It's scary to watch.
I had the book "In The Shadow Of The Sword" on my GoodRead's wishlist for ages before I found a reason to put some moolah down to buy it. It attempts to trace the history of how the Quran came to be, which by necessity means describing the history of the Levant and the Middle East from roughly 0AD to about 700AD (I'm a bit fuzzy as to the exact date).
The history is fascinating, because it includes how the Eastern Roman Empire became Christian, a slice of history I'd not heard told before. It also tells of how the Arab tribes had a consistently warlike relationship with their neighbours since practically forever.
When the author turned his narrative to the stories about the Prophet, he admitted that there is a awful lot of early material simply missing. You might think there's a lot missing about the early Jewish scriptures. There is an ocean of material about that compared to early versions of the Quran: because they either do not exist or are under heavy lock and key. Just once he made the suggestion that the later Muslim scholars watched very carefully how first the Jews and later the Christians redacted and edited their own scriptures. This meant they figured out how to shape the Quran and Islam so both are set in stone with no room to move.
Now, that's just one scholar's effort. But even if it's vaguely correct, there are other signs that Islam was designed to not move with the times.
Wade.
The history is fascinating, because it includes how the Eastern Roman Empire became Christian, a slice of history I'd not heard told before. It also tells of how the Arab tribes had a consistently warlike relationship with their neighbours since practically forever.
When the author turned his narrative to the stories about the Prophet, he admitted that there is a awful lot of early material simply missing. You might think there's a lot missing about the early Jewish scriptures. There is an ocean of material about that compared to early versions of the Quran: because they either do not exist or are under heavy lock and key. Just once he made the suggestion that the later Muslim scholars watched very carefully how first the Jews and later the Christians redacted and edited their own scriptures. This meant they figured out how to shape the Quran and Islam so both are set in stone with no room to move.
Now, that's just one scholar's effort. But even if it's vaguely correct, there are other signs that Islam was designed to not move with the times.
Wade.
