Yet another Jefferson quote


The Chozen Few wrote:

As Sayid pointed out in one of his responses, he wouldn't even have had to
know any Arabic at all to learn that the Qur'an teaches that Jesus was born
of a virgin, and (because of his deistic disbelief in miracles) to discard
the inerrancy claims of that book on those grounds alone.

As I keep saying, if Jefferson didn't believe in miracles, it's because
none happened in his life. That in itself does NOT mean that miracles
don't happen or Jefferson's rejection of Islam, based on what little
understanding he had, is of any importance.

Regarding your last sentence, I say that any Book (whether you believe
in it or not) which claims to be a word of God has to claim absolute
authority or it's not from God. That's just common ense!

As your article points out, the only English translation available in
those days was the George Sale translation which has been totally
discredited and now hardly anybody uses it. See:

http://www.al-shia.com/html/eng/books/miscelleneous/the-dome-of-the-rock/translate.htm

"One of the most famous English translations was by George Sale in
1734, who included a detailed explanatory discourse. Sale depended
largely on Maracci's Latin version (he could not fully master the
Arabic language). His tutor was an Italian named Dadichi, the king's
interpreter at the time. Although Voltaire asserted that Sale had spent
'five and twenty years in Arabia where he had acquired a profound
knowledge of the Arabic language and customs,' this was ruled out in
his biography by the historian R.A. Davenport as being 'opposed by the
stubborn evidence of dates and facts. Undeniably Sale's translation of
the Quran contains many faults, each one indicating that he could not
have fully grasped the Arabic language."

In the introduction, "The Preliminary Discourse," and other annotations
Sale did his best to poison the well to generate a negative view of
Islam. Jefferson's other source, Pufendorf, must also have used either
Sale's or Ross' translations, both of which were full of errors. The
first serious translations of Quran in English (translated directly
from Arabic into English) came out only in 1930s with Picthall and
Yusuf Ali's translations. Yusuf Ali's translation, though stylistically
better than Picthall's, had some inaccuracies which have been removed
in some recent editions.

Again, according to Hayes' article, Jefferson was eventually able to read
the Qur'an in Arabic.

What exactly did Hayes say? See also my comments above.


"Before long, Jefferson began teaching himself to read Arabic. He acquired
some basic Arabic grammars including Rudimenta Linguae Arabicae,
by Thomas Erpensius, and Simplification des Langues Orientales, the
Arabic grammar prepared by his friend and correspondent, C.-F. Volney.
He also obtained a copy of Heinrich Sike's edition of the infancy gospel
with the text in Arabic and Latin on opposite pages. In addition, he added
a copy of Euclid's Geometry in Arabic to his library (Sowerby, nos. 4744-
4747).Taken together, these works show that Jefferson's systematic attempt
to learn Arabic closely paralleled the procedure he had established for
learning other languages during his student days."

Hayes naver stated that Jefferson learned Arabic. Looking at
Jefferson's book collection, he is simply suggesting that Jefferson
used the same approach that he had tried on other languages. I too
have several Arabic dictionaries and books of grammar but that does not
mean that I know Arabic. And I can read Arabic better than Jefferson
could possibly have in his lifetime! I suggest that you take a course
in Arabic to find out how difficult it is for an English speaking
person, and with all the other things Jefferson was involved in, not to
mention other languages he was trying to learn, it's near darn
impossible that he had a working knowledge of Arabic.

Hayes didn't explicitly say how well Jefferson learned to read Arabic, but
given the general success of Jefferson's "systematic attempt(s)" to learn
other languages, I think it's reasonable to conclude that he learned to read
Arabic at least as well as you've learned to read English.

LOL. I don't think so.

I'm sure Jefferson realized very well that the Qur'an claimed to be a direct
revelation from God, and also that the Bible and the books of other
religions claim to be that, but that realization is very far from
*believing* any such claims, in *any* language.

No Christian Bible scholar of repute, that I know of, has ever claimed
that the entire Bible, word to word, is from God. Their claim is that
God 'inspired' the prophets who then wrote down the scriptures. Because
God inspired so many and at such different times, there is
inconsistency, if not Biblical inerrancy. According to Islamic
beliefs, on the other hand, God did not 'inspire' Prophet Muhammad
(s.a.w); He 'revealed' to him His message, which he conveyed word to
word faithfully.

As I keep saying (but you don't seem to be understanding), if Jefferson
didn't believe, too bad for him :-)


Don't *you*
attribute absolute authority to the Qur'an? And if so, do you think your
acceptance of the Qur'an's absolute authority is mainly the result of
your
having been better able than Jefferson to read the book in Arabic, and/or
your having been less exposed to "extremely biased sources"?

With all due respect, I think you are making an extremely foolish
remark. If I give you a book which has been poorly translated and the
in the foreword the translator has added all kinds of
negative remarks about the book, many of which are untrue or biased,
you cannot possibly have a good impression of that book.

My "extremely foolish remark" was a question, and you haven't answered it.

I do attribute absolute authority to Quran which does tell me to also
listen to the Prophet (s.a.w), consult other people who have knowledge,
and think on my own. If Jefferson didn't get that message, too bad for
him.

I have been exposed extremely biased sources (this newsgroup is one
evidence) but I also have a much better understanding of Quran and
Islam than Jefferson, the reason being that it takes many years of
study AND practice to understand a religion. For example, according to
the article Jefferson thought that Quran is the main or the 'only'
source of Islamic law. That was an egregious mistake. The source of
Islamic law is 'fiqh' (Islamic jurisprudence) which is based on many
different sources and is certainly not as monolithic as Jefferson or
you have been assuming.

Jefferson's knowledge (or lack thereof) of the sources of Islamic law isn't
necessarily relevant to his disbelief of the Quran's claims of divine
inerrancy.

I do believe in Quran's claim of divine inerrancy. If Jefferson didn't,
that was his problem.

.