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Theme Changer

 Topic: the injil

 (Read 17467 times)
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  • the injil
     OP - January 04, 2015, 03:38 PM
    the quran says that the injil is a kitab that is sent down from allah to jesus.

    but we know today that the etymology of word "injil" is from the greek word "evangelion". the word evangelion is used to refer to any written account, originally in greek, of the life or teachings of jesus. the usage of this word as referring to the written accounts of the life of jesus is then translated into the languages which the evangelion is translated in. thus in syriac it become ewangaleyoon, in Ethiopic it becomes wangel, etc.

    thus, isn't the quran mistaken on this point? I would presume that if I was an arab in 7th century Arabia that is familiar with Christian literature, I would think that "al injil" would refer to written accounts of the life of jesus which were originally in greek.
    "we stand firm calling to allah all the time,
    we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
  • the injil
     Reply #1 - January 04, 2015, 07:18 PM
    I'm not entirely sure what to make out of the Qur'an's reference to 'injil.'  The verses which cite the 'injil' seem almost indifferent to any actual book or its particulars.  Instead they present a stereotyped broader picture in which Allah sends "books" down to his prophets, and those books are "confirmations" which repeat the exact same message.  The Qur'an, in these passages, is thus seen as the third of three, the same "book" sent down this time in Arabic.

    Distinctively, none of the details seem to have been worked out or thought to matter.  What matters is that the hearer/reader understand that the present scripture is part of this tradition of eternal revelation which is periodically given to Allah's prophets in the form of a holy book.

    Focusing on the details is thus somewhat beside the point -- I read this as a relatively unsophisticated layer of Qur'anic text in which the nascent scripture tries to claim authority by likening itself to prior books given to prior prophets, without troubling much about the details.  This is only likely to have occurred in a particular context where the readers/listeners could not easily and readily access the prior written texts under discussion, probably because of (a) rarity; and (b) language barrier.  Otherwise these arguments would have seemed contradictory and silly to the recipients, much like accusing the Jews of worshiping Ezra.

    So I think this represents a layer of post-Mohammed "Islamicizing," and (without knowing the answer) would presume it is limited to the so-called Medinan surahs.
  • the injil
     Reply #2 - January 04, 2015, 09:06 PM
    Quote from: Zaotar on January 04, 2015, 07:18 PM
    and (without knowing the answer) would presume it is limited to the so-called Medinan surahs.


    You made me curious so I checked al-mu'jim al-mufahris li alfaath al qur'an and you are correct, the word injeel only appears in the following which are all Medinan Suras.

    3 times in Aal 'Imran
    5 times in al-ma'idah
    1 in al-a'raaf
    1 in al-tawbah
    1 in al-fath
    1 in al-hadeed

  • the injil
     Reply #3 - January 05, 2015, 12:38 AM
    Muhammad Asad's footnote for 3:4 on the Injil - I'm guessing that the 'source of the Synoptic Gospels' stuff is a more recent apologia:

    Quote
    It is to be borne in mind that the Gospel frequently mentioned in the Qur'an is not identical with what is known today as the Four Gospels, but refers to an original, since lost, revelation bestowed upon Jesus and known to his contemporaries under its Greek name of Evangelion ("Good Tiding"), on which the Arabicized form Injil is based. It was probably the source from which the Synoptic Gospels derived much of their material and some of the teachings attributed to Jesus. The fact of its having been lost and forgotten is alluded to in the Qur'an in 5:14.

    Before it gets too late, you will find escape.
  • the injil
     Reply #4 - January 05, 2015, 08:16 PM
    That apology is contradicted not only by all modern scholarship on the Gospel texts, but also by the Qur'an itself, which repeatedly claims that the contemporary Christians have the Injil with them and are acting in accordance with the Injil.  But you can see why this 'another Injil' is needed, since the actual Christian holy scripture bears no resemblance to how these Qur'anic verses seem to understand the Injil.

    The traditional scholar's explanation for this disjunction would be that Mohammed was living in pagan Hijaz, had only dimly heard about the Christian texts, and was making garbled statements about those texts based on his provincial misunderstandings.

    My own belief, explaining why I expect to find such comments in the 'Medina' surahs, is that this type of relatively unsophisticated vernacular rhetoric is characteristic of a layer of Qur'anic text that probably arose as Arabic speakers infiltrated and exerted power over older Christian and Jewish communities -- in other words, during the early conquest period.  In that dynamic, the Arabs tried to situate themselves in relation to the older communities, claiming heir to their antique authority while explaining their own distinctive Arabic status.  That process created a sort of crude generalizing reinterpretation of those older religious traditions, subordinating them to larger political points about the Arabic community, its legitimacy, and its succession to the older traditions.  This type of Qur'anic rhetoric seems almost completely indifferent to the particulars of the older religious traditions and texts it is discussing -- not so much ignorant as indifferent.

    That is why this layer of text seems almost completely unconcerned with the prospect of a literate audience that would have its own copy of these texts at hand, and which held radically different beliefs about them (i.e. Jews and Christians).  It just doesn't care about them.  It is speaking to vernacular Arabs in an early-conquest context, telling them that they are part of the older religious world, and just as much heir to it (both as political successors, as children of Abraham, and as religious believers) as the Christians/Jews.

    That kind of attitude would be very unlikely in the archaic 'Meccan' material, which following Luling et al I take to have originally been a relatively sophisticated Christian liturgy in the vernacular Arabic context.  It would be almost impossible for the writers of such liturgy to be so confused about the 'Injil,' and the audience likewise would be baffled.  Such commentary I would thus expect to appear as a later interpolation in such surahs, if at all, related to the nascent Islamic community's formulation of claims for prophetic authority and succession theology.  And those are characteristic of the surahs which are called "Medinan" on the theory that they reflect an Arabic ascent to political power, which is certainly true, but should be understood as Arab political power in the early conquest of Palestine, not Medina.
  • the injil
     Reply #5 - January 05, 2015, 09:23 PM
    I love reading your posts, Zaotar  Afro

    Quote from: Zaotar on January 05, 2015, 08:16 PM
    That kind of attitude would be very unlikely in the archaic 'Meccan' material, which following Luling et al I take to have originally been a relatively sophisticated Christian liturgy in the vernacular Arabic context.  It would be almost impossible for the writers of such liturgy to be so confused about the 'Injil,' and the audience likewise would be baffled.


    As you know my background is very much within the traditional Islamic view of the Qur'an, so this is fascinating, but I find the above quote a little difficult to understand.

    Are you saying the early Qur'anic verses were of Christian sectarian origin?

    I gather you consider the Qur'an to be the product of more than one author, and I am becoming more convinced of this - but what is your view of Muhammad? Who was he? What did he actually say? Was he preaching a version of Christianity or perhaps Judaism?
  • the injil
     Reply #6 - January 05, 2015, 09:57 PM
    Yes, I believe the earliest layers of the Qur'an reflect provincial Christian texts, liturgy, and theology, and that they were later adopted and formed the kernel of what over time became an "Islamicized" text.  So just as there is a documentary hypothesis for the Torah -- seeing it as the work of different factions and redactions -- so I think the same is clearly true of the Qur'an, and certainly nobody would ever think otherwise for an instant were it not for the complex Muslim tradition of explaining the text's peculiarities and disjunction by reference to the prophet's fictive biography.  I see it exactly the reverse, ideology about an Arabian prophet was slowly and successively imposed into the Qur'an.  This is not because of the prophet's rise to power but because the Qur'an is an assembly of texts in transition over time, during which the idea of Arabian prophethood was slowly imposed on a relatively conservative group of texts.  At its initial layer, the claims of prophethood were very sedate and nonconfrontational (just a messenger, same message as always), and only over time did an increasingly aggressive and distinct 'prophet' theology get written into the texts, culminating in the few verses that refer to a specific contemporary prophet.  Consistent with that, it is well-known that the term 'nabi' appears almost entirely in Medinan texts; Meccan surahs call the speaker 'rasul.'  This is not, in my book, because Mohammed became a prophet in Medina, but rather that the Medinan texts are more extensively and lately reworked/compiled, and thus incorporate a more advanced version of the Arabian prophet mythology, including as its latest layer the use of the term MHMD along with a claim that he is the seal of the prophets.

    Your question about the historical MHMD is much harder to answer because I believe the Qur'an reflects very little about any historical person.  I generally follow Shoemaker's view, which is that there was an Arabic speaking prophet who claimed divine leadership in connection with the Arab conquests of Palestine.  As the divine name MHMD indicates (I reject the argument that this name only emerged long after his death -- the reason it appears so rarely in the Qur'an is not because it was developed late but because MHMD had so little to do with the Qur'an's development, until very late in that process), this prophet was believed to hold the keys to the coming of the apocalypse and to paradise, in connection with the anticipated Arabic conquest of Jerusalem under MHMD's leadership, playing role of Messiah/David/Jesus etc.  But then MHMD unexpectedly died (like all would-be prophets of the apocalypse eventually do), disappointing his followers.  Historically, we can know very little more beyond that.  As far as his religion, I doubt it can easily be explained other than to say he saw himself as part of the divine authoritative tradition of both Christianity and Judaism, with MHMD being the true heir of political and religious authority granted from Allah, essentially an apocalyptic Arabic caliph, with Judgment Day (his key central message) being about to descend.  To call this Judaism or Christianity is kind of like asking whether Mormonism is Christian or not ... both Islam and Mormonism clearly derive largely from Christianity, but the claims of total prophetic authority are not compatible with mainline Christianity.  Certainly MHMD would have claimed that his religion was the same as Christianity and Islam, I think, just stripped of frippery.

    But this prophet MHMD was only one part of the overall Arab expansion across the Middle East, and his role in the overall religion of the Arabs was long contested and probably pretty unimportant until the Umayyads and Zubayrids seized upon him as a figure to legitimate their political ambitions.  That is why following the initial Arab conquest of Palestine you see essentially no mention of him in any texts or inscriptions until the 660s-680s.
  • the injil
     Reply #7 - January 05, 2015, 10:02 PM
    http://www.afcaforum.com/attachment.php?id=29689[/img]]
    Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
  • the injil
     Reply #8 - January 05, 2015, 10:09 PM
    Thanks, Zaotar - fascinating!!  Afro
  • the injil
     Reply #9 - January 05, 2015, 10:35 PM
    Quote from: Zaotar on January 05, 2015, 09:57 PM
    But this prophet MHMD was only one part of the overall Arab expansion across the Middle East, and his role in the overall religion of the Arabs was long contested and probably pretty unimportant until the Umayyads and Zubayrids seized upon him as a figure to legitimate their political ambitions.  That is why following the initial Arab conquest of Palestine you see essentially no mention of him in any texts or inscriptions until the 660s-680s.


    Yes that makes sense, I have often wondered if Muhammad might have come after the initial Arab expansion into the Middle East. I.e. the Arabs conquer the Middle East, and as a result of this they become very interested in the religious traditions of the Jews and Christians, and they start composing Arabic poetry about them. Then Muhammad goes back to the ancestral homelands of the Arabs and uses this poetry to preach to the Peninsular Pagans, perhaps backed with an army from the Levant/ Northern Arabia. Therefore the biography of Muhammad is adapted from the real events of Arabs spreading monotheism back to their homeland in the Peninsula (after the conquest of the Middle East, not before it).

    Of course this is all speculation, but it does seem a little more feasible that the traditional narrative.
  • the injil
     Reply #10 - January 05, 2015, 10:55 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on January 04, 2015, 09:06 PM
    You made me curious so I checked al-mu'jim al-mufahris li alfaath al qur'an and you are correct, the word injeel only appears in the following which are all Medinan Suras.

    3 times in Aal 'Imran
    5 times in al-ma'idah
    1 in al-a'raaf
    1 in al-tawbah
    1 in al-fath
    1 in al-hadeed

    Well I read Quran so many times,  let me read those "injeel" verses again.  But before going to the Quran verses that contain word "Injeel",  let me scribble something just for those who are novice to Quran  or to those who are looking at other two Abrahamic  religious texts  through the lens of Quran,

    To start  with according to Islamic belief,  with in Quran,  Injeel is supposed to be the name of  holy book that allegedly revealed by God to Jesus Christ, . This concept is part of the following classification  Abrahamic  religions.



    that is how this Islamic creationism comes in to picture., So According to traditional Islam those 4 holy books of Abrahamic religious revelations are  1). Quran, 2) Injeel, 3). Torah and 4). Zabur

    According to Islam,   Zabur  the 1st  holy book of allegedly revealed to Dawud (David),   by Gd before the Qur'an. So where is that  the holy book of Dawud (David)?    Huh?
     
    Torah is the 2nd holy book [ib]allegedly revealed to Moses by Gd and according Jewish traditions it consists of  5 books namely  1). Genesis (Bereisheet) – 2). Exodus (Shemot)., 3). Leviticus (Vayikra), 4). Numbers (BaMidbar)  and 5). Deuteronomy (D’varim).  .. So all these are OT books.

    Now our Injeel is  the 3rd holy book of Islam that was allegedly revealed to Jesus Christ and that itself is a alleged composition four more books namely  1). The Gospel of Matthew, ascribed to the Apostle Matthew.  2). The Gospel of Mark, ascribed to Mark the Evangelist.  3). The Gospel of Luke, ascribed to Luke the Evangelist and The Gospel of John, ascribed to John the Apostle..

    And the fourth and final one is supposed be our Quran., Now with that story., Any one who has bit of commonsense will  frame/ask themselves simple questions on these Gd's successive revelations that are alleged;y collated as books....SILLY BOOKS ..books....  namely  "Zabur,  Torah ,  Injeel,  Quran,"  

    Q: What do we know about Zabur?..... where is the book??            
    Ans: ...Nothing..NOTHING... Zero.. Zippo..

    That is OK.. So David's life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, and he allegedly ruled  United Kingdoms of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. Now Gd slept for sometime with  His (HEeeee).. girl friends/boy friends and suddenly wakes  up to reveal  those OT books to Moses.  When was that? what was the time scales.. we don't know that.. It is all over and it is all confusing..

    Now casual look at those old  testament 24 books .. 24 books would make you to run for Quran as it is small book and simpler to read. But Question is What new good stuff reveled  in Quran that is not there in those 24 OT books ?

    Same question goes to new testament books, Our Islamic intellectuals answer that question.. saying all that were reveled before Quran are corrupted..   When you ask about those, corruptions they run in circles..

    To be fair to Quran over the New testament, Quran often highlights that Jesus is NOT Gd or Son of Gd but a Prophet  .., So that is only the correction in Quran. rest of the book is Gibberish and mostly copy/pasted patched up stories with some Junk such as rules for marriage, rules for war and rules for controlling the society.

    So My point is THERE WAS NO MUHAMMAD., All these hadiths and Quran were collated way after the death of an unknown  Arab pagan preacher who only said .."You Fools Jesus Christ was NOT son of god or God" but a messiah"    That is all what he said.. Rest of Islamic literature (Quran and hadith) are all cock bull stories  by early Arab Muslim rulers & warriors who told in the name of Muhammad to ruin the name of that poor guy .. The original Arab Pagan preacher

    Anyways Let me read those Injeel verses of Quran ....
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • the injil
     Reply #11 - January 05, 2015, 11:06 PM
    The Qur'an also mentions (87:19 & 53:36-37) something it calls: "Suhuf Ibrahim wa Musa" - The scrolls/pages of Abraham & Moses".

    The "scrolls" of Moses I assume refers to the Torah - but what the "scrolls of Abraham" are I have no idea.
  • the injil
     Reply #12 - January 05, 2015, 11:15 PM
    I am not as familiar with Christian or Jewish traditions as I am with Islam - are the Gospels and the Torah regarded by their respective communities to be literally the "word of God" as the Qur'an is?

    From what I know, they are not. But maybe I'm mistaken?

    The Qur'an seems to assume they are of a similar nature to the Qur'an, (which is regarded as the direct speech of God.)
  • the injil
     Reply #13 - January 05, 2015, 11:18 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on January 05, 2015, 11:15 PM
    I am not as familiar with Christian or Jewish traditions as I am with Islam - are the Gospels and the Torah regarded by their respective communities to be literally the "word of God" as the Qur'an is?
     

     when in doubt WATCH FOOLS   Cheesy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRhHX2NS1uk
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • the injil
     Reply #14 - January 05, 2015, 11:20 PM
    It may be referring to the Torah as the book about them + given to them.  It is characteristic of the Qur'an to treat a book written *about* somebody holy (like the Gospels/Torah) *as if it was in some sense the 'book of'* the holy person that the book writes about.  

    This trait is not limited to Islam.  Traditionally, Jews ascribed authorship of the Torah to Moses, even though the 5 books of the Torah are books *about* people including Moses, and describe Moses's death.  Christians could hardly do the same with the Gospels, since they are in Greek rather than Aramaic (another stumbling block for the apologetic Islamic view -- I suppose you could claim that Jesus was given a now-lost Aramaic "Injil" that the Christian Gospels were based upon, but then you'd have to explain why the Aramaic book was also given a Greek name!  One would think that Allah would have remembered to give the correct Aramaic name for Jesus's lost holy book, whatever that name was).

    Abu Ali, Christians do not generally consider the Gospels to literally be God's word in quite the same way -- more that they are divinely inspired and thus God's word in a more metaphorical way that leaves room for human authorship.  Since the New Testament is not in a language that Jesus spoke, it would be hard to privilege its text too much ... I believe there's only a couple points of the New Testament that are in Aramaic.  With conservative Jews, there is more of a tendency to see the Torah's text itself as divine, akin to Islam and the Qur'an.

    Oh and Yeez, the "Zabur" is almost certainly the book of Psalms, which of course are attributed by traditional Judaism to King David.  Even now, Arabic-speaking Christians refer to the book of Psalms as the "Zabur."  Again, the only reason this is not more widely known is because the Qur'anic references to "Zabur" seem unfamiliar with what the actual book of Psalms is.
  • the injil
     Reply #15 - January 05, 2015, 11:21 PM
    Quote from: yeezevee on January 05, 2015, 11:18 PM
    when in doubt WATCH FOOLS   Cheesy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRhHX2NS1uk


    Oh God no I can't stand that nitwit!! lol
  • the injil
     Reply #16 - January 05, 2015, 11:45 PM
    Quote from: Zaotar on January 05, 2015, 11:20 PM
    .................................

    Oh and Yeez, the "Zabur" is almost certainly the book of Psalms, which of course are attributed by traditional Judaism to King David.  Even now, Arabic-speaking Christians refer to the book of Psalms as the "Zabur."  Again, the only reason this is not more widely known is because the Qur'anic references to "Zabur" seem unfamiliar with what the actual book of Psalms is.


    Well I guess that  assumption of Zabur being Psalms  comes out of this verse  163  from that  sūrat AN-NISA .. women..Women.. ., it says
    Quote
     Surely We have revealed to you as We revealed to Nuh, and the prophets after him, and We revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and Isa and Ayub and Yunus and Haroun and Sulaiman and We gave to Dawood

     That verse is simply a flat out description of some names of prophets..

    But Zaotar I wonder., is there any Arabic word in any Quran  verse that explicitly  uses the words.. "Zabur and or Psalms"??
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • the injil
     Reply #17 - January 06, 2015, 12:45 AM
    It wouldn't, because as I understand it the Arabic word for "Psalms" is "Zabur."  To my knowledge, there isn't another word for "Psalms" in Arabic.  So there wouldn't be a way for the Qur'an to say "Psalms or Zabur," unless you used the Hebrew term for the book, "Tehillim," and the Qur'an almost never uses direct Hebrew borrowings, almost always its Semitic religious phraseology comes through Syriac borrowing.

    The Syriac Peshitta uses the title "Mazmore" for the book of Psalms, meaning "songs."  I guess the Qur'an could have said "Zabur or Mazmore."

    Zabur is thus usually translated as "Psalms," and I can't see how there's any genuine controversy about it.  For example:

    http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=4&verse=163
  • the injil
     Reply #18 - January 06, 2015, 12:57 AM
    well this funny on this Zabur"  or book of Psalms  in Quran.,  always used to think that Shakir is the best and closest to that Arabic Quran., Many Islamic websites mention that  the word "Zabur" is mentioned by name only three times in Quran.   Sura  An-Nis , ayah 163,  Sura  Al-Isra  ayah 55 and sura  Al-Anbiya , ayah 105.

    Funny thing Shakir translation has neither Zabur or  book of Psalms ., where as other translations such as Moshin Khan or that Yusf Ali or   Pickthal  does use those words in Brackets..  Let me put those verses here just as a note..
    Sura  An-Nis , ayah 163,

    Quote
    Muhsin Khan: Verily, We have inspired you (O Muhammad SAW) as We inspired Nuh (Noah) and the Prophets after him; We (also) inspired Ibrahim (Abraham), Isma'il (Ishmael), Ishaque (Isaac), Ya'qub (Jacob), and Al-Asbat [the twelve sons of Ya'qub (Jacob)], 'Iesa (Jesus), Ayub (Job), Yunus (Jonah), Harun (Aaron), and Sulaiman (Solomon), and to Dawud (David) We gave the Zabur (Psalms).

    Shakir: Surely We have revealed to you as We revealed to Nuh, and the prophets after him, and We revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and Isa and Ayub and Yunus and Haroun and Sulaiman and We gave to Dawood

     Sura  Al-Isra  ayah 55

    Quote
    Muhsin Khan:  And your Lord knows best all who are in the heavens and the earth. And indeed, We have preferred some of the Prophets above others, and to Dawud (David) We gave the Zabur (Psalms).

    Shakir: And your Lord best knows those who are in the heavens and the earth; and certainly We have made some of the prophets to excel others, and to Dawood We gave a scripture.

    sura  Al-Anbiya , ayah 105.

    Quote
    Muhsin Khan : And indeed We have written in Zabur (Psalms) [i.e. all the revealed Holy Books the Taurat (Torah), the Injeel (Gospel), the Quran] after (We have already written in) Al-Lauh Al-Mahfuz (the Book, that is in the heaven with Allah), that My righteous slaves shall inherit the land (i.e. the land of Paradise).
    Shakir:  And certainly We wrote in the Book after the reminder that (as for) the land, My righteous servants shall inherit it.



    Well that is what it is...  But I can tell this here..... The  Songs/Sonnets of Psalms are far more beautiful than any verse of any Abraham religions..

    Quote
    Listen to my words, Lord,  consider my lament.
      Hear my cry for help,my King and my God, for to you I pray.

    In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;  in the morning I lay my requests before you
    and wait expectantly.

    For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, evil people are not welcome.
    The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong;

     you destroy those who tell lies.The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest.  But I, by your great love,
    can come into your house; in reverence I bow down toward your holy temple.

    Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies— make your way straight before me.
    Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;  their heart is filled with malice.

    Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies.
    Declare them guilty, O God! Let their intrigues be their downfall.
    Banish them for their many sins, for they have rebelled against you.

    But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
        let them ever sing for joy.
    Spread your protection over them,
        that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

     Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous;
        you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

    well that is  Psalm 5
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • the injil
     Reply #19 - January 06, 2015, 01:04 AM
    Quote from: Zaotar on January 06, 2015, 12:45 AM
    ...............Zabur is thus usually translated as "Psalms," and I can't see how there's any genuine controversy about it.  For example:

    http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=4&verse=163


    You are indeed right Zaotar.,  The more I read Quran the more I consider that book is written/put together by many people at  different times each one not reading what other wrote...

    your posts on Quran are always educational...thank you

    with best wishes and Happy by year
    yeezevee
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • the injil
     Reply #20 - January 06, 2015, 02:49 AM
    Considering that most scholars see the Torah as having been made up of multiple sources pieced together (aka the Documentary Hypothesis) and comes from a time far after Moses, do Muslims argue that the Torah referred to in the Quran is not the written Torah and instead perhaps the oral traditions that made up the various laws in the Torah?

    The earliest writings we have on Jesus are from Paul and he seems to not have much knowledge at all on what Jesus did in his life, leading many scholars to conclude that no extensive written accounts about Jesus' life were around at that time. The Gospels in the Bible were derived from oral accounts, legend, and perhaps a few rudimentary written accounts such as the infamous "Q" document that is a speculative source for the shared stories between Matthew and Luke. That their was some now lost "injeel" that Jesus revealed like the Quran is supposed to have been revealed seems very ridiculous.
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • the injil
     Reply #21 - January 06, 2015, 03:15 AM
    Quote from: Zaotar on January 06, 2015, 12:45 AM
    It wouldn't, because as I understand it the Arabic word for "Psalms" is "Zabur."  To my knowledge, there isn't another word for "Psalms" in Arabic.  So there wouldn't be a way for the Qur'an to say "Psalms or Zabur," unless you used the Hebrew term for the book, "Tehillim," and the Qur'an almost never uses direct Hebrew borrowings, almost always its Semitic religious phraseology comes through Syriac borrowing.

    The Syriac Peshitta uses the title "Mazmore" for the book of Psalms, meaning "songs."  I guess the Qur'an could have said "Zabur or Mazmore."

    Zabur is thus usually translated as "Psalms," and I can't see how there's any genuine controversy about it.  For example:

    http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=4&verse=163



    Mazmore probably comes from the Hebrew word "mizmor", which I think is the more literal word for "psalm", tehillim is the name for the book of psalms as a whole, but the individual ones are introduced with "mizmor l'david" or whoever they say wrote it. Quick edit: it's hard to say what words actually meant when the Bible was written, because Hebrew was a dead language for so long, and was really only revived to legitimize the claims of the State of Israel's founders. So there are tons of words we don't understand, or even know if they had meanings. Like "selah".

    Quote from: Abu Ali on January 05, 2015, 11:15 PM
    I am not as familiar with Christian or Jewish traditions as I am with Islam - are the Gospels and the Torah regarded by their respective communities to be literally the "word of God" as the Qur'an is?

    From what I know, they are not. But maybe I'm mistaken?

    The Qur'an seems to assume they are of a similar nature to the Qur'an, (which is regarded as the direct speech of God.)


    It depends largely on which group you're talking about. There's no real consensus about anything in Christianity, you can see that very clearly in America where there isn't a state religion so everyone has their own ideas about what they think the Bible REALLY is all about. some 80% of Americans are Christians, and there is one church per 900 people, so that's about 720 Christians per church, and each church says that all the other ones are wrong. Lots of American Christian groups do believe that the Bible is the literal word of God (sometimes they believe that the King James Bible in particular is the inspired word of God and don't know that English is not the original language of the Bible, and didn't even exist then....forrealz....)

    Reform and Reconstructionist Jews are more like the Church of England or even less interested in the scriptures. Conservative Jews are usually people who like having religious leaders who at least have some semblance of knowing the texts, but don't care to know what they say themselves. Like take my deceased grandmother's synagogue. There was a bit of an uproar last year when the head rabbi of the synagogue came out as gay.  What made people upset wasn't that they had problems with people being gay; they're fine with that, many members are gay or have gay kids, but they want their rabbi to at least appear to be somewhat interested in living according to the Torah, even tho they don't themselves care what it says.

    Even within the Orthodox Jewish movement, the Modern Orthodox people don't tend to believe the historical narrative the Torah gives about itself (there's a growing mountain of evidence that Moses was not a real person, the Jews were never slaves in Egypt, they never went for a 40 year tour of the desert, etc), but they do believe that its MESSAGES are something we should obey. Then there are the mentally ill people. I haven't met a single [non-Modern] Orthodox Jew who didn't suffer some level of mental illness. Usually bipolar. Probably from the inbreeding.
    Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
  • the injil
     Reply #22 - January 06, 2015, 04:02 AM
    The torah is one fucked up book. The God character is at his absolute worst slaughtering men, women, and children just for being the unfortunate occupants of the holy lands, or living at the time of Noah, or being a first born in Egypt at the time God was hardening pharaohs heart. I would be scared if anyone took it literally and considered it to the only authoritative scripture.
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • Re: the injil
     Reply #23 - January 06, 2015, 08:43 AM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on January 05, 2015, 11:06 PM
    The Qur'an also mentions (87:19 & 53:36-37) something it calls: "Suhuf Ibrahim wa Musa" - The scrolls/pages of Abraham & Moses".

    The "scrolls" of Moses I assume refers to the Torah - but what the "scrolls of Abraham" are I have no idea.


    You need to go into the "non-canonical" literature ( ie the vast amount of, broadly speaking, classical era literature produced by Jews in the period between the era of Alexander's successors and the establishment of the new commonwealth to the wars against the Romans ) - that was disseminated widely, translated,  and comes down to us in Greek, Ge'ez, Slavonic, Armenian etc, and/or fragmentarily in Hebrew. There is a 2nd century text that is/was known as "The Testament of Abraham" - and this is a good candidate for what is being referred to here.
  • the injil
     Reply #24 - January 06, 2015, 10:45 AM
    Thanks galfromusa & josephus  Afro
  • the injil
     Reply #25 - January 06, 2015, 01:17 PM
    Quote
    The Diatessaron (c. 160–175) is the most prominent early Gospel harmony; and was created by Tatian, an early Christian Assyrian apologist and ascetic.[1] Tatian sought to combine all the textual material he found in the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—into a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death. However, and in contradistinction to most later gospel harmonists, Tatian appears not to have been motivated by any aspiration to validate the four separate canonical gospel accounts; or to demonstrate that, as they stood, they could each be shown as being without inconsistency or error.

    Tatian's harmony follows the gospels closely in terms of text but, in order to fit all the canonical material in, he created his own narrative sequence, which is different from both the synoptic sequence and John's sequence; and occasionally creates intervening time periods that are found in none of the source accounts.[2] This sequence is coherent and consistent within itself, but not necessarily consistent with that in all or any of the separate canonical gospels; and Tatian apparently applies the same principle in respect of the narrative itself. Where the gospels differ from one another in respect of the details of an event or teaching; the Diatessaron resolves such apparent contradictions by selecting one or another alternative wording and adding consistent details from the other gospels; while omitting apparent duplicate matter, especially across the synoptics. Hence, in respect of the healing of the blind at Jericho the Diatessaron reports only one blind man, Bartimeaus, healed by Jesus when leaving the city according to the account in Mark 10:46ff (expanded with phrases from Luke 18:36-37); consequently omitting any separate mention of two unnamed blind men healed by Jesus leaving Jericho (Matthew 20:29ff), and also the healing by Jesus entering Jericho the previous day of a single unnamed blind man (Luke 18:35ff


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatessaron

    Were the koran writers referring to the Diatessaron?

    And I think we should stop assuming anything tracks back to Mecca/Medina!
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • the injil
     Reply #26 - January 06, 2015, 06:48 PM
    In this article, Segovia argues that Surah 87 is referring to the pseudepigrapha of Moses and Abraham (pp. 237-38).

    http://www.academia.edu/1534642/Thematic_and_Structural_Affinities_between_1_Enoch_and_the_Qur%C4%81n_A_Contribution_to_the_Study_of_the_Judaeo-Christian_Apocalyptic_Setting_of_the_Early_Islamic_Faith_2012_Book_Chapter

    I'm not yet convinced, I think it's more likely that the two concluding verses of Surah 87 are rhetoric designed to hammer home the claim that this text is identical with the 'scriptures' of the Judaic patriarchs, and thus consistent with the general unsophisticated rhetorical line described above -- early conquest believers who are radically reinterpreting older religious texts and traditions to suit the social and political needs of their new circumstances.  I suspect that 87:18 and 19, starting with "inna" (indeed), may even be later additions to the older base text that try to situate it within this presumed continuous 'scripture' that the Arabs claim to follow, stripped of its particulars -- heirs to the scriptures of the original Jewish patriarchs, the same general scripture given to all of the prophets.

    The Qur'anic authors clearly were not particularly concerned with a defined body of written scripture, nor clear on what that defined body of scripture actually says.  Again and again, they emphasize what you might call living religious doctrines and beliefs which the older texts are claimed to support, but not in a context of actually sitting down and looking at the texts.  "Scripture" almost seems like a validating category of revelation, in which Allah's gift of a holy book to a prophet validates the message, not a codified and canonized text.
  • the injil
     Reply #27 - January 07, 2015, 12:25 AM
    Quote from: yeezevee on January 05, 2015, 10:55 PM
    blah blah blah.

    (Clicky for piccy!)

    blah blah blah Anyways Let me read those Injeel verses of Quran ....


    So, I'm not showing that picture as being complete, so I did a google image search for it to try to find the full picture, and this is what came up:



    Wut.
    Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
  • the injil
     Reply #28 - January 07, 2015, 12:53 AM
    Perhaps injeel is slang for Asian pussy?
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • the injil
     Reply #29 - January 07, 2015, 12:58 AM
    "Abide by what the injeel (pussy) has revealed." Might have something to with working under Khadijah all those years
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
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