by
Damien F. Mackey
“There is no physical evidence
that Mecca existed at the time of Muḥammad.
It is also striking that
recurring place names in the Qur'an, Thamūd, Madyan (Midian),
and Ād, all refer to localities
well to the north of Mecca and Medina.
Another issue is the observation
in Q37:137–38 that the Qur'an’s audience can pass by the remains of Lūṭ’s
[Lot's] people in the morning and by night. The Biblical account of the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is associated with the region around the Dead
Sea...”.
Mark Durie
Last night (1st February, 2019) I watched
Andrew Bolt’s fascinating interview of Mark Durie on SkyNews in relation to the pastor
and linguist’s controversial new book
on Islam’s Qur’an, The Qur’an and its
Biblical Reflexes. Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, August, 2018).
The interview further confirmed my view that the
Prophet Mohammed was not a real, single historical entity. See such articles of
mine as:
“Scholars
have long pointed out the historical problems associated with the life of the
Prophet Mohammed and the history of Islam, with some going even so far as to
cast doubt upon Mohammed’s actual existence. Biblico-historical events,
normally separated the one from the other by many centuries, are re-cast as
contemporaneous in the Islamic texts. Muslim author, Ahmed Osman, has waxed so
bold as to squeeze, into the one Egyptian dynasty, the Eighteenth, persons
supposed to span more than one and a half millennia.
Now, as I intend to demonstrate in this article, biblico-historical events that occurred during the neo-Assyrian era of the C8th BC, and then later on, in the Persian era, have found their way into the biography of Mohammed supposedly of the C7th AD”.
Now, as I intend to demonstrate in this article, biblico-historical events that occurred during the neo-Assyrian era of the C8th BC, and then later on, in the Persian era, have found their way into the biography of Mohammed supposedly of the C7th AD”.
Andrew Bolt has summarised his encounter with Mark
Durie in the Herald Sun:
DID MUHAMMED REALLY DICTATE
THE KORAN?
Linguist and [theologian] Mark Durie has written a
brilliant new book: The
Qu'ran and its Biblical Reflexes. (I interviewed him here.)
No, he concludes: the Koran was almost certainly not
written when, where and how Muslims traditionally believe. Its Arab dialect,
its geographical and historical references and carbon dating of its earliest
copies suggest it was created earlier in an area closer the [abandoned] city of
Petra than at Mecca or Medina.
In fact, the Koran does not even mention the creation of
Muhammed, long worshipped as the Prophet, or actually the
"Messenger", who dictated it to his followers. Indeed, the Koran
names Muhammed just four times, and the reference may just be a title:
"Praised One".
What's more, the very earliest copies of the Koran do not
mention Mohammed at all.
In any case, concludes Durie, the Koran is inconsistent
with the biographies given of Muhammed in the sacred Hadith, or sayings of the
Prophet, the first of which was not written until 150 years after his death.
Durie also dismantles the popular claim of apologists
that Muslims and Christians just worship the same God, given that the Koran,
too, mentions God, Moses, Abraham, Noah, Lot, Heaven, Hell, Satan and even
Jesus - although this Jesus is not God's son, and his mother is the sister of
Moses.
Durie shows that while some of the characters of the
Christian Bible have been borrowed, the Christian theology has not. Even the
meanings of some of the most important of the borrowed words has been changed,
so that Messiah in the Koran has come to be interpreted by some Muslim
theologians as meaning simply that Christ had flat feet. (Durie quotes a former
Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia on this point.)
The God in the Koran turns out be very much a creation of
Arab society at the time - a God who shows compassion rather than love, and who
orders rather than makes deals or a "covenant" with his people. Durie
notes that Allah considers humans as "slaves".
Crucially, midway through the Koran, the
"Messenger" - with his followers getting impatient with waiting for
Allah to punish their enemies - hears Allah change his message. Once Allah had [urged]
tolerance, but now he tells the Messenger that Muslims may be instruments of
his justice on earth. They may kill unbelievers for him - in commands that
haunt the modern world. No longer need they leave future punishment of
unbelievers to their God.
Durie's book is meticulously researched and footnoted,
and been praised already by scholars in Australia and abroad.
And here are some excerpts from Durie's book:
Even the barest outline of the life of Muḥammad —
that is, that someone called Muḥammad was the Messenger figure in the Qur'an,
which was sent down to him first in Mecca and then Medina — is difficult to
reconcile with contemporary historical sources and the Qur'an’s own internal
evidence.
The Qur'an itself has scant information on
Muḥammad, only mentioning him by name (written as m-ḥ-m-d) four times (Q3:144;
Q33:40; Q47:2; Q48:29), but this word could also be an epithet meaning “praised
one.”...
The name Muḥammad is also mentioned surprisingly
rarely in contemporary non-Muslim sources until well into the second Islamic
century, and when Muḥammad first appears, it is not in reference to a religious
leader....
There is no physical evidence that Mecca existed at
the time of Muḥammad. It is also striking that recurring place names in the
Qur'an, Thamūd, Madyan (Midian), and Ād, all refer to localities well to the
north of Mecca and Medina.
Damien Mackey’s comment: My argument that ‘Mohammed’ is a
composite and largely (though perhaps not entirely) biblical character - very
heavily based, in some aspects, upon Tobias son of Tobit (Book of Tobit) -
would account for a more northerly (“well to the north of Mecca and Medina”)
geography. Does not a “Media” (there to be taken as “Midian”) figure
importantly in the Book of Tobit? See my article:
Back to Durie’s book:
Another issue is the observation in Q37:137–38 that
the Qur'an’s audience can pass by the remains of Lūṭ’s [Lot's] people in the
morning and by night. The Biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah is associated with the region around the Dead Sea... The Qur'an again
implies its audience was closer to the Dead Sea than to northern Arabia when it
says “the people of Lūṭ are not far from you” (Q11:89)...
Another type of evidence which points away from
Mecca to the Southern Levant is the dialect in which the consonantal skeleton
or rasm of the Qur'an was recorded.... This implies that the Qur'an was
originally recited in the Arabic of settled areas in the Southern Levant...
Muḥammad was active as a messenger from 570 to 632
CE, and the text of the Qur'an was reportedly standardized under Uthman between
650 and 655 CE. If the Islamic account of the standardization of the Qurʾan
were true, we should expect extant manuscripts to date from no earlier than 650
CE…
In the Great Mosque of Ṣanʿaʾ in Yemen, a cache of manuscripts was found behind
a wall during renovations in 1972... Two leaves dated from 543–643 CE, one from
433–599 CE, one from 603–662 CE, and one from 388–535 CE... All these dates are
too early to accord with the traditional account of Muḥammad’s life, who was
reported to have commenced receiving Qur'anic revelations in 610 CE... Folios
of the manuscript 1. or. fol. 4313, of the Berlin State Library, has been dated
to 606–652 CE...
These dates are startling... Multiple instances
carbon dating results cannot be reconciled with the dating of the life of
Muḥammad, let alone the Uthmanic recension: the outer limit of some dates
finish even before Muḥammad’s prophecies commenced.
This is a must-read, and not just for scholars of Islam. Buy
it
No comments:
Post a Comment