Historical Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

Historical Errors in the Quran (view source)

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→‎Hāmān in ancient Egypt: Have added in more evidence and explanation between Haman and ancient Persian elements (incorrectly) moved into ancient Egypt - from Adam Silverstein's work, highlighting the historical issues.

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 === Hāmān in ancient Egypt ===
-The Quran places a man called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman_(Islam) Hāmān (هامان)] as an enemy of the jews being a court official, military commander, and high priest of the Pharoah in ancient Egypt in the time of Moses. A man also called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman Hāmān הָמָן] with similar characteristics, also appears in the biblical Book of Esther where Haman is a counsellor of Ahasuerus, king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and an enemy of the Jews, more than a millennia apart in different parts of the world. He appears alongside another character [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korah Qorah] who also rebels against Moses at a different time in the bible:
+The Quran places a man called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman_(Islam) Hāmān (هامان)] as an enemy of the jews being a court official, military commander, and high priest of the Pharoah in ancient Egypt in the time of Moses. A man also called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman Hāmān (הָמָן)] with similar characteristics, also appears in the biblical Book of Esther where Haman is a counsellor of Ahasuerus, king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and an enemy of the Jews, more than a millennia apart in different parts of the world. He appears alongside another character [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korah Qorah] who also rebels against Moses at a different time in the bible:
 {{Quote|{{Quran|40|24}}|Unto Pharaoh and Haman and Qorah, but they said: A lying sorcerer!}}
 This may have been done for literary/storytelling purposes:
 {{Quote|Reynolds, Gabriel Said. The Qur'an and its Biblical Subtext (Routledge Studies in the Qur'an) (pp. 212-213). Taylor and Francis.|The pairing of Qorah and Haman, if not in line with the Biblical account, is hardly unreasonable in literary terms. Both acted as the nemesis of God’s servant (Qorah of Moses, Haman of Mordecai). Qorah was extremely wealthy. Haman was extremely powerful. The argument that the  is somehow wrong or confused by placing Haman and Qorah in Egypt (or, for that matter, that the Talmud is wrong by placing Jethro, Balaam, and Job there) seems to me essentially irrelevant. The  concern is not simply to record Biblical information but to shape that information for its own purposes. The more interesting question is therefore why the  connects Haman and Qorah with the story of Pharaoh. The answer, it seems, is that the Pharaoh story is to the  a central trope about human conceit and rebelliousness, on the one hand, and divine punishment, on the other. Accordingly the characters of Haman and Qorah, and the legend of the Tower of Babel, find their way into the  account of Pharaoh. Thereby the  connects this account to its lessons elsewhere on the mastery of God over creation.}}
+==== Other Mesopotamian elements in the Egyptian story, including baked clay to make lofty towers to the heavens ====
+There is more evidence of Hāmān being out of place in the Qur'an, with the story linking ancient Persian elements to Moses and the Pharoah. We see for example in the Torah [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2011%3A1-9&version=NIV Genesis 11:1-9] with the 'Tower of Babel' story (where a tower to the heavens is built by a rebellious people but they are blocked by god) seemingly inserted into the ancient Egyptian setting, as was common in Late Antiquity where Babylonian and Egyptian courts were often interchangeable in story retellings<ref>Silverstein, Adam J.. ''Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story: The Reception of a Biblical Book in Islamic Lands'' (Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions) (p. 32). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.</ref> (regardless of historical accuracy).{{Quote|1=[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2011%3A1-9&version=NIV The Book of Genesis 11:1-9]|2=1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there <u>3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”</u> 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and <u>the tower</u> the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” <u>8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.</u> 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.}}As Silverstein (2012) states these 'Hāmāns' are in fact related, and notes there are other common Mesopotamian elements in the Qur'an and Islamic exegesis that support association between them.<ref>''The Qur'anic Pharaoh.'' Adam Silverstein. Taylor and Francis. Found in: ''pp467 - pp477. New Perspectives on the Qur'an. The Qur'an in its Historical Context 2''. Edited By Gabriel Reynolds. Imprint Routledge. DOI <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203813539</nowiki> eBook ISBN9780203813539</ref>{{Quote|{{Quran|28|38}}|“Firʿawn said: ‘O Haman! Light me a (kiln to bake bricks) out of clay, and build me a lofty tower (ṣarḥ), that I may ascend to the god of Moses:  though I think (Moses) is a liar!’ ” }}{{Quote|{{Quran|40|36-37}}|"Firʿawn said: ‘O Haman! Build me a lofty tower (ṣarḥ), that I may reach the asbāb – the asbāb of the heavens, so that I may ascend to the god of  Moses: though I think (Moses) is a liar!’ ”}}
+Many modern academics have assumed it takes from the tower of Babel story too.<ref>Ibid. pp. 469.</ref> Several key aspects highlighted by Silverstein are:<ref>Ibid. pp. 470-471</ref>
+# The use of baked clay to build the tower, which was typical of ancient Mesopotamian architecture but not of Egyptian.
+# The parallel of where people in Shinar (Mesopotamia) built a tower to reach the heavens, challenging God; both the Tower of Babel and the ṣarḥ serve a similar purpose: attempts to defy or reach God, both of which are blocked.
+# The many associations of the two stories in Islamic exegesis such as early Muslim scholars often conflating tyrants like Nimrod (who builds the tower in extra-biblical traditions) and Pharaoh in their exegesis. Or having this specific pharaoh come 'from the east',<ref>Ibid. pp. 472-473</ref> and Silverstein (2008) notes exegetes often have these vastly separate empire leaders both be related descendants of the Amalekites (an ancient enemy tribe of Israel), linking them.<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/30959178/Hamans_transition_from_the_Jahiliyya_to_Islam ''Haman's transition from the Jahiliyya to Islam.''] ''pp. 297.'' Adam Silverstein. 2008, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam.</ref>
+This has long been noticed by classical Christian apologists,<ref>E.g. Silverstein (2012) pp. 469. notes that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludovico_Marracci Father Marraccio], confessor to Pope Innocent XI, who published his annotated translation of the Qurʾān (into Latin) in the late seventeenth century made this connection as a critique of Islam.
+Silverstein, Adam J.. ''Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story: The Reception of a Biblical Book in Islamic Lands'' (Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions) (p. 20). 2018. OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition. Notes:
+''"Similarly, Henri Lammens, (1862-d.1937) a Christian clergyman himself, and a scholar of Islam, calls the Pharaonic context in which Haman appears in the Qur’ān “the most glaring anachronism”,<sup>11</sup> and Eisenberg, in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, states, “That Muhammad placed Haman in this period betrays his confused knowledge of history.”"''</ref> and continues in modern times, particularly around the use of '''baked bricks with many contend are another historical error.'''<ref>[https://adamsilverstein.huji.ac.il/publications/quranic-pharaoh Silverstein (2012)] also notes this online debate in pp. 469, see modern arguments and counter arguments here:
+See answering-Islam's original page on baked bricks in the tower, followed by Islamic-awareness's response, followed by answering-islam's rebuttal.
+https://www.answering-islam.org/Index/B/bricks.html (original Baked Bricks as an error article from Christian Apologists)
+https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/contrad/external/burntbrick (Islamic Awareness's Response article)
+https://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Saifullah/bricks2.htm (Rebuttals to the Islamic Awareness article)</ref> As Egyptologists note that while known about, baked clay is rare for ancient Egyptian structures during ancient times, and not the likely choice for Pharoah to request from Hāmān.<ref>E.g. ([https://ia601308.us.archive.org/24/items/cu31924102198896/cu31924102198896.pdf Manual of Egyptian Archaeology], G. Maspero, H. Grevel,) White Press. Originally published in 1902.
+''pp3 "The ordinary Egyptian brick is made of mud, mixed with a little sand and chopped straw, moulded into oblong bricks and dried in the sun." (not burned)''
+''pp.4-5 "The ordinary burnt brick does not appear to have been in common use before the Greco-Roman period, although some are known of Ramesside times…. …The ordinary Egyptian brick is a mere oblong block of mud mixed with chopped straw and a little sand, and dried in the sun""''
+([https://ia601305.us.archive.org/16/items/egyptiana00smit/egyptiana00smit.pdf Egyptian Architecture as Cultural Expression], American Life Foundation, 1938, Earl Baldwin Smith, page 7.)
+''"By the end of the III Dynasty the Egyptians were masters of such essentials of brick architecture as the arch and vault. Kiln-baked brick was almost never used, and a few examples of glazed tile, appearing in a highly developed technique in both the I and III Dynasties, prove that it was not technical ignorance, even at an early date, which kept the Egyptians from developing the possibilities of this method of wall decoration and protection…."''
+''"…Although Egypt had an old and fully developed tradition of brick architecture, she never evolved, as did Mesopotamia, a monumental style in this material. While brick continued to be the most common building material throughout Egyptian history, it was used more for practical construction than for important monuments."''</ref>
+Silverstein (2008)<ref>Adam Silverstein. 2008. [https://www.academia.edu/30959178/Hamans_transition_from_the_Jahiliyya_to_Islam ''Haman's transition from the Jahiliyya to Islam.''] ''pp. 301-303.''</ref> and (2012)<ref name=":0">Silverstein 2012. The Qur'anic Pharoah. pp. 474-475</ref> notes this transformation likely occurred because the story is based on an older but still very popular Mesopotamian story in the near-east, of Ahiqar the sage, where an Egyptian pharaoh challenges the Assyrian ruler to build a tower to the heavens; which left its mark on Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures. The story of Aḥīqar is alluded to in the Book of Tobit (second century BCE) directly, but with Haman replaced a similarly evil character in the story "Nādān" with a similar sounding (the C1āC2āC3 pattern of “Nādān” easily lends itself to a corruption in the form of “Hāmān”) rhyming name, suggesting the characters of separate stories begin to mix.<ref name=":0" />
+More connections include the towers of [https://www.britannica.com/technology/ziggurat ziggurats] (large, terraced, stepped temple towers built in ancient Mesopotamia made with baked brick exterior) likely being the inspiration of Earth to heaven towers "...''although they are ascendable nowadays, pyramids at the time were not “stepped” in the way that Babylonian  ziggurats are; they were smooth and could not be climbed. In fact, Babylonian  ziggurats are a much more likely candidate for being the inspiration behind both  the Tower of Babel and – indirectly – the ṣarḥ. The ancient Babylonians called their temples “ bīt(u) temen šamē u erṣētim ”, a translation of the Sumerian etemenanki, which itself means “the foundation platform of heaven and earth”; as such,  the ziggurat was the link between the heavens and the earth.''<ref>Ibid. pp. 472.</ref>  And in the Qur'an they reach the '[[Cosmology of the Quran#The%20Sky-ways%20(asb%C4%81b)%20of%20the%20Heavens|asbāb]]' of the heavens, who's literal meaning is a cord or rope,<ref>Lane's Lexicon classical Arabic to English Dictionary: [https://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume4/00000009.pdf ''sīn bā bā'' (س ب ب) p. 1285]
+See also: Sinai, Nicolai. ''Key Terms of the Qur'an: A Critical Dictionary (p. 412).'' Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.</ref> has strong imagery parallels in the Aḥīqar story "''Aḥīqar commissioned rope-weavers to produce two ropes of cotton, each two thousand cubits long, that would lift boys borne by eagles high into the air, from where the summit of the tower could be built. The role played in the Aḥīqar story by these overlong ropes strikingly prefigures that which is played in Firʿawn’s ṣarḥ by the asbāb. Presumably, the version of the Aḥīqar story that was familiar in seventh-century Arabia is the version known to Tobit ’s author. That Aḥīqar was known in Muḥammad’s Arabia is indicated by the parallels between some of his maxims and those that are attributed to Luqmān in the Qurʾān.<sup>39</sup> What Aḥīqar and Luqmān have in common, of  course, is that they are both paradigmatic “sages” in the Near East, the adjective ḥakīm being applied to both of them.'' "<ref>Silverstein 2012. pp. 475.</ref>
 === Mecca as a safe sanctuary ===