According to sources, the words of Mohammed were copied down by those who heard him. These were later collected and compiled into a book. They were not collected during his life time. There are no original copies of the Koran in existence. The oldest Koran in existence is the Othman Koran compiled in Medina by Othman, the third caliph. Hadiths (traditions) tell that Zaid bin Thabit compiled the Koran and that Caliph Uthman later had an official version prepared. There have been many revisions, corrections, alterations, interpolations, and changes in wording. The present day Koran cannot be checked for validity against an original since no original exists.
Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany, argues that the Koran has been misread and mistranslated for centuries. His work, based on the earliest copies of the Koran, maintains that parts of Islam’s holy book are derived from pre-existing Christian Aramaic texts that were misinterpreted by later Islamic scholars who prepared the editions of the Koran commonly read today.
Arab scholar Suliman Bashear reported that Islam developed as a religion gradually rather than emerging fully formed from the mouth of the Prophet.
John Wansbrough of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, insisted that the text of the Koran appeared to be a composite of different voices or texts compiled over dozens if not hundreds of years. After all, scholars agree that there is no evidence of the Koran until 691 �?? 59 years after Muhammad’s death �?? when the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem was built, carrying several Koranic inscriptions.
Patricia Crone, a scholar from the School for Oriental and African Studies at London, insists that the Koran and the Islamic tradition present a fundamental paradox. The Koran is a text soaked in monotheistic thinking, filled with stories and references to Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Jesus, and yet the official history insists that Muhammad, an illiterate camel merchant, received the revelation in Mecca, a remote, sparsely populated part of Arabia, far from the centers of monotheistic thought, in an environment of idol-worshiping Arab Bedouins. Unless one accepts the idea of the angel Gabriel, Ms. Crone says, historians must somehow explain how all these monotheistic stories and ideas found their way into the Koran.
The obvious answer is there is no paradox at all and that many of the stories Muhammed would have no way of knowing were inserted into the Koran as the religion evolved.
Reading all this makes me question whether any of these Middle Eastern religions are legit.
I think I may start worshipping Thor on this snowy Thorsday afternoon.
