The Lost Archive
Missing for a half century, a cache of photos
spurs sensitive research on Islam’s holy text

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God’s word. The wartime destruction made the project “outright impossible,” Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s. Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars — and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

OK. And the point is…?

According to Islamic orthodoxy, the Quran is a verbatim record of direct revelation. No changes. No editing. No revisions. Pristine, from Allah to Mohammed to the book.

Evidence of an evolutionary progression of ancient texts into the current book directly undermines the claims of Islam to absolute and unchangeable truth. Too bad, reality is a bitch!