WORD OF GOD?

Some years ago, Dan Browne’s Da Vinci Code captured the imagination of the world in its print and cinematic versions, opening a whole new range of thought in popular minds to the teachings handed down about Jesus Christ.
Now the Sana’a Code, under study since discovery from Yemen’s National Museum over five decades ago, holds out similar promise of possibly revealing the earliest versions of the teachings of the Prophet himself.  
Recent hardening of stands in Islam has suspended earlier dialogues between the various schools of thought. Hence the excitement over the unveiling of the Sana’a Quran to serve as a reminder that open, yet respectful conversation is possible.    Some experts opine that if written from a firsthand account within 15 years from his death, this may become doubly precious as THE words of God, for 3 Judiac religions; despite the over writing on this palimpsest, common practice for ancient recycling of expensive parchment.
Radiocarbon dating after painstaking salvage from age losses and onslaughts of insects, mice and mold, revealed an age close to the Prophet, around 578 to 668 CE.
Defying death several times, the sacks full of manuscripts were finally sorted and studied with state-of-art digital tools for reconstruction by the Corpus Coranicum, a project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Humanities and Sciences at Potsdam – each character retraced by hand, sometimes using ultraviolet imaging to render the washed-away lower text visible.
The hope is that this Code will reveal not only the words of God, but also the world in which those words were born and first gained meaning; from the study of ancient Islamic manuscripts, the varying ways they are read, and their relationship with religious texts in Syriac, Hebrew and Greek traditions, possibly familiar to the peoples of those times.
“The Quran did not arise in a vacuum,” says Michael Marx, research director at the Corpus Coranicum, “it has a history. Part of that history lies in Christian and Rabbinic traditions” – perhaps even testimony that the Arabia of Muhammad’s times saw lively debates over Christian, Judaic, pre-Islamic monotheistic and pagan traditions, as borne out by word usages familiar to Hebrew, Christian and Islamic readers. 
Scholars point out that unlike the neat schisms in religions in our times, in earlier times, “boundaries between beliefs were not so neat” – witness the merging of so many festivals in India. 
In Mecca itself, the heartland of Islam, claims David Kiltz, a Corpus Coranicum scholar, both traders and pilgrims would have dealt with a Babel, including pagans, Jews, Nestorian Christians, even Zoroastrians, converging from different parts of the then known world.
This is borne out by French scholar Christopher Robin’s revelation that around 380 CE, the Himyar kingdom, south Yemen to Riyadh, converted to a hybrid Judaism to ward off Ethiopian / Byzantine Christians and Persian Zoroastrians!
Anything suggesting a rapprochement would auger well for Mankind, would it not?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deepika Vs Madhuri

The music channels are full of the  “Deewani Mastani” song. It takes one back Madhuri Dixit’s so many kg ghagra kothawali dance in Devdas.  Pet obsession? Chitpavan women would never be caught in public watching such a performance, as Priyanka Chopra is seen, with perhaps the most authentic expressions crossing her face as she looks on at the interplay between Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. Deepika, in   her pale gold avatar in a net outfit reminiscent of flamenco dancers, with many   co-dancers, seems to inhabit the same Madhuri  space.   She dances in a huge ornate space, more European than Peshwai in design.    Peshwai architecture was noted for its long, perhaps narrow halls and tall distinctively fluted and carved wooden columns based on stone to prevent damp and   insect damage --- all topped with intricately carved wood ceilings and all polished black in color.   Noted examples are the Mastani resurrected palace at ...
Read more

A New Mastani

MASTANI is  unique book in that it is India’s first historical novel that offers its readers two endings, diagrammatically opposed to each other;  the second one  plugs all the holes left in the story of Mastani left by traditional renderings of the myths and legends that surround the second wife of Peshwa Baji Rao I, widely accepted as India’s answer to Napoleon Bonaparte as a unbeaten general.  Congratulations are due to Mr. Kapish Mehra of Rupa Publications for allowing this to happen. As a history buff, every reading of Maratha history left me bewildered at the steadfastness of historians in never failing to mention Mastani as leading influence in Baji Rao’s life; and then leaving that mention as a single sentence or paragraph without any elaboration of such a ‘towering’ personality, so to speak. Hence the research that went on and on and on to explode all the myths and legends that surround Mastani, to expose her tragedy, her true character and her royal...
Read more

A UNIFORM CIVIL CODE?

This was first published on Jan-2007.   How much has the situation changed? What is this Uniform civil Code? Is it possible? Reasonable? Soon after Independence, Hindu inheritance laws were codified to give weightage to the females of the family. Later others ‘favoring’ women have been added. Despite this codification, dowry continues. Daughters’ inheritance remains as dicey as when the Christian community battled for those rights in the Courts.
 Meanwhile daughters have already been made as responsible for upkeep of aged parents as their brothers. Would the promulgation of a Uniform civil Code push the conservative elements off center stage and allow women their rights? Much of the focus has been on the "plight" of Muslim divorcees, especially victims of talaq, talaq, talaq. In that community, the order of male relatives who must support the woman has been laid down. Whether they do so or not, is another matter altogether. 
But what of our Hindu women, rejected by ...
Read more