The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an: The Book of God
~ 57 ~
SUPERIORITY OF THE QUR’AN
The very language in which it is written – Arabic –
is a kind of miracle, being an astonishing exception
to the historical rule that a language cannot survive
in the same form for more than 500 years. In the
course of five centuries, a language changes so
radically that the coming generations find it
increasingly difficult to understand the works of
their distant predecessors. For instance, the works
of Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400), the father of
English poetry, and the plays and poetry Of
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), one of the
greatest writers of the English language, have
become almost unintelligible to twentieth century
readers, and are now read almost exclusively as
part of college curricula with the help of glossaries,
dictionaries and ‘translations.’
But the history of the Arabic language is strikingly
different, having withstood the test of time for no
less than 1500 years. Wording and style have, of
course, undergone some development, but not to
such an extent that words should lose their
original meaning. Supposing someone belonging
