The Qur'an is Allah's Perfect and Complete Word ?

8/4/2019 The Qur'an is Allah's Perfect and Complete Word ?

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Myth #2

When Omer smote is bloomin lyre,Hed eard men sing by land and sea;An what e thought e might require,E went an took - the same as me!- Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads

What Does the Qur'an Say About the Bible?God's Evident Preservation of the Bible

Various Types of Pre-Islamic Source Materials Used in the Qur'anThe Qur'an is in Pure Arabic?Mistakes, Inconsistencies, and Imperfections in the Qur'an

As one would expect, Islam teaches that the Qur'an is perfect, the complete revelation of Allahto mankind. The Qur'an is held to be flawless, completely unassailable in what it says, both infact and doctrine. Because of this perceived completeness and perfection, Islam is viewed to bethe ultimate religion, the final religious revelation from Allah to man, superseding all previousbelief systems. With the completion of the Qur'an, Muslims believe, the need for revelationended and Allah's message to man was concluded.

"The guidance he has shown unto mankind is complete and flawless, and is enshrinedin the Holy Qur'an....Secondly, God has completed His revealed guidance throughProphet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and Islam is the complete religion formankind. God has said that, 'Today I have perfected your Faith - religion - for you, andhave completed my bounty upon you,' and a thorough study of Islam as a way of life

proves the truth of these Quranic words." 1

Concurrently, Muslims believe that the Gospels and the Torah are also revelations to man fromAllah, but that these revelations were corrupted, changed by Jews and Christians who tried tohide the original and true meanings of those texts. They believe that the Bible and Torah containGod's Word, but are thoroughly mixed with the words and thoughts of men, and are thuscorrupted and superseded by the Quran.

What Does the Qur'an Say About the Bible?

However, Islam has always taken a somewhat double-minded position on the Bible. Whileteaching that the Bible is flawed, incomplete, and untrustworthy, Islam at the same timeteaches that the Bible is to be followed by Muslims as a means of finding the truth. "And if thou(Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those whoread the Scripture (that was) before thee. Verily the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee.

#2 - The Qur'an is Allah's Perfect and Complete Word http://www.studytoanswer.net/myths

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So be not thou of the waverers." (Pickthal translation, Surah 10:94) Thus, we see supposed divinerevelation from Allah directing Mohammed and his followers to seek truth as a final authorityfrom the Bible, from Jews and Christians who "read the Scripture before thee", as a means ofclearing up misunderstandings and doubts about quranic revelation. It is from this that thestrange paradox arises whereby Muslims must teach that the Bible is corrupted by man, yet atthe same time accept what it teaches (more or less) as being from God.

Further, a question which then arises is this: If Allah is directing Mohammed (and therefore

Muslims in general) to seek guidance from the Bible, then did the early Muslims really considerthe Bible to be corrupted in and of itself? As will be seen below, the proof texts from the Qur'anthat Muslims use to maintain the teaching of biblical corruption are less decisive on this pointthan Muslims believe. Further, if they wish to press the issue, then a problem remains forMuslims. When do they suppose the Bible to have been corrupted? Was it BEFORE Allah toldMohammed to seek out guidance from the biblical Scriptures through Christians and Jews, inwhich case Allah told Mohammed to seek spiritual wisdom from corrupt sources? Or was it AFTERAllah told Mohammed to seek Biblical guidance from earlier peoples of the Book, a fact that isrefuted by the evidence from biblical manuscripts in several languages that are dated from bothbefore and after the rise of Islam, that show textual continuity throughout this period (indicating

that the text was fundamentally the same throughout)?

The corruption lies not with the Bible, but rather with the Qur'an - the creation of Arabs in needof a religious text to substantiate their developing monotheistic religion. Many storied in theQur'an were directly (though imperfectly) transferred from the Bible, containing stories aboutpersonalities from the Bible, but often the stories are incorrect. The Qur'an states that Hamanwas a servant of Pharaoh, that Moses was adopted by Pharaoh's wife rather than his daughter,that the great Flood of Noah occurred during the time of Moses, and that Joseph was bought as aslave by an Egyptian named Aziz (instead of Potiphar), to name a few. The evidence seems topoint to a rudimentary acquaintance with the biblical Scriptures during the early years of theArab Empire, with a concomitant misunderstanding of much of what they heard and saw in them.

The Arabs merely cobbled together their various impressions of what they had heard from variousreligious sources, and made them a part of the Qur'an.

Further, it ought to be noted that passages in the Qur'an which Muslims point to as "proof" of thecorruption of earlier texts do not necessarily teach the corruption of the texts themselves. Twoprimary quranic passages used by Muslims to claim Biblical corruption are these:

"And there are among them illiterates, who know not the Book, but (see therein theirown) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture. Then woe to those who write theBook with their own hands, and then say: "This is from Allah," to traffic with it formiserable price!- Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they

make thereby." (Surah 2:78-79)

"Can ye (O ye men of Faith) entertain the hope that they will believe in you?- Seeingthat a party of them heard the Word of Allah, and perverted it knowingly after theyunderstood it." (Surah 2:75)

Neither of these passages indicate textual corruption. The first passage refers to illiterates(defined by the context as those ignorant of the quranic revelation, which explains how an"illiterate" could write a book) who act upon their own accord to create their own scriptures, andthen try to pass them off as sacred writings. This does not refer to the corruption of the words of


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God, but rather to the production of competitors to the words of God, false teachings and newbooks. The second passage refers to people who heard preaching, and knowingly perverted whatthey had heard, teaching that it means something else. As Parrinder has noted, early Muslimclaims of corruption (tahrif) generally refer to misinterpreting scripture, and passing offsomething which is not scripture as if it were so, but say nothing about the text of the previous

scriptures being corrupted 2. He further states in reference to Muslim commentary on the Bible,

"Another writer says: 'In the Koran tahrifmeans either false interpretation of thepassage bearing upon Mohammed or non-enforcement of the explicit laws of thePentateuch. As for the text of the Bible, it had not been altered....No rival text is

assumed."3

As we see, traditional Muslim claims about "corruption" in the Bible revolve around suggestedfalse interpretations, not actual alteration of the text itself. More will be said about this subjectin Chapter 6, with particular regard to the issue of the charge made by Muslims that Jews andChristians concealed prophetic references to Mohammed appearing in their scriptures.

God's Evident Preservation of the Bible

While the falsity of Muslim claims for the revelation of the Qur'an and its subsequent lack ofchange have been previously exposed, the Muslim charges concerning the corruption of the Bibleought to be addressed briefly. Islam has yet to produce any textual evidence to demonstrate thecorruption of the Biblical texts as a whole. Often, Muslims will try to point to differences inreadings between individual manuscripts, and use this to support their assertion. However, thescience of textual criticism, as applied to the task of systematically examining the manuscriptevidence, provides Christian scholars with the ability to distinguish between true and spuriousreadings in individual manuscripts. The body of evidence from Greek manuscripts, themanuscripts of other ancient versions (Old Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Latin Vulgate, etc.), and thequotations of early Christian writers allows us to determine the content of the originalautographic texts with as yet unassailed certainty. It should be noted (as shown earlier) thatIslam cannot truthfully make the same claim, and in fact is unable logistically to even make theattempt because of the artificial standardization of the Arabic quranic text by the early caliphs,and the subsequent destruction of nearly all contrary quranic manuscriptual evidence. Thus, theMuslim assertion rests entirely on blind faith in what amounts to a tradition handed downthrough Islam for roughly 1300 years. Facts show, however, that the texts used to produce theKing James Bible in English, and its analogs in other languages, are the preserved, uncorruptedwords of God.

Let us briefly trace the history of the preservation of the Scriptures. Beginning with the Old

Testament, we see that it was written originally in Hebrew (except for certain portions of Danieland Ezra, which were in Aramaic). Therefore, we must look at the history of the Hebrew textswhen addressing any suggested corruption of these Old Testament scriptures. The Scripturesreiterate to us time and time again the promise that God has made concerning the preservationof His Words. For example,

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purifiedseven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this

generation for ever. (Psalm 12:6-7)4


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And,

The grass withered, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.(Isaiah 40:8)

It is perfectly logical to suggest that God who gave His Words to man would then preserve thoseWords. Indeed, what logical purpose is there for the inspiration of Scripture, if there is nosubsequentpreservation? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself demonstrated a complete trust that the

Word of God was available in His day, even centuries after the original autographs had beenpenned and lost. Whether He was quoting scripture to refute Satans temptations, or readingfrom a scroll of Isaiah to announce the first advent of His messianic ministry, Jesus neverindicated any belief that the copies of the Word which He read or remembered were anythingless than the Words of God - not reconstructed, not 95% recovered, but the Words of Godpreserved in His day. These Words were in the Hebrew, as well, for He used the Hebrew Bible, notthe Greek Septuagint translation. In Luke 11:51, Jesus, speaking of the blood of Gods martyrsshed through the entire Old Testament period, said this,

From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between thealtar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.

What Jesus did here was to encapsulate the entire history of the persecution of those who trustin the Lord by those who do not - beginning with Abel in Genesis 4:8, and ending with Zechariahin II Chronicles 24:21. This is of interest to our present discussion because this first and lastrefer to passages in the first and last books of the Old Testament - as they appear in thetraditional ordering of the Hebrew scriptures among the Jews, an order that differs from thearrangement of the Old Testament books in the Septuagint. Evidently, when Jesus thought about

the Old Testament Scriptures, He had the Hebrew, not the Greek Septuagint, in mind5. Godpromised to preserve His Words for us, and God in human flesh gave every indication of fullytrusting in His own promise. So, how does this apply to our present discussion concerning Biblical

preservation versus corruption? What evidences, and in what way do we see that the Scriptureswere preserved, contra the Muslim allegations?

Romans 3:1-2 tells us, "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there ofcircumcision? Much every way: chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles ofGod." This passage clearly illustrates to us that it was the Jews who had been given theresponsibility and privilege of passing on and protecting God's Word. This they did, too, throughtheir Masoretic school. From 500-1500 AD, there existed throughout the Jewish Diaspora a schoolof dedicated copyists known as the Masoretes. The Hebrew Masoretes followed thoroughly

prescribed and very rigorous methods for transcribing copies of the Hebrew scriptures 6. Amongother things, they had to have an authentic copy of the texts before them when copying. Theycould not copy anything from memory, but had to have a bona fide copy in front of them,sounding out each word before copying it. The copyist had to have the word on his lips, not justin his mind. Rules governed everything involved with the copying, even the color of the ink used,the number of lines per column of text, the preparation of the parchment skins used, etc. Strictstandards were followed that governed the style of letter formation, space between letters, thehandling of the pen used to copy. Care was taken not just to transfer words, but to standardizethem so rigorously that the copy was as nearly a perfect replica of the original as was humanlypossible. The quality of copying from this method would approach that obtained with a moderncopying machine. Further, if one mistake was found on a sheet of parchment, the sheet was laid


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to rest and the work started over. If three mistakes were found on any one page, the entiremanuscript was thrown out and copying anew. Thus, if a Masorete who was copying the entiretext of the Hebrew Bible started in Genesis and got all the way to the end of II Chronicles andmade three mistakes on a page, the entire document was thrown out, along with weeks of work,and started over.

This is well and good for showing that the Hebrew scriptures were preserved as they weretranscribed from after 500 AD. But what about before this time? As was alluded earlier, the

evidence from Jesus use of the Scriptures seems to show that He was using Hebrew texts thatwere Masoretic in type, at least for the portions of Scripture which He was citing or reading. Thiscontention is well supported by evidences that go back to, and indeed predate, the Lordsearthly ministry. For many decades, biblical scholars called into question the antiquity andauthenticity of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. As noted above, the Masoretic schools only began tooperate in the 6th century AD. But, it was said, there is no evidence for the Masoretic Hebrewfrom before this time, and because the Septuagint - a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripturesusually considered to date from around 250 BC - was older, this text-type was considered to bemore authentic or closer to the original. This all changed beginning in 1947 with thediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a series of caves near Qumran, near the Dead Sea in Israel.

The Dead Sea Scrolls profoundly changed the way scholars looked at the textual issue. This isbecause the large majority of the hundreds of Hebrew manuscripts found at Qumran areMasoretic-style texts. Among the biblical manuscripts from Qumran, 60% are Proto-Masoretictexts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5%Septuagintal-type texts. Furthermore, the Qumran-style manuscripts have their basis in theproto-Masoretic texts, as do the proto-Samaritan texts. The Masoretic-type texts were dominant

in the time of the Hasmonean period (about 160 BC)7. Hence, around 85% of the biblical texts inHebrew that were found at Qumran are Masoretic in type (the term proto-Masoretic is used bymany scholars to denote the fact that these are Masoretic texts that existed long before theMasoretic was supposed to have existed). This pushed back the evidence for the Masoretic text

to a couple of centuries before Jesus. There was even found at Qumran an exemplary Isaiahscroll of the Masoretic type, dating to 150-100 BC, which compared quite closely to theMasoretic Isaiah underlying that book in our English Bible today. This manuscript proved to bepractically identical with the later Masoretic text in more than 95% of its text. The remaining5%, the variant readings, was made up of obvious scribal slips of the pen and spelling differences

that do not affect the teaching contained therein8. Geisler and Nix observe that of the 166 words

in the Hebrew of Isaiah 53, only 17 letters in the Dead Sea Scroll Isaiah exemplar 1QIsb differfrom the Masoretic text of today - 10 letters constitute spelling variations, 4 lettersdemonstrated stylistic changes, and 3 letters represented the addition of the word for light in

verse 11

9

. Among these slight variances, there is no effect on the doctrines contained therein.

Still, as seen above, there were other types of texts as well - a small number of Hebrew textsthat agree with the Septuagint, and then a somewhat larger grab-bag of eclectic texts that donot lend themselves to categorization. Cross hypothesized that there were three families oftexts at Qumran. He suggests a Masoretic family, a Palestinian family (which developed intothe Samaritan version of the Hebrew scriptures that we saw above had its basis in the proto-Masoretic text-type), and an Egyptian family, which became the basis for the Septuagintal

type of Hebrew texts, and which was used by the Jews in Alexandria10. The existence of theseother text-types has led scholars to believe that the Masoretic was only one type among many of


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the Hebrew Bible, and that the text of the Bible was hardly settled during the time in which theDead Sea Scrolls were being compiled and stored away in the caves at Qumran. By noting thatthe probable origin of the proto-Samaritan and Qumran-style texts was in the proto-Masoreticfamily, Schiffman largely dispensed with the "three families" theory, though the presence of theother, minority text-types has kept alive the basic thesis of an unsettled text.

There is absolutely no reason to believe this understanding of the evidences, however. There isno need to believe that the Masoretic was just one among many until it was standardized (and

presumably accredited) by Masoretes starting around 500 AD. The circumstances surroundingthe evidences obtained from Qumran need not be interpreted so as to arrive at the particularconclusions that many textual scholars have. One understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls that isfinding increasing currency in recent years is the view that at least some of the caves at Qumranwere not used to store valuable and treasured texts, but instead were used as a type ofgenizah.Agenizah is a Jewish repository for manuscripts that can no longer be used, or never were used,because they arepassul - unfit for ritual use in the synagogue. These types of texts would be setaside as shemos, stored away in some place where they would not be used, but yet would not bedestroyed because they contained the name of the Lord on them. With regards to theSeptuagintal type manuscripts in particular, we see that the large majority of texts bearing

Septuagintal-type readings were stored in one particular cave - Cave 4. Using data from R. GrantJones11, a compilation of the discovery locations of manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrollscontaining textual variances between the Masoretic and the Septuagintal readings in thePentateuch shows that 34 out of 45 manuscripts, with 196 out of 221 total variant readings,were found in Cave 4 - accounting for 75.6% of the texts and 88.7% of the variances. Theremaining texts were scattered between 6 other caves at the Qumran complex. Jones selectionof variant readings in the rest of the Hebrew Bible shows that, from the selected texts, 33 out of42 Septuagintal readings, or 78.6%, were from manuscripts found in Cave 4. Because of theoverwhelming selection of Cave 4 for this particular text type, as well as the fact that themanuscripts in Cave 4 were not stored in jars as were the manuscripts in the other caves, Cave 4has a definite appearance of being agenizah, a place where old, damaged, or textually corruptmanuscripts were laid to rest after being removed from circulation.

Indeed, the entirety of the Qumran cave complex might be agenizah, as was originallypostulated by the late E.L. Sukenik. Recent scholarship surrounding the study of the Scrolls hasmoved increasingly towards the view that the Qumran community was not necessary made up ofEssenes, and that the repository of manuscripts may not even be associated directly with thecommunity at Qumran, whoever they were. Golb has theorized that the Qumran caves complexwas instead a depository of texts serving as a sort of safe house for the personal libraries ofJews who escaped from Jerusalem before the Roman destruction of that city in 70 AD. He pointsto the fact that the manuscripts contained at Qumran were copied by well over 500 different

hands12, far more copyists than would have been needed or used in a small community such asthe Essene complex, even over the course of a few centuries13. This multitude of copyistssuggests that the manuscripts were simply produced independently of each other by scribes allover Israel, rather than by those of one closed community. This theory has evidence to commendit, but it seems unnecessary to theorize that these scripts were stored by Jews escaping theRomans, since if one is fleeing for ones life, why take the time to travel to a remote location inthe desert to store away portable scrolls when you could simply take them with you while gettingout of the country?

Rather, I suggest that the evidences of the plethora of scribes, as well, as the peculiarity of


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storing these scrolls away in remote caves, suggests that the complex was agenizah. ALL thescrolls there were essentially throwaways, even such nearlyperfect specimens as the Isaiahexemplar, and were laid to rest respectfully over the decades and centuries. This suggests, then,that far from being a valuable repository of knowledge about the development of the HebrewBible, the Dead Sea Scrolls show what was NOT used. The preponderance of Masoreticmanuscripts demonstrates that the Masoretic was the Hebrew Bible in use during this timeperiod, but the fact that the Masoretic texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls have even minor textualvariances with the established Masoretic texts could indicate that even at this early date,there was a purposeful selection against these corrupted manuscripts. Perhaps there wereproto-Masoretes who were copying the Hebrew scriptures, and whose copyist errors would betreated much the same way as those of the later Masoretes were - by trashing the manuscriptand starting over. In the very least, we see that there is the definite possibility thatnon-Masoretic and Masoretic texts with copyist errors were laid to rest in the Qumran caves,even if a specifically Masoretic process of copying was not in operation. This then would suggestthat the Masoretic text, same as todays, was the gold standard even back in that day, therule by which all manuscripts were judged.

Efforts at accurate and reliable transmission, perpetuated by the Masoretes, and likely

originating long before 500 AD, protected God's Word in Hebrew from any sort of corruption.Islam cannot even begin to make the same sort of claim for the Arabic texts of the Qur'an, whichthe evidences show had already been corrupted, altered, and then artificially standardized bythe early caliphs. The result of the Masoretes' work was what was used to translate the OldTestament in the King James. The King James translators used the Ben Chayyim Masoretic text,produced by Rabbi Abraham ben Chayyim iben Adonijah, and published by Daniel Bomberg in

1524 14. Thus, the King James Old Testament comes from a text that can be consideredcompletely trustworthy and a preserved replica of the originals.

Likewise, the Greek New Testament underlying the King James remained uncorrupted. There arecurrently in the possession of scholars over 5300 copies, either partial or full, of the Greek New

Testament, in various forms such as uncials, lectionaries, papyrus fragments, and cursive texts.Of these, more than 5200 most generally agree with the Traditional Text (also called theSyrian or Byzantine), the text type underlying the Greek text from which the King James

New Testament was translated 15. Hence, more than 98% of all existing Greek New Testamenttexts are in general agreement with one another and with the Textus Receptus which Beza editedin 1598. What this means is that the vast bulk of Greek manuscripts for the New Testament weretransmitted accurately down throughout the entire Church Age, right up to the time when Bezacollated his complete Greek text. Further evidence for the accuracy of their transmission is thefact that around 2,630 out of 4,383 (60%) of the New Testament quotations from early churchfathers who died before 400 AD were in the form of distinctive Byzantine readings (i.e. the

writer chose the Byzantine reading when the Byzantine and Alexandrian texts differed on averse)16. As Kenyon pointed out in his survey of Miller and Burgons analysis, this preference forthe Traditional Text increases to around 64% (151 of 235) if the writers from the fi rst threecenturies are considered, and this further rises to 76% (530 of 700) when a list of thirty highlyimportant passages are considered from this group of patristics, chosen for their frequency of

quotation and theological importance 17.

The tiny remaining number of Greek texts (less than 2%, or between 50-100 manuscripts,depending on how one classifies individual manuscripts) all bear evidence of having been littleused by the churches of God. The two primary manuscripts of this class, Codex Aleph (aka


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Sinaiticus) and Codex B (aka Vaticanus), both have earmarks of Gnostic corruption18.Further, not only do they differ from the vast body of manuscript and patristic evidence againstthem, they also are so eclectic that they contradict each other in reading nearly as much as theyagree. Pickering notes,

"The variation between two 'Byzantine' MSS will be found to differ both in number andseverity from that between two 'Western' MSS or two 'Alexandrian' MSS -- the number

and nature of the disagreements between two 'Byzantine' MSS throughout the Gospelswill seem trivial compared to the number (over 3,000) and nature (many serious) ofthe disagreements between Aleph and B, the chief 'Alexandrian' MSS, in the same

space."19

Nevertheless, they are touted by most textual critics as being the most trustworthy manuscripts.This is because of their greater age. Both date from the middle to latter part of the 4th century,exceeding the age of the oldest extant Traditional manuscript by at least three centuries.However, one fact that needs to kept in mind is this: When a text written on vellum is usedconstantly, it wears out and needs to be recopied. Conversely, when a text is never used, itremains in a much better condition. Further, there is much evidence to suggest that when the

worn out vellum manuscripts reached the point where they could not be used, they were put torest through honorable destruction. This general point was first suggested over a century ago by

Burgon, but was independently articulated by Lake, et al. nearly 50 years later20. These twopoints combined would explain the lack of very ancient Byzantine manuscripts, and concurrentlyprovide a reasonable explanation for the continued existence of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Giventhat the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus texts are the oldest, the obvious point is then that they werenever used, and thus never had to be recopied. This doubly supports the notion that theTraditional texts have been preserved uncorrupted in that it tells us the early churches and menof God through the ages recognized them, and not the small minority of corrupted texts, asbeing the authentic readings (in other words, an incipient form of textual criticism appears to

have been at work). It also tells us that few significant mistakes were made throughout thecourse of transcribing and re-transcribing the Traditional texts over the centuries, for them to allagree as substantially with each other as they do, across the thousands of manuscripts spreadacross the old Roman world and Medieval Europe. Even "indefensible" readings in the Traditionaltext-based Textus Receptus need not be considered "inauthentic", such as the Johannine Commain I John 5:7-8, which survived the attempt by ancient Arian heretics to purge it from the

Scriptures21. A point that must be made is that the small number of corrupted texts are thosefrom which the 'modern' versions of the Bible like the NIV, NASB, RV, Berkeley, ESV, etc. aretranslated. The textual support for these modern versions is very small, and certainly does notoutweigh the vast textual support which the King James enjoys. These modern versions carry

through many of the theological difficulties that their parent manuscripts contained, such asremoving or downplaying important doctrines like the efficacy of Christ's blood, His virgin birth,His resurrection, etc. Christians interested in having and studying the true Word of God would dowell stay away from the modern versions and stick with the King James Version.

God has again preserved His Word, by retaining for us a text in Greek, the Traditional text whicheventually culminated in the collation of the Textus Receptus, which has been copied and carriedthrough for centuries without error. Combined with the protection He afforded to the HebrewMasoretic texts, we see that God has preserved and protected His Word through the ages. This isnot surprising though, as God has promised to us to preserve His Word. "The grass withereth, theflower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever." (Isaiah 40:8). Truly He has done


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this with His Word, the Bible, and truly the same cannot be said for the Qur'an!

Various Types of Pre-Islamic Source Materials Used in the Qur'an

Now let us turn to an examination of the "perfect and heavenly" Qur'an. Islam's claim that therevelation of the Qur'an was handed down from Allah to Mohammed in complete and final formdoes not seem to be possible, given the large amount of "borrowing" which is evident in theQur'an. Many of the stories and teachings of the Qur'an originally were taught in a variety of

pre-Islamic writings and among various pre-Islamic groups. To begin, there seems to have been alarge amount of pre-Islamic Arabian mythology and legend that found its way into the Qur'an.This is not surprising as the Qur'an was, of course, developed by Arabs who lived in an evolvingpre-Islamic Arabian society. This understanding has been sustained by many scholars who havestudied Islam, and much of what was included in the Qur'an came from apocryphal or/andfanciful sources:

- The story of the she-camel which leapt out of a rock and became a prophet was known inArabia long before Muhammad (Suwar7:73-77; 54:27-29; 91:13-14).

- The story of an entire village of people who were turned into apes because they broke thesabbath by fishing was a popular legend in Muhammad's day (Suwar2:65; 7:163-166).

- The story of Moses and the gushing twelve springs is found in Surah 2:60ff and comes frompre-Islamic Arabian legends.

- In what is called the "Rip Van Winkle" story, seven men and their animals slept in a cave for 309years and then woke up perfectly fine (Surah 18:9-26)! This was also a popular story in Arabia atand before Mohammed's time. This legend was also found in Greek and Christian folks fables fromthat time and before.

- The fable of the pieces of four dead, cut-up birds getting up and flying was well known inMuhammad's time (Surah 2:260).

- The story about the birth of Mary in Surah 3:35-37 appears to be loosely based off of anapocryphal 2nd century work, The Protevangelion of James the Lesser.

Additionally, there appear to be several Jewish sources that were used when developing the

quranic revelation22:

- The Second Targum of the Book of Esthersupplied the non-biblical details of the Queen ofSheba's visit to King Solomon (Surah 27:17-44).

- The Testament of Abraham provided the teachings of the Qur'an found in Surah 42:17 and Surah101:6-9, which relate that on the judgment day, a scale of balance will be used to weigh goodand bad deeds, and to make the determination of whether people will be sent to heaven or hell.This Jewish work is also apparently quoted in Surah 87:19.

- The story of murderous Cain and the raven (Surah 5:30-31) is found in several Jewish writings,such as the Pirqe of Rabbi Eleazerand the Targum of Jerusalem, both of which pre-date theQur'an.

- The tale of Abraham being delivered from Nimrod's fire (Suwar21:51-71; 37:97-98) originated


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in the Midrash Rabbah on Genesis.

- The Talmud provided the Qur'an with the story of Moses' resurrection (Surah 2:55-57)

- The story of the golden calf which was made by Israel in the wilderness, in which the imageactually leaps out of the fire and moos (Surah 20:80-98), comes from the Pirqe of Rabbi Eleazer.

- Lastly, the seven heavens and hells described at various points in the Qur'an can also be found

in the Zoharand the Hagigah, and the hells are further described in the Midrash on the Psalms.

Heretical Christian sources also provided a source of inspiration to Mohammed. The fingerprintsof Gnostic and heretical sects can be seen at several points in the teachings of Mohammed. Forexample, the quranic definition of the Trinity, consisting of God, Jesus, and Mary (Surah 5:116),was a doctrine held by a small Arabian pseudo-Christian group known as the Collyridians, withwhom the early Muslims apparently had some contact. That heretical Christian groups exerted astrong influence on the developing Arab theology and beliefs has been demonstrated repeatedly

by scholars of Islam 23. Two examples of fanciful stories that were taught by heretical groups andthat found their way into the Qur'an are the story of Jesus' speaking from the cradle as an infant(Surah 19:29-30) and the story of Jesus molding a bird from clay and then breathing life into it(Suwar3:49, 5:110). These were stories passed down from various Gnostic sources.

Related to what was said above, we must also note that many pagan rituals and activities wereintroduced into the developing Arab religion, the large share of these having their roots in thepagan pre-Islamic days of ancient Arabia. This included such well-known Muslim worshipactivities as worshipping at sacred stones (the Ka'bah, for Islam), praying five times a daytowards a sacred geographical location (Mecca, for Islam), and fasting for part of a day for anentire month (Ramadan, for Islam). As an example of this, Wensick observes that the Ka'bah isnot unique to Mecca, but instead, there is evidence for various holy precincts - Ka'bahs - some of

which housed sacred stones, prior to the rise of Islam24, just as the Ka'bah in Mecca houses the

sacred meteorite venerated by Muslims.

Less certain, but also suspected, is that the Muslim cult practice of throwing stones at Satanfinds its origins in a pre-Islamic pagan ritual in which stones were thrown to symbolically driveaway jinn and other evil spirits. Muslim tradition itself indicates to us that Mohammed couldcommunicate with spirits and jinn, on one occasion it is recorded that a tree spoke toMohammed and informed him about the activities of a group of jinn, suggesting a shamanisticability to communicate with the spirits that are often believed by primitive peoples to reside in

trees, rivers, and other natural features 25. Mohammed himself was even said to have been at

various times bewitched by magic spells26. Even the traditional account of the beginning of

Mohammed's reception of the quranic revelations seems to betray a demonic origin, as he is saidto have been "pressed" by the angel that came to him to the point where he could barely stand

it27. This description is very similar to that reported by many people who claim to be the targetsof paranormal activity or alien abductions, and who will often say that they were physically

"pressed" while lying in bed, or otherwise rendered unable to move28. These evidences provideadditional support to the contention that much of Islam is repackaged pre-Islamic Arabianpaganism.

The Qur'an is in Pure Arabic?


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Any book making the claim to be God's Word ought therefore to be free from demonstrable error.The Bible has withstood every test of literary, logical, historical, archaeological, and scientifictruth and accuracy brought against it by skeptics and unbelievers. Can the same be said for theQur'an?

The answer as can be shown is no. Muslims claim that the Qur'an is preserved and inspired, andpoint to Surah 85:21-22 as proof, "Nay, this is a Glorious Qurn, (Inscribed) in a TabletPreserved!" It is claimed for the Qur'an as an impregnable dogma that it is written in perfect

Arabic, said to be "Allah's language", providing a basis for its absence of error. This claim is madein Surah 13:37,

"Thus have We revealed it to be a judgment of authority in Arabic. Wert thou tofollow their (vain) desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldstthou find neither protector nor defender against Allah."

This claim is further refined,

"We know indeed that they say, "It is a man that teaches him." The tongue of him theywickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and clear." (Surah

16:103)

Surah 12:2 and Surah 41:41,44 are also often used to support this dogma, with the logic beingthat if Allah does something, it must be perfect, so his revelation of the Qur'an in Arabic meansthat the text in Arabic must be perfect. Traditional Muslim scholarship has since affirmed thisdogma. One such example, drawn from the writings of the classical Islamic scholar as-Suyuti, iscited by Burton,

"The Companions, the very models of correct Arabic usage, would not have madeerrors in ordinary speech, let alone in the recitation of the Holy Qur'an which they hadreceived orally from the very lips of the Prophet as it was revealed and which theypromptly, accurately, and expertly committed to memory. Can one suppose them tohave collectively committed errors, not merely in reciting, but also in writing thetexts? And to have failed to draw people's attention to such errors and order theimmediate abandonment of whatever was incorrect? Can one imagine 'Uthman'sactually forbidding that the errors be put right? Can one conceive that thenation-wide (tawatur) transmission of the texts would not only fail to expose butwould even perpetuate errors, generation after generation? Reason, religion, andnormal human behavior combine to militate against such reports. The first impulse isto reject them as unsound. Had there been anything in the reports, the Companionswould have corrected the texts without further ado. They would not have delegated

the correction of errors to folk whose Arabic could not match their own. In any case,'Uthman had ordered not one, but several copies. It is highly improbable that all thecopies would be afflicted with precisely the same errors, yet no-one has ever reportedthat only some of the copies were seen to be faulty. Apart from the minutiae ofconsonant- or vowel-resolution (which has nothing to do with errors in language), all

the copies were identical."29

However, analysis of the quranic Arabic and associated evidences shows this not to be true.

Burton points out30 that the traditions themselves reported linguistic problems with the Arabic inthe Qur'an. These were recognized by many of the commentators and were dealt with by


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subjecting the passages in question to ta'wil, reinterpretation. Burton then proceeds in hisarticle to demonstrate in grinding detail quite a number of instances where the quranic Arabic isincorrect according to widely known rules of Arabic grammar. Likewise, the critical (and mostwould say apostate) Iranian scholar Ali Dashti made this comment concerning the quranic text,

"The Qor'an contains sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible withoutthe aid of commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used withother than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of

the concords of number and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronounswhich sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are

often remote from the subjects 31.....To sum up, more than one hundred Qor'anic

aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted 32."

The Qur'an has many grammatical errors in the Arabic, a partial listing being errors in Suwar2:177, 3:59, 4:162, 5:69, 7:160, and 63:10. An exposition of some of the errors in the Arabic has

been provided by Dr. Anis Shorrosh, a Palestinian Christian and native Arabic speaker 33. Theseerrors demonstrate the fallibility of the Arabic text of the Qur'an. In a further exposition on thesubject, Rafiqul-Haqq and Newton have provided detailed demonstrations of how the Qur'an usesgrammatically unsound Arabic on many occasions (Suwar2:177, 3:59, 4:162, 5:69, 7:56, 7:160,21:3, 22:19, 41:11, 49:9, 63:10, and 91:5) and provide the correct readings according to

standard rules of classical Arabic grammar34. Bellamy notes twelve instances in the Qur'an wherethe language of the text appears to be incorrect, where words make no sense in the context inwhich they appear. If these words are emended as Bellamy suggests, they make sense. He alsodemonstrates scientifically why his emendations make sense per grammatical and textual-

critical reasonings35.

A couple of examples from Bellamys suggestions will suffice. In 21:98, an ayah about falseteachers and their idols being *fuel* for the fires of hell, the text uses the word has.ab, a word

that literally means "pebbles", and which Islamic commentators have usually explained away byexpanding the meaning of the word to include the false teachers as "pebbles of fuel" for the firesof Jahannum. Bellamy proposes to emend has.ab with hat.ab, a word in Arabic that commonlymeans "firewood", and that makes perfect sense in the passage. In 11:8 and 12:45, the Qur'anuses ummah, and the word is said to mean "time, a while", though this is not the usual meaningof that word. Bellamy proposes to emend this to amad(replacing the h with a d), a word whichmeans "time, a period of time" and which, again, makes perfect sense in context. Bellamy later

proposed a further set of nine emendations to copyist errors in the quranic text36. For example,in 11:111, the Qur'an says wa-inna kullan lamma". The lamma is "meaningless" and is likely anerror due to copyist insertion. The passage makes better sense if it is removed entirely. Then, it

becomes "good grammatical Arabic". Likewise, in 26:177-189, the Qur'an talks about the prophetShu'ayb. This name has no sound etymology in Arabic - it appears to be meaningless,lexicologically. It is a corruption in the text, and if the name is replaced by Sha'ya (Arabic formof Isaiah), the passage both makes sense AND has a sound Arabic foundation. Also, in variousplaces, the Qur'an mentions the Sabians (al-sabi'una) - a group of people whom both Westernscholars and Islamic commentators are at pains to identify conclusively, even to this day.Bellamy proposes that the term originated as a corruption, and was propagated throughout theother places it appears in the text. He proposes to emend s.bwn/s.byn to mnwn/mnyn, a termreferring to the Manichaeans. This would resolve the apparent problem with identification, andcause the passage to refer to a definite, historical group of people. These "Sabians" (really


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Manichaeans or similar Gnostic groups) were accepted by the early Muslims as a "people of thebook" because they did indeed have their own religious books, mostly authored by Mani, theirfounder. Also worthy of noting is that several of Bellamys examples show the influence of Judaicand Christian thought on the text.

Additionally, the quranic Arabic cannot be considered "pure" because of the inclusion of manyforeign words into the text. These words include "Pharaoh" (Egyptian, repeated 84 times),"Haroot, Maroot, sirat, hoor, tilmeeth, jinn, andfirdaus" (Farsi words), "heber, sakinah, maoon,

turat, and jehannim" (Hebrew words), "taboot, taghouth, zakat, and malakout"(Syriac words),and "injil" (Arabization of eua[n]ggelion, Greek word for good news, referring to the Gospels)37. In his foundational study of Syriac influences on the Quran, Mingana noted several pointswhere the Quran had either directly borrowed words from Syriac (a Christian liturgical tongueused throughout Syria, Mesopotamia, and Northern Arabia at the time), or else adopted foreign

meanings for native words which were derived from their cognate usage in Syriac38. Many ofthese words that entered into the Quran were drawn directly from Christian usage, includingterms such as resurrection and Messiah. Despite the age of Dr. Minganas research, it stillremains foundational to understanding this point, as his evidences and conclusions have beenlittle assailed by the intervening decades of quranic research.

Further investigations have revealed more evidence of reliance upon Syriac for many terms in theQuran, especially terms associated with cult and theology. Watt discusses the use of the wordrijz, denoting Gods wrath and anger in the Quran, and demonstrates it to be the likelycarryover of a Syriac term into the Quran. Indeed, Watt suggests that the linguistic tradition of

Christian Arabs influenced the language of the Quran in certain points",39

The conclusion now seems unavoidable that, always leaving out of account 8.11, rijzno less than rujz represents the Syriac rugza. It has suffered slight transformation ofmeaning - if indeed it is a transformation - by coming to denote the outward

expression of anger rather than the feeling itself, and by being used on occasionindefinitely; this is only a very slight change.40

An interesting and similar case is that of the term hanif, used in the Quran to denote one whowas a monotheist, one who was turned the right way. Bashear notes that this term alsooriginated from Christian Syriac use, informing us that the term hanifand the Syriac term hanpappear to have a close affinity. The latter term was used in the Jahilliya period to denote thosewho deviated from Christianity, and had the meaning of heathen, even having been applied tothose who venerated the Kabah, prayed toward it, and performed the hajj. This was an use forthe term which appeared in Christian writings even after the rise of Islam, such as John ofDamascus polemic against the Ishmaelite religion, and Ghevonds record of the letters

between Umar II and Leo III. It also seems to have initially had this sense in Arabic as well.However, as the pilgrimage to Mecca and other beliefs and practices of theJahilliya hanifiyyawere adopted into Islam, this meaning gave way to a much more positive meaning of turning

towards and one who is upright41.

The Syriac origin of hanifiyya was showed by the Arab historian al-Mascudi (d. 345/956) whopointed it out in his al-Tanbih wa-l-ishraf. The occurrence of hanpe in a Syriac text by Daniel,Bishop of Edessa (665-684 AD) as someone who does not believe the Messiah to be God and itsuse by the Jacobite Athanasius of Balad (684 AD), in the same sense, were noted by Crone and


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Cook 42. Thus, the term originally seems to have meant a person who had rejected Christianity,especially one who remained involved in pagan worship. The term, as we saw, was even appliedto those who engaged in the pre-Islamic worship at the Kabah. As such worship becameincorporated into the evolving and expanding Islamic religion, the term was carried over,retaining perhaps some of its original force (with respect to venerating the Ka'bah), but wasrelieved of its negative overtones, eventually developing the positive connotations ofmonotheism and right religion, as found in Islam. Hence, when Muslims would refer to

Abraham as a hanif, the term was meant to be complimentary, since he was a monotheist whorejected idols and worshipped Allah only.

Perhaps most troublesome for the traditional Muslim position of perfect quranic Arabic is thepossibility that the Quran (or at least the earlier parts of it) was not even originally in Arabic.While the evidence above, beginning with Mingana and continuing to the present, would logicallyseem to suggest that the Syriac language played a large role in influencing the early writing ofthe Arab texts that became the Quran, current scholarly work suggests that Syriac may wellhave been the original language of the quranic recitations. A recent work by the pseudonymous

Christoph Luxenberg, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran43, probes this question. Luxenbergsreanalysis of many quranic passages that have historically mystified even Arab Muslim

commentators suggests that these passages are more coherent and better understood if they areapproached from the vantage point of having originally been written in Syriac and thentranslated into Arabic, with the corresponding problems of misunderstanding that can arise fromsuch translation. One such possible alternative meaning has to do with the well-known quranicpromise of virgins for those who give their lives for the propagation of Islam. Luxenbergs workcasts doubt on this promise of perpetual young dark-eyed virgins, suggesting instead that the

original Qur'an documents may have been promising "raisins" of "crystal clarity"44. This claim ismade because the word in the Quran which is translated as dark-eyed virgins is huri, which iscognate with the word hurin Syriac, a feminine plural adjective which literally means white,and is implicitly understood to be referring to young or new raisins in Syriac texts. The reading of

raisins also, actually, makes much more contextual sense in those quranic passages where thisword appears, since they deal with the pleasures of food and drink in Paradise. It is perhapsfortunate that the pearl-like young boys also promised to faithful Muslim warriors in Paradise(as we will see later) may also be based upon a mistranslation, as the Arabic word could comefrom a Syriac term which refers to chilled drinks (also in line with the food and drink

context of these verses)45. These and other contextually relevant re-appraisals of quranicpassages strengthen the thesis that the Quran was originally written in Syriac.

In light of the claims made by Muslims versus the evidence seen above, questions remain. If theArabic of the Qur'an is perfect, why is there so much evidence for grammatical errors and scribal

corruptions? If Arabic is the language of Allah, and therefore perfect, than why the need for theinclusion of words from other languages, when there are perfectly viable Arabic alternatives foreach word listed above that could have been used? Further, how do we even know that theQuran originally was in Arabic?

Mistakes, Inconsistencies, and Imperfections in the Qur'an

Beyond the problems of language, the Quran also contains many problems of fact. The Qur'anincludes several outright scientific errors:

In Surah 23:14, the embryo is said to be formed by turning a sperm into a clot of blood,


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which then continues to grow into the embryo. This incorrect view entirely ignores theequally important presence of the female ovum (egg), and the process of fertilizationwhich occurs between the egg and the sperm, as well as the simple medical fact thatspermatozoa do not "turn into" blood at all. The traditions add detail to the quranicteaching,

"Narrated 'Abdullah bin Mus'ud:

"Allah's Apostle, the true and truly inspired said, '(The matter of the Creation of)a human being is put together in the womb of the mother in forty days, and thenhe becomes a clot of thick blood for a similar period, and then a piece of flesh

for a similar period....'46

These embryological teachings from the Qur'an and the traditional material are quite at

odds with what modern science has observed47. Further, in Surah 86:6-7, the Quran alsoinforms us that semen originates in a region of the body between the kidneys and the spine,which is obviously wrong, but which yet reflects the widespread belief of the time thatoriginated with the Greek physician Hippocrates in the 5th century BC and continued to be

accepted until the rise of modern, scientific medical investigation. Relatedly, while theQur'an is silent regarding the subject, the ahadith give us some insights into Islamicgenetics,

"As for the resemblance of the child to its parents: If a man has sexualintercourse with his wife and gets discharge first, the child will resemble the

father, and if the woman gets discharge first, the child will resemble her."48

Even ignoring the somewhat odd view of intercourse presented in this tradition, thisstatement obviously runs counter to everything we know about the science of genetics andheredity.

In Surah 18:86, the Qur'an says that a traveler sees the sun set in a spring of murky water,and in 18:90 this same traveler finds the specific point at which the sun rises. We know, ofcourse, that the sun does not set into a murky spring of water, and further that the earth isnot flat, which is presupposed by the finding of specific places where it rises and sets.

While modern Muslim apologists argue that these verses do not teach a flat earth,traditions and commentaries on the Qur'an indicate that the literal, flat-earth cosmology isthe understanding that Muslims had about these verses. Al-Tabari, one of the most famouscommentators on the Qur'an, stated,

"Then he said: For the sun and the moon, He created easts and wests (positionsto rise and set) on the two sides of the earth and the two rims of heaven, 180springs in the west of black clay - this is (meant by) God's word: 'He found itsetting in a muddy spring [18:86],' meaning by 'muddy (hami'ah)' black clay - and180 springs in the east likewise of black clay, bubbling and boiling like a potwhen it boils furiously. He continued. Every day and night, the sun has a newplace where it rises and a new place where it sets. The interval between themfrom beginning to end is longest for the days in summer and shortest for

winter."49


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Hence, al-Tabari clearly understood the quranic statement in 18:86 literally to be sayingthat the sun sets in a muddy spring found at the edge of the earth. He elsewhere stated,

"God created two cities, one in the east, and the other in the west....Werethose people not so many and so noisy, all the inhabitants of this world would

hear the loud crash made by the sun falling when it rises and when it sets."50

The hadithic traditions records a similar sentiment from Mohammed's cosmology,

"Narrated Abu Dhar:

"The Prophet asked me at sunset, 'Do you know where the sun goes (at the time of sunset)?'I replied, 'Allah and His Apostle know better.' He said, 'It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostratesItself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted andthen (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will notbe accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, butit will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west. And that isthe interpretation of the Statement of Allah: 'And the sun Runs its fixed course For a term

(decreed). that is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing.' (36.38)"51

This tradition refers to a portion of the Qur'an where the sun and the moon are shown totravel a fixed path around the earth,

"And the sun runs his course for a period determined for him: that is the decreeof (Him), the Exalted in Might, the All-Knowing. And the Moon,- We havemeasured for her mansions (to traverse) till she returns like the old (andwithered) lower part of a date-stalk. It is not permitted to the Sun to catch upthe Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day: Each (just) swims along in (itsown) orbit (according to Law)." (Surah 36:38-40)

Clearly, the Muslim understanding of quranic cosmology was that of a flat earth aroundwhich the sun and moon circled.

In Surah 51:49, the Qur'an claims that Allah made everything in pairs. However, we knowthat there are several species of plants, animals, and monerons that reproduce asexuallythrough parthenogenesis, and that have only one gender, or really no gender at all.

Suwar16:15, 21:31 and 31:10 all claim that mountains exist to prevent earthquakes,something which both science and simple observation demonstrate to be false. Incommenting on this peculiar teaching in Surah 16:15, al-Tabari stated,

"When He wanted to create the creation, He brought forth smoke from thewater. The smoke rose above the water amd hovered loftily over it. Hetherefore called it 'heaven'. Then He dried out the water, and thus made it oneearth. He split it and made seven earths on Sunday and Monday. He created theearth upon a (big) fish (hut), that being the fish (nun) mentioned by God in theQur'an: 'Nun. By the Pen.' [68.1] The fish was in the water. The water was uponthe back of a (small) rock. The rock was upon the back of an angel. The angelwas upon a (big) rock. The (big) rock - The one mentioned by Luqman [31:16] -was in the wind, neither in heaven nor in earth. The fish moved and became


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agitated. As a result, the earth quaked, whereupon He firmly anchored themountains on it, and it was stable. The mountains proudly (tower) over theearth. This is stated in God's word that He made for the earth 'firmly anchored

(mountains), lest it shake you up.' [16:15]." 52

While the notion of the earth resting upon a fish is obviously foreign to the findings ofmodern science, this cosmology is in line with many traditional pagan cosmologies from

around the world, such as the ancient Egyptian belief that the world rested on the back ofa giant turtle, the Hindu belief that it rested on the back of an elephant which in turnstood on the back of a turtle, or the traditional Japanese idea that the world rested uponthe back of a giant catfish.

In Surah 25:61, the Quran intimates that the moon gives its own light. In this verse, theword muneeris used to describe the light of the moon. The phrase used here in the Arabicisfeeha sirajan waqamaran muneeran. It appears as the bold portion of the verse, Blessedis He Who made constellations in the skies, and placed therein a Lamp and a Moon givinglight. In this verse, the sun is referred to as the siraj, a word meaning a bright lamp orlight. However, muneeris an adjective which describes the light produced by an object,

and is applied to both the sun (siraj) and the moon. Four times in the Quran, the wordmuneeris used to describe the light of illumination or enlightenment provided by theQuran itself (in a figurative sense, of course), in Suwar3:184; 22:8, 31:20, and 35:25.Would Muslims suggest that the Quran reflects the enlightenment from another, or ratherthat it is the source of enlightenment? The latter, of course. Further, in Surah 33:46, theenlightenment which Mohammed was said to bring is described as wasirajan muneeran,thus demonstrating that muneeris an adjective describing what a siraj produces. Thus, themuneerof the moon, from the way these words are used elsewhere in the Quran as well asthe reading of this specific ayah, is seen to originate from the moon itself, an obviousscientific error.

Al-Tabari seems to support this view of the sun and moon when he wrote,

"He said: When the Messenger of God was asked about that, he replied: WhenGod was done with His creation and only Adam remained to be created, Hecreated two suns from the light of His throne. His foreknowledge told Him thatHe would leave here one sun, so He created is as (large as) this world is fromeast to west. His foreknowledge also told Him that He would efface it andchange it to a moon; so the moon is smaller in size than the sun. But both areseen as small because of the sun's altitude and remoteness from theearth....The Lord was too concerned with His servants and too merciful to them(to do such a thing). He thus sent Gabriel to drag his wing three times over theface of the moon, which at the time was a sun. He effaced its luminosity andleft the light in it. This is (meant by) God's Word, 'And We have made the nightand the day two signs. We have blotted out the sign of the night, and We havemade the sign of the day something to see by.' [17:12] He continued. The

blackness you can see as lines on the moon is a trace of the blotting."53

This commentator's understanding of the Qur'an was that the sun and the moon were bothcreated as bodies giving light. The moon was "effaced", or darkened, but all the same, He"left the light in it". Clearly, the idea that the moon produces its own light is presented in


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the traditional Muslim writings. While this is taught in the Qur'an and supported bytraditional commentary, it is contrary to what we actually know to be the case.

While not appearing in the Qur'an itself, traditional Islamic teaching from the ahadith andrespected commentary provides a few other examples of "weird science" appearing in thetraditional Islamic worldview.

Mohammed apparently had some interesting ideas about the cause of weather. He is

reported to have said,

"Allah's Apostle said, 'The (Hell) Fire complained to its Lord saying, 'O my Lord!My different parts eat up each other.' So, He allowed it to take two breaths, onein the winter and the other in summer, and this is the reason for the severe heat

and the bitter cold you find (in weather).'"54

Never mind all that rubbish about meteorology and the effects of the tilt in the earth'saxis, cold winters and hot summers are caused by an anthropomorphic hell breathing on us.

The traditions also record some teaching about the cause and spread of disease.

"I heard the Prophet saying, "Fever is from the heat of the (Hell) Fire; so cool it

with water."55

"Allah's Apostle said, '(There is) no 'Adwa (no contagious disease is conveyed

without Allah's permission)."56

We now know that fever is a response by the body to the introduction of infectiouspathogens, and that the spread of contagious disease is due to being exposed to thosepathogens from another person.

Al-Tabari, in his exposition of the quranic version of the Adam and Eve story, relates thefollowing reason why women menstruate,

"Eve cut the tree, and it bled. The feathers [cf. 7:26] that covered Adam andEve dropped off, 'and they started to cover themselves with leaves of Paradisestitched together. Their Lord called out to them: Did I not forbid you this tree,and did I not tell you that Satan is for you a clear enemy?' Why did you eat of it,when I have forbidden it to you....Now, you, Eve, as you caused the tree to

bleed, you will bleed every new moon...."57

Rather than being a natural part of a woman's reproductive cycle, menstruation is said tobe a curse placed upon women for cutting a tree, which seems to ignore the very necessaryrole that it plays in the positive and God-given gift of reproduction.

However, these and other errors have not stopped Muslim apologists from trying to provemiraculously prognostic scientific knowledge in the Quran. Nearly all of these claims are sotendentious and strained in their exegesis that the average reader could easily see through thearguments. Some of the more modern claims, in fact, rely on blatant misunderstanding ofscience, or misinterpretation of science to make it appear to correlate with the Quran. A coupleof these are presented for the readers examination below:


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Certain Muslim apologists will claim that Surah 79:30 (based upon what has been shown tobe a mistranslation of the word dahaha) states that the earth is egg-shaped. The claim putforward by the apologists is that this statement shows that the Quran gave advancedknowledge of the slightly imperfect shape of the earth's sphere. However, the earth is anoblate spheroid (having an equatorial radius greater than the polar radius, i.e. asquashed sphere). Eggs, however, are prolate spheroids (having an equatorial radius lessthan the polar radius, i.e. an elongated sphere). Thus, the earths shape actually departsfrom the shape of a true sphere in the opposite direction from what is claimed by theseapologists.

What is especially ironic about this claim, however, is that the Qur'an itself does not makethe claim that the earth is egg-shaped.Ayat 79:30 reads, "And the earth, moreover, hathHe extended (to a wide expanse)". The apologists draw the "egg-shaped argument" from theuse of dahaha in the verse, but the translators of the Qur'an do not translate it as such, andshow no evidence of thinking that this is what the Qur'an is trying to say at this point. Theapologists are apparently inventing this claim out of whole cloth.

In Surah 57:25, many Muslim apologists will claim that the reference to Allah sending

down iron is a miraculous foreknowledge of modern scientific understanding concerningthe appearance of iron in the solar system. Since some of the latest cosmological theoriesstate that iron entered the solar system from outside, as the sun is not hot enough toproduce iron in situ, the sending down of iron reflects this. Of course, such aninterpretation, which presupposes that the evolutionary bases that underlie thecosmological theories are true, flatly contradicts the instantaneous creation taught by theQuran (Surah 2:117) where Allah says, Be! And it is. Even disregarding this, theargument is flawed if we assume the cosmological theories to be true. These theories statethat the solar system formed from the gravitationally-induced aggregation of pre-existingelements (from the Big Bang, previous supernovae, take your pick) that over time formedthe planets, moons, the sun, etc. Now, if iron were present in the solar system at the time

of its theoretical formation, then it would have been incorporated into the earth at thattime. Yet, the phrase we sent down (using the Arabic term nazal, meaning to bringdown, to cast down) presupposes that the earth was already in existence at the time ofthe sending down of iron (else there would be nothing to send it down to, as the plainunderstanding of the Arabic clearly says). Hence, the apologists argument is an attempt toingratiate Islam to modern science which does not stand firm in the face of reasonedinvestigation.

Further, I have actually seen some Muslim apologists go beyond this and claim that it ismiraculous that the surah containing this verse (entitledAl-Hadid, The Iron) is numbered(per the present arrangement of the suwar) the same as the atomic weight of iron.

However, since Al-Hadid is the 57th surah in the current arrangement, and the atomicweight of iron is 55.847 AMU (atomic mass units), which we can charitably round to 56, theargument seems to be mooted. Even in the face of this, some apologists will yet arguethat, if one does not count Al-Fatiha (the opening surah of the Quran, Surah 1), thenAl-Hadid is number 56 and thus falls into line with the atomic weight of iron. I find thisinteresting because at no other time would any sort of modern orthodox Muslim suggestignoring or removing any surah of the Quran!

Interestingly, this claim that Allah (or other deity) sent down iron to mankind did notoriginate in the Qur'an. Instead, this belief that iron was sent down from heaven has a long


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history among many ancient peoples all around the Mediterranean and the Near East. This

belief, as pointed out by Bauval58, likely originated from the meteoritic origin of the ironwhich probably formed the first major sources of iron for ancient man. Among the ancientEgyptians, iron was known by the word Bja, a word which also had the meaning "material ofwhich heaven was made", indicating a belief on the part of the Egyptians of a divine origin

for iron59. McCall tells us that the Phrygians of the 7th century BC worshipped a

cone-shaped iron meteorite60, and Bauval also gives several examples of stones that "fell to

earth" that were venerated by ancient peoples, including the black meteorite enshrined inthe Muslim Ka'bah. Hence, this story in the Qur'an has clear pre-Islamic pagan origins.

The Qur'an holds within its pages a few historical inaccuracies, as well:

In Surah 28:38, Pharaoh (the king of Egypt) orders Haman(?) to begin making baked bricks ina kiln out of clay for the purpose of building a "lofty tower" so that Pharaoh can "survey thegod of Moses" and "deem him of the liars" (in a story somewhat reminiscent of Nimrod'srebellion and the building of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11). This is said to take placeduring the time of Moses (Haman also appears associated with Pharaoh in Suwar28:6,8 and40:24,36). Aside from the fact that Haman was a Persian noble who lived a millenniumafter Moses, there are other errors in this account. Historical evidence demonstrates thatthe Egyptians at the time of Moses built their buildings out of two materials: cut stone andsun-dried bricks. Lucas and Harris note that with the early advent of stone as a buildingmaterial in Egypt (there is evidence of stone being used all the way back to the FirstDynasty), monumental architecture such as tombs and temples began to be built out of

stone instead of the less durable sun-dried bricks61. They also point out that, despite somevery few possible exceptions, burnt bricks were practically unknown in Egypt until the timeof the Romans. For a grandiose piece of monumental architecture such as a "lofty tower"reaching up to heaven, the Egyptians would not have used bricks, period, and if they had,they almost certainly would not have used burnt bricks. They would have used stone, which

lends itself more readily to the larger sizes needed for such buildings, and which is far moredurable.

In Surah 20:87 and 20:95, the Jews are said to have made the golden calf idol at the behestof the Samaritans, a group of people who did not exist until the Post-Exilic period, nearlyten centuries after the Exodus.

At several points, the Qur'an also makes mistakes regarding the beliefs of non-Muslims groupswith whom the early Arab Muslims had contact. One example which was mentioned above (andwill be examined in much greater detail in Chapter 4) is the erroneous quranic teaching on theTrinity, or more properly, what Christian beliefs about the Trinity supposedly are. The Qur'an says

that Christians join two gods with Allah, and that the Trinity is composed of God, Jesus, andMary. This composition is not the historic Trinity which was accepted by the vast bulk ofChristendom for centuries before Islam appeared. Instead, this "Trinity" which the Quran railsagainst was a heretical construction of the Collyridians, who were steeped in Mariolatry. Thehistorical trinitarian understanding of the Trinity (as was later defined in the Athanasian Creed)was quite broadly established throughout Christendom for several centuries before Mohammed,and evidence for the trinitarian belief exists from the very start of the churches. However, Allahsomehow missed the teaching of the vast bulk of the early churches, which was that the Trinityis God being one in essence while three in persons, and instead revealed to Mohammed thatChristians believed the Trinity to be God, Jesus, and Mary. In other words, Allah apparently made


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a mistake, and did not understand what was the true teaching of Christianity, and what was thefalse teaching of heretics.

Further, we note that in Surah 9:30, the Qur'an attributes to the Jews the belief that Ezra (Uzair)was the son of God. This is not a belief which has been expounded by Jewish theologians andteachers, however, and is thus another error which Allah purportedly made concerning the beliefsof a non-Muslim group.

Also, we must note the quranic fascination with referring to Jesus as "Isa". Muslims maintain,based upon the authority of the Qur'an, that Isa is the true name for Jesus in the Arabiclanguage. However, this is not the case. Instead, Yasu is the Arabic form of Jesus, (the name"Jesus" itself being a Hellenization of the Hebrew Yeshua). The Arabic form of Jesus is clearlyshown to us to have been Yasu among Arabians who lived even before Mohammed's time:

"Mr. G. Lankaster Harding, Chief Curator of Antiquities Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan,kindly sent me copies of a little more than five hundred Thamudic inscriptions....It isthe inscription [Harding No. 476] that interests us here. Below the circle there are

four letters: a y, a sh, a c, and again a y. These letters are so placed that they can be

read from right to left or from left to right y-sh-c, probably pronounced Yashc, and

this name is the same as Yshac, the Hebrew form of the name of Christ. It is known

that Yshac, is the later pronunciation of Yhshac or Joshua; it was used after theExile in order to avoid the immediate sequence of two dark vowels (o and u). Ofcourse, it is well known that the Christians whose language is Arabic commonly use

the form Yasc...." 62

Further on in this article, Littman says that the form "Yasuc" represents "the ancient Arabic nameof Jesus", and "Inscription Harding No. 476 is the oldest native document of Christianity of

Northern Arabia known so far." 63

What this means to us is that this form, "Yasuc"64, is the name by which Jesus was known in themost ancient inscriptions in an Arabic language, of which Thamudic is an archaic example. Thisconstruction appears amazingly similar to the Hebrew "Yeshua" or "Yehoshua", and the Aramaic"Yeshua" (seen in Ezra 5:1, a passage written in Aramaic, which appears in the English Bible asJeshua, and is the same name with the same meaning, "Jehovah saves"). Hence, the Arabsinitially appear to have referred to Jesus with the name Yasu, not Isa as Muslims and the Qur'anclaim.

Where did the name "Isa" come from then? Isa is the Arabic form of the name "Esau". That this istrue is even admitted by Muslim apologists:

"The Holy Quran refers to Jesus as "Eesa", and this name is used more times than anyother title, because this was his "Christian" name. Actually, his proper name was"Eesa" (Arabic), or "Esau". (Hebrew); classical "Yeheshua", which the Christian nationsof the West Latinized as Jesus. Neither the "J" nor the second "s" in the name Jesus isto be found in the original tongue - they are not found in the Semitic language.

"The word is very simply - "E S A U" - a very common Jewish name, used more thansixty times in the very first booklet alone of the Bible, in the part called "Genesis".There was at least one "Jesus" sitting on the "bench" at the trial of Jesus before the


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Sanhedrin. Josephus the Jewish historian mentions some twenty five Jesus' in his"Book of Antiquities". The New Testament speaks of "Bar-Jesus"- a magician and asorcerer, a false prophet (Act 13:6); and also "Jesus-Justus" - a Christian missionary, acontemporary of Paul (Colossians 4:11). These are distinct from Jesus the son of Mary.Transforming "Esau" to (J)esu(s) - Jesus - makes it unique. This unique (?) name hasgone out of currency among the Jews and the Christians from the 2nd century afterChrist. Among the Jews, because it came to be the proper name of their God(?) - theirGod incarnate. The Muslim will not hesitate to name his son - "Eesa" - because it is an

honored name, the name of a righteous servant of the Lord." 65

While Deedat makes some mistakes in his analysis above, such as claiming that Esau is a"common Jewish name" (the sixty times that the name is used in the Old Testament all refer toone individual, the brother of Jacob), the essential point of his writing is evident -- Isa is thename for Esau. The rest of his analysis is inaccurate, as he is trying to show that the name "Esau"was the name which Jesus came from in the New Testament. Both the Greek "Jesus" and theHebrew/Aramaic "Yeshua" mean "Jehovah saves", while Esau means "hairy". However, hisadmission to the truth of Isa equaling Esau speaks volumes.

What was the source of Isa being applied to Jesus in the Qur'an? Nobody knows for sure, thoughthe most plausible explanation to date is that certain Jews with whom the Arabs had contact, inan effort to insult the Lord Jesus, told them that the Son of God worshipped by Christians was"Isa", thereby applying the name of Jacob's hated brother Esau to the hated Christian Savior. Thisclaim, however, rests on much hearsay, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps theArabs at the time of the infiltrations into Syria-Palestine simply misunderstood the hearing orreading of the name, and began to refer to Jesus as "Isa" out of simple mistaken understanding.What should be clear to us, though, is that the quranic use of "Isa" rests upon a name for Christwhich was NOT His name, even in the Arabic. Is it really likely that an omnipotent, omniscientdeity such as Allah is claimed to be would make such a simple error as to misname one of hisprophets?

The Qur'an also contains several internal self-contradictions and logically problematicstatements, a few of which are listed below:

The heavens and the earth were created by Allah in six days, according to 7:54, 10:3, 11:7,and 25:59; but it took eight days, according to Surah 41:9-12.

In 22:47, Allah's day equals 1000 human years, but in 70:4, a day to Allah is reckoned as50,000 human years.

The punishment for adultery is flogging with 100 stripes for both sexes in 24:2, versus

lifelong house arrest for the woman and no punishment upon repentance for the man in4:15-16.

2:256 claims that there must be no compulsion in religion, yet 8:38-39 commands Muslimsto fight until all religion but Islam is done away with. Similarly, 45:14 tells Muslims toforgive unbelievers, while 9:29 commands them to fight unbelievers.

In addition to this short list, there are dozens of other contradictions that point to the Qur'an asbeing a flawed book. See a more complete discussion of quranic contradictions at Answering

Islam's treatment of the subject66.


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In conclusion, we see that the Qur'an cannot legitimately claim divine inspiration and/orpreservation. It has many errors, inconsistencies, and a history of corruptions. The Qur'an is animperfect book, and cannot be claimed as the work of a perfect and complete God. The samecharges cannot be made against the Bible, however, which has withstood every attack upon itmade by unbelievers.

End Notes(1) - S.A.A. Maudadi, Toward Understanding Islam, pp. 81-82(2) - E.G. Parrinder,Jesus in the Quran, p. 147(3) - Ibid., citing M.H. Ananikian, The Reforms and Religious Ideals of Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan,p.78, appearing in The Moslem World, Vol. 14 (1924), pp. 61ff(4) - See T.M. Strouse, "The Permanent Preservation of Gods Words: Psalm 12:6,7", in Thou ShaltKeep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture, Ed. K. Brandenburg,pp. 29-33, where Strouse ably demonstrates through a careful exegesis of the Hebrew passagethat the them in v. 7 refers back to the words of the LORD as their antecedent, not to the

needy in v. 5, as is often contended by those seeking to deny the clear promise of scripturalpreservation in this passage.(5) - We should also note that, whatever else may be said about the proposed uses of theSeptuagint in New Testament quotations of the Old Testament, when the Lord dealt with theactual written text of the Old Testament, either in referring to its order as He did here, or whenHe was reading from it, as is the case in Luke 4:18-19, He provided distinctive Masoretic readingsover and against the LXX.(6) - D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, pp. 24-25(7) - L.H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 171-172(8) - G. Archer,A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, p. 25(9) - N. Geisler and W. Nix, General Introduction to the Bible, p. 382

(10) - See G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective, p. 206; F.M. Cross, TheAncient Library at Qumran, pp. 121-142(11) - See http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/7224/Rick/Septuagint/spappendix.htm,this data was generated using the footnotes in M.G. Abegg, P. Flint, and E. Ulrich, The Dead SeaScrolls Bible(12) - N. Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran, p. 332(13) - See ibid., pp. 97-98, for his discussion of evidences from a similar cache of ancientmanuscripts from Elephantine, in Egypt. This community is estimated to have been fifty timesmore populous than the one at Qumran, yet the texts show far fewer scribes in use, estimated at4-5 per generation. In contrast, Cave 1 alone contained texts prepared by more than fifty

different scribes.(14) - Waite, op. cit., p. 27(15) - Ibid., p. 56(16) - J.W. Burgon, The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established, pp. ix-x(17) - F.G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 321-322;Kenyon then attempts to argue against these evidences, but relies upon the same outdatedarguments drawn from the traditional Hortian methodological apparatus that Pickering has morerecently refuted.(18) - See T. Holland, Crowned with Glory: The Bible from Ancient Text to Authorized Version,pp. 21-28, for an introductory discussion of the question of Gnostic corruptions of the critical or


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Alexandrian texts. See also http://www.studytoanswer.net/bibleversions/gnostic.html(19) - W.N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, p. 54(20) - K. Lake, R.P. Blake, and S. New, "The Caesarian Text of the Gospel of Mark," HarvardTheological Review, Vol. 21 (1928), p. 348-349(21) - E.g., see http://www.studytoanswer.net/bibleversions/1john5n7.html(22) - See e.g. C. Glass, The New Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 264; J. Jomier, The Bible and theQuran, pp. 49-52; E. Sell, Studies in Islam, pp. 210-216; A. Guillaume, Islam, p. 13; for muchmore in-depth discussions of this, see A. Geiger,Judaism and Islam and A.I. Katsh,Judaism inIslam: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of the Koran and its Commentaries, two classic workson the subject.(23) - E.g., R. Bell, The Origin of Islam in Its Christian Environment, p. 110; Sell, op. cit., pp.216-221(24) - A.J. Wensinck, Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. H.A.R. Gibb and J.A. Kramers, p. 197;Wensinck notes the report of Epiphanius (ca. 310-403) that Dhu 'l-shara (Dushara) wasworshipped through a caabou (kaabou) located in Petra, "in which word Ka'ba is also probablyconcealed", and that it is unclear whether the term refers to the temple itself, or to the blackstone contained therein. He also notes that certain pre-Islamic Arabian tribes worshipped at asacred precinct in Sindad called Dhat al-Ka'abat

(25) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 5, Bk. 58, No. 199; see also Vol. 1, Bk. 12, No. 740, whereMohammed is enabled to perceive and understand the conversation which some devils have witheach other.(26) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Bk. 53, No. 400 and Vol. 4, Bk. 54, No. 490(27) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 1, Bk. 1, No. 3(28) - See http://www.answer-islam.org/Muhammad.html for a detailed investigation of thesimilarities between Mohammed's experiences and those of shamans in many pagan cultures.(29) - J. Burton, "Linguistic Errors in the Qur'an",Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. 33 (1988),Autumn, p. 182, citing Jalal al-Din as-Suyuti, al-Itqan fi 'ulum al-Qur'an, 2 pts in 1 (Cairo, 1354),Vol. I, pp. 183-184(30) - Ibid.(31) - A. Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, p. 48(32) - Ibid., p. 50(33) - A.A. Shorrosh, Islam Revealed: A Christian Arab's View of Islam, pp. 199-200(34)

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The Qur'an is Allah's Perfect and Complete Word ?