There has been a lot of scholarly activity proving that the Koran could not have been written originally in Arabic since the Arabic language did not exist until 150 years after Mohammed. The recent tendency is to believe that the Koran was written in Aramaic. Thus the current literal reading of the Koran from Arabic is inaccurate. This will profoundly refute and negate a lot of current Islamic claims. What do you think? — Tallahassee
Arabic as a written language dates back to the 400s AD (or CE, for “Common Era”). Since the Koran (Qur’an) dates to the 600s, it is simply not true that there was no Arabic in the time of Mohammed and the original Koran (parts of which may have been written down as early as 610 AD).
The confusion may arise because the Arabic script ultimately dates back to the Aramaic script, examples of which have survived from before the time of King David (1000 BC). In the time of Christ, the Nabateans were living and trading in Arabia and the Middle East, and their language has survived in written form from the first century AD. Nabatean script, scholars agree, eventually evolved into the script of classical Arabic.
For more on this, consult the worldwide web. But language and how a language is written are two different matters. Our English script dates back, in a sense, to the ancient Roman alphabet. And yet there was no “English” 2500 years ago; we “borrowed” the writing system that was given to the Romans and Greeks by the ancient Phoenicians. In linguistics, everyone begs, borrows or steals!
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