Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A Blunder in the Qur'an

Okay, so the following is not really about a blunder in the Qur'an. It is about a blunder in my copy of Yusuf Ali's The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an: New Edition with Revised Translation, Commentary and Newly Compiled Comprehensive Index (amana publications).

I've read and referred to YA's translation (among others) a lot over the years, but I only recently noticed that my copy has a numbering error in Surah 6. After properly enumerating verses 1-120 it suddenly skips to 140. At first I thought a camel might have snuck in and ate some of the verses - either that or my dog did it, proving that she really will eat anything, however distatsteful it might be - but after picking up a copy of Muhammad Asad's translation which was close at hand, I discovered they were all there and were only wrongly numbered.

3 comments:

Yahya Snow said...

"a camel"???

Do I hint a stereotype here?

Anthony Rogers said...

Not if you know waht the word "stereotype" means.

Anthony Rogers said...

Oh, I think I see what you are getting at now. Apparently you misread it as a stab at Middle Eastern culture. Actually, it is an allusion to the story of an animal eating part of the Qur'an. I know it was actually a tame sheep, but I imagine a camel or two got their grub on as well.