Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Indiana Jones Vs. The Da Vinci Code

The Koran is a hoax?

Well, I think we all agree on that, but it looks like there is proof:


Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code
By Spengler

Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during World War II but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies, reads like a conflation of the Da Vinci Code with Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail.

The Da Vinci Code offered a silly fantasy in which Opus Dei, homicidal monks and twisted billionaires chased after proof that Christianity is a hoax. But the story of the photographic archive of



the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, now ensconced in a Berlin vault, is a case of life imitating truly dreadful art. It even has Nazis. "I hate those guys!" as Indiana Jones said.

No one is going to produce proof that Jesus Christ did not rise from the grave three days after the Crucifixion, of course. Humankind will choose to believe or not that God revealed Himself in this fashion. But Islam stands at risk of a Da Vinci Code effect, for in Islam, God's self-revelation took the form not of the Exodus, nor the revelation at Mount Sinai, nor the Resurrection, but rather a book, namely the Koran. The Encyclopaedia of Islam (1982) observes, "The closest analogue in Christian belief to the role of the Koran in Muslim belief is not the Bible, but Christ." The Koran alone is the revelatory event in Islam.

What if scholars can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Koran was not dictated by the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammad during the 7th century, but rather was redacted by later writers drawing on a variety of extant Christian and Jewish sources? That would be the precise equivalent of proving that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels really was a composite of several individuals, some of whom lived a century or two apart.


It has long been known that variant copies of the Koran exist, including some found in 1972 in a paper grave at Sa'na in Yemen, the subject of a cover story in the January 1999 Atlantic Monthly. Before the Yemeni authorities shut the door to Western scholars, two German academics, Gerhard R Puin and H C Graf von Bothmer, made 35,000 microfilm copies, which remain at the University of the Saarland. Many scholars believe that the German archive, which includes photocopies of manuscripts as old as 700 AD, will provide more evidence of variation in the Koran.


Go read the whole thing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

35,000 microfilm copies!!

EACH and EVERY single image should be placed on the world wide web for further unfettered examination study, exploration, discussion.

These are all simple images. No harm will come to the originals.

There is absolutely NO justification for concealing/ferreting away items acquired for the NAZI's. Germany should demand to take possession and place it all on permanent public display - if not in a museum, then online.

Pastorius said...

I concur.

Anonymous said...

The more I sleep on this issue, the more adamant I get.

Those chosing to conceal and ferret this information away are doing so at their own risk. They should be held equally accountable for all future crimes committed in the name of Muhammad so long as they provide assistance in concealing all these Nazi era files.
When, not if, but when the Germans suffer the wrath of Muhammad at the hands of some pious zealot, all those protecting this cache of qur'anic secrets should be held responsible for aiding and abbetting the most destructive ideology in humankind. They are as guilty as those who protect the mob after paying 'protection' money.
No-one person, no-one belief system, no-one religion is above reproach. Not now . . .not ever . . .never again!