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Hidden origins of islam
#1
There is a new book out , The Hidden Origins of Islam, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591026342/ I dont know if anyone is familiar with this field but it may be in part at least, a response to some of the criticisms of this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Ar..._The_Koran
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#2
Shlama Judge,

It's really interesting that you should mention this new book right now.

I started reading 'By Foot To China--Mission of the Church of the East, To 1400', by John M.L. Young, last night again.

I'm on page 24, of 109.

It makes mention "he (Mohammed) had reason to befriend the Christian's for a "Nestorian" had been Mohammed's teacher at one point.....".

I think that there are still DEEP influences within Islam from the Church of East of those days.

The way in which Muslims pray and some other things that they do religiously, probably came from directly from The Church of the East.

I can remember Akhi Paul (Younan) mentioning this in a post, perhaps a few months ago.

I might go looking for that post in the next day or two, and see if I can find it again.

There maybe some website that I know nothing about that describes early Islam's COE "connections", if anyone knows of such a website, I'd love to go and check it out.

I just thought how "timely" that it was that you brought this up, and I started reading 'By Foot To China' again.

Messiah's Peace Be Upon You,

Albion

P.S. Judge if you buy and finish reading this book, I'd really enjoy 'A reader's review'.

Thanks










judge Wrote:There is a new book out , The Hidden Origins of Islam, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591026342/ I dont know if anyone is familiar with this field but it may be in part at least, a response to some of the criticisms of this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Ar..._The_Koran
Reply
#3
Shlama Judge,

Thank you for the heads-up on this new work. The publisher is actually the same publisher of Ibn Warraq's works.



Shlama Albion,

I think you might be thinking about this thread:

Forum --> General --> "The Language of the Quran: Aramaic?" by Christina
(Wed. Mar. 26, 2008).

If so, then I would then guess that you might be remembering an excerpt along the lines of:

Quote:???There are numerous Qur???anic verses that are borrowed from the Old Testament. We will examine those similarities in this book. Others are taken from the Talmud; the following chapters will show the sources of those verses. Certain verses are borrowed from ecclesiastical writings of early Christian authorities that are known to exist, and yet were omitted from the authorized New Testament. There are 16 verses from chapter 18 that are taken from the story of the Cave written by the Syriac Metropolitan, Jacob of Suruj (431-521 A.D.).???
[p.17, Sawma]
.... or perhaps ....

Quote:???The tools I used to write this book are: Biblia Hebraica, Biblical Aramaic, the Syriac Peshito (Fshito), the liturgy and hymns of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch as taught by Professor, the late Patriarch Jacob III of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, and Professor Malfono Asmar El-Khoury; the dialect of Eastern Syriac as spoken in the region of Tur Abdin in South East Turkey and the Jazirah district in east Syria; the magnificent handwritten Syriac Bible of the Four Gospels scribed by my late professor, Malfono Asmar El-Khoury, of St. Severius College in Beirut, Lebanon, to whom I owe my knowledge of Syriac; the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (H&EL) ???.???
[p.21, Sawma]

.... ???????

Just a thought. BTW, does your PM or email work? Something's come upon my heart.



Quote:P.S. Judge if you buy and finish reading this book, I'd really enjoy 'A reader's review'.

Ditto, Judge!



Blessings!
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#4
Dear Ryan,

You can write me here:

<!-- e --><a href="mailto:red_panda@hushmail.com">red_panda@hushmail.com</a><!-- e -->

or at:

<!-- e --><a href="mailto:aramaic_albion@hotmail.com">aramaic_albion@hotmail.com</a><!-- e -->

The first one is probably the safest.

Shlama, Albion
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#5
judge Wrote:There is a new book out , The Hidden Origins of Islam, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591026342/ I dont know if anyone is familiar with this field but it may be in part at least, a response to some of the criticisms of this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Ar..._The_Koran

Shlama Akhi Albion:
This is a very important topic. Here is an article by Sandro Magister with Christoph Luxenberg.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/7025?eng=y">http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/ar ... 7025?eng=y</a><!-- m -->

Scholars Scrutinize the Koran's Origin
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html">http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html</a><!-- m -->


From the Gospel to Islam
An interview with "Christoph Luxenberg" by Alfred Hackensberger

Q. - Professor, why did you think it useful to conduct this re-reading of the Koran?

A. - "Because, in the Koran, there are many obscure points that, from the beginning, even the Arab commentators were not able to explain. Of these passages it is said that only God can comprehend them. Western research on the Koran, which has been conducted in a systematic manner only since about the middle of the 19th century, has always taken as its base the commentaries of the Arab scholars. But these have never gone beyond the etymological explanation of some terms of foreign origin."

Q. - What makes your method different?

A. - "I began from the idea that the language of the Koran must be studied from an historical-linguistic point of view. When the Koran was composed, Arabic did not exist as a written language; thus it seemed evident to me that it was necessary to take into consideration, above all, Aramaic, which at the time, between the 4th and 7th centuries, was not only the language of written communication, but also the lingua franca of that area of Western Asia."

Q. - Tell us how you proceeded.

A. - "At first I conducted a ??synchronous?? reading. In other words, I kept in mind both Arabic and Aramaic. Thanks to this procedure, I was able to discover the extent of the previously unsuspected influence of Aramaic upon the language of the Koran: in point of fact, much of what now passes under the name of ??classical Arabic?? is of Aramaic derivation."

Q. - What do you say, then, about the idea, accepted until now, that the Koran was the first book written in Arabic?

A. - "According to Islamic tradition, the Koran dates back to the 7th century, while the first examples of Arabic literature in the full sense of the phrase are found only two centuries later, at the time of the ??Biography of the Prophet??; that is, of the life of Mohammed as written by Ibn Hisham, who died in 828. We may thus establish that post-Koranic Arabic literature developed by degrees, in the period following the work of al-Khalil bin Ahmad, who died in 786, the founder of Arabic lexicography (kitab al-ayn), and of Sibawwayh, who died in 796, to whom the grammar of classical Arabic is due. Now, if we assume that the composition of the Koran was brought to an end in the year of the Prophet Mohammed??s death, in 632, we find before us an interval of 150 years, during which there is no trace of Arabic literature worthy of note."

Q. - So at the time of Mohammed Arabic did not have precise rules, and was not used for written communication. Then how did the Koran come to be written?

A. - "At that time, there were no Arab schools - except, perhaps, for the Christian centers of al-Anbar and al-Hira, in southern Mesopotamia, or what is now Iraq. The Arabs of that region had been Christianized and instructed by Syrian Christians. Their liturgical language was Syro-Aramaic. And this was the vehicle of their culture, and more generally the language of written communication."

Q. - What is the relationship between this language of culture and the origin of the Koran?

A. - "Beginning in the third century, the Syrian Christians did not limit themselves to bringing their evangelical mission to nearby countries, like Armenia or Persia. They pressed on toward distant territories, all the way to the borders of China and the western coast of India, in addition to the entire Arabian peninsula all the way to Yemen and Ethiopia. It is thus rather probable that, in order to proclaim the Christian message to the Arabic peoples, they would have used (among others) the language of the Bedouins, or Arabic. In order to spread the Gospel, they necessarily made use of a mishmash of languages. But in an era in which Arabic was just an assembly of dialects and had no written form, the missionaries had no choice but to resort to their own literary language and their own culture; that is, to Syro-Aramaic. The result was that the language of the Koran was born as a written Arabic language, but one of Arab-Aramaic derivation."

Q. - Do you mean that anyone who does not keep the Syro-Aramaic language in mind cannot translate and interpret the Koran correctly?

A. - "Yes. Anyone who wants to make a thorough study of the Koran must have a background in the Syro-Aramaic grammar and literature of that period, the 7th century. Only thus can he identify the original meaning of Arabic expressions whose semantic interpretation can be established definitively only by retranslating them into Syro-Aramaic."

Q. - Let??s come to the misunderstandings. One of the most glaring errors you cite is that of the virgins promised, in the Islamic paradise, to the suicide bombers.

A. - "We begin from the term ??huri,?? for which the Arabic commentators could not find any meaning other than those heavenly virgins. But if one keeps in mind the derivations from Syro-Aramaic, that expression indicated ??white grapes,?? which is one of the symbolic elements of the Christian paradise, recalled in the Last Supper of Jesus. There??s another Koranic expression, falsely interpreted as ??the children?? or ??the youths?? of paradise: in Aramaic: it designates the fruit of the vine, which in the Koran is compared to pearls. As for the symbols of paradise, these interpretive errors are probably connected to the male monopoly in Koranic commentary and interpretation."

Q. - By the way, what do you think about the Islamic veil?

A. - "There is a passage in Sura 24, verse 31, which in Arabic reads, ??That they should beat their khumurs against their bags.?? It is an incomprehensible phrase, for which the following interpretation has been sought: ??That they should extend their kerchiefs from their heads to their breasts.?? But if this passage is read in the light of Syro-Aramaic, it simply means: ??They should fasten their belts around their waists.??"

Q. - Does this mean the veil is really a chastity belt?

A. - "Not exactly. It is true that, in the Christian tradition, the belt is associated with chastity: Mary is depicted with a belt fastened around her waist. But in the gospel account of the Last Supper, Christ also ties an apron around his waist before washing the Apostles?? feet. There are clearly many parallels with the Christian faith."

Q. - You have discovered that Sura 97 of the Koran mentions the Nativity. And in your translation of the famous Sura of Mary, her "birthgiving" is "made legitimate by the Lord." Moreover, the text contains the invitation to come to the sacred liturgy, to the Mass. Would the Koran, then, be nothing other than an Arabic version of the Christian Bible?

A. - "In its origin, the Koran is a Syro-Aramaic liturgical book, with hymns and extracts from Scriptures which might have been used in sacred Christian services. In the second place, one may see in the Koran the beginning of a preaching directed toward transmitting the belief in the Sacred Scriptures to the pagans of Mecca, in the Arabic language. Its socio-political sections, which are not especially related to the original Koran, were added later in Medina. At its beginning, the Koran was not conceived as the foundation of a new religion. It presupposes belief in the Scriptures, and thus functioned merely as an inroad into Arabic society."

Q. - To many Muslim believers, for whom the Koran is the holy book and the only truth, your conclusions could seem blasphemous. What reactions have you noticed up until now?

A. - "In Pakistan, the sale of the edition of ??Newsweek?? that contained an article on my book was banned. Otherwise, I must say that, in my encounters with Muslims, I have not noticed any hostile attitudes. On the contrary, they have appreciated the commitment of a non-Muslim to studies aimed at an objective comprehension of their sacred text. My work could be judged as blasphemous only by those who decide to cling to errors in the interpretation of the word of God. But in the Koran it is written, ??No one can bring to the right way those whom God induces to error.??"

Q. - Aren??t you afraid of a fatwa, a death sentence like the one pronounced against Salman Rushdie?

A. - "I am not a Muslim, so I don??t run that risk. Besides, I haven??t offended against the Koran"

Q. - But you still preferred to use a pseudonym.

A. - "I did that on the advice of Muslim friends who were afraid that some enthusiastic fundamentalist would act of his own initiative, without waiting for a fatwa."

Divine Verses

Koran, in Arabic Qur??an, means recitation or reading. It is an essential element of the Islamic faith that it was always with God and "descended" in its fullness to Mohammed at the moment of his call as a prophet, called the "night of destiny." It is in Arabic, and it may be ritually recited only in this language. It is divided into 114 Suras, or chapters, and each Sura is divided into verses. The first Sura, called "the unstopping," is a brief prayer that plays an important role in worship and everyday life. The following Suras are ordered according to length, from longest to shortest. According to the tradition, Mohammed gradually communicated to his faithful the parts of the Koran revealed to him. The oldest Suras are called those "of Mecca"; that later ones, "of Medina." The most ancient Suras are of a markedly theological character, while the Suras of Medina are more juridical, dictating the ordering of the community. For Sunni Islam, the Koran may not be put to criticism, given its divine nature: in any case, the "door of interpretation" of the Koran has been closed since the 11th century. my emphasis in bold

Shlama,
Stephen
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#6
Shlama Stephen,

I also found THIS piece this morning:


<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.leithart.com/archives/000995.php">http://www.leithart.com/archives/000995.php</a><!-- m -->


Let me know what you think, OK?

Thanks.

In Messiah Yeshua, Albion
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#7
Albion Wrote:Shlama Stephen,

I also found THIS piece this morning:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.leithart.com/archives/000995.php">http://www.leithart.com/archives/000995.php</a><!-- m -->

Let me know what you think, OK?
Thanks.
In Messiah Yeshua, Albion

Shlama Akhi Albion:
Right on the money. This is very informative research. The idea of Islam: Mirror of Christendom is not a new idea. We know that the Koran quotes both Torat and Angeel The TaNaKh and the Evangelion/Gospel. I think that this research must continue publicly, in an honest and forthright manner.

Shlama,
Stephen
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#8
Shlama Akhay,

Great work, Stephen and Albion! I really appreciate those posts on Islam and The Koran. Perhaps Aramaic primacy will overtake Islam and Christianity, both!
One can only pray.

Dave
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#9
Shlama Forum:
Here is an article from <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.islamic-awareness.org">http://www.islamic-awareness.org</a><!-- m --> originally written on December 20th, 2004 rebutting Christoph Luxenberg's book Die syro-aram??ische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschl??sselung der Koransprache
or
The Syriac-Aramaic Origins of the Koran

read the whole rebuttal and decide for yourself its veracity.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/vowel.html">http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/ ... vowel.html</a><!-- m -->

This is obviously a hot topic amongst Islamic scholars.

Shlama,
Stephen
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dukhrana.com">http://www.dukhrana.com</a><!-- m -->
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#10
Stephen Silver Wrote:This is obviously a hot topic amongst Islamic scholars.

On a related note, Akhi, the Shiite community in Iraq has for years been approaching the CoE to re-learn Aramaic as they consider it fundamental to know that language to understand their own Arabic better. Additionally, Muhammed had ordered Muslims to learn Aramaic. I forgot the specific Hadith, but he asked one of his followers if they knew Aramaic, and when they replied in the negative he said "learn it!"
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#11
The book appears to be related to The Inarah Otzenhauzen Conference On ???The Early History Of Islam And The Koran??? March 13-16, 2008.
If anyone reads German they might glean something from this
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#12
Albion Wrote:P.S. Judge if you buy and finish reading this book, I'd really enjoy 'A reader's review'.

Thanks
I'll have to put in on my list. Is that the book Paul has in Beth Gaza free to download right on this site in PDF?

Sadly the other book I bought on the history of the Church of the East recently was in some luggage that was stolen.
Oh well I figure God must have some even better clothes for me to wear and that someone who will get a lot from my book will end up with it! <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
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#13
judge Wrote:The book appears to be related to The Inarah Otzenhauzen Conference On ???The Early History Of Islam And The Koran??? March 13-16, 2008.
If anyone reads German they might glean something from this

Shlama Akhi Judge:
Wow, what an excellent article. Just to give a sense of the conference, here is an excerpt for those interested in this topic.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589">http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpag ... c_id/19589</a><!-- m -->

Finally, Christoph Luxenberg himself gave an impressive talk that seemed to untie some difficult knots that several centuries of both Islamic and Western scholarship had been unable to undo. He gave an original explanation of the so-called mysterious letters with which some Surahs commence. At the beginning of twenty nine suras following the bismillah stands a letter, or a group of letters which are simply read as separate letters of the alphabet.[5] Luxenberg suggested that they all had something to do with Syriac liturgical traditions. For instance, the letter TZADI at the beginning of Surah 38 indicates the number 90, referring to Psalm 90, while the letters A L R to be found at the beginning of Surahs 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 are a Syriac abbreviation meaning ???The Lord said to me.???
I would think that A.L.R. is the acronym/notaricon of [font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]04dwqd 0xwr Yl rm0[/font] ...Amar..Li..Rukha d'kadusha ...The Holy Spirit spoke to me.

Shlama,
Stephen
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dukhrana.com">http://www.dukhrana.com</a><!-- m -->
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