How much do we really know about the historicity of the Quran?
Is the Quran that Muslims rely on today the correct one, the original? Evidently not. We know for example there has been a purge of variant Quranic texts. This occurred in the year 653, about 21 years after Muhammad's death.
But here's another fact: According to Robert Spencer (in his book Did Muhammad Exist), "There are reasons to believe that the Quran took its present shape not in the seventh century but later, even centuries later. The Arabic alphabet in which the Quran is written did not yet exist in the early seventh century, so it is improbable that Muhammad's secretaries, [if brought back to life] would be able to recognize a modern edition of the Quran as part of the so called holy text that was dictated to them in fragments during Muhammad's lifetime... that is, if such dictation even occurred.
Muslims today are taught that the Quran is perfectly preserved, word-by-word, syllable-by-syllable, and letter-for-letter. Indeed, they think that the Quran is the actual, literal (and pre-existent) word of God. Muslims think so highly of the Quran, that one could say that they worship it. In this sense, all Muslims are fundamentalists. It has been said that the closest comparison to it in Christianity is Christ himself.
However, let’s consider the evidence to see if this assumption is valid. The history of the Quran is most interesting. For the benefit of any Muslim readers, I will liberally document essential points from reliable Muslims resources.
Muhammad claimed to begin having revelations from God when he was 40 years old. It is generally believed that Muhammad was illiterate, which Muslims think is a testimony to the miracle of Quran.
People memorized things Muhammad said or they wrote them down on palm leaves, rocks, and bones (Bukhari 6:509). Bukhari also records that Muhammad "allowed some variation" regarding the recitation of the Quran (Bukhari 3:593, 601, 4:442, 6:514, and 9:640).
There was no organized manuscript of the Quran prior to Muhammad's death (Bukhari 6:509). Shortly after his death, it was noticed that some of the people who had memorized parts of the Quran were being killed in tribal conflicts. Some verses did not survive as the people who remembered them died or verses were otherwise lost (Bukhari 4:62, 6:509-11, 527, 550, 552).
It is not known for sure how many scribes were involved in compiling the Quran. But there were four known companions of Muhammad who were involved in the process: Masud, Salim, Mu'adh, and Ubai (Bukhari 6:521, 526). Even though these men were all authorized by Muhammad himself and each version was widely accepted, these versions of the Quran were not identical. What are the implications of this discontinuity?
Muslims today are taught to accept the Quran without the benefit of any scientific validation. This is in sharp contrast to the Bible, which has been subjected to rigorous scientific inquiry. Also, interestingly, it is in contrast to ancient Muslim scholars, who at the time were willing to look more objectively, albeit critically at the Quran.
One such critic as Sallam, a scholar who studied under the famous masters of the Qufan and Basran schools. Sallam was renowned as a philologist, a jurist, and an authority on the Quranic sciences included in Kitab Fada'il-al-Qur'an. He claimed that many verses had fallen out of the Quran, that a lot of the Quran had in fact been lost. For example, Aisha, the prophet's favorite wife, asserted along with Ubai Ibn Ka'b, one of Muhammad's closest companions, that the chapter of the parties (Sura 33) had at one time contained two hundred verses compared to the 73 in the current Quran. Aisha even claimed that many of the codices had been intentionally altered.
These facts seem to raise serious questions about the authenticity of the Quran, and its claims to be a revelation from God. If verses were dropped out of the Quran, it's also likely that other verses were added. In the early days of Islam, quarrels among those working to write the Quran often resulted in one group leaving out content authored by rival groups and substituting their own verses. Muslim scholars have not attempted textual analysis and criticism of the Qur'an since AD 934. Those who persisted in using variant texts of the Quran, in an attempt to get the true meaning of Muhammad’s thoughts were severely punished for their efforts.
It is widely known among Muslim scholars that changes were made to the closing words of various verses. For example, when the Prophet said, 'And God is mighty and wise' ('aziz, hakim), a scribe by the name of Abdollah Abi Sarh suggested writing down 'knowing and wise' ('alim, hakim), Muhammad agreed with the changes. Having witnessed a succession of changes of this type, Abdollah became disillusioned and renounced Islam on the grounds that the forming Quran, if truly from God, could not be changed at the mere prompting of a scribe such as himself. Muslims dispute this account,. but it raises interesting questions does it not?
Another interesting aspect of the Quran is that there were verses in the original version of Muhammad's Quran that have been abrogated, that is, eliminated from the text altogether. In fact, the Quran itself justifies this practice (Suras 2:105-106, 13:39, 16:101, 22:52). This practice is unique among world religions. No other religion with a book of sayings and thoughts of the religions founder have so liberally changed its content... or made it up to suit their purposes. The question must be asked... If Allah cannot get it right the first time, is he really all-wise?
Modern scholarship is bringing new light to the Quran. The oldest Quran manuscript known was discovered in 1972 in Yemen. This text apparently has words changed and verses and chapters rearranged from the Quran that is available today. Complicating the issue, this old text does not contain the dots over the Arabic letters, which suggests some variant meanings of the words. In 2007 a German author Cristoph Luxenberg published a controversial work entitled The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran. Luxenberg claims that much of the original Quran was written in Syriac-Aramaic rather than Arabic, as most Muslims assume. Arabic was not a written language until after the Quran was first put to writing. Reading the Quran in Syria-Aramaic changes many passages in the Quran.
Muslims claim that the literary style of the Quran is evidence of its divine inspiration. But if that is a valid test, they would have to accept that the writings of Homer and Shakespeare as divinely inspired as well. But even Muslim sources recognize that the Quran is not always as eloquent as is claimed. The Iranian Shiite scholar Ali Dashti contends that the Quran contains numerous grammatical problems. He says... "The Quran contains sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid of commentaries..."
The German scholar, Salomon Reinach, stated... "From the literary point of view, the Quran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it."
Historian Edward Gibbon described the Quran as "an incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and sometimes is lost in the clouds."
McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia states, "The matter of the Quran is exceedingly incoherent and sententious, the book evidently being without any logical order of thought as a whole or in its parts. This agrees with the desultory and incidental manner in which it is said to have been delivered."
The German critical theologist and Semitic scholar Ernest Renan points out, "The book (the Quran) seems to us declamatory, monotonous, and boring. An uninterrupted reading of it is almost unbearable."
There are several things found in the Quran about Christian theology that are quite plainly wrong. Sura 5:116 says that Christians believe that Mary is God. Sura 9:30 says that Jews believe that Ezra was the Son of God. It confuses the angel Gabriel with the Holy Spirit (Sura 2:97,98 versus Sura 16:102). There is no evidence that Christians and Jews ever believed these things. What seems to be the most likely explanation why things like this are in the Quran is that there was no Arabic translation of the Bible in the time of Muhammad. Muhammad picked up bits and pieces of Christian and Jewish theology from hearsay and gnostics, and just got it wrong. Not the sort of thing one would expect from a man claiming to have received a revelation from God.
In conclusion, it is clear that Muslim belief in the word-for-word/letter-for-letter preservation of the Quran is incorrect. Even Muslim scholars know that! It is also clear that the claim of an error-free Quran is incorrect. There are hundreds of contradictions and inaccurate statements in the Quran.
Even IF the Quran of today were a carbon copy of the one originally dictated by Muhammad, it does not logically follow that it is from God. Irrespective of the quality of today's copy, the internal and external inconsistencies in the Quran disqualify it as being a true revelation of the One True Holy God.
