Holybooks Int CD-rom

history
holy books have a
history
textual histories of the new testament & the quran
holy books have a
k e i t h e. s m a l l
holy Books have a history: New testament and Quran Manuscripts

Copyright Keith E. Small All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-4507-3994-8 Printed in USA Design by Thinkpen Design, Inc., www.thinkpendesign.com Copy Editor, V. Kathleen Draper Printed by Snowfall Press, Monument, Colorado No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from Keith E. Small. Permission to reproduce the photographs contained in this book were obtained from the following: Bibliothque nationale de France for pictures of text from manuscripts BNF Arabe 326a, 328a, 331, 333c, 334c, 340c and 370a. These are found on pages 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37; Fondazione Ferne Noseda for pictures of IST TIEM SE 54 and the portion of a Quran palimpsest on pages 28 and 47; A private collector GRP for pictures of the Sanaa manuscripts 01-29.1 and 01-20.x on pages 27, 32, and 34; The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland for the image of Codex Leicestrensis. The picture from Codex Sinaiticus was obtained from the Codex Sinaiticus website and is used according to its provision of permission for the reproduction of its images for educational and non-profit use.
Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Chapter 1: holy Books have a history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Chapter 2: textual Criticism on the Bible and the Quran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
The Background of Biblical Textual Criticism and Quranic Textual Criticism Earliest Identifiable Text of the Quran? An early, strong standardization of the Quran text? precise version going back to Muhammad? A strong parallel oral tradition? Orthographic Variants Proper Names Variable Spelling Zones of Variable Spelling Grammatical Variants Changes of Person Changes of Number Substitution of conjunctions Diacritical Marks Variants Copyist Mistakes Different Words Corrections Earliest Identifiable Text of the NT and Quran? An early, strong standardisation of the NT and Quran text? One precise version going back to Jesus or Muhammad? A strong parallel oral tradition?
Chapter 3: Kinds of Variants in Nt and Quran Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Chapter 4: Comparisons and Conclusions from textual Criticism . . . . . . 53
Chapter 5: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Appendix one: textual Criticism and the inspiration of scripture . . . . . . 83 Appendix two: Common Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many ministry colleagues through Also, Id like to thank the many Muslims who shared their
the years who have helped me develop the ideas in this book. convictions with me, most as thoughtful statements from the heart, but even when they came as challenges and provoking statements. I have appreciated their conviction that truth should be proclaimed and debated in the public arena.
granted permission for the use of material that originally
Special thanks are due to the publisher Hans Schiler, who
appeared in the book Schlaglichter: Die beiden ersten islamischen Jahrhunderte, 2008, edited by Karl Heinz Ohlig and Markus Gro. Material from the chapter, Textual Variants in the New appears in chapters three and four of this book. The pictures
Testament and Quranic Manuscript Traditions (pp. 572-593),
used in that article and in this book are very partial processed pictures of the full pictures found in the authors PhD thesis, scripts, and in the forthcoming book, Textual Criticism and Mapping a New Country: Textual Criticism and Quran ManuQuran Manuscripts (Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland, ison of textual variants in the New Testament and Quran
USA, late 2010). The thesis contains a more extensive comparmanuscript traditions. The academic book, Textual Criticism and Quran Manuscripts, is a more developed study of the textual variants in just the Quran manuscript tradition, and of the Quran and the recovery of its original text. :
how the variants illumine issues regarding the textual history
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introduction
One might well ask, why study ancient manuscripts of other
peoples Scripture? Why meddle with someone elses religious is wrong? Doesnt such study only lead to unedifying argu-
heritage? Why must you ask questions of who is right and who ments? These questions express a tension anyone involved in mission must deal with on a very personal level. The answer to all of these questions is that in the end, critical study of
sacred texts is an exercise in simple intellectual honesty. It is
an expression of loving my neighbour as myself by seeking to of someone elses beliefs without asking these kinds of ques-
understand his beliefs. How can one gain a true understanding tions? Perhaps the better question is, since such studies in the
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end are necessary, what attitudes are the most helpful to use in pursuing them? Many people of all faiths and no faith have come to realize
that religious tradition cannot be followed blindly. If a religion is to commend itself in this age, it must be open to the hardest and best questions put to it. We no longer live in a world the criticism and scrutiny of others who dont share their where religious communities can keep themselves aloof from beliefs and values. Christians of all denominations have had to face this because of challenges from Secularism and scrutiny from people of other faiths around the world. Muslims, in particular, have taken for themselves a role as commentators and critics of Christianity and the Bible. For them too, the One scholar has written: 1 challenge is there of being on the receiving end of criticism.
Islam and the Quran do not belong any longer exclusively to Muslims, but they belong to mankind, and mankind will henceforth demand the right to interfere in the interpretation of the Islamic heritage as will be the case with regard to the religious history of all religions of the world.
One Muslim has wisely written: 2
1 Gnter Lling, A Challenge to Islam for Reformation. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003, 514-515. 2 David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers. Richmond: Curzon, 1999, 5-6.
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Sooner or later Islam must, like its monotheistic rivals, face the tribunal of secular reason and patiently endure trial by modernity, and asks: Are Islam and its scripturecapable of patiently tolerating disciplined investigation?Later he argues that Any constructive engagement between Islam and modernity must involve the rejecter [i.e. the non-Muslim]: the rejecter must reserve the right to examine critically the contents of the Koran
even for the outright rejecter, it is a basic exercise of intellec-
For the believer in Islam, for the intellectually curious, and
tual honesty to thoroughly investigate the history of the text of the Quran using the best available tools of historical research. groups was held at the British Library in London where Recently, an exhibition sponsored by diverse religious
ancient manuscripts of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures were displayed together, visually illustrating the histories of the transmission of these texts. In the exhibition the exhibition: 3
catalog, the following statement was given as the purpose of
The main questions this exhibition asks of all of us are: what do these three faiths have in common, and how have they in their very separate and diverse histories created or received their holy texts? How and where have they become standardized, and what do they signify for us of whatever faith or none in the twentyfirst century?
3 John Reeve, Sacred. London: British Library, 2007, 12.
by everyone. Stuart, as a devout Christian, also comments they might cause:4
These are excellent, honest questions that need to be faced
about the necessity of these kinds of studies, and some fears
Some people may feel that textual criticism will expose weaknesses in the ancient versions of the Bible or the translations made from them. This is not really the case. What textual criticism shows is that no single version can claim to be perfect, since there are evident differences in the ancient copies. In this sense, strength comes with diversity. Since we have available to us a great variety of ancient texts, we must whenever possible place them before us and analyze them. The results will give us a far greater security as to what the original may have been than the credulous certification of any one text could ever do. We are therefore obliged not to reject whatever complicates the picture, but to enter into a careful and responsible analysis of the texts we have in an attempt to decide what was most likely the original wording actually inspired by the Holy Spirit.
as to construct critical Greek New Testaments and critical
Textual criticism and the study of ancient manuscripts so
Hebrew Bibles are responses to these challenges in the most
basic and essential way possible. They are attempts to answer tians and Jews been reliably preserved? As I have pursued
the question: have the traditional scriptures received by Christhese studies, I have had my faith challenged at many points, but overall, I have found my convictions in the Bibles reli-
4 Douglas Stuart, 'Inerrancy and Textual Criticism', Douglas Stuart, Inerrancy and Common Sense. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980, 97-118, 110-111.
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ability, sufficiency, and authority strengthened and deepened. the British Coronation service:5
I find more than ever I can share in the following words from
This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God.
studies in stating:6
One Christian scholar has shared a similar conclusion to his
the end result of such studies has confirmed that we have every reason to trust the Bible. It has the right books, it has the right words, it does make sense, you can understand it; it contains all the words of God we need to know Him, to trust Him, and to obey Him; and it is where we should go to find the words of God to us.
after many years of study and experience.
This book is written from these same convictions arrived at
The Aim of this Book

The aim of this book is to critically examine some foundational claims that Muslims make concerning the Bible and Muslims that the text of the Bible was corrupted so much
the Quran. There is a widespread and long held belief among
5 http://www.oremus.org/liturgy/coronation/cor1953b.html, accessed 1 August 2010. 6 Notes from Dr. Wayne Grudem, The Importance of the Bible, lecture given at the European Leadership Forum, Eger, Hungary, in May 2009.
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that a new revelation, the Quran, had to be sent. Also, with this claim is often tied a claim that the text of the Quran has been preserved perfectly. This book will not be an exhaustive treatment of the subject but will instead focus on how textual critiother questions concerning the Qurans textual history. This is done so that discussions of this topic between Christians and
cism of manuscripts can help answer these questions and some
Muslims can be conducted in a more fair and even-handed way. preservation of the Quran are presented by Muslims as logically connected, they actually are not connected in the same way for both Muslims and Christians. They are two separate issues for Though these two ideas, the preservation of the Bible and the
Christians that really have no logical connection between them. If the Quran is preserved perfectly, it has no logical bearing on whether or not the Bible is the authentic revelation claimed by if the Bible is corrupted or not, and it has no logical bearing on Jews (Old Testament) and Christians (Old Testament and New Testament). For Muslims, the two are connected, because if the some logical ground for their claim of the Qurans authenticity as revelation. But the Quran still needs to makes it claim to be a revelation that replaces the prior books on its own terms. Just claiming the prior books are corrupted so the Quran must be authentic is not good enough and is not a logical connection. Bible has been corrupted the way they assert, then it does provide
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assumption that the Bible and Quran are the same kinds of
Also, in this claim there is the unspoken and mistaken
scripture and that claims for the same kind of inspiration are made for both that makes perfection of textual transmission necessary. This is not true. Christians have never claimed that
the Bible has been preserved perfectly, and such a claim is not most, perfection is claimed for the original autographs of the individual books of the Bible. Because of the acknowledged human element in inspiration, and the recognized human
necessary for it to be considered inspired and even inerrant. At
means of preservation and transmission, the most Christians have claimed is that it is reliable and sufficient in preserving and transmitting Gods truth to mankind.
force a Muslim view of scripture onto the Bible, a view that
To force a standard of perfection on its textual history is to
Christians have never really held. Also, forcing this standard truth for the Quran. If perfection is claimed for the text of so that the Quran can be evaluated on its own merits. It is
is often done by Muslims without actually demonstrating its the Quran, its perfect transmission ought to be demonstrated, usually assumed by Muslims to be true, and often asserted to
be true, but the careful work of examining manuscripts to see if it has actually occurred is usually not brought into the picture. This book is the fruit of such an examination on a limited portion of the text of the Quran. The basic research under-
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lying this book was done to examine the manuscripts of both
the New Testament and the Quran traditions using the same
established methods of textual criticism that have been applied to many ancient literatures by scholars worldwide. Any claims for the inspiration of the Bible or the Quran ought to be set order to assess the truth and consistency of such claims.
against a basic knowledge of the results of this kind of study in For Christians, our claims to the inspiration of the New
Testament are consistent with the results of three centuries of such study. One man has rightly said,7
Modern biblical criticismbelongs among the greatest intellectual achievements of the human race. Has any of the great religions outside the Jewish-Christian tradition investigated its own foundations and its own history so thoroughly and so impartially?
confidence, humility, reverence, and sympathy towards others who do not share our strength of conviction, knowing that building convictions on sound foundations takes hard thought and work, and is emotionally and spiritually demanding. Also, we must recognize that reasoning and arguments do not necessarily create faith in the hearer, but that God is often
Ideally, we should hold onto this hard-won strength with
pleased to use them to help gain a hearing for the Gospel, and
7 Kng, Hans, Judaism: The Religious Situation of Our Time, London: SCM Press Ltd, 1992, 24.
He uses them to strengthen our own faith. As you read this book, please keep in mind 2 Timothy 2:24-26:
And the Lords bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held by him to do his will.
that I should love my neighbour as myself. I am attempting to with a sympathy and objectivity that I would want extended back to me in my search for truth. I would like to commend and paraphrased (my additions in boldface) from a scholar whose work I have come to appreciate:8
As a devout Christian, I try to take Jesus words seriously
deal with these issues concerning the Quran and Islamic belief
this book to you with some wise words that I have borrowed
I hope I can suggest without impertinence that Muslims and ourselves not allow polemical convenience to dictate our estimates of historical probability; rather to recognise, as Islamic scholarship and Christian scholarship traditionally have, that we in the world are bound to work with probabilities, even when it comes to the relation of the available Quran and Bible to Gods transcendent knowledge. :
Keith E . small, PhD, August 2010
8 Melchert, Christopher, The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another, JQS 10 (2008), 73-87, 84.
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holy Books have a history
Your Bible has been changed. You need to read the perfectly preserved Word of God, the Holy Quran.9
Holy books have a history. There is always a process in which the sayings and teachings that inspire and define a religious rized version. This can happen over many centuries, as with movement are recorded, collected, and then put into an authothe Old Testament scriptures, over a relatively short time of a an even shorter time, between 23 years and three centuries
few decades to three centuries, as for the New Testament, and for the Quran. Theories of inspiration of scripture are developed in the interaction between historical circumstance and theological dogma. Among Christians, verbal plenary inspira9 Quotation from an email read by the author.
holy books have a history
tion seeks to hold the two facets of Divine intent and guidance as to meaning, content and word choice together with human involvement as to style, vocabulary, and construction of
argument. Among Muslims, mechanical models of inspiration have been consistently chosen so as to minimize the human The Islamic dogma that the Quran was sent down from a view of inspiration. One scholar has noted:10 element and maximize the Divine credentials of the Quran. heavenly tablet has in effect locked Muslims into a mechanical
as a way to enhance the status of a canonical text, it is hard to trump the doctrine of its eternity. Non-Muslim monotheists made little attempt to compete. The view that the Torah had existed for two thousand years before the creation of the world was found among the Jewish rabbis; but compared to the pre-eternity of the Quran, such a claim was modesty itself. Taken together, the doctrines which developed around the Koran accorded it a more elevated status than that of the Bible in either Judaism or Christianity.
history, it seems relatively straightforward. Through a combination of written and oral transmission, we are told, the text has been preserved perfectly since the time of Muhammad. Many will go on to say that in its present form it perfectly represents the text of the Quran on a tablet next to Allahs
10 Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 2000 112-113.
When you first hear a Muslim view of the Qurans textual
chapter 1: holy books have a history
throne in paradise. If you are a Christian, and your Muslim at some point that whereas the Quran has been preserved perfectly, the Bible was changed by Jews and Christians at
friend is making comparisons to the Bible, he will usually state
some point in its history, and changed so much, that Allah had to send the Quran to restore the truth about religion. usually no significant historical evidence is provided. This conclusion is presented as a settled fact of history, though Often, these comparisons are carried out by our Muslim
neighbours with little knowledge of the actual history of the standing of the practice of textual criticism as it has been
Bible. Sometimes, they are made with a sophisticated undercarried out on the text of the Bible over the last few centuries in the West.11 It should be noted, though, that Muslims have never applied these methods to the text of the Quran, and as methods for the New Testament is attempted by Muslims, they ought to be similarly applied to the Quran.
a point of fairness and integrity, if any comparison using these
Fideism vs. Evidentialism

At the outset, it is important to note that this belief is based reality Muslims believe it presents, as well as being what mainly on what the Quran teaches and the view of historical Muslims believe is revelation about the past from Allah.
11 For instance, one critical Western book by the scholar Bart Ehrmann, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, (Oxford, 1993) has been translated into Arabic because it asserts intentional change to the text of the New Testament.
One prominent Muslim debater once said to me in a debate concerning the historical eyewitnesses to the event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ: We have the eyewitness that counts. We have Allah, and He said in the Quran that the crucifixion did not happen!12 In saying this, he was
pointedly repudiating the historical integrity of the Gospels in and Roman sources that affirm the crucifixion took place, and also five centuries of consistent historical testimony of the centuries preceding the birth of Muhammad. He did all this
the New Testament, as well as the historical integrity of Jewish
in one sweeping statement without giving one reason why his demonstrated the truth of his confident but wrong assertion. Tragically, I have had to conclude from many sincere
view was better. This was a clever debate tactic, but it in no way
conversations, that these kinds of convictions among Muslims are not usually a conclusion arrived at after a sober, thorough, and objective survey of the history of the collection of the
books of the New Testament and the events presented therein. They are rather held as articles of unquestioned faith and a key justification for asserting the authenticity and necessity
of the religion of Islam. Questioning these things, instead of and even angry responses. However, if we really believe that our eternal destinies and those of other people are depen-
bringing out a serious discussion often brings about emotional,
12 Debate between Keith Small and Shabbir Ally, March 5th, 2000, Bradford, UK. He was referring to the Quran passage Surah 4:157 which denies the crucifixion occurred.
dent on the teaching of any of these holy books, then we
owe it to ourselves, to other people, and to God Himself to Any religion that requires people to make a choice of faith must also allow the investigation of difficult basic quesand honourable. tions and issues if that choice of faith is to be meaningful
look into these issues as carefully and objectively as possible.
when it comes to considering and defending the authenticity and integrity of their scriptures. Muslims tend to work from a position known as fideism that the truth of a religion rests
Muslims and Christians usually start from different points
ultimately on your faith in that religion. Christians have tradithe truth of a religion can be demonstrated by appealing to evidence, and especially historical evidence. One effect of this is that Muslims are very hesitant to
tionally worked from a position known as evidentialism, that
examine the Quran critically. They are taught that to doubt it are taught to follow the advice of Surah 5:101 for these kinds of questions:
in any way is to sin and to start down to the path to hell. Many
O you who believe! Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble.
Thessalonians 5:21:
How different this is from the advice to all Christians in 1
But examine everything carefully; hold fast that that which is good.
sizing things that strengthen their faith in the Quran, rather
The ways Muslims defend the Quran often end up empha-
than carefully examining the foundational issues and demon-
strating their truth to outsiders. Rather, things that are actually irrelevant like the beauty of its sound in Arabic,and the inimitability of its Arabic rhetorical style are what are emphasized. Also, things will often get mixed in that appear at first to be
evidences but which after a deeper look actually become irrel-
evant or insufficient. Some of these are the supposed scientific its text, and asserting there are no contradictions in it.
knowledge in the Quran, the perfection of the transmission of Also, Muslims often try to defend the Quran by attacking
the Bible. The standards they use for their attacks are all ones that are based on what the Quran teaches the Bible hypothetically was. It is not in a form that the Quran presents as its true one (66 books rather than the Torah, Zabur, and Injil). This is also seen in their attacks that its text must be corrupted because what it teaches disagrees with Quranic teaching (the Trinity, that Jesus is God in the flesh, that He was crucified and
raised from the dead, and one must believe in Jesus sacrificial death
and resurrection in order to be forgiven). It is also seen in their assertion that the existence of textual variants for the text of the Bible necessarily means its corrupted (50,000 errors in the Bible!). None of these proofs prove the Bible was changed and the Quran was not, and all of them are ultimately based on the Muslims faith in the Quran, not on a careful and dispassionate examination of available evidence. Christians, on the other hand, defend the Bible on the
history of its preservation that shows it does contain the
authentic and authoritative sayings and teachings of Jesus
and His Apostles (the Christian Scriptures), as well as the
Scriptures given by God to the Jews. Since it does stand up
to historical scrutiny, we know it is a solid basis for our faith outside the faith.
and we can defend it and present it in relevant ways to those
Muslim and Christian Views of Scripture

One basic theological difference between the Bible and the Quran as books of scripture ought to be explained at the outset. Though similar in many respects, the Islamic and
Christian views of scripture are very different in their funda-
mental emphases of conception and use. The Quran presents derived from the Bible itself. It presents an idea of a dictated
an idea of scripture that is very different from any that can be
book delivered by miraculous means from a heavenly original.13 Though some Jews at the time of Jesus had come to a view of the Torah being created 2000 years before the universe, the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian scriptures themselves
present no such idea of being direct representations of a celestial book. Rather, the claim is made that they are the writings of people on earth who were directed in their writing by God.
But the Qurans view is very different from the views of scripture that have been held by the majority of Christians through history, and to the beliefs that are considered sound to Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. The Qurans view and later theological formulation concerning it came about in come to be the Christian and Jewish views of scripture in the 7-9th centuries AD.
situations of comparison, debate and competition to what had
Tahrf
The technical term for these changes to scriptures is tahrf, or corruption. It is a word found in the Quran in verses that are often used to explain this belief that the text of the Bible
meanings. The first is changing the sense of the text, misrep-
was changed.14 As traditionally conceived, tahrf has two main
resenting it as it is presented or explained, as in interpretation

13 Surah 85:21, the Preserved Tablet (al-Lauh al-Mahfz). 14 Surahs 2:75-76; 4:46; 5:13 and 41 especially.
in the Bible can legitimately be interpreted as this misrepreview held by such Islamic scholars as Tabari, Razi and even
or translation.15 All of the verses in the Quran alleging tahrf
sentation of the text, not actual change to the text. This is the Ibn Taymiyyah.16 This then is used to legitimately support the
conclusion that the Quran actually affirms the textual integrity of the Bible, but also recognizing that it criticizes some people for misusing it at the time of Muhammad.
to the text of the Bible itself to obscure its real teaching,
Another view of tahrf is that intentional change was made
involving the substitution of different words on the page for because it asserts the intentional corruption of revelation, a by the very people it was sent to guide and direct. This is
what was originally there. This is a much more severe charge, deliberate and perverse attempt to distort the Word of God the prominent view one hears today, though it was not the
majority view of the earliest Islamic commentators. Translations of the Quran into English are even influenced by this view so that the assertion is made from the Quran when actually the Arabic supports other interpretations of tahrf.17
15 H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974, 560-561. 16 Tabari: al-Tabari, The Commentary on the Quran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1:403-404. Razi, in Mahmoud Ayoub, The Quran and its Interpreters. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984, 121. Ibn Taymiyyah from his Ibn Taymiyyah, A Muslim theologians Response to Christianity. New York: Caravan Books, 1984, 226, 229. 17 Compares the translations of Pickthall Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., to Hilali and Khan, M. Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali and M.M. Khan, Interpretation of the Meanings of the Noble Qurn. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 2001 at S. 2:75; 4:46, 5:13, 41. Pickthall keeps the original ambiguity of tahrif. Hilali and Khan strengthen it to mean change to the written text.
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is usually how the word is interpreted in the Quran. In the
In the early Islamic Quran commentators, the first sense
ninth century, however, belief in the second meaning grew and was applied increasingly to Muslim understandings of prior scriptures.18 Today, the second view is the one normally used
when Muslims speak of the text of the Bible. Most Muslims I and Christians changed their scriptural texts away from what was originally given. They sincerely and passionately believe that Islam was given to restore the true faith originally given and Christians.
have met sincerely believe as fact that at some point, both Jews
to Abraham, but which was later corrupted by rebellious Jews
The Big Questions

The big questions behind this study are: Muslims assert? Muslims claim? 1. Was the New Testament ever changed in the ways that 2. Has the Quran been preserved as faithfully as 3. Why should answering these questions make a difference to Christians, Muslims, and others?
textual histories of the New Testament and the Quran as
This book is an attempt to answer these by comparing the
18 Steven Masood, The Bible and the Quran: A Question of Integrity. Carlisle, Cumbria: OM Publishing, 2001, 75-79, and Colin Chapman, Cross and Crescent. Nottingham: IVP, 2007, 216-220 have useful sections for this point.
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carefully as possible. The unique thing about this study is that it applies the same basic method of textual criticism to the earliest available manuscripts of both the New Testament
and the Quran manuscript traditions.19 The foundation for this study is the analysis of actual manuscripts to see what can show about the original texts of these books and their ensuing histories. kinds of textual variants they contain, and what these variants
inescapable observation that manuscripts have textual variants, and that one precise form of the text has not been preserved in writing. This can also be said for the Quran manuscript tradion its own terms to the same degree as the New Testament. tians can view textual variants:20
The entire practice of NT textual criticism is based on the
tion, even though its manuscript tradition has not been studied Bishop Michael Nazir Ali gave a crucial insight on how Chris-
The survival of variant manuscripts is regarded as a strength by Christian scholars in establishing a critical text of the New Testament. The variations do not appear to compromise either the historical integrity of the New Testament or its reliability as a canon of Christian doctrine in any substantive way. The existence of a large number of manuscripts in different ancient languages, with their origins in widely separated churches yet in substantial agreement
19 It is based on a PhD thesis, Keith Small, Mapping a New Country: Textual Criticism and Quran Manuscripts, Brunel University, London, UK, 2008. 20 Michael Nazir-Ali, Frontiers in Muslim-Christian Encounter. Oxford: Regnum Books, 1987, 48.
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with each other, is an argument in favour of the integrity of the Scriptures.
is extensive and useful,21 especially for approaching questions concerning the oral transmission of the text of the Quran. The parallel transmission of the Quran from the earliest
The variants mentioned in Islamic literature for the Quran
era through both oral and written transmissions is a unique
feature of the Quran tradition. Though both the New Testa-
ment and Old Testament had features of oral transmission in
their historical development, they both ended up relying more settings in which they were recorded and transmitted which were more dependent on written literary conventions than
on written transmission of their texts, as a result of the cultural
oral ones. The Quran, initially occurring in an oral setting also normal conventions of manuscript transcription and transmission that were in use in late near eastern antiquity.
quickly came to be treated as a book to be transmitted through
This Book
Overall, the purpose of this book is to give the reader the best grasp possible for a comparison of the outlines of textual history for both the New Testament and the Quran. When considering supporting arguments for both sides, what often
21 The three most important collections of these are Abd al-Latf Al-Khatb, Mujam al-Qirt. Damascus: Dr Sad al-Dn, 1422/2002, Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurn. Leiden: Brill, 1937, and Abd al-l Slim Makram and Ahmad Muktr Umar, Mujam al-Qirt al-Qurnyah, Maa Maqaddimah f Qirt wa Ashhar al-Qurr. Cairo, Egypt: lam al-Kitab, 1997.
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gets lost is the big picture. After reading this book, the reader should have a good grasp of the big picture so that they can then evaluate individual arguments. Since the New Testament text has been studied in such detail over the last three centuries, reference will be made to standard texts which explain its textual history in more detail. Emphasis will be on the textual to that of the New Testament. history of the Quran, and the comparison of its textual history The similarities and differences in kinds of variants are
explored, taking into account the differences in kinds of script, the development of orthography, the effects of oral tradition on written transmission, and the role of centralized ideological control on the texts. These comparisons are then examined in regard to recovering the earliest possible forms of the texts of both traditions and illuminating the histories of the development of these texts into standardized text-forms. Intentional variants in both traditions are given special attention. Because of limitations of space, this book examines what
this author thinks are the most significant foundational issues, so it will not be an exhaustive presentation of these issues. However, direction will be given for further study, and it is
hoped that the careful reader will obtain a sufficient overview so as to discern what is foundational and what is peripheral when these issues are discussed. :
textual Criticism on the New testament and the Quran .
Youre a Christian? You know, your Bible has been changed.22
All discussions on this topic, whether polemical, apologetic, or irenic ought to be based on facts, but what precisely are the facts here? Has the Bible been changed? In addition to
Muslims, some current New Testament scholars are saying yes, it has been changed for dogmatic reasons. Are they right? Has the Quran been perfectly preserved? Most Muslims believe there a factual basis for this belief? this passionately and it is the usual unspoken assumption. Is Many Evangelical Christians are familiar with the Bible
side of things, especially with statements like, 24,000+ New Testament manuscripts contain the same basic text, or A
22 A common opening comment when I was introduced to a Muslim for the first time.
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critical text for the New Testament based on 200+ years of
concerted research, or We have an extremely reliable version of the original text. These are all things we assert and use to ground our faith. We are used to thinking about such issues
for the New Testament because so much work has been done on its text. We have facsimiles of manuscripts, a multitude of reference works, a critical text based on hundreds of represenup around the questions of textual variants in manuscripts.
tative manuscripts, and an enormous discipline that has grown And even with challenges from scholars like Bart Ehrman and popular books like the DaVinci Code that call a concept of the original text into question, we have a firm basis for believing that the New Testament text has been kept until our day with an extremely high degree of reliability. But what about the Quran? Are there textual variants in
Quran manuscripts? How can we make sense of claims like
Seven ways of reciting the text were given to Muhammad, or There has always been a parallel oral tradition protecting the written text, or So many people had the text memorized
from Islams earliest times that the text could not be corrupted? Also, with manuscript discoveries like those from Sanaa in the 1970s, more questions come to our minds. What kind of textual make of stories of collections Muhammads Companions had
variants do the Sanaa manuscripts actually contain? What do we that supposedly contained substantial textual variants? Are these
chapter 2: textual criticism on the new testament and the qur'an
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in manuscripts? Has a single, precise text of the Quran been kept through a parallel oral tradition? There are some books that address these kinds of issues, but
once you start looking for firm answers to questions about
the history of the text of the Quran on a level that has been Contemporary Muslim scholars recognize that the kind of
done with the New Testament, one finds almost a black hole. work done on the New Testament, at least for gathering and scholarship.23 And the blackness of this hole is then inten-
collating the texts of manuscripts, has not been done in Islamic sified with confusing issues raised about multiple systems
for reciting the Quran, the Companions Collections of the
Quran, alleged Shiite variants, a parallel oral tradition, and been preserved perfectly from the eternal tablet until today. violence to anyone who tampers with Islams holy text.
the dogmatic and constantly asserted claims that the text has And there is also the even blacker background of the threat of All Christian ministries explicitly or implicitly rely on this
factual information concerning the New Testament. When one turns to look for similar information concerning the Quran, however, there is a dearth of information concerning the actual
development of its text as can be traced in manuscripts. Instead,
one is left with contradictory accounts of the reliability of Islamic
tradition which in the end cannot be fully verified or fully falsified.

23 M. M. Al-Azami, The History of the Quranic Text. Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003, 317.
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find answers to these questions.24 For this research, I took narrative portions of the New Testament and the Quran from 20 them for textual variants. I used the established methodolorepresentative manuscripts from each tradition. I then examined gies for textual criticism and applied them to both books. For
A number of years ago I started a research project to try to
the Quran, I was able to use the oldest Quran manuscripts in
European collections as well as three of the earliest manuscripts tive of the oldest Quran manuscripts in the world.
from Sanaa, Yemen. Together, these manuscripts are representaTextual criticism as a discipline seeks to explore two main
issues: recovering the earliest form of the text; i.e. the original that text from the earliest times until today. As I applied the
text if possible, and to also trace the historical development of methods to the New Testament manuscripts I had chosen, I came away with a stronger conviction that we can and have recovered an extremely reliable form of the original text the New Testament. a much greater understanding of the state of the text of the As I applied these methods to the Quran, I came away with
Quran in its manuscript tradition. Concerning the recovery of the earliest form of the text of the Quran, I came to conclusions that challenge many normal assumptions held in the West and among Muslims. Overall, I have found that there
24 A summary of this research can be found in Keith Small, Textual Variants in the New Testament and Quranic Manuscript Traditions, Keith Small, Schlaglichter. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2008, 572-593. This is a summary of some of the findings in the authors PhD thesis, Keith E. Small, Mapping A New Country: Textual Criticism and Quran Manuscripts. Brunel, London School of Theology, 2008. The Quran side of this comparison is to be published in late 2010 by Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, under the title, Textual Criticism and Quran Manuscripts.
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are facts to be gleaned from early manuscript studies have a very direct and practical bearing on even the most popular level discussion concerning the relative reliability of the New
Testament and the Quran. These are things that I believe need to be a matter of public record, and need to be easily accessible for any inquiring person to be able to investigate.
The Goals of Textual Criticism

Textual criticism of manuscripts has been pursued concerning Testament text in particular. Two primary goals of such study have emerged: classical Greek and Latin texts in general, and the Greek New
To establish the original text with as much precision as possible; To trace the historical development of the text. In order to pursue these two goals in a comparative study
of the New Testament and Quran, certain research questions
were adopted. The questions were chosen to highlight the most important comparative issues, taking into account features that are unique to each textual tradition as well as those features that are shared between both of them.
The Key Research Questions

1. What is the earliest attainable text for the Quran that can be discerned through applying textual criticism to existing manuscripts?
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2. What kinds of variants do the New Testament and Quran traditions have in common and what kinds are unique to them respectively?
3. Can the idea of one precise version of the Quran going back to Muhammad be supported from the manuscript evidence?
4. Did a parallel oral tradition act as a strong protection to the precise content and pronunciation of the text of the Quran from the time of Muhammad?
The Research Project

Manageable portions of text from both books were chosen as a basis for comparison, portions of similar length, style, and subject matter. For the Quran, a portion was found that was available in twenty manuscripts. Seven were of Hijazi script, eleven were Kufic, one was Eastern Kufic, one was an Warsh text. The portion chosen was Surah 14:35-41 which features Ibrhm, Isml and Ishq.25
Ottomon Pre-1924/1342 Cairo text, and one was the current
length and genre was chosen from the New Testament, Acts 7:1-8. It features a retelling of Abrahams call to come out
After determining the Quran portion, a portion of similar
25 The manuscripts used are: Istanbul, Museo delle arti turche e islam, Eserleri Muzesi manuscript: IST TIEM SE 54, pictures of which were obtained from Prof. Sergio Noja Noseda; Sanaa manuscripts 01-28.1, 01-29.1, and 01-20.x pictures of which were obtained from a private collector; British Library manuscripts Or. 2165, Or. 12884, and Or.70.a.31; the Samarkand Kufic Quran, the 1905 facsimile version by Pissaref , obtained on microfilm from Princeton University, Paris Bibliotheque Nationale manuscripts Arabe 325a, 326a, 328a, 330c, 331, 332, 333c, 334c, 343, and 370a; the Meknes manuscript pictured in the Bergstrsser photo-archive at the Freie Universitat in Berlin; and a printed copy of the Warsh text obtained in Morocco.
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from Mesopotamia. It mentions Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This portion was then located in 20 representative manuscripts from the New Testament tradition consisting of
papyri, Majuscule/Uncial script manuscripts, and Minuscule representative of the major text-types discerned through Text-types. script manuscripts.26 These also were manuscripts that were
text-critical study: the Western, Alexandrian, and Byzantine The portions of text from all of the manuscripts were
collated in order to highlight any textual variants. The variants observed were then examined, categorized, and analysed. The ment studies which is called Reasoned Eclecticism.27 This method of analysis was the main method used in New Testamethod has been developed over the last two centuries and is accepted critical text of the New Testament.28 It balances
the method that has been used for assembling the most widely external evidence of manuscript age, materials, script style,
provenance (if known), and scribal features with the internal accounts for the origin of any variant readings.
evidence of which reading grammatically and stylistically best The primary goal of textual criticism in all branches of the
discipline whether regarding biblical, religious, or other ancient

26 Using the Gregory system of designating manuscripts, these manuscripts are: p33, p7 4, , A, B, C, D, E, P, 33, 69, 104, 203, 326, 614, 1175, 1505, 1739, 2495, and Mt. Sinai Arabic Manuscript 151. The texts for these were obtained from either the manuscripts, photographs, facsimiles, and published collations. 27 Bruce M. B.M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament. New York: OUP, 2005 28 Eberhard and Erwin Nestle and Barbara and Kurt Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001
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literature is to recover the original reading of the texts that are now extant. Elliott and Moir give this concisely:29
Textual criticism is, primarily, the study of any written work, the original of which no longer survives, with the purpose of recovering that original text from those copies which have chanced to survive A textual critic works back from extant sources to the supposed original text from which all surviving copies ultimately descend.
scholarship has shown that the concept of the original text can be a complicated one in the context of ancient book production and textual transmission.
Recovering the original is the primary goal, but recent
other sacred texts, it has proved particularly useful for illu-
There are also additional purposes for textual criticism. With
minating the history of the transmission of the text, and for logical issues in textual transmission.
discerning evidence for the influence of historical and theo-
What is the Original Text of the Quran?

On the face of it, the question What is the original text of the Quran? may seem a simple one. However, it is actually a complicated issue deserving precise definition. This is especially true when one is dealing with a literary tradition that
operates with a mixture of oral and written literary conven29 Keith Elliott and Ian Moir, Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1.
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tions. For ancient books produced in cultures that preserved,
maintained, and distributed their cultural and religious literacan be viewed as the state of the text when the document left the authors desk to be published and circulated. When oral mances preserved and distributed through oral and written means that could all compete for status as original texts. in the ancient world can be described with the following
tures through predominantly written means, the Original Text
dynamics are introduced, one may have a variety of oral perfor-
The progression of the writing of a published written text
acceptance of the text from its beginnings to widespread and official acceptance. Sources: these are the sources, written and oral, that were
five categories.30 These describe the process of writing and
used to write the text. They might be quoted, paraphrased, refashioned, or used simply as research sources. publication and distribution.
Authors text: this is the text as it left the authors desk for Official version(s): these are versions that after publication
achieved an official status of some sort in a defined geographic area or in a particular group of people. Canonical version: this is a published version that achieves an
official status over a wide geographical area and a large group of people setting it above and distinct from other versions.
30 This is a simplified and expanded version of the categories described by Eldon Epp in Eldon Jay Epp, The Multivalence of the Term Original Text in New Testament Textual Criticism, HTR, 92, 3, 245-81.
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that are edited or refined to a further degree, while retaining a clear relationship with their predecessor.
Revised versions: these are official and canonical versions
Original Text Issues for the Quran

Whatever portions, oral and written, existed in Muhammads lifetime would belong to category 1) Sources. They made up a into an authoritative version. loose collection of original material though it had not been put After Muhammads death, there were collections of this
material in use among his Companions that became official versions in their own right. This is seen in that they were recited and used in different geographic areas where the
Companions went during the early Islamic conquests. These can be considered Official versions, each an official text in its own geographical sphere. It was the use of these different ened the unity of the new Islamic empire and prompted
versions that allegedly caused conflicts so severe they threatUthman to create a single version. The traditions recount that Uthman did this using one companions version for his basic text- Umars which he obtained from Umars daughter Hafsa. official versions), edited and then declared it to be the one
Uthman had this version, (at the time considered one of many Canonical version. Any later versions of this text, such as by
al-Hajjaj and Ibn Mujahid, or any others that added dots to
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consonants or vowels, can be considered later revised versions. Uthmans action, while providing one text, destroyed access to of the Companions, and the loose body of material from within the lifetime of Muhammad. more original versions of the Quran, both the Official versions
lifetime his recitations were recorded in both writing and
According to some Islamic traditions, within Muhammads
by memorization, but not in a complete, organized collec-
complete collection, but there are many reasons which make Muhammads full personal authority behind it, there would
tion.31 There are traditions that assert Muhammad did leave a
this unlikely. For instance, if there was such a collection, with have been no need for Uthman to form a committee to collect versions and edit one of them, and then to disbar and destroy the collections of Muhammads companions. Uthman would have had the complete and authoritative copy from the start tions from the Companions. The earliest available Quran will bring out. and there would have been no question of competing collecmanuscripts confirm this general scenario as well, as this book While the New Testament original text can be largely recov-
ered through textual criticism, only a later edited version of the Qurans can be recovered. Muslim scholars can only point to a precise text of the Quran that is supported by written docu31 See Bukhari Sahih, Kitb 61, Bb 3
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mentation and the consensus of Muslim scholarly opinion
dating mainly to the third and fourth centuries of Islam. For
documenting the history of the text of the Quran before this hadith about the collection of the Quran, and lists of names
they depend on the indirect testimony of isnads associated with of oral transmitters contained on recitation certificates.32 There
is little written documentation verifying the history, preservacrucial early period. Modern textual criticism on manuscripts being done, specific claims for the transmission of the text of many questions can be definitively answered.
tion, and transmission of the precise text of the Quran for this can go a long way toward filling this gap. Without such work the Quran are difficult to prove or disprove. With this work, One reason for the importance of this study is that in much
current Islamic literature a partial and misleading picture is given as to the existence of textual variants in the Qurans manuscript tradition. One will find these in both popular treatments and serious academic studies.33 These tend to
only acknowledge the unintentional errors of scribes. This is
puzzling in that early and medieval Islamic scholarship openly acknowledges textual variants for the Quran that are intentional. One modern acknowledgement of this lack of study is
32 Al-Azami, History, 192-193. 33 For instance, Mona Abul-Fadl, Introducing Islam From Within. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1991, 92 and Al-Azami, History.
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by scholars who have produced a photographic facsimile of the famous Topkapi Quran in Istanbul:34
Until the present day, none of the Mushafs which Caliph Uthman had ordered to be copied and sent to the major centers of the Islamic world was brought to light and constituted the subject of a study. In other words, until the present day such an ancient copy had not been the subject of a comparison between the Mushafs that were copied in the early centuries and those that are read today.
chart that shows textual variants between the Topkai Mushaf, the Cairo Mushaf, and the Samarkand Mushaf, and they are variants that cannot be attributed to simple scribal error.35 This study, too, is just a start, and hopefully an impor-
In their volume, they make an important start by having a
tant one. It is a limited one, and it is hoped that others will do similar and more extensive studies. However, even with its limitations, this study does present representative textual Testament manuscript tradition.
variants from the Qurans manuscript tradition and the New
34 Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, Al-Mushaf al-Sharif, Attributed to Uthmn bin Affn. Istanbul: IRCICA, 2007, 82. 35 Altikulac, Al-Mushaf. , 87-89.
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Table 2.1 New Testament Manuscripts

MS p33 p74 01 A 02 B 03 C 04 Name P. Vindob. G. 17973 Bodmer Papyrus XVII Codex Sinaiticus Codex Alexandrinus Codex Vaticanus Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus Dea 05 Ea 06 Papr 025 Codex Bezae Codex Laudianus Codex Petropolitanus V VI XI Date VI VII IV V IV V Type Papyri Papyri Majuscule Majuscule Majuscule Majuscule Palimpsest Majuscule Majuscule Majuscule Palimpsest 33 69 Paris BN Gr. 14 Codex Leicestrensis IX/X XV Minuscule Minuscule Alexandrian and Byzantine Family 13 Caesarean and Byzantine 104 203 326 614 1175 1505 1739 2495 Arab 151 Harley 5537 Add. 28,816 Lincoln College Gr. 82 Milan B.A. E 97 sup. Ioannou, 16 Lavra, B 26 Lavra, B 64 St. Catherines Monastery Gr. 1342 Mt. Sinai Arabic Codex 151 AD 1087 AD 1111 XI XIII XI 1084? X XIV/XV AD 867 Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Minuscule Kufic Byzantine Byzantine? Alexandrian Western and preByzantine Alexandrian Byzantine Alexandrian Byzantine Related to Syriac and Western III III I III II in Acts III none V for Acts I for Acts V Western Western and Byzantine Byzantine in Acts IV II V in Acts Text-type1 Alexandrian Alexandrian Alexandrian Alexandrian Alexandrian Alexandrian and Byzantine Aland Category2 II I I I in Acts I II
1 These categories are taken from C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994, I:2-7; David A. Black, Textual Criticism. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994, 63-65; Metzger and Ehrman, Text. 52-122. 2 Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament. Leiden: Brill, 198983-158. The Alands explain their categories on pp. 335-337. Categories I-III contain varying degrees of the early text, I containing the most. Manuscripts categorised as IV contain forms of the Western Text. Manuscripts in category V contain text that is predominantly of the Byzantine text-type.
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Table 2.2 Quran Manuscripts

Manuscript3 Date4 Script Style5 H.I B.Ia H.I A/B.Ia H II (H) D I? CI? (K) B Ib (K) H I (H) H I (H) H III H) B Ia (K) C I (K) C III(K) H IV (H) Script Style B II (K) D c (K) C (K) B II (K) NS I10 (K) Naskh Maghribi Manuscript Orientation6 Vertical Vertical Vertical Horizontal Vertical Horizontal Horizontal Horizontal Vertical Horizontal Vertical Vertical Horizontal Horizontal Manuscript Orientation Horizontal Horizontal Horizontal Horizontal Vertical Vertical Vertical Manuscript Material Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Manuscript Material Parchment Parchment Parchment Parchment Paper Paper Paper Orthographic Features7 sd, nsv, cd sd, nsv sd, nsv nd, nsv sd, nsv fd, nsv nd, cd sd, nsv sd, nsv sd, nsv sd, nsv fd, nsv fd, cd sd, cd Orthographic Features fd, cd sd, cd fd, cd sd, cd fv fv fv Verse markers8 1,5,10 1,5,10 1 10 1, 10 1,10 1,5,10 1,10 1,5,10 1,10 1,10 1,10 10 1,5,10 Verse markers 1.5.10 10 10 1,5,10 1,5,10 1,10 1,10 Istanbul 9 Tiem SE 54 01-28.1 01-29.1 01-20.x Or. 2165 SamK BN 325a BN 326a BN 328a BN 330a BN 331 BN 332 BN 333c BN 334c Manuscript I I I I I II II II I II II II III III Date
BN 340c BN 343 BN370a Meknes Or. 12884 Sharif Warsh
III IV IV III IV XI XV
3 This is the manuscript number used in their respective catalogues. 4 These are the hijri (AH) dates given in the respective catalogues for these manuscripts as to the century according to the Islamic calendar. For the Paris manuscripts, since Droche does not generally give dates, they are from the earlier DeSlane catalogue. 5 Generally, these are the categories devised by Droche in Franois Droche, Catalogue des Manuscrits Arabes. Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1983 and Franois Droche, The Abbasid Tradition. London: Nour Foundation, 1992 unless noted otherwise. The more general categories of H&ijzi and Kufic are noted in parentheses as (H) and (K) respectively. 6 This refers to the orientation of the page as to a vertical book format or a horizontal one. 7 Abbreviations used are: nd- no diacritics, fd- few diacritics; sd- some diacritics; md- many diacritics; nsv- no short vowels; cd- coloured dots for some vowels; fv- fully vocalised with diacritics and short vowels. 8 These are verse separators, usually seen as single verse, 5 verse, and 10 verse separators. 9 This manuscript will be referred to as the Istanbul manuscript for convenience. 10 Droche designates this style New Style I Droche, Tradition. 136-137.
Kinds of Variants in New testament and Quran Manuscripts
It must follow that any history of the book- subject as books are to typographic and material change- must be a history of misreadings.36
The practice of textual criticism on manuscripts is based on the inescapable observation that all manuscript traditions contain textual variants, and that one exact form of any ancient text has not been preserved in writing. Variants do enter the process of textual transmission, and even the earliest manuscripts in both cannot be completely reconciled. Hence there is the need for scholarly evaluation to determine and suggest the best text that explains the origin of the variants.
the New Testament and Quranic traditions show variants that
36 D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. London: The British Library, 1986, 16.
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many textual variants were encountered in both textual traditions. For the New Testament, a wide variety of written variants was observed. These included:37
Within the limited portions of text that were surveyed,
observed in scribal practice. These can be things like the accidental duplication of letters or words or lines, acciinvolving vowels.
Copyist mistakes- normal kinds of unintentional errors
dental omissions, and variable spelling of words, especially Intentional variants- variants which seem to have been
made in an effort to correct grammar or spelling, to improve style, or even strengthen or establish a particular religious belief. to phrases.
These variants ranged in length from individual letters Whereas the New Testament manuscripts surveyed
presented a variety of written variants, comparatively, the
Quran manuscripts presented a much more restricted variety of written variants. They were fewer in number and kind, though unintentional and intentional variants were found.
Usually, these Quran variants were no more than a letter in in the chosen manuscripts that were the length of a phrase
length or at very most a short word. No variants were observed or longer. Emphasis was given to variants of the consonantal
37 These will just be summarised in this book. Complete details are available in the thesis, and treatments of the normal kinds of variants encountered in New Testament manuscripts are available in all of the major New Testament introductions.
chapter 3: kinds of varients in new testament and qur'an manuscripts
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line of the text, since the earliest Quran manuscripts have marks and no short vowel notation marks.
very sporadic and inconsistently placed consonantal diacritical
Proper Names
One category of consonantal variant encountered in the Quran manuscripts were variants in the proper names. Variants were encountered for all three of the names in the selected portion, Ibrhm, Isml, and Ishq. Concerning Ibrhm, it was observed that two forms, Ibrahim and Ibrahm which differ by one consonant, the omission or addition of the final y (both did not contain the medial alif). These forms
were used interchangeably in the earliest manuscripts surveyed. These variations were sometimes found within the same surah, and even on the same page. This is different from the current accepted text of the Quran which has one consonantal form in Surah 2 (Ibrahim) and a slightly different one in all other locations (Ibrahm). Here are examples: At Surah 14:35, in the manuscript BNF 328a, the form
is found which in the current text is only found in Surah 2, Ibrahim.38
38 BNF Arabe 328a, folio 53a, line 10.
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01-29.1, the form is found which is the form found at this Quran except Surah 2, Ibrahm.39
At the same place, Surah 14:35 in the Sanaa manuscript
place in the currently accepted text and everywhere else in the
interchangeably in the earliest manuscripts surveyed.
These forms were found in many manuscripts and were used In one of the earliest manuscripts used, a similar variant was
observed for the name Ismal, with the y omitted, which
made the word read Ismail (short final i) instead of Ismal (long final i). Here is how the word looks in a Hijazi script manuscript from Istanbul:40
39 Sanaa 01.29-1, line 17. 40 Istanbul, Museo delle arti turche e islam, Eserleri Muzesi manuscript: IST TIEM SE 54, f. 11b, line 2.
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and in all later manuscripts. This example is taken from the manuscript BNF Arabe 326a:41
Here is the way it normally looks in these early manuscripts
an additional alif is found in the spelling of Ishq. The current text usually represented by a dagger alif so that the long a sound of of the Quran does not contain this full form of alif, though it is
In a later manuscript, probably from the third Islamic century,
the alif is pronounced. Here is the way Ishq is normally found in the early manuscripts, without a full alif. This is how it is written in the manuscript BNF 370a:42
41 BNF Arabe 326a, folio 3 verso, line 2. 42BNF Arabe 370a, folio 3 recto, line 6.
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Here is Ishq with the full alif as found in BNF 333c:43
spelling of other names in early Quran manuscripts, a survey was done in various manuscripts of some other prominent names. While some names were spelled in consistently one the earliest Quran manuscripts.44
In order to understand how these variants compare to the
form, four names were found to be spelled in variant ways in
Tawrat: Can be found in 2 forms: Shatn: Can be found in 3 forms: Isrl: Can be found in 2 forms: Dd: Can be found in 4 forms:
43BNF Arabe 333c, folio 42 recto, line 7. 44Some of the names that were spelled consistently one way are Musa, Isa, Yunus and Miriam. Details of the manuscripts in which these variant spellings can be found are in the thesis. Two prime sources were Efim A. Rezvan, The Qurn of Uthmn. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Centre for Oriental Studies, 2004 and the CD-ROM from UNESCO which contains 300 pictures of early Quran manuscripts from Yemen: San Manuscripts, Memory of the World, UNESCO, Cairo, Egypt: Ritsec Cultureware.
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as copyist mistakes if they are described at all. However, their frequency of use in manuscripts which in all other respects show extreme care in scribal practice lead one to believe that
Sometimes, variants in the spelling of names are described
they were acceptable alternative forms of spelling at the time
they were inscribed. James Barr, in a book on spelling variation in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), coined a useful phrase for this phenomenon, that they are zones of variable multiple ways that were all considered acceptable spelling. spelling.45 They are words that at one time were written in
Later, their spellings were standardized to one particular form.
Diacritical Mark Variants

Unlike the New Testament tradition, the Quran manuscript tradition has diacritical mark variants. These are variations in the placement of dots used to distinguish one consovariant observed:
nant from another. There were two kinds of diacritical mark 1. Diacritical marks that demonstrated that slightly different 2. Diacritical marks that were used according to a particular has become the standard reading of the text. systems of diacritical marks were in use, and
system but that designated different consonants from what
45 James Barr, The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 204.
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Variable Diacritical Mark Systems

The earliest manuscripts in Hijazi script seemed to employ a fairly uniform system, but the system was inconsistently applied. This system is identical to the current system in use,
except for a small degree of variation. For instance, two of the Bibliotheque Nationale 328a used the basic system of designot always mark the same consonants, and neither of them
earliest Hijazi manuscripts, British Library Or. 2165 and Paris nating consonants that is still in use today. However, they did marked all of the consonants. One letter, nun, is representa-
tive. In the sample portion obtained from Or. 2165, 67% of the nuns were dotted with one dot over the consonant. In the same portion of Paris BNF 328a, 30% of them were dotted. Different systems of using dots were also observed for
certain consonants. Four methods for designating fa and
qaf were observed among the manuscripts surveyed.46 Two methods for designating jim, ha, and kha were observed.47 The earliest Quran manuscripts in Kufic script were either
completely without consonantal diacritics, or they contained some that were sporadically applied. Here are examples of both:
46 The four systems observed are: 1) f one dot above, qaf two dots above: BN 325a, BN 326a, 01-28.1, Hafs, and Sharf; 1a) (only fs dotted) BN 330a, BN 331, and BN 334c; 2) f one dot underneath, qaf one dot above: Istanbul, Warsh; 3) one dot above for the f and one beneath for qaf: 01-29.1; and 4) neither dotted: (neither dotted) Or. 2165, 01-20.x, Samarkand Kufic, BN 328a, BN 332, BN 333c, BN 340c, BN 343, BN 370a, Meknes Quran. 47 If these letters were designated, all but one of the manuscripts used the current system for distinguishing these letters. 01-29.1, from Sanaa and . Letters with a single dot below match however, used single dots above some letters so marked in the current system: . is noted with one dot below rather than two above. is distinguished with a dot to the right letters that currently carry no dot: and are not distinguished with dots at all. side.
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None: Kufic Script in Sanaa 01-20.x

This early manuscript from the first Islamic century is devoid of consonantal diacritical marks.
None: Kufic Script in Paris BNF Arabe 340c

This manuscript, dated to the third Islamic century has but the consonants are devoid of diacritical marks. coloured dots to indicate vowels and a pattern of vocalzation,
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Some: the Paris Manuscript BNF Arabe 331

This manuscript, dated to the second Islamic century, like many manuscripts from this period has some but not all of the discretion of the individual scribe, because there is not a set
consonantal letters pointed. They also seem to be applied at the standard of the amount of application between manuscripts.
Diacritical Variants Specifying a Different Meaning

Occasionally, one will find that the diacritical marks that are to be the accepted standard text. The New Testament tradidesignated indicate a different form of the word than has come tion does not have this kind of variant because of the nature
of Greek script. The case and grammatical relationships often Testament through letters added to words as prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. Comparatively, this facet of the scripts results in
expressed by these diacritical marks are represented in the New
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more numerous variants within the New Testament tradition. However, in Quran manuscripts, if the dots are not there, the text can be read in a variety of ways without there being clear
evidence of a textual variant. For the Quran, one is left with a potential of containing many textual variants. These can have an effect on the meaning as is seen in the following example:
comparatively more ambiguous text with an internal unwritten
T instead of y
14:41 Sanaa 01-29.148
rather than when it is reckoned Sanaa 01-29.1
(here in BNF 334c ): When you reckon the account

49
instead of the standard reading
BNF 334c
Omitted Word
Occasionally one will find a word missing that is found in what has come to be the standard text.14:37:2 BNF 340c(bridging the second and third lines in this image),50
48 Sanaa 01-29.1, line 27. 49 BNF Arabe 334c, folio 34 recto, line 20. 50 BNF Arabe 340c, folio 36 recto, lines 13-14.
42
instead of what is now the standard of this image from BNF 370a).51
(bottom line
Different Word
Occasionally one will find a different word from what is found which substituted the conjunction wa for fa: S. 14:37 BNF 328ainstead of in the current standard text. Here is an example of a correction
:52
51 BNF Arabe 370a, folio 2 verso, line13. 52BNF Arabe 328a, folio 53a, line 15.
43
Heres the normal reading from BNF 331:53
similar to substitutions found in New Testament manuscripts of kai for de.
In English, this is like substituting and for then. This is
Physical Corrections in Quran Manuscripts

These are physical corrections made either by the original Testament tradition and is a relatively frequent feature in scribe or a later one. This is a common feature in the New early Quran manuscripts. There does seem to be, however, a respective texts.
significant difference in why the corrections were made to the With the Quran manuscripts the corrections were mostly to
cause the text to conform to what is now considered to be the standard Uthmanic consonantal text. Out of nine of corrections observed in these manuscripts, six of them, 67%, were
apparently for this reason. The most significant of this kind of
53BNF Arabe 331, folio 24 recto, line 6.
44
correction was found in Paris BNF 370a at 14:39 involving what is now the standard phrase,
Who has given me in my old age, Isml and Ishq. It bridges lines two and three in this image.54
different phrase. This original phrase was completely defaced text, which itself has since become mostly defaced through
Apparently, at this point of the text there was originally a
and replaced with what is now considered to be the standard the ink flaking off the page. The interesting thing to note is script style and the words and letters are squeezed into the
that what remains of this added text is in a slightly different space that was made available by defacing the original text.
This is an indication that the original phrase was probably a was a shorter form of wording. There were also a number of
different reading from what the later scribe inserted, one that smaller corrections on this particular manuscript page that had
54 BNF Arabe 370a, folio 3 recto, lines 4-5.
45
the same net effect of adjusting the reading of the text to the Canonical form.
Corrections in New Testament Manuscripts

The physical corrections found in the New Testament manuscripts were mostly to correct obvious scribal mistakes, or to improve grammar or style, or to conform the text to the reading of another manuscript, thought to be more trustworthy. Here is a typical example of a grammatical correction found in Manuscript 69 at Acts 7:4, where the Greek word tn for land is inserted above the line of text to make the text read land of the Chaldeans.55 This is in the same script style original scribe. and ink as the main text and seems to have been done by the
in the manuscripts surveyed for this study comprising twelve

55 69, Codex Leicestrensis, folio 168 recto, line 24.
This kind of correction seems to be the most prevalent type
46
of seventeen, 71%, of the observed corrections. What is also seem to have been to conform the text to a recognized
significant is that none of the seventeen corrections observed standard text-form. The closest was if a correction was made to adjust the text of one manuscript to the text of another thought to have a better reading. This was not, though, an
understanding of a better text that was considered a universal or official standard but was instead a judgement made in the mind of the individual scribe according to his knowledge of Greek grammar and scribal practice.
this writer has observed is below, a portion of a page from the book of Esdras (Ezra in current Bibles) in the Old Testament portion of Codex Sinaiticus.56 It has a collection on one page of almost all the ways Greek biblical texts were correctednotes between the lines and in the margins, minor erasures,
The most extensive set of corrections to a page of the Bible
dots marked over letters and words needing correction. What
is not done is the major erasure of a portion of text for it to be individual corrections made by various scribes on their own tical authority.
replaced with a more official or standard form of text. They are personal authority, not on behalf of some political or ecclesias-
56 Codex Sinaiticus, Quire 36, folio 4r. Accessed at: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=8.
47
48
Intentional Changes for Orthographic Conventions

This kind of variant is where as a language and its spelling conventions change over time, manuscripts are updated to reflect this development. These are intentional changes to keep the reading of a manuscript relevant to its latest generation of readers. Both traditions had significant numbers of these. It was the single largest category by far in the Quran tradition.
Both traditions had variable spelling with proper names. Both traditions exhibited a limited degree of spelling variation in a variety of kinds of words, mainly with the spelling of vowels these reflect the development in the standardization of the
and vowel combinations. With the earliest Quran manuscripts use of the long vowels alif, y and ww. For the New Testa-
ment, similar sounding vowels were often interchanged, and to a perceived better and more classical standard of spelling. the text, especially in the Quran manuscripts. For the later Quran manuscripts, the improvements to the script were more substantial to make it more precise both in meaning and pronunciation. There was a series of improvements to
in some, there appeared to be a tendency to conform spelling These changes occasionally have an effect on the meaning of
completely remove phonetic and interpretive ambiguity from adding diacritical marks to consonants, adding short vowels,
the Arabic script itself by standardising the use of long vowels,
49
and the invention and introduction of the letter hamza. The
New Testament manuscripts did not contain a range of development that corresponded to this in the Quran manuscripts, neither in degree or kind.
Intentional Changes for Grammatical Correction

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

One category the Quran manuscripts contained that the New Testament ones did not was to change the text to make it match what was viewed as the official or Canonical text. The improvements to the text observed in the New Testa-
ment manuscripts appeared to be made by individual scribes
50
working on individual manuscripts to correct and improve the manuscript before them according to their personal understanding of grammar, and whatever other manuscripts they
might have had immediately available to them. Ecclesiastical
authorities in the Christian tradition were concerned with the be authentic or inauthentic, not with establishing the precise form of the text of each individual book.57 With the Quran, though, if Islamic tradition is to be
inclusion or exclusion of complete books that were thought to
accepted as reliable, there was from the time of the third
Caliph Uthman a strong official effort to control the precise form of text found in written manuscripts. Evidence of this was observed in the corrections involving erasure and also in much of the updating of the orthography. Over the first
four Islamic centuries there was an overarching concern to In the end, one main form of consonantal text was established and a limited degree of variability of its pointing
establish a precise form of text that Muslims could unite on.
allowed in the approval of the Ten reading systems. Also, it should be mentioned that some of these canonical reading textual variants.58 systems among the Ten do contain a few small consonantal
57 Two excellent books on the selection of books for the Bible are F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988 and B.M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. 58 See Brother Mark, A Perfect Quran. Privately published, 2000and Yasin Dutton, An Early Mushaf According to the Reading of Ibn mir, Journal of Quranic Studies, III, 1, 71-90 for examples of these consonantal differences.
51
respective scribes worked diligently to accurately transmit the texts that were before them. They were concerned with high degrees of precision in their work, and they maintained a
Overall, both textual traditions demonstrated that their
tremendous standard of textual fidelity through the centuries
for their respective traditions. They were human, though, and
subject to personal shortcomings as well as linguistic, political and religious developments of their times. Their devotion and handled what to them were holy objects of scripture. : diligence are to be admired and commended as they reverently
Comparisons
The pen is the plough which cultivates the field of truth.
Anonymous
without truth, is but an old error.

- C y p r i a n 59
Custom, though ever so ancient,
Comparisons between two very different textual transmissions have very different kinds of scripts, and were preserved and transmission dynamics. However, by keeping these distinc-
need to be made carefully. The New Testament and the Quran transmitted with very different proportions of oral and written tives in mind, and comparing the kinds of written transmission conventions the two traditions have in common, meaningful texts and their transmission histories. When one carefully comparisons can be made in regard to their respective original examines the minutiae of these respective traditions in iden59 Thomas Fielding, Select Proverbs of All Nations. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, 207.
53
54
tifying textual variations, and then one steps back to gain a be made.
bigger picture, certain significant comparative observations can
Major Observations
1. The Quran variants from the early manuscripts demonstrated a level of variability in the Arabic spelling that existed before the script and the Quran text were phonetically standardized in the tenth century AD/fourth century sion, flexibility and latitude in certain features in the text. AH. In these early centuries, there was a degree of impreci2. The degree of ambiguity of meaning in words that contained no consonantal diacritical marks or only partial ones were context of the word in dispute. There was still ambiguity lessened but not solved by examining the immediate literary observed in regard to person and gender of certain forms, as well as the precise meanings available from the unpointed 3. There were examples of omitted and different words in consonantal text.
Quran manuscripts. These were rare in the surveyed manuscripts, and there were no instances of omitted or different words involving two or more words or phrases. This lack of such variants is very different from the New Testament and other ancient textual traditions, and points to a more formal and official effort to establish a unified text. This is
chapter 4: comparisons
55
also reflected in the lack of textual variants that consisted of
radically different consonantal pointing. One further feature in the very earliest available manuscripts. These testify to text by an editor/compiler. Together with the witness of
that strengthens this is the presence of verse ending markers deliberate collection, arrangement, and organization of the Islamic tradition as to such projects, these textual features provide strong evidence of an early standardization of the Quran text even before the inscription of the earliest available manuscripts. This is especially true if the first-century AH dates assigned to many of the Hijazi and some of the 4. The larger range of New Testament variants does not Kufic manuscripts are accurate.
substantially affect the content or message of the text. Often, the variants expressed in additional or omitted words were the kind of grammatical variants that were allowed by the ambiguity of the unpointed consonantal text, or through alternative pointing of consonants. Likewise, the variants of the texts involved. They would have, however, affected recitation and precise interpretation of the Quran.
observed for the Quran do not radically affect the meaning
5. The New Testament textual variants show a more normal
variety of variants compared to other literary traditions. This is seen especially in the presence of variants involving words and phrases in the manuscripts surveyed. These features
56
point to an informal attitude toward textual standardization, one that occurred without an official authority prescribing a particular form of the text, but rather one that occurred
over centuries because of outside influences like persecution. Also, through the general dynamics of the copying practices employed in various scriptoria in monasteries.
6. The significance of all of these observations is heightened by sests are manuscripts in which the original text written on re-used for the writing of a new text. Depending on how what is being discovered in Quranic palimpsests.60 Palimp-
the parchment was washed off and the parchment was then thoroughly the manuscript was washed, and other factors
like the kind of ink used and conditions of preservation, the original reading can sometimes be read using the naked eye or with the help of infrared and ultraviolet light. Palimpsests exist in many manuscript traditions, including the
New Testament tradition. Until recently, only one Quranic at least four more are known, two of which have been picture of one page of a Quranic palimpsest.63 palimpsest was known to Western scholarship,61 but now
examined and described academically.62 Here is a partial
60 Alba Fedeli, Early Evidences of Variant Readings in Qurnic Manuscripts, Karl Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, Die dunklen Anfnge. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2005, 293-316; Keith E. Small and Elisabeth Puin, UNESCO CD of San MSS: Part III, Manuscripta Orientalia, 13, 2, June 2007, 59-71 61 Alphonse Mingana and Agnes Smith Lewis, Leaves From Three Ancient Qurns, Possibly Pre-Uthmnic. Cambridge: CUP, 1914, 62 Fedeli, Evidences, 293-316, examines two of these, folios which passed through the Bonhams and the Fogg auction houses in London. Two further ones are known to exist in Sanaa and are mentioned in Small and Puin, UNESCO CD III. These two manuscripts have not been published. 63 Sam Fogg, Islamic Calligraphy. London, 2003. This manuscript is one of the palimpsests examined by Fedeli.
57
contain the text of Surah 14:35-41 used in this research, when one examines the kinds of variants found in palimpsests that have been examined, one finds variants of a substantially different nature from those found in the rest of the Quranic manuscript tradition. Quranic palimpsests contain a closer sampling of the variety of variants as found in the New Testaand even sentences. Physical corrections in manuscripts and and suppression of variant texts which Islamic tradition has long recognized.
Though no palimpsest manuscripts are yet known that
ment manuscripts, especially including variant words, phrases, palimpsests provide substantial evidence of the standardization
Informal vs. Formal Standardization

In contrast to the Qurans situation, the New Testament text came to be standardized through an informal process which occurred over centuries. There were external forces such as the Diocletian persecution which placed a limiting factor on the
58
variety of text-types that were being copied. This, together
with imperial edicts to replace destroyed Bibles gave prominence to a form of the text which was one of few before the persecution. This had the cumulative effect of narrowing the was copied and stylistically improved as it was adapted for
scope of variants exhibited in manuscripts as this type of text use in liturgy. Also, since the Western church had embraced
a Latin translation of the text as their official text, the Greek
tradition was mainly preserved in the Eastern portions of the Greek New Testament manuscript tradition was no longer
Roman Empire where Greek was the dominant language. The cross-pollinated with Greek manuscripts from throughout the Christian world, as had been the case in the first three Christian centuries. One scholar has made the general comparative statement concerning the Quran, 64
But while it may be true that no other work has remained for twelve centuries with so pure a text, it is probably equally true that no other has suffered so drastic a purging.
the New Testament and the Quran. Though New Testaments were destroyed in one state-sponsored persecution under Diocletian in the early 300s, the Quran went through at least
This statement is certainly true for the comparison between
64 L. Bevan Jones, The People of the Mosque. London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1932, 62.
59
two and possibly three formal efforts to standardize its text under Islamic leadership.
Major Differences
Though there were similarities, the differences in kinds of variants between the two traditions were more pronounced. It is also in these differences that the most important comparisons concerning their textual histories are found. The three most significant had to do with 1) the amount of concern demonstrated for establishing a precise form of the text,
2) the role of oral tradition in the preservation of the text, manuscript traditions.
and 3) the place of longer textual variants in the respective The longer variants involving complete words and phrases
are perhaps the most noticeable kind of textual variant. They are found in the New Testament manuscript tradition. Just
also have the greatest effect on the meaning of the text. They in this sampling, Acts 7:4 has an additional phrase in some
manuscripts. Longer variants in the New Testament tradition that extend from a phrase to multiple sentences, as with the long version of the ending of Marks Gospel, Mark 16:9-20 or the story of the women caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 are well known and documented in actual manuscripts. None of the Qurn manuscripts collated for this study
contained variants of even a phrase. Though longer variants are
60
discovered during this research that had longer variants were the palimpsests and two manuscripts in Scottish university collections.66 The Islamic literature concerning textual variants would have been portions in the Sources for the Quran, the occasionally includes longer variants.67 These kinds of variants
reported in Islamic tradition,65 the only Qurn manuscripts
Authorial version and later official text-forms of the Companions, though they have been excluded from the Canonical one of Uthman and al-Hajjaj. None of the manuscripts examined and collated for this study had the longer variants. The Qurnic tradition showed itself to have much more
concern with the precise form of the text than the New Testament tradition. This was evident from the earliest available forms of these texts. The earliest available Qurnic manuthe Qurnic palimpsests showed a degree of variability in exhibited in the New Testament manuscript tradition.
scripts contained a very precise consonantal line of text. Only the consonantal text that approached the degree of flexibility However, there was potentially more semantic ambiguity in
the unpointed Qurnic script than the more flexibly spelled and worded New Testament script because of the characteristics of their respective scripts. Even though there was a
65 See Hossein Modarressi, Early Debates on the Integrity of the Quran, Studia Islamica, 77, 5-39 for a list of these. 66 These are mentioned and pictured in the appendix of Adrian Alan Brockett, Studies in Two Transmissions of the Qurn. University of St. Andrews, Department of Arabic Studies, 1984. 67 See Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurn. Leiden: Brill, 1937; Abd al-l Slim Makram and Ahmad Muktr Umar, Mujam al-Qirt al-Qurnyah, Maa Maqaddimah f Qirt wa Ashhar al-Qurr. Cairo, Egypt: lam al-Kitab, 1997; and Abd al-Latf Al-Khatb, Mujam al-Qirt. Damascus: Dr Sad al-Dn, 1422/2002 for many such examples.
61
more flexibly spelled and worded New Testament text, the
meaning it conveyed was more precise than that which could be conveyed through an unpointed Arabic text because the grammatical relationships of the words in the New Testament text were explicitly notated. One scholar has noted that the was largely due to the need to precisely interpret Qurnic development of Arabic orthography in Qurn manuscripts texts.68 The orthographic development observed in the collated
Qurn manuscripts made the script both a script that could be precisely pronounced for a unified recitation and a script that could be precisely interpreted for instruction and dogma.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the New Testament, having a wider range of variants, shows a lack of active standardization of the text and tradition with small exceptions presents an informal stan-
a lack of organized suppression of variant texts. Its manuscript dardization process of the text, and one which allows access textual criticism.
to most of the Authors text through conventional methods of Concerning the Quran, one written form of the consonantal
text has been kept extremely well, but the process for establishing and keeping this form of text meant the destruction and suppression of variant written texts, and the initial and
68 E. Rezvan, The First Qurans, E. Rezvan, Pages of Perfection. St. Petersburg: ARCH Foundation, 1995, 108-117, citing 108-109.
repeated editing and improvement of the remaining text over a 300 year period to make the orthography of the Quran a (or ten) recitations. : complete phonetic system which could precisely present seven
Conclusion
He who conceals an useful truth, is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood.
- A u g u s t i n e 69
It is better to know things than to not know things.

Moroccan proverb
The entire practice of textual criticism with manuscripts is
based on the inescapable observation that manuscripts have been perfectly preserved in writing. From very early times,
textual variants, and that one precise form of the text has not there was an awareness of textual variants in the Qurans tradition which was accompanied by a desire to bring them under official control. As a result, over the centuries what emerged for the Quran was a compromise between the exact text,
the originals of which could not be recovered, and a generalized variant regularizing the consonantal text and allowing a
69 Thomas Fielding, Select Proverbs of All Nations. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, 208.
63
64
limited latitude of variation, all which would meet with broad acceptance from a wide variety of groups within Islam.70 A simple picture for comparison between the New Testa-
ment and the Quran is provided by shopping for groceries in organically grown and food that is commercially produced
the West. There is often a distinction made between something using methods of mass production and chemical and genetic intervention. To extend this picture to the New Testament and Quran manuscript traditions, the New Testament tradition is more like the organic side of the supermarket, where the original form grew into a tradition with very little outside tian persecution which ordered the destruction of all Chris-
intervention. The only major exception to this was the Diocletian books, not just ones of a particular text form. There were informal controls on the transmission process in the form of normal scribal practices and book production and distribution, but there was not an overarching religious or political authority deciding that a particular form of the text ought to be preserved at the expense of others. That is why there in manuscripts.
are textual variants of a wide spectrum of types can be found The Quran, however, is more like the other kind of food
produced for the supermarket, food that has been improved
in order to make it conform to a desired ideal like a super70 Efim A. Rezvan, Mingana Folios: When and Why, Manuscripta Orientalia, 11: 4: 2.
chapter 5: conclusion
65
market accepting only carrots of a certain length and colour, visible blemishes, and then the suppliers being told to only
or oranges of a certain size, variety and colour, these without plant and supply these ideal versions. The rest of the produce
that does not make the grade is destroyed and suppressed, and can even go out of existence as a variety of that food. Instead of the most original forms of the text of the Quran being preserved, what has been preserved and transmitted for the
form of these texts that was chosen from amidst a group of A picture from forestry can provide another useful illus-
others, which was then edited and canonized at their expense. tration. Coppicing is a practice where certain kinds of small
trees are regularly pruned back to the stumps so that they can grow again and provide a steady supply of material for crafts, individual books that were planted that came to be gathered small poles and firewood. For the New Testament, there were into the New Testament. Within the first century two major the same root and these trunks grew new major branches,
trunks, especially for the Gospels and Acts had sprouted from often called the Western and Alexandrian text-types. The
Diocletian persecution had an unforeseen effect in that it cut one of these trunks down, and trimmed a lot of the smaller branches away from the other. The remaining trunk grew and
was pruned over the centuries into a distinctive textual shape.
66
program of cutting. Instead of one tree, it was like many trees sprouting from the same root, like a cluster of oak sprouts from a buried hoard of acorns. From these sprouts, a few
The Qurn had a different beginning and a different
grew into the authoritative text-forms of the Companions
collections. There were many trunks sharing the same root of material planted within Muhammads lifetime. At Muhammads death these trunks became independent trees still sharing the same root system. Uthman pruned these back
to one trunk, and then shaped this trunk through grafts and prunings into a distinctive shape. This became a strong tree, but the root continued to send out shoots, and the main trunk years there were fifty+ trunks or major branches sharing the
continued to grow new branches so that within three hundred same root system. Ibn Mujahid and others then pruned these away all of the other trunks or shoots coming independently also been allowed to sprout ten branches each. Two of these
back to ten major branches from the main trunk and trimmed from the root. These branches have been maintained but have eighty branches have been put into print in this last century. become a trimming job on minor branches. The trunk and main branches are in place. The smaller branches are what need pruning.
Recovering the Authors text-form of the New Testament has
67
recovered. One trunk of many survives which was heavily
For the Quran, the original forms of the trees cannot be
pruned and grafted onto at the outset. It has since been subject to two further major pruning exercises. Also, this metaphor breaks down in the complexity of the pruning/editing that was done to the Quran. The earliest Canonical text-form
that can be recovered is a consonantal text in its basic outline of diacritics and the precise vocalization of the short vowels are later Interpretive texts. They were not fixed until the
without diacritical dots or vocalization marks. The set patterns
third/tenth century when Ibn Mujahid legitimised the Seven reading systems. The two forms of text in print today are Interpretive texts of two of the seven readings. These two texts of Hafs (d. 796/180 ) and Warsh (d. 812/197), but this cannot be confirmed by manuscripts of those early dates. Instead, we
might date back to before the time of Ibn Mujahid to the lives
have only the indirect testimony from later tradition that their oral versions attributed to them started within their lifetimes. Discerned in the Manuscript Tradition? Can an Early, Strong Standardization of the Quran Text Be Yes, an early and strong standardization of the Quran
text can be discerned in the manuscript tradition. Three
phenomena make it plainly evident. First, there is the degree of agreement in the form of the consonantal text seen across all of the manuscripts that were collated. The degree of agreement
68
is truly phenomenal when it is compared to other textual traditions such as that of the New Testament. The relatively small numbers of unintentional and intentional variants are quite noteworthy. In and of itself, this degree of agreement does
not prove standardization. It could be testimony to extremely accuracy in transcription than other manuscript traditions. But taken with the next two phenomena, it becomes clear
careful scribal practice and a higher concern for precise verbal
that while there was extreme care taken in the transcription a level of standardization well above that of the New Testament tradition.
process, there were also extraordinary external forces ensuring
in Quranic palimpsests. These were found to be more of
The second factor is the kinds of textual variants observed
the same kinds found in the New Testament tradition. They
demonstrate a concern for accuracy to convey meaning with New Testament textual tradition. That these kinds of texts were erased demonstrates that strong external forces were
a degree of flexibility in word choice that also marks the early
brought to bear on the textual transmission of the Quran to
edit the text and ensure uniformity, even at the cost of the irrevocable loss of early Quranic material. This view is strengthened further when one considers the corrections found in manuscripts that conform the text to a Canonical text-form.
69
tion and literature to textual variants for the text of the Quran. With this is also the open acknowledgement of two official efforts to standardize the text of the Quran which involved
The third factor is the extensive testimony in Islamic tradi-
the physical destruction of variant texts. At least two attempts have been made by central religious authorities, one attrib-
to standardize the text and destroy variant texts are reported to uted to Uthman (c. 653/33), and one attributed to Al-Hajjaj
(c. 705/86). Also, after the description of seven systems by Ibn Mujahid (c. 934/323) authorities punished the use of reading ones recitation from known variants, which prior to this systems that contained rare textual variants, or of constructing appears to have been allowable.71 And a similar attitude of
preventing alternative forms of the text by the use of suppression or destruction of texts continues to the present day. In the 1920s the German professor Gotthelf Bergstrsser
was prevented from photographing a manuscript because
allowing a Western scholar to view and document its unique
features was not consistent with orthodoxy.72 A more recent
example occurred in relation to the manuscript finds in Sanaa, might find something detrimental to traditional Islamic
Yemen during the 1970s. Over concerns that Western scholars dogma concerning the Quran, the following request appeared
71 Christopher Melchert, Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Quranic Readings, Studia Islamica, 91, 5-22, 20-21. 72 Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurn. Leiden: Brill, 1937, 10.
70
in the letters to the editor of the English language version of the Yemeni Times,73
Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents. Also, please rebury them or if they are not exact reproductions, please burn them. Allah help us against our enemies.
uniformity of text to anything less than the involvement of a strong, centralized religious authority. This is especially true when one considers the kind of texts that are reported to have collections of Quranic material all being read and recited as authoritative scriptural texts. There was not one initial,
It would be difficult to attribute such a high degree of
existed prior to the efforts to unify the text. There were various
original text from the period of Muhammads career which
was preserved with this high degree of precision. Instead, at available was chosen to be the one text everyone would
best, one of the collections from among the various versions use. It was then edited heavily, and the others were forcibly suppressed, not because they were less authentic per se, but because they presented rivals to the one chosen text and could provide a basis for political and religious competition. This is in fact the role the collection of material attributed to Ibn finally suppressed in the wake of Ibn Mujahids reforms. It
73 Abul Kasim, Conspiracy against Islam: Muslims being cheated, Yemeni Times. Issue 46- Nov 13 through Nov 19 2000, Vol. X.
Masud played in the first three Islamic centuries until it was
71
was a competing official text to the Canonical text attributed to Uthman. Can the Idea of Seven or Ten Versions of the Quran Going Back Since it cannot be demonstrated that there was one version
to Muhammad be Supported from the Manuscript Evidence?
going back to Muhammad, it also cannot be demonstrated is that one form of the consonantal text has been very well tions have developed which reinforce a particular under-
that seven or ten went back to him. What can be maintained preserved from the seventh/first century, and that oral tradistanding of, and a set number of recitals of, that one consonantal text. These recitals do perhaps survive from an early time in Islamic history, but not to before the fixing of the
Canonical text-form or to Muhammad himself. Also, there is were practiced, other than the very few consonantal markers that some of these systems contained. Some have sought to argue that all of these versions were somehow present in accurate way of stating this is to say that the flexibility and opment, and the development of other systems as well. In
no available method of testing how early their precise features
or contained by the flexibility of this orthography.74 A more ambiguity inherent in the unpointed text allowed their develthese early Islamic centuries, the oral transmission was as static
74 Adrian Alan Brockett, Studies in Two Transmissions of the Qurn. University of St. Andrews, Department of Arabic Studies, 1984, 94, 142.
72
as the written text required, and as organic and creative as the ambiguous orthography permitted. At this point, the earliest that precise and complete versions
of the Seven or Ten reading systems can be dated is to when the script was written with full consonantal diacritics and demonstrated that, from what is written concerning the vocalization symbols in the fourth/tenth century. It can be variants in these systems, they arose after the fixing of the
Canonical form of the consonantal text. Also, from what is
recorded concerning their precise vocalization features there duced the version learned from their teacher. Though oral
was a degree of permitted flexibility in how exactly one reprotradition was present and used extensively, the oral text-forms grew in precision and decreased in flexibility over these three centuries.75
Precise Content and Pronunciation of the Text of the Quran from the Time of Muhammad? That an oral tradition of the recital of the Quran exists from
Did a Parallel Oral Tradition Act as a Strong Protection to the
a very early period is not contested. What is contested is how a precise pronunciation of the text as it was received. The
complete, strong, and organized this tradition was to preserve manuscript evidence best supports a view that though it was a
necessary feature accompanying the written text, an oral tradi75Christopher Melchert, The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another, Journal of Quranic Studies, 10, 2, 73-87, 80-82.
73
tion of the precise pronunciation of the text was never strong enough or developed enough to unify the earliest Muslim and systems were not in place to establish and maintain a oral pronunciation of the ambiguous consonantal text of community on a standard recitation of the text. The mechanics strong enough oral tradition to provide an indisputably precise the Quran. The textual mechanics were not in place in that there were multiple official texts after Muhammads death which would have each required a separate strong oral tradition. Otherwise, a written recension, like the one attributed to Uthman, would not have been needed. The time frame for when this standardization took place was in Islams first
century, and it was possibly a two-stage standardization of the consonantal text, with those two steps occurring toward the middle and end of the first Islamic century. The attributions of an edition to Al-Hajjaj, the presence of corrections and alternative texts in the palimpsests, the existence of manuscripts with variant surah orders, all support this scenario.
of flexibility of oral pronunciation that matched the flexibility of the written text. With the standardization of the Canonical text-form and the suppression of the official text-forms,
Second, there seems to have been in this period an attitude
the oral traditions for those text-forms would have also been suppressed or conformed to the new standard. Also, though this early standardization of the consonantal text did provide
74
a basis of unity that still exists in Islam, it was not precise
enough to prevent the development of rival recitation systems, the use of different recitation systems based on other forms of the consonantal text attributed to other companions of
even of its own consonantal text, nor did it completely displace
Muhammad, which can be viewed as competing official texts. the records of textual variants and the Companions collections is that a historical situation of competing recitals and written versions of the Quran did in fact exist. This is seen in the The most comprehensive explanation for the complexity of
existence and extent of the Qiraat literature with the systems of the Seven, the Ten, and the Fourteen reading systems, the of the Companions collections, and the records of other various historical records concerning the existence and content portions that were known to have existed in the earliest period. If these variants were real, then the oral tradition was not strong enough to keep them completely in check. Then, after the Canonical text was in place, there was a
degree of flexibility allowed concerning its precise pointing
and pronunciation that grew to the multiplicity of systems that were being practiced two hundred and fifty years later when the 930s AD/320s AH. Some of these were possibly tied to official texts that preceded the Canonical one, but most of Ibn Mujahid found it necessary to try limit them to seven in
them seem to have been based on different ways of applying
75
diacritical and vocalization marks to the Canonical consonantal text. The manuscripts from this period would have allowed this degree of flexibility, and the systems of coloured dots for vocalizations confirm that more systems than the seven or ten were being practiced. The growth in the precision of the oral recitations confirms the conclusion reached from observing the development of orthography in the manuscripts that the ambiguity fostered by the unpointed consonantal text was gradually improved so that the precise pronunciation and interpretation of the text could be achieved. As the oral tradition became more precise it advanced the
need for a more precise Arabic script, and at the same time the more precise Arabic script enabled the oral tradition to unified oral tradition was not preserved from the seventh/ first century. Arguments that this entire edifice of records of textual
be recorded and maintained with greater precision. A strong,
variants and the Companions collections of the Quran are
a pious fabrication,76 though, as some Western scholars have preserve discernible features of distinctive readings of the
held, cannot be maintained in that there are manuscripts that Quran.77 Also, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence of the
survival of one form of recitation with a strong written and
76 A. Fischer, Grammatisch schweirige Schwur- und Beschwrungsformeln des Klassichen Arabisch, Der Islam, 28, 1-105 77 Yasin Dutton, An Early Mushaf According to the Reading of Ibn mir, Journal of Quranic Studies, III, 1, 71-90, Yasin Dutton, Some Notes on the British Librarys Oldest Quran Manuscript (Or. 2165), Journal of Quranic Studies, VI, 1, 43-71 Intisar A. Rabb, Non-Canonical Readings of the Quran: Recognition and Authenticity (the Hims Reading), Journal of Quranic Studies, VIII, 2, 84-127
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oral pedigree traced directly back to Muhammad, which, if it allegiance. Also, though political and religious motives may create recitations that served their sectarian purposes, these are not sufficient reasons to cause the creation of the entire
ever existed, would have commanded a high degree of use and have been sufficient reasons for people to abuse a system and
system or reading systems in the first place. More sufficient
reasons are at hand, for instance the ambiguous character of the unpointed Arabic script and the transition from an oral literary environment to one that operated according to the more precise and fixed conventions of written literature.
give an indication that some of these recitation systems may
Though the colored dot systems in some manuscripts do
have existed earlier, they do not present the short vowels with enough precision to make definitive conclusions, nor do they contain consonantal diacritical marks with enough precision. Before the 10th/4th century, the text is simply not in a
state containing the degree of precision required to record and transmit even one full reading system. The chains of names of transmitters of these systems are also not enough of a guar-
antee of the precise pronunciation of these systems since in the the precise features of the recitation systems.
early period there was a degree of flexibility allowed in creating Comparatively, a similar oral tradition never developed
for the New Testament text. Orthographically there was not
77
the need for one to safeguard pronunciation or the meaning of the text because of the relative phonetic completeness of New Testament because of the completeness of the script and perhaps the differing conception of the use of it as a the Greek script. Such a tradition never arose concerning the
scripture to be read more for its meaning than recited for its the Quran, and there is excellent evidence for its existence,
blessing. Though an early oral tradition has been claimed for it was never strong enough to guard one form or pronuncia-
tion of the text, and the oral traditions that have existed since particularly after orthographic improvements were added to
have always been tied to particular versions of the written text, the consonantal text to make it more precise syntactically and tradition cannot be viewed as evidence of one text going back to Muhammad because of the degree of textual variation in secondary Islamic literature.
phonetically. The uniformity of the majority of the manuscript
the palimpsests and the extensive records of textual variants in
The Major Comparison

been to recover one text from among many to recover the the textual variants and text-types that have accumulated The primary task in New Testament textual criticism has
first published text of each New Testament book from among throughout the history of the transmission of the text. The
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primary task in Quranic textual criticism, as practiced historically in Islam has been instead to justify one form of the text against many others. These efforts to establish and justify one text from among a group of collections of material, both oral and written, has resulted in the irreparable loss of the earliest the Quran shows it to be an intentionally developed text. This contrast demonstrates that, comparatively, there is
authoritative forms of the text. The entire shape of the text of
much more of a possibility of recovering the earliest auto-
graphic forms of the New Testament texts, and discerning
a reliably preserved representation of them from within the extant manuscripts, than there is for recovering the earliest the Quran that survives contains authentic material, it is a materials are not available to precisely discern how reliably preserved of a representation of the original it is. text-forms of the Quran. And while the form of the text of partial, edited selection of what was once available, and the
original text of the New Testament has been transmitted more accurately than that of the original forms of the Quran. More of the New Testaments original material is available in the breadth of variants observable in the extant manuscripts than can be observed for the Quran. Islamic efforts from almost the earliest periods of the history of the text of the Quran have been directed toward establishing and promoting one
With this in mind, it can be confidently asserted that the
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version of the text at the expense of others which possibly contained authentic material. These comparative situations also demonstrate the impor-
tance of the second goal of textual criticism- tracing the
historical development of the text. In the case of the Quran, it actually becomes the main goal available for study. The effect of these un-intentioned and well-intentioned textual changes, however, can be cumulative and significant. They can obscure the original form and meaning of the text. Ehrman adds a significant observation:78
by physically altering the words, they (the scribes) did something quite different from other exegetes, and this difference is by no means to be minimized. Whereas all readers change a text when they construe it in their minds, the scribes actually changed the text on the page. As a result, they created a new text, a new concatenation of words over which future interpreters would dispute, no longer having access to the words of the original text, the words produced by the author.
manuscripts available for study gives current scholars a much better opportunity to evaluate textual changes than any prior generation. Ehrmans observation is mainly about the sporadic, occasional changes made by scribes in individual manuscripts. His comments cannot be taken as evidence of
78 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford: OUP, 1993, 280.
For the New Testaments text, that there are so many
80
an official conspiracy or effort to change the text. However,
for the Quran, Ehrmans observation has great significance in under Uthman and al-Hajjaj. By making these versions,
that such an official editing effort is reported in Islamic history promoting them over against other ones, and by destroying prior materials, these efforts have denied later generations access to more original forms of the text. Indeed, the history of the Qurans textual development can legitimately be viewed as a prolonged attempt to conform the text of the Quran, which in very earthly circumstances, to a divine ideal presented in what came to be Islamic dogma. While there were original
came into existence and was collected through human agencies
texts of the books of the New Testament, there never was one original text of the Quran, and with the recognition of the just one text of the Quran. There has been careful concern validity of the Seven and Ten reading systems, there still is not for passing on the complexity of the situation and preventing to have been an abandonment of any attempt to recover one its theoretical existence. :
further multiplication of reading systems. But there also seems text, even though there has been widespread implicit belief in
Appendix one inspiration of scripture
Currently in the West, Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists are often equated as having the same basic kinds of beliefs and attitudes, even leading to the same kinds of violent fanatical results. This lecture will explore one of the most important foundations of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism-
doctrines concerning scripture. It will be demonstrated that
even the most fundamental Christian views are qualitatively
different from Muslim views, and that equating them is quite wrong and leads to quite different results in belief and action. One scholar has helpfully observed, 79
The issue of scripture marks a key difference between Muslim and Christian fundamentalisms. Virtually all Muslims are fundamen79 Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, 2005, 194.
83
84
talist in their attitude to scripture Likewise, while Muslim fundamentalists stress political goals and implementation of religion in all areas of life, Christian fundamentalists can go either way and some become secularists by Muslim standards.
note the following quotation:80
As an example of the misguided fallacy equating the two,
The orthodox Muslim view of the Koran as self-evidently the Word of God, perfect and inimitable in message, language, style, and form is strikingly similar to the fundamentalist Christian notion of the Bibles inerrancy and verbal inspiration that is still common in many places today. The notion was given classic expression only a little more than a century ago by the biblical scholar John William Burgon. The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne! Every Book of it, every Chapter of it, every Verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of itevery letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High!
article, makes the fallacy of equating Christian and Muslim side of the traditional Christian view of the inspiration of
This quotation, found in what is otherwise an excellent
views. He is actually misquoting Burgon, only looking at one scripture, that it is a fully divine process, but also a fully human one. Even Burgon acknowledges this in the same book quoted above: the Human Element no doubt is there; no doubt our
80 Toby Lester, What is the Quran? Atlantic Monthly, January 1999, 43-56, 45.
appendix one: inspiration of spripture
85
rhetoric, intended to emphasize Gods role in inspiration,
Maker acts through our faculties in every respect.81 Burgons
however, is used by Muslims to describe their normal belief. Muslim doctrines of the inspiration compare:
Here is a comparison of how the Evangelical Christian and
The Bible: Verbal Plenary Inspiration

The traditional description of the inspiration of the Bible is that the words of Scripture are inspired by God; plenary that it is a model of Verbal Plenary Inspiration. Verbal means means that every word is inspired by God; and inspiration means that it was God-breathed, that it had its origin in God and comes from God. With this understanding has also always stood the understanding that the words were spoken and written by people, using their full personalities and faculties. This model is what the Bible presents for Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16,17 and 2 Peter 1:21:
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of god may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16,17) For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:21)
81 John W. Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation. Collingswood: Dean Burgon Society Press, 1999, 269.
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tion is made that God himself speaks through prophets, and humans writing according to His direction and will.
With these verses and throughout the Bible the clear asser-
the principle continues that he can inspire Scripture through Also, this technical view is one that was arrived at in retro-
spect, as the Church used and reflected on the writings left up the writings of the New Testament were recognized by
by the Apostles and their companions. The books that make the Church as having an intrinsic authority and authenticity
that apocryphal works did not have. They were not books that the Church at some point arbitrarily, for political or dogmatic reasons, granted authority. They were recognized as having an intrinsic authority that had been proven through centuauthoritative pronouncement would give them.82
ries of use, not as inauthentic books needing the boost that an Also, concerning perfection of the text, the most that has
ever been claimed for the New Testament by Christians is that the original autographs were in a perfect form. There has been recognition that copies can contain mistakes of transmission, accurately represent the meaning of the original. Reliable, required, not perfect transmission. since the times of the earliest church fathers at least an implicit and that translations are the Word of God only insofar as they sufficient transmission has always been what was viewed as
82 B.M. Metzger has an excellent discussion of this very point in his book, The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, 282-288.
87
Quran: Mechanical Dictation

The Islamic view of the inspiration of scripture starts from a different point than the Christian view. Finding its origin in the reported experiences of Muhammad and the words of the statement distilling the major Islamic view is:83
Quran rather than the prior teaching in the Bible, a consistent
The Quran is the Speech of God, written in copies, remembered in the hearts, recited by the tongues, and sent down to the Prophet. Our utterance of the Quran is created, our writing of it is created, our reciting of it is created, but the Quran is uncreated.
copies of the Quran are created, it also speaks of the Quran
While this particular statement recognizes that written
as being sent down, from the Arabic word tanzil the word chosen to describe the inspiration of the Quran. The picture is that the actual words of the Quran were sent down to Muhammad through the agency of the angel Gabriel. They
were taken from an eternal tablet, delivered to Gabriel, who words to Muhammad.
then over 23 years as occasion demanded, delivered the precise The words of the Quran are not then viewed as the product
of Muhammads mind and Allahs mind. They are strictly
viewed as only the words of Allah. One Sunni statement even asserts that these words are from eternity subsisting in Gods
83 William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Creeds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, 63. This is described as a Hanafite Creed, in line with the teaching of the Sunni law school of Hanafi.
88
essence.84 With this view, Allahs Speech is an eternal attri-
bute, and human involvement in the production of scripture is viewed as anathema and a necessarily corrupting influence. In the Christian/Biblical view, Speech is not an eternal attribute of God and human influence does not necessarily corrupt. Speech is instead an extension of Gods knowledge and is
personified in the second person of the Trinity, the Eternal
Son. This makes the Bible as the Word of God a derivative, allows for full human involvement in its production.
subordinate Word, and the deeper view of the nature of God For the Quran, inspiration is viewed as extending to the
exact letters and words in Arabic. It is viewed as being divine only, as if spoken or written by God Himself and delivered tablet which is somehow separate from but linked to the without human contamination. Having its origin in an eternal eternal knowledge of Allah, this Islamic view of the Quran
makes an even greater demand that copies of the Quran be
preserved with a precision extending to the Arabic letters of
the original. Perfection of transmission of the text in copies is
needed if the claim is to be made that that the text in the hand is the kind of thing that many Muslims claim:
and that is recited is the actual and full Word of God. And this
84 Al-Ghazzali, quoted in Watt, Creeds. , 76.
89
The Holy Koran differs from any other religious text in that it was not written or edited by any human author; no word has been added to it or subtracted from it. 85 Qur-aan is the word of Allah and retains its pristine purity without the least change, alteration, distortion, division, amendment or annulment since it was revealed to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.).86 Actually there is no religious literature other than the Last Divine Scripture which has escaped contamination--addition, deletion and deformation, etc. 87 The Holy Koran differs from any other religious text in that it was not written or edited by any human author; no word has been added to it or subtracted from it. 88
Implications for Interfaith Discussions

Muslims tend to read their view on the Bible, and Christians can tend to read their view on the Quran, rather than
comparing views and achieving a more realistic understanding. Bible tend to not be based on actual historical or manuscript One result of this is that Muslim views of corruption of the
evidence of what the Bible has always been, but rather, on the in the Quran- one Injil from Jesus, a book called the Taurait
fact that the Bible as it exists does not match what is described
85 From: What Every Christian Should Know About Islam, pub. The Islamic Foundation, Leicester UK, cited in The Daily Telegraph, 10 Dec. 2005, page 24. 86 Hafiz M. Adil, Introduction to Quran. Delhi, India: Adam Publishers and Distributors, 1990 5. 87 Kamal Omar, Deep Into the Quran. Delhi, India: Noor Publishing House, 1992302. 88 From: What Every Christian Should Know About Islam, pub. The Islamic Foundation, Leicester UK, cited in The Daily Telegraph, 10 Dec. 2005, page 24.
90
that Moses received, and a book that David received called the Zabur. Early Muslim apologists developed the idea that the this false belief has persisted through the ages. The really significant questions are: Christians and Jews changed the text of their scriptures and
contamination of the text by Muhammad or others?
Does the Quran live up to its claims that there is no human Does the New Testament live up to its claims to be a histor-
ically reliable text and a sufficient witness to the teaching and claims of Christ?
available to evaluate these claims.
Textual criticism on manuscripts provides the best evidence
The New Testament: the Earliest Available Version

For the New Testament, a reliable, sufficient form of the original text can be discerned from within existing manu-
scripts. This can be seen in that variants of various kinds can be seen relating to a basic form of text shared across thousands of manuscripts. Also, these variants can be evaluated and sorted to discern the more original reading, the product of which
are the various available critical texts of the New Testament.89 (306-315 AD) and after show the same basic forms of text,
89 The New Testament Critical Texts- UBS 3rd ed., Nestle-Aland 27th ed. are the most recognized.
Also, since the manuscripts before the Diocletian persecution
91
and this form of text goes back into the second century, there is good reason to believe on textual, literary, and historical dating back to the times of the Apostles.90 grounds that they are accurate copies of more original texts
The Quran: the Earliest Available Version

For the Quran, mainly one early heavily edited version is to achieve this text alternative and more original versions available in the manuscripts. If Islamic tradition is correct, of the text were destroyed and suppressed. With the manurevolving around a basic text, but there are fewer kinds of
scripts with this edited text, one finds various kinds of variants variants and fewer numbers of variants comparatively to the
New Testament. This edited basic Quran text is more stable than the New Testament, which did not go through such an scripts that might give us a significant look into the form of the text before this initial editing project. With the variants that do exist in the mainstream of the editing process. The Quranic palimpsests are the only manu-
Quran manuscripts, these can be evaluated and sorted to discern a more original form of the text, and the kinds of
variants point to the basic text being standardized to a remarkable degree in even the earliest manuscripts. Since there is historical testimony in Islamic sources of a very early editing
90 There are more than 200 manuscripts of portions of the New Testament that predate the Diocletian persecution, which was more than three centuries before Muhammad died.
92
project which involved the destruction of earlier forms of the text and variant forms of the text, then the degree of stability that this editing project and ensuing suppression of variant of the basic text in the earliest Quran manuscripts is evidence texts did actually take place.91 Quranic palimpsests, because of
their rarity and the large numbers and kinds of variants they contain in their underlying texts, are additional and strong
evidence of the extent of this early project.92 The evidence from the palimpsests also suggests that the fluidity of the text was much greater in the earliest period of the Qurans collection than current Islamic belief might suggest.
The Quran: the Version Available Now

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

91 A story considered reliable by Muslims is that the third Caliph after Muhammad, Uthman, established a committee around AD 653 to standardise the text of the Quran. After this text was made, the order was given to destroy the original and variant texts from which it was constructed and to which it had been compared. This is recorded in the collection of traditions called Sahih al-Bukhri, Kitb 61, Bb 28. 92 See Alba Fedeli, Early Evidences of Variant Readings in Qurnic Manuscripts, Karl Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, Die dunklen Anfnge. Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2005, 293-316 for the best presentation currently in print of textual variants in Quranic palimpsests.
93
constructions. These differences are very small, but they are there, and if a standard of perfection of transmission of an unaltered original is being claimed, then there are serious issues that work against this view.93
Conclusions
Christians can have every confidence that the Bible has not is supported by historical evidence and textual evidence, in been changed the way Muslims and others might assert. This addition to theological agreements between the Old and the New Testament, like concerning the identity and role of the Messiah (Isaiah 53). The Quran does not live up to the claims currently being
made for it. While one early form of the text has been
preserved very well, it took an enormous amount of human effort to create this form of text, to destroy and continue to preserved text into what Muslims use today. suppress alternative forms of the text, and then to refine the The Muslim view of the inspiration of the Quran in many
ways is at odds with the actual history of its text for how it of Scripture which legitimately accommodates the human and divine aspects of scripture, the text of the Quran has
came to be in its present form. Rather than arriving at a view
been shaped intentionally, and in this humanly shaped form is

93 The main Quran text in print is known as the Hafs text, named after a prominent early Quran reciter. Another version, the Warsh text is in print and use in North Africa. Other written versions are known from manuscripts as well.
94
used to support a doctrinal belief in its divine perfection. The an inerrant dictation leaves no room for any sort of literary revision.94 For the New Testament, inerrant autographs,
problem, though, for the traditional view of the Quran is that
without an accompanying claim for perfect transmission, can accommodate literary revision. :
94 J. Windrow Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology. London: Lutterworth Press, 1945-1967, Part One, vol. II, 137.
Appendix two Common Questions
1. Was there ever one original text of the Quran? No, there was not one, if Islamic tradition is true about how edited after his death. One scholar has written, There exists
the Quran was given to Muhammad and then collected and no canonical book, recognized by any religious community as
a revealed or inspired original, whose text in the earliest period of its transmission, shows to such a degree a picture of fluctuaparts of the Quran that were left out, the Companions collections, and textual variants in palimpsests all support this. How tion and uncertainty as we find in the text of the Quran.95 The
95 Translated from the German of Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung. Leiden: Brill, 1920 in J. Windrow Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology. London: Lutterworth Press, 1945-1967Part One, volume II, 133. Also, translated slightly differently in Ignaz Goldziher, Schools of Koranic Commentators. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 20061.
95
96
can these things be reconciled with the idea of one original text of the Quran? In the tradition from Ismail b. Ibrahim, from Ayyub,
from Nafi, from Ibn Umar: He said: Let none of you say I
have learned the whole of the Quran, for how does he know that the whole of it is, when much of it has disappeared? Let him rather say, I have learned what is now extant of it. It is possible to argue that what exists is some of the Quran
from the heavenly book, but not that what exists is all of the
Quran, nor is what exists in the form it was originally given.
The question then becomes, is what remains a reliable portion of what was originally given? Perfection of the book is out of the question. It is clear that almost desperate efforts had to be made to achieve uniformity when once it had been laid down that verbal accuracy was desirable.96 Also, any assertion of one precise written version of the
Quran within Islams first 30 years is anachronistically
reading back a precise conception of a book of scripture onto the Quran which could only have developed later in Islam. Because of the state of Arabic script in the 600s, and the description of how the content of the Quran was received
and transmitted, it is more reasonable to see the Quran was preserved mainly as a flexible oral tradition that at Muhammads death was not a single coherent, organized, complete
96 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 133.
appendix two: common questions
97
book, but instead a fluid body of various portions of material, written and memorized. Some other issues that confirm this are that the Caliph
Umar is reported to have had extreme anxiety at the death of Quran memorizers at the battle of Yamama. This does not square with the idea of a standard written collection being in cult to understand as well. He is said to have been hesitant to undertake a work for which he had no command from place at Muhammads death.97 Zaid ibn Thabits role is diffi-
the prophet. He also complained about the difficulty of the task. He is the first amanuensis of the Prophet, is called to undertake the collection by Abu Bakr at the instance of Umar and protests, and is finally called again to the task by Uthman and makes similar protests.98 Such protests would have been meaningless if an authoritative written version were in exis-
tence. Uthmans entire project would have been unnecessary if Gabriel.99 Also, the later limiting the readings to Ten systems
Muhammad had left a copy that he had checked through with was done in the AD 900s.100 Why would this have been neces-
sary if a precise, authoritative text from Muhammad was had been in existence for three centuries?
97 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 134. 98 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 134-135. The traditions Sweetman refers to here are given in full in Bayard Dodge, The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadm. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1970,47-49. 99 Canon Sell, The Historical Development of the Quran. Tunbridge Wells, Kent: People International, 2. 100 Miskawaih, Universal History, [ed. Amedroz in Gibb Memorial Series] i. 285.
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2. How do these issues affect the idea of an eternal uncreated Quran?
Instead of working to support the idea of the Quran being
preserved perfectly in its transmission from the heavenly tablet, all these things work against the idea. The general shape of the history of the Quran consists of efforts to make a variety of texts one text. One perfect text cannot be traced through this history issues also work against the idea. For instance, how can the back to Uthman, or Muhammad, or to a heavenly original. Other heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in the present Quran when we are told that it was necessary for Gabriel to revise it in the process if this was necessary.101 The Hadith Qudsi (Holy yearly with Muhammad? There was liability to error somewhere Hadith) are revelations said to have been given to Muhammad by Gabriel, but why are they not in the Quran if it is the full revelation intended to be given from the heavenly tablet?102 How can the heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in the
present Quran when we are told it was necessary for variant copies to be burned, copies gathered by companions of Muhammad that were Muhammads acclaimed experts on the Quran? How is the heavenly prototype accurately preserved in the
present Quran when we find the present Quran is incom-
101 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 132. 102 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, volume II, 135. One version of the Hadith Qudsi is An-Nawaw Forty Hadith. Damascus: Holy Koran Publishing House, 1976.
99
plete. It is (at least) missing the verse on stoning for adultery. according to Umar, the verse it read: The adult male and the adult female, when they fornicate, stone them outright, as an exemplary punishment from God. God is mighty, wise.
Usually described as being abrogated in wording but not in its ruling,103 Umar is said to have stated, Had I not been afraid recorded it. (as-Suyuti, Al-Itqan, ii. 29) lest people should say I had added to the Quran I would have How can the heavenly prototype be accurately preserved in
the present Quran when we know the original script of the
Quran lacked vowels and many consonants, thus producing
variant readings of the Quran? How can the heavenly prototold of three separate versions of the Quran even apart from
type be accurately preserved in the present Quran when we are the companions copies-- one from the time of the Muhammad, another in the time of Uthman, and a third in the reign of the Caliph Abd ul Malik (AH 70- the version by Al-Hajjaj)?
3. What issues are raised by Uthmans action to establish one version of the Quran?
Uthmans text could conceivably represent a perfect version of
the heavenly tablet if it was an unedited collection of Muham-
mads sayings, especially in chronological order. However, since

103 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 137-138.
100
it was supposedly edited to some extent during Muhammads sources to textual variants going back to the Companions,
lifetime and after, and that there is so much testimony in Islamic Uthmans could not have been a pristine unedited copy of the
original. An inerrant, dictated original ought not to need editing. by Uthman, as a practical measure against opposition, argues Also, the willingness and zeal to collect it and organize it
against this. Uthmans measure was a in effect a compromise, at its best seeking to make as good of a version as possible in less and standardize a collection of authentic material, not the one collection of authentic material. Many Muslims have argued that it was a necessary action to maintain Islamic unity and than ideal circumstances. At best it was an attempt to preserve
power.104 At its worst, it was a politically motivated expedient to consolidate his power in a rapidly deteriorating situation. He was accused of only partially preserving what was revealed to Muhammad, and chopping out or editing out portions. He was not charged with wholesale invention of material. The recorded resistance to Uthmans action confirms this. It was (Tabari, ii. 1, 516) and The Quran was in many books and was not charged with inventing new material.
said by opponents of Uthman that he had torn up the Book you discredited all but one(Tabari, i. 6, 2952). To his credit, he
104 Labib as-Said, The Recited Koran. Princeton, New Jersey: Darwin Press, 1975, 24. Note this statement: Thus did Uthman, in response to what was clearly a threat to Muslim unity and strength, undertake that which had seemed unnecessary to his predecessors, namely, the standardization of the written text of the Koran through the institution of a sole authorized canon.
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4. What about Hafsahs Quran? In view of what is said about the collections of the Companions it seems that hers was one of a number of versions all sharing a semi-official status. Also, this is what makes sense the official version, why was it burned by Muawiyah? This providing political competition to Uthmans version.
in view of its eventual fate. If it was the only original copy of seems to be the action of someone who wanted to keep it from
5. Did the Companions collections only differ in dialect? Dialects are the regional varieties of a language, and can be
distinguished from other varieties by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Dialects are more than just a matter of different pronunciation of the same words. They result in different pronunciation and words and word forms. If the Companions collections just differed in these features, then it is possible they just differed in dialect. However, this would argue against just one perfect copy being preserved during Muhammads lifetime. The Companions versions were treated as versions
with a divine sanction during the decades between Muhammads death and Uthmans edition. The severity of the situation and Uthmans actions imply that something greater than
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different dialects was at stake, and that the differences in the Qurans had to do with content as well as lesser issues. Also, what is not accounted for in the argument saying they
only differed in dialect are the longer variants like phrases,
verses and portions which are mentioned in the traditions and are appearing in the palimpsests. Also, how can even differby Uthman of the original records of the Quran and the the problem, not just dialects. ences in dialect represent a perfectly preserved text? Burning Companions collections suggests that differing content was
6. How does Abrogation fit into all of this? Abrogation relies on an understanding of the chronology of external to the Quran provide this chronology. Though the
the giving of the text of the Quran. Hadith and Sirah literature general principle is found in Surah 2:106, how can the application of this basic interpretive principle of a heavenly book be explained in and controlled by external human sources? One scholar summarized the problems with abrogation and the idea of an eternal tablet:105
If there are texts which abrogate others in the written Quran are we to conclude that this abrogation took place in the transcendent
105 Sweetman, Islam. Part One, Volume II, 138.
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realm, and that in the heavenly original the abrogating and abrogated appear only in the earthly copy then what becomes of the theory of the proper copying of the heavenly original? On the other hand, if the abrogated appears in the heavenly original, then what are we to conclude about the Divine Wisdom? what sort of notion are we to gather as to the relation of this heavenly tablet to the will of God? It would simply be a record of the temporal changes and chances of human life as seen by divine prescience, and would attribute to the divine all the shades and fluctuations of human life with no certainty as to what is truth and ultimately no concern for it, for that which is truth for yesterday and not for to-day is not truth at all. It would have to assume that a lengthy statement of history, e.g., that Jesus died on the cross, could stand in a book written by God alongside a denial that it took place. Such ideas are the height of absurdity and make a mockery of God.
7. What are the 7 Ahruf? With the tradition of Muhammad being granted permis-
sion to recite the Quran in 7 ways (ahruf ), the definition of views of this issue are known as to what the ahruf are and there is no consensus as to which is the best one.106 These
the ahruf has never been clearly defined. At least 35 different
views range from the seven being different dialects to being the Companions Collections, to even being just a symbolic number for many. This does not seem to support a view that time of Muhammads death.
there was one perfect version of the Quran in existence at the
106 Ahmad Von Denffer, Ulm al-Qurn. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1994, 113.
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8. What are the 7 and 10 Reading systems, the Qiraat? First of all, the Seven Qiraat described by the scholar Ibn
Mujahid are not to be confused with the Seven Ahruf. Ibn
Mujahid never claimed that the seven versions he was identifying were Muhammads seven versions; he evidently just used the number as a working principle for limiting the
great variety of reading systems that were then in existence.107 Three more versions fulfilled the criteria he used to determine the seven and were eventually accepted as having an regarded as acceptable. How can this be squared with one heaven?
equal authority. In many circles there were additional readings perfectly preserved version, and with one perfect version in To make matters worse, these 7, 10, and others were chosen
from among possibly at least 50 versions in use at the time.108 This number also does not include the collections of Ibn Masud, Ubayy ibn Kab, and Ali which are said to still have
how can 10 versions of the Quran which do not go precisely
been available in written versions at this time.109 In all of this,
back to Muhammad accurately represent a heavenly original?
107 Al-Jazari, in his book al-Nashr, identified at least fifty systems in use by the AD 900s. Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurn. Leiden: Brill, 1937, 2, note 3 citing Nashr. 1:90; Intisar A. Rabb, Non-Canonical Readings of the Quran: Recognition and Authenticity (the Hims Reading), Journal of Quranic Studies, VIII, 2, 84-127, 124, note 114, citing Nashr, 1:34-37. Forty systems in addition to the canonical 10 are mentioned. 108 See note 13. 109 Dodge, Fihrist. 57, 58, 63.
105
9. Dont Isnads prove that the text of the Quran was not changed?
Actually, isnads have never played a part in documenting the content of the Quran.110 They never came to be a method of attempting to document its transmission as they became with hadith. There are records of transmission lines of recitations documented with reading certificates, but these also do not document a line of transmission, but there is no parallel
document the precise contents of the recitation.111 They instead
written or oral guarantee that every syllable of that transmis-
sion has remained unchanged. Ibn Mujahids effort in the 900s to identify seven of greater authority through the use of recitation records prompted an innovation at that time that such records came to be regarded as necessary. Before that time
such conventions were not viewed as necessary, but apparently, justifying the text of the Quran was developed.112
the old system had broken down by the 900s and a new way of Also, it is unlikely that the practice of readers certificates
documenting lines of transmission could have documented
the level of precision of pronunciation that eventually came
into use with the orthographic improvements of the script of
the Quran. One critic of isnads in the 900s claimed they were
110 M. M. Al-Azami, The History of the Quranic Text. Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003, 193. 111 Al-Azami, History. , 192. 112 Geoffrey Khan, Al-Qirqisns Opinions Concerning the Text of the Bible and Parallel Muslim Attitudes Towards the Text of the Qurn, The Jewish Quarterly Review, LXXXI, Nos. 1-2, 59-73, 68-71.
106
unsatisfactory because accepting the hadith on the basis of
the name of a transmitter involved accepting the report itself
without subjecting the report to sufficient criticism.113 The same could be said for these lines of reported transmission. Overall, while there was an unpointed consonantal script for the
Quran, there was an allowance of a level of flexibility that was limited only in the 900s through the actions of Ibn Mujahid and similar scholars.
10. What kind of textual variants do the Sanaa manuscripts have?
A definitive answer to this cannot be given because the
thousands of pages of manuscript material have not been
published. However, some partial answers can be given which are probably representative. One article that lists the general with the most textual variants are the very few palimpsest kinds of variants in them is available.114 The Sanaa manuscripts
pages. These have textual variants ranging from individual
letters to the omission or addition of sentences and verses. For the rest of the manuscripts, they contain variants concerning variants. There are also a few that have variant surah orders,
113 Khan, Opinions, 71. 114 Gerd-R. Puin, Observations on Early Quran Manuscripts in San, Stefan Wild, ed., The Quran as Text. Leiden: Brill, 1996, 107-111
the long vowels, especially alif, and also some diacritical mark
107
one of which matches an order said to have been in Ibn
Masuds version and one which matches an order said to have been in Ubayy b. Kabs. There was also at least one which did not match any known alternative surah order system.115 There
are also many manuscripts which have extensive corrections.116 11. What are the contents of the Samarkand and Topkapi Qurans and how old are they?
The Samarkand Kufic Quran has many missing pages. Also, These are not original to the manuscript and it is difficult to of parchment contain portions of surahs 2-5, 11, 12, 14-20, 24, 27, and 36-43. the later paper pages contain portions of the parchment ones. On the basis of the script style and mid to late 700s.117
many pages have been repaired and replaced with paper pages. know exactly how old they are. The oldest pages that are made
surahs 2-7. Some of the paper pages are interspersed among artwork, most Western scholars date this manuscript to the The Topkapi Quran is now available in a beautiful color
facsimile printing.118 The Turkish scholars who produced it
also provided a lengthy and informative introduction to the
115 Puin, Observations, Puin, . 116 San Manuscripts, Memory of the World. UNESCO. Cairo, Egypt: Ritsec Cultureware. CD-ROM. 117 Arthur Jeffery and Isaac Mendelsohn, The Orthography of the Samarqand Quran Codex, JAOS, 62, 175-195. 118 Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, Al-Mushaf al-Sharif, Attributed to Uthmn bin Affn. Istanbul: IRCICA, 2007,
108
manuscript and many of the issues involved in evaluating early Quran manuscripts. The Topkapi Quran is almost complete. It is missing two folios that contain S. 5:3-8 and 17:17-33. It is possible that folios 1-6 and 11 (containing s. 1-2:1-72 and a damaged manuscript, very possibly before AD 800.119 The
2:114-126 respectively) were written by a later scribe repairing introduction presents the conclusion that this manuscript
dates to either the generation after Uthman or the genera-
tion after that. This dates the manuscript probably to within the early to mid 700s. In the preface to the facsimile is the following statement,
This Mushaf, which we proudly present, does not constitute a sample of the early period of Mushaf writing due to a number of characteristics, namely, its illumination, calligraphy which shows the development of the Arabic script to a certain extent, the fact that the words appear on straight lines, the proportion between the letters, diacritical marks or irab in the form of dots in red ink, and the signs of idjam in the form of thin slant lines differentiating similar letters from one another in black ink, with which the text is written. Considering its dimensions and style of illumination, this Mushaf most probably belongs to the Umayyad period.
12. Do the contents of the Topkapi Quran prove that the Quran has always had 114 surahs?
119 Altikulac, Al-Mushaf. 75.
109
Though this is a possibility, it cannot be proven from this one to the early 700s. Also, the particular content of 114 in the
manuscript. This manuscript documents this order and content present order is one of possibly a variety of forms the Quran was in before these facets were standardized. Ibn Nadim in his book the Fihrist from the mid 800s mentions that four
different written versions of the Quran were in existence in his time: the standard one, Ibn Masuds, Ubai b. Kabs, and Alis.120 Also, if the variant surah orders among the Sanaa
Qurans are any indication, there could have been other variant versions that went out of use relatively quickly.121 13. What is the oldest dated complete Quran? According to the scholar Brannon Wheeler, the earliest
complete dated Quran s from 393 AH/1002 AD, and is kept at the Rajab Museum in Kuwait. A picture of it is on the following website:
http://www.usna.edu/Users/humss/bwheeler/quran/kufi_393.html There might be complete Qurans dated earlier than this
that are not dated by a colophon from the scribe, but rather by
120 Dodge, Fihrist. 121 Puin, Observations, 111.
110
an approximation from its script style and ornamentation. This however, is complicated in that there is no complete register of the contents and dates of Qurans in Western collections been done for most of the New Testament manuscripts in
or Middle Eastern and North African ones. Though this has the world, it has not yet been done for Quran manuscripts, the world.122
though many efforts are underway in various libraries around The Topkapi Quran is perhaps the earliest Quran that can
make the claim to being almost, or practically complete. It is
much more complete than other manuscripts from the 700s. be the very earliest Quran manuscripts (some possibly into
For instance, Hijazi script style manuscripts- held by many to the late 600s)- are very incomplete with no representation of manuscripts, however, because there is not an available catalogue of their contents.
surahs after Surah 76. This does not include the Sanaa Hijazi
14. What about the views of New Testament scholar Bart
Ehrman? Hasnt he proven that the Bible was corrupted? No, he hasnt. He has demonstrated something that New Testament scholars have known and spoken of since the times of the early church fathers: that occasionally, isolated
122 Al-Azami, History. 317.
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scribes intentionally changed manuscripts to strengthen the
teaching on some doctrinal issue. This was done sporadically in individual manuscripts by individual scribes, not as a part of a larger conspiracy or official effort by an ecclesiastical or political authority. The discipline of textual criticism, as it has developed over the last three centuries, has been able to
discern these changes through comparisons between the large numbers of available manuscripts. The issues Ehrman brings out are all corrected in the critical texts of the New Testament used for translation of the Bible for all major Chris-
tian denominations. Rather than bringing out new evidence of corruption, he is working with already discovered textual He is merely illuminating a little further a period in Chrisvariants that have been evaluated and rejected for the best text. tian history for which the modern text accounts and for which it does not make the same mistakes. When one looks at the actual content of the changes that are asserted by Erhman, they dont affect the teaching of the New Testament to any
great degree. The clearest verses demonstrating the deity of
Christ, the Trinity, and the atoning death and resurrection of Christ are not in question. Taking his views as the authority than demonstrating wholesale change or corruption of a some scribes in some locations in some manuscripts. is making the mistake of losing the forest for the trees. Rather manuscript tradition, his is documenting tendencies among
112
tion is a technical one from textual criticism meaning any kind of change by a scribe, intentional or unintentional, though the emphasis of his book is on intentional change.
Ehrman also recognizes that his use of the word Corrup-
He mentions that he used the word intentionally for its ironic impact (dare one say its sensationalist impact?) implying he is This kind of corruption is not the same as the Islamic view of Tahrif as applied to the text of a book of scripture which requires a conscious, radical intentional change to a book to for the New Testament in his most scholarly work. stretching its true meaning beyond its real significance.123 Also,
hide or alter its teaching. Not even Bart Ehrman asserts this Also, Ehrmans general conclusions are actually more
accurate concerning the Quran than the New Testament.
Think of the following quotation if it is applied to the actions of the Companions, Uthman, al-Hajjaj, and the scribes who scripts in the 900s:124 applied full diacritical marks and vocalization marks to manu-
by physically altering the words, they did something quite different from other exegetes, and this difference is by no means to be minimized. Whereas all readers change a text when they construe it in their minds, the scribes actually changed the text on the page. As a result, they created a new text, a new concatenation of words over
123 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford: OUP, 1993, xii. 124 Ehrman, Corruption, 280.
113
which future interpreters would dispute, no longer having access to the words of the original text, the words produced by the author.
of the Quran, then he is actually confirming the words of
If Ehrmans words are applied to the history of the text
another New Testament scholar, B.F. Westcott, who made late 1800s:125
the following observation concerning the Quran back in the
When the Caliph Othman fixed a text of the Koran and destroyed all the old copies which differed from his standard, he provided for the uniformity of subsequent manuscripts at the cost of their historical foundation. A classical text which rests finally on a single archetype is that which is open to the most serious suspicions.
majority of intentional variants in the New Testament tradition were not dogmatically inspired- that is, to strengthen a particular doctrine. In contrast, much of the very form of the Qurans text as it stands today has been shaped by dogmatic forces, from precise choice of diacritical marks on consonants original choice of contents and order by Uthman. It also is
Even Ehrman should recognize that the overwhelming
to the application of a precise vocalization system, to even the evident in physical corrections to the text and in the Quranic palimpsests. Physical corrections and palimpsests in the New Testament tradition dont show such dogmatic change. Rather,
125 Brooke Foss Westcott, Some Lessons of the Revised Version of the New Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897, 8-9.
114
they contain the same kinds of variants observed in the rest of to standardize a form of the text to an official standard.
the New Testament manuscript tradition. They are not changes
15. Is there any historical evidence for the Qurans view of the Bible consisting of individual books given to Moses, David, and Jesus?
There really is no evidence of books like what the Quran
describes of the Taurait, Zabur and Injil. The Qurans state-
ments are the only evidence for their existence and if Muslims have definite evidence, it would be a great service to everyone that Jesus came with a book. Rather, the word Gospel, which good news of Jesus life and crucifixion and resurrection. By including the four Gospels in the New Testament. It was by Jesus. if they would produce it. However, Christians have never held means good news was originally a word used to describe the the end of the 200s it had come to be used in titles of books, understood at that time that these were books about Jesus, not Similar things can be said for the Taurait and the Zabur.
The Torah of the Jews has always been the first five books of the Pentateuch, the foundation for the larger collection of scriptural books shared by Jews and Christians. If Zabur refers to the Psalms of David, the Psalms have always been songs
115
composed for worship at the Temple, not a book of revelation given from heaven. There is simply no historical evidence for the existence of books like what the Quran describes.
16. How do the numbers of existing New Testament manuscripts and Quran manuscripts compare?
This cannot yet be figured. While there is a count of known New Testament manuscripts and an extensive collection of for Quran manuscripts.127 There are some efforts currently photographs of them at one place,126 this has never been done going on to catalog collections around the world, but none of them is seeking to be all-inclusive. So, while it is know that there are somewhere in the range of 24,000 New Testament
manuscripts is a variety of languages, one can reasonably speculate that the number of Quran manuscripts would be in the thousands. The Sanaa collection alone has thousands of pages Qurans. The largest collections of early Quran manuscripts
of manuscript material, many of these comprising incomplete are known to exist in Istanbul and Paris. There are also known to be many in Egypt, and the oldest ones in European collections came mainly from Egypt originally.
126 The Center for New Testament Studies at Mnster, Germany. 127 Al-Azami, History, 317.
116
17. What are the earliest Quran manuscripts and how do their contents compare to the current Quran?
The earliest Quran manuscripts are the Hijazi palimpsest
pages in the collection in Sanaa, Yemen and in collections in Denmark and private hands.128 The earliest non-palimpsest pages are also in Yemen and are also matched in their antiquity by Qurans in Istanbul, London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, as well as small numbers of pages in various collections in Europe and the USA. These are Hijazi script manuscripts. Kufic script manuscripts, like 01-20.x used in this study.
The Sanaa collection also contains what are probably the oldest The contents of all these manuscripts is very partial, and
missing the last surahs of the Quran, mainly after surah 76.
The surahs between about 45 and 76 are also not as well repre-
sented as the surahs before that. This is all qualified, though, by has not yet been released. A catalog of a partial sampling of a is available.129
the fact that a catalog of the contents of the Sanaa manuscripts CD produced by UNESCO of 300 representative manuscripts
18. How accurately does the current Quran represent the original?
128 The only available pictures of some of these are in various London auction house catalogs, though projects are underway to publish at least some of them. 129 Keith E. Small, UNESCO CD of Sana MSS: Qurn MSS Contents, Manuscripta Orientalia, 12:2:65-72
117
The current Qurans published in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
are versions of the the 1924 Royal Cairo edition which was
not made with reference to the earliest available manuscripts. to Medieval Islamic Quran science literature. This literature supports the traditional view of the Quran, but the manuscripts do not since they allow for and even gave rise to so
Instead, the precise form of the text was determined according
many variant recitations of the Quran. Also, palimpsests and corrections in manuscripts show that other variant readings text represents the consonantal text established by Uthman were once part of the manuscript tradition. At best, the current and al-Hajjaj, but the rest of the pointing and vocalization is later, dating to the 900s. The current Quran does not reprenot in the period immediately following his death until the editing projects of Uthman and al-Hajjaj. sent what was used as Quran during Muhammads lifetime,
19. How do these issues affect current arguments for the Qurans divine status?
Appeals to the miraculous nature of the Quran, its perfect style, supposed lack of contradictions, and supposed secret scientific knowledge in the Quran are all assertions that are dependent on a perfectly preserved text of the Quran from the heavenly tablet. Since the Quran has not been preserved
118
perfectly, these arguments are all open to question since they actually unobtainable.
are supposedly related to an original form of the Quran that is
20. Why do Christians believe in the Bible? Aside from arguments that they find it personally and spiritually meaningful, there are very good historical reasons for Christians to believe that the text of the Bible has been to this topic, so this will be just a brief summary.130
preserved with integrity. There are many good books devoted First, the New Testament agrees with and builds on the
teaching of the Old Testament. The Old Testament has many predictions of the Messiah that are clearly fulfilled in Jesus the New Testament books. One of the most important of years before Jesus was born, which includes the following portion (53:4-6 NASB) describing the purpose of the Messiahs ministry: Christ, as He is portrayed in the Gospels and in the rest of these is Isaiah chapter 53, revealed to the prophet Isaiah 700
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
130 One excellent book is Steven Masood, The Bible and the Quran: A Question of Integrity. Carlisle, Cumbria: OM Publishing, 2001.
119
But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.
Testaments is not the only critieria. Also, the integrity of the historical transmission of the Bible has been subjected to Kung, a Roman Catholic theologian, has said this:131 enormous amounts of outside and even hostile scrutiny. Hans
Continuity of the revelations between the Old and New
Lay people are usually unaware that the scrupulous scholarly work achieved by modern biblical criticismrepresented by scrupulous academic work over about 300 years, belongs among the greatest intellectual achievements of the human race. Has any of the great world religions outside of the Jewish-Christian tradition investigated its own foundations and its own history so thoroughly and so impartially? None of them has remotely approached this. The Bible is far and away the most studied book in world literature.
kind of criticism and the rigorous studies have instead come to support its reliability through archaeological evidence, literary
131 Hans Kng, Judaism: The Religious Situation of Our Time. London: SCM Press Ltd, 1992, 24.
The Bible, though, has shown that it can stand up to this
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criticism, textual criticism, and historical evidence. This book is a thorough look at just the one aspect of textual criticism. Though no one likes to have their holy books criticized,
Christians have come to realize that our holy books must be able. Only by surviving such scrutiny can we commend our its truth and sufficiency for our world.
examined by the most modern and careful scholarship availfaith to our age with full intellectual and spiritual conviction of A third area is a statement summarizing the thrust of this
book, that the Bibles text has not been corrupted or changed significantly away from what the individual books that were originally given. The Islamic claims that this happened are not supported by historical evidence. They are instead theological assertions that are not based on a fully informed view of all
the evidence. Books like the DaVinci Code or Bart Ehrmans history of the text on the basis of much less trustworthy
books also dont prove it. They are merely asserting a different evidence and large amounts of speculation.One last area is
historical evidence of the development of Christianity. There is no sufficient historical reason for the start and continued existence of Christianity except for the firm belief among Jesus apostles and disciples that Jesus really did die on the cross and rise from the dead. Islam and the Quran, which recognize Christianity as a legitimate historical religion from God, do not adequately take this into account. Without the atoning
121
death and resurrection of Christ, Christianity would have just Judaism. But because these events did happen, and since the risen Jesus appeared to His apostles and guided them in the religion which claims universal significance and allegiance. at least be historically accurate and supportable. Christians Revelation from God, contained in a holy book, should
been a Jewish reform movement and would have stayed within
ensuing decades, Christianity was born and became a separate
believe that God does not leave Himself and His acts in time and space without adequate witness or testimony. The Bible ment present a historically accurate picture of Jesus and the stands up to this standard. The four Gospels of the New Testatime he lived in. They do present His actual words, teaching, and claims to deity. As millions have put their personal faith can bring into their lives through granting forgiveness and in the risen Christ they have experienced the change that He cleansing from sin. He makes changes in lives greater than any law or merely human effort can accomplish. It is only because of the historical occurrence of the crucifixion and resurrec-
tion, and through the continued experience of redemption that believers in Christ through the ages have received, that Christianity has continued to exist and continues to grow dramatically in our own time. :
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history

holy books have a

holy books have a

holy Books have a history: New testament and Quran Manuscripts

Chapter 3: Kinds of Variants in Nt and Quran Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Chapter 4: Comparisons and Conclusions from textual Criticism . . . . . . 53

granted permission for the use of material that originally

Special thanks are due to the publisher Hans Schiler, who

Testament and Quranic Manuscript Traditions (pp. 572-593),

how the variants illumine issues regarding the textual history

One might well ask, why study ancient manuscripts of other

sacred texts is an exercise in simple intellectual honesty. It is

One Muslim has wisely written: 2

even for the outright rejecter, it is a basic exercise of intellec-

For the believer in Islam, for the intellectually curious, and

catalog, the following statement was given as the purpose of

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

by everyone. Stuart, as a devout Christian, also comments they might cause:4

These are excellent, honest questions that need to be faced

about the necessity of these kinds of studies, and some fears

as to construct critical Greek New Testaments and critical

Textual criticism and the study of ancient manuscripts so

Hebrew Bibles are responses to these challenges in the most

One Christian scholar has shared a similar conclusion to his

after many years of study and experience.

This book is written from these same convictions arrived at

The Aim of this Book

the Quran. There is a widespread and long held belief among

cism of manuscripts can help answer these questions and some

Also, in this claim there is the unspoken and mistaken

necessary for it to be considered inspired and even inerrant. At

force a Muslim view of scripture onto the Bible, a view that

To force a standard of perfection on its textual history is to

lying this book was done to examine the manuscripts of both

Ideally, we should hold onto this hard-won strength with

As a devout Christian, I try to take Jesus words seriously

Keith E . small, PhD, August 2010

holy Books have a history

holy books have a history

When you first hear a Muslim view of the Qurans textual

chapter 1: holy books have a history

friend is making comparisons to the Bible, he will usually state

a point of fairness and integrity, if any comparison using these

Fideism vs. Evidentialism

holy books have a history

the New Testament, as well as the historical integrity of Jewish

bringing out a serious discussion often brings about emotional,

chapter 1: holy books have a history

dent on the teaching of any of these holy books, then we

look into these issues as carefully and objectively as possible.

Muslims and Christians usually start from different points

tionally worked from a position known as evidentialism, that

holy books have a history

How different this is from the advice to all Christians in 1

sizing things that strengthen their faith in the Quran, rather

The ways Muslims defend the Quran often end up empha-

than carefully examining the foundational issues and demon-

evidences but which after a deeper look actually become irrel-

chapter 1: holy books have a history

history of its preservation that shows it does contain the

authentic and authoritative sayings and teachings of Jesus

and His Apostles (the Christian Scriptures), as well as the

Scriptures given by God to the Jews. Since it does stand up

and we can defend it and present it in relevant ways to those