Qur'an Textual Variants

7/27/2019 Qur'an Textual Variants

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Minor Copyist Errors and Variants in the Tawrat, Zabur, Injl and Qur'n

All of us agree that God's Word cannot be changed, for this is the clear testimony of both theBible and the Qur'n. So when we find a manuscript with a variant, does this disprove ascripture? Certainly not, for there are hundreds of such typos or copyist errors in both theQur'n and Bible. Just last month I was startled to read in my Islami Foundation BengaliQur'n that the believers and righteous will earn themselves jahannam (hella typofor jannat, heaven)! 1 Such a typo is normal for any printed book, as minor copying errorswere in the days of careful hand-copying. Does this prove that God's Word can be changed?

No, for Allah was not referring to minor copying or printing mistakes, but significantcontent.

However, many people have an imaginary idea of scripture, knowing only the eulogies of ignorant semiliterate clerics. The truth is that there are many minor textual variants amongearly copies of the Qur'n and Bible. While early Muslims and Christians accepted this asinevitable and wrote about it, later Muslims have attempted to deny this and cover it up.

There exists no original copy today of the Tawrat, Injl, Zabur or Qur'n , though we havethousands of reliable early copies of each of these. There is a mistaken idea perpetuated insome circles that the Topkapi and Samarqand manuscripts in Turkey and Uzbekistan areoriginal copies. However, experts agree that these are not Uthmn's copies, as they arewritten in the Kufic Arabic script which only appeared in the late eighth century.

Furthermore, even the Uthmnic copies themselves were not originals, for they werecompiled many years after Muhammad's death to standardize the variety among Qur'nictexts. 2

Since printing presses were only invented five hundred years ago, all the early scriptureswere written and copied by hand. This task was done by well-trained scribes who checkedand rechecked their translations. The Hebrew term for these scribes is sopherim which literally means the counters. The early scribes earned this title because they countedevery letter of every book of Scripture to make sure they didn't leave out anything. However,despite their best efforts, errors escaped their notice, especially in regard to numbers andnames. It has been computed that, on the average they mistakenly copied one out of every1,580 letters; and they usually corrected these errors when they made new copies. It issignificant to note that almost all the copyist errors within the Bible are not in the Tawrat,1 Al-Qur'anul Qarim Bangla Tarjama (Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, Dhaka, 2005), p.126.2 Tabari's Commentary, 1, 20. See also Suyuti, Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur'n , Vol. 1, p.160; and al-

Bukhari, Vol. 6, p.479.

Taken from: http://www.unchangingword.com/obj_hist_21variants.php
http://www.unchangingword.com/obj_hist_21variants.phphttp://www.unchangingword.com/obj_hist_21variants.php


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Zabur and Injl but in the other prophetic writings, These minor copying mistakes wereinevitable, and can be found in both the Bible and Qur'n.

These copyist mistakes do not invalidate the eternal preservation of God's Word, for we caneliminate copyist errors and determine the correct manuscripts through a science of textual

analysis. We have thousands of ancient manuscripts from many separate textual traditions,and where minor variants exist in one manuscript we can find the correct original in another manuscript tradition. So for example with Ahaziah's age in 2 Chronicles 22:2, somemanuscripts read 42 while other early manuscripts read 22, but from the context we candetermine that 42 was a copyist error and 22 the correct original.

For example, in the first verse of Baqara one reads, Thilikal Kitaabu laa rayba fiih, This isthe Scripture of which there is no doubt. Yet Ibn Masood (who was the Prophet's favoritereciter) along with several others recorded this as Tanziilul Kitabu laa rayba fiih, [This is]the Scripture sent down of which there is no doubt. 3

At the end of verse 198 of Baqara Ibn Masood included the extra phrase fi Mawasemel hajj (in the season of pilgrimage) after an tabteghu fadhlen merrabekum . Similarly, in the

present Qur'n , Surah Al-Imran 19 reads Innaddina inddallaahil islamm (the religion beforeGod is Islam), but Ibn Masood's text had the word al-Hanifiyya instead of the word Islam.

In Sura Al-Imran the last part of verse 43 reads, wasjudi warkai ma-arrke-ein, prostrate

thyself and bow with those who bow, but Ibn Masood's reading was, warkai wasjudi fes-sajedeen , (bow thyself and prostrate among those who prostrate. 4

One could go on and on to state many more of these variants. If the variants that were extant before the present version of the Qur'n do not destroy the integrity of the Qur'nic text, thenthe same is true of the Tawrat, Injl and Zabur. As one well-known commentator wrote,Few books are not printed without mistakes; yet, authors do not disown them on account of this, nor are the errors by the press imputed to the author. The candid reader amends them bythe context or by comparing them with some other part of the work.

In addition, Bible translators do not attempt to keep secret the variants that exist, but anymodern literal English translation will have footnotes showing all major variant readings. Acursory reading of such footnotes will show how few and insignificant these variants are.

3 Abdur Rahman Doi, Qur'n : An Introduction, p.27.4 Kitab al-Masahif



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Fig. 1: An example of variants in Sura al-Asr (Source: Kitab al-Masahif, pp.192, 111, 55)



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Fig. 2: Textual Variants between the Earliest Qur'anic Manuscripts



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Fig. 3: More Textual Variants between the Earliest Qur'anic Manuscripts


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Qur'an Textual Variants