Koran may be older than Mohammed

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Clive
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Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Clive »

This report fails to realise implications of carbon dating

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021
What may be the world's oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.
Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.
Tom Holland ‏@holland_tom 3h3 hours ago
As with other carbon datings, the intriguing possibility is raised that some qur'anic fragments may antedate Muhammad
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Blood
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Blood »

In the Christian tradition, scholars are always eager to seize on the oldest possible date as the actual date, but in this case, the oldest possible date pre-dates Muhammed's birth by 25 years!

So it's safe to say in this case, no Islamic scholar will be trumpeting the earliest date.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
Clive
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Clive »

Why not?

They accept it is a collection of things written on leaves and bones, and I thought argued that Adam was a Muslim.

Therefore, extremely easy to put into their narrative! I understand parts are from the Alexander narrative so easily older!

There also seems to be differences between parchment age and writing age - text has dots that are later.
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Clive
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Clive »

Gabriel Said Reynolds
Amazing thing about this #Quran story is not that the dating is early, but that the dating is TOO early. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33436021

Results are close to those from tests in Paris on a Hijazi mss. which gave a 6th century date. The #Quran may be older than it should be.

On the other hand - evidence is growing that the Quran is very early, maybe earlier than traditional dates of Muhammad's life.

Two fragments of the Sana palimpsest were dated in Paris to 543-643 and 433-599. The Birmingham fragment is not the oldest dated #Quran.

More on the BBC #Quran story ( http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33436021 …): the go-to person on this is Alba Fedeli, new Ph.D. on ancient Qurans from Birmingham.

To recap about interesting #Quran manuscript in Birmingham: dating matches finding of C. Robin in Paris of San'a manuscript. (1/2)

Both dates are earlier than traditional 'Uthman story of Qur'an's collection and raise possibility that #Quran dates to 6th century. (2/2)

https://mobile.twitter.com/GabrielSaidR ... 9249976320
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Clive
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Clive »

...
Alba Fedeli’s study (“Qur’ān fragments in the Mingana Collection”) examined a number of early Qur’an fragments from the Mingana Collection. She pointed out examples of textual emendation in early Qur’an manuscripts that suggest a re- writing of text to conform to later canonical versions of the text. Fedeli devoted particular attention to a Qur’an palimpsest in a Christian Arabic manuscript, published by Alphonse Mingana and Agnes Smith Lewis in Leaves from three ancient Qur’āns. She suggested that, given the existence of this manuscript, the link between early Islam and Arab Christianity needs further attention in the academy.

Gabriel Said Reynolds (“Current scholarly debates on the history of the Qur’ān”) presented the current discussions among scholars about the data of Qur’an manuscripts such as the manuscript described by Alba Fedeli. He noted a “reflex” among many scholars to assume the truth of medieval Muslim traditions about the development of the Qur’an, and then to measure the manuscripts against that Muslim tradition. For example, he highlighted the articles of Behnam Sadeghi on such manuscripts as the San‘ā’ palimpsest, in which Sadeghi examines the manuscript while assuming the historicity of the ḥadīth stories of the fixation of the Qur’anic text by the caliph ‘Uthmān.
....

http://www.uco.es/revistas/index.php/cc ... le/207/204

From 2014...
https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1736307
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Clive
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Clive »

And we no longer have Patricia Crone to comment!
SACROSANCT TEXTS ARE NEVER TO BE TRUSTED
JULY 17, 2015 LEAVE A COMMENT
What follows is my translation of Patricia Crone’s obituary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, by Rainer Brunner. Please send me corrections, as my German is, how you say, inelegant.



Revisionism as an honorary title: On the death of Patricia Crone, historian and Islamicist

Her academic career began with a bang. Having just been awarded her doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, but not yet released her dissertation, in 1977 Patricia Crone published Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World with Michael Cook. In this work, the authors took a hatchet to what until then had been the closely guarded tabernacle of Oriental Studies: namely, belief in the reliability of the Muslim sources for early Islamic history.

They were not the first to raise doubts about this, but they were perhaps the most radical. According to their core thesis, parts of which would be developed later on, Muhammad was not the prophet of a new religion at all, but rather the leader of a Jewish messianic movement, which traced itself back to Abraham’s wife Hagar. It was only in the late seventh century that an origins myth was formed out of this, stepping into the full light of history as Arab Islam. Further controversial works followed, such as Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987), in which Patricia Crone did away with the notion that late-antique Mecca had been an international centre for trade.

The response was critical, to put it mildly....
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Blood
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by Blood »

I'm glad they're doing this now. In another few years, the earth's climate will be too warm to get accurate carbon dates.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/ancie ... -the-past/

Now we'll never get Nag Hammadi accurately dated!
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
ficino
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by ficino »

"Saud al-Sarhan, the director of research at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said he doubted that the manuscript found in Birmingham was as old as the researchers claimed, noting that its Arabic script included dots and separated chapters — features that were introduced later. He also said that dating the skin on which the text was written did not prove when it was written. Manuscript skins were sometimes washed clean and reused later, he said."

I would think that if the two leaves were from a palimpsest, that fact would have been recognizable. But al-Sarhan's points about dots (vowel pointing?) and separated chapters seem well taken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/world ... pe=nyt_now
outhouse
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by outhouse »

Clive wrote:This report fails to realise implications of carbon dating
No it doesn't. You fail, but that's another topic.


This only gives possible glimpse of what is already known.

The date provided with a 95% accuracy date to before the compilation of the book and possibly before the pedophile warriors birth.


It changes nothing in our understanding of how the plagiarized traditions were compiled into this rewritten form of Abrahamic's.


If it dates early it only confirms what is already known but is strong evidence muhammad was a collector and nothing originated with him, if it dates to the later end of the spectrum it is in line with current academics, which already assumes the same thing.
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Re: Koran may be older than Mohammed

Post by outhouse »

ficino wrote:"Saud al-Sarhan, the director of research at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said he doubted that the manuscript found in Birmingham was as old as the researchers claimed, noting that its Arabic script included dots and separated chapters — features that were introduced later. He also said that dating the skin on which the text was written did not prove when it was written. Manuscript skins were sometimes washed clean and reused later, he said."

I would think that if the two leaves were from a palimpsest, that fact would have been recognizable. But al-Sarhan's points about dots (vowel pointing?) and separated chapters seem well taken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/world ... pe=nyt_now
He is biased, and it shows.


They created these animal skins to be written on asap after making the skin ready for writing. They did not sit on shelves waiting to be written on. They were for the most part created to be used for a specific task. This was expensive material, not to be confused with paper on a shelf waiting to be used.

Had it been used previously, we would see it without issue or question.
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