Scientific Miracles in the Quran: Difference between revisions

Many modern Islamic scholars have argued that {{Quran|21|30}} and {{Quran|51|47}} describes the Big Bang. Historians, by contrast, have shown that the first verse describes a version of world egg creation myth which was widely believed in earlier times through much of the world. According to the archetype of the myth, the Earth and heavens both existed in an egg-shaped structure which split (or hatched) to become the separate Earth and heaven, ushering in the era of mankind. In many versions, the first man appears as this earth-heaven structure 'hatches' open. The verse states that "We clove them" (dual pronoun 'huma'), not "We clove it", thereby indicating that the Earth and heavens are two distinct entites after the cloving, and the next verse speaks of mountains being placed on Earth. The other verse uses the Arabic word mūsiʿūna, which means makers of ample room or of width.<ref name="LexiconExpanders">وسع awsa'a - [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume8/00000306.pdf Lane's Lexicon] page 3052 [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume8/00000307.pdf and page] 3053</ref> The identical verb form and grammar is used for the last word in the next verse, the spreaders (al mahidoon الْمَهِدُونَ), which is from the root mahada مهد which means to make plain, even, smooth, spread a bed<ref>مهد mahada - [http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume7/00000267.pdf Lane's Lexicon] page 2739</ref>. Also from this root is the noun mahdan, meaning a bed or even expanse, which appears in other verses about the creation of Earth where it was made a bed in the past tense. The tense is clear in those verses to mean a past event rather than an ongoing process ({{Quran|20|53}},{{Quran|43|10}} and {{Quran-range|78|6|7}}).