Pax Vobis Mohamed...

m_ghounem{at}yahoo.com wrote:
> it's made abundantly obvious by the theme of the book and the
> bibliography that I am addressing the "Christian" Bible and the
> Christian view of the Bible,

So then the title is indeed misleading, and the book isn't really for
Jews, nor is it for any Christian who might wish to consult the Greek
and Hebrew texts for that matter. Or this admittedly harsh statement
may be true for only those verses which hinge on your approach to
translations (e.g. the comparison of Soorat al-Mu'minoon to the book of
Job on the issue of embryology).

> The difference between Arabic and Aramaic in many cases is a mere
> accent, compared to the ocean wide difference between the Ancient
Greek
> language and Aramaic, second, when the Quran quotes Prophets, a
> straight forward approach is taken, so there isn't the confusion
about
> sonship and divinity as in the Christian Bible.

Well, first I will concede that indeed there is a great deal more
similarity amongst Semitic languages than there is between a Semitic
language and a European tongue, therefore translation from one Semitic
language to another (e.g. from Aramaic to Arabic) is often easier than
from a Semitic language to a European language (e.g. from Aramaic to
Greek).

That being conceded, it should be noted that translation from one
Semitic language to another can still be fraught with many of the same
problems present in any translation. For a fun example, I set up the
following page:

http://geocities.com/denis_giron/jesus-and-quran-in-psalms.html

There are three sentences given (two in Hebrew script and four in
Arabic script), followed by charts that give the rough conversions of
equivalent characters in the Hebrew and Arabic scripts. The first
sentence is from the Hebrew text of Psalms 118:15 (but let us pretend
that we did not know that), and reads "y'shuah b'ahalei tsadeeqeem," or
"salvation is in the homes of the righteous". The second sentence
transliterates the Hebrew text into Arabic script (i.e. employing the
exact equivalent characters from the Arabic alif-baa). The third
sentence is the closest possible translation based on the
transliteration given, and reads "Yasuwa b'ahli as-Sadeeqeen," roughly
"Jesus is with the people of the righteous" (we can imagine that "ahl
as-Sadeeqeen" is some group of very righteous people, something
analogous to the muttaqeen), which comes off as a proclamation in favor
of Christianity (even employing the name for Jesus used by Christian
Arabs).

The fourth sentence is from Targum Onqelos to Psalms, and is thus the
Aramaic translation of the Hebrew verse. It reads "furqanaa
b'mashknehon d'tsadeeqei," or "salvation is in the abodes of the
righteous." The fifth sentence transliterates the Aramaic sentence into
Arabic script. The sixth sentence is the closest possible translation
based on the transliteration, and we get "al-furqaan fee masaakin
as-Sadeeqeen," or "the Furqaan [the Qur'an?] is in the abodes of the
righteous."

The point of this admittedly long-winded analogy is to show that even
translations among Semitic languages can bristle with problems (as the
same sentence can be translated one way and be misinterpreted as a
reference to Jesus, or translated another way and be misinterpreted as
a reference to the Qur'an). So this brings me back to my point: are you
willing to concede that all the Qur'anic quotes attributed to
individuals who probably didn't speak Qur'anic Arabic (such as Jesus,
Zu'l-Qarnain, Pharaoh, et cetera) are also "mere translations"?

> the context is Jesus refuting the student by saying "Why" do you call
> me good? "Only" God is good. That is as clear as me saying why do you
> call me funny, only Jon Stewart is funny, thus I am denying being
funny
> in comparison to Jon Stewart,

Your example only works if we *presuppose* that you are not John
Stewart, and indeed, while we do presuppose such, to presuppose that
Jesus was not God as part of an attempt to demonstrate that he was not
is simply fallacious. Therefore, this is where your analogy fails. The
point still stands that Jesus' biconditional proposition is clearly
stating that if one is going to call him "good" (relevant to the sense
used in the conversation), then he or she is calling him "God" (in some
sense). That is what it says, and you tried to argue that this was not
what was meant.

> Jesus repeatedly stated his
> inferiority compared to God.

Which would, therefore, either (a) be a reference to his human nature,
(b) show that Jesus is not identical to the Godhead in toto, (c)
support a subordinationist doctrine, or (d) be some combination of
(a-c). While (c) is in conflict with the classical doctrine of the
Trinity, none of these four choices demonstrates that Jesus was not
divine.

Finally, while I have yet to get back my copy of the book, I wanted to
ask another question. You supported the position that the verb
daHaahaa, referring to the earth in Soorat an-Naazi'aat 79:30, can be
translated "he made it egg shaped". As I understand it, the verb can
best be translated "he spread it out" (and most translations of the
Qur'an seem to agree with this understanding). I have checked a bunch
of Arabic dictionaries, and could not find a single one that had a verb
drawn from the dal-Haa-waw (dal-Haa-yaa?) root meaning "to make egg
shaped". Is there any dictionary you can cite that gives the meaning
"to make egg shaped" for the relevant verb? If I'm not mistaken, the
crux of the argument put forth by proponents of this translation (which
is usually part of a polemic that takes the scientific-hermeneutic
approach to the Qur'an, with the hopes of demonstrating that the text
is from a divine origin), assuming they attempt any argument at all, is
that from the same root comes a word for [ostritch?] egg. It seems to
me that if this is indeed their only argument, it commits a linguistic
fallacy, as it does not follow that if a noun can be derived from a
root, verbs from the same root can take the meaning "to shape or make
like [the noun in question]." So what is your support for this
translation?
....
 
 Denis Giron
http://geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/home.htm
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