Confusion and the Quran

A new translation of the Quran. - By Reza Aslan - Slate Magazine

I've noted before that the Quran is difficult to read as it is not a narrative, or laid out in any other logical or consistent style. This article in Slate goes into more detail about its confusing and highly uncertain nature.

I hadn't heard this before:

....Sura 4:34, which has long been interpreted as allowing husbands to beat their wives: "As for those women who might rebel against you, admonish them, abandon them in their beds, and strike them (adribuhunna)." The problem, as a number of female Quranic scholars have noted, is that adribuhunna can also mean "turn away from them." It can even mean "have sexual intercourse with them."

Well, to say the least, that's a rather wide range of possible interpretations. (Rather like the issue as to whether the martyrs are to expect virgins or grapes in Heaven.)

The article notes that an author of a new translation tries to paint this confusing and mystifying nature of the book in a positive light:

It is through the attempt to make sense of our confusions, to work through them with reason and with faith, that the Quran's dramatic monologue transforms into an eternal dialogue between humanity and God. Indeed, of all the sacred texts of the world, Khalidi argues that the Quran is perhaps the one that most self-consciously invites the reader to engage with it, to challenge it, to ponder and to debate it. After all, as the Quran itself states, only God knows what it truly means.

Well, if true, this would suggest that it's a religion primed for liberalising interpretations. But the situation in the real world is quite to the contrary.

It also seems a bit mean-spirited of God to deliver his word via a language which is (apparently) especially capable of misinterpretation.