Welcome back to Variant Quran. I just wanted to give you all a brief update. As you can see, I'm
up on the slopes today, but I have been watching and paying attention to the comments on the videos.
I wanted to respond to some of the general comments, again, that I've seen. I have not yet
put together a response to Tayyar Altıkulaç' book, but that is coming. I don't want to rush that.
In reality, the approach that he's taken to my book isn't going to be all that challenging to
to answer, but I do want to take my time on it, and get it right. In general, what he seems
to be saying is that, because there are a lot of corrections, and because there are a lot of other
manuscripts that are possibly contemporaneous to the ones that I've shown in my 20 examples, that
the other manuscripts have the expected rasm as we have today, that therefore there's nothing to
see here, there is nothing to be concerned about ... that it's not anything more than a correction. But,
I don't think it's quite as simple as that, and certainly at least a couple of the ones
that I've shown you already seem to not allow that as a possibility, in my opinion.
In any event, that seems to be sort of the gist of his book. The other thing is that he
addresses the issue of Orientalism. And, I'll have more to say about that. I have said something about
it already, but that is just a a larger issue that has been an issue in our field of study
for a very long time, and I think we need to give that some serious focus. But, when I see somebody
looking and classifying people as Orientalists, it often means that they intend it as
a derogatory term. I don't see it as a derogatory term. I don't necessarily
embrace it as the entire definition of who I am and what I do, but I
likewise don't shy away. The Orientalists have done some very good scholarship in our
area. But, anyway, we'll deal with that as well. And then, he asked some questions about
my motivations. Again I'll come back to that, and deal with that in time. Anyway, this video is not
a refutation or a response, directly, principally, or majorly, to Altıkulaç' book; I just wanted to
address that in a preliminary form, and say "hello" to all of you. I know it's been a while since I
put up a video. One other commenter asked, in just this past week, went through and said
that my response to Hythem Sidky's review looked weak and that it looked like I was admitting that
everything was merely corrections of mistakes, scribal mistakes, and I clearly don't think
that's the case. We're still (as I've said) at the very beginning of this area and topic of research.
And so, it needs humility, and that's the thing I just want to keep coming back to on this. We
need humility, and looking at these manuscripts we need to have a lot of people looking and
comparing things, as has started to be done. Actually what Altıkulaç did with
finding the other manuscripts in each one of those passages is one of the things that
really should be done on with all of these corrections, to assess them. That is one of the
steps that is valuable to do with this but I think we should not jump to the conclusion at
the beginning, and I haven't jumped to conclusions at the beginning. I've just put out possibilities,
and these possibilities are so very tentative. If you've been watching these videos and you've been
reading my book you know that I've not come to very strong conclusions. I've just put out some
very tentative broad strokes things there. So, those -- and I think that's right way to be doing it. Now,
we want to approach it with rigor, and there are a lot of other people out there doing work with
with a good amount of rigor. But I also want to be not
avoiding, and coming quick to the conclusion that, "Oh, these are just scribal mistakes,
and therefore they were corrected." So, I don't know where this leads. I don't know
if ... I know where different camps want it to lead, and,
you know, we'll see where it goes. But, let me think if there's something else that
anybody has said. There are a couple of other really good questions out there,
really good comments. One or two commenters have focused on some of the intertextuality
with the Bible, with the New Testament, or apparent intertextuality. Actually, it's kind of a
fraught territory when you start talking about causality. Intertextuality ... I think
it's fairly obvious that the text of the Quran is speaking about and
referring to the text of the Bible, and so I think it's something that we need to deal with,
and pay attention to, particularly when there are biblical themes and possible relation to some
particular biblical passage in any of the verses that we're looking at with
corrections, to consider whether there is something going on there, beyond
a mere correction. And, the other big question that people have is, "Do you have corrections that
have some theological significance?" And, I got this question from somebody in a conversation just this
past week, about the theological significance of any given correction. And, I told this person, I just
mentioned to them (and I don't know if I've said it on here), but
that is obviously a very important question, about
theological significance. But it's something that needs to be looked at very closely,
on a case-by-case basis. And, the example that I gave to this person is
that of David Powers. David Powers found one small issue on BNF arabe 328, and wrote an entire
book, and did some serious thought on that one small correction on a word involving one letter,
a difference between one "lam" and two. And so, if we think about that one correction in
one manuscript and think of the thousands that I and my friends have located so far, there's a
lot of work to do on this, and it's not just quite as easy as saying, "Is there theological
significance to this one?" There's probably a checklist that we need to go through to identify
the possible theological significance in any given case, but it takes a lot of work and takes a
lot of thought and and effort and comparison and stuff it's just not as simple as looking at one
and saying, "Is this theologically significant?" Some times, it's probably a little bit more obvious
than at others, but I just wanted to mention that it is a very good question to ask, a natural question,
and an important question. But, it's one that we approach slowly and deliberately with these
things. So, I want to let you know that I will be coming through with the additional page from
BL2165. Sorry that I haven't gotten that edited and out to you yet. And upcoming, of
course, is going to be a fuller response to Dr. Altıkulaç' book responding to my book,
and more stuff is on the horizon, as well as an announcement about my forthcoming
book and translation into another language it is now complete, after having been reviewed by
a proofreader in that language. So, it's translated into the language and it's proofread,
and it's just about ready. So, I'll be making an announcement about that soon, hopefully within
this week or next. I'll let you know that it has been published, and I'll let you know more about it.
That's it for today! I want to thank you for watching and I'm going to get back on the slopes.
I just wanted to check in, and say "hi." I hope you're all doing well, wherever you are in the world,
and we will talk to you again soon. Be sure to "like" and subscribe, and do leave comments.
It's getting to where I'm getting a lot of comments and
it's hard for me to respond to everyone but I do really appreciate those, especially if it's
thoughtful and substantive. And, as you see, I'm trying to make an effort to put up some
of the best ones of those in videos as well. OK, we'll talk to you again soon. Take care.