/lit/ - Literature

Reminder that no Muslim has a response to this:

The editors of the ‘qirav’a mashhura’, or textus receptus, worked under the domination of a servile scrupulousness for tradition. Otherwise they would not have been able to resist the temptation to improve, by means of equivalents readily furnished by the lexicon, the poor rhymes terminating the verses. They would not have scattered broadcast through the collection, sometimes in the course of the same Sura, groups of verses which have a logical connection. They would have tried to delete or tone down the principal repetitions and tautologies which make its bulk unwieldy. Revision after the author's death would have modified the verses relating to Zainab (Qoran 33, 37), and brought into agreement the differing versions of the same prophetic legend. In the enumeration of the prophets it would have separated and distinguished between those of the Old and those of the New Testament, and such a re-editing would have brought consistency into the story of Abraham's relations with Ishmael and Isaac, which are completely dissimilar as related in the Mekkan or the Medinese Suras. In deciding what order to assign to the Suras a critical revision would at least have adopted some criticism less primitive than that of length. Above all, it would have cut out the most glaring anachronisms: the confusion between the two Marys (19, 22), between Haman, minister of King Ahasuerus, and the minister of Moses' Pharaoh (Qoran 28, 5-7, 38; 40, 38); the fusion into one of the legends of Gideon, Saul, David and Goliath (2, 250, etc.); the story of the Samaritan (sic)who is alleged to have made the Jews worship the golden calf (20, 87, etc.). The Qoranic Vulgate has respected all this, and left everything exactly as the editors found it."

"Some Orientalists have alleged that it has been touched up in order to bring the language to the standard of perfection set by the pre-Islamic poets. In that case we must suppose that these purists in their revision have paid no attention to the extremely primitive rhymes of the most recent Suras and above all that they have passed over slight faults of grammar and style which it would have been so easy to rectify. (Qoran 20, 66: inna followed by a nominative; 49, 9, dual subject of a plural verb.) In 2, 106; 4, 40-41, the predicate is singular in the first clause of the sentence, and in the plural in the second although relating to the same grammatical subject. In 27, 61; 35, 25, passim, Allah speaks in the third person; then, without transition, in the first. Thus in 2, 172, the celebrated philologist Al-Mubarrad read al-barr instead of
al-birr, in order to avoid this singular construction: ‘piety is he who...’ In spite of all this there is no occasion for surprise in the fact that the Qoran, especially the Medinese Suras with their more polished phrases, less interspersed with ellipses and anacolutha than the pre-Hijran ones, has served as the standard for fixing the rules of national grammar...

The editors of the ‘qirav’a mashhura’, or textus receptus, worked under the domination of a servile scrupulousness for tradition. Otherwise they would not have been able to resist the temptation to improve, by means of equivalents readily furnished by the lexicon, the poor rhymes terminating the verses. They would not have scattered broadcast through the collection, sometimes in the course of the same Sura, groups of verses which have a logical connection. They would have tried to delete or tone down the principal repetitions and tautologies which make its bulk unwieldy. Revision after the author's death would have modified the verses relating to Zainab (Qoran 33, 37), and brought into agreement the differing versions of the same prophetic legend. In the enumeration of the prophets it would have separated and distinguished between those of the Old and those of the New Testament, and such a re-editing would have brought consistency into the story of Abraham's relations with Ishmael and Isaac, which are completely dissimilar as related in the Mekkan or the Medinese Suras. In deciding what order to assign to the Suras a critical revision would at least have adopted some criticism less primitive than that of length. Above all, it would have cut out the most glaring anachronisms: the confusion between the two Marys (19, 22), between Haman, minister of King Ahasuerus, and the minister of Moses' Pharaoh (Qoran 28, 5-7, 38; 40, 38); the fusion into one of the legends of Gideon, Saul, David and Goliath (2, 250, etc.); the story of the Samaritan (sic)who is alleged to have made the Jews worship the golden calf (20, 87, etc.). The Qoranic Vulgate has respected all this, and left everything exactly as the editors found it."

"Some Orientalists have alleged that it has been touched up in order to bring the language to the standard of perfection set by the pre-Islamic poets. In that case we must suppose that these purists in their revision have paid no attention to the extremely primitive rhymes of the most recent Suras and above all that they have passed over slight faults of grammar and style which it would have been so easy to rectify. (Qoran 20, 66: inna followed by a nominative; 49, 9, dual subject of a plural verb.) In 2, 106; 4, 40-41, the predicate is singular in the first clause of the sentence, and in the plural in the second although relating to the same grammatical subject. In 27, 61; 35, 25, passim, Allah speaks in the third person; then, without transition, in the first. Thus in 2, 172, the celebrated philologist Al-Mubarrad read al-barr instead of
al-birr, in order to avoid this singular construction: ‘piety is he who...’ In spite of all this there is no occasion for surprise in the fact that the Qoran, especially the Medinese Suraswith their more polished phrases, less interspersed with ellipses and anacolutha than the pre-Hijran ones, has served as the standard for fixing the rules of national grammar."

Was Henri Lammens right?