Page 282 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

262 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

the very outset of Israelite history. For example: (a) the Hebrew language
was borrowed from the Phoenicians; (b) the Jews did not develop their
own script, appropriating it instead from the Aramaic and the Assyrians;
(c) the diacritical system of the Hebrew Torah was borrowed from the
Arabic; (d) the Book of the Covenant (roughly Exodus 20:22-23: 19) was
possibly adapted from the Code of Hammurabi, and so on.
The text itself remained fluid till the 10th century C.E., nearly 2300
years after Moses' death: fluid in that it remained open to alterations
given sufficient doctrinaljustification. And once the change was complete,
the original became 'defective' and was destroyed, eliminating all traces of
a trail which might otherwise have led back to something older and more
intact.
Turning our attention towards the Qur'an, we note the verse:
•• J ~ ~~<-~ J~ Jj;. ll" -\]1" ~II J "II -: '~' ~ II J.
~ ~ , .r-"'" J., ->, ~ I$" J-..r.......:.-J~ (j.., ')7
J
137£ 2'':11' "J-'~ll
I
'{ ~ ~ J , 'J.J-'
Those whoflllow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find
mentioned in their own [Scriptures], in the Torah. andthe Gospel.:
which explicitly states that even the corrupted texts of the Old and New
Testaments contained clear references to the forthcoming prophet. Such
references were seen by many of the Prophet's Companions and successors.!"
but have since then been largely cleansed. 139
I will end this chapter with two interesting quotes:

The central myth of classicalJudaism is the belief that the ancient
Scriptures constituted divine revelation, but only a part of it. At Sinai
God had handed down a dual revelation: the written part known to
one and all, but also the oral part preserved by the great scriptural
heroes, passed on by prophets to various ancestors in the obscure past,
and finally and most openly handed down to the rabbis who created
the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds.U"
With [the Qumran] material at their disposal,experts concerned with
the study of the text... are in a position to prove that it has remained
virtually unchanged for the last two thousand years.141

137 Qur'an 7:157.
138 Fordetails seeIbn Kathu, TafsTr, iii:229-234.
139 Though there are still a fewtracesleft. SeeYusufAli, Translation qf Holy Qyr'an,
footnote of 48:29.
140 J. Neusner, The WiD' of Torah, p. 81.
141 GezaVermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls inEnglish, Pelican Books, 2ndedition, 1965, p. 12.