be in its present form. Rather than arriving at a view of Scripture which legitimately accommodates the human and divine aspects of scripture, the text of the Qur’an has been shaped intentionally, and in this humanly shaped form is

93 The main Qur’an text in print is known as the “Hafs” text, named after a prominent early Qur’an reciter. Another version, the “Warsh” text is in print and use in North Africa. Other written versions are known from manuscripts as well.


95

used to support a doctrinal belief in its divine perfection. The problem, though, for the traditional view of the Qur’an is that “an inerrant dictation leaves no room for any sort of literary revision.”94 For the New Testament, inerrant autographs, without an accompanying claim for perfect transmission, can accommodate literary revision. :

94 J. Windrow Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology. London: Lutterworth Press, 1945-1967, Part One, vol. II, 137.


95

Appendix two Common Questions

1. Was there ever one original text of the Qur’an?

No, there was not one, if Islamic tradition is true about how the Qur’an was given to Muhammad and then collected and edited after his death. One scholar has written, ‘There exists no canonical book, recognized by any religious community as a revealed or inspired original, whose text in the earliest period of its transmission, shows to such a degree a picture of fluctua-tion and uncertainty as we find in the text of the Qur’an.”95 The parts of the Qur’an that were left out, the Companions’ collec-tions, and textual variants in palimpsests all support this. How

95 Translated from the German of Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung. Leiden: Brill, 1920 in J. Windrow Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology. London: Lutterworth Press, 1945-1967Part One, volume II, 133. Also, translated slightly differently in Ignaz Goldziher, Schools of Koranic Commentators. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 20061.

96 holy books have a history appendix two: common questions 97

can these things be reconciled with the idea of one original text of the Qur’an?

In the tradition “from Isma’il b. Ibrahim, from Ayyub, from Nafi’, from Ibn ‘Umar: He said: Let none of you say ‘I have learned the whole of the Qur’an’, for how does he know that the whole of it is, when much of it has disappeared? Let him rather say, ‘I have learned what is now extant of it’.” It is possible to argue that what exists is some of the Qur’an from the heavenly book, but not that what exists is all of the Qur’an, nor is what exists in the form it was originally given. The question then becomes, is what remains a reliable portion of what was originally given? Perfection of the book is out of the question. ‘It is clear that almost desperate efforts had to be made to achieve uniformity when once it had been laid down that verbal accuracy was desirable.’96

Also, any assertion of one precise written version of the Qur’an within Islam’s first 30 years is anachronistically reading back a precise conception of a book of scripture onto the Qur’an which could only have developed later in Islam. Because of the state of Arabic script in the 600s, and the description of how the content of the Qur’an was received and transmitted, it is more reasonable to see the Qur’an was preserved mainly as a flexible oral tradition that at Muham-mad’s death was not a single coherent, organized, complete

96 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 133.


book, but instead a fluid body of various portions of material, written and memorized.

Some other issues that confirm this are that the Caliph Umar is reported to have had extreme anxiety at the death of Qur’an memorizers at the battle of Yamama. This does not square with the idea of a standard written collection being in place at Muhammad’s death.97 Zaid ibn Thabit’s role is diffi-cult to understand as well. He is said to have been hesitant to undertake a work “for which he had no command from the prophet.” He also complained about the difficulty of the task. “He is the first amanuensis of the Prophet, is called to undertake the collection by Abu Bakr at the instance of Umar and protests, and is finally called again to the task by Uthman and makes similar protests.”98 Such protests would have been meaningless if an authoritative written version were in exis-tence. Uthman’s entire project would have been unnecessary if Muhammad had left a copy that he had checked through with Gabriel.99 Also, the later limiting the readings to Ten systems was done in the AD 900s.100 Why would this have been neces-sary if a precise, authoritative text from Muhammad was had been in existence for three centuries?

97 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 134.

98 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 134-135. The traditions Sweetman refers to here are given in full in Bayard Dodge, The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1970,47-49.

99 Canon Sell, The Historical Development of the Qur’an. Tunbridge Wells, Kent: People International, 2.

100 Miskawaih, Universal History, [ed. Amedroz in Gibb Memorial Series] i. 285.


2. How do these issues affect the idea of an eternal uncreated Qur’an?

Instead of working to support the idea of the Qur’an being preserved perfectly in its transmission from the heavenly tablet, all these things work against the idea. The general shape of the history of the Qur’an consists of efforts to make a variety of texts one text. One perfect text cannot be traced through this history back to Uthman, or Muhammad, or to a heavenly original. Other issues also work against the idea. For instance, how can the heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in the present Qur’an when we are told that it was necessary for Gabriel to revise it yearly with Muhammad? There was liability to error somewhere in the process if this was necessary.101 The Hadith Qudsi (Holy Hadith) are revelations said to have been given to Muhammad by Gabriel, but why are they not in the Qur’an if it is the full revela-tion intended to be given from the heavenly tablet?102

How can the heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in the present Qur’an when we are told it was necessary for variant copies to be burned, copies gathered by companions of Muhammad that were Muhammad’s acclaimed experts on the Qur’an?

How is the heavenly prototype accurately preserved in the present Qur’an when we find the present Qur’an is incom-

101 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 132.

102 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 135. One version of the Hadith Qudsi is An-Nawawī Forty Hadith. Damascus: Holy Koran Publishing House, 1976.


plete. It is (at least) missing the verse on stoning for adultery. according to ‘Umar, the verse it read: ‘The adult male and the adult female, when they fornicate, stone them outright, as an exemplary punishment from God. God is mighty, wise.’ Usually described as being abrogated in wording but not in its ruling,103 Umar is said to have stated, “Had I not been afraid lest people should say I had added to the Qur’an I would have recorded it.” (as-Suyuti, Al-Itqan, ii. 29)

How can the heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in the present Qur’an when we know the original script of the Qur’an lacked vowels and many consonants, thus producing variant readings of the Qur’an? How can the heavenly proto-type be accurately preserved in the present Qur’an when we are told of three separate versions of the Qur’an even apart from the companions copies-- one from the time of the Muhammad, another in the time of Uthman, and a third in the reign of the Caliph ‘Abd ul Malik (AH 70- the version by Al-Hajjaj)?

3. What issues are raised by Uthman’s action to establish one version of the Qur’an?

Uthman’s text could conceivably represent a perfect version of the heavenly tablet if it was an unedited collection of Muham-mad’s sayings, especially in chronological order. However, since

103 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 137-138.


it was supposedly edited to some extent during Muhammad’s lifetime and after, and that there is so much testimony in Islamic sources to textual variants going back to the Companions, Uthman’s could not have been a pristine unedited copy of the original. An inerrant, dictated original ought not to need editing.

Also, the willingness and zeal to collect it and organize it by Uthman, as a practical measure against opposition, argues against this. Uthman’s measure was a in effect a compromise, at its best seeking to make as good of a version as possible in less than ideal circumstances. At best it was an attempt to preserve and standardize a collection of authentic material, not the one collection of authentic material. Many Muslims have argued that it was a necessary action to maintain Islamic unity and power.104 At its worst, it was a politically motivated expedient to consolidate his power in a rapidly deteriorating situation. He was accused of only partially preserving what was revealed to Muhammad, and chopping out or editing out portions. He was not charged with wholesale invention of material. The recorded resistance to Uthman’s action confirms this. It was said by opponents of Uthman that he had “torn up the Book” (Tabari, ii. 1, 516) and “The Qur’an was in many books and you discredited all but one”(Tabari, i. 6, 2952). To his credit, he was not charged with inventing new material.

104 Labib as-Said, The Recited Koran. Princeton, New Jersey: Darwin Press, 1975, 24. Note this statement: “Thus did Uthman, in response to what was clearly a threat to Muslim unity and strength, undertake that which had seemed unnecessary to his predecessors, namely, the standardization of the written text of the Koran through the institution of a sole authorized canon.”


4. What about Hafsah’s Qur’an?

In view of what is said about the collections of the Compan-ions it seems that hers was one of a number of versions all sharing a semi-official status. Also, this is what makes sense in view of its eventual fate. If it was the only original copy of the official version, why was it burned by Mu’awiyah? This seems to be the action of someone who wanted to keep it from providing political competition to Uthman’s version.

5. Did the Companions collections only differ in dialect?

Dialects are the regional varieties of a language, and can be distinguished from other varieties by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Dialects are more than just a matter of different pronunciation of the same words. They result in different pronunciation and words and word forms. If the Companions collections just differed in these features, then it is possible they just differed in dialect. However, this would argue against just one perfect copy being preserved during Muhammad’s lifetime. The Companions’ versions were treated as versions with a divine sanction during the decades between Muham-mad’s death and Uthman’s edition. The severity of the situa-tion and Uthman’s actions imply that something greater than


different dialects was at stake, and that the differences in the Qur’ans had to do with content as well as lesser issues.

Also, what is not accounted for in the argument saying they only differed in dialect are the longer variants like phrases, verses and portions which are mentioned in the traditions and are appearing in the palimpsests. Also, how can even differ-ences in dialect represent a perfectly preserved text? Burning by Uthman of the original records of the Qur’an and the Companions’ collections suggests that differing content was the problem, not just dialects.

6. How does Abrogation fit into all of this?

Abrogation relies on an understanding of the chronology of the giving of the text of the Qur’an. Hadith and Sirah literature external to the Qur’an provide this chronology. Though the general principle is found in Surah 2:106, how can the applica-tion of this basic interpretive principle of a heavenly book be explained in and controlled by external human sources? One scholar summarized the problems with abrogation and the idea of an eternal tablet:105

If there are texts which abrogate others in the written Qur’an are we to conclude that this abrogation took place in the transcendent

105 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 138.


realm, and that in the heavenly original the abrogating and abrogated appear only in the earthly copy then what becomes of the theory of the proper copying of the heavenly original? On the other hand, if the abrogated appears in the heavenly original, then what are we to conclude about the Divine Wisdom? … what sort of notion are we to gather as to the relation of this heavenly tablet to the will of God? It would simply be a record of the temporal changes and chances of human life as seen by divine prescience, and would attribute to the divine all the shades and fluctuations of human life with no certainty as to what is truth and ultimately no concern for it, for that which is truth for yesterday and not for to-day is not truth at all. It would have to assume that a lengthy statement of history, e.g., that Jesus died on the cross, could stand in a book written by God alongside a denial that it took place. Such ideas are the height of absurdity and make a mockery of God.

7. What are the 7 Ahruf?

With the tradition of Muhammad being granted permis-sion to recite the Qur’an in 7 ways (ahruf ), the definition of the ahruf has never been clearly defined. At least 35 different views of this issue are known as to what the ahruf are and there is no consensus as to which is the best one.106 These views range from the seven being different dialects to being the Companions Collections, to even being just a symbolic number for many. This does not seem to support a view that there was one perfect version of the Qur’an in existence at the time of Muhammad’s death.

106 Ahmad Von Denffer, ‚Ulūm al-Qur‘ān. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1994, 113.


8. What are the 7 and 10 Reading systems, the Qira’at?

First of all, the Seven Qira’at described by the scholar Ibn Mujahid are not to be confused with the Seven Ahruf. Ibn Mujahid never claimed that the seven versions he was iden-tifying were Muhammad’s seven versions; he evidently just used the number as a working principle for limiting the great variety of reading systems that were then in existence.107 Three more versions fulfilled the criteria he used to deter-mine the seven and were eventually accepted as having an equal authority. In many circles there were additional readings regarded as acceptable. How can this be squared with one perfectly preserved version, and with one perfect version in heaven?

To make matters worse, these 7, 10, and others were chosen from among possibly at least 50 versions in use at the time.108 This number also does not include the collections of Ibn Masud, Ubayy ibn Kab, and ‘Ali which are said to still have been available in written versions at this time.109 In all of this, how can 10 versions of the Qur’an which do not go precisely back to Muhammad accurately represent a heavenly original?

107 Al-Jazari, in his book al-Nashr, identified at least fifty systems in use by the AD 900’s. Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān. Leiden: Brill, 1937, 2, note 3 citing Nashr. 1:90; Intisar A. Rabb, “Non-Canonical Readings of the Qur’an: Recognition and Authenticity (the Himsī Reading)”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, VIII, 2, 84-127, 124, note 114, citing Nashr, 1:34-37. Forty systems in addition to the canonical 10 are mentioned.

108 See note 13.

109 Dodge, Fihrist. 57, 58, 63.


9. Don’t Isnads prove that the text of the Qur’an was not changed?

Actually, isnads have never played a part in documenting the content of the Qur’an.110 They never came to be a method of attempting to document its transmission as they became with hadith. There are records of transmission lines of recitations documented with reading certificates, but these also do not document the precise contents of the recitation.111 They instead document a line of transmission, but there is no parallel written or oral guarantee that every syllable of that transmis-sion has remained unchanged. Ibn Mujahid’s effort in the 900s to identify seven of greater authority through the use of recita-tion records prompted an innovation at that time that such records came to be regarded as necessary. Before that time such conventions were not viewed as necessary, but apparently, the old system had broken down by the 900s and a new way of justifying the text of the Qur’an was developed.112

Also, it is unlikely that the practice of readers certificates documenting lines of transmission could have documented the level of precision of pronunciation that eventually came into use with the orthographic improvements of the script of the Qur’an. One critic of isnads in the 900s claimed they were

110 M. M. Al-Azami, The History of the Qur’anic Text. Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003, 193.

111 Al-Azami, History. , 192.

112 Geoffrey Khan, “Al-Qirqisānī’s Opinions Concerning the Text of the Bible and Parallel Muslim Attitudes Towards the Text of the Qur’ān”, The Jewish Quarterly Review, LXXXI, Nos. 1-2, 59-73, 68-71.


unsatisfactory because accepting the hadith on the basis of the name of a transmitter involved accepting the report itself without subjecting the report to sufficient criticism.113 The same could be said for these lines of reported transmission. Overall, while there was an unpointed consonantal script for the Qur’an, there was an allowance of a level of flexibility that was limited only in the 900s through the actions of Ibn Mujahid and similar scholars.

10. What kind of textual variants do the Sanaa manu-scripts have?

A definitive answer to this cannot be given because the thousands of pages of manuscript material have not been published. However, some partial answers can be given which are probably representative. One article that lists the general kinds of variants in them is available.114 The Sanaa manuscripts with the most textual variants are the very few palimpsest pages. These have textual variants ranging from individual letters to the omission or addition of sentences and verses. For the rest of the manuscripts, they contain variants concerning the long vowels, especially alif, and also some diacritical mark variants. There are also a few that have variant surah orders,

113 Khan, “Opinions”, 71.

114 Gerd-R. Puin, “Observations on Early Qur’an Manuscripts in San’ā’”, Stefan Wild, ed., The Qur’an as Text. Leiden: Brill, 1996, 107-111


one of which matches an order said to have been in Ibn Masud’s version and one which matches an order said to have been in Ubayy b. Ka’b’s. There was also at least one which did not match any known alternative surah order system.115 There are also many manuscripts which have extensive corrections.116

11. What are the contents of the Samarkand and Topkapi Qur’ans and how old are they?

The Samarkand Kufic Qur’an has many missing pages. Also, many pages have been repaired and replaced with paper pages. These are not original to the manuscript and it is difficult to know exactly how old they are. The oldest pages that are made of parchment contain portions of surahs 2-5, 11, 12, 14-20, 24, 27, and 36-43. the later paper pages contain portions of surahs 2-7. Some of the paper pages are interspersed among the parchment ones. On the basis of the script style and artwork, most Western scholars date this manuscript to the mid to late 700’s.117

The Topkapi Qur’an is now available in a beautiful color facsimile printing.118 The Turkish scholars who produced it also provided a lengthy and informative introduction to the

115 Puin, ‘Observations’, Puin, .

116 “San‘ā’ Manuscripts”, Memory of the World. UNESCO. Cairo, Egypt: Ritsec Cultureware. CD-ROM.

117 Arthur Jeffery and Isaac Mendelsohn, “The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur’an Codex”, JAOS, 62, 175-195.

118 Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, Al-Mushaf al-Sharif, Attributed to ‘Uthmān bin ‘Affān. Istanbul: IRCICA, 2007,


manuscript and many of the issues involved in evaluating early Qur’an manuscripts. The Topkapi Qur’an is almost complete. It is missing two folios that contain S. 5:3-8 and 17:17-33. It is possible that folios 1-6 and 11 (containing s. 1-2:1-72 and 2:114-126 respectively) were written by a later scribe repairing a damaged manuscript, very possibly before AD 800.119 The introduction presents the conclusion that this manuscript dates to either the generation after Uthman or the genera-tion after that. This dates the manuscript probably to within the early to mid 700’s. In the preface to the facsimile is the following statement,

This Mushaf, which we proudly present, does not constitute a sample of the early period of Mushaf writing due to a number of character-istics, namely, its illumination, calligraphy which shows the develop-ment of the Arabic script to a certain extent, the fact that the words appear on straight lines, the proportion between the letters, diacritical marks or i‘rab in the form of dots in red ink, and the signs of i‘djam in the form of thin slant lines differentiating similar letters from one another in black ink, with which the text is written. Considering its dimensions and style of illumination, this Mushaf most probably belongs to the Umayyad period.

12. Do the contents of the Topkapi Qur’an prove that the Qur’an has always had 114 surahs?

119 Altikulac, Al-Mushaf. 75.


Though this is a possibility, it cannot be proven from this one manuscript. This manuscript documents this order and content to the early 700’s. Also, the particular content of 114 in the present order is one of possibly a variety of forms the Qur’an was in before these facets were standardized. Ibn Nadim in his book the Fihrist from the mid 800s mentions that four different written versions of the Qur’an were in existence in his time: the standard one, Ibn Mas’ud’s, Ubai b. Ka’b’s, and Ali’s.120 Also, if the variant surah orders among the Sanaa Qur’ans are any indication, there could have been other variant versions that went out of use relatively quickly.121

13. What is the oldest dated complete Qur’an?

According to the scholar Brannon Wheeler, the earliest complete dated Qur’an s from 393 AH/1002 AD, and is kept at the Rajab Museum in Kuwait. A picture of it is on the following website:

h t t p : //www. u s n a . e d u / U s e r s / h u m s s / bw h e e l e r/q u ra n / k u f i _ 3 93 . h t m l

There might be complete Qur’ans dated earlier than this that are not dated by a colophon from the scribe, but rather by

120 Dodge, Fihrist.

121 Puin, “Observations”, 111.


an approximation from its script style and ornamentation. This however, is complicated in that there is no complete register of the contents and dates of Qur’ans in Western collections or Middle Eastern and North African ones. Though this has been done for most of the New Testament manuscripts in the world, it has not yet been done for Qur’an manuscripts, though many efforts are underway in various libraries around the world.122

The Topkapi Qur’an is perhaps the earliest Qur’an that can make the claim to being almost, or practically complete. It is much more complete than other manuscripts from the 700’s. For instance, Hijazi script style manuscripts- held by many to be the very earliest Qur’an manuscripts (some possibly into the late 600’s)- are very incomplete with no representation of surahs after Surah 76. This does not include the Sanaa Hijazi manuscripts, however, because there is not an available cata-logue of their contents.

14. What about the views of New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman? Hasn’t he proven that the Bible was corrupted?

No, he hasn’t. He has demonstrated something that New Testament scholars have known and spoken of since the times of the early church fathers: that occasionally, isolated

122 Al-Azami, History. 317.


scribes intentionally changed manuscripts to strengthen the teaching on some doctrinal issue. This was done sporadically in individual manuscripts by individual scribes, not as a part of a larger conspiracy or official effort by an ecclesiastical or political authority. The discipline of textual criticism, as it has developed over the last three centuries, has been able to discern these changes through comparisons between the large numbers of available manuscripts. The issues Ehrman brings out are all corrected in the critical texts of the New Testa-ment used for translation of the Bible for all major Chris-tian denominations. Rather than bringing out new evidence of corruption, he is working with already discovered textual variants that have been evaluated and rejected for the best text. He is merely illuminating a little further a period in Chris-tian history for which the modern text accounts and for which it does not make the same mistakes. When one looks at the actual content of the changes that are asserted by Erhman, they don’t affect the teaching of the New Testament to any great degree. The clearest verses demonstrating the deity of Christ, the Trinity, and the atoning death and resurrection of Christ are not in question. Taking his views as the authority is making the mistake of losing the forest for the trees. Rather than demonstrating wholesale change or corruption of a manuscript tradition, his is documenting tendencies among some scribes in some locations in some manuscripts.


Ehrman also recognizes that his use of the word “Corrup-tion” is a technical one from textual criticism meaning any kind of change by a scribe, intentional or unintentional, though the emphasis of his book is on intentional change. He mentions that he used the word intentionally for its ironic impact (dare one say its sensationalist impact?) implying he is stretching its true meaning beyond its real significance.123 Also, This kind of “corruption” is not the same as the Islamic view of Tahrif as applied to the text of a book of scripture which requires a conscious, radical intentional change to a book to hide or alter its teaching. Not even Bart Ehrman asserts this for the New Testament in his most scholarly work.

Also, Ehrman’s general conclusions are actually more accurate concerning the Qur’an than the New Testament. Think of the following quotation if it is applied to the actions of the Companions, Uthman, al-Hajjaj, and the scribes who applied full diacritical marks and vocalization marks to manu-scripts in the 900s:124

…by physically altering the words, they did something quite different from other exegetes, and this difference is by no means to be mini-mized. Whereas all readers change a text when they construe it in their minds, the scribes actually changed the text on the page. As a result, they created a new text, a new concatenation of words over

123 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford: OUP, 1993, xii.

124 Ehrman, Corruption, 280.


which future interpreters would dispute, no longer having access to the words of the original text, the words produced by the author.

If Ehrman’s words are applied to the history of the text of the Qur’an, then he is actually confirming the words of another New Testament scholar, B.F. Westcott, who made the following observation concerning the Qur’an back in the late 1800’s:125

When the Caliph Othman fixed a text of the Koran and destroyed all the old copies which differed from his standard, he provided for the uniformity of subsequent manuscripts at the cost of their historical foundation. A classical text which rests finally on a single archetype is that which is open to the most serious suspicions.

Even Ehrman should recognize that the overwhelming majority of intentional variants in the New Testament tradi-tion were not dogmatically inspired- that is, to strengthen a particular doctrine. In contrast, much of the very form of the Qur’an’s text as it stands today has been shaped by dogmatic forces, from precise choice of diacritical marks on consonants to the application of a precise vocalization system, to even the original choice of contents and order by Uthman. It also is evident in physical corrections to the text and in the Qur’anic palimpsests. Physical corrections and palimpsests in the New Testament tradition don’t show such dogmatic change. Rather,

125 Brooke Foss Westcott, Some Lessons of the Revised Version of the New Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897, 8-9.


they contain the same kinds of variants observed in the rest of the New Testament manuscript tradition. They are not changes to standardize a form of the text to an official standard.

15. Is there any historical evidence for the Qur’an’s view of the Bible consisting of individual books given to Moses, David, and Jesus?

There really is no evidence of books like what the Qur’an describes of the Taurait, Zabur and Injil. The Qur’an’s state-ments are the only evidence for their existence and if Muslims have definite evidence, it would be a great service to everyone if they would produce it. However, Christians have never held that Jesus came with a book. Rather, the word Gospel, which means “good news” was originally a word used to describe the good news of Jesus’ life and crucifixion and resurrection. By the end of the 200’s it had come to be used in titles of books, including the four Gospels in the New Testament. It was understood at that time that these were books about Jesus, not by Jesus.

Similar things can be said for the Taurait and the Zabur. The Torah of the Jews has always been the first five books of the Pentateuch, the foundation for the larger collection of scriptural books shared by Jews and Christians. If Zabur refers to the Psalms of David, the Psalms have always been songs


composed for worship at the Temple, not a book of revelation given from heaven. There is simply no historical evidence for the existence of books like what the Qur’an describes.

16. How do the numbers of existing New Testament manuscripts and Qur’an manuscripts compare?

This cannot yet be figured. While there is a count of known New Testament manuscripts and an extensive collection of photographs of them at one place,126 this has never been done for Qur’an manuscripts.127 There are some efforts currently going on to catalog collections around the world, but none of them is seeking to be all-inclusive. So, while it is know that there are somewhere in the range of 24,000 New Testament manuscripts is a variety of languages, one can reasonably spec-ulate that the number of Qur’an manuscripts would be in the thousands. The Sanaa collection alone has thousands of pages of manuscript material, many of these comprising incomplete Qur’ans. The largest collections of early Qur’an manuscripts are known to exist in Istanbul and Paris. There are also known to be many in Egypt, and the oldest ones in European collec-tions came mainly from Egypt originally.

126 The Center for New Testament Studies at Münster, Germany.

127 Al-Azami, History, 317.


17. What are the earliest Qur’an manuscripts and how do their contents compare to the current Qur’an?

The earliest Qur’an manuscripts are the Hijazi palimpsest pages in the collection in Sanaa, Yemen and in collections in Denmark and private hands.128 The earliest non-palimpsest pages are also in Yemen and are also matched in their antiquity by Qur’ans in Istanbul, London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Peters-burg, as well as small numbers of pages in various collections in Europe and the USA. These are Hijazi script manuscripts. The Sanaa collection also contains what are probably the oldest Kufic script manuscripts, like 01-20.x used in this study.

The contents of all these manuscripts is very partial, and missing the last surahs of the Qur’an, mainly after surah 76. The surahs between about 45 and 76 are also not as well repre-sented as the surahs before that. This is all qualified, though, by the fact that a catalog of the contents of the Sanaa manuscripts has not yet been released. A catalog of a partial sampling of a CD produced by UNESCO of 300 representative manuscripts is available.129

18. How accurately does the current Qur’an represent the original?

128 The only available pictures of some of these are in various London auction house catalogs, though projects are underway to publish at least some of them.

129 Keith E. Small, “UNESCO CD of San’a’ MSS: Qur’ān MSS Contents”, Manuscripta Orientalia, 12:2:65-72


The current Qur’ans published in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are versions of the the 1924 Royal Cairo edition which was not made with reference to the earliest available manuscripts. Instead, the precise form of the text was determined according to Medieval Islamic Qur’an science literature. This literature supports the traditional view of the Qur’an, but the manu-scripts do not since they allow for and even gave rise to so many variant recitations of the Qur’an. Also, palimpsests and corrections in manuscripts show that other variant readings were once part of the manuscript tradition. At best, the current text represents the consonantal text established by Uthman and al-Hajjaj, but the rest of the pointing and vocalization is later, dating to the 900’s. The current Qur’an does not repre-sent what was used as Qur’an during Muhammad’s lifetime, not in the period immediately following his death until the editing projects of Uthman and al-Hajjaj.

19. How do these issues affect current arguments for the Qur’an’s divine status?

Appeals to the miraculous nature of the Qur’an, its perfect style, supposed lack of contradictions, and supposed secret scientific knowledge in the Qur’an are all assertions that are dependent on a perfectly preserved text of the Qur’an from the heavenly tablet. Since the Qur’an has not been preserved


perfectly, these arguments are all open to question since they are supposedly related to an original form of the Qur’an that is actually unobtainable.

20. Why do Christians believe in the Bible?

Aside from arguments that they find it personally and spiri-tually meaningful, there are very good historical reasons for Christians to believe that the text of the Bible has been preserved with integrity. There are many good books devoted to this topic, so this will be just a brief summary.130

First, the New Testament agrees with and builds on the teaching of the Old Testament. The Old Testament has many predictions of the Messiah that are clearly fulfilled in Jesus Christ, as He is portrayed in the Gospels and in the rest of the New Testament books. One of the most important of these is Isaiah chapter 53, revealed to the prophet Isaiah 700 years before Jesus was born, which includes the following portion (53:4-6 NASB) describing the purpose of the Messiah’s ministry:

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

130 One excellent book is Steven Masood, The Bible and the Qur’an: A Question of Integrity. Carlisle, Cumbria: OM Publishing, 2001.


But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities;

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.

All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

Continuity of the revelations between the Old and New Testaments is not the only critieria. Also, the integrity of the historical transmission of the Bible has been subjected to enormous amounts of outside and even hostile scrutiny. Hans Kung, a Roman Catholic theologian, has said this:131

Lay people are usually unaware that the scrupulous scholarly work achieved by modern biblical criticism…represented by scrupulous academic work over about 300 years, belongs among the greatest intellectual achievements of the human race. Has any of the great world religions outside of the Jewish-Christian tradition investigated its own foundations and its own history so thoroughly and so impar-tially? None of them has remotely approached this. The Bible is far and away the most studied book in world literature.

The Bible, though, has shown that it can stand up to this kind of criticism and the rigorous studies have instead come to support its reliability through archaeological evidence, literary

131 Hans Küng, Judaism: The Religious Situation of Our Time. London: SCM Press Ltd, 1992, 24.


criticism, textual criticism, and historical evidence. This book is a thorough look at just the one aspect of textual criticism.

Though no one likes to have their holy books criticized, Christians have come to realize that our holy books must be examined by the most modern and careful scholarship avail-able. Only by surviving such scrutiny can we commend our faith to our age with full intellectual and spiritual conviction of its truth and sufficiency for our world.

A third area is a statement summarizing the thrust of this book, that the Bible’s text has not been corrupted or changed significantly away from what the individual books that were originally given. The Islamic claims that this happened are not supported by historical evidence. They are instead theological assertions that are not based on a fully informed view of all the evidence. Books like the DaVinci Code or Bart Ehrman’s books also don’t prove it. They are merely asserting a different history of the text on the basis of much less trustworthy evidence and large amounts of speculation.One last area is historical evidence of the development of Christianity. There is no sufficient historical reason for the start and continued existence of Christianity except for the firm belief among Jesus’ apostles and disciples that Jesus really did die on the cross and rise from the dead. Islam and the Qur’an, which recognize Christianity as a legitimate historical religion from God, do not adequately take this into account. Without the atoning


death and resurrection of Christ, Christianity would have just been a Jewish reform movement and would have stayed within Judaism. But because these events did happen, and since the risen Jesus appeared to His apostles and guided them in the ensuing decades, Christianity was born and became a separate religion which claims universal significance and allegiance.

Revelation from God, contained in a holy book, should at least be historically accurate and supportable. Christians believe that God does not leave Himself and His acts in time and space without adequate witness or testimony. The Bible stands up to this standard. The four Gospels of the New Testa-ment present a historically accurate picture of Jesus and the time he lived in. They do present His actual words, teaching, and claims to deity. As millions have put their personal faith in the risen Christ they have experienced the change that He can bring into their lives through granting forgiveness and cleansing from sin. He makes changes in lives greater than any law or merely human effort can accomplish. It is only because of the historical occurrence of the crucifixion and resurrec-tion, and through the continued experience of redemption that believers in Christ through the ages have received, that Chris-tianity has continued to exist and continues to grow dramati-cally in our own time. :

123

123

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