Posted on 03/27/2002 8:43:15 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:00 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
09:40 PST JERUSALEM (AP) -- An explosion went off Wednesday evening in a hotel in the Israeli coastal resort of Netanya, and paramedics said there were dozens of casualties.
The blast came at a time when Israelis were marking the start of the weeklong Passover holiday. Many hotels cater Passover Seders -- the ritual meal that ushers in the holiday.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
That's precisely analogous to saying of the King James Version of the Bible: "If it was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me." Colossal ignorance.
The POINT is that "the language of the Koran" as read today IS NOT THE ORIGINAL, ace:
Radical New Views of Islam and the Origins of the Koran
[snip]
Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany, argues that the Koran has been misread and mistranslated for centuries. His work, based on the earliest copies of the Koran, maintains that parts of Islam's holy book are derived from pre-existing Christian Aramaic texts that were misinterpreted by later Islamic scholars who prepared the editions of the Koran commonly read today.
So, for example, the virgins who are supposedly awaiting good Islamic martyrs as their reward in paradise are in reality "white raisins" of crystal clarity rather than fair maidens.
[snip]
Scholars like Mr. Luxenberg and Gerd- R. Puin, who teaches at Saarland University in Germany, have returned to the earliest known copies of the Koran in order to grasp what it says about the document's origins and composition. Mr. Luxenberg explains these copies are written without vowels and diacritical dots that modern Arabic uses to make it clear what letter is intended. In the eighth and ninth centuries, more than a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic commentators added diacritical marks to clear up the ambiguities of the text, giving precise meanings to passages based on what they considered to be their proper context. Mr. Luxenberg's radical theory is that many of the text's difficulties can be clarified when it is seen as closely related to Aramaic, the language group of most Middle Eastern Jews and Christians at the time.
For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white." Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for "houri," which means virgin, but Mr. Luxenberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means "white raisin."
Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as hur, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors.
In many cases, the differences can be quite significant. Mr. Puin points out that in the early archaic copies of the Koran, it is impossible to distinguish between the words "to fight" and "to kill." In many cases, he said, Islamic exegetes added diacritical marks that yielded the harsher meaning, perhaps reflecting a period in which the Islamic Empire was often at war.
A return to the earliest Koran, Mr. Puin and others suggest, might lead to a more tolerant brand of Islam, as well as one that is more conscious of its close ties to both Judaism and Christianity.
[snip]
A specific part of a female's anatomy comes to mind.
Let us not forget that Powell reports to a fellow named Bush. The buck stops there.
I didn't see your other posts yet .. I fear you may be right
A specific part of a female's anatomy comes to mind.
Wow, what an insult to the female anatomy!
You only have to listen to them to know that this is not what they mean. They want the total extermination of every Jew on earth, then they will work on the rest of us non-muslims.
I would characterize it more as war with some Arab countries, plus Iran. It's bin Laden and co. who are trying to drag the entire Islamic world into this -- we shouldn't play into his hands by accepting the premise ('though we should still eliminate the radicals whereever we find them).
I can now enjoy the "raisin" interpretation in comfort. (Of course, the term "crystal clarity" suggests they're describing diamonds, not dried fruit....)
Is that a joke?
That's right. The desert is in south. It's called the Negev. I believe that Negev in Hebrew means south.
Stay Safe !
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