SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the don't-just-date-get-married dept.
Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests that 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 Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 545 AD and 568 [takyon: 568 and 645 AD, with 95.4% accuracy], 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 quran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran 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."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:52AM
This is a non-story. The postulated dates of production for the parchment (568-645 A.D) [rawstory.com] cover Mo's entire lifetime (570-623 A.D). Carbon dating is imprecise, news at 11! Islamafoe bait, nothing more.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:02AM
Looks like it was a misprint in the source linked. Cross-checking several other articles, it looks like the 645 figure is more common, but I'm unable to find the original study to be certain.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:26AM
cover Mo's entire lifetime
"he's just a victim of soicomstance!"
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:44PM
Why I oughta... woop woop-woop woop-woop!
Nggggah.
Three Stooges... three major Abrahamic religions...
What's Jim Carrey doing these days?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:31PM
I'm also not getting how the book could have been produced before Muhammad and then talk about him. I haven't studied Islam in depth since high school, but I read about half the Qur'an if I remember correctly. I don't remember very many details, but I'm pretty sure Muhammad was mentioned explicitly.
Although maybe it just called him "God's prophet" and the book was originally about someone else. But an intact or mostly intact copy of the Qur'an that dates to before Muhammad is quite a bit different than the postulation that Muhammad collected and assembled the Qur'an from many different sources.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:36PM
FWIW, this isn't an entire koran. Just some pages. Maybe those pages do mention old Mo, maybe they don't. The reporting hasn't been very specific.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:52PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @08:12PM
The Islam version of Goldstein's book is Why I Am Not a Muslim [wikipedia.org]. There's enough in the first couple of dozen pages to demolish Islam, without any radiocarbon dating. It's just as much fiction as Judaism and Christianity. In fact, it draws on both and throws in some pagan Arab superstition for good measure.