And will bend the truth to convince you.
July 23, 2015
The BBC announced enthusiastically Wednesday that “what may be the world’s oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.” This news is not only of interest to scholars and Muslim intellectuals; it appears to buttress the Islamic claim that the Qur’an’s text has remained unchanged for 1,400 years – which is purported to be proof of its divine origin.
There is only one problem with all this: the BBC article raises more questions than it answers, and reveals more about the wishful thinking of the academic and media establishments than it does about the Qur’an.
The article is riddled with academic and journalistic sloppiness. We’re told that the radiocarbon dating shows, “with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.” Very well, but does the ink date to that time as well? We are not told. Parchment was often reused in the ancient world, with the earlier text erased and written over, and so if a parchment dates from 645, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the text does.
However, it is impossible to discover any more details from this shoddy BBC presentation. The best photo of this manuscript that the BBC provides shows clear traces of another text underneath the main text. It is not clear from the photo whether that is the text from the other side bleeding through on the photograph, or even if there is any text on the other side; nor does the BBC tell us whether or not the parchment shows signs of having been a palimpsest — that is, a parchment that was used more than once for different texts. There is also some red ink in the top lines of the manuscript in the photo but not in the succeeding lines. Has the red ink faded from the other sections, or is it itself evidence of the ink fading? Or is it a later hand filling in areas that had faded away (and possibly altering the text)? The BBC doesn’t tell us, yet this is an extremely salient point. Another recently discovered and much-touted fragment of the Qur’an, now in Germany and dated from between 649 and 675, shows clear signs of alteration, raising the possibility that the Qur’anic text was altered over time (image available here). If this is a possibility also for the University of Birmingham manuscript, the BBC should tell us so. But it doesn’t.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259561/bbc-really-wants-you-believe-quran-authentic-robert-spencer
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