1/30/2023 0 Comments Quran textual criticismThe method of Reasoned Eclecticism is the method of textual criticism chosen for this study. Part 4 is chapter 12 which is devoted to conclusions. ![]() Part 3 contains an evaluation of these variants in three chapters: how the variants in the manuscripts compare to Islamic records of textual variants (chapter 9), concerning intentionality and non-intentionality on the part of scribes (chapter 10), and the role of orality in the textual transmission of the Qur’ān (chapter 11). Part 2 concerns the textual variants observed in the manuscripts in six chapters.Ĭhapters 3 through 8 present the kinds of variants found: orthographic variants (chapter 3), copyist mistakes (chapter 4), diacritical mark variants and variants affecting grammar (chapter 5), variants to the consonantal line of text (chapter 6: Rasm variants), verse marker variants (chapter 7), and physical corrections to the manuscripts (chapter 8). Part 1 comprises introductory matters and in two chapters contains the introduction (chapter 1) and a description and pictures of the manuscripts used, together with a collation of their texts for Surah 14:35–41 (chapter 2). This book contains four parts, each containing one or more chapters. If this exercise were extended to the remaining portions of text available in the earliest Qur’ān manuscripts, it would provide a better basis for approaching the wide spectrum of issues currently addressed in academic Qur’ānic studies. This book seeks to contribute to this preliminary work by exploring what can be achieved through a careful collation of textual variants from extant manuscripts and early Islamic literature and using them to address questions of textual origins and the history of the Qur’ān. 6ĭonner helpfully notes that in view of the many limitations preventing the production of a critical text, the greater need of the moment is for preliminary work developing tools and methods with the eventual goal of producing a critical edition of the Qur’ān. 5īut even with this start, Neuwirth and Sinai are correct in describing the overall situation as a “veritable litany” of lacunae, with “no critical edition of the text, no free access to all of the relevant manuscript evidence, no clear conception of the cultural and linguistic profile of the milieu within which it has emerged, and no consensus on the basic issues of methodology” just to name a few of the more glaring omissions. ![]() Recently, interest in such a project has revived because of significant discoveries of early manuscripts in Yemen, the rediscovery of the Bergsträsser photo archive of ancient Qur’āns, and because of the development of computer software that can overcome some of the practical collation problems. 3 Most attempts to construct a critical text of the Qur’ān were abandoned for various reasons after World War II. This is still an accurate description of the situation more than twenty-five years later, although a significant step to remedy this is in progress with the Corpus Coranicum project. This project did not come to fruition, nor does it seem today very likely that it will, although the need for and the desirability of such is still there. When Jeffery wrote this article, one of his major interests, and that of a number of other people at the time, was to construct a printed text of the Qur’ān complete with a critical apparatus of textual and orthographic variants and so forth. Rippin noted in 1982 of Jeffery’s attempt, The scholars Arthur Jeffery, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl worked on complementary projects from the 1920s into the 1930s, and Jeffery alone into the 1950s, to amass necessary source materials to begin the construction of a critical text of the Qur’ān. Western scholars have often expressed the handicap they feel over the absence of such a text. Qur’ānic studies operate with an open knowledge of this lack concerning the Qur’ān, and as such methods and their results have had to be adapted to this fundamental deficiency. In other literary disciplines, it is almost taken for granted that scholarly study of a text must start with a text based on the collation and analysis of the oldest and best manuscripts available for that text. 1 The current printed texts of the Qur’ān are based on medieval Islamic tradition instead of the collation and analysis of extant manuscripts. ![]() It is widely acknowledged that there has never been a critical text produced for the Qur’ān based on extant manuscripts, as has been done with other sacred books and bodies of ancient literature.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |