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Category: Islamic Textual History
The Qurʾān, manuscripts, readings, and transmission.
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The Scriptural and Historical Continuum
This essay evaluates the Qurʾān’s own defense of prior Abrahamic Scripture against later Islamic charges of wholesale textual corruption (taḥrīf al-lafẓ) and against the dogma of letter-perfect inlibration.
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The Imperial Compilation and the Syro-Aramaic Subtext
The Imperial Compilation and the Syro-Aramaic Subtext The Standard Islamic Narrative asserts that the Qurʾān was revealed verbatim in the seventh-century Meccan dialect of the Quraysh, standardized under Caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān around 650 652 CE, and preserved…
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The Syro-Aramaic Subtext and Philological Architecture of the Qurʾān
This essay offers a historical-critical and biblical-theological assessment of the Qurʾān’s linguistic, intertextual, and manuscript profile. Classical Islamic orthodoxy presents the text as a verbatim Arabic dictation, preserved letter-perfect from a heavenly tablet.
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Inventing Muhammad and the Failure of Inlibration: A Biblical-Theological and Historical-Critical Appraisal of Early Islamic Origins
This essay offers a biblical-theological and historical-critical appraisal of the origins of early Islam. It reads the late compilation of sīra and ḥadīth against the Islamic dogma of inlibration—the uncreated Word made Book—and the Christian confession of incarnation,…
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Linguistic Paradoxes, Textual Philology, and the Origins of the Qurʾān: A Historical-Critical and Biblical-Theological Assessment
The Standard Islamic Narrative asserts that the Qurʾān was revealed verbatim in the seventh-century Meccan dialect of the Quraysh, standardized under Caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, and preserved with letterperfect uniformity.
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The Petra Genesis and the Revisionist Revision of Islamic Origins: A Historical-Critical and Biblical-Theological Appraisal
This essay examines historical-critical challenges to the Standard Islamic Narrative S.I.N.) regarding the origins of Islam, focusing on geographical, archaeological, and textual arguments that situate early Islamic sanctuaries in northern Arabia and the Levant—particularly the Nabataean region around…
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The Quranic Preservation Debate: Manuscript Evidence, Historical Critique, and the Promise-Plan of Divine Revelation
This essay offers a historical-critical examination of the traditional claim that the Qurʾan has been preserved letter for letter from the seventh century to the present. Drawing on paleography, codicology, and the history of the qirāʾāt, it argues…