Zilam
20-11-2006, 06:17
I want to know more about a few things Muslims believe.
1) Do you read the Injeel(New Testament) like all good muslims are supposed to?
[Nisa 4:136] O People who Believe! Have faith in Allah and His Noble Messenger and the Book He has sent down upon this Noble Messenger of His, and the Book He sent down before; and whoever does not accept faith in Allah and His angels and His Books and His Noble Messengers and the Last Day, has undoubtedly wandered far astray.
2)If not, is it because it has been corrupted?
3) When was it corrupted? If before Mohammed, then wouldn't he have said not to read them? And if after Mohammed, doesn't that mean that the Qur'an wasn't needed?
4) Do you take into account that the Qur'an might be faulty too (http://www.biblestudy.org/maturart/bibledef/bibdef8.html)?
Although a standard Muslim claim says the Quran has no textual variations, this is in fact incorrect. No one original manuscript of the Quran ever existed, since Muhammad (c. 570-632 A.D.) didn't write any of it. Instead various followers wrote scattered revelations on whatever material came to hand, including pieces of papyrus, tree bark, palm leaves and mats, stones, the ribs and shoulder blades of animals, etc. Otherwise, they memorized them. These disparate materials were susceptible to loss: Ali Dashti, a Islamic statesman, said animals sometimes ate mats or the palm leaves on which Suras (chapters of the Quran) were written! After his death, Muhammad's revelations were gathered together to eliminate the chaos.
To solve the problems of conflicting memories and possibly lost or varying written materials, Caliph Uthman (ruled 644-56) had the text of the Quran forcibly standardized. He commanded manuscripts with alternative readings to be burned. But he didn't fully succeed, since variations are still known to have existed and some still do. The Sura Al-Saff had 200 verses in the days of Muhammad's later wife Ayesha, but Uthman's version had only 52. Morey says Shiite Muslims claim Uthman cut out a quarter of the Quran's verses for political reasons. In his manuscript of the Quran, Ubai had a few Suras that Uthman omitted from the standardized version. Arthur Jeffrey, in his Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran, gives 90 pages of variant readings for the Quran's text, finding 140 alone for Sura 2. When the Western scholar Bertrasser sought to photograph a rare Kufic manuscript of the Quran which had "certain curious features" in Cairo, the Egyptian Library suddenly withdrew it, and denied him access to it.
Even when originally first written, certain problems existed, since Muhammad would make mistakes or corrections to revelations he had made. Before documenting examples of verses removed from the Quran, Arabic scholar E. Wherry explained first: "There being some passages in the Quran which are contradictory, the Muhammadan doctors obviate any objection from thence by the doctrine of abrogation; for they say GOD in the Quran commanded several things which were for good reasons afterwards revoked and abrogated." One follower of Muhammad, Abdollah Sarh, often made suggestions about subtracting, adding, or rephrasing Suras to him that he accepted. Later, Abdollah renounced Islam because if these revelations had come from God, they shouldn't have been changed at his suggestion. (Later, after taking Mecca, Muhammad made sure Abdollah was one of the first people he had executed). Muhammad had the curious policy of renouncing verses of the Quran that he spoke in error. In the Satanic verses incident he briefly capitulated to polytheism by allowing Allah's followers to worship the goddesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Manat (see Sura 53:19; cf. 23:51)
5) Who corrupted the Injeel specifically?
6) What was their motivation?
I suggest that all good muslims read Al Injeel, and even Az-Zubur, Al-Tawrat, along with their Qur'an. :)
http://www.crescentproject.org/links.cfm
1) Do you read the Injeel(New Testament) like all good muslims are supposed to?
[Nisa 4:136] O People who Believe! Have faith in Allah and His Noble Messenger and the Book He has sent down upon this Noble Messenger of His, and the Book He sent down before; and whoever does not accept faith in Allah and His angels and His Books and His Noble Messengers and the Last Day, has undoubtedly wandered far astray.
2)If not, is it because it has been corrupted?
3) When was it corrupted? If before Mohammed, then wouldn't he have said not to read them? And if after Mohammed, doesn't that mean that the Qur'an wasn't needed?
4) Do you take into account that the Qur'an might be faulty too (http://www.biblestudy.org/maturart/bibledef/bibdef8.html)?
Although a standard Muslim claim says the Quran has no textual variations, this is in fact incorrect. No one original manuscript of the Quran ever existed, since Muhammad (c. 570-632 A.D.) didn't write any of it. Instead various followers wrote scattered revelations on whatever material came to hand, including pieces of papyrus, tree bark, palm leaves and mats, stones, the ribs and shoulder blades of animals, etc. Otherwise, they memorized them. These disparate materials were susceptible to loss: Ali Dashti, a Islamic statesman, said animals sometimes ate mats or the palm leaves on which Suras (chapters of the Quran) were written! After his death, Muhammad's revelations were gathered together to eliminate the chaos.
To solve the problems of conflicting memories and possibly lost or varying written materials, Caliph Uthman (ruled 644-56) had the text of the Quran forcibly standardized. He commanded manuscripts with alternative readings to be burned. But he didn't fully succeed, since variations are still known to have existed and some still do. The Sura Al-Saff had 200 verses in the days of Muhammad's later wife Ayesha, but Uthman's version had only 52. Morey says Shiite Muslims claim Uthman cut out a quarter of the Quran's verses for political reasons. In his manuscript of the Quran, Ubai had a few Suras that Uthman omitted from the standardized version. Arthur Jeffrey, in his Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran, gives 90 pages of variant readings for the Quran's text, finding 140 alone for Sura 2. When the Western scholar Bertrasser sought to photograph a rare Kufic manuscript of the Quran which had "certain curious features" in Cairo, the Egyptian Library suddenly withdrew it, and denied him access to it.
Even when originally first written, certain problems existed, since Muhammad would make mistakes or corrections to revelations he had made. Before documenting examples of verses removed from the Quran, Arabic scholar E. Wherry explained first: "There being some passages in the Quran which are contradictory, the Muhammadan doctors obviate any objection from thence by the doctrine of abrogation; for they say GOD in the Quran commanded several things which were for good reasons afterwards revoked and abrogated." One follower of Muhammad, Abdollah Sarh, often made suggestions about subtracting, adding, or rephrasing Suras to him that he accepted. Later, Abdollah renounced Islam because if these revelations had come from God, they shouldn't have been changed at his suggestion. (Later, after taking Mecca, Muhammad made sure Abdollah was one of the first people he had executed). Muhammad had the curious policy of renouncing verses of the Quran that he spoke in error. In the Satanic verses incident he briefly capitulated to polytheism by allowing Allah's followers to worship the goddesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Manat (see Sura 53:19; cf. 23:51)
5) Who corrupted the Injeel specifically?
6) What was their motivation?
I suggest that all good muslims read Al Injeel, and even Az-Zubur, Al-Tawrat, along with their Qur'an. :)
http://www.crescentproject.org/links.cfm