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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: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:30AM
Even a total non-scholar like me knows that the holy texts of all religions are written in the cultural and literary context of the time. Buddhist texts relate ideas from the older Vedic tradition. The Talmud and Torah contain some ideas that originated with the Hittites and Babylonians. The Christian New Testament includes ideas from Greece and Egypt. Not only am I not surprised to hear they found older documents containing ideas also found in the Koran, I would have expected it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:09AM
That's a good point. The great texts of any religion are preservations of tribal history, geneology, poetry and wisdom handed down from generation to generation, with the spark of the new teachings and relevations from the great man in who gave the name to the collection.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:09PM
Yes, you would have expected it had it not been reputedly written by one man in his lifetime. What we have here is the suggestion that the writings of one man may simply be a collection of writings, copied by one man. That's the difference, and the point.