Structure and Transmission of the Koran 2

The Light Shines in the Darkness...

The Transmission of the Koran

Contrary to the popular Muslim claim, the Koran that is held by Muslims today is not the same Koran spoken by Muhammad. When Muhammad died, it was unexpected and without warning, and there was no collection of all the Suras:

“To begin with it is quite certain that when the Prophet died there was no collected, collated, arranged body of material of his revelations. What we have is what could be gathered together somewhat later by the leaders of the community when they began to feel the need of a collection of the Prophet’s proclamations and by that time much of it was lost, and other portions could only be recorded in fragmentary form. There is a quite definite and early Tradition found in several sources which says, “The Prophet of Allah was taken before any collection of the Qur'an had been made”.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

Islamic tradition records that the Koran was written on stones, palm leaves, shoulder blades, tree bark, animal ribs, wooden boards, and the breasts of men. What was not written down was in the heads of the Qurra’, Muslims who memorized and recited certain Suras spoken by Muhammad. The reason that none of this was collated later on was because, as the Muslim Caliphs (i.e. emperor and religious leader of Islam) reasoned, Muhammad himself had never ordered such a thing to be done. However, the loss of some of these Qurra’ at the Battle of Yemamah startled some of the Islamic leaders:

“Tradition says that it was the sudden danger of the loss of these specialists that led to the next stage in the history of the text. We read that at the battle of Yemamah in the year 12 A.H. so many of the Qurra’ were among the slain that ‘Umar suddenly awoke to the fact that a few more battles like that of Yemamah might mean that a great portion of the revelation material would be irretrievably lost, and so he came to the Caliph Abu Bakr and urged on him the necessity of getting this material that was in the possession of the Qurra’ assembled and written down in some fixed form, ere it was too late. As it is we find numerous references in tradition to verses, which were “lost on the Day of Yemamah”.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

So, already we see that the very Words of Allah, which were believed to have been sent to earth and guarded for posterity by Divine Providence (Sura 15:9), were irretrievably lost! Even Islamic tradition admits that verses of the Koran were “lost” at the battle.

Thus, Caliph Abu Bakr ordered that the Suras be compiled before any more of the revelation was lost. When those who gathered the Koran came to those who had written Suras, they found that some of the items upon which Suras were written had been destroyed. Worms had eaten some of the palm leaves, tree bark crumbled, and stones were broken or lost (Ali Dashti, 23 Years, p. 28). Nevertheless, they continued to put together what they had, and eventually, they finished their work. However, the codices that the separate compilers put together were different from one another:

“In the case of the Codices of ‘Ali, Ubai and Ibn Mas’ud, indeed, we find tradition which professes to give the order in which the revelation material was arranged in their Codices an order which differed considerably from that found in our present Qur’an…Thus we know that the Codex of Ibn Mas’ud omitted Suras I, CXIII and CXIV, and that both the Codices of Ubai and Abu Musa included two short Suras, which are not in our present text, while a considerable body of variant readings from these Codices is to be gathered from the grammatical, lexical, exegetical and masoretic literature of latter generations which still remembered and discussed them.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

This presented a problem to the Islamic world because one Muslim group would have one Koran that differed fundamentally from another (i.e. extra verses, differing words of same verses, missing Suras, etc.). So, Caliph Uthman ordered a standardizing of the Koran so that every Muslim would have the same Koran instead of letting Islam divide itself into several warring sects. In doing so, however, he took many of the disputed verses out of the Koran and attempted to destroy all other variant readings:

“…for at her funeral the Governor Marwan, who had tried in vain to get it from her during her lifetime, demanded it of her brother and destroyed it, fearing, he said, that if it got abroad, the readings that ‘Uthman desired to repress would recommence. Third, he appointed a Committee to work with Zaid b. Thabit, to scrutinize all the material sent in, to accept only that for which two witnesses could he found, and to see that what was written was written but in the genuine Quraish dialect. Fourth, when the work was completed he had copies made and sent to the great metropolitan centres, with orders that all other Codices or portions of revelation material in circulation be destroyed. Some traditionists tell us that this was known as “the year of the destruction of the Codices”, and for long afterwards we hear echoes of the bitter hostility of the Qurra’ to ‘Uthman because of his work in thus canonizing the Madinan text tradition and prohibiting the use of any other.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

Indeed, during the time of Ayesha, one Surah originally contained 200 verses, but after Uthman’s standardization, it only contained 73 verses! This means that 63.5% of Allah’s revelation in that Sura (which Allah had supposedly guaranteed to protect; Surah 15:9) was lost forever! Some Muslim apologists have tried to say that all that Uthman did was rid the Koran of dialectic variations, but this isn’t the whole story:

“…but to pretend that it was merely a matter of dialectal variations is to run counter to the whole purport of the accounts. The vast majority of dialectal variations would not have been represented in the written form at all, and so would not have necessitated a new text. The stories of Zaid and his colleagues working on the text make it perfectly clear that they were regarded as recording a text de novo…Finally, the mass of variant readings that has survived to us from the Codices of Ubai and Ibn Mas’ud, shows that they were real textual variants and not mere dialectal peculiarities.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

Even after the standardization, there remained several variant readings in existence, and for several hundred years afterward, Muslims had the “free choice” of which of the variant readings to use:

“But actually the enormous body of variant readings that has been recorded proves that there was no consistent tradition on this matter transmitted. From the date of the publication of ‘Uthman's official text till the year 322 A.H. we are in the period of ikhtiyar or “free choice”, and it is very curious that though the ‘Uthmanic text is now taken as the basis, many famous savants, even to the end of this period, were accustomed to state their preference in certain passages for readings from one or other of the old non-‘Uthmanic Codices.”

-Arthur Jeffrey, The Textual History of the Koran

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

Some Muslims have tried to say that the text that Uthman standardized was the true text spoken by Muhammad and that Uthman had Allah’s guidance in choosing the correct Suras and verses. But this begs the question, “How do they know this?” They are starting off from the assumption that Islam is true and that the Koran is the Word of God. They then proceed to use this assumption as part of their argument, and then conclude with the same assumption. Their argument is circular reasoning: you cannot use your conclusion as an assumption in your argument.

Furthermore, the evidence is quite to the contrary. Many of the Qurra’ (who were witnesses of what Muhammad said) died at the Battle of Yemamah, and even Islamic tradition records that the verses (which some of them alone knew) were irretrievably lost. For the documentation of this, go here:

http://www.answeringislam.org/Gilchrist/Jam/chap4.html

http://www.answeringislam.org/Quran/Text/2.238.html

http://www.answeringislam.org/Quran/Collection/chap5.html#5.1

For a documentation of many of the variant readings that have been discovered, go here:

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/Materials/index.htm

Conclusion

As almost all scholars recognize, the Koran that we have today is not the same Koran that Muhammad preached in the early 7^th century A.D. There are many verses missing and entire Surahs removed. The claim made by Islamic apologists that Uthman’s revision was by Allah’s providence is special pleading that goes against the evidence. Lastly and most importantly, Allah has failed to preserve his word as he said he would in the Koran (Surah 15:9).

Overall Conclusion on the Structure and Transmission of the Koran

Robert Morey stated it well:

“Since Muslims claim that the Quran was “handed down” from heaven, and that Muhammad cannot be viewed as its human author, it is interesting to point out that, according to the Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, the Arabic of the Quran is in the dialect and vocabulary of someone who was a member of the Quraysh tribe living in the city of Mecca. Thus Muhammad’s fingerprints can be found all over the Quran…The Quran, in its dialect, vocabulary, and content, reflects the style of its author, Muhammad-not some heavenly Allah.”

- Robert Morey, The Islamic Invasion (Las Vegas, NV: Christian Scholars Press, 1992), p.127.

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Some helpful online reading can be found here:

http://www.answeringislam.org/Quran/Miracle/index.html

http://www.answeringislam.org/Quran/Incoherence/index.html

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/thq.htm

http://www.answeringislam.org/Books/Jeffery/Materials/index.htm