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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

2 Jan

A strange bit of misinformed apologetics has been making the rounds on Twitter that claims the Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaª) (Is. 42:1) mentions ʾAḥmad (traditionally understood to be Muḥammad) of Q61:6. This is false, but figuring out what is happening is interesting. So 🧵

Let's first take a moment to appreciate what the significance of Isaiah 42:1. The Synoptic gospels ( Mathew 3:17, Mark 1:11 & Luke 3:22) cite a Greek adaptation of this verse at the Baptism of Jesus:
"You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"

This is clearly quite close to the Hebrew of the old testament Isaiah 42:1 "Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; Mine elect, in whom My soul delights." and is understood to refer to it.

The fourth gospel, John, lacks this reference (this will become important later).

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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

2 Jan

I'm having a lot of fun with this Japanese pitch accent dictionary thing, but I'm kind of curious: are there any good (preferably English) descriptions that actually try to make morphological sense of what is actually happening?

gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/search/in…

It's clear that unaccented words, in some verbal forms gain an accent

haku, hakanákatta, which I suppose you could describe by saying the suffix is simply -nákatta

But when there is a lexical pitch, the pitch get retracted by not replaced:
háku, haká-nakatta

I would be tempted to write a tonal sandhi rule:
Cv́-Cv-Cv́ > Cv-Cv́-Cv

Thus háka-nákatta > haká-nakatta

But this rule would not predict the right form with the -éba suffix:

haku, hakéba (✅)
háku, hákeba (❌)

idem for -imásu
haku, hakimásu (✅)
háku, hakimásu (❌)

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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

14 Dec 21

@boris_liebrenz

So... I'm going to have to admit that I've been very wrong. And honestly, I now think both about this Brooch AND the Birka Ring.

I have to thank @boris_liebrenz for making this clear to me. If one examines Victoria Porter's catalogue, there are very similar (mirrored?) examples.

https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1470384266248957952

https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/920584737168723968

For the Birka Ring, here are some decent parallels. Though I wonder if it says بالله instead. What throws one off is 1. it wasn't mirrored and 2. the vertical closure of the hāʾ is absent in both, which really just makes it look like lines...

https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/920584737168723968

I'm still not sure that whatever the brooch says (and many of these other seal rings) read تبنا لله, which still strikes me as idiomatically unusual. But well, it's definitely Arabic.
Birka and the Brooch *might* be bad European imitations, but could just be poor but genuine.

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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

13 Dec 21

@britishmuseum

Another bogus claim of "Arabic" on a Medieval European Object.

The @britishmuseum Website claims that this Brooch has two lines of early Arabic script: šāʾa ḷḷāh, or tubna li-llāh (or bismi llāh?). With no amount of fantasy could one read any of that.

britishmuseum.org/collection/obj…

1. What šāʾa ḷḷāh would look like in Early Arabic script.
2. What tubna lillāh (one would expect tubna ʾilā ḷḷāh, but okay) would look like,
3. What bi-smi llāh would look like.

Needless to say, this jumble of line looks nothing like any of these.

The fact that three readings are suggested, all of which are utterly incompatible with each other (and none of which look anything like what the Brooch has), should tip us off that it is, in fact, not Arabic, and that whoever came up with the readings was just guessing wildly.

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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

12 Dec 21

Interesting variant reading in Wetzstein II 1913 that I just ran into, rather than the canonical ʾinna ḷḷāha la-hādi llaḏīna ʾāmanū "God is the guide of those who have believed" it has tanwīn la-hādin-i llaḏīna: "God is guiding those who believe" (somewhat forced transl.)

It is recorded as a secondary reading in the much later Kufic Quran Arabe 325(k).

Ibn Ḫalawayh (and others) attribute it to ʾAbū Ḥaywah (Syrian reciter, d. 203 AH). While grammatically equally viable, it ended up not making it into the reading of any of the ten.

It is remarkable though that it would be Wetzstein II 1913 of all manuscripts that marks it as the primary reading. W1913 is a very complete early manuscripts, with Syrian regionality. Its vocalisation is probably early, since it has non-canonical features not found elsewhere.

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Marijn "i before j" van Putten

@PhDniX

8 Dec 21

A strong argument for an oral tradition of the Quran in parallel to the written text that I've heard is that even with the Muqaṭṭaʿāt, there is consensus of the reading, while ٮس (Q36:1) could have been read in 10 different ways. Does it hold up in manuscript evidence? 🧵

@Adam_Bursi

This argument rests on the assumption that the original codices of Uthman were undotted. This is likely a myth. Every early Quranic manuscript has sporadic dotting, there is no reason to believe that the original Uthmanic master copies were different. See @Adam_Bursi's article.

So what about the few dotted Muqaṭṭaʿāt? How do they show up in early manuscripts? Do they have dots? Is the consensus because the text was simply unambiguous? This is something we can check, so let's have a look what early manuscripts show!

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