The Qur'an We Have Today is Not What Muhammad Dictated Verbatim.

In any case two basic facts are established:1. The Quran was canonised at some point2. This canon eventually made it into textual form at some point3. We are assessing our textual form of the canon we have today in light of its state before the canonThis round, I will not speak too much about canon, but largely about the transmission of the Qu’ran from person to person to generation. 1,400 years has passed, of which at least 800 predated printing, and more before modern printing. The current standardised version of the Qu’ran used is based on the 1924 Qu’ran of Cairo. Thus, for the purposes of this debate I will largely be directed against this version and other variant versions extant today. TransmissionThe Qu’ran was transmissed by hand by scribes, and according to some Hadith tradition, also by oral tradition. This is problematic since both introduce a plethora or opportunity for scribal errors and recitation errors. These need not be intentional either, and western scholarship has widely recognised the role in which scribal errors play in the transmission of texts. The most widely research text, the New Testament, for example has over 6,000 ancient manuscripts, of which no two are the same, with differences becoming more severe the earlier the manuscripts are found. The reason is rather simple, copying introduces mistakes, from lack of precision in copying, recitation, etc. Some are intentional, such as attempts to correct what ar epercieved to be previous mistakes. Thus, before the advent of printing, we have excellent reason to assume that the Qu’ran will contain many of the same issues, since it was transmitted by humans via. comparable processes. Evidence for Copyist MistakesOriginal ArabicWhen the Qu’ran was originally composed, it was written in a basic Arabic, without the use of voweling and diacritical marks. These marks were added over the course of approximately 300 years which added the necessary precision to the text to pronounce it correctly. However this introduces obvious problems in transmission, since there is no way to know what the original “correct” pronunciation of the text is without these markings. An example of the two styles of Arabic are given below:[1] To give an idea of what this would look like in English, this sentence here would look like:“t gv n d f wht ths wld lk lk n nglsh ths sntnc hr wld lk lk”Clearly, from this sentence, the insertion of various vowellings and punctuation would yield a plethora of different readings of that text, which is exactly what we have evident today. There are seven variant readings of the Qu’ran (Qira’at), with no way of knowing which if any are correct. To make things worse, this number was trimmed down to a significantly greater number before then. To quote a 2008 study on the variants:“…First, agreements and disagreements among them are counted to see whether there are regular patterns to these. The strongest tendencies to agree unite Khalaf with two of the Kufan readers before him, M16;amza and al-KisāF2;ī, while the strongest tendencies to disagree divide M16;amza from Ibn Kathīr and NāfiF3;. However, no pattern of agreement or disagreement seems very predominant, suggesting that the Ten were not strongly influenced by regional traditions, also that traditional identifications of teachers and students do little to explain actual choices of readings. Secondly, the nature of disagreements is analysed. A majority of disagreements have to do with vowels to supply, most of them in turn not conceivably reflecting dialectal differences. ”The paper concedes that the variant readings are largely in agreement on the consonantal text, but disagreements derive from vowel and dot insertions, which is to be expected from the Qu’ran as it was composed. [. http://www.euppublishing.com...]A study by Alan Brockett on the Hafs & Warsh noted dozens of differences between the two transmissions in both the graphical form and vocal forms. , even when excluding disagreements between the manuscripts used for both Hafs & Warsh transmissions. Thus, as it stands the current seven readings is black and white that the original meaning was not perfectly transmitted, and was susceptible to exactly the type of transmission errors discussed. Textual CriticismNo critical edition of the Qu’ran exists today, as textual criticism of the Qu’ran in light of early manuscripts is a very new field. Preliminary work by Western Scholars Keith Paul studied over 20“. .. the available sources do not provide the necessary information for reconstructing the original text of the Qur’ān from the time of Muhammad. Neither do they yet provide the necessary information for reconstructing the text from the time immediately after Muhammad's death until the first official edition of the Qur’ān attributed to have been ordered by the Caliph ‘Uthmān”[. http://www.amazon.co.uk...]The dissertation also found a plethora of orthographic variants, vowelling differences and discritical marks between the manuscripts, but more seriously also found the manuscripts differed grammatically, and with clear copyist mistakes. Evidence of physical corrections, Sura ordering and verse divisions were also plain. [ . http://www.euppublishing.com...]In line with what has been found in western scholarship reading other texts, the type of mistakes made ranged from both unintentional, such as word repetition and deletion, to intentional mistakes, via. sloppy corrections etc. The thesis concedes that the consonantal text is highly conservative among the manuscripts, but the pronunciation mistakes are severe. Sana’a ManuscriptsThe Sana’a manuscripts of the Qu’ran are most likely the earliest extant manuscripts known, with the oldest texts paleographically dated to the 7th century, and the parchment dated to 14C dated to before 669AD (95% chance), although the text is somewhat younger, due to the writing necessarily dating after the production of the parchment. [ . http://www.islamic-awareness.org...]The manuscripts are palimpsest, text that has been written over washed parchment. While the extant upper text is essentially the same as the Qu’ran we have today sans minor spelling errors, the lower text of most contains a plethora variants to the extant text today. While most only make minor changes to the meaning, several make much more significant changes. [ . http://www.qurantext.org...]For example:[ . http://www.answering-islam.org...] Standard Text: Sana'a Palimpsest: Translation (difference emphasis mine):Standard: “they turn away, Allah will punish them with a painful punishment in this world and the Hereafter. And there will not be for them on earth”Palimpest: “they turn away, Allah will punish them in this world. And there will not be for them on earth”Regardless of the primitive vowelling, either subtractions to the palipest, or additions to the current text are extant. Errors such as in word substitution (including the consonantal text), variant spelling , deletion and insertions. [. http://en.wikipedia.org...]SummaryFor the Qu’ran today to be the verbatim word of Muhummad, would require perfect textual transmission of the Qu’ran. This is clearly not the case both in practice and in principle. Over to Con!