# Oldest Koran found in Birmingham, UK **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 22, 2015, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-koran-found-in-birmingham-uk/725871 "2015-07-22T12:34:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-koran-found-in-birmingham-uk/725871/81 "2015-07-31T18:39:24Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Last chance. Anyone else wants to continue the hijack about fat white people, miniskirts or anything else will be getting a warning. I understand that the OP poisoned the well a bit but if you want to Pit him or what you think he is trying to say go ahead. In the Pit. If you want to discuss the news story about the Koran continue. I am taking in what is being said about my way of thinking and appreciate that I need to put on my scientist"s hat. Lesson learnt. This board is the best I’ve come across and I’d be stupid to carry on as I have been. ---
**Author:** ![Chemical-camus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71c47a/32.png) [@Chemical-camus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chemical-camus)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-koran-found-in-birmingham-uk/725871/82 "2015-08-07T04:51:21Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > So, to summarise, you’re leaving the thread you started: > > 1. Without responding to the rebuttal offered by several posters to your initial comments about the 95% spread; > > 2. Without responding to the contradiction by other posters of your factual assertion that there are variant versions of the Koran; > > 3. Without responding to the critique by other posters that there is no evidence to support your convoluted theory that Mohammed plagerised from an unknown Nestorian Christian document that his uncle had; > > 4. Without providing any authority in support of the assertion that the Koran was actually written in the late 700’s, instead of the broadly accepted date of the mid 600’s, except for your own personal theory; > > 5. Without providing any support for your assertion that Moses hid the Pentateuch in a temple that didn’t exist when he died, in a location which the Bible expressly states he never visited before his death. > > So all we’re left with are your personal meanderings, suspicions and feelings, unsupported by any shred of factual evidence, other than your own personal prejudices. > > Have I got that right? Being an atheist, someone who is ethnically Middle Eastern and European, and a person who has studied religion (particularly Christianity and Islam) quite extensively, I think I can make a somewhat less bias comment than what I’ve seen so far, regarding racist comments of fat white men, and Arab liberation with miniskirts. This is my first post, I’m a long time lurker, I usually post as psychonaut on [atheistforums.org](http://atheistforums.org), but this discussion warranted a signup. I’ll play the devils advocate, and bring this forum back on topic. 1. Bryan Ekers has already given an adequate explanation for the apparent contention that the OP may have had. So I won’t discuss it unless the OP has further clarified their contention. 2. The OP may be referring to the qira’at, the two main qira’at in use today being the Hafs and Warsh. Ibn Warraq has commented on the differences between these qira’at in his book “Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics”, he has also posted a summary of some variants between the Hafs and Warsh qira’at in this article [http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/15565/sec\_id/15565](http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/15565/sec_id/15565) If the OP is not referring to that, he may have, as he had stated in another post, been referring to the Differences between the 1924 Cairo version and the Sana’a manuscript , there is a list of variants on the wikipedia page (which I’m not a fan of referencing, but I’ll do it for the humanities :P) for the Sana’a palimpsest here > **[Sanaa manuscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana%27a_manuscript#Variants)** > > The Sanaa palimpsest (also Ṣanʽā’ 1 or DAM 01-27.1) or Sanaa Quran is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. Part of a sizable cache of Quranic and non-Quranic fragments discovered in Yemen during a 1972 restoration of the Great Mosque of Sanaa, the manuscript was identified as a palimpsest Quran in 1981 as it is written on parchment and comprises two layers of text. > A partial reconstruction of the lower text was published in 2012, and a reconstruction of the legible portions of bot... 1. He may in fact be referring to the hadith which claims that Waraqa used to read the Bible in Arabic. IE: [404 - Page not found | Quran Verses, Hadith, and Islamic History | Alim](http://www.alim.org/library/hadith/SHB/605/4) Or the the common christian polemic, starting with St. John of Damascus, that he had forged his book with the help of Bahira, the Nestorian monk: [http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/stjohn\_islam.aspx](http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/stjohn_islam.aspx) To add, isn’t there an ongoing project to compare a lot of pre-Islamic literature to the Quran, thus at least mildly affirming what he is saying? [http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/](http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/) 1. He may be referring to the near complete manuscripts from the late 1st to early 2nd century Hijra, which is roughly around the late 600s to 750 If I remember correctly. So he’s a bit off, but I mean, there’s really nothing we can do to confirm with near certainty that there is a complete Quran around the mid 600s, unless of course, I’m mistaken, if so, please clarify. > **[The "Qur'an Of Uthman" At The Al-Hussein Mosque, Cairo, Egypt, From 1st / 2nd...](https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/text/mss/hussein)** > > A brief description of an early Qur'anic manuscript at the al-Hussein mosque, Cairo, Egypt, attributed to Caliph 'Uthman. 1. It sounds like he’s referring to Josiah’s rediscovery of the Deuteronomic texts, which has been theorized as the origin of the Pentateuch (meaning Josiah, and the Yahwist priest Hilkiah strung together Deuteronomy instead of finding it) rather than Moses “burying it” as you say, which isn’t even mentioned in the bible. The theory posited by Dewett is currently being discussed at length Here’s a sample [https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jbl/summary/v130/130.1.na-aman.html](https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jbl/summary/v130/130.1.na-aman.html) We probably are left with his personal meanderings, but I hate seeing things being discussed without reference. So there they are. Do what you will with them. I know these don’t constitute for scientific evidence, as my background IRL is science, but historical evidence (from memory) is a bit more loose, and seems to me, that it’s just people arguing at length with each other without any falsifiable physical evidence. Just theorizing and using Occam’s razor. I may be wrong though, as it’s only a hobby of mine to delve in to such matters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-koran-found-in-birmingham-uk/725871.md?page=4)