Let's take a look at surah 53

[manfred]

This is a text full of curiosities. Apart from having once housed the “satanic verses”, it has a plethora of issues.

1. By the star when it goes down, (or vanishes).

This is how it starts. Allah SWEARS by a star. A deity to swears to humans? Perhaps he is known, like many Arabs, to be generous with the truth, so he is not easily believed? Why swear by a star? Is that not something he made? I just made some rendang daging (a stew common in Sumatra, and delicious with rice) Would you be more inclined to believe my words if I said “I swear by this beef stew that….”?
And do stars go down, set or vanish? “Shooting stars” are not stars though. True the Arabic word can also sometimes mean “planet”, but that is not helping either….
Then comes this:

2. Your companion (Muhammad, presumably) has neither gone astray nor has erred.
3. Nor does he speak of (his own?) desire.
4. It is only an Inspiration that is inspired.

Allah defends Mohammed…. Oddly the WHOLE of this surah is composed after the “satanic verses” debacle, so despite of his oath Allah is not entirely truthful… by Mohammed’s own admission did he “go atray and has erred”.
So Mohammed’s words are an “inspiration that is inspired”. What an odd thing to say… are there “inspirations” which are NOT inspired? Also, Mohammed manifestly DID "reveal" his own desires, many times, we should have a thread on that.
Let’s read some more:

5. He (Mohammed?) has been taught (what? Making rendang?) by one mighty in power.

So who is this power and why is the name missing?
The next part is a total blurr… (except for SAM of course, who “knows” everything but can’t explain anything…)

6. Dhu Mirrah (free from any defect (in body and mind?)), Fastawa [then he rose / became stable].

Grammatically this could relate to the “He” from the verse before, as well as the “Power”. Most translators relate it to the “power”. So this teacher of Mohammed’s wasn’t mad (but Mohammed thought he himself was…) and he “rose and became stable”… Maybe he was drunk and steadied himself?

7. While he (this “power”, I suppose, possibly Gabriel) was in the highest part of the horizon,

Where is that?

8. Then he (Gabriel?) approached and came closer,

Ok… How? Did he walk? Flutter? Just float perhaps?

9. And was at a distance of two bows' length or (even) nearer,

Right, so, assuming this means the length of two bows, and not double the range of a bow as this could also mean, we are taking 2 metres,,,,

10. So did he convey the Inspiration to His slave.

Who? Gabriel or Allah?
And also I would be grateful if someone pointed out what this “inspiration” actually was… I haven’t found it, anywhere in the Qur’an.

11. The heart lied not what he saw.

Which “heart”? Mohammed’s presumably. Here we have another example of how the Qur’an assumes the heart is connected to mental processes, in this case lying.

12. Will you then dispute with him what he saw.

Obviously, yes, as this garbled text is FROM MOHAMMED, so has very limited value as evidence. Would an all knowing deity write that bad Arabic, so bad, that translation in often ambiguous guesswork? And why would make this tall tale Mohammed's claims more credible? Would they not do the opposite?

How on earth does this ridiculous passage provide any evidence for Mohammed's claims?

[Takeiteasynow]

Obviously, yes, as this garbled text is FROM MOHAMMED, so has very limited value as evidence.

That is nothing more than an assumption. The Quran was originally encoded about two centuries before the Sunna doctrine started explaining how Quranic texts should be read or interpreted. That being said, it's difficult to prove the opposite.

Would an all knowing deity write that bad Arabic, so bad, that translation in often ambiguous guesswork?

As Jeffery and others pointed out the Arabic script of the Quran depends on a small amount of roots, no more then four hundred. This may make it difficult to translate the 'chain of vocal transmissions' or isnad into a written form. If you believe that this chain of transmissions really occurred and I don't.

Some authors and journal articles relate Quranic texts to Syro-Aramaic scriptures and do so quite convincingly. If you analyze Surah 53 as a sermon it would maks sense as a text about the nature of god, especially in relation to verses 19, 20 (Allat and her epithets al-Uzza and Manat ) and then

Is the male for you and for Him the female?

.

According to surah 53 Allah has solely a male form, others are "no more but names" and owns the after life. Knowing that in Nabatean religion Allat probably managed the afterlife it makes sense for the author of this text to propagate against these female gods in favor of his one true god.

Allat, al-Uzza and Manat belong to a Nabatean religious context which makes it possible to explain verses from surah 53 differently:

By the star when it descends ...

The star is Canopus and is descending in the early morning sky

Your companion has not strayed, nor has he erred,
Nor does he speak from inclination.
It is not but a revelation revealed
Taught to him by one intense in strength

Allah or the messenger knows what he's talking about

One of soundness. And he rose to true form

Allah's solely male form

While he was in the higher horizon.

... into the morning soltice

Surah 53 only makes some sense when read as a sermon with an attempt to be poetic.

[manfred]

That is nothing more than an assumption. The Quran was originally encoded about two centuries before the Sunna doctrine started explaining how Quranic texts should be read or interpreted. That being said, it's difficult to prove the opposite.

Sure, my assumption that these are probably Mohammed's words are based on the testimony of Muslims and the fact that the contents clearly only exist to serve Mohammed's purpose... This is in itself a paradox... while Allah asserts that Mohammed does not "reveal his own desire", Allah certainly does.

As Jeffery and others pointed out the Arabic script of the Quran depends on a small amount of roots, no more then four hundred. This may make it difficult to translate the 'chain of vocal transmissions' or isnad into a written form. If you believe that this chain of transmissions really occurred and I don't.

If you look at the Arabic text, assuming you know enough Arabic to translate things with some help from a dictionary, like me, you find the text really is very often fragmentary and confused, much more than translations suggest, and frequently incomplete. There are also grammatical ambiguities and down right mistakes, and many words do no appear in standard Arabic, for example sudden jumps from third to first person or vice versa, or the wrong from for a verb, adjective or noun being used.

I, like you, am suspicious of the "isnad", and I would argue that the Qur'an as we have it today is an edited and redacted text compiled from fragments and at times just memory. In addition, the editors themselves added some bits. Variant version were suppressed, which is a shame because they could help a lot in getting closer what Mohammed really taught.

Still, I believe SOME of the contents of the Qur'an are Mohammed's words, or at least close to his words.

Still, to a Muslim this text is authored by God, so that should be where the analysis should start.

[Takeiteasynow]

If you look at the Arabic text, assuming you know enough Arabic to translate things with some help from a dictionary, like me, you find the text really is very often fragmentary and confused, much more than translations suggest, and frequently incomplete. There are also grammatical ambiguities and down right mistakes, and many words do no appear in standard Arabic, for example sudden jumps from third to first person or vice versa, or the wrong from for a verb, adjective or noun being used.

I couldn't agree more. According to some authors this indicates someone addressing an audience in an Arabic dialect unknown to the Abbasid theologians.

I, like you, am suspicious of the "isnad", and I would argue that the Qur'an as we have it today is an edited and redacted text compiled from fragments and at times just memory. In addition, the editors themselves added some bits. Variant version were suppressed, which is a shame because they could help a lot in getting closer what Mohammed really taught.

Well, I do think that there are other ways to help us understand what Mohammed really taught. I don't think that there were that many versions (take for instance the edited version of Quranic verses found in Sanaa that were actually close to the final versions) but that the Abbasids added imaginary verses after eliminating their Omayyad rivals to profile the Quran with an Arabic origin.

Still, to a Muslim this text is authored by God, so that should be where the analysis should start.

I couldn't disagree more Analysis starts there where you can hook up something, in this case a text, into a logical chain of events or message protocol.

[Eagle]

Whenever God swears an oath by any of the created objects, it isnt on account of their qualities, although these qualities do serve the purpose of attracting the audience's attention at first, but for the reason that they testify to the truth which is meant to be established in the subsequent verses. This is not an uncommon mode of expression in divine scriptures from the past such as in the book of Jeremiah Jer31:35,32:20-26 where various observable natural penomena and entities are pointed to in order to establish the statements that follow.

In every oath there is thus a thing (physical or abstract) testifying to a concept and in this life, we are called to be witnesses that these things do in fact give a true testimony. However a day will come, where these roles will be reversed 85:3"By the witness and the witnessed". In this life we are called to witness and the things pointed to in the oaths are witnessed, whereas in the afterlife all creation shall be called to witness against us, who will be the witnessed.

Besides testifying to the truthfulness of a statement, by pointing to them, these surrounding signs also offer the true believers the opportunity to reflect, and see in them the inevitability of a day of accountability 3:190-4.

Disbelievers on the other hand are oblivious to these signs and fearlessly roam the earth, but this is nothing but a short enjoyment 3:196-7. Other types of oaths taken by God are meant to convey the understanding that there are mighty realities beyond our present perception 69:38-48 that testify likewise to the truths stated in the Quran, and the supreme Being swears by Himself to ascertain some of these truths 16:63"By Allah, most certainly We sent (messengers) to nations before you". See the bible in Gen22:16.

With the above in mind one can apreciate how the oath in this sura najm comes in the context of accusations that Muhammad was either deluded (adopted wrong ways consciously) or had gone astray (adopted a wrong way in unawareness of the right way). But just as the setting of the star and dawning of the day signals the end of darkness where one was justified in his conjectures and guesses concerning the surrounding realities that were shrouded from clear view, the same is the case of Muhammad whose life and personality isnt hidden in darkness to any of his addressees, but is manifest like the bright dawn ie "your companion" (an often repeated phrase 7:184,34:46,81:22 to stress how well known and familiar to them he was) consequently none can justifiably conjecture and question his sanity, sagacity, righteousness and honesty -all of which were known qualitites of his- by accusing him of willfuly walking into the ways of crookedness and sin or unwillingly dragged into an evidently false path in ignorance of the right way. A similar oath is sworn in 81:15-26 concerning the certainty of the divine source of this revelation, it being fully part of God's established system of creation just as the "laws of nature", the daily observable aspects of that universal plan, are. Not only does the oath by the appearing stars, the departing night and the first light of day attest to the "clarity" of that truth, it also attests, through its rightly guiding qualities, that it cannot be the word of an evil entity, allegedly conveyed to a divinator who scarcely conveyed it and only did in exchange of a compensation of some sort "Most surely it is the Word of an honored messenger...Nor of the unseen is he a tenacious concealer, Nor is it the word of the cursed Shaitan.."

There are other similar oaths by the stars that argue for the truthfulness of the statements that follow.

[Eagle]

As to stars vanishing, in 53:1 the root for hawa is H-W-Y and it means what is between the earth and the sky and that is air and emptiness for the Arabs. Conceptually, as in 7:176 and elsewhere, it stands for desire because it mostly has no justifiable support, a baseless/empty idea. It also describes an entity, like the star in 53:1, that has vanished from sight and cannot be seen just like the emptiness and the air for which the word primarily stands for.

[Eagle]

Gabriel is the one personally descending with the revelation, with God's express authority "he revealed it to your heart by Allah's command". This emphasis is meant at dispelling any ambiguity, in the minds of those that dislike the indirect manner in which God communicates with His prophets, as to the ultimate source of the message. Elsewhere the Quran, in its surgical use of words and in a similar context of attesting to the otherwordly origin of the Book, says that it is

53:4"a revelation revealed".

Since the most obdurate could still find a way to disbelieve, admitting to the divine origin of the Quran but rejecting the legitimacy of the prophet who would've been given the revelation by a human, God makes it clear, it is a revelation (to the angel messenger) revealed (to the prophet by the inspired angel).

[Eagle]

The more one trains his spiritual receptivity the more it becomes aware of spiritual matters and the more God increases its capacity to perceive. With the prophet Muhammad, that capacity reached such a high peak that the spiritual vision could perceive the powerful angel of revelation, an entity invisible to the physical eye, hence the precise wording of the verse 53:12 that it was the heart that "saw".

[manfred]

The more one trains his spiritual receptivity the more it becomes aware of spiritual matters and the more God increases its capacity to perceive. With the prophet Muhammad, that capacity reached such a high peak that the spiritual vision could perceive the powerful angel of revelation, an entity invisible to the physical eye, hence the precise wording of the verse 53:12 that it was the heart that "saw".

An angel in the oldest texts was simple a human/human like figure that brought a message and ALL could see. Look at the story of Lot in Genesis for example. In Islam an "angel" had evolved to an invisible being who has 600 pairs of wings and will not enter places that have a picture, making delivery of a message somewhat dubious.

And to ascribe incredible spiritual awareness to a man who claims to see things other cannot is not logical. The other day I visited a care home and made acquaintance with a man who told me that his long dead wife come into his room every night and asks he he needs any washing done.. Does he have special spiritual awareness too?

So Mohammed had an invisible friend. He also murdered, pillaged and raped. Also due to his "spiritual vision"?

Also eagle do you swear by the shelves you hung up??