> That's what muslims claim. Actually reading the thing does not at all give that impression Did you read it in Arabic? Do you even speak the language? > don

> That's what muslims claim. Actually reading the thing does not at all give that impression Did you read it in Arabic? Do you even speak the language? > don't immediately recognize is greek it becomes a lot easier. One really nice thing about Arabic is that you can reduce practically every word to 3 or 4 letter roots. This really makes it clear where a derivative of a word came from (including the word "Quraan" incidentally). > As for the language of the Quran, have you ever googled "Christopher Luxenberg" ? I have heard of him, yes. His argument is painfully laughable that it's unbearable to answer with a straight face. Without going into much detail, it is clear that he is selecting whatever supports his so called analysis, and discarding (or he is perhaps ignorant of) everything else. A beginner in Islamic studies would be able to refute him blind folded so to speak. > Here's his central argument : rewrite the quran in arameic(/greek), letter-by-letter and it makes sense, both in a historical context, the grammar is suddenly correct Umm, no. I have looked into Aramaic as well as Hebrew (I developed an interest in these languages after watching Passion of the Christ and recognizing a bunch of words in the movie). My knowledge of Arabic gives me an advantage in that I am able to easily make out similarities in syntax and pronunciation (incidentally, a lot of (most?) modern Hebrew speakers really twist the language, and it sounds nothing like it would have sounded back in the day -- many letters are dropped or merged, pronounced incorrectly, etc). The key point being: there is no one-to-one mapping of Arabic letters to Aramaic or Hebrew letters. There is a very large overlap; however, there exist letters in Arabic not present in Aramaic/Hebrew, as well as as the other way around (such as 'p' and 'v'). I concur that there are some words shared between these languages (e.g. "house", "bird", "eye", "them", "one"). However, the grammatical constructs, transformation of words, usage, plurals, pronunciation, etc are all quite different. Arabic grammar and conjugation is much more rich and complex than Aramaic or Hebrew. As a tiny example, "house" => "bayt" in Arabic/Aramaic/Hebrew -- a place of resting. Now, "yabeet" (only in Arabic) means to spend the night at a house; but in this example, you can see that they both have the same root of (ba-ya-ta). I have not seen this behavior in Aramaic or Hebrew. Aramaic is closer to Hebrew than Arabic. That being said, it is impossible to have a letter-by-letter re-write from Arabic to Aramaic by definition. It's illogical and impossible. > Oh and there is even an Arameic word for "Songbook" (meaning an extract of the New Testament, with most text put into verses to be sung, as you can find today in every church on the planet). Know what that word is ? "Koran" Wrong again. The Aramaic (Syriac actually) word you are looking for is "Kriyana" ('reading the scriptures' or 'lesson'). The three-letter root of Qur'aan is (Qa-Ra-'a) -- to read/recite. So, while they sound similar (not surprising given what I mentioned about similar roots above), or even have somewhat similar meanings, they are not the same word as you were trying to make it out to be. If anything, the Arabic word "Kira'a" (reading/recitation) is closer in meaning (it's a gerund) to the Aramaic version than Qur'aan (a proper noun). Also, the Quraan has multiple names too, such as Al-Furqan, Al-Thikr, Al-Huda, etc, but that doesn't really relate to this discussion. Just something for your information. > Keep in mind that Arabic is not in fact that far removed from Greek, because it is based on Hebrew According to Wikipedia, Greek is Indo-European, whereas Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic (deriving from Afro-Asiatic). I re-iterate that I am completely fluent in Arabic, and I have Greek colleagues. The languages are not similar (if at all) as what you're trying to point out. Are you sure you're not just re-iterating things you heard before from someone and trying to pass one on me? Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language (like Aramaic), both deriving from a Central Semitic language family. Arabic is also derived from a Central Semitic language family. This makes Arabic and Aramaic/Hebrew more like uncle/nephew instead of siblings or even descendents (like how Hebrew descended from Aramaic). The analogy you are trying to make with the poem does not hold. The Quraan's Arabic is not obtuse like that at all. This just reinforces the fact that you don't seem to speak the language at all, yet you try to make a statement based on false claims. For your information, the Quraan and Hadith (moreso the former) are used as references for the Arabic language to know what is proper grammar from improper -- which yet again makes the poem analogy ridiculous.