11-02-2004, 08:04 PM
It's elementary....Arabic was the last of the Semitic group of languages to be written, it was most likely the last to be developed to any degree past simple grunts.
Hehehe. You're very humorous when it comes to the Arabs.
Think about it for one second. Arabic became a literary language in the 7th century A.D. Akkadian texts, written in Cuneiform, exist from the 3rd Millenium B.C. Think about that time period....OVER three thousand years of written civilization and linguistic heritage.
Actually, the earliest known Arabic forms are names that occur in Assyrian records of the eighth century BC, but the oldest texts, which are wall inscriptions, are from the Sinai peninsula and dated about the third century AD.
Writing and reading was rare amongst the Arabs, especially since writing materials was expensive and scarce. I suppose the Bedouins, whose memories were the written page, must pale against the glorious Akkadians to you. But they were able to constantly refine their language because of their intense poetic competitions.
What were the Arabs doing all that time? Well, if they didn't come along till Ishmael (the first "Arab") was born, that wasn't until 1,800 B.C.
Remember the Nabateans?
That leaves the Arabs with 2,400 years of illiteracy...chasing lizards in the desert.
<!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
What does Arabic have to do with anything? For Chrissakes, the Lebanese taught the Greeks to read 1,000 years before Arabic finally became written down. Even the Greeks were literate before the Arabs.[/quote]
Yeah yeah.
"The method of transmitting the Qur'an from one generation to the next by having the young memorise the oral recitation of their elders had mitigated somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on written records . . .John Burton, An Introduction To The Hadith, 1994, Edinburgh University Press, p. 27.
Writing is not relevant to our present discussion
Hehehe. You're very humorous when it comes to the Arabs.
Think about it for one second. Arabic became a literary language in the 7th century A.D. Akkadian texts, written in Cuneiform, exist from the 3rd Millenium B.C. Think about that time period....OVER three thousand years of written civilization and linguistic heritage.
Actually, the earliest known Arabic forms are names that occur in Assyrian records of the eighth century BC, but the oldest texts, which are wall inscriptions, are from the Sinai peninsula and dated about the third century AD.
Writing and reading was rare amongst the Arabs, especially since writing materials was expensive and scarce. I suppose the Bedouins, whose memories were the written page, must pale against the glorious Akkadians to you. But they were able to constantly refine their language because of their intense poetic competitions.
What were the Arabs doing all that time? Well, if they didn't come along till Ishmael (the first "Arab") was born, that wasn't until 1,800 B.C.
Remember the Nabateans?
That leaves the Arabs with 2,400 years of illiteracy...chasing lizards in the desert.
<!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
What does Arabic have to do with anything? For Chrissakes, the Lebanese taught the Greeks to read 1,000 years before Arabic finally became written down. Even the Greeks were literate before the Arabs.[/quote]
Yeah yeah.
"The method of transmitting the Qur'an from one generation to the next by having the young memorise the oral recitation of their elders had mitigated somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on written records . . .John Burton, An Introduction To The Hadith, 1994, Edinburgh University Press, p. 27.
Writing is not relevant to our present discussion
???Do not give up, for that is ignorance and not according to the rules of this art... Like the lover, you cannot hope to achieve success without infinite perseverance.???