After they start burning books...

I've been thinking over the past two weeks or so about some of the most over-exaggerated and false Christian claims that are presented in an attempt to
degrade the credibility of Islam and after some of the discussions I've been participating in on another site, I've decided to consider these statements that have come up in the discussions or the recent debate:

"We have some minor manuscript errors because we never burnt all our variant manuscripts."

"Uthman burnt all the variant Qur'ans, but we have never had a wholesale burning of books."

In turn, these statements usually lead into the proposal:

"Christian scholarship is honest as it hides nothing, Islamic scholarship hides things and is therefore dishonest."

So lets consider the facts:

1) According to the hadith literature, Uthman did give an order for all variant Qur'anic manuscripts, in part or full, to be burnt:

So Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, 'Send us the manuscripts of the Quran so that we may compile the Quranic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you'. Hafsa sent it to Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin Az-Zubair, Said bin Al-As and Abdur Rahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, 'In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Quran, then write it in their (Quraishi) tongue'. They did so, and when they had written many copies, Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied and ordered that all the other Quranic materials whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt..." (Sahih al Bukhari: 6:510)

2) However, utilising this hadith as direct fact is a double edged sword for Christian, as ahadith in the collection of Tirmidhi, used to show that variants existed, actually illustrates that not all 'variant' copies were handed over:

Abdullah Ibn Masud said: "O you Muslim people! Avoid copying the Mushaf and recitation of this man. By Allah! When I accepted Islam he was but in the loins of a disbelieving man”—meaning Zaid bin Thabit—and it was regarding this that Abdullah bin Mas’ud said: “O people of Al-Iraq! Keep the Musahif that are with you, and conceal them.” (Tirmidhi: 3104).

3) Moreover, if all these variant copies were burnt in the time of Uthman (650 CE) then why were they all still around to be recorded in the collections of ahadith (850-950 CE) and all extreme reported variants, such as those recorded by the Rafidiah cleric Ahmad ibn Muhammad as-Sayyari in his Kitab al-Qira’at 900 CE, are recorded and referred to in major Sunni tafsir and ahadith collections and, in turn, debunked by those contemporary scholars.

In fact, because the Muslims were always so blatantly honest about what was out there, we have access to it all!

Still today I can buy as-Sayyari's book printed in Arabic, despite the contents not conforming to any sect (including the Shia), even in English translation, if I wish.

I can also purchase language and theology primers for the Qur'an written by the Mutazilah, political commentaries on the Qur'an written by the Shia and the whole range of Sunni Qur'anic exegetical texts refer to these heterodox opinions on the Qur'an if I really want to read them.

We've never hidden or deleted a reported Qur'anic variant. In fact, we have embraced them from the very beginning and debunked them with quality scholarship. Scholarship so confident, that we have even allowed the original variant texts to continue to be published.

So, it seems Uthman did send an order for variants to be destroyed, but clearly not all were. How did Islamic scholars deal with these variants? By analysing them - not merely wiping them off the face of the Earth.

Lets compare this to the Christian experience using two examples (there are many more, but for time's sake, we need to limit it).

1) What happened to the texts of Marcion?
Marcion of Sinope (85-160CE) was a major heterodox Christian leader in the first and second Christian century, who's teachings are believed to have become as widespread and had as many followers as the Roman Church in the following centuries (Blackman, 2004).

Marcion had his own Christian Scripture canon list, his own Gospel account (called the Gospel of the Lord) and even his own theology. In short, Marcion believed that the Jewish God and the Old Testament were not related to the Heavenly Father, Jesus and the New Testament, i.e. that there were two gods and Judaism and Christianity had no common roots.

So Marcion was a prolific writer, who had many followers over a few centuries to spread the writings around. Therefore, we would assume something of his writings would survive to this day, if Christians never destroyed heterodox texts.

In fact, as with many heterodox Christian groups, few or no actual writings survive. All we have are the commentaries and responsas written by the early proto-Orthodox Church Fathers - and from that scholars have made reconstructions.

To be completely fair, some scholars suggest a 3rd Century fragment of the Gospel according to Luke, P69, may in fact be a fragment of Marcion's Gospel.

So a prolific writer, who the Church Fathers testify in their own books had many followers for at least a century, and all we have left are reponsas and, maybe, a tiny fragment of a single page. What happened to all the rest?

Perhaps, you may say, as his teachings fell out of favour people just individually threw his texts out.

But what then do we say about the Nag Hammadi Library?
This group of Gnostic texts was found in 1945 with over 50 different texts mostly believed to have been lost since the 4th Christian century. It is believed that they were buried in jars in the desert in order to be hidden from those attempting to destroy them, after Bishop Athansius rejected them as heretical in the Festal Epistle of 367 CE.

Some of the key texts within it, such as the Gospel of Thomas, had some fragments found in the late 19t / early 20th Century, but nothing near a complete manuscript had ever been discovered.

While the majority of these texts had been referred to by many early Church Fathers, some, such as the Gospel of Thomas, were believed to be quite widespread and written in at least two languages (Greek and Coptic). Similar to Marcion, we find nothing but a few fragments of this text and nothing but commentaries by Church Fathers on most of the other texts. Had it not been for the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi, we would know very little.

The questions herein are quite significant. I have my own answers to them, but I'll leave it for the reader to make further conclusions. I'll summarise and then pose the questions as I see them:

1) Muslims are condemned for burning all their variant texts, yet, we find texts written by those who reported the variants, ahadith reporting the variants and also commentaries on these variants from the very beginning of Islamic textual history. Moreover, all texts written by heterodox writers, despite how little the spread of their influence or how dramatically different their theology was to the mainstream.

2) In contrast, while Christians claim they never destroyed their variant texts, we find little evidence for major early Christian groups, such as those identified above. Moreover, it is clear from some early Church documents, such as the Festal Epistle of 367 CE, that all texts considered to be heterodox were labelled as heretical and they essentially cease to exist.

So:

Who has the most honest scholarship?

Who really destroyed their variant texts?

What does this actually say about the manuscript variants of the Christian Scriptures?

I'm looking forward to some ongoing discussion...

Of Mice and Straw Men

Another debate was held in December which had been in planning stages for a while and ended up running rather well. Certainly there were some flaws with my arguments, but I came to realise, while listening to the arguments of my Christian counterpart, that there are some straw men cropping up around the field.

For example, the Christian Scriptures being devoid of the word 'Trinity' is not a proof they have not been altered. Some extremist Shia sects (that no longer exist) holding that a few verses have been omitted from the Quran that are at complete odds with what the text itself says are not a proof the text has been altered.

These statements aren't even real arguments - they are straw men. Who is setting up the criteria for these issues? Not evidence based critics.

Essentially the debate itself, both in my shortcomings and in the shortcomings of my counterpart, demonstrated to me the profound importance of using an evidence base for making arguments and, in turn, conclusions. Emotions and assumptions need to be left for after the evidence has been considered...

I'll build upon this into a better post within the next week or so, God willing, and hopefully it will help my methods in the future.