Greetings,
As is often the case in discussions here, pretty much all the points I've made have been missed completely.
Not huge, but if somebody did it would it really constitute a violation of the laws of nature?
These are side issues that are not logically connected to the fact that a literary device was discovered after the text's composition.
This shows the same naive understanding of how literature works that I've mentioned earlier.
As in much of your post, your argument here essentially boils down to "You can't read Arabic. Naa na na naa na!" Why didn't you just write that, in accordance with the Arabic proverb you gave?
The point you're missing is this: The Qur'an may or may not be a particularly good piece of writing. We might disagree on this, but as you rightly say, I'm not properly qualified to judge, given that I'm not fluent in Arabic. But simply being a good piece of writing does not qualify something as being a miracle - a violation of the laws of nature. Many writers construct sentences beautifully, making word choices with astonishing precision - that is in a sense their job - but we don't assume that the laws of nature have been broken every time they produce a good piece of writing.
How can we measure eloquence? Again, you show no real understanding of how literature works.
The idea that the Qur'an can only exist in Arabic is the biggest red herring in this discussion. Why is it that Homer, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Pascal, Dostoyevsky and countless others can have their works translated and still retain their power, but the Almighty cannot?
Again, you're probably right when you say this is a good choice of words, but why does that make it miraculous?
There is no objective standard for judging sentence structure and phrasing, so the challenge is meaningless.
Fair enough, but this is the same point again: it may be a good word choice, but why does that make it a miracle?
Yes: but why mention it in a post describing the supposedly amazing composition of the text of Surah Yusuf? Unless you interpret the whole post as I have, the information concerning '23 years' is irrelevant.
All of the palindromes I gave were meaningful and contained more than four words. How did they not satisfactorily answer Qatada's challenge?
It's symptomatic of the uncritical way that Muslims are taught to read the Qur'an, automatically accepting claims that are wildly over the top.
I have listened to the Qur'an several times. You didn't think I would spend five years on a forum learning about Islam and miss that particular experience, did you?
On the point about the rhyme scheme: yes, it is a well-known technique, and I'm happy to believe the Arabic poets when they say it has been used extremely well, but why does that make it miraculous?
On the inability to create something like the Qur'an: as I've already said, such a challenge is as meaningless as asking someone to come up with a text similar to any major work of literature.
Now you've lost me. I've read the book; I know how repetitive it is.
Again, there is no objective measure of this, so the claim is meaningless.
This is a weak attempt to blind readers' judgments with some fancy terms. If you were aware of what even half of these terms mean you would know that they are present in almost any fictional text. Substitute
Don Quixote,
Hamlet or even
Harry Potter for 'the Qur'an' and the paragraph remains just as meaningful.
I'm willing to believe you for the sake of argument, but many other texts behave in similar ways and we would never think of them as being miraculous. If you truly believed what you are saying here, you would logically have to regard many other texts as miraculous too. Take James Joyce's
Ulysses for example. It contains every literary device you've mentioned so far, plus many, many more. It is longer than the Qur'an (732 pages in its first edition), and contains one of the largest vocabularies of any text in any language. It is an extraordinary achievement by any standard. But is it miraculous? Of course not.
I'm sure you're right, but how does precision with word choice qualify as a miracle?
Your argument now seems to be: "It is so difficult to write well in Arabic, that when it happens over the course of a lengthy text, it must be a miracle." Is that fair?
This is a matter of belief.
Oh, I'm still here! I'm very interested in discussing this with you. Thank you for not getting too emotional about it thus far.
It's the appellation of the word 'miracle' that I'm most concerned with here, and that is a claim that can be expressed in any language. As for it being a waste of time: you were the one who asked for this discussion. If you've grown bored of it, then you are free to leave it any time you like.
Btw, Qatada: I answered your post in the last four paragraphs found
here.
Btw, Skye: you were of course quite right about the bee. I'm always happy to be proved wrong - thanks.
Peace
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