Re: Providential Eloquence #2
- From: kleinecke@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:25:46 -0600
Abdalla Alothman wrote:
I refer to this example, in Genesis to compare human authorship with
the Quran's authorship. The story of Yusuf in Genesis is a collection
of simple thoughts that require no effort or creativity. In the Quran
the Narrator has to adhere to rules of a very complex language.
I am not addressing any comment to the Surat Yusuf so I have snipped
most of the original post.
I am struck by the poster's apparent belief that Bibical Hebrew is a
simple language and the language of the Qur'an is "very complex". Such
a belief cannot be based on any real knowledge of Bibical Hebrew or, in
my opinion, any real knowledge of Qur'anic Arabic.
In fact, Hebrew and Arabic are very closely related languages and their
complexity, by any sensible measure of complexity, is approximately
equal. There is a stylistic difference between the narration in Genesis
and the narration in the Qur'an in that Genesis is written in a style
that, it appears, attempted to minimize grammatical complexity. Later
on in Old Testament times, this style went out of fashion and books
such as that of the prophet Jeremiah are every bit as complex as
anything in the Qur'an.
As to whether the language of the Qur'an is "very complex" in any
absolute sense, that seems to be a matter of opinion because there is
no agreed upon way to measure the complexity of a language. I
personally find the language of the Qur'an to be relatively simple as
compared to say, Sanskrit or Japanese, not to mention exotic languages
such as Navaho (widely, but probably inaccurately, considered to be the
most difficult human language). Even though I am a native speaker of a
related language (English), I find classical Greek much more complex
and difficult than Qur'anic Arabic.
The Qur'an itself says it is in clear Arabic. I cannot see how anything
is gained by a belief that its language is somehow difficult.
Eloquence, providential or otherwise, has nothing to do with language
complexity. To my ear, the style used in Genesis is more eloquent than
that used in the Qur'an, but tastes differ.
Proverbially, we should not dispute about matters of taste.
.
- References:
- Providential Eloquence #2
- From: Abdalla Alothman
- Providential Eloquence #2
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