Is the K'oran really a great book?

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I don't speak Arabic, but frankly the book is a bit s**t in English. It's ugly, vague and ends every bloody line with "God is All-Knowing". Is it really a good read in Arabic? Is it up there with Ulysses, or any other book with brilliant literary structure?

It depends very much on your definition of "great book". I frankly hated and despised Ulysses, which already meansd we have different standards.

The Qur'an is a compilation of texts of uneven length, delivered by / to Muhammad over a period of years and collected after his departure by those who had heard them from his mouth.

In the form in which we have it it is composed in what technically we would have to call a pre-Classical Arabic - though the Classical is largely modelled on it, not too far linguistically from the earliest documents we have. It appears to have a few traits from Muhammad's native dialect.

It is near verse, rhymed but not quite metrical, very much like Southern preacher prose with rhyme added.

In content, literary art is not its goal; it is more polemic than narrative, and each surah addresses specific issues. A collectioon of Marx's letters might be a closer parallel than Mein Kampf.

Its form does definitely give it a force in the Arabic lacking in translation, but it is not going to be a good read in trhe aesthetic sense. It needs to be read as scripture, as a supplement to and in the context of history, as a tool for understanding Muhammad and seeing whence some of the features of the various strains of contemporary Islam derive.

Thus it is certainly an important book, whatever your stannce on "great".

I thought it was a good read; though I am sure it loses something in translation; it was still ok though.

I am also not much a fan of Ulysses... but I still love reading Cicero.

I rather enjoyed Cicero's mind, though not quite mine. But his rhetoric is a bear! That was independent study. We moved between 11th and 12th grade. In school A, 3rd and 4th year Latin were doing the Aeneid - that and Cicero in alternate years. In school B 3rd and 4th year were doing the Aeneid. I sat in class for the interaction and read Cicero friom the Extension.

It must be a strange thing... to be the least corrupt man left in a burning democracy... the only Caesar without an army and the only Brutus without a dagger.

Thanks for the great response, you are the ideal person to reply, given your background into linguistics. Although it's aside from the point, I found Ulysses a bit impenetrable, although the language was pretty beautiful in itself.

So it's pretty much a book that is only beautiful to a believer, or someone who finds meaning in its words. For example, I don't find Marx's politics agreeable, but some of what he says is extremely profound. To someone unmoved by his words, his writing would be so - so (or at least definitely along the lines of the archetypical "southern preacher".)

I ask the question because a Muslim Debater in our college argued the book was so well written, so perfect that it is proof that Allah himself dictated it. Naturally, I felt a little excluded due to the fact my Arabic is awful, so I was wondering if the book really did have the fantastic structure and articulation necessary to constitute any kind of proof. Your response leads me to believe its literary structure is nothing special in itself, and he was convinced by the meaning that he extrapolated made him find it so beautiful. Someone could easily claim Also Sprach Zarathusthra to have the same virtues.

I have the same opinion of Beethoven's 9th Symphony... it does not say much of his religion... but a great deal of his inspiration.

That's a very common claim made by Muslim apologists. IIRC the Koran itself actually includes a challenge to later generations to produce any piece of writing in a similar style, and the (alleged) failure of anyone to do so is taken as proof that the Koran could not have been written by humans. All nonsense of course.

It is large.

No artist can ever be completely emulated. Take the Warsaw Concerto; a company wanted to commission Rachmaninoff to write something for a movie, he declided, so they brought in someone to try emulate him. You could tell in half a second Rach didn't write it himself. Then there are Samuel Ireland's Shakespeare Forgeries... The bottom line is the limitations of a forger do not equate to "God Did It!" Your post does explain how he came up with such an "inspired argument" though; the K'oran taught him it

It is large...therefore, god is large?

His Ego at least.

Whatever I may think of Joyce - and believe me I do - no one can deny his way with the language.

The parts of the Qur;'an I have been through in the original vary as to language, but it would be hard not to feel the power of Al-Fatiha, the opening sura, to be recited at the outset of any journey or undertaking, Bi-smi-llahi rraHmaani rraHiim ...That if nothing else has power, and considered as near-prose it is at the poetic and devotional level of the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer.

Morbidly obese, even

It's at its most beautiful as calligraphy or singing.

The words themselves are just polemical and nothing especially beautiful. If you believe every word of it, though, I suppose it becomes beautiful. Some of it does have 'power', which is a difficult thing to define in language.

'A holy book only a believer could love'

Right on.

Not even the Japanese can beat Arabic calligraphy, by me. I always regretted I do not have the eye-hand coordination to come close. In Roman script I don't mind my internationall notorious lousy handwriting that the teachers gave up on in 2nd grade, but I WISH I could make Arabic look good. When I write Arabic people aren't always sure I am not doing English, and vice versa.

As for the foirmal recitation - I had almost forgotten that, have not heard it for years. Again in my view, it beats the Jewish equivalent, at least the European version thatr is all I have heard, all hollow. I have heard some Syriac scripture reading from the eastern churches, not unlike the Qur'an reading. Have not heard enough to decide which is best.