Books Details
Author : Ibn Warraq Pages : 805 pages Publisher : Prometheus
Books Language : ISBN-10 : 161614937X ISBN-13 : 9781616149376
Books Descriptions
Centering on the pioneering work of Christoph Luxenberg, this
anthology of scholarly yet accessible studies of the Koran
makes a convincing case that Islam's holy book borrowed heavily
from Christian texts in Syriac and other Near Eastern
sources.In this important compilation, Ibn Warraq focuses on
the pioneering work in Syriac and Arabic linguistics of
Christoph Luxenberg, a native speaker of Arabic who lives in
the West and writes under a pseudonym. Luxenberg's careful
studies of the Koran are significant for many reasons. First,
he has clarified numerous obscurities in the Koran by treating
the confusing passages as poor translations into Arabic of
original Syriac texts. He demonstrates that when one translates
the difficult Arabic words back into Syriac, the meaning
becomes clear. Beyond textual clarity, Luxenberg's scholarship
provides ample evidence that the Koran developed from a Judeo-
Christian background, since Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic) was
the main language of both Jews
