T H E Q U R A N A COLLECTION OF DIVERGENT & VARIANT READINGS By Dr. Allen Fredrick Arthur Jeffery was a Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University, and an Adjunct Professor at Union Theological Seminary. He was a Scholar of world-renown, who fluently spoke and wrote the language of its origin, and who devoted a lifetime to its study. His writings show that, contrary to popular Islam understanding, the Quran's history is one of additions, deletions and alterations- evidently done by Mohammed's followers in an attempt to update the Quran as the knowledge uncovered by later generations began to conflict with its content, and illuminate the errors it contained. During his many years as an Arabic Scholar, Arthur Jeffery collected and documented an abundance of divergent and variant readings of the Quran. Notwithstanding wide acceptance of the Quran throughout the Mid-East as a collection of sacred writings from "Allah", these readings confirm beyond all reasonable doubt that the Quran is, to the contrary, a hodge-podge of additions, corrections, changes and deletions, and that their broad acceptance as a revelation from God is based on tradition rather than fact. The underlying problem of the Quran is not unlike that of other counterfeit writings in religion: Simply stated, except that a writing actually issue from God, its content will contain errors. These errors avoid detection until such time when new knowledge shows them to be false. When this occurs, there are two options: One is to discard the writings, and the other is to change them. In the case of the Quran, social imperatives forced the latter-- a practice that has evidently continued for centuries. To better understand why this occurred, we need to revisit its origin. Mohammed was born in the time period 570 - 580 AD in humble circumstances. His father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was age six. He was raised an orphan and later worked for a wealthy woman fifteen years his senior whom he later married at age twenty-five. She died about 620 AD and he then remarried an increasing number of women, stopping at about twelve wives. Wealth acquired from his first marriage permitted him to pursue his own tastes. As he traveled, he noticed two things about the Jews and Christians that he met: They were prosperous, and they had a sacred Book (Scripture). He also noticed two things about his own people: They were impoverished, and they had no sacred book. Thus was born the sincere, albeit exaggerated utterances of a man who believed that he had a divine message, and a divine warrant for its delivery. Mohammed penned the Quran about 640 AD i.e. about five hundred years *after* Bible manuscripts were in circulation-- and Mohammed borrowed heavily from them. Examples of biblical doctrines that are found in the Quran are: * Anti-Christ * Anti-Christ slain by Christ * Period of tranquility (Millennium) between man and beasts * Doctrine of the Elect * Gog and Magog * Day of Judgment * Creation Days (plus a seventh on which God does not rest) * Fallen angel (who presides over hell) Mohammed also borrowed a number of teachings from the Bible. These include: * Humility * Truth * Justice * Love (as Charity) * March on Jerusalem * Brotherhood of Believers * Call for children to obey their parents. By infusing his "book" with portions of the timeless truths of Scripture, Mohammed unwittingly guaranteed that its human content would be changed to realign with future knowledge as the compelling alternative to discarding its (albeit incomplete) Bible truths. But these revisions were also forced by the need to preserve the promise of a future life that it gave to the impoverished masses. Since its populace was largely destitute and without education, each version of the ever-changing Quran was uncritically accepted as though it was the original document penned by Mohammed. These abundant, divergent and variant readings of the Quran are documented in several of Arthur Jeffrey's texts. One reference is: The Quran as Scripture, Russell F. Moore Company, Inc., New York (1952) Another reference (edited by Dr. Jeffrey's) is: Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran: The Old Codices Printed for the Trustees of the "De Goeje Fund" No. XI, Leiden, E.J. Brill (1937) Additional references that highlight Dr. Jeffrey's scholarship in documenting the Quran's many variant and divergent readings is provided in the Appendix. The alterations in the documents that comprise the Quran are well documented by these and other scholarly works, and stand in sharp contrast to the timeless and invariant character of the Bible. Indeed, if the Quran can be said to have an enduring quality, it is in the supernatural content of the Bible texts that influenced Mohammed when he penned his manuscripts. For example, the Bible contains Old Testament Mosaic Law that is woven into the legal fabric of virtually every government on earth, and the Words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament Sermon on the Mount have literally transfigured the world. Moreover, whereas the Quran- although penned by one man, is replete with divergent and variant readings, the Holy Bible presents an inexplicable coherence even though numerous writers penned it, and over times that embraced centuries. These scribes were born on different continents, lived in different ages, emerged from divergent economic strata, came from widely varying social settings, and had different occupational and educational backgrounds. Moreover they wrote under a variety of adverse personal circumstances, and under conflicting political systems. Yet, cover to cover, the Bible's central focus is God's provision for sin in Christ. In particular, The Old Testament proclaims His Coming, the Gospels herald His arrival, and the Epistles promise His Return. In addition archeological evidences confirm Bible historical prophecies, and historical evidences confirm its Messianic prophecies. Consider the Creation account found in the Holy Bible versus the Quran: The opening three words of every Bible: "In the beginning" are affirmed by astrophysicists and cosmologists all over the world. By way of contrast, the Quran has our world on the angel Malak's shoulders as he stands on a ruby held by the horns of a bull that stands on Bahamout fish swimming in waters whose waves wash the shores of eternity. This child-like rhetoric conjoined with the Quran's rhapsodic tone has fueled speculation that some of Mohammed's writings may be the product of epileptic fits and cataleptic trances. Well over one-billion people today accept the Quran as a sacred writing from Allah in a religious faith known as Islam. The symbol of Islam is the crescent, which traces back to Abraham's day when a moon god was worshipped. He was the supreme deity of "OR" of the Chaldees. This same god was worshipped in prehistoric times in Mecca where he was phonetically called, "Al Eel La." In 640 AD Mohammed added this deity to his religion, and today he is referred to as "Allah." Regardless of how one chooses to view the Quran, a lifetime of work by Arthur Jeffery has clearly established that its content is a hodge-podge of additions, deletions and alterations. Its divergent and variant readings attest to centuries of corrections and changes in a systematic effort to align its content with new and changing knowledge. Yet although the Quran has changed, the vast majority of its followers have not. They remain a good and moral people. However unlike the Quran, the Bible remains unchanged, and Christians who confess faith in Christ and practice His teachings are likewise good and moral people. But because Christ's bodily resurrection is as secure as history can make it, they accept His bodily resurrection as proof that God speaks through the Holy Bible, and thus believe that their moral practices come from God, rather than man. Beyond this, Christians look to Christ as God's provision for their sins. Except for Christ (Who is revealed in the Bible as God incarnate in human form), the provision for sin is neither found in, nor offered by any other faith or religion on earth (see The Claims of Christ that is available for download from this website). A P P E N D I X --------------- Publications by Dr. Arthur Jeffrey * Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran (1938) * Islam - Mohammed & his Religion (1958) * Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran (1937) (published by Brill, Leiden, Holland - 1937) * Muquaddimatan Fi 'Ulumal - Quran * The Quran as Scripture (1952) (published by Moore, New York) * A Reader on Islam