"My idea is that the Koran is a kind of COCKTAIL OF TEXTS that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Quran claims for itself that it is mubeen, or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesnt make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a FIFTH OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT IS JUST INCOMPREHENSIBLE. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Quran is not comprehensible, if it cant even be understood in Arabic, then its not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Quran claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on."
Professor Gerd R. Puin, Saarland University
"Their VARIANT READINGS and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."
Professor Andrew Rippin
"There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, and the tradition which places this rather opaque revelation in its historical context is not attested before the middle of the eighth. The historicity of the Islamic tradition is thus to some degree problematic: while there are no cogent internal grounds for rejecting it, there are equally no cogent external grounds for accepting itthe only way out of this dilemma is thus to step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again.
Professor Gerd R. Puin, Saarland University
"Their VARIANT READINGS and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."
Professor Andrew Rippin
"There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, and the tradition which places this rather opaque revelation in its historical context is not attested before the middle of the eighth. The historicity of the Islamic tradition is thus to some degree problematic: while there are no cogent internal grounds for rejecting it, there are equally no cogent external grounds for accepting itthe only way out of this dilemma is thus to step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again.
