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Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

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Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#41

Post by s_q_b »

mc32 wrote: post #36
s_q_b wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wholeheartedly agreed. The ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist majority of the Muslim minority in Myanmar is horrifying right now. I'm very disappointed in Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership thus far. I suppose we'll see what she does after the election.

I don't think you can blame her. She's in a very difficult position. She has to think of getting the country from under the throes of dictatorship before she can address civil rights. If she starts with civil rights, her effort will sputter and nothing will happen.

I agree that she's in an impossible position, with the Junta on one side and Buddhist extremists on the other, but her extreme popularity makes her uniquely capable of speaking up on behalf of the Rohingya.

Also, she seems to be constructing her party along an authoritarian model. I was a supporter of her while under detention, but today I just don't know. I very sincerely hope she lives up to her rhetoric once in power.

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#42

Post by 32bitkid »

s_q_b wrote: post #20

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts. Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on th…

> Given the practice of ancient scribes to re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted in the loss of uncountable ancient texts...

I wonder if future historians will look back on modern mutable storage devices with the same distain.

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#43

Post by escape_goat »

mc32 wrote: post #38
s_q_b wrote: post #20

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts. Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on th…

I don't think this is set out to undermine religion. Believers will believe despite strong contrary evidence, if anything, it redoubles their beliefs. That said, if scholarly religious studies or any studies undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better. We'll all be better off without fervent believers. I understand the cultural aspect of these religions will outlast religion and I'm okay with t…

I seem to be writing short comments this morning myself, for which I apologize, but this is an absolutely terrible non-argument. You have a thesis statement, an assertion of fact that is essentially irrelevant to that thesis, and then the assertion that, besides, it would be good if your thesis was wrong.

What you actually meant to say is "if scholarly religious studies do undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better." Which is fine, if that's an assertion you'd like to share with us, but you're not really all that interested in whether or not the article undermines religion; not enough to actually have anything to say about it.

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#44

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #26
s_q_b wrote: post #20

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts. Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on th…

> and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry. A few people try to claim that other religions don't inspire terrorist groups, but that's clearly bullshit. Buddhism is generally seen as pacifist but there's a Buddhist army and probably 2 Buddhist terrorist groups. (And that's not including Aum Shinryko) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen…

[deleted]

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#45

Post by _ub0q »

Reason why this story is doing circles again and trending high is because of a colossal, major screw-up, and no one picked up on it but a few readers yesterday.

The 8/31 rawstory "article" originally claimed the carbon dating range was 568 - 545. The 7/22 University of Birmingham press release that the story is loosely based on stated "568 - 645": the reporter copied the range wrong by 100 years and then researched and wrote rest of the article based on that. They've since corrected the number (after it trended on reddit), but not altered the narrative to reflect the change.

So you have an entirely speculative article based off of incorrect facts and sensationalized on that premise, and no one bothered issuing a correction notice because it's obviously sloppy, sloppy work and that'd be too much work or worse, embarrassing. And now, all the lazy regurgitation of trending material from other news outlets is repeating the message whose very first paragraph was so horribly wrong.

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#47

Post by haliax »

s_q_b wrote: post #20

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts. Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on th…

> Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column."

This is an article from a private news source about work done by academics at a private university, saying that the parchment MAY predate the accepted dates of Islam's founding. How do you get from that to military scholarship and an attack on Islam?

It's perfectly possible (leaving aside the deficiencies in the radiocarbon dating) to believe that the accepted dates are incorrect without condemning Islam in any way. People frequently discuss errors in the histories of other religions (e.g. the Old Testament has god giving an incorrect value of Pi) without condemning their followers in any way.

tl;dr: "undermine the historicity of Islam" != "condemning an entire religion"

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#48

Post by tbirdz »

vixen99 wrote: post #16
gilgoomesh wrote: post #6

> University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. Without a narrower range, it's ridiculous to say that it predates Muhammad. At most it predates the first known, fully assembled Qur'an from 653CE. (Aside: I realize this story comes from Fox News but its listing of dates as "Anno Domini" is in poor…

Why poor taste? As is common knowledge A.D. is an abbreviation for Anno Domini. You might as well say that calling Muhammamad 'The prophet' is in poor taste. For most people in the Western world the year zero is an arbitrary number and not understood as year of 'Our Lord' nor is Muhammad regarded as a prophet. Both are aids to communication not exegesis. Not living in the US, the reference to Fox News is a bit lost o…

There is no year zero, 1 BC is followed by 1 AD (1 BCE is followed by 1 CE.)

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#49

Post by news_1776 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #39

The likelihood that the entire Koran was written from scratch after the birth (and during the life) of Muhammad is pretty slim. The Hebrew Bible was canonized* after the Babylonian exile and there have been copies found containing different versions of other books. The Old Testament has additional books to the Hebrew Bibles (Maccabees) that were never canonized in the Hebrew Bible but remain an Historical Jewish cann…

That's a lot of "facts".

Re: Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad

#50

Post by mc32 »

escape_goat wrote: post #43
mc32 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is set out to undermine religion. Believers will believe despite strong contrary evidence, if anything, it redoubles their beliefs. That said, if scholarly religious studies or any studies undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better. We'll all be better off without fervent believers. I understand the cultural aspect of these religions will outlast religion and I'm okay with t…

I seem to be writing short comments this morning myself, for which I apologize, but this is an absolutely terrible non-argument. You have a thesis statement, an assertion of fact that is essentially irrelevant to that thesis, and then the assertion that, besides, it would be good if your thesis was wrong. What you actually meant to say is "if scholarly religious studies do undermine the great religions and lesser rel…

To undermine a religion, it's necessary for the religion to have fragile beliefs or beliefs proven untrue and accepted untrue. Since their beliefs are faith based, it's hard to undermine them. Believers would have to believe these findings upended their religions, which is something I find unlikely. So, it's almost impossible to undermine them.

The only thing these findings do is reinforce what non believers already know and adds to historical knowledge. Therefore I don't think it sets out to undermine religion.

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