Oldest Books?

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samah12

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Can anyone tell me how old the oldest known Quran that is still in existance is and where it is kept? Same question for the Torah and Bible?
 
:salamext:

sis every quran is the same, inshaAllah the oldest was just like the one you have in your house.
 
IbnAbdulHakim said:
:salamext:

sis every quran is the same, inshaAllah the oldest was just like the one you have in your house.
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Thank you I understand that but I am having a bit of a set too with a Christian friend. When I told her that not one letter of the Quran has ever been changed she said prove it, show me the oldest existing Quran so I can compare it to yours. And of course she does not agree with me that the bible has been changed many times. So the task for me is to find the oldest Quran and she will find the oldest bible so I can prove I am right. ( I know, pride is a sin).
 
:salamext:
sis, I found these sites
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/samarqand.html

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/topkapi.html

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/hussein.html

There are copies scribed in 488 A.H., 1290 A.H. and 842 A.H. and these are kept in the Library of King Abd-el-Aziz.

but I don't think these copies are open for the public to use. I think they are in safe places and the officials are trying to preserve them.
hope this helps.


wasalm
-SI-
 
Sister, I hope you know what your doing.

As for the Qu'ran, there's many logical things, the fact that there is the written manuscripts, the fact that the Qu'ran is memorised by many letter for letter, which of itself shows its validity.


I think the crucial thing is the envioroment in which scriptures have been provided in.

Debating is useless unless both persons are receptive. Thus debating an 'ignorant stubborn' individual will fail to prove anything to him since he will not listen, rather debating with someone who is receptive will have a result either you come to a better understanding or he does.
 
I still can't see the big deal of this 'unchanged' thing.

You could take many examples from the classical world in Greek and Latin written any time in the twelve hundred years or so before Mohammed (including the period in which the New Testament was written) and there is no evidence they have been changed in any significant way. Sure, the miniscule letters and such are a medieval addition, but that's just cosmetic. Where is all the scholarly debate claiming that we have somehow fundamentally mis-interpreted Plato or Aristotle (both of whom have 'messages' far more complex than the New Testament) because somebody made some copying errors somewhere down the line?
 
Trumble said:
I still can't see the big deal of this 'unchanged' thing.

You could take many examples from the classical world in Greek and Latin written any time in the twelve hundred years or so before Mohammed (including the period in which the New Testament was written) and there is no evidence they have been changed in any significant way. Sure, the miniscule letters and such are a medieval addition, but that's just cosmetic. Where is all the scholarly debate claiming that we have somehow fundamentally mis-interpreted Plato or Aristotle (both of whom have 'messages' far more complex than the New Testament) because somebody made some copying errors somewhere down the line?
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The big deal is that the Quran is the word of Allah and no-one should change even one letter of it. It is known that the bible has been changed, particularly during the reformation of the church, so how can anyone be confident that the message in the bible today is the message that God gave to man?

There are plenty of scholars that debate like crazy over Plato and Aristotle but not on this website.
 
Greetings,
samah12 said:
There are plenty of scholars that debate like crazy over Plato and Aristotle but not on this website.
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True, but I think you missed Trumble's point: what is so amazing about the Qur'an remaining unchanged, when so many other (and older) texts could make the same claim?

[And I'm sure the mods wouldn't object to a little Plato and Aristotle popping up here and there on LI...] :p


Peace
 
samah12 said:
so how can anyone be confident that the message in the bible today is the message that God gave to man?
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Because in all probability none of those changes have any fundamental effect on how the core content is interpreted? - that's the point I was making.


There are plenty of scholars that debate like crazy over Plato and Aristotle but not on this website.
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About their philosophy, yes. Just as they do Kant or Wittgenstein. In none of those cases is that debate about whether we don't actually know what they wrote because somebody copied it down wrong!
 
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It is known that the bible has been changed, particularly during the reformation of the church, so how can anyone be confident that the message in the bible today is the message that God gave to man?
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I would disagree, The "tanslations" in Greek etc were changed. The source Hebrew text always remained the same, pronounciations may have differed, but many even doubt that, since an actual Torah scroll written according to the law of writing a Torah scroll (not a book with the Torah written in it, but gives commentary in the middle etc) has never been found that differs from our tradition.
 
Moving on a little then, can those who claim that the Bible (Torah or New Testament) has been significantly changed - in a way a great many hugely significant works just as old do not appear to have been - actually provide 'proof' of this?

All I have seen is the suggestion that it might have been changed or unsupported statements that it has. The relatively few 'contradictions' and 'errors' that cannot be otherwise explained demonstrate only that there were generally trivial differences of opinion and knowledge of historical/mythical details between the (different) authors of the books concerned - which we knew anyway.
 
lavikor201 said:
I would disagree, The "tanslations" in Greek etc were changed. The source Hebrew text always remained the same, pronounciations may have differed, but many even doubt that, since an actual Torah scroll written according to the law of writing a Torah scroll (not a book with the Torah written in it, but gives commentary in the middle etc) has never been found that differs from our tradition.
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Sorry I was referring to the english translation that I read as a christian.
 
Trumble said:
Moving on a little then, can those who claim that the Bible (Torah or New Testament) has been significantly changed - in a way a great many hugely significant works just as old do not appear to have been - actually provide 'proof' of this?

All I have seen is the suggestion that it might have been changed or unsupported statements that it has. The relatively few 'contradictions' and 'errors' that cannot be otherwise explained demonstrate only that there were generally trivial differences of opinion and knowledge of historical/mythical details between the (different) authors of the books concerned - which we knew anyway.
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To be honest with you Trumble I have no answers. It is a subject I have just become very interested in. I believe in coexistance and a thread about coexistance on this site got me thinking about this. Why is there so much animosity between Muslims, Christians and Jews? So this is what I am currently researching, taking one small topic at a time. I decided to start with the foundations of each religion, the Books.

So if anyone has any comments, answers or suggestions then I am all ears (or eyes as the case may be).
 
samah12 said:
To be honest with you Trumble I have no answers. It is a subject I have just become very interested in. I believe in coexistance and a thread about coexistance on this site got me thinking about this. Why is there so much animosity between Muslims, Christians and Jews? So this is what I am currently researching, taking one small topic at a time. I decided to start with the foundations of each religion, the Books.

So if anyone has any comments, answers or suggestions then I am all ears (or eyes as the case may be).
Click to expand...

I have to agree with Trumble. I have seen no proof the texts of the Bible were changed.
 
don532 said:
I have to agree with Trumble. I have seen no proof the texts of the Bible were changed.
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This is where the thread started, I asked if people could tell me the whereabouts and age of the oldest Quran, Bible and Torah. In this day and age of technology there must be a way to compare the oldest to the current. Surely this would stop the argument once and for all?
 
samah12 said:
This is where the thread started, I asked if people could tell me the whereabouts and age of the oldest Quran, Bible and Torah. In this day and age of technology there must be a way to compare the oldest to the current. Surely this would stop the argument once and for all?
Click to expand...

Here's a link on some of the biblical texts. All the oldest texts available do not differ significantly in meaning. Yes, the apocrypha books are not in included in the non catholic bible, but the message is not changed. It wouldn't matter how old of manuscripts were found. If it differs from the Qur'an, it's still corrupt in the Muslim perspective.

http://www.religion-cults.com/Judaism/escript.htm

1- The "Greek Bible", the "Septuagint":
From the third century before Christ, is the oldest document we have: It is the Greek translation made in Alexandria by a Group of 72 rabbis (6 from each one of the 12 Tribes of Israel), and hence the name of "Septuagint" given to the translation. It has 46 books, like the Catholic Bibles, and it was the common version of the Bible among the Jews well after Christ; the one used and quoted by the Evangelists and Apostles when they wrote the New Testament, and the one mostly quoted in the Talmud.
- It was then translated to Syriac in the 1st century AC, to Coptic in the 3rd century AC, and to Latin in the 4th century AC (the "Vulgata").
2- The "Hebrew Bible", the "Masoretic Text":
Written in the 6th to 10th centuries after Christ, by a Group of scholars from Babylon and Palestine, the Karaites, introducing vowels and accent signs to the original Hebrew. It has 39 books, and it is the one mostly used by Protestants.
3- The "Dead See Scrolls":
Very important, because they are in Hebrew, dating from 300 "before Christ", when the oldest Hebrew Bible we had, the Masoretic, is from 700 "after Christ"... it pushed back the curtain 1,000 years on the earliest known surviving Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament.
Only from the Cave IV of the Qumran finds, there are fragments of 382 manuscripts. Every book of the Bible, except Esther, is represented, and same books by many copies. Seven scrolls are in Israel, at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. But most of them are in Jordan at the Palestine Archeological Museum of Jerusalem.
All manuscripts are with a remarkable similarity to those Greek and Hebrew we had!... and they have been qualified as "the most important discovery ever made in Old Testament manuscripts", also very valuables in New Testament studies.
"Codex":
The Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, are kept in several "Codex": The "Codex Vaticanus", the oldest, from the 4th century AC, in the Vatican Library, Rome. In the British Museum of London are kept the "Codex Sinaiticus" of the 4th century AC, and the "Codex Alexandrinus" of the 5th century. In Cambridge, the "Codex Bezae" of the 5th century AC.
There are also fragments of the Bible kept in "papiry" in Manchester and Oxford (England), in Washington (USA), and Geneva (Switzerland).
 

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