Scientific Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

Mountains nonetheless continue to rise and erode to this day. Similarly, living things and their sustenance continue to evolve, yet the Qur'an says that the creation of mountains and sustenance occurred in a specific period during the six days of creation. See the next section regarding the final two of the six days ({{Quran-range|41|11|12}}) which immediately follow the verses discussed above, and another verse which confirms this sequence.

Academic scholarship has identified a late antique Christian homilitic precedent for these enigmatic verses. Basil the Great of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia (d. 379 CE) understood Isaiah 51:6 in the Bible to mean that the heaven was initially made from a smoke-like substance (he used the Septuagint Greek translation which says the heaven as smoke [ὡς καπνός] was made firm [ἐστερεώθη], whereas the Hebrew verse says vanished like smoke).<ref>[https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/32011.htm Hexaemeron, Homily 1:8] - New Advent church fathers website</ref><ref>Julien Decharneux (2023), Creation and Contemplation: The Cosmology of the Qur’ān and Its Late Antique Background, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 128-9</ref>

{{Quran|21|104}} and {{Quran|39|67}} state that the heavens will be 'rolled up' come the day of judgement, implying their corporeality and two dimensional form.

{{Main|Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth}}The Qur'an assumes and describes a flat-Earth cosmography according to multiple academic studies. The later idea that Islamic scriptures themselves indicated a spherical Earth was a creative act of reinterpretation when Islamic scholars encountered advances in astronomy. Attempts to explain Quranic verses about the Earth only in terms of local flatness at a human level, non-literal readings, and/or by ignoring context, are often challenged by critics, as discussed in the [[Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth|main article]], which also contains further evidence and verses beyond those listed here.

The Qur'an instructs Muslims to fast by abstaining from food and drink from sunrise till sunset during Ramadan. In the polar regions there are six months of sunlight and six months of perpetual night during Summer and Winter. Such fasting is not practicable for anyone living in the polar regions, and very easy (depth of Winter) or extremely hard (height of Summer) in places within around 40 degrees latitude of the poles. Various rules have been contrived by Muslim scholars for people at such latitudes to try to accommodate the (here inconvenient) fact that we live on a round Earth.

A common interpretation advocated by Muslim scholars today is that this refers to a fringe Arab Christian sect known as the Collyridians. However, this sect were only mentioned in a 4th century CE book on heresies. The most plausible interpretation proposed so far by academic scholars interprets these verses as a response to a Byzantine theological dispute and contemporary war propaganda (or a misunderstanding thereof, in the view of critics). For details, see the Qur'anic Trinity section of the article [[Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature]].

Some modern academic scholars cite evidence that this could be a case of typology (deliberate literary allusion between characters - see main article). This may be the best explanation, although the verses would still be misleading as historical statements. {{Muslim||2135|reference}} seeks to explain the coincidence based on alleged customary forms of address (to explain "sister of Aaron") or naming customs (to explain why Imran named his daughter Mary), depending on interpretation of the hadith. Either interpretation only reduces part of the coincidence. Even if a naming custom could increase the odds that this father-daughter pair would share names with some earlier biblical family, a further coincidence would still be required if her father happened to be named the same as the father (Imran) in the particular biblical family alluded to when his daughter is addressed customarily as "sister of Aaron". Another attempted explanation is that this Imran actually had a son called Aaron as well as a daughter named Mary.

ʿUzayr has traditionally been interpreted as the Biblical Ezra. Academic scholarship has tended to concur, noting that Ezra was held in high esteem (though not the "son of god") in the Talmud.

More recent academic work in 2025 found a more likely identification of ʿUzayr as the 2nd century CE Rabbi, Eliezar ben Hurcanus. For details see [[Historical_Errors_in_the_Quran#'Uzayr_as_the_son_of_God_in_Jewish_doctrine|Historical Errors in the Quran]]. To critics, the Quran appears to misunderstand the reverence in which R. Eliezar was held in rabbinic circles since god describes him as "Eliezer, my son" in certain texts, language which is actually common in the Hebrew Bible and is applied to multiple rabbis in the Talmud.

Historians commonly credited the invention of coat mail (not to be confused with scale armor) to the Celts in the 3rd century BCE.<ref name="books.google.com">Richard A. Gabriel, [http://books.google.com/books?id=HscIwvtkq2UC&pg=PA79 ''The ancient world''], Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007 P.79</ref>. Mail has also been found in a 5th century BCE Scythian grave, and there is a cumbersome Etruscan pattern mail artifact from the 4th century BCE.<ref>Robinson, H. R., [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BaDMDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA10 ''Oriental Armour''], New York:Dover Publications, 1995, pp.10-12</ref> The nature of coat mail is such that it should persist for several millennia, and such advantageous military technologies would spread rapidly, so it is unlikely that coat mail would have originated much earlier, undiscovered by archaeologists. While older translations of the Bible mention Goliath and David wearing a "coat of mail" in 1 Samuel 17:5 and 17:38 respectively, this is a well known mistranslation for a word meaning armor in general.