SUBSTITUTION OF FOREING VOCABULARY IN NEW TESTAMENT A CASE STUDY OF THE ORIENTALISTS' APPROACH TO THE DIFFERENCE OF THE QURANIC READINGS

The issue of differences in Qur’anic readings has long been an important issue in the discussion of Qur’anic sciences and has been addressed by Islamic thinkers and commentators. Differences in readings are not a complicated issue for Muslim scholars; but in recent times, this issue has become very immense in the eyes of orientalists and a lot of research has been devoted to it in the West. One of the recent approaches of Orientalists to determine the correct reading is to employ words from non-Arabic languages, such as Hebrew, Syriac, Nabataean, and so on. The approach of substituting the foreing vocabulary has also been used by New Testament scholars and has been proposed as criteria such as the criterion of the Greek language and its context and the criterion of the Semitic phenomenon (Aramaic) or the environmental characteristics of Palestine. The leading article has explained this approach in the Qur'an and the New Testament in a descriptive-analytical way and has evaluated and criticized its application in the issue of differences in Qur'anic readings. The results of this study show that, however, the importance of this approach and its success in critical New Testament studies should not be overlooked. However, its application in cases of differences in Qur'anic readings is faced with problems such as incorrect generalization, disconnection from objective and historical understanding, the illusion of public conspiracy, being more ambiguous and confusing than the official recitation of the Qur'an and invalidating the readings’ document.