Genesis Of A Holy Book

So Where Does This Leave Us?

Nobody likes “truths” that they’ve deemed to be sacrosanct to be brought into question…let alone shown to be entirely spurious.  The preceding inquiry, then, will surely ruffle some feathers.  Anyone who suggests that the Koran is anything less than inimitable is met with a scoff.  Those engaged in a candid critical analysis of sanctified dogmas quickly finds themselves personae non gratae.

What revanchists fail to recognize is that addressing this issue honestly is simply a matter of debunking a “just-so story”–a bit of overwrought farce that is taken as holy writ.  Shall we all be obliged to treat such claims as inviolable?  Don’t be ridiculous.

(For more on this, see R. Stephen Humphreys’ “Qur’anic Myth and Narrative Structure in Early Islamic Historiography”; Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity; 1989.)

As I hope to have shown, the sequence of oral transmission that yielded what we now know as the “Recitations” (i.e. Final Revelation) was riven with a potpourri of ad hoc emendations.  We’ve seen that the chain of narration (“isnad”) was punctuated by countless–mostly unknown–segues.  That process led to lost and/or redacted verses on numerous topics, from stoning to breast-suckling.

It is, of course, POSSIBLE that the authorities made an honest effort to base every decision on unconditional fidelity to the oldest discernible versions of the oral tradition; but that is a big leap to make.  It is an assumption that is unverifiable.  One may propose that there was absolutely zero contrivance involved…by anyone…at any point; but that would be comically far-fetched.

Be that as it may, highly improbably is not quite impossible.  While “exceedingly unlikely” leaves room for remote possibility, tempered credulity can only go so far until it becomes delusion.  Such conjecture becomes even more improbable, though, once we factor in the staunch vested interests that were invariably at play…each and every step of the way.

And WHAT OF the putative “isnad” that are purportedly “mutawatir” (perfectly dependable)?  Here’s the thing: The account of any given isnad’s credence is ITSELF part of the “isnad”.  Ergo a catch-22.  The reliability of any given chain of narration (including the credibility of ANY ONE OF its transmitters) is PART OF the isnad-in-question.  Hence the putative “sahih” rating is nothing more than a particular “isnad” vouching for itself.  Short of corroboration from independent sources, we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle.  For insofar as the Hadith are the ultimate authority, we can never really “get outside” of the tradition in order to validate that tradition.  (One might think of this as the narrative version of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.)  After all, the meta-isnad assessment is, well, just another isnad.

To suppose that every amanuensis was impartial AND competent (that is: perfectly honest with a perfect memory) is to engage in a flight of fancy.  It’s safe to say that staunch conflicts of interest were involved at every juncture…by SOMEONE…for SOME reason…over the course of the long, meandering process of transmission.

Unsurprisingly, along the way, every major figurehead proclaimed his own version to be THE “correct” version; and claimed its chain of oral transmission (the “isnad”) to have been meticulously documented, and each amanuensis thoroughly vetted.  So the consecrated “mushaf” was summarily deemed unimpeachably authentic.

This is something that ANY party would enthusiastically proclaim when attempting to legitimize his own version.  Obviously, promulgators of designated “naskh” / “ta’lif” / “haf” would make this claim for themselves; as they would have been foolish NOT to.  Yet simply asserting impeccable validation does not make it so.

That said, it stands to reason that Islamic apologists have a problem with anyone correcting the record.  For doing so undermines what is deemed a coveted historiography (to wit: the version of events on which their book’s divine origin is predicated).  After all, GENUINE divine revelations (which don’t really exist) are not supposed to be man-made. (!)  In the event that sacred apple-carts are upset, those depending on those apple-carts are bound to protest.

Pulling back the curtain to reveal the artifice behind such celestial communiques is seen as–if nothing else–extremely poor manners.  For True Believers, such elucidation is taken as desecration.

In the end, the “Cairo” version of the Koran (the most widely-accepted OFFICIAL version now used by the vast majority of the world’s Muslims) was approved on July 10, 1924 by a government-appointed committee at Al-Azhar University, convened by a man named Mohammed ibn Ali al-Husayni al-Haddad.  It might be noted that this version does not correspond to the manuscript evidence of ANY of the earliest versions.  As mentioned, it lays claim to the lineage through Hafs…which is said to have been a faithful rendition of the fabled “Uthman Koran”.  To know anything about the history of Islam’s holy book is to know that this is a risible claim.

The “Cairo” Koran’s incessant declaration that “these words have not been changed since the day they left the prophet’s lips” is–all things considered–preposterous.  Such special pleading, over and over again, brings to mind the comment by Gertrude in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: Thou doth protest too much. 

It is rather odd that the Koran incessantly pleads that it is not merely a rehashing of fables told by men of old.  And it is suspiciously adamant that it was not simply lifted from extant poetry–as in 6:25, 8:31, 25:4-6, 36:69, 46:17, 52:30, 68:15, 69:41, and 83:13.

(Ancillary note: There is evidence that some of the material was taken from the writings of the 6th-century poet, Imru al-Qays ibn Hujr of the Banu Kindah: an Arab Christian who served in the court of Ghassanid prince Al-Harish ibn Jabalah.)

All of this is entirely beside the point anyway.  For the issue of the Koran being unchanged is ultimately irrelevant.  Even if we were to suppose that the “Cairo” Koran is somehow a verbatim transcript of everything that MoM actually said (a feat that would be impossible without recording devices and a time-machine), doing so would not in any way detract from the fact that all that the Koran is TODAY is a word-for-word record of the pontifications of a particular Bedouin panjandrum: a charismatic leader from the Hijaz purportedly named “Mu-H-M-D”.  No more; no less.

In other words, EVEN IF it could somehow be proven that the collection of “Recitations” now serving as Islam’s holy book has been completely unchanged since the moment they were uttered by MoM, that would in no way lend any credence to their content.  For, even then, all the book would be is a perfectly accurate record of stuff a guy said in the Arabian desert hundreds of years ago.