Corrections in Early Quranic Manuscripts, Revisited

Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith will be doing a series of 'livestreams' on the subject of the corrections which have been found in the earliest Qur'anic Manuscripts, a subject they have already covered in a previous series last year, but need to be revisited again. It was in May of 2019 that Dr Dan Brubaker published his first book on the subject, entitled: "Corrections in Early Qur'anic Manuscripts, 20 examples", which caused quite a stir within the Muslim community. A few months later, Hythem Sidky wrote a 16-paged review of Brubaker's book in 'Al-a'Usur al'Wusta', vol. 27 (pgs. 273-288). In his review he presented a number of criticisms which we feel need to be answered. That is why we have decided to work through Sidky's review and respond to the criticisms he has brought up against Brubaker, so that you can understand not only what Dr Brubaker is saying, but how we can respond to the criticisms of Sidky and others like him. In this first episode we begin by remarking how Brubaker's book is the ‘first of its kind’. Sidky says this in his article, where he writes, “The first of its kind, Brubaker’s book represents the sole accessible work on scribal changes in manuscripts and one of only a few on Quranic manuscripts as a whole..." We ask why this is the first book anywhere on scribal changes? Why haven’t Muslims written these kind of books themselves? Why does an American, studying a revelation he doesn’t believe in turn out to be the first one who has ever ventured into this area? When we look at the Bible, weren’t the earliest historical Biblical critics European Christians (i.e. The Tubingen School, and Welhausen)? What does this suggest concerning Islamic self-criticism? Al Fadi, as a Saudi Arabian and a former Muslim responds that this kind of criticism just doesn't exist in the Muslim world, as it wouldn't be healthy; so that it is left for Western scholars like Dr Brubaker to not only broach the subject, and do the hard work, but then take on the vitriol and anger leveled at them by others in the Muslim world who see this as an affront to everything they believe. Al fadi and Jay then tackle the environment in which the Qur’an was created, pointing out that it was written within a dominant political environment, unlike the Bible. Sidky concurs, noting that, “In contrast to the scripture of the early Christian community, he [Dan] correctly states, the Muslim scripture enjoyed an elevated status under a dominant political hegemony from an early period and thus was not subject to censorship or destruction". Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an, according to both Brubaker and Sidky, was created within a privileged environment and given a privileged status, and therefore had much more oversight in its initial stages. The question we ask is why then, with all that protection and control, are Muslims today not able to find a single complete copy of it in the 7th or the 8th centuries? Multiple copies of the Bible (N.T.) can be found by the early 4th century (300 years earlier then when the Qur'an was compiled). It was at this time that the Bible was likewise finally under control of a political authority. So, why can't we find even one example of the 4 or 9 copies which were compiled during the time of Uthman, in 652 AD? We then ended this episode by noticing the presuppositional base which both of the parties in this discussion started with; Sidky, holding to the traditional Islamlic view that there was an original 'Q' archetypal text created by Uthman which was subsequently lost, suggests that all the corrections found by Brubaker are nothing more than scribal mistakes, created after 652 AD. Brubaker understandably begins with a completely different starting point, questioning the traditional narrative which was itself only compiled 200-300 years later. He believes that while there must have been a standard text, empirical evidence tells us (i.e. no one has ever found any of Uthman's 4-9 examples) that it was not created at the time of Uthman at all, but much later; in fact, after the creation of the earliest manuscripts. That is why we find so many corrections (over 4,000 at the latest cound), often crudely applied by later scribes. Depending on which pre-supposition you begin with, will have much to say concerning where you stand on these discussions, which will become patently obvious as we continue in future episodes on this debate between Sidky and Brubaker. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (27,530)