Welcome back to Variant Qurʾan, I'm Daniel Brubaker. Today, I'm going to answer a few
of your questions and give you an update of where we stand with things. It has been
a couple of weeks since my last video, and I just wanted to let you know what has been going
on. What I have been working on, mainly, is that "Corrections in Early Quran Manuscripts" has been
translated. It's being translated into a couple of different languages, and one of those is basically
ready to be published. And, I'll let you know via another announcement very soon when that has been
published. The second thing I want to do today is just answer some of your questions -- I've just
picked out a few today that caught my attention -- and cover sort of a range of topics and
perspectives. Alright, here's the first one. It says "Dr. Daniel Brubaker should make an effort
to debunk Professor Bart Ehrman on the subject of Christianity. This should be his first move."
Well, Bart Ehrman ... I have had discussions with him by email over the over the years, and
he's a colleague. I have respect for him in his area of, relating to study of the Bible,
the biblical text, and the biblical manuscripts. His academic work is, you know, his credentials
are strong and so forth, and so as I've had need. I have had interactions with him. But,
really, this comment has an assumption in it that I should somehow ... that I'm somehow
studying the wrong thing, that I shouldn't be doing the work that I'm doing, and that I
should be doing some different work, in other words, related to text or criticism of the
biblical manuscripts, or defending the biblical manuscripts, or whatever it is.
There are lots of people doing that kind of work, and it's just not what I've chosen to do, and so
it's great that people do that. It's something that's necessary to do, but you know, this just
completely misses the point of the topic that I've chosen for my academic and scholarly work.
And, there are a lot of other people, as I've said, who can do what I'm doing,
or do things similar to what I'm doing, but each of us has to make a decision where we want to
focus our particular energies in life. We have a certain number of days and hours, and so forth,
and we just have to make those decisions. I can't do everything and, you know, there are plenty of
people, as I've said, who are working on biblical biblical stuff. And, you can go read their things.
People seem to be using the word "debunk" on here a lot. I don't really like the word "debunk" that
much. We want to either verify and confirm, or disprove something, then that's
one thing. But the word "debunk" is kind of a loaded and rhetorical term more than it is a
scientific term. Alright, "Bowrudder" asks, "Dan, please cover ink composition, watermarks, and
hands," and obviously, these are things relating to the codicology of early Qurʾan manuscripts,
and I've studied that a little bit. I'm not the world's expert on that -- the person who has most
gone into that area, and in fact teaches courses on Islamic codicology is François Déroche, so
at some point, however, it would be good to go over that in a video, and talk about those things ... about
inks and the other features of the manuscript. Watermarks are something
that come in on paper. They're not something that we see in parchment, which is ... the earliest
Qurans were written on parchment, and later on they started writing them on paper. So, the watermarks are
something that we can discuss, but not something that's totally relevant to the time period
that I've been talking about. And hands: Obviously, different scribes have
different handwritings, and we will go into that at some point as well. So, that's a good
question and a good suggestion for a future video. Mark Bingham says, "How could it be mid- to late-
7th century and have diacritics?" And he refers to a particular point in the video that he comments on.
So, this is referring to a manuscript that I've presented as mid- to late- 7th Century, and in
that case it was probably late 7th Century, possibly even early 8th Century. But,
be that as it may, this is an opportunity to address a matter of the issue of diacritics.
Now, most of the earliest manuscripts, even the ones in the so-called "Hijazi" hand style,
sometimes called "Ma'il" have at least some diacritics. Not all of them do; there are some pages
of manuscripts that have no diacritics whatsoever, and so, it's also a common misconception
among those who haven't really thoroughly looked at the material that all these early
manuscripts have at least some diacritics. And so, that was one of the points that Hythem Sidky made
in his criticism of my remarks in my book, and he just simply had not reviewed the literature
thoroughly nor had he seen enough manuscripts to know that there are some pages
that have no diacritics whatsoever. So, I corrected that in my response to him as well.
Alright, moving on. "Predicator Veritatis" says, "Great job, Dr. Brubaker. I wish I could have your
permission to translate this video into Indonesian language and upload it on my channel. I believe it
will benefit many people and will also bring more subscribers to your channel. God bless you."
Okay, well, thank you very much for that and I have been receiving a number of requests to translate
these videos. And, if you do have requests like that, please contact me individually. In general,
my hope is that if you do make translations of the video, that you do a couple of things:
Number one, if you would please
make any changes to the video itself. In other words, translate the entire thing
and not make any editorial remarks or other comments on it but just do a translation of
what it is that I've said. Secondly, if you would link your translated video,
which you presumably publish on your channel, back, and place a comment linking to that in the
comment section under the original video that I've put, and also place in your comments, in
your description of your video, a link back to the original video so that people can find my channel
and come back to me. I would reserve the right to, you know, if I become aware of
a translation that is not accurately translated or is not done to a standard that I think reflects
the original work, then I would reserve the right to come over and ask you to take something down.
But, other than that, if you're doing a just a straight translation and you want to put it up in
in your language, I would suggest generally go ahead and do so, and then be sure to refer
people back to the original video. Alright, here's another one it's from Ahmad Abbas,
who says, "What are you trying to prove? That scribes made errors or changes?
All the examples you mentioned in this video don't have any impact on the meaning
of any of the relevant verses whatsoever, so they would most probably be scribal errors corrected
by others who revised their writing. Compare this to the introduction of the entire story
of the women caught in adultery of the Gospel of John. It is not found in ancient manuscripts, nor
in ancient commentaries on the gospel of John, or the triadic formula inserted in 1 John
5:7, not found in any Greek manuscripts. I'm not against critical studying of the Quran, but
if you want to prove the Quran is variant and has been changed, why not give strong
compelling evidence like the ones I gave off the top of my head regarding the New Testament?"
OK, obviously there are a couple things to say here. And, the first one is that the study of
New Testament and biblical text criticism is much more far advanced than the study of quranic
textual criticism. It's been done for several hundred years, and people know a lot of stuff
about it, so we're still in fairly early stages of this work relating to Qurʾan manuscripts.
And so, that's number one. Number two, just a general comment about the 1 John 5:7.
That formula is inserted there, and it was contained, actually, in the -- and I'm just talking
from my my general knowledge of this -- it was contained, I believe, in the Latin vulgate of Jerome,
and it had been, originally, a marginal notation that some later scribe
appears to have taken as part of the text itself. So, this is why it's important to get back to the
earliest manuscripts and look at what was there. And, newer translations of the
New Testament don't include that portion of 1 John 5:7. But, they are trying to get
back to the, you know, to the earliest text, in that case. Alright, so are there
things like that that would be found regarding the Qurʾan? I don't know. But part of the
study that we're doing, that I'm doing, which I think is an honest study (and other people are
welcome to do it) is to look at the manuscripts and start asking these kind of questions.
And for me it's not the same thing as looking at the text of the of the Bible, obviously because
you know I'm a Christian. I believe the Bible to be inspired by God. If I believed that about
the Qurʾan, I would not be a Christian; I would be a Muslim. So, it's a different thing. And so,
I'm not that personally invested and concerned about really getting to the earliest text,
or determining, you know, for devotional reasons, to determine what is the earliest text. But, from
a more academic perspective, and you know, obviously there are questions of truth and things that come
around that but from the scholarly and academic perspective, what I'm interested in doing is
just looking at this period of history of the development of the text of the Qurʾan, or of the
faithfulness of the text of the Qurʾan, or whatever it is, and to determine what was the tradition of
the transmission in its written form, and how did that transmission relate to (for example) the
orality that was present, and so forth. And so, these are natural questions and I think it's
fair to ask them. What am I trying to prove?, going back to the beginning of his comment there,
I'm not really trying to prove anything I'm trying to study something, and so I think it's
really important. A lot of people seem to be saying, you know, I'm trying to do something
or show something, or whatever. Yeah, I'm trying to show you what I've been doing, and
obviously, there is a curiosity behind this that is connected to deeper issues. But, I'm not trying
to "prove" something; I'm trying to study something, and to allow you into my world as I study it,
and share it with you. Alright, I have a couple more here. This one is from Firman Hidayat. It
says, "Me myself, as Muslim, when looking a teacher to teach Qurʾan, the qualification should be, number one,
able to speak write (knows grammar) Arabic. Number two, have memorized at least half of Qurʾan. Number
three, memorize some of the hadith, especially regarding revelation and compilation of Qurʾan.
If they don't qualified on that condition, for me it's just the same like me: they're only student and I
cannot rely on them, because they are not capable enough no matter what their title is, (doctor,
professor, or else's)." OK, well, and these are ... this is a fair statement, and a comment, and I
understand that if you were looking for a teacher to teach the Qurʾan, which is not what I'm doing,
you would be looking for these sort of things. Obviously, you're looking for different things than a person
who is going to be a teacher of the Qurʾan, a teacher of a holy text, you know, I'm not -- you would probably (presumably) also
be looking for somebody who is a Muslim to do something like that, and I'm not a Muslim. I'm not
a native Arabic speaker. My task, once again, is a carefully and a more closely circumscribed task.
It's narrower, and it's just a different area. So, this commenter, Firman Hidayat, would be welcome to either
pay attention to what I've presented, and will continue to present, or not to. And, to take me seriously, or not to. And, that
is ... anybody can do that and make those decisions. But, really, these are qualifications -- to memorize
half the Qurʾan ... I don't know of anybody among my academic colleagues who work in this area,
the most respected people in the area of the study of Qurʾan, have not memorized half
the Qurʾan. At least in Western academia. And so, that is an admirable thing that somebody. You
know, that's a feat of memory to be able to to do something like that, and accomplish it,
but you know it's a hard thing to do, but it's not something that
I would require of somebody who's doing academic or scholarly work. And, the same thing (applies)
with memorizing the hadith. Memorizing hadith ... obviously, when you become very familiar with
something, these things may roll off your tongue, or you know them very well. And, I see the memorization
of the Quran and the Hadith as more of a, largely, devotional activity that is not really
necessarily required for good scholarly work. I would just comment on a couple things. Obviously,
you've noticed in the comments there are a lot of people who are Christians who are following these
videos, and are interested in them, and for various reasons, I presume. And, a lot of people around the
world -- and whoever you are and whatever brings you here, you know, I'm grateful, and you're welcome here --
"Muslim bashing" ... I want to make clear that I have no intention of doing anything that could be
classified as "Muslim bashing" here, and I don't invite anybody else to do "Muslim
bashing," or anything like that. I don't consider, you know, criticism or, you know,
a strong discussion back and forth, to be "bashing." I like all people. I have no hatred for any
human being, any other person. If you're watching this, I have no hatred for you I have no desire to "bash"
you or hurt you or harm you in any way and so, yeah, that's my intention. Obviously, there are thousands of
people watching these videos and so I don't know what each individual person's intention is or what's
in their heart, but I just want you to know that what's in my heart is nothing of the sort. It's
not a "bashing" nature or anything that's unkind.
Alright, let's move on to the last one here, and I'll just conclude with this.
"N", the screen name "N," says, "You're doing an amazing work for the sake of academia. I salute
your professional and honest disposition, and I hope you keep that paramount. As an Arabic speaker
and a Muslim, I find this work fascinating. While I do understand why some fellow Muslims find this
sensitive, I think it is important to hear what you find and what you have to say.
You said it, sir, we are all humans and we all do
mistakes, and so did the early scribes." Alright, so that's, I think, a good place to conclude this.
And, those are, you know, good remarks. I am glad for Muslims and everybody else who is following
this channel. I'm getting buried in snow out here, so I will wrap this up here, and just let you
know that more videos are coming. I have one more that's recorded, that's another page from BL2165.
There are, maybe, about a dozen pages in that manuscript that I think have
some interesting things on them. I was looking back through my earlier notes from my visit
to that manuscript back about seven years ago, actually, and I noticed that there are
about that many pages that have some interesting corrections. So, the one I showed you in the last
video was ... it was one of those that does. It did catch my eye, because it had several corrections on
it. Not all the pages have corrections, and so I'll give that perspective as we do that, but you can
look for that video fairly soon, and other videos coming up, as well as an announcement about the
forthcoming release of "Corrections in Early Qurʾān Manuscripts" in another language.
I'll tell you what that is soon. Thank you very much for watching; please do "like" and subscribe, and let
other people know about this channel, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Take care. Bye.