'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University

[paarsurrey]

BBC NEWS
By Sean CoughlanEducation correspondent
22 July 2015
'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University - BBC News
It is a happy news
Regards

Thanks to our friend in the forum

Lyndon

 

[Augustus]

I posted this in another thread, but I'll post it here too as I think it is relevant.

Just to raise an important 'hold on a minute...', not to try to 'discredit' anything, just because what I say is true and something that not everybody realises.

One thing to be very careful of, radiocarbon dating is not this highly accurate tool that produces hard facts like some people think. Results can be distorted due to numerous factors such as climate, contamination, etc. Also, the dating of ancient documents is problematic as they date the material that the text is written on, rather than the writing itself, and parchments might well have been reused multiple times (although they can identify if this is the case).

One of the current 'oldest Qurans' is considered to be the Sana'a Manuscript which was radiocarbon dated twice giving ranges of 433-599 (obviously too early), and 543-643 (most likely too early).

When dating a manuscript, radiocarbon dating is not the number 1 tool, it is a helpful guide but is less important than other factors from textual analysis, history, philology, palaeography, etc.

People overrate radiocarbon dating as it is "science", and people overrate scientific techniques in general. "Science" is always seen as better than "not science" when the opposite is frequently true when dating manuscripts.

Oldest Quran found makes nice headlines and gets nice publicity for the university, but there is a reason that 'oldest' is in quotation marks as it is far from proven. The problem is most people will take this as fact. It is highly likely that this date will be revised later as that is frequently the case with ancient documents of all types.

I think that the oldest Quranic texts in existence are considered to be from around 675-700 currently, possibly slightly earlier, so we already know it was a fairly standardised document from within about 50 or so years of Muhammed's death.

Given that the probability of the radiocarbon dating being inaccurate is greater than the probability of any new text actually being the 'oldest', it is most likely that this date will be revised upwards. Perhaps the dating is accurate, but the balance of probabilities says that it is not.

 

[Milton Platt]

I posted this in another thread, but I'll post it here too as I think it is relevant.

Just to raise an important 'hold on a minute...', not to try to 'discredit' anything, just because what I say is true and something that not everybody realises.

One thing to be very careful of, radiocarbon dating is not this highly accurate tool that produces hard facts like some people think. Results can be distorted due to numerous factors such as climate, contamination, etc. Also, the dating of ancient documents is problematic as they date the material that the text is written on, rather than the writing itself, and parchments might well have been reused multiple times (although they can identify if this is the case).

One of the current 'oldest Qurans' is considered to be the Sana'a Manuscript which was radiocarbon dated twice giving ranges of 433-599 (obviously too early), and 543-643 (most likely too early).

When dating a manuscript, radiocarbon dating is not the number 1 tool, it is a helpful guide but is less important than other factors from textual analysis, history, philology, palaeography, etc.

People overrate radiocarbon dating as it is "science", and people overrate scientific techniques in general. "Science" is always seen as better than "not science" when the opposite is frequently true when dating manuscripts.

Oldest Quran found makes nice headlines and gets nice publicity for the university, but there is a reason that 'oldest' is in quotation marks as it is far from proven. The problem is most people will take this as fact. It is highly likely that this date will be revised later as that is frequently the case with ancient documents of all types.

I think that the oldest Quranic texts in existence are considered to be from around 675-700 currently, possibly slightly earlier, so we already know it was a fairly standardised document from within about 50 or so years of Muhammed's death.

Given that the probability of the radiocarbon dating being inaccurate is greater than the probability of any new text actually being the 'oldest', it is most likely that this date will be revised upwards. Perhaps the dating is accurate, but the balance of probabilities says that it is not.

Well, I don't support the validity of the Quoran or any other divine text. That being said, the jury is still out as this paper has to be peer reviewed, and the tests repeated. Also, the ink must be dated. I suspect it is close to the truth, but let's wait and see.

 

[paarsurrey]

I posted this in another thread, but I'll post it here too as I think it is relevant.

Just to raise an important 'hold on a minute...', not to try to 'discredit' anything, just because what I say is true and something that not everybody realises.

One thing to be very careful of, radiocarbon dating is not this highly accurate tool that produces hard facts like some people think. Results can be distorted due to numerous factors such as climate, contamination, etc. Also, the dating of ancient documents is problematic as they date the material that the text is written on, rather than the writing itself, and parchments might well have been reused multiple times (although they can identify if this is the case).

One of the current 'oldest Qurans' is considered to be the Sana'a Manuscript which was radiocarbon dated twice giving ranges of 433-599 (obviously too early), and 543-643 (most likely too early).

When dating a manuscript, radiocarbon dating is not the number 1 tool, it is a helpful guide but is less important than other factors from textual analysis, history, philology, palaeography, etc.

People overrate radiocarbon dating as it is "science", and people overrate scientific techniques in general. "Science" is always seen as better than "not science" when the opposite is frequently true when dating manuscripts.

Oldest Quran found makes nice headlines and gets nice publicity for the university, but there is a reason that 'oldest' is in quotation marks as it is far from proven. The problem is most people will take this as fact. It is highly likely that this date will be revised later as that is frequently the case with ancient documents of all types.

I think that the oldest Quranic texts in existence are considered to be from around 675-700 currently, possibly slightly earlier, so we already know it was a fairly standardised document from within about 50 or so years of Muhammed's death.

Given that the probability of the radiocarbon dating being inaccurate is greater than the probability of any new text actually being the 'oldest', it is most likely that this date will be revised upwards. Perhaps the dating is accurate, but the balance of probabilities says that it is not.

I understand it.
Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

radiocarbon dating is not this highly accurate tool that produces hard facts like some people think

I understand it.
Regards

 

[Milton Platt]

I understand it.
Regards

Carbon dating is accurate within a range. It can be thrown off but the things that affect the dates are well understood and are compensated for. One way is comparing it to other things of a known age, such as tree rings. All that being said, I agree with an earlier post that pointed out that they have estimated the age of the paper, not the writing. Plus, this will need to be confirmed by others repeating the tests. Folks on both sides of the fence needn't get too excited just yet.