German
Scholars reveal Aramaic-Christian hymns embedded in Qur’an
In the 1970s a German
Protestant theologian scholar named Dr Gunther Luling (a Dr. in Arabistics and
Islamics and a pioneer in the study of early Islamic origins) wrote his
Doctoral thesis on the origins of the Qur’an, where he reconstructed a
comprehensive pre-Islamic Christian Hymnal hidden within the Qur’an, taken from
5th-6th century Syriac Christian hymns.
His 1970 PhD thesis
received the ‘Opus Eximium’ (high distinction) grade, the highest available in
Germany, which should have promoted him to professorship anywhere, but in 1972
he was kicked out of his University, for no reason. One German scholar said ‘He
was a crack-pot’, possibly because his research was just too new and too
explosively controversial.
In the 1990s his thesis
was translated into English, which gave it a much wider audience, and he was
rehabilitated, so that by the time he died in 2014, he had been exonerated.
Following Dr Luling’s
example another German Arabist and Syriac scholar, Dr Christoph Luxenberg broke
new ground on the Qur’an, discovering that much of it came from previous
Christian Lectionaries, Homilies, and Hymns, written in Syro-Aramaic, and then
interposed into Arabic later on.
Like Luling, he was
ostracized by the German academic community. As a result, he changed his name
and never publicly showed his face, in order not to be identified.
He was curious
concerning the 25% of the Qur’an which even the scholars don’t understand,
known as the “Dark Passages”, and so decided to apply Luling’s methodology,
using his own 7-step process of peeling back the layers of the Arabic to find
what the text originally said.
Here is his 7-step
process:
1) He checked
al-Tabari’s 10th century Tafsir (commentary) for an Arabic meaning for the
words in question.
2) He then checked the
13th century Lisān al-ʿArab (“Tongue
of Arabs” = Arabic Dictionary) which was compiled by Ibn Manzur (in 1290)
for dictionary meanings of those words.
3) He looked to see if
there were homonymous (synonymous) roots in the Aramaic, even perhaps with a
different meaning.
4) He then tried
different diacritics (the 5 dots above and below each of the letters in Arabic)
to see if he could fine other alternatives.
5) He finally went to
the Aramaic language to find an Aramaic root using different Aramaic diacritics
(dots similar to those in Arabic).
6) Upon trying the
different diacritics, he then re-translated the Arabic words back into the
Aramaic using the semantics of the Syro-Aramaic word.
7) And finally he tried
to find the lost meanings of Arab words using 10th century Syro-Aramaic
lexicons.
After employing these
7-step he was able to reproduce the 25% “Dark Passages” and noticed that they
were simply Aramaic Christian Lectionaries, Homilies, and Hymns written by
Christian priests in the 4th – 6th centuries in worship to JESUS!
So, his exercise had
nothing to do with ‘what he found’, but ‘who he found’!
What can we conclude?
•The Qur’an is a
mixture of Arabic and Aramaic words, originally written in Aramaic script,
later transcribed into the Arabic script.
•When taking Aramaic
into account, the Qur’an can be fully understood as a Christian text.
•During the 9th &
10th centuries (according to the Germans), diacritics/vowels were added and the
reading was therefore fixed (scriptio plena).
•The present Qur’an is
an interpretative act by Muslim Arabs (no longer Christians) who decided where
the dots and vowels would go.
•Thus, the Qur’an was
changed, and claims that an oral tradition ensures the correct reading are
patently false.
Here then is a possible
time line, including 5 periods of Textual evolution:
·7th century = Aramaic
texts were transposed into Arabic, though few of the compilers knew Aramaic
well.
·8th – 9th centuries =
Arabic manuscripts began to appear, but without diacritics or vowels, making it
difficult to read.
·8th – 10th centuries =
Qira’at & Ahruf copies were compiled (736 – 905 AD) by over 700 different
men put their dots/vowels wherever they chose, and then gave their name to
their Qur’anic text.
·10th – 15th centuries
= 7 Qira’ats (chosen by Ibn Mujahid in 936 AD), then 14 (chosen by al Shatabi
in 1194 AD), then 9 ‘Readings’ (chosen by al Jaziri in 1429 AD) were designated
the 30 official Qira’at Qur’ans, with over 93,000 differences between them.
As different
geographical groups memorized their Qur’an, they followed the Qira’at of their
choice, which created problems.
·20th century = So, in
1924 the final and singular ‘Hafs’ Qur’an was chosen, first for Cairo, then in
1936 for Egypt, and then for the whole world in 1985.
So, Muslims began with
1 Qur’an, which became 7, then 21, then 30, and finally back to 1 again. Yet,
they still claim that there has always been only 1 Qur’an, without one letter
or one word different.
