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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:43AM   Printer-friendly
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."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:36AM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:36AM (#230610)

    How about something rational and good for the human race in the long term, like the straightforward "Don't be a Dick". Pretty much anything that just tends towards "Be nice to people" better than any organized religion.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:14AM (#230649)

    It is super appealing to the unsophisticated mind, but don't be a dick is insufficient whenever there is a conflict between two groups of people. Its great a as guideline, but it is woefully inadequate for dealing with real problems.