Posted: Oct 05, 2015 1:06 pm
Does Islamic tradition make explicit claims about sacred texts only ever being written on freshly-made substrates?
As far as dating evidence potentially putting the discovered text not before Mohammed, but not conforming to a tradition saying things were written in a certain style up to point X, and a different style thereafter, were that what evidence suggested and if we ignore the various possible dating-related excuses people could make, that only really puts us in a situation where a pretty specific bit of received wisdom is shown to be wrong, which isn't necessarily any more serious than an archaeologist who had formed a theory of when things happened based on the best available evidence being shown to have been wrong when new evidence turns up.
Such an occurrence in a religious context needn't be taken as anything worse than a lesson in the fallibility of humans basing pronouncements on incomplete evidence.
Is there an Islamic tradition that any particular person's particular theological idea post-Mohammed is necessarily true simply because the person sincerely believed it was true and claimed it was true, and that not only can a theological idea be unquestionably correct, but that such a correct position can be clearly demonstrated or known to be correct by other humans?
As far as dating evidence potentially putting the discovered text not before Mohammed, but not conforming to a tradition saying things were written in a certain style up to point X, and a different style thereafter, were that what evidence suggested and if we ignore the various possible dating-related excuses people could make, that only really puts us in a situation where a pretty specific bit of received wisdom is shown to be wrong, which isn't necessarily any more serious than an archaeologist who had formed a theory of when things happened based on the best available evidence being shown to have been wrong when new evidence turns up.
Such an occurrence in a religious context needn't be taken as anything worse than a lesson in the fallibility of humans basing pronouncements on incomplete evidence.
Is there an Islamic tradition that any particular person's particular theological idea post-Mohammed is necessarily true simply because the person sincerely believed it was true and claimed it was true, and that not only can a theological idea be unquestionably correct, but that such a correct position can be clearly demonstrated or known to be correct by other humans?