This actually seems really easy. The writing style alone of the Quran is very distinctive.
(I got one wrong out of eighteen, but that one was because the verse from the Bible had the word "God" in brackets, which is the usual convention for a word not being present in the original text. )
The point is less about style/punctuation and more about thematic content - they're similar texts with similar stories and overtones. Just 2 different groups of people using these similar texts to justify very different (how different?) cultural and societal norms because they are "God's will".
I can't see how two texts that differ by ~1500 years (in the case of the old testament and the q'uran) and ~500 (new testament and q'uran) can be such "similar texts".
Truth is, they aren't of course, and that if you weren't using (like they are doing in the site) relatively modern translations of the originals that bring the two texts a big together, it would be immediate to see which was which.
All in all and putting it simply, they were written in very different periods which means that they were written by very different people of very different cultures.
I don't think they are very similar texts at all, have you read both?
The old testament is a compendium of an entire people's history over a significant period of time; with one of the primary themes being the this-worldly reward for correctness / obedience of God's Law where disasters and tragedy indicate the deviance or transgression from the Law. The Quran is a revelatory text from a single generation, revealed by God to Muhammad, primarily providing divine justification for Muhammad's conquests and further expansion.
If your intent is to suggest they are similar as in terms of laying down God's law and Morality - sure: but that's the essence of monotheistic religion more generally.
I've read both. Yes, similar in laying out God's vision of morality and justice through parables and stories.
This is the goal explicitly stated on the website:
The mission of BibleOrQuran is to educate people about the true nature and content of the Bible and Qur'an. False statements such as "81% of the Qur'an is about killing infidels!" and "The bible teaches only peace!" are commonly thrown around with little evidence to back them up. Despite their lack of credibility, however, they still continue to polarize and cause irrational hate and fear. We hope that by showing random Bible or Qur'an passages, we show how similar the two texts are and allay many of the fears of Islam and its teachings.
> False statements such as "81% of the Qur'an is about killing infidels!" and "The bible teaches only peace!" are commonly thrown around with little evidence to back them up.
We must be engaged in conversations with very different interlocutors, at least I don't know of anyone claiming things akin to the above. The new testament may be peaceful, - but the old testament is downright bloody!
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
>The Quran is a revelatory text from a single generation, revealed by God to Muhammad, primarily providing divine justification for Muhammad's conquests and further expansion.
Quite a bit of the OT involves God instructing, encouraging, or justifying the Hebrews' conquests around the Levant.
This is, however, put forth as a story. A history. In most ways OT is no more aggressive than a book detailing any serious amount of history containing a war. It is cruel, sure, but no more than other books from that long ago or even more recent (Cicero, for instance, contains quite a few gruesome passages).
The quran, on the other hand, instructs people to war. There is no temporal dimension in the vast majority of the war, and every 50 verses or so, muslims are instructed to attack this or that.
I guess what I'm saying is that in the OT's case, especially when viewed through the interpretation the NT provides, requires quite a bit of roundabout reasoning to get it to say to make war.
In contrast, it is a quite well established fact that islam teaches eternal war ("through words when possible, militarily when necessary"). It quite directly states that anything opposing their spread is to be attacked (and yes it uses words like attacked). First with words. Then with soldiers. And then through traps and sabotage, through raids and blind destruction. Islam, and this is an incredibly well established fact, teaches that there will be war until islam reigns supreme and all dead muslims will rise again. Needless to say, there are more than a few variations on the exact mechanism, but none are peaceful.
Furthermore, islam's history (of the religion/state) is a history almost without significant periods of peace. Islam was created in a 100-150 year long war (as in the people who wrote the quran were born into a muslim-instigated set of wars, raised during war, and died during war. Several generations had that experience). Then a period with expansion wars but internally relative peace, then devolving into a millenium of constant warfare everywhere, internally and externally. That period is still going on, the violence there may have reached quite low levels since 1970 or so, but it certainly looks to be increasing again. Worse: wherever islam went, large scale massacres followed. Famously in Spain and India, but let's get real here : those are famous because they were recorded. We know, for instance, that there was an islamic massacre in Carthage. It killed or kidnapped and enslaved every last man, woman and child. Every last one. There was never any recovery and to today the city/country lies in ruins. We have plenty of reports from the Roman Empire of muslims doing that to towns, farms and cities.
Plus let's get real here. Christianity spread because it convinced the population to convert and help eachother. For the poor to work together to make life better and provide a large-scale improvement of the life of the poor in the Roman Empire. Any revolution or any form of violence would have failed, so Christians didn't do that. You might want to look up once, for instance, exactly why Nero was fiddling when Rome burnt.
Islam succeeded because it caused a millenium of large-scale wars of conquest, with constant massacres. The cases of conversion to islam without military intervention exist, but they are few and far between (and in many cases it's nobles converting to then go to war using a muslim army).
To say these ideologies are the same when it comes to war and violence, is incredibly ignorant of everything. From their own texts, their history, both from their own perspective and from other sources.
>This is, however, put forth as a story. A history. In most ways OT is no more aggressive than a book detailing any serious amount of history containing a war. It is cruel, sure, but no more than other books from that long ago or even more recent (Cicero, for instance, contains quite a few gruesome passages).
A history in which a divine being, ostensibly the only divine being, and the most powerful, knowing, and moral being in existence is a primary character. One who calls for wars and even participates in them. And who doesn't indicate if this state of war will ever end, or whether one is to behave differently if it does.
>I guess what I'm saying is that in the OT's case, especially when viewed through the interpretation the NT provides, requires quite a bit of roundabout reasoning to get it to say to make war.
I think the opposite is true. It takes minimal effort to find God commanding the Israelites to engage their enemies.
As to Islam's violent tenets and history, I don't deny its existence, but the only historical documents we have about Judaism's early days suggest that it, too, was the same at the outset. Also, as I argue below, Christianity has its share of skeletons in its closet.
>Christianity spread because it convinced the population to convert and help eachother. For the poor to work together to make life better and provide a large-scale improvement of the life of the poor in the Roman Empire.
This is a hypothesis that explains its survival during the first two centuries of its existence - one among several that is suggested by historians. It's hardly the only answer, though, and a survey of later Roman and all of Byzantine history indicates strongly that there are myriad political reasons for Christianity's subsequent survival.
One consequence of the Christianization of the Empire and the various post-Roman kingdoms is forced conversion, particularly of Jews (who also experienced plenty of systemic discrimination, violence, and social stigmatization). All of this with plenty of ecclesiastic support.
>You might want to look up once, for instance, exactly why Nero was fiddling when Rome burnt.
I suppose any reason could be posited, since this didn't happen.
I think that's the whole point. They have many similarities. The book "
Opening the Qur'an: Introducing Islam's Holy Book by
Walter H. Wagner " does a great job of introducing the quran to those coming from western point of view.
I've always wanted to jump into a project that used NLP
et al and theology/mythology experts to map thematic commonalities between the world's religions and proto-religious texts. I contacted Huston Smith a little too late.
Interesting, thanks. Does this need to do a round-trip for every question, though? Seems unnecessary, just spit out 10 of them per request or something.
I'm guessing the majority of both Christians and Muslims would admit, when not under threat of being kill for saying so, that they don't follow these books by the letter, not even half of it. What I don't get is, if you don't, why lump yourself in with the insane bunch that do? Call yourself something else (that doesn't include the original name) or, better yet, don't give yourself any label and build an modifiable set of principles based on personal experience and advice from people you respect, not commandments from people who say they know better than you.
"Modifiable" is fundamentally contradictory to a core concept of Islam; the Qur'an (mother of books) is infallible and not open to change by mankind - it has existed beside God from the beginning and transcends time. This is where it is quite radically different to Christianity (New Testament).
How could infallible information even be stored in fallible information storage units a.k.a words? Interpretation by mankind is the same thing as changing it. Anyway, I'm not saying change or amend the books. Qur'an 2.0 would be carrying forward the "Qur'an" label, the opposite of what I'm talking about. Christianity amended in the past for whatever reason but I don't think we'll see that happen again, they're playing the same game. Since the majority of of people in both camps are visibly not following these books by the letter, I think it's safe to assume most don't actually believe them 100% and should stop labeling themselves.
It's a belief system, Muslims believe it was orated to Muhammad, perfectly, without error (except that one time) - your technical view of information transfer is disingenuous with the topic at hand; just try your proposal on moderate, practising Muslims and see how far it gets.
Some of the content of the Old Testament and Qur'an are pretty explicit in their brutality so I don't see how you would get round that... Redact it?
If most Muslims believe it, why aren't most brutes? Or are most?
> (except that one time)
That made me laugh even though I don't get the reference. What is it?
Also, according to Wikipedia, the Qur'an isn't even believed to be directly written by Muhammad. Is everyone involved in it's current compilation assumed to be just as perfect as him?
Too bad the differences in translation styles make it really easy to spot which is which without even having to really read. :/ And I'm not even a native English speaker.
Interesting concept! I'm enjoying playing with it. Reminds me of a Pepsi-challenge page Microsoft set up comparing Google and Bing search results when they were launching. I went into that one expecting to be able to tell the difference, and I was right. Similar feeling here.
As others have pointed out, the internal similarities of the specific translations mean it doesn't take long for a user to be able to make calls based on style rather than content. Maybe randomizing translation as well as passage would help remove that loophole?
The UI could use some love - "input" components should be separate from "output" components. As it's designed now, I can't simply memorize blue/left means "pick Bible" and green/right means "pick Qur'an", because I have to remember that for every other click, blue/left means "get the next question" and green/right isn't a button right now; it displays my result.
Atm this feels like those implicit social cognition tests from Harvard (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html) Round 1, a pic will pop up, as fast as possible without making errors, press left arrow if it's a happy face or right arrow if it's a sad face. Round 2, keys reversed. Round 3, left for light skinned person and right for dark skinned person; Round 4, reversed. Round 5, left for a happy or light face, right for a sad or dark face. Etc. Every time the rules change, your responses slow down for a while because you have to actually process things instead of acting on instinct.
I don't want to have to think about whether the button I'm about to click will perform a "Bible" or a "Continue" action, nor do I want to look for whether or not my answer was correct in the area of the page I've mentally allocated as "Qur'an".
UI wishlist:
- Neither choice should be colored green or red; those colors have semantics attached to them. (I'd probably make them both blue, but making them different colors from each other is probably fine too)
- Ability to use the keyboard arrow keys to make a choice, for the sake of speed
- If the choice is wrong something big and red should appear (but somewhere that's NOT one of the buttons or where the passage is displayed)
- If the choice is right, something big and green could appear (but doesn't really need to - season to taste)
- No continue button at all; when will a user of this page ever not want to continue getting passages? A continue button only really matters if there's something to lose, like (for instance) using up limited time or scoring low points by getting a passage before you're ready to start
22 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 64.8 ms ] thread(I got one wrong out of eighteen, but that one was because the verse from the Bible had the word "God" in brackets, which is the usual convention for a word not being present in the original text. )
Truth is, they aren't of course, and that if you weren't using (like they are doing in the site) relatively modern translations of the originals that bring the two texts a big together, it would be immediate to see which was which.
All in all and putting it simply, they were written in very different periods which means that they were written by very different people of very different cultures.
The old testament is a compendium of an entire people's history over a significant period of time; with one of the primary themes being the this-worldly reward for correctness / obedience of God's Law where disasters and tragedy indicate the deviance or transgression from the Law. The Quran is a revelatory text from a single generation, revealed by God to Muhammad, primarily providing divine justification for Muhammad's conquests and further expansion.
If your intent is to suggest they are similar as in terms of laying down God's law and Morality - sure: but that's the essence of monotheistic religion more generally.
This is the goal explicitly stated on the website:
The mission of BibleOrQuran is to educate people about the true nature and content of the Bible and Qur'an. False statements such as "81% of the Qur'an is about killing infidels!" and "The bible teaches only peace!" are commonly thrown around with little evidence to back them up. Despite their lack of credibility, however, they still continue to polarize and cause irrational hate and fear. We hope that by showing random Bible or Qur'an passages, we show how similar the two texts are and allay many of the fears of Islam and its teachings.
We must be engaged in conversations with very different interlocutors, at least I don't know of anyone claiming things akin to the above. The new testament may be peaceful, - but the old testament is downright bloody!
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Quite a bit of the OT involves God instructing, encouraging, or justifying the Hebrews' conquests around the Levant.
The quran, on the other hand, instructs people to war. There is no temporal dimension in the vast majority of the war, and every 50 verses or so, muslims are instructed to attack this or that.
I guess what I'm saying is that in the OT's case, especially when viewed through the interpretation the NT provides, requires quite a bit of roundabout reasoning to get it to say to make war.
In contrast, it is a quite well established fact that islam teaches eternal war ("through words when possible, militarily when necessary"). It quite directly states that anything opposing their spread is to be attacked (and yes it uses words like attacked). First with words. Then with soldiers. And then through traps and sabotage, through raids and blind destruction. Islam, and this is an incredibly well established fact, teaches that there will be war until islam reigns supreme and all dead muslims will rise again. Needless to say, there are more than a few variations on the exact mechanism, but none are peaceful.
Furthermore, islam's history (of the religion/state) is a history almost without significant periods of peace. Islam was created in a 100-150 year long war (as in the people who wrote the quran were born into a muslim-instigated set of wars, raised during war, and died during war. Several generations had that experience). Then a period with expansion wars but internally relative peace, then devolving into a millenium of constant warfare everywhere, internally and externally. That period is still going on, the violence there may have reached quite low levels since 1970 or so, but it certainly looks to be increasing again. Worse: wherever islam went, large scale massacres followed. Famously in Spain and India, but let's get real here : those are famous because they were recorded. We know, for instance, that there was an islamic massacre in Carthage. It killed or kidnapped and enslaved every last man, woman and child. Every last one. There was never any recovery and to today the city/country lies in ruins. We have plenty of reports from the Roman Empire of muslims doing that to towns, farms and cities.
Plus let's get real here. Christianity spread because it convinced the population to convert and help eachother. For the poor to work together to make life better and provide a large-scale improvement of the life of the poor in the Roman Empire. Any revolution or any form of violence would have failed, so Christians didn't do that. You might want to look up once, for instance, exactly why Nero was fiddling when Rome burnt.
Islam succeeded because it caused a millenium of large-scale wars of conquest, with constant massacres. The cases of conversion to islam without military intervention exist, but they are few and far between (and in many cases it's nobles converting to then go to war using a muslim army).
To say these ideologies are the same when it comes to war and violence, is incredibly ignorant of everything. From their own texts, their history, both from their own perspective and from other sources.
A history in which a divine being, ostensibly the only divine being, and the most powerful, knowing, and moral being in existence is a primary character. One who calls for wars and even participates in them. And who doesn't indicate if this state of war will ever end, or whether one is to behave differently if it does.
>I guess what I'm saying is that in the OT's case, especially when viewed through the interpretation the NT provides, requires quite a bit of roundabout reasoning to get it to say to make war.
I think the opposite is true. It takes minimal effort to find God commanding the Israelites to engage their enemies.
As to Islam's violent tenets and history, I don't deny its existence, but the only historical documents we have about Judaism's early days suggest that it, too, was the same at the outset. Also, as I argue below, Christianity has its share of skeletons in its closet.
>Christianity spread because it convinced the population to convert and help eachother. For the poor to work together to make life better and provide a large-scale improvement of the life of the poor in the Roman Empire.
This is a hypothesis that explains its survival during the first two centuries of its existence - one among several that is suggested by historians. It's hardly the only answer, though, and a survey of later Roman and all of Byzantine history indicates strongly that there are myriad political reasons for Christianity's subsequent survival.
One consequence of the Christianization of the Empire and the various post-Roman kingdoms is forced conversion, particularly of Jews (who also experienced plenty of systemic discrimination, violence, and social stigmatization). All of this with plenty of ecclesiastic support.
>You might want to look up once, for instance, exactly why Nero was fiddling when Rome burnt.
I suppose any reason could be posited, since this didn't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah_in_Islam
Some of the content of the Old Testament and Qur'an are pretty explicit in their brutality so I don't see how you would get round that... Redact it?
> (except that one time)
That made me laugh even though I don't get the reference. What is it?
Also, according to Wikipedia, the Qur'an isn't even believed to be directly written by Muhammad. Is everyone involved in it's current compilation assumed to be just as perfect as him?
As others have pointed out, the internal similarities of the specific translations mean it doesn't take long for a user to be able to make calls based on style rather than content. Maybe randomizing translation as well as passage would help remove that loophole?
The UI could use some love - "input" components should be separate from "output" components. As it's designed now, I can't simply memorize blue/left means "pick Bible" and green/right means "pick Qur'an", because I have to remember that for every other click, blue/left means "get the next question" and green/right isn't a button right now; it displays my result.
Atm this feels like those implicit social cognition tests from Harvard (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html) Round 1, a pic will pop up, as fast as possible without making errors, press left arrow if it's a happy face or right arrow if it's a sad face. Round 2, keys reversed. Round 3, left for light skinned person and right for dark skinned person; Round 4, reversed. Round 5, left for a happy or light face, right for a sad or dark face. Etc. Every time the rules change, your responses slow down for a while because you have to actually process things instead of acting on instinct.
I don't want to have to think about whether the button I'm about to click will perform a "Bible" or a "Continue" action, nor do I want to look for whether or not my answer was correct in the area of the page I've mentally allocated as "Qur'an".
UI wishlist:
- Neither choice should be colored green or red; those colors have semantics attached to them. (I'd probably make them both blue, but making them different colors from each other is probably fine too)
- Ability to use the keyboard arrow keys to make a choice, for the sake of speed
- If the choice is wrong something big and red should appear (but somewhere that's NOT one of the buttons or where the passage is displayed)
- If the choice is right, something big and green could appear (but doesn't really need to - season to taste)
- No continue button at all; when will a user of this page ever not want to continue getting passages? A continue button only really matters if there's something to lose, like (for instance) using up limited time or scoring low points by getting a passage before you're ready to start