Obvious Variant
Who Borrowed From Whom?
By: Shahid Bin Waheed شاهد
بن وحيد
بسم
الله الرحمن
الرحيم
الحمدلله
رب العالمين
والصلوة
والسلام على اشرف
الانبياء
وسيدالمرسلين
نبينا محمد صل
ا لله عليه
وعلى آله
واصحابه
وازواجه
اجمعين - امابعد
All the praises and thanks be
to Allaah, Sustainer of the Universe, and blessing and salutation to be the
most distinguish of the Messengers and foremost among the Prophets, our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of
Allaah be on him and on his wives, children and Companions.
The
invention of the diacritical marking
known in Arabic as tashkil تشكيل were invented by Abu al-Aswad ad-Du’ali {died 69 A.H./688 C.E.}. However
Anti-Islaam forces especially Judeo-Christian fundamentalists
leaves no stone unturned while making absurd claims that Glorious Qur’aan was
copied and/or borrowed from Bible and/or Judeo-Christian sources. The question
that begs for an honest answer is, are they right or are they telling the
truth? For a learned man of reason the answer will always be in big
bold NO. Let us examine some facts, in the Syriac
alphabet only two characters possess skeletal dots i.e. dolath
(dal د) and rish
(ra ر), contrary to that by comparison the
Arabic alphabets contains a total of fifteen dotted characters. They are ب، ت، ث، ج،
خ، ذ، ز، ش، ض،
ظ، غ، ف، ق، ن،
ة. Imagining that the
Arabs borrowed their multitudinous dots from the Syriac
becomes a difficult proposition. Let us now
examine the diacritical marking in Syriac, of which
two sets exists. According to Yusuf
Dawud Iqlaimis, the Bishop of
“It is confirmed without a doubt that in the life of Jacob of Raha, who died in the beginning of the 8th
century C.E. there did not appear any diacritical marking method in Syriac, neither the Greek vowels, nor the dotting
system.” {Source: Yusuf Dawud Iqlaimis, the Bishop of
According
to the Davidson {B. Davidson, Syriac
Reading Lessons, London 1851}, Jacob of Raha
(died 708 C.E.) invented the first set of
marking in the 7th century, while Theophilus
invented the second set (Greek vowels)
in the 8th century. Readers must keep this in mind that the end
of the 7th century C.E. corresponds to 81
A. H. (Muslim year of Hijrah),
and the end of the 8th century to 184 A.H.,
thus, the question becomes (as I stated earlier): Who borrowed from whom? The signs used by Jacob of Raha bear
resemblance to the Qur’aanic diacritical system (an examination of Syriac
script can prove this),
now let us again recall the inventor of the Arabic system i.e. Abu al-Aswad ad-Du’ali {died 69 A.H./688 C.E.} who dotted the entire Mushaf
during Muawiya’s {رضى
الله عنه} reign c. 50 A.H./670 C.E. Readers can see that suddenly the issue of “Who borrowed from
whom?” becomes crystal clear, which means that for six hundred years the Syriac wrote their Bibles without any diacritical marking.
Another myth that is put forward
by the enemies of Islaam is about the so-called “variant readings” of
the Glorious Qur’aan, which is another usual distortion of truth by
Judeo-Christian fundamentalists. Because there is no such thing in Islaam, it
is rather the hallmark problem of the Bible. In Islaam we have variant reciting
(not readings) that does not change the meanings, message, theme, and the
thought, which always happens in the Bible. Let
me shatter their so-called claim of variant readings, which they pass as some
kind of fallacy with few examples:
Example # 1
Surah
Al-Fatiha 4
The Only Owner (and the
Only Ruling Judge) of the Day of Recompense (i.e. the Day of Resurrection)
Some recite مالك
and some recite مِلك
Example # 2
Surah
Al-i-'Imran 26
قُلِ
اللَّهُمَّ مَالِكَ
الْمُلْكِ
تُؤْتِي
الْمُلْكَ
مَنْ تَشَاءُ
وَتَنْزِعُ
الْمُلْكَ
مِمَّنْ
تَشَاءُ وَتُعِزُّ
مَنْ تَشَاءُ
وَتُذِلُّ
مَنْ تَشَاءُ
بِيَدِكَ
الْخَيْرُ
إِنَّكَ
عَلَى كُلِّ
شَيْءٍ
قَدِيرٌ
Say (O Muhammad صلى
الله عليه وسلم): "O Allâh!
Possessor of the kingdom, You give the kingdom to whom You will, and You take
the kingdom from whom You will, and You endue with honour
whom You will, and You humiliate whom You will. In Your Hand {1}
is the good. Verily, You are
Able to do all things.
{1} (V.3: 26): See
the footnote of (V.3: 73)
Unanimously read مالك
The red colored
words can be contextually read in both verses (Ayaat) as either مالك or مِلك
Surah Al-A'raf
146
سَأَصْرِفُ
عَنْ
آيَاتِيَ
الَّذِينَ
يَتَكَبَّرُونَ
فِي
الْأَرْضِ
بِغَيْرِ
الْحَقِّ
وَإِنْ
يَرَوْا
كُلَّ آيَةٍ
لَا يُؤْمِنُوا
بِهَا وَإِنْ
يَرَوْا
سَبِيلَ الرُّشْدِ
لَا
يَتَّخِذُوهُ
سَبِيلًا
وَإِنْ
يَرَوْا
سَبِيلَ
الْغَيِّ
يَتَّخِذُوهُ
سَبِيلًا
ذَلِكَ
بِأَنَّهُمْ
كَذَّبُوا
بِآيَاتِنَا
وَكَانُوا
عَنْهَا
غَافِلِينَ
I shall turn away from My Ayât (verses of the Qur’ân) those who behave arrogantly on the
earth, without a right, and (even) if they see all the Ayât (proofs, evidence,
verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.), they will not believe in them. And
if they see the way of righteousness (monotheism, piety, and good deeds), they
will not adopt it as the Way, but if they see the way of error (polytheism,
crimes and evil deeds), they will adopt that way, that is because they have
rejected Our Ayât (proofs, evidence, verses, lessons, signs, revelations,
etc.) and were heedless (to learn a lesson) from them.
Some read رُشْد others
read رَشَد
Example # 4
Surah Al-Kahf
10
(Remember) when the young men fled for refuge (from their
disbelieving folk) to the Cave. They said: "Our Lord! Bestow on us mercy
from Yourself, and facilitate for us our affair in the
right way!"
Unanimously
read رَشَدا
Example # 5
Surah Al-Kahf
66
قَالَ
لَهُ مُوسَى
هَلْ
أَتَّبِعُكَ
عَلَى أَنْ تُعَلِّمَنِ
مِمَّا
عُلِّمْتَ رُشْدًا
Műsâ said to him (Khidr): "May I
follow you so that you teach me something of that knowledge (guidance and true
path) which you have been taught (by Allâh)?"
Some read رُشْدا others رَشَدا
Lexicographically
both forms are valid in each case. Readers
must note that I have kept it very brief to make my point and show the
absurdity of anti-Islaam claims. Now, in the light of above facts one can see
how absurd the so-called claim of variant reading is. People in
The myth of
Syntax
Often these [anti-Islaam]
attackers would toss an issue of Syntax and/or syntactical issue in Glorious
Qur’aan showing the fallacy according to their whim. But before you
allow these missionaries to deceive you, you must notice that they use the
English translation of Glorious Qur’aan, not the actual Qur’aan that is in
Arabic, in support of their absurd and erroneous claim. Glorious Qur’aan is the direct revealed
word of Allaah صلی
الله عليه
وسلم
and itself is a miracle at its supreme perfection. There is such a grandeur,
lucidity and sweetness in the arrangement of its sentences that nothing equal
to it can be produced. I will give only one example that will suffice.
Extracting blood money from a murderer was regarded as a
virtuous act among the people of
القتل
احياء لجميع (killing is
collective life) and/or القتل
انفى للقتل (killing checks killing)
These phrases were so
popular that they were commonly used and regarded as eloquent. The
Glorious Qur’aan has also expressed the same sense but with stunning effect
by saying,
Surah
Al-Baqarah 179
And there is (a saving of) life for you in Al-Qisâs (the Law of Equality in
punishment), O men of
understanding, that you may become Al-Muttaqűn
(the pious - See V.2: 2).
Hebrew Was Not The Original Language of Old Testament!
The pre-exilic language used by the Israelites was a Canaanite
dialect not known as Hebrew. The Phoenicians (or, more accurately, the
Canaanites) invented the first true alphabets c. 1500 B.C.E., based on
letters instead of descriptive images. All successive alphabets are indebted to
and derivative of this Canaanites accomplishment. (See Israel Wilfinson, Tarikh al-Lugat as- Samiyya (History of Semitic Languages), Dar al-Qalam,
Beruit, Lebanon, PO BOX 3874, ND, p. 54)
In general culture the Canaanites are no less remarkable,
and not a little of that culture was taken over by the Hebrews…. The Hebrews
were not great builders, nor very apt in the arts and crafts. As a result they
had to rely heavily on the Canaanites in this field, and in others as well. Whatever
language the Hebrews spoke before settling in
In
fact OT itself never refers to the Jewish language as Hebrew, as illustrated by
these following two verses from Isaiah 36 {KJV}:
36:11 Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I
pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it:
and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are
on the wall.
36:13 Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews'
language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of
Also
read: Hebrew
Was Not The Original Language of Old Testament!
The same
phrase is found in the NWT, The Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text, RSV,
and the Arabic edition. These last three substitutes “Aramaic” for ‘Syrian
language’, but none of them designates the other as Hebrew. We find the
same incident and/or same expression in 2 King 18:26 and 2 Chronicle 32:18.
2 Kings 18
18:26
Then said Eliakim the son of
Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joah, unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray
thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and
talk not with us in the Jews' language in the ears of the people that are on
the wall.
2 Chronicles 32
32:18
Then they cried with a loud voice in the Jews' speech unto the people of
In Isaiah 19:18 {KJV} we
read the following:
19:18
In that day shall five cities in the
The above citations unanimously agree on this phrasing; surely if
Hebrew had been founded by then the OT would bear testimony to it, instead of
vague wording about the ‘Jews’ language’ or the language of Canaan’. Given that the text makes the reference to
the language of
In fact the word ‘Hebrew” was indeed in existence, but it
predated the Israelites and did not refer to anything remotely Jewish. The words ‘Ibri
(Habiru) and ‘Ibrani
(Hebrew) were in usage even before 2000 B.C.E. and referred to a group of Arab
tribes from the northern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Syrian
desert. The appellation spread to other Arab tribes in the area until it
became a synonym for ‘son of desert.’ Cuneiform and Pharaonic
texts from before the Israelites also use such words as Ibri,
Habiri, Habiru, Khabiru and Abiru.
In this sense the term Ibrani, as
described to Abraham in the Bible, means a member of the ‘Abiru (or nomadic Arab tribes), of which he was a
member. The phrase “Ibrit, denoting Jews, was coined later on by the rabbis in
So what language OT was written in? From the information cited above we see a process of
scriptural evolution: Canaanite, Aramaic (Assyrian), and finally square, which
later on came to be regarded as Hebrew. We can conclude that prior to their return from Babylonian exile
in 538 B.C.E.; Israelites did not have any means of written communication
distinctly their own since pre-exilic Jewish script was Canaanite (Ibid p. 91). Ernst Wǜrthwein writes on pp. 1-2 of his book The Text
of the Old Testament (2nd Edition, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
“When Aramaic became the predominant tongue of the ancient Near East, the Jews adopted this language and soon assumed its script as well-which was then known as Assyrian.”
Note for readers: There is yet another twist to this history of fabrications as now
in Wadi el-Hol in Egypt,
near Luxor, a ‘Semitic
inscription’ has been discovered dated somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B.C.E.
by Dr. Darnells and his wife Deborah.
What was the mother tongue of Christ?
Christians
have no conclusive evidence about the mother tongue of Christ, since
documentation of his full saying never existed. Thus, the dilemma of
Christians’ ignorance is that their scholars disagree about the tongue Jesus’
sayings may have been uttered in. The gospels and Christian writers from early
age to present have failed to provide any answer with certainty. Among the guesswork of early
scholars in this regard, there is:
The above facts are the direct cause that resulted in creation of
different text types in the Christians’ cock-and-bull story AKA
New Testament, to be exact these different text types (poles apart from each other) are:
Variant readings in the New Testament!
One notable quality of the Greek uncial script was its lack of a
separator, between adjacent words as well as sentences, even though separation
between words had been used previously in Hebrew writings, and was therefore
not unknown. This flaw resulted in a divergence of meanings or rather
interpretations for certain verses. Among the most serious example of this is
Manuscript p 75 (Bodmer
Papyrus XIV-XV) ą, where John 1:18 can be read as either an only one, God, or God,
the only begotten. There
is an obvious profound difference in the two choices; the latter implies the
existence of a Trinity, while nothing in the former supports the absurd notion
of Trinity. In fact, the literal translation is ‘a unique God’, though it is never given as such {P. W. Comfort, Early Manuscript & Translations of the New Testament, Baker Books 1990, p. 105} We find similar serious problem in John 1:34;
John 7:53-8:11 {ibid, p. 107
& 115} One can go on citing
the entire New Testament, however, I would suggest the readers to read the
books (sources) I have cited in this treatise as my reference.
Conclusion!
The above facts are the undeniable proof from the very Judeo-Christian sources that:
·
Muslims
invented the Diacritical Marking that was later copied and/or borrowed by the
Christians.
·
For
six hundred years Bibles were written without diacritical markings.
·
The
myth of alleged variant readings of Glorious Qur’aan is not true, since there
is no such thing in the Glorious Qur’aan.
·
Glorious
Qur’aan has variant recitations or Qirat,
which does not change the meanings, theme, thought and message as proved above.
·
Hebrew
was not the language of the Old Testament.
·
Christians’
don’t know and/or don’t even agree about the mother tongue of their sham god
Jesus, thus, how can the New Testament be relied upon?
·
Serious
and/or highly questionable different types of text exist among Christians with
extreme variant readings that have changed the thoughts, meanings, message
and creed. Thus, none
of that can be relied upon!
·
Judeo-Christian
dilemma furthers because of the
Bible’s Missing
Books, and WHY ARE THEY MISSING?
·
Hebrew was not the
langue of Bible.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Allaah is all-sufficient for me,
and the best one to trust in.