'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University

[Anomalocaris]

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33436021

Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.

The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.
[...]
When a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, looked more closely at these pages it was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the results were "startling".
[...]

The tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, showed that the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, were among the very oldest surviving texts of the Koran.

These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
[...]
"According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death."

So, now we have two pages with text very similar to that found in a modern quran, dated to when it was claimed that Mo lived or very shortly after.

I wonder why none of the reports I looked at about this mention which exact parts of the quran that are present in these old pages...?

Who cares?

[robvalue]

Who are the lemonites? Or the laminates?

[KevinM1]

Who are the lemonites? Or the laminates?

All I know is that they're notorious for their lemon parties.....

[Longhorn]

Who are the lemonites?

Citizens of Lemongrab?

[vorlon13]

Lamenites are mentioned in the Book of Mormon. If a supposedly old, old version of the Koran mentioned Lamenites, we would know it is more forged LDS/Joe Smith bullshit.

Mormons get their hopes up every few years thinking some independent discovery will confirm even a particle of the Book of Mormon. It NEVER happens. There have been some pathetic forgeries over the years. And the LDS apologists get all excited to have even an atom of the Mormon shit confirmed only to have their hopes dashed again.

[Minimalist]

Who cares?

Because if the translations do not match the modern version the shit will hit the fan.  The rock-throwers are very touchy about that shit.

[Rayaan]

There are already manuscripts that do not match with the modern version, so I wouldn't be surprised either way.

I explained that in an earlier thread:

Unlike New Testament manuscript traditions, things here are different when it comes to the Quranic manuscript tradition. That is because, thanks to the parallel oral transmission, the variations which come about at the secondary copying stage are limited and restricted to specific manuscripts. They are easily identifiable and do not spread like wild fire once a manuscript is copied and recopied. In sharp contrast, due to a lack of a rigid oral transmission tradition, mistakes in NT manuscript spread rapidly from one to another, with new mistakes coming about in the copying stage. In the case of the Quran, however, that is less likely to happen because of the widespread memorization of the Quran.

One has to remember that written manuscripts are over-rated. There is a book called "Misquoting Jesus" and it addresses the issue of common misconceptions about old manuscripts, which are: (1) Just because a manuscript is older, does not mean that it is more authentic and (2) if there is a variation, then there is no way to tell which is more authentic.

So, the main problem with manuscripts is that they are written by a single person or two. It will always be susceptible to error in writing and error in reading (in addition to the potential for forging). So, it is in this light that the Muslim system of preservation of knowledge shines. It never depended on written documents only and always depended on the dual system of both writing and mass memorization. In the case of hadiths, there was also writing and memorization as well, but not on the mass scale.

[Rayaan]

Poca, this was a duplicate thread by the way. Another one was started just nine hours ago:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34901.html


I thought as a staff member you would be a little more observant of threads as to avoid this, eh?

[Minimalist]

They are too busy smacking spammers.  I'm sure you remember from your days on staff!

[abaris]

I would be even more interested how it came to end up in a british library.