value of accents?

James Forsyth james at bigbeing.com.au
Tue Jun 4 08:55:24 EDT 2002


Hello,

Please note a fundamental difference in mindset between the following 
quotations and the comments by Eric Weiss in the same thread.

"The Qur'an has not been expressed using any human's words. Its wording is 
letter for letter fixed by no one but Allah."

"Allah has guaranteed that He will protect the Qur'an from human tampering, 
and today's readers can find exact copies of it all over the world. The 
Qur'an of today is the same as the Qur'an revealed to Muhammad (saas)."

Above is from: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/

"When the mark above the word is a small [image of Arabic accentuation, 
i.e. "stop", mark included], it means one of two things.  Either we should 
not stop there at all, or we should not begin there after stopping and 
taking a breath on a different word, or that same word.

The Medinah copy of the Qur'an has the most accurate stop markings which 
were put in by some of the top scholars of the Qur'an.  If you do not use a 
Medinah copy of the Qur'an, we highly recommend that you switch to it.

Above is from: http://www.abouttajweed.com/010701.htm

The Qur'an was revealed in the Arabic language, and the original text has 
remained unchanged in that language since the time of its revelation.

Above is from: http://islam.about.com/library/products/aabybquran.htm

If it were to come to a vote of all the B-Greek participants, I'd be voting 
to retain the accents.  Even though I may be the most ignorant participant 
of all.

James Forsyth

At 04:35 AM 4/06/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Eric Weiss wrote:
>
>And if we will only get rid of the accents and breathings, think of the 
>ink that could
>be saved!
>
>No, no! Accent rules only clutter the mind, and accent marks only clutter 
>the page. I
>hereby call on all Greek scholars everywhere to unite. Let us join together in
>banishing forever these wicked little black strokes along with their 
>accursed rules!
>It's all a waste of time, I tell you, a terrible waste. Let us all with 
>one voice
>insist that henceforth all authors and all publishers cease and desist 
>this baneful
>practice immediately. Once the accents are no longer used, perhaps 
>students will lose
>interest in them. Of course, some inquisitive students will find them used 
>in older
>books or even in some ancient and in nearly all medieval manuscripts, and 
>they are
>bound to ask what the marks are for. But we teachers will just have to 
>insist that
>they are of no importance at all. It is the only way to save future 
>generations of
>scholars from the needless waste of time required to master these tedious 
>rules with
>all their multifarious exceptions.
>
>"Carson suggests that those who learn NT Greek primarily for preaching 
>purposes can do
>all right with methods like Wenham's, but the serious scholarly student 
>needs to learn
>the accent system." Huh! That's a bunch of claptrap. It just sounds to me 
>like an
>ingenious way for Carson to earn a fast buck on book sales. We scholars 
>need to draw
>the line somewhere. I say, Let's do away with all those accent and 
>breathing marks,
>and the diaereses to boot. It may take a couple of years, but if we all 
>band together
>in protest, we can do it. And after that, then we can think about getting 
>rid of all
>those nasty little subscripts!
>
>David H. Warren
>Prof. of NT and Greek
>Freed-Hardeman University
>Henderson, Tenn.
>
>
>
>---
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