My response to Ammar Khatib:
He says regarding some early scholars’ rejection of some readings: ((these scholars were not questioning the authenticity of the Qur'anic text but rather the transmission of the reading... https://twitter.com/ShAmmarKhatib1/status/1311878399292448768

and that the reading was actually a mistake made by a successor in his recitation. ))
The modern standard narrative says that every variant in the canonical readings is mass-transmitted by generations of reciters that go back to the time of the prophet.

By admitting that early scholars considered some of these variants to be mistakes in transmission, this means these variants weren’t mass-transmitted because if they were then these scholars would have never considered them to be mistakes in transmission.

Khatib doesn’t believe that every variant in the canonical readings is mass-transmitted. Although some non-early classical scholars shared his opinion, this is not the standard narrative today which is what I have in mind when I write my posts.

The majority of Muslim readers believe in this standard narrative so I always care to address the opinion of the majority.
Khatib says: ((The issue here is some people are claiming that the understanding of every single Muslim scholar in the early centuries of Islam...

was "that the reading traditions aren’t entirely divine and that many reading variants were introduced by humans".
This is completely WRONG.))
As for the first part: “the reading traditions aren’t entirely divine”, Khatib has acknowledged that early scholars’ criticism of...

readings means they considered these readings to be mistakes in transmission which makes such readings non-divine.
It’s impossible to prove that every Muslim scholar at the time believed in the existence of mistakes in transmission. But what I can prove is that...

the general scholarly stance didn’t have a problem with this claim. What evidence do you need more than the fact that Ibn Mujahid himself, the one who canonized the 7 readings, rejected a number of variants that were in the very 7 readings that he canonized?.

For example, “Kun fayakuunu” in verse 2:117 is in the nominative. But in the canonical reading of Ibn 'aamir it's in the accusative: kun fayakuuna.
Ibn Mujahid says: This is a mistake.

Today if a Quran teacher in a mosque said that this variant is a mistake, he would get fired. But Ibn Mujahid and many other scholars and grammarians from that time had no issue in stating such opinions. And the fact that a large portion of such criticisms came from...

a major scholar like Al-Tabari should be very telling. Imagine if a major modern scholar like Ibn Baz criticized hundreds of variants from the ten readings. That would mean the general scholarly stance in modern Saudi Arabia has no issue with the idea that the ten readings...

aren’t entirely divine.
The second part of my claim was that early scholars believed that many reading variants were introduced by humans. Now this includes mistakes in transmission and deliberate introductions. Can I prove that the general stance of early scholars...

acknowledged that many variants were deliberately introduced?. This one is harder to prove because I need to scan a huge number of criticisms of readings to see who explicitly stated that the variant he’s criticizing was made up.

But I have such examples from the earliest two exegetes: Al-Faraa’ and Al-Tabari. I showed Khatib some of these examples and he said this doesn’t prove that Al-Tabari approved of this. And he quoted Al-Tabari saying that one shouldn’t read in a variant just because...

it’s correct in Arabic. This is an unnecessary deflection. At the time of Al-Tabari (third century) the reading traditions were already established so I don’t think new variants were being made by that time.What matters here is that Al-Tabari believes that the reading masters...

did come up with many variants by themselves. Which means he believes that the reading traditions have variants that were deliberately introduced by humans. In my original statement I didn’t say anything about early scholars approving of this practice.

They acknowledged it. Although some approved reading the Quran by paraphrasing the meaning, this is a different issue that requires a different discussion.
Khatib cites a number of reports where reading masters say the reading tradition is a practice to be followed.

I do believe that they followed an oral tradition because if they didn’t then we would have had a much larger number of disputed variants in the canonical readings.
But was this oral tradition comprehensive enough to prevent the creation of new readings...

due to the ambiguity of the defective Uthmanic script?. No. And was it precise enough to prevent mistakes in transmission? No.

In the next part tomorrow I will discuss Khatib's response to the contradiction between the readings of إلا امرأتك.