Sorry, it is quite long, but very interesting I think.
Morten Rydal | 31st March 2011
The early beginning of the Koran is not to be found among Muslims in the Arabian peninsula, but among East Syrian Christian Arabs. This is the startling conclusion of research into the Muslim holy book.
In all recent reference works on Islam, we read that the modern Koran, known as the Cairo edition of 1923 is almost similar to the revelation the Prophet Muhammad allegedly received in Mecca and Medina more than 1300 years ago. It is admitted that the process may have been slightly longer, but the idea that the Koran has remained largely the same since the 7th century, is not disputed.
New Koranic research, which is currently taking place, mainly in Germany, now shows entirely new ways of understanding the Qur'an genesis.
The new understanding of the Koran took a decisive leap with the discovery of a large quantity of ancient Koranic manuscripts in a cavity in the mosque in Sana. These manuscripts have proved to preesent different text versions compared to the Cairo Koran. Several are in fact so called palimpsests, i.e. manuscripts from which the original text or part of it has been scraped off and a new text written on top of the old one.
At some point in history an old Koranic text has been deleted and rewritten. When you write with ink on thin skin, the ink sinks deep into the leather, and even if one scratches the skin carefully, there will still be a shadow left. Scientists could "recall" the scraped away text and thus in several cases were presented with yet another deviant text in relation to the Cairo Koran. The ancient manuscripts made it obvious that the Quran has not been preserved unchanged from the 7th century. It has through the centuries been subject to countless amendments.
Parallel to the study of ancient manuscripts researchers have also studied the text in the Cairo Koran. This text is in places exceedingly difficult. Even Muslim scholars speak of "obscure places". Moreover, the language is an Arab, which actually only occurs precisely in the Koran.
The traditional Muslim explanation for this is,that it is obviously an example of Allah's perfect Arabic, which we humans may one day be able to learn. The German philologist Christoph Luxenberg (pseudonym), however, had a theory: Could it be that the language of the Koran´s oldest parts, the "Meccan suras", could be read in Aramaic, which was the international language of the region in the 7th century?
This is entirely possible, since both Aramaic and Arabic are Semitic languages, where you only write the consonants. The vowels "are derived from the context. Luxenberg undertook a pioneering study of all the "obscure places" and it turned out that the original wording read as Aramaic, suddenly had meaning.
A case in point: We hear in the media that the young suicide terrorists dream of becoming martyrs, because they will be rewarded in paradise with 72 black-eyed virgins. This is based among others things on the "obscure" Sura 44, 54, which states: "And we give them virgins with large black eyes for marriage" Luxenberg read, however: "Under white crystal clear grapes we will make it comfortable for them." In other words: In Paradise they don´t get young virgins, but grapes, just like in the Judeo-Christian paradise where the tree of life is a vine.
THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE, but all the "obscure places" showed the same trend. Luxenberg concluded: Parts of the Koran, mainly the oldest, consists of an original Aramaic text collection with evident Christian character, it may even be a kind old Syrian Bible commentary. The Koran must have evolved through a long and complex process where the oldest parts were written, rewritten and vocalized in Arabic. The Koran, we know today existed only as a finished book at a much later date, at the earliest about the end of the 9th century, when Islam had become an independent religion.
Luxenberg's discovery is apparently contradicted, however, by a something outside of the Koran. In the famous Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem there is a frieze with what we believe is a sort of mosaic of Koranic quotations. The Dome of the Rock was built in 694 AD, and the Koran therefore must have been finished, written and known at this time. Anyway that is how the argument goes in the traditional descriptions of the Koranic history.
Luxenberg also tested his reading method on the frieze, and the result was again surprising: The frieze is - read in Aramaic - a heretical-Christian creed, opposing the Byzantine church´s trinity dogma. The message reads : God is one, and Jesus Christ is his servant. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, in other words, is not a mosque but originally built as a church!
Luxenberg's findings are confirmed by other historical-critical studies. The German research group has shown in articles passages that agree with the reasoning in the Church father Lactantius' main scripture "institutions". They have also found Jewish, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichaean and mandaean thought material. All of it features, that not only points to a long, complicated process of creation, but also suggests a completely different geographic location for the Koran's early history.
THE NEW GERMAN KORAN RESEARCH is strictly scientific. The Circle of researchers counts among others philologists, numismatics, archaeologists, theologians, religious historians and experts in Aramaic and Arabic languages. As researchers, they insist on using only safe, verifiable historical sources. This means for example that they cannot use the much later Islamic historiography as a source to the Koranic history.
This almost changes the picture completely: The early beginnings of the Koran are not to be found among believing Muslims in the Arabian peninsula, but among EastSyrian Christian Arabs in and around the city Merw (mentioned in the Koran surah 2, 158) in the current southern Turkmenistan, where there lived Christians of East Syrian origin, who had not accepted the dogma of God's trinity.
They thought they stood for a more correct Bible interpretation: God is one, and Jesus Christ is his servant. They knew nothing about Muhammad. MHMD consonants that appear in the Koran meant in Aramaic "the praised", i.e. Jesus.
When Merws ruler al-Malik about the end of the 7th century went west, what we know as Islam's conquest began, but in reality it was an Arab heretical Christian conquest spree.
Over time, the Arabs distanced themselves more and more from Christianity. The Consonants MHMD became the Prophet Mohammed and Islam emerged with the Koran as we know it today. The Koran is in other words, a human construction, not a divine revelation. The traditional view of the Koran as Muhammad´s immutable revelation is not sustainable. When all historical research imposes stringent requirements for documentation and secure, verifiable sources, the Koranic research and research into the history of Islam cannot be exempted from these requirements.
The sources of the Koran's early history are not secure, and the sources that we actually have from the time, tell a different story. No one has yet managed to rebut this new Koranic research with factual arguments. In fact, the researchers - not least among university colleagues - have been greeted with ridicule, arbitrary accusations of being unscientific, accusations of "Islamophobia" or with deafening silence. The latter is apparently the case in Denmark.
If this is known in the scientific community here in Denmark, why do we hear nothing about it? The new Koranic research is dynamite, but this is no excuse for not evaluating its results. In my view it may have far reaching consequences. Could this new research not be seen as a helping hand to Muslims and non-Muslims to rid themselves of the old rigid positions and a petrified view of the scriptures?
Morten Rydal is a vicar
http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/413867:Kronik--KRONIK--Koranen-begyndte-som-en-kristen-bog?all=1
Topic: The Koran began as a Christian book