Scientific Exegesis of the Qu'ran (Video in French - article in english) - Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard

I know - it's sucks for those who don't understand French, but this is amazing, and I had to post it on GLP!

[link to www.catholicapologetics.info]

..."Comparing the Qur’an to the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical Midrashim, Fr. Thery concluded that the Qur’an was only “the Bible explained to the Arabs,” though he also isolated a residue, drawn from allusions made to contemporary events by the Quranic author, which could not be explained away in this fashion. This residue he believed was a little like the Acts of the Apostles, and so he dubbed them the Acts of Islam, thereby presenting them as kind of diary of rabbinical attempts to convert the Arabs to Judaism. Although Fr. Thery did not have a completely closed and satisfactory theory, he advanced the study of Islam and declared the key to discovering it would be a systematic and scientific translation of the Qur’an, for the Qur’an was the only sure document. He believed that the Qur’an had to explain the Qur’an in the way that the Bible explained the Bible. His linguistic deficiencies, however, made him unsuitable for the task.

The process has been greatly advanced in our days; by Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard. He is not merely a gifted theologian, who has studied Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in depth, but he is also a talented linguist who reads Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Arabic.

The first thing to understand is that his systematic translation of the Qur’an is necessary because no one has ever succeeded in doing it to date. The reason is that the translators have been guided not by the actual meaning of the text, but by taking into predominant consideration “the received sense” of the text. There is actually no agreed translation of the Qur’an in existence! We may be used to differences of phraseology and emphasis in the various editions of the Bible that exist, but no one disputes the essentials. With the Qur'an, however, it is all the other way round. One writer will translate a phrase in one way, another will do so in a completely different way, and both talk of breaks in meaning, interpolations, amendments, and adaptations in an effort to cover up the essential uselessness of their work. Speaking of such translations, Fr. De Nantes, a colleague of Br., Bruno, writes:

Nonsense, fantastic inventions, contradictions, incoherence without” even mentioning the innumerable omissions of embarrassing words and misplaced additions-such is the method of the traditional translation for 13 centuries.


" ...

.."Br. Bruno tells us that the word Islam is traditionally translated as “submission,” something that we saw at the outset of this article. He says that the translation is clearly wrong and wholly unconnected to the text. The Hebrew root word, sim, is also to be found in Aramaic and is simply ‘aslim in Arabic. The word means “perfect”—in Aramaic, hawei selim means, “Be perfect!” Why this should be will be explained in due course.

It is, of course, beyond the scope of this article to follow Br. Bruno through all his translation, so we will have to content ourselves with a brief overview of the text, which shows the true meaning of the Qur’an, and also through looking at certain key words. Firstly, however, we will have to review our historical knowledge a little, so that the full impact of what has been discovered comes home to the reader."

..."As Br. Bruno has proceeded to translate the first two Suras of the Qur’an, its basic theme is becoming clear and hints are being revealed regarding its author and his background.

Confronted by the violent and unending conflicts between Jews and Christians in the peninsula, it is evident that the Quranic author was forced to reflect on why the alliance—the covenant with God—had come to this sorry pass.

He remarks that the sign of the alliance with God is circumcision, and that the alliance was made with Abraham. Yet he also remarks that the first son of Abraham to be circumcised is not Isaac, but his son, Ismael, by the slave Agar. Recall that God demonstrated his power to Abraham by giving a son, Isaac, to his elderly wife, Sarah. We know too that, at the insistence of Sarah, Agar and Ismael were sent away, and Ismael would become the father of the Arab people.

Thus the alliance was made with Abraham, who was neither Jew nor Christian, but was a pagan who became “perfect”—the first Muslim.

Abraham and his son Ismael were made “perfect men”—muslimayn— and they were told to consecrate their ancestors to God, to make of them “a perfect people”—muslimat. This call to perfection was a “justice” which came upon Abraham and Ismael (because God never stopped listening to the prayer of Agar and her son, according to the Quranic author) and also upon Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets including Moses and Jesus without distinction.

In other words, there is no distinction made between the Old and New Testaments, for the author holds that the Torah of the Jews and the Gospels of the Christians have been used wrongly to divide the Peoples of the Book.

The Jews are held to have fallen away from the Law, and the Christians have distorted the prophetship of Jesus, making a mere man a God, and thus fallen into apostasy.

The Quranic author apparently felt called to reunite the Peoples of the Book. This he does by taking the racial line of Judaism through circumcision and adding to it the call to perfection from the Gospels, emphasizing all the time that the falling away of the Jews and Christians from God’s alliance did not abolish the alliance made with Abraham and Ismael." ...

.."It is certainly the case that in the Qur’an, the author makes several references to himself, but he is remarkable for the overall silence about himself. In Sura III, vs.144 he calls himself muhammadun, and from the work of Ibn Hisam onwards, this has been taken to be the real name of the founder of Islam. Br. Bruno says that this is not the case, and gives his proofs at length. It is interesting to note that this assertion of the non-existence of Muhammed has not drawn a single rebuttal from Fr. Michel Lagarde, a priest who is not only an expert in the field himself, but who is also heavily committed to Islamic-Christian dialogue.

On the other hand, Br. Bruno translates the word muhammadun as “the beloved.” He is saying that it is not a name as such, but a title bestowed upon someone; a little like saying “the light of my life” in referring to your child, for example, which could not be misconstrued as the name of the child. He says that the word muhammadun is derived from the root word hmd, which is the Arabic transposition of the biblical root word hamad, meaning "to covet” or “to desire.”

Throughout the Quranic text, it is evident that the author knows St. Paul and turns him to his desired end, which is to confer the divine alliance upon the sons of Ismael, the perfect people. the musliymat. Fr. De Nantes, a colleague of Br. Bruno goes further, saying that throughout the whole Sura the similarities with the Gospel are so close and so numerous that he believes that the Quranic author’s intention was not merely to imitate the approach of St. Paul, but to substitute himself for Christ.

This may not be as far-fetched as it first sounds. The parallel between the “failure” of Christ leading to Calvary is paralleled by the “failure” of the Quranic author to take “the House at Bakka” in Jerusalem in 614.His faithful are dispersed, and this is his “calvary.” He uses the term “qarhun,” meaning “calvary.” specifically to emphasize the parallel. Yet the Sura also makes clear that the “failure” has not forced him to renounce his objective.

Let us take a look at the word Mecca, which we are told is the translation of Makka. We are told by Hiro that Mecca was the birth place of Muhammed, that it was a trading center of some 5,000 people, and that this was where Muhammed began his apostolate. There are two problems with this: 1) the word Mecca does not appear in the Qur’an at all. Rather, the word Bakka appears once and is wrongly translated as Mecca, and 2) all of the maps of antiquity prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the city of Mecca did not exist in the seventh century. The great mapmaker of the 19th century, Vidal de la Blache, was an expert in the great commercial routes of antiquity and, using the Geography of Ptolemy, showed that Mecca did not exist. Even Blachere does not dispute the point, nor does Fr. Lagarde in his 1990 review in the publication IslamoChristiana of Br. Brunos first published volume. Indeed, given Blachere’s desire to promote Islam at the expense of Christianity. his testimony is all the more weighty:

There is no doubt that Byzantine writers have given us precious information about the Arab emirs ruling on the steppes of Syria with the consent of the emperor. Thanks to these authors, we are reasonably well informed about the conflicts of these emirs with their Babylonian counterparts in the service of the Persian Sassanids. Through these authors we can determine the religious affiliation of the Arab tribes, either nomadic or settled, in the Transjordan or on the steppes to the west of the Euphrates. Even mysterious Yemen furnishes us with several scraps of information about its past, and allows us to make out foreign trends, some of which come from Ethiopia, standing alongside its age-old paganism. But on the cradle of Islam, on the Hedjaz and Mecca, its holy city, in the sixth century, we have nothing more than the examples of Muslim “cartographers” (The Problem of Mahomet, 1952).

In other words, there is no pre-Islamic map in the world which shows the existence of Mecca. Attempts to show that Macoraba was Mecca under another name have always been pure speculation, and have no serious evidence to back them up.

So if there is no Mecca, what is the meaning of this word, Bakka? It appears only once in the whole Qur’an (Sura III, vs.96) in the same Sura that is concerned with the return of the faithful to Jerusalem. Now, in Sura II, vss. 125 and 127, the author talks about the House—al bayt—and attributes its foundation to Abraham. It is, therefore, perfectly obvious that the “House” is in Jerusalem specifically among the ruins of the Temple. It just so happens that the word Bakka is used in the Sura in relation to the House, with the consequence that the word can only be a reference to the “valley of Baka,” which is to the north of the Hinnom Valley and to the west of Jerusalem. Indeed, the meaning is so transparent, one wonders why none of the scientific enquirers have ever even suggested it as a possibility. But there is more.

The Qur’an gives no idea of the geography or layout of Mecca, but it does give some precise information about Jerusalem, which reinforces the fact that the theme of the Qur’an is concerned up to this point with a return to Jerusalem, to the cradle of the alliance made between God on the one hand, and Abraham and his son Ismael, on the other.

In Sura II, vs.158 the author refers to as-safa, which is the Hebrew transposition of ha-sophim. meaning “the sentry.” It just so happens that to the north of Jerusalem, there is a hill which is connected to the Mount of Olives, which is rendered in Greek as skopos. It is to be found in rabbinical literature, and is a point where one can overview Jerusalem as from a watchtower. Skopos is Greek for “sentry.”

Again, when the Quranic author promises his faithful in Sura IV, vs.13 and elsewhere, that they "will enter gardens—janna—where rivers flow underground— min tahtiha,” he is not writing mere literature. It is an exact description of the irrigation system of the Jerusalem of his time!

Last Edited by <JADR> on 02/09/2011 04:46 AM

So there you have it people - Islam is the most likely invention of a megalomaniac Christian Arab monk.

Last Edited by <JADR> on 02/09/2011 05:47 AM

..."Finally, let us look at the problem of the Ka ‘ba, the stone temple or House of God, which is to be found in the middle of the mosque of Mecca (see magazine cover), and which is the most important shrine in the Islamic world. Since Mecca did not exist, we have to ask ourselves what the word Ka ’ba meant to the Quranic author.

It is first mentioned in Sura IV, vs.6. It means “cube”—kubos in Greek—and pertains to the foundation stone of a house. Fr. Jomier in his article “Ka’ba,” says that the word “comes from the more or less ‘cubic’ form of this sanctuary.” He goes on to say that “the word was also used already to refer to specific sanctuaries of the same shape.” Br. Bruno has managed to identify two such sanctuaries: one at Petra, where the Quranic author and his faithful set out on the return to Jerusalem, and the other at the gates of Jerusalem. It is also important to note that the word Ka ‘ba appears for a fourth and final time in Sura LXXVIII, vs .33 bearing the meaning “virgins”—kawaa ‘iba. The two meanings are so radically different that we are justified to ask: “Is the Ka ‘ha “a house” or a “virgin”?

We know that the Ka ’ba was always associated with the esplanade maqam of Abraham, such that both one and the other were connected to the House— al bayta. The House is the Temple at Jerusalem and the maqam is the courtyard of the Temple—that is to say, the sacred Rock of Mount Moria. Thus, if we want to find the real origin of the Ka ’ba, we need to be looking at Jerusalem.

From a homily of St. Germain of Constantinople (634—733). concerned with the Dormition of our Lady and the transportation of her body from her home in Holy Zion to her "tomb" in Gethsemani. we learn that along this route there is a monument known in Greek as Kubos. He says: It is along the route followed by the funeral cortege, going down the valley of josaphat. that there is to be found a monument in the form of a cube... [It] is at the center of this cube that there is the venerated column which commemorates the miracle wrought in the healing of the impious Jew.

We also find the monk Epiphany, on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the seventh century, describing this monument with the word: tetrakoinin. He states, “It is a cubic edifice with four columns and crowned by a cupola.” Fr. Daniel (1099—1185) is even more precise:

It is 100 yards from the gates of the City (Jerusalem) to the place where Jephonias [the High Priest—Ed.] tried to throw down the body of the Holy Mother of God from her stretcher, who was being taken by the apostles to Gethsemani. An angel appeared, cutting off his two hands with a sword, and leaving his hands fixed to the stretcher. Fr. Daniel adds: “From this point to the tomb of the Holy Mother of God is 200 yards.” This allows us to situate precisely this cubic monument outside the Beautiful Gate on the eastern side of the Holy City. The miracle referred to by St. Germain is that “the impious Jew,” Jephonias, had his hands restored, and converted to the Catholic Church. Thus the apparent riddle is easy to solve.

In reparation for the attack on Our Lady, the Christians of Jerusalem put up a monument in her honor. The High Priest, Jephonias, came to it and was miraculously healed. It is plausible that during the seventh century, in the time of Epiphany, the Muslims still maintained respect and veneration for this holy place, kubos, consecrated to the Virgin, ka ’ba, and vilifying the impious action of Jephonias.

In this way, we see how easily the cube could become a virgin. The hypothesis at this stage for the good monk is that the Muslims took the Kubos to be a symbol of the House of Abraham, and thus transported it (or simply its base) at another date for reasons unknown. Of course, it could be that the Ka ‘ba in Mecca has wholly different origins, which have no connection whatever with the Qur’an."

I need to Learn more French...

Read the article - 2nd link - it pretty much resumes the video!

Long story short, anything after the old testament is propaganda used to cause Arabs, Jews, and Christians to hate each other.
Which means the "DeviL" is really any religious leaders propping up anything newer then the old testament.

Cool story. And what are Judaism / Christianity according to Brother Bruno?

Thanks, very interesting.

Why don't you ask him.

If that is what you understood from the article, then I advise you to read again.

Because he wears a 10th century monastery robe.

If he wants me to take him seriously he should make a scientific exegesis on his own religion before shitting on someone else's parade.

The scientific exegesis of the new and old testaments are old news in the Christian and Jewish faith - it's been done many times ...

Last Edited by <JADR> on 02/09/2011 08:57 AM