Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature: Difference between revisions

Lane's Lexicon Quranic Research - [https://lexicon.quranic-research.net/data/08_d/044_drj.html ''root درج'']</ref> (e.g. men are a rank above women {{Quran|2|228}}, some messengers are ranked higher than others {{Quran|2|253}}, and people generally {{Quran|6|165}}),<ref>See uses of the word for ranks/degrees applied to people in the Qur'an on the noun section of [https://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=drj Qur'an Corpus root ''dāl rā jīm'' (د ر ج) page]</ref> those in the afterlife among the believers similarly have different ranks/degrees.<ref>''darajah | rank'' Sinai, Nicolai. ''Key Terms of the Qur'an: A Critical Dictionary (p.283-289).'' Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.</ref> Sinai (2023) notes verses such as {{Quran|8|2-4}}, {{Quran|20|75}}, {{Quran|4|95–96}}, {{Quran|9|20}} and {{Quran|58|11}} suggest that degrees of belief, action, and knowledge appear lead to these differences in eschatological rewards''.''<ref>Ibid pp. 288.</ref> This idea is further confirmed in hadith, such as {{Bukhari|9|93|519}} and Qur'anic commentaries.<ref>E.g. commentaries on [https://quranx.com/tafsirs/46.19 Q46:19], [https://quranx.com/tafsirs/8.4 Q8:4], [https://quranx.com/Tafsirs/17.21 Q17:21] or any other verse listed in this section.</ref>

Reynolds (2020) notes the Qur’ans's vivid depictions of hell are highly unlike the New Testament, where Jesus refers to afterlife punishment mostly allusively. The closest the Gospels describe hell is through the few images of “fire,” “wailing,” and “gnashing of teeth.”, for example in Matthew’s Parable of the Weeds, Jesus explains that at the end of the age, the Son of Man will send his angels that will cast evildoers into a fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 13:40–42).<ref>Reynolds, Gabriel Said. ''Allah: God in the Qur'an (pp. 81-82).'' Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.</ref> He notes the much more constant and vivid Qur'anic descriptions far better match with later Christian works that expanded the descriptions to be more gruesome, in order to scare the reader/audience.<ref>Ibid. pp. 88.</ref>{{Quote|Reynolds, Gabriel Said. <i>Allah: God in the Qur'an (pp. 82-83).</i> Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.|The way that the Qur’an describes hell in particularly vivid, gruesome terms brings us back to something we mentioned in Chapter 1, namely, that the Qur’an in many ways is a “homiletic” work, a work written like a homily or sermon. The Qur’an’s intention is not simply to declare that those who disobey God will be punished, but to describe that punishment in a way which brings the awfulness of hell to life. Similarly, homilists in the early centuries of Christianity expanded dramatically on the New Testament allusions to hell. In a sermon attributed to John Chrysostom (d. 407) we read a description of hell with the sort of detail that we find in the Qur’an: It is a sea of fire—not a sea of the kind or dimensions we know here, but much larger and fiercer, with waves made of fire, fire of a strange and fearsome kind. There is a great abyss there, in fact, of terrible flames, and one can see fire rushing about on all sides like some wild animal…. There will be no one who can resist, no one who can escape: Christ’s gentle, peaceful face will be nowhere to be seen.¹⁵}}Sinai (2017) in his paper titled "''The Eschatological Kerygma of the Early Qur’an''" notes many overlap with Syriac Homilies on the afterlife as well as other apocalyptic ideas and terminology.<ref>“[https://almuslih.org/wp-content/uploads/Library/Sinai,%20N%20-%20The%20Eschatological%20Kerygma.pdf The Eschatological Kerygma of the Early Qur’an]”, Nicolai Sinai, in ''Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity: Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th–8th Centuries'', edited by Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy Stroumsa, Leuven: Peeters, 2017, 219–266.