Some time ago I published a sequence of posts on Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great. (I never did finish the series, since other things got in the way. Perhaps one day I will return and discuss the remainder of the chapters of Hitchens’ book.) The one particularly in question is this one: Hitchens’ “god is not Great”: An Assessment: XI: “The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin”: Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings. Late to the discussion, yet very welcome, is Rahman, who set out to correct some of Hitchens’ errors. This discussion has now gone through several cycles. What I am going to do now is to post Rahman’s latest comment, then I will comment on that, and I invite others who are interested to join in the discussion.
At the heart of this discussion is the question, which arose very early on with the new atheists, when challenged by Terry Eagleton, whether an atheist critic of religion had to be thoroughly acquainted with the theology of the religion being critiqued before venturing a publish a public criticism of that religion. This was answered, as you may remember, by PZ Myers, in his “Courtier’s Reply.” There’s even a Rationalwiki, as well as a Wikipedia entry under this heading – here and here. Essentially, the question at issue was whether a thorough acquaintance of a religion’s theology was necessary in order to launch an effective critique of the religion itself. In his London Review of Books review of The God Delusion, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” Eagleton, you will remember, puts it in these rather high-flown terms:
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case? Dawkins, it appears, has sometimes been told by theologians that he sets up straw men only to bowl them over, a charge he rebuts in this book; but if The God Delusion is anything to go by, they are absolutely right. As far as theology goes, Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.
Rahman’s concerns are slightly different, but not so different that there is no relation between his concerns and those expressed by Eagleton. One of the issues over which we have differed is as to the reliability of oral transmission. I will consider these points briefly below. You can always go back to the beginnings of the discussion, if you like, by clicking on the link above which will take you to the original post, and the later discussion prompted by Rahman’s intervention. John K has also been taking part in the discussion.
So, for the record, here is the latest of Rahman’s contributions.
Hello both,
Apparently “Hitchens was not talking theology”, well, sorry he was. According to the OED theology is “the study of the nature of God and religious belief”. If you make statements of the kind “The Islamic God has the following properties…(e.g. is a monoglot).” then you are discussing theology, because you are discussing the nature of God.
Your posts here are discussing theology too. Your admission that you “don’t need to know what the beliefs actually are” is rather disappointing, and leaves me puzzled a to why you would write long blog posts about a subject you have no interest in. I mean, I know nothing about medieval german literature, so wouldn’t it be strange for me to write a blog about the subject then when challenged with evidence that I’d got some facts wrong simply say, “well, I don’t need to know anything about medieval german [sic] literature to write this blog”.
Anyway, let’s leave that there, as I’m sure you can at least understand my point by now even if you don’t agree with it.
As for oral transmission of the Quran, as I said before there is no way to verify (in the scientific sense) virtually any historical event. It must be assessed on balance of probabilities. Sure, we can’t prove the Battle of Waterloo actually happened, but there is strong evidence to suggest it did, and little or no evidence to say it didn’t. As we go back it history, evidence even for true events naturally becomes more scarce: there is less evidence for Caesar than Napoleon, but most reasonable people would still think both existed. In a scientific sense, there is no experiment we can do to prove either existed though, so both are, in that sense, non-verifiable.
The fact that the Quran is memorised by thousands, maybe millions today, shows that it is possible for a human to remember it. And the oral transmission of the Quran perhaps only lasted 100 odd years until the first copies were written down (that is from non-religious historical evidence, most muslims [sic] think the Quran was written down almost immediately after the prophet’s death). Are you saying it was impossible to transmit accurately a document of the Quran’s length over one or two generations, given that at the time of the Prophet’s death hundreds or thousands of people had memorised it? [Yes, I am.]
I am a master of “baa baa black sheep”. When I recite that nursery rhyme, I literally NEVER get a word wrong. EVER. I am quite proud of that fact. My son is training to be a master of baa baa black sheep under my tuition. This is pure oral transmission, I know that because as yet my son cannot read. I think in a few months he too will be a master of baa baa black sheep, and I am confident even if he goes his whole life without ever seeing baa baa black sheep written down, years hence he could accurately transmit to his children. Do you disagree? If not, then what length is the text that becomes impossible for this to occur? Is it longer or shorter than the Quran, and how do you know?
Oh, and John, the 200,000 sayings you mention are the hadith, not the Quran. And there is methodology for ruling them out, transmission must be documented and must pass through only reliable transmitters. You may not agree with the methodology, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any.
I want to stress, once again, that this is only the latest of Rahman’s contributions. Hitchens says, in god is not Great, that Allah is a monoglot, and Rahman has set out to show me that he is not, and that the Qu’ran backs him up on this. He has provided references, which I will not repeat here, though you can find them in the linked discussion, if you think them important.
One of the arguments is that Allah had sent messengers to the Jews and Christians in their own languages. Rahman takes this as evidence that Allah speaks those languages as well. (I know, it’s all a bit fanciful, since there is no way of establishing that Allah even exists, let alone that he speaks in many languages.) However, there are several points militating against this stance: (i) many Muslims believe that the language of the Qu’ran is the language in which Allah delivered his message to Muhammad, and that therefore the Qu’ran, the words of which, alone, can move devout Muslims to tears, is written in the language of Allah; (ii) In the case of Christianity and Judaism, the revelation from God is not (at least for the most part) in the form of direct speech, but is mediated by a prophet or other spokesman who speaks with God’s authority; (ii) Muhammad is thought to have conveyed the very words spoken by Allah himself. These considerations seem to point to a difference in kind between the revelations to Christians and Jews and the revelation to Muhammad, which is assumed to be Allah’s final word, therefore ascribing to Arabic a central role in the divine revelation. This is strengthened even more when it is considered that no translation of the Qu’ran is the Qu’ran, which is why Marmaduke Pickthall, in his “translation” of the Qu’ran, entitles his book The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An explanatory translation, clearly indicating that his text is at one remove from the divine revelation itself, which is available only in the original Arabic. These aspects of the status of the Qu’ran indicate to me that the Qu’ran is thought to have been written in the very language of Allah himself, and no other language can convey Allah’s message to humanity.
The other area of contention has to do with the oral transmission of the Qu’ran. Rahman takes as evidence that oral transmission can be 100% reliable the fact that many people now memorise the Qu’ran perfectly. He uses the example of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” as an example, and tells us that he is a master of the poem, and is training his son to be a master of the poem as well. The reliability of transmission, however, as I have already pointed out to Rahman, is made possible by have a written text to check whether one’s translation is in fact accurate or not. Qu’ran memorisers can always return to the text, or other can check their accomplishment against the text, to make sure that the words have been truly memorised. In the case of oral transmission, however, there is no way to check the reliability of transmission. All you have to go on is the latest oral iteration of the work, whether epic poem or sacred text, but the latest oral iteration of the text is not available as a measure against which to check the accuracy of transmission. In fact, studies have been done of oral transmission, and it is now well-known that changes, improvements and embellishments are added freely in the course of oral transmission.
As to Rahman’s points regarding history, he says directly that
As we go back it history, evidence even for true events naturally becomes more scarce: there is less evidence for Caesar than Napoleon, but most reasonable people would still think both existed. In a scientific sense, there is no experiment we can do to prove either existed though, so both are, in that sense, non-verifiable.
This is actually untrue. Historical events can be verified, some more or less conclusively. The Battle of Waterloo is a case in point. Historians work with records contemporary with the events, diaries, news reports, field reports by officers during the battle, reminiscences by those who took part in the battle, records (especially in the case of Waterloo) of what was done with the dead soldiers and animals — much of it, by the way, was shipped to England, the bodies of soldiers included, where it was used as fertiliser. And there are doubtless still artifacts on the original field of battle and along the route of retreat to Paris that confirm the events of what happened on those two decisive days from late on Saturday, 17th June 1815 to the main battle on Sunday, 18th June 1815. Of course, for many battles fought in the past we do not have anything like so much corroborative evidence, and the further back in history we go, the less evidence we have, and the less reliable a lot of it is, especially if it has been conveyed via oral tradition, like the Trojan war, or, if it comes to that, the life and works of Muhammad, which are to a great extent lost in the mists of the past. Tom Holland, in his latest book, The Shadow of the Sword, proposes a completely new understanding of Muhammad and how he came by the knowledge (as well as misinformation) included in the Qu’ran, which is far more plausible that the traditional Muslim accounts of Muhammad’s life, all of them coloured, as they are, by pious legend.
But doing what I have just been doing is not, despite Rahman’s claim, doing theology. Indeed, I am not terrifically interested in Islamic theology, for, like all theology, it is fanciful and tendentious word-spinning which is not rooted in what we can with any assurance be said to know. This is amply demonstrated by what Philip Kitcher calls the symmetry argument. Religious people become religious largely by means of childhood indoctrination. What religion you come to think valid or true is, by and large, dependent upon this upbringing. There is, in other words a symmetry between the way Christians become Christians and Muslims become Muslims, and the same goes for other religions. Yet all religions claim of themselves that they speak the truth, thus effectively undermining each other’s claims. The consequence is the existence of numerous religious traditions each claiming special divine revelations that cannot, in the nature of the case, be confirmed. Thus actually doing theology is, for the purposes, at least, of determining the truth claims of the religions, a waste of time. I have, on the other hand, gone on record as saying that, though religions are obviously human creations, we should expect that over the centuries the religions have become a repository of useful information about the nature of being human and how to live a good life. It would be, I think, worthwhile to survey the religions for this purpose, to seek out those things that can contribute to human flourishing and then to flush the dross away. I haven’t had many takers, and I have not myself undertaken the proposed research, but I still think the proposal has merit. As to the reliability of the religions as vehicles of the truth about god or about transcendent things, the only reasonable position is a determined scepticism.
Thanks Eric, to be honest I thought I would have bored you by now but instead you’ve written a whole article about our discussion! And you type fast!
I’m not saying that atheists or non religious people should know anything at all about religion, especially if it’s of no interest to them. What I do contend in general is that it is fruitless for one to enter into a discussion on a topic that 1) one has little knowledge of AND 2) that one is unwilling to learn any more about. Note the AND. I have no interest in Justin Bieber. I don’t participate in impassioned online discussions over which album of his is better (does he have several??)
You speak long and eloquently but I think a lot of your points can be defeated as follows:
Is Hitchens talking about theology in this book “God is not Great”? Well as I said before theology is the discussion of the nature of God. Hitchens repeatedly states what he think attributes of the ‘Islamic’ God are, so he is talking about theology, by the normal definition of the word.
Is God a monoglot (according to Islamic theology)? A monoglot is someone who only speaks one language. In Islamic theology God spoke (literally) to many prophets Quran 4:164, 2:253 (for those of you who don’t know this includes Jesus, Moses, David, Abraham, Adam, Mohammed and thousands of others from all over the world). Those prophets didn’t all speak Arabic. So God is not a monoglot. Eric, you have tried to shift this to a claim that “Arabic is the ‘language of God’”, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have a precise meaning (perhaps you can provide one) so is harder to assess the truth of, unlike Hitchen’s “God is a monoglot” which is clearly untrue. Yes, the Quran is not truly the Quran when translated into English, just as (in the Islamic view) the Torah is not the Torah when translated either – so does that mean the the language of God is now Hebrew?
As for oral transmission, this may impress you, but I never check my recitation of Baa Baa Black Sheep against a written record. I know this as I own no written record of the rhyme, and yet I am 100% perfect. If we ever meet I invite you to test me, in the meantime you will have to take my word. I assume you will be stunned when my son becomes a master of baa baa black sheep, yet is still unable to read, as this will have disproved your claim that inter-generational oral transmission cannot be 100% accurate without a written record.
My serious point is this – it is obvious that oral transmission CAN work and CAN be reliable over the span of one or a few generations for short poems like that discussed. To claim otherwise is nonsense. So the question is not one of absolutes – oral transmission is not a thing that can NEVER happen. The question now becomes how long a piece of text can be transmitted over 100 year or so period, not by a single chain of individuals but by a whole society determined to do so? Is it as long as the Quran? If you say no, then how do you know this, or is it just what you believe?
I thing that it is misdirection to claim that when you discuss religious matters you must have a knowledge of theology. It is also a misdirection to to claim that when you discuss (say) morality you must have a knowledge of philosophy. You can discuss a book without a knowledge of literature. There is of course a risk that you might be going over old ground and making ‘beginners mistakes’ – but when have you ever encountered theologians, philosophers, or book critics that agreed of a major issue? It is all discussions of ideas in the world of ideas, and while they may be experts in those ideas if they cannot substantiate their ideas against reality (I know, I know) then their expertise is merely social recognition of their interests.
Come to think of it, I’ve not encountered a theologian with a deep understanding of all gods, nor a philosopher with a deep understanding of all philosophies. But most would argue that their particular theology or philosophy is the ‘only true’ one. How do they know?
Rahman, the research that has been done on oral transmission does not back you up. I do not have the references with me here, but I can get them if you like. But oral transmission is such as to introduce variants into the recitation of texts. Oral transmission is not a word for word transmission of particular texts, but of a related series of texts in sequence. This is clear in every case of oral transmission that we know, though, of course, it is impossible now to go back and check that this was true of the Qu’ran. Given what we know of oral transmission, it is almost certainly the case also with the Qu’ran.
As to the monoglot issue, I do not think that there is much further that we can go on the issue. I know that some Muslims believe that Arabic is the language of Allah. Whether all believe so is obviously in question, because you do not. It does not follow, however, that this is not a classical Islamic claim. I would need to have more evidence for this than a few verses from the Qu’ran which are, in themselves, subject to interpretation.
As to knowing something about a religion in order to speak about it, of course, one must know something about it to speak about it in depth, but that was certainly not Hitchens’ intention. He believed he knew enough about Islam to say with assurance that it is a human creation and not a revelation from a god. I think he was right in this. He does not need to study deeply to come to that conclusion. I cursory reading of the Qu’ran is enough to show that it is deeply steeped in very human emotions and ideas. It is clearly a pastiche of borrowed fragments from other religious texts, and it tends to be, on the whole, too interested in the grizzly punishments awaiting the unfaithful. Indeed, from my own reading of the Qu’an, it is one of the nastiest sacred texts in existence, which alone leads me to think that it is of little value as a religious text. Of course, no religious text has any particular secular value, and almost all religious texts lead to multiple forms of inhumanity, the Qu’ran as much as any other, and perhaps, since Muhammad was something of a brigand as well as an oversexed male primate, laying the foundation for the kinds of violence that are in evidence in the Muslim world just now. That, of course, is not to deny Christianity’s bloody history. These are criticisms that can be made on the basis of a rudimentary knowledge of the Qu’ran, a few ahadith, and smidgeons of Shar’ia. No deep acquaintance with Islamic theology is necessary. Of course, there may be errors — though I am still not convinced that Hitchens made an error in speaking of Allah as a monoglot, since that is demonstrably the way that some Muslims consider him — but they will not be, on the whole, such as to demolish the whole negative case that Hitchens, and others like him, are trying to make regarding religion in general and specific examples of religion in particular.
As to the discussion of the potential immutability of oral transmission: check out the Wiki page on “Baa,baa black sheep” and note that there are 3 variants there, not including recent variations in England described in the following excerpt.
“Two private nurseries in Oxfordshire in 2006 altered the song to “Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep”, with black being replaced with a variety of other adjectives, like “happy, sad, hopping” and “pink”.[10] In 2012, a private nursery in Kingston upon Thames replaced “black” with “little” for their Easter show”.
These variations could launch “theological” arguments –wars, perhaps– over the true nature of the Sheep.
Perhaps we will find “Sheepists” calling for the death of any who blaspheme by drawing the Sheep in any colour but black…
Rahman (and indeed Eagleton) seems to be missing the crucial difference between use versus reference in “talking theology” and “talking about theology”.
Nor is it necessary to follow all the details of a complex theological argument to its conclusion if its very premises are false.
Justin Bieber does not espouse a bronze age, tribal morality based on the words of a most likely fictional character, who on one hand is claimed by Muslims to be the perfect man who reflects all the divine attributes but in reality is a paedophilic, misogynistic, homophobic, polytheistic, ethic cleansing and genocidal tribal brigand.
Justin Bieber has never demanded that women and homosexuals be tortured and killed, young girls intent on getting an education be shot in the head or have acid thrown in their faces, mobs of angry fanatics engage in murderous rampages any time a teddy bear is given an unapproved name or someone uses the Koran for that which it is best suited, namely as a fire starter.
Which is more than I can say for the scumbag prophet of Islam.
I only need to look at the effects that Islam has on our increasingly global society to realize that it is the number one threat to well being of human beings on our planet and as such I do not need to acquaint myself with the theology of Islam to criticize it, although I suspect I have a better understanding of it than most Muslims, not being forced to memorize it’s dogma in a language that I don’t actually understand.
I would encourage Rahman to continue to teach his son relatively benign nursery rhymes and not inflict that last bastion of socially sanctioned child abuse known as religious education on him.
steve oberski | 22 March 2013 at 09:58, while it is true that Islam and Christianity as well as Judaism are fairly ancient, it is not true than any of them, except perhaps early Judaism, have their origin in the bronze age. Most of the Hebrew Bible takes place from the early to late iron ages. So we should not use “bronze age” carelessly as a marker for the primitivity of these religions. This was something that Hitchens unfortunately sometimes did, and it does not help the argument.
Hi Eric,
I agree that the use of “bronze age” is sloppy.
I would point out though that tribal ethics and morality dating back to the bronze age and earlier were most likely co-opted and incorporated wholesale into the the 3 desert dogmas.
It’s not as if religion actually creates anything new, it’s endlessly syncretic in nature and it never cites it’s sources.
Wow tough crowd.
About knowing about theology – I think my argument from the earlier remarks on a different blog post have been missed by some. I didn’t say you need to know about religion to say it is false, perhaps you think the very idea of religion is silly – great, no problem. That makes perfect sense to me. What doesn’t is to engage in a discussion of the nature of God in Islam, and when challenged that you made a mistake say “well I don’t care about the actual beliefs anyway”. Can you see the distinction?
Eric – two points I wonder if you can answer.
1. If God can speak to different prophets in different languages (see abundant references already given) how can he be a monoglot (meaning is only capable of speaking one language)?
2. Can you answer my argument about oral transmission of relatively short poems. Do you really believe it is impossible? Andrew – I’m not suggesting Baa Baa black sheep has never changed, I’m asking as a thought experiment, is it possible for it to be transmitted between generations 100% reliably. I think it is obvious that it is.
Steve, thanks for the parenting advice, I value it from such a calm and level headed person.
One person may pass baa baa black sheep to the next generation reliably but several hundred people all passing it reliably to their children? That is less likely. And for longer works, …
Rahman,
You’re counter-arguments are not very convincing for reasons that should be obvious, namely that none of us consider the Qu’ran to be the sacred word of Allah. Reiterating the same passage over and over again isn’t going to persuade us, especially as long as other Muslims contradict you. There seems to be a lot of agreement among the Muslim community that Arabic is either divine, superior, or privileged over other languages because it was the language that Allah supposed spoke to Mohammed in. These assertions, combined with the assertion that the Qu’ran is only the Qu’ran in Arabic and that prayers have to be said or should be said in Arabic, mean that Allah is a monoglot in practice if not in theory.
However, this is easy to disprove. Produce some other revelation from Allah in a different language or produce a non-Arabic version of the Qu’ran that is just as sacred as an Arabic version. Either of these would validate your case. Stop reiterating the Qu’ran’s claim that Allah spoke to other prophets and prove it. What was the revelation? What is the proof it came from Allah? In the absence of this sort of evidence, your claim that Allah has spoken to people in other languages is a hollow one.
About my second point, I realize that according to Muslim theology, there can be no non-Arabic version of the Qu’ran but why is this? If Allah is a polygot why doesn’t he just provide one? Why didn’t he transmit his revelation in a variety of languages in order to ensure that it could be communicated effectively to non-Arabs? Why didn’t Allah grant Mohammed the power to converse in multiple languages or choose multiple prophets from a variety of language groups? Why wasn’t Allah able to guide Muslim scholars to properly translate the Qu’ran into other languages? Why isn’t Allah capable of communicating his final revelation in anything but Arabic? The seemingly obvious answer is it is because Mohammed only spoke Arabic and his religion was spread by the Arabic speaking imperialists of the first Caliphate. It’s the same reason why Latin was the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the language that the heads of the Church spoke when it was founded.
Since you’re a committed believer, I doubt either of these objections will give you pause for thought. I anticipate that if you do respond to this comment, you won’t have anymore proof than you’ve already provided. Try to keep in mind that quotes from the Qu’ran are not compelling to disbelievers, tangible evidence is.
Hi Rahman,
It’s funny, I have had this discussion before in a quite different context, which was with an Inuk who resented what she believed to be my defending the epistemic superiority of written records over oral traditions as historical sources. To be clear, I readily concede two things at the outset: first, orally-transmitted information is not any less reliable per se than written records. In principle, oral transmission is 100% reliable.
In practice, it is not. This is not just the “telephone game” problem of mis-transmission, but various political interests have vested interests in particular rendering of religious texts. The machinations and debates around the selection of the Biblical canon are more or less well known, I believe (Eric can correct me if I am wrong and I will defer).
On the other hand, there seems to me to be an active campaign against historical research into how the current version of the Koran has come to be, which raises all kinds of red flags for me at the outset. Note, that I am not questioning that the angel Gabriel dictated the contents directly to Mohhamad at this point in the discussion. I’m just curious about the historical lineage of the present version(s), and even more interesting to me is where did the Hadith come from and how were the true-inspired-Holy-real hadith selected from what surely must have been a voluminous collection of candidates? Clearly there are differences between Sunni, Shia and Sufi interpretations of the Qu’ran. What are the historical/archaeological merits of their cases? Even a complete Biblical dilettante like myself can find popular exegeses of the Bible, complete with references to textual, archaeological and historical data written by secular scholars. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that any secular scholar embarking on such a project concerning the Qu’ran would be putting his/her life at risk. How can we know if the oral transmission of the Koran has been consistent without verification by referring to ancient manuscripts?
While it is of course fascinating to discuss whether Rahman’s invisible friend is multilingual, one wonders what his motivation is.
Could this be a form of taqiyya, to distract and confuse the dhimmi and deflect valid criticisms of the core tenets of Islam to time-wasting and futile discussions of abstruse theological concepts ?
Or is this cognitive dissonance in action, does Rahman actually realize how vile his religion truly is and by focusing in on a specific and inconsequential aspect of it he can ignore the larger picture ?
I think that this is a much more interesting question than whether Rahman’s sky daddy can speak more than one language, which on the face of it is rather silly since Rahman would probably insist that his deity is omnipotent and omniscient, rendering the question of his linguistic competence moot, forcing one to conclude that Rahman has some sort of ulterior motive.
Last year British television broadcaster Channel 4 showed the documentary “Islam: The Untold Story” by historian Tom Holland.
As Andrew above noted with respect to the danger that a scholar would face investigating any aspect of Islam, a private screening was due to take place at the broadcaster’s headquarters in London on September 13 before an audience of historians had to be cancelled after the presenter was threatened with physical violence.
In the documentary, the Cambridge-educated historian offers a critical examination of the traditional Islamic narrative that the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was transmitted directly and “fully formed” to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel in the seventh century.
Holland says that contrary to Muslim claims, it is far more probable that the Koran and Islamic theology developed gradually over many centuries in conjunction with the expansion of Arab empires. He also says there are many “black holes” in the historical record and suggests that Islam is essentially a “made-up” religion. Says Holland: “I had expected to find contemporaneous Muslim evidence, but there’s nothing there.”
Thanks for the heads-up, steve! I will watch the documentary on Youtube.
Andrew,
I’ve watched the video and it is really well done.
Of note is the fact, as mentioned above, that Tom Holland started the project with the assumption that the (non supernatural parts of the) Muslim narrative would be largely correct but was forced over the duration of the project to modify his basic assumptions until he came to the conclusion that it was all made up.
Islam couldn’t have had a more sympathetic investigator but it appears to lack even the most basic evidence to back up any of it’s historical claims.
Much more detail, with full citation of sources, can be found Tom Holland’s book “In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World”, which I have not read yet but it is on the list.
Hi Andrew,
You assert that oral transmission of text isn’t possible due to political interference. If that were so in the case of the Quran, given the relatively unstable nature of leadership in Arabian society directly after the Prophet, wouldn’t we expect the Quran to contain passages promoting one particular ruler or another, in order to give them some kind of ‘divine mandate’? Instead, there is virtually nothing in the Quran about the type of government and who should do the governing. There is nothing to assert claims to rulership of one clan, tribe or family. If political interference had influence or later events had influenced the Quran why don’t we seen any evidence for it in the text?
On to the Hadith, as I mentioned earlier the Hadith compliers used methodology based on reliable chains of transmitters. Hadith strength was categorised based on the number of such chains, the strength of such chains (i.e. the reliability of the people in the chains), whether the Hadith contradicted other Hadith or the Quran, etc etc. A range of categories of Hadith exist based on their strength in these terms. So this is quite different from the Quran, as it is known and accepted in Muslim opinion that some Hadith are less reliable than others, and all are less reliable than the Quran (which was complied in written form much earlier). Some muslims even reject use of the Hadith altogether because they cannot be relied upon 100%.
You say “Clearly there are differences between Sunni, Shia and Sufi interpretations of the Qu’ran.” Different interpretations, yes, but not different texts. There is one Quran, but understand that to muslims the Quran is not a 7th century text. It is a text originating outside of time, and therefore applies to all periods of history equally, the past, present, and far future. Naturally in different times and societies the text will be interpreted in different ways, that is not a weakness of the text but a necessity and a strength. This makes the question about historical/archaeological evidence for different interpretations of the Quran rather moot.
“Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that any secular scholar embarking on such a project concerning the Qu’ran would be putting his/her life at risk.” In today’s world unfortunately that seems to be true. You perhaps think this results from a directive in the Quran, I’m sure many think the Quran says things like “Behead those who insult Islam” or other such stupid slogans we tend to see from time to time from ignorant muslims. If you’re remotely interested, Quran 25:63, 7:199 and this 5 min video is good too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6zuKbBlmRo
Steve: yes you’re right there is an ulterior motive! I was sent by the Grand High Chief Muslim to distract you with “futile discussions of abstruse theological concepts”, because you, steve, are all that’s stopping US, the evil forces of Islam, from taking over the world mwhahahahaa. Whoops I probably shouldn’t have let that slip!
Rahman (and others too, of course), you seem to misunderstand the functioning of memory in the transmission of traditions. As to the Qu’ran, there is very little knowledge of how it came to be written, and why it takes the shape it has. Its literary history is almost entirely suppressed. At some point, as I recall, there was a concerted attempt to gather various parts of the text together, and to suppress and destroy texts that didn’t make it into the collection. If there is a unity in the text that other sacred texts do not display (and there is less unity than is often suggested, I think) it is because of political decisions to ensure that unity, and to exclude and destroy sayings that were deemed not to belong. You probably know more of the history of this process than I do.
But more important is the discussion over memory. Much research has been done on orality and memory, and this needs to be studied before making firm pronouncements about the reliability of the transmission history of the Qu’ran. Dominic Crossan, in his book The Birth of Christianity adduces quite a bit of evidence regarding oral tradition and how memory functions. Memory is a reconstructive process, not an iterative process. Albert Bates Lord, who studies oral traditions has this to say:
This, however has not be the experience of those who have studied oral traditions. Crossan then goes on to say that “[a]lmost everything that common sense tells us about memory is wrong.” [59] It is often thought that eye-witnesses are the best proof of guilt, but eye-witness testimony is known to be very unreliable. The stories we tell ourselves have an impact on what we remember. Part II of the book The Birth of Christianity explores the vagaries of memory, and how it functions in the transmission of oral tradition. This should disabuse anyone of the myth that oral transmission is reliable. As to the oral transmission of short poems, I don’t know, though I think that even here memory will play tricks, and if the only check you have on the reliability of transmission is your memory, I am sure that reliability slopes off over time.
You first question, as to the language of god, is really one of those endless hermeneutical discussions which end up badly. As I have said, I think you can take the messages of god in the OT to be mediated by human beings, and thus to be in human language, whereas the revelation to Muhammad was of a complete text in Arabic, unmediated by human beings, and thus, in some sense, the language of god himself. However, as I say, I don’t think the issue is one of importance. Some Muslims obviously think that Arabic is the language of Allah, some do not. I, on the other hand, do not believe that there is a god, therefore no Allah at all, and the question of his language doesn’t arise. For example, the Qu’ran itself says:
That is, the book itself, not a message from god, but the whole book! This makes a difference between the way that Allah communicated with Christians and Jews, and how he communicated with Muslims. Surely you can see that. And another:
There is a distinct sense in which the Qu’ran is the word of god in a way that other scriptures are not, and that is implicit in the way that the Qu’ran reports itself as being, itself, the revelation.
@Rahman
Well you finally got something right.
What say you watch the Tom Holland video and perhaps read his book and report back to us.
I’d like to hear how you rationalize the oral transmission of a 7th century fairy tale for which there is evidence that it is the made up effort of centuries of different authors and no evidence that it actually came into existence as per your fantasies.
I don’t really think you are an agent of the caliphate either, I lean towards the cognitive dissonance/rationalization hypothesis myself.
This conversation reminds me of one I had with a friend who told me I couldn’t criticise Islam before I studied and understood the koran something which most of them have memorised but understand very little what it says.
If Bukhari received over 700K hadiths and chose only a small number, it is right for me to say that there could have been political considerations among other things at the time he was compiling them.
Why would the koran need to declare it comes in Arabic if this matter is not in contention? The other so called sacred texts do not declare they come in a specific language. Could it be that when it was first written, it was written in the languages that were being used and later on changed to Arabic?
The history of Mohammed is clouded in mystery. There is a possibility he didn’t exist and that his story was concocted in a similar was as Joseph Smith did when he invented Mormonism. So if Muslim were to be exposed to similar criticism as other religions without threat to lives of historians, we may find it hangs on a loose thread backed by nothing except credulity.
Interesting as the origin of the Koran may be, this discussion seems to miss the main point: if there is no allah (or whatever you might call him), there is no question of whether his word was accurately transmitted by oral tradition, or of what languages he spoke. Muhammad seems to have been a real person. But without allah, Muhammad is just a man. Perhaps a great man, certainly a significant man, but a man with no claim to divine authority. Allah is an imaginary character for which there is no evidence. Let’s skip the hypotheticals and face the facts.
It’s no less true for the god of the Tanakh or the new testament or the gods of Homer. They are projections of the human mind. Would you argue whether Zeus spoke Persian as well as Greek? Or whether Homer’s Illiad is a literally accurate version of the oral accounts that he transcribed?
Rahman, you seem to be a very decent and rational man. You want to keep the focus on the possibility of accurate oral transmission, but accurate oral transmission of what? Like other so-called sacred texts the Quran has to stand or fall on the value of its message to humanity. It has no supernatural authority.
Marshall, you capture the crux of the matter clearly and precisely!
If Allah doesn’t exist[as he doesn't] the rest are side issues.
Marshall, I agree with what you say other than to add that there is no evidence that Rahman’s paedophile prophet was a real man, it’s far more likely that he is an amalgam of historical and fictional characters. There are obvious parallels to the Jesus figure.
And I would disagree with your analysis of Rahman being either rational or decent, one only needs to review his comments in this thread to disabuse ones self of the rational part (although he does have certain skills at rationalizing) and anyone who defends his vile religion can hardly be considered decent, unless decent has suddenly taken on a new meaning signifying that one can compose in sentences and paragraphs without excess use of capitalization and eccentric punctuation.
Eric – at last I see the problem with the God’s language discussion. You think God revealed the Koran in a different way to the other texts. This isn’t so. Quran 6:91 says
“Say, “Who revealed the Scripture that Moses brought as light and guidance to the people? You make it into pages, disclosing [some of] it and concealing much. And you were taught that which you knew not – neither you nor your fathers.” ”
Also see Quran 6:154. The Torah, Gospel, all scriptures were revealed the same way as the Quran, but as seen in the quote above, were changed when written down (I doubt you will have much argument with that!) So God spoke these languages just as he spoke Arabic to Mohammed – God always speaks the language of the people to whom the message is sent, because of course the point is for the people to understand it!
Paxton: you asked “Would you argue whether Zeus spoke Persian as well as Greek? Or whether Homer’s Illiad is a literally accurate version of the oral accounts that he transcribed?” I didn’t bring these arguments, it was Hitchens (and Eric), I was merely responding to them.
So I just finished watching Tom Holland video several of you mentioned. Some kind of unordered thoughts:
The main thesis is that Arabs weren’t muslims immediately after Mohammed died, and that Islam formed in the years afterwards. The evidence Holland cites for this is rather a lack of documentary evidence for Muhammed or Islam before a certain date.
Part of his main claim, that there is no contemporary evidence for Mohammed, can be disproved easily simply by citing examples. Look up Sebeos, an Armenian bishop of the 7th century or the Doctrina Jacobi, a document from the same time that mentions Mohammed. There are also many artifacts held in Istanbul but Holland no doubt feels these are tainted by Islamic tradition.
Holland is stunned that no mention of Mohammed is found on an Islamic coin until 50-60 years after his death. But is that really so surprising? The first United States currency was issued in 1792, 16 years after the declaration of independence. This gap is because creating new coinage takes a lot of resources, resources that the US was at the time using to fight the British and establish a country. Similar pressures were facing the Arabs, but in a society much less technologically advanced and where money itself was much less common place and necessary than the US a thousand years later. Is it really so surprising that it took the Arabs 50 years to strike coins – that’s assuming we happen to have the absolute earliest coin struck, in reality this is unlikely which means the figure of 50 years is no doubt too high.
Later he also acts similarly stunned that the Dome of the Rock (built 61 years after Mohammed’s death) has the earliest surviving inscriptions of the Quran and mentioning Mohammed. A building of the scale and ambition of the Dome of the Rock is not the first thing a civilization constructs. The great pyramids in Egypt were not the first time the Egyptians built pyramids, and their rituals and traditions did not begin suddenly when they threw up the three at Giza. How many pyramids are lost to time, and how many shrines and mosques? The Dome shows that Mohammed and the Quran were at the centre of Arabian belief 60 years after the death of the prophet – within a lifetime. It is possible that people who personally met Mohammed saw the Dome of the Rock completed – we are not talking about vast expanses of time or the ‘Black Hole’ as Holland likes to put it. Yes, there aren’t any earlier buildings still extant, but we know they must have existed because a civilization can’t pull the Dome of the Rock out of nothing with no prior art. We’re talking about events over 1000 years ago, in a region that has seen much of that time with various wars going on. Again, is it really so surprising?
On 29 minutes Fred Donner is interviewed and talks about the recently conquered inhabitants Jerusalem “…who had very sophisticated religious ideas. Why would these populations not have risen up in rebellion against their “muslim” rules if these muslim rules were trying to impose something totally different that was hostile to their own beliefs?” The implication being that the arabs had no real religion at all. Well maybe the reason the population didn’t rebel was because contrary to popular conception, which sees ‘Islam spread by the sword’, the muslim conquests didn’t spread Islam amongst the general populace. Rates of conversion were very slow, and christians, jews and others were able to continue their own traditions, subject to paying a tax to the new rulers. The masses simply weren’t forced to convert, so why would they rebel on these grounds? This may also be the reason the sources quoted in this section didn’t really know much about the religion of the rulers, as it wasn’t imposed on them. And as I have discussed, Islam isn’t ‘totally different’ to christian and jewish beliefs anyway, in fact very similar in almost all aspects. In fact much more similar than ‘no religion’ or arab paganism that is the inference of Donner.
Apparently Holland has read the Quran ‘through and through’ (he states on 47 minutes), well apparently he wasn’t paying attention as he claimed there in no unambiguous mention of Mecca. Try Quran 48:24.
If Holland is right, and the Quran was developed in the decades or centuries after Mohammed died, and was in fact from other regions not from Mecca, why is there absolutely no sign of this in the Quran? If the Quran had been invented at the political whims of later Arab rules, why does it not support one of other of them, why is there no directives on who should rule? There were massive changes in Arabian society after Mohammed, many major battles, splitting into Sunni and Shia, moving of the capital several times, assassination of rulers. Why is none of this mentioned in the Quran, if the Quran wasn’t fixed?
PS thanks steve, do you mind if I add your glowing recommendation to my CV?
We have poorly evolved brains for coping with modern life but some of us refuse to acquire and/or use the intellectual tools needed to be responsible members of a post enlightenment secular society.
Most notably religious folk who insist on using primitive, tribal morality to deal with the problems that face our global civilization.
I would compare the actions of religious folk who try to inject their primitive morality into modern society to that of drunk drivers who deliberately put other peoples lives at risk for strictly personal, selfish and irresponsible reasons.
The first currency issued by the US was issued by the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and was known as Continental currency. The Continental Congress met from 1774 to 1789 and the currency they issued is evidence of a United States that is contemporaneous with the Declaration of Independence.
Now if there was no evidence of any US currency for 2 generations after the claimed fact then one would have cause to doubt the event, and by analogy the issues that Tom Holland raises about lack of contemporaneous Islamic currency bearing the image of the great paedophile (or any other historical artefacts) is a valid criticism.
One of the basic rules of trying to prove that your holy book is true is that you can’t actually cite parts of your holy book as proof. You have to reference external sources such as records by other contemporaneous historians, coinage, art work, literature and so on. You will never be able to prove with an absolute certainty that specific historical events are true but you can assign a probability based on the amount, quality and extent of the evidence.
Quite right steve, I should have said first US coinage (not currency), which was issued in 1792 according to wikipedia. Of course banknotes are much easier to produce than coins but were not invented in the 7th century and even if they were would not have survived. The point is that even in relatively modern countries, it takes a while to get coinage into circulation. 16 years in the case of the US. A thousand years earlier is 50 years such a large gap for the Arabs (especially since 50 years is the maximum based on currently available evidence, in reality it might have been shorter)?
And where did I use the holy book as proof when discussing Holland’s documentary? Only once when I was disproving his assertion that there is no mention of Mecca in that exact same holy book. In fact I cited two contemporary non-Islamic sources that both mention Mohammed (one by name, one as prophet of the Ishmailites”), why not go back and re read my post if you’re confused?
Apologies for stepping out of the conversation for a while, my time can often be taken up in unpredictable ways.
It only takes one mistake for an argument to become invalid. One need not study a 50 page proof in detail after a foundational mistake can be found on the first page. So it is with this criticism of the Quran.
There is no basis for verifying a purely oral tradition. How do you claim no mistakes on even a short poem, when any mistakes would surely be mistakes of the memory used to both recite it in the first place and also to verify it? Magnify this problem by 114(?) chapters, and the chances of accurate transmission become vanishingly unlikely in any realistic way. Logical possibility is not enough. The story defies what has been observed about all other oral traditions that can actually be put to the test, and also defies what we can verify about the reliability of eyewitness testimony. One can only take on a perfect transmission belief at great risk of being incorrect and in opposition of what has been observed about such things.
I keep trying to convey the same point and failing. No, it is not impossible, but there is no good reason to think that it is so. Is it not also possible that a conclave of conspirators spread complete lies about the prophet before it was written down in order to hide the teachings in their entirety, behind an enormous amount of complete fabrication? Must you deny even the conceptual possibility that this could happen in order to dismiss it? Without evidence, how can we say that one story has any more truth to it than the other?
I don’t really feel the need to get into the amount and types of languages a god can speak, the reliance on oral transmission is a far greater problem. Any text that is going to claim supernatural events needs to be verified. I am not going to believe that Odysseus battled a Cyclops any more than Muhammad rode a Pegasus. The context is not based in any kind of reliable evidence and contradicts too much of what we can verify about the world we live in.
John – the chances aren’t as low as you suppose. Some important factors:
The length of the pure oral transmission was relatively short – as seen from the discussion above some if not all of the Quran was written down 50-60 years after the prophet’s death.
At the time of the prophet’s death, there were lots of people who had memorized the Quran entirely. They could cross check with each other, and work together to train new people.
This was a societal effort, and that society realised the importance of what they were doing
But you’re right, even if you’re convinced that it was possible or even likely, and that Mohammed actually existed – it doesn’t mean that he didn’t make it all up. The test is to read the Quran. If you read it and think it’s a communication from the creator of the universe, then bang, you’re a muslim, if not, then not. Everyone can read and make up their own mind.
I feel like we have gone about as far as possible in this discussion. I thank you for interest and civility. I will allow you the final word after this post.
I still think you greatly overestimate the reliability of eyewitness testimony and oral transmission. The internet will afford you quite a bit of investigation, and I suggest you look into both those topics more thoroughly. Here is an article on eyewitness testimony as it pertains to trails. Most trails occur within a few years of the incident with statements taken as quickly as possible, and people can completely misidentify culprits and other major factors. 19 of 21 wrongful convictions in a study in that article were attributed to reliance upon eyewitness testimony. The span of 60 years would only compound such problems, and is not a short time at all as far as these things are concerned.
I would also think that people in general of the time would be highly motivated to say they had indeed met and spoken with the prophet and gained special insight into the word of god, and there are quite a few other factors one has to wave away to take the accuracy of transmission seriously.
I must also repeat one last time, one cannot use memory as a verification of memory. Even if there were a concerted effort to memorize the text by many people, at the outset all of it was from firsthand accounts, which can be radically altered based upon the method of questioning (see that in the linked article as well). Hard physical evidence is always required for any reasonable measure of certainty, and the burden only increases with extraordinary claims.
I wish you luck in your continued religious education. I consider the discussion at an end, for my part.