My 2¢ on the ḥadīth scholarship vs. secular scholarship discourse
[1] Motzki (et al.) was mistaken to speak of the “authenticity” of the ḥadīth corpus, inasmuch as readers confused how he used authenticity with how ḥadīth scholarship uses words like ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan, etc...
“Authentic” for him means “not forged by the compiler/tradent”; authenic ≠ historical veracity.
Motzki ran into this problem repeatedly, but the toothpaste couldn't be put back into the tube. ICMA aims at *dating*, not *verifying*, traditions. See his statement from our book.
[2] From my outsider perspective, Muslim ḥadīth scholarship really aims at achieving one end – determining whether or not any given report meets the criteria to be regarded as authoritative for one’s dīn (belief, practice, etc.). The methods used by Muslims ...
In Q Ḥašr 59:23, God is called: al-muʾmin al-muhaymin. The first name, muʾmin|مؤمن, usually means “believer” but in this context probably means, “faithful,” or “granter of safety (ʾamn).” But what about the second term, al-Muhaymin?
If you've studied Aramaic, the answer seems pretty straightforwoard: al-muhaymin is easily recognizeable as mhaymen|ܡܗܰܝܡܶܢ|מהימן.
It means the exact same thing as al-muʾmin, i.e., “believer” or “faithful”.
Theodore Nöldeke (1836-1930) noted the Aramaic background to al-Muhaymin, but surprisingly he did not find the word to be suitable adjective for the divinity, saying "there is not meaning in Aramaic which may be applied to God."
This is not the original quote of Hitler AFAIK, but the original does have an interesting history behind , and it's key for understanding the Battle of Poitiers in modern Western historical imaginary ...
Hitler’s "Tabletalk" (Tischgespräche) – ranting monologues given at the Führer headquarters from 1941-44 – were recorded and transcribed, and this is the source of such statements. In a monologue from 28 Aug 1942, he bemoans Charles Martel’s victory at Poitiers in 732 and ...
Chrisianity's hold over Europe. He then fantasizes about how Islam would have enabled the German race to conquer and subjugate the world. The English translation by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens of 1953 appeared long before the German edition, ed. by W. Jochmann in 1980.
As noted by @IraniRoxanna, Khamenei is quoting one of the more misogynist passages from Nahj al-balāġah here, in Arabic: al-marʾah rayḥānah wa-laysat bi-qahramānah.
Personally, I don’t think ʿAlī actually uttered these words...
Why?
[1] It's strange forʿAlī to employ a word like qahramānah, a word borrowed into Arabic from Persian typically used in the Abbasid era to referred to an enslaved stewardess of a harem.
[2] The saying is attributed to other, later figures:
The one worth considering most seriously is Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, one of the fathers of Arabic literary prose. He’s a key figure for the transmission of Persian and Indian gnomologia into Arabic literature. See the excerpt from Ibn Qutaybah’s ʿUyūn al-aḫbār below.
Reading a new essay by Devin Stewart, "Ignoring the Bible in Qur’anic Studies Scholarship of the Late Twentieth Century" (2024). It's on the history of qur'anic studies scholarship in the 20th century and the place of biblical literatere therein. Some thoughts ...
Really it's an autopsy of what went wrong why the topic stagnated in qur'anic studies after WW2. He gives this example of Watt's revisions of Bell's Intro to the Qur'an as primary example of what changed. The language of the ToC speaks volumes. scienceopen.com/hosted-documen…
I think people are too harsh on Watt, but his approach does strike me as minimizing and even censoring the rigorist, comparativist approach of older orientalist philology in favor of practicing scholarship as a way of making nice: For Watt (an Anglican priest) ...
Ehrman's right ofc, and the axiom isn't "hidden"
The Qur'an is a human text: it's written in a human language and as such ought to be analyzed as a product of humanity.
Ratifying a fideist "special pleading fallacy" as the foundation of your hermeneutic is against free inquiry
Truth be told, the aims of HCM are very modest--a measured, rationalistic approach to assessing the plausibility of our historical knowledge and revising it using empircal tools and methods. Most of the frustrations with it are, as you can see on display in the replies, ...
that it does not bow to or support grand claims about metaphysics or apodictic declarations about god, which its ardent detractors want to impose on the rest of us.
But seriously consider -- what new things have those infallible™ types told us about the ancient world ...