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Carbon Dating Shows Koran May Predate Muhammad
HughPickens.com writes: Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the "heavenly" origins of the holy text. Scholars believe that a copy of the Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 568 AD and 645, while the Prophet Mohammad was believed to have been born in 570 AD and to have died in 632 AD. It should be noted, however, that the dating was only conducted on the parchment, rather than the ink, so it is possible that the Koran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Koran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda. "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," says Keith Small, from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library. "'It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged," says Historian Tom Holland. "and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions."
Update: 09/01 17:32 GMT by S : There was a typo in the dates used by the original linked article — in the press release from the University of Birmingham, the date range given for the parchment is between 568 AD and 645 AD, which overlaps more closely with Muhammad's lifetime. The dates and link have been fixed now in the summary. Historians say this new information highlights the uncertainty surrounding the emergence of such religious texts, rather than being a major upheaval.
Muhammed was illiterate. He had friends who could read, but he himself could not. So in the original story God dictated the Koran to him, and he recited it to his friend who wrote it down. The more you think about this the less it makes sense.
As such the Koran is supposed to be the literal word of God. I mean, it clearly isn't, because even if you accept that there might be a deity, the book itself is very poorly written. It's very obviously a product of the minds of the time, and you don't need a language degree to see that.
This finding is a huge problem for people who believe that the Koran is the literal word of God, dictated to Muhammed. Unlike the Bible, where it is accepted that there are many authors and many of them were not alive at the time of the events depicted, and each had their own agendas etc, the Koran is supposed to be perfect. Any flaw would be a flaw in God's work.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Palimpsest.
Even if the carbon dating is right, all we know is the sheep (or goat) on which it was written died before Mohammed was born.
Bad science journalists! No biscuit!
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
"no one claims it is the literal word of God"
Like most absolute statements, this is false. It might be that most Christians don't believe the Bible to be the literal word of God, but there is definitely a vocal sub group that do claim it is exactly that. Additionally, despite knowing that the Bible was assembled into its various forms by groups of religious leaders centuries after the constituent parts were supposedly written, many people I have talked to believe that the form we have today is what God intended all along.
While we know a lot about the history of The New Testament, the Old Testament is far more obscured. The last I heard it looked like the author attributed as Moses had written the first few books. Which is troubling when you think of all the Christian mythology that comes out of those books. For instance the Exodus appears to be completely unsupported by archaeological evidence.
Your points about the shroud of Turin and the alleged tomb are spot-on.
As for the Qur'an, it would indeed be a major problem for Islam intellectually if it were found to preexist Mohammed. However, even though I don't have any desire to defend Islam, from a critical standpoint I think that these findings are really too weak to even imply such a claim.
In the first place, the fact that the dating belongs to the parchment and not necessarily the ink is huge. Since parchment was relatively rare and expensive, it was a common practice (even among Christians) to re-use old parchment, e.g. blank pages in other manuscripts or even at times writing over other texts. In fact, the manuscript in question seems to be a copy of the Qur'an, and no claim seems to have been made that it was the original copy penned by Mohammed himself, and so this opens up seemingly endless possible scenarios where somebody found an older piece of parchment and copied the Qur'an onto it.
Secondly, the real and obvious character of the Qur'an is not so much that it plagiarizes other written texts but that it borrows explicit elements from Judaism, Christianity, and local religious thought, and reshapes all of this material through a particular lens that services Mohammed's political and social agenda. This is clear even without any specific manuscript dating, as it is a process that is more internal and subtle than merely taking a page from one book and inserting it into a another. Understanding this, it actually makes even more sense to suppose that a copyist reused an older parchment, because it fits with the spirit of Islam, a spirit that is evident in ISIS's systematic destruction of antiquities, even if a substantial portion of Muslims may be horrified by this action as well. Islam is in many ways a white-washing and concealment of history; Allah's transcendence breaks into history as an external and alien power and provides the Qur'an as a kind of divine text without history. Hence the Qur'an cannot be translated or critically examined because to do so would be to submit the text to historical forces. (If anyone reading this sees a resemblance between this kind of thinking and Christian fundamentalism, this is not at all surprising.)
Christianity in contrast, despite significant variations and particular groups that lean more in the direction of Islam, is like Judaism a deeply historical religion. By breaking into history in the Incarnation, God takes on our history as his very own, in such a way that the history of human beings becomes transcendently meaningful. Hence the Bible is written by human authors in human language (not a divine dialect of Arabic), but mysteriously transmits the Word of God. Hence it really would be no problem for Christianity (except for a few particular groups) if it were found that certain of Jesus' famous sayings had already been said verbatim by someone else. The divine authority of the Qur'an is premised upon a denial of any human element, but the divine authority of the Bible is premised upon a divine acceptance of human language.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
It's worse than that. The Koran contains stories that are based on common at the time mis-translations of the Jewish books.
Just like the book of Mormon, it contains proof of being the work of men, by virtue of the mis-translations included.
I'm sure the same would be true of the Jewish and Christian books, but their predecessor books aren't readily available.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'