robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Thereafter the text was largely frozen in meaning. That canonical text, however, is the one in which, as the
philologist Gerd-R. Puin notes, “every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense.” Consequently,
some scholars speculate that perhaps the diacritical marks themselves caused the incoherence of the
Qur'an. If these marks were added incorrectly or with some polemical or dogmatic objective in mind, it
may be that by stripping them out and applying different ones, we can discover the true meaning of
difficult and borderline nonsensical Qur'anic passages.
It is by no means an arbitrary practice to strip out diacritical marks and reevaluate the Qur'anic text:
The Qur'an contains numerous indications of a non-Arabic derivation, or at the very least considerable
non-Arabic influence. As we have seen, even the word Qur'an itself may be a Syriac word for a
lectionary. 8 Furthermore, Muhammad's first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, uses language that otherwise, according
to scholar Alfred Guillaume, appears only in a “Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels which will
conclusively prove that the Arabic writer had a Syriac text before him.” 9
Some Qur'anic passages that are puzzling or contain odd locutions become clear once the canonical
diacritical marks are stripped out and the text reread in light of the Syriac language. The Qur'anic account
of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son contains this verse, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's rendering: “So when
they had both submitted their wills (to Allah), and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead (for sacrifice)
…” (37:103). Pickthall renders the same verse as: “Then, when they had both surrendered (to Allah), and
he had flung him down upon his face…” The passage translated as “laid him prostrate on his forehead” or
“flung him down upon his face” is wa-tallahu li'l jabin. But this is the only time the word jabin appears
in the Qur'an. Although Muslim scholars interpret the word to mean “forehead” or “face,” the philologist
Christoph Luxenberg reads jabin as a corruption of the Syriac habbin, firewood. The j in jabin (
the h in habbin ( ) differ by only one dot. Luxenberg reads wa-tallahu not as “laid him” or “flung him”
but, in light of the Syriac tla, “bind.” Thus he renders the verse in a way that is much more consonant with
the biblical account: “He bound him to the firewood.” 10
) and
A Christian Lectionary
Numerous scholars have noted traces of a Christian text underlying the Qur'an. In line with the meaning of
the Syriac word Qur'an, that Christian text may have been a lectionary. The Qur'anic scholar Erwin Gräf
declares that the Qur'an, “according to the etymological meaning of the word, is originally and really a
liturgical text designed for cultic recitation and also actually used in the private and public service. This
suggests that the liturgy or liturgical poetry, and indeed the Christian liturgy, which comprises the Judaic
liturgy, decisively stimulated and influenced Mohammed.” 11
Similarly, the German philologist Günter Lüling posits that “the text of the Koran as transmitted by
Muslim Orthodoxy contains, hidden behind it as a ground layer and considerably scattered throughout it
(together about one-third of the whole Koran text), an originally pre-Islamic Christian text.” 12 Earlier
Qur'anic scholars such as Alois Sprenger and Tor Andrae have also identified a Christian substratum to
the Qur'an. 13