Ancient text translation errors left enduring problems.

This seems to be the season, or perhaps the age, for discussing virgins. I say “age” due to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and their suicide-homicides, or as they would say, their “martyrdom” and associated heavenly rewards of seventy-two virgins. It would seem that at particular times over the past few years certain vapors may in fact have been clouds of damsels rising with their successfully atomized heroes for bliss in the afterlife. Or was that something the bombers would find less desirable drifting skyward with them? More on this later. 

There was a time when it would have been bad manners in my part of the world to have made mention of virgins, except in the sterile context of “round yon virgin” that we sang of at Christmas. During those years I had only a bare clue as to what a virgin was. I think I may have felt vaguely uneasy asking questions on the subject and it seemed never to occur to my contemporaries to do so, probably for the same reasons.

Now the Chistmas season is here again and there are multiple daily reminders of the “round young virgin, mother and child.” We sing her praises and the season lifts our hearts and raises our spirits. This joy is real and apparently not necessarily dependent on anything that happened a couple of millennium ago, as non-Christian persuasions often join in the festivities and enjoy the carolling as well.   

I know little about translating ancient texts, so have to depend on others who are experts in the field, or who research others in the field. It seems that when it comes to virgins, according to these experts, the original translators of ancient texts had a penchant for stumbling badly. And once something (particularly of an imputed magical quality) is set in motion, inertia is a very powerful force. A number of modern linguists have questioned the older translations that rendered “virgin” from the original text. This new work shows more contextual and lingual sense by translating the text to “young woman” rather than to “virgin.”  Certainly, it makes more sense physiologically. The odds of a “young woman” having a child are far greater if you put that meaning to the translation rather than “virgin”.  And no harm has to be done to the laws of biology for this translation to function with physiological perfection.

Another case of apparent linguistic translation failure with regards to virgins springs from the Islamic insistence that the Kur’an promises 72 dark-eyed virgins for each martyr in heaven.¹

Christoph Luxenberg’s book, “Die syro-aramaische lesart des Qur’an (Berlin:Das Arabische Buch, 2000) has had an enthusiastic reception among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages. Luxenberg tries to show that many of the obscurities of the Qur’an disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. [His] new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields ‘white raisins’ of ‘cristal clarity’ rather than doe-eyed and ever-willing virgins—the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offered, and not unsullied maidens or houris. In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning ‘white’ with the word raisin understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as sura76, verse 19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning ‘chilled raisins (or drinks)’ that the Just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the ‘boiling drinks’ promised to the unfaithful and damned.”

So it would seem, according to Ibn Warraq, that the suicide bombers would do well to concentrate on getting themselves laid seventy two times in this world, unless they really prefer chilled or white raisins in the next. 

¹Ibn Warraq, Free Inquiry December, January, 2006 These passages concerning 72 Virgins are actually found in The Traditions rather than in the Kur’an.

© 2005 R. Leland Waldrip