The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
~ 66 ~
550 words in the New Testament - about 12% of the
entire text - was not known. At that time a German
expert, Adolf Deissman, discovered some ancient
scrolls in Egypt. From them it emerged that biblical
Greek was in fact a colloquial version of classical
Greek. This language was spoken in Palestine
during the first century AD. Deissman was able to
attach meanings to some of the unknown words,
but there are another fifty words whose meanings
are still unknown.
(The Gospels and the Jesus of
History,
by Xavier Leon-Dufour S.J.)
Ernest Renan (1823-1894) carried out extensive
research on Semitic languages. He wrote a book on
their vocabularies, in which he had this to say about
the Arabic language:
“The Arabic language is the most astonishing
event of human history. Unknown during the
classical period, it suddenly emerged as a
complete language. After this, it did not
undergo any noticeable changes, so one
cannot define for it an early or a late stage. It
is just the same today as it was when it first
appeared.”
