There is a work on the origins of the Quran by Alan Dundes, now sadly, deceased. It is a slim paperback titled “Folklore in the Quran” published shortly before his death in 2003. Dundes was the greatly respected professor of Anthropology and Folklore at the University of California Berkeley.
A brief visit can still be had with him in the extras on the DVD “The God Who Wasn’t There”. I think that is, perhaps, the best single thing on the DVD although lots of the disk is good. It introduced me to Dundes, Richard Carrier and Robert Price among others but I digress.
In the introduction he explains that he discovered no research of this sort had ever been done before and he learned from friends and associates that it was something he shouldn’t do. It might be considered demeaning to the Quran, a form of “disparagement” and thus even be dangerous to his continued existence. He ignored the warnings and did the research. The book is written quite differently than his earlier work on the bible, “The Holy Writ as Oral Lit”! He is very circumspect but makes his points never the less.
So given the threats made when one “disparages” the Quran does anyone think it even slightly possible that we could find 100 scholars to join a “Muhammad Seminar” as they did in the “Jesus Seminar”?
NOT A CHANCE!!
But Dundes work is a excellent start. He finds many puzzling inconsistencies in the Quran.
I don’t intend to recite Dundes work here but one point will serve to demonstrate its content.
Muhammad was purportedly illiterate, he could neither read nor write. This is important Dundes says, (page 2) because in that situation he was a blank slate for the Angel Gabriel to act upon. Yes the very same Angel who carried the word of God to the prophet Daniel, announced the birth of John the Baptist, and told Mary of the impending birth of her son Jesus.
How do we know that Muhammad could neither read nor write, the Quran tell us it is so! 
(Surah 29 “The Spider”, 29:48) But in Surah 96 the very first supposedly given to him by the Angel he is commanded to “read”, 96:1. (another translation is “recite” but that makes less sense, admittedly in English.) and then in the many accounts of the day of Judgment, “Resurrection Day” Dundes says each believer is given a book and commanded “Read thy Book” (17:12, 69:19 cf 17:71) difficult if not impossible for those who can’t read.
I am disappointed that serious study of the Quran as a historical document has not been done but it will not be so long as threats of death hover over those who embark upon such a study.
Let me say this about myself. I do not believe in any sort of Deity. I think that what we have discovered about the world and ourselves in the past 71 years, my lifetime, explains scientifically many of the things that were a cause of religious belief in the ancient past. We know the earth’s age from radioactive Isotopic dating of the oldest rocks we can find, (those are about 3.65 Billion years old give or take a few hundred million years and were found in Australia.) We know that the universe is 13 to 14 Billion years old and we know what stars are not, holes in the blanket of the night letting the light of day peek through.
I think if we don’t somehow eliminate theocracies, religious education in the place of public education, and in this country stop home schooling, we are well down the road to our destruction as a species. Does anyone who read this think we can manage even one of the above goals? I repeat our family phrase “NOT A CHANCE”
Jim
