The Real Koran

I have been noodling around the net and have come across some very interesting stuff on the history of the Koran.

By the standards of contemporary biblical scholarship, most of the questions being posed by scholars like Puin and Rippin are rather modest; outside an Islamic context, proposing that the Koran has a history and suggesting that it can be interpreted metaphorically are not radical steps. But the Islamic context -- and Muslim sensibilities -- cannot be ignored. "To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community," says R. Stephen Humphreys, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally -- though obviously not always in reality -- Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless."

So there you have it. The Koran can not withstand real scholarship. I say turn the academics with courage loose. Where is Indiana Jones when you need him? The University of Chicago perhaps?

Koran, Islam, Islamic History, Koran History, Indiana Jones, University of Chicago, James Breasted, Breasted, Religion

Cross Posted at Classical Values