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Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature: Difference between revisions
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Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature (view source)
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::Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women? Why just 'of the Hebrew women'? - It teaches that they handed about to all the Egyptian women but he would not suck. He said: Shall a mouth which will speak with [God] suck what is unclean! (b. Sotah 12b)"<ref>Gabriel Said Reynolds, ''The Qurʾān and Bible'' p. 598</ref> | ::Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women? Why just 'of the Hebrew women'? - It teaches that they handed about to all the Egyptian women but he would not suck. He said: Shall a mouth which will speak with [God] suck what is unclean! (b. Sotah 12b)"<ref>Gabriel Said Reynolds, ''The Qurʾān and Bible'' p. 598</ref> | ||
==Allah keeps the heavens and the birds from falling== | |||
{{Quote|{{Quran|67|19}}|Do they not see the birds above them with wings outspread and [sometimes] folded in? None holds them [aloft] except the Most Merciful. Indeed He is, of all things, Seeing.}} | |||
{{Quote|{{Quran|16|79}}|Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of (the air and) the sky? Nothing holds them up but (the power of) Allah. Verily in this are signs for those who believe}} | |||
The same verb for holding (amsaka) appears in {{Quran|22|65}} and {{Quran|35|41}} with regard to Allah holding the sky from falling to earth. | |||
{{Quote|{{Quran|22|65}}|Do you not see that Allah has subjected to you whatever is on the earth and the ships which run through the sea by His command? And He restrains the sky from falling upon the earth, unless by His permission. Indeed Allah, to the people, is Kind and Merciful.}} | |||
{{Quote|{{Quran|35|41}}|Indeed, Allah holds the heavens and the earth, lest they cease. And if they should cease, no one could hold them [in place] after Him. Indeed, He is Forbearing and Forgiving.}} | |||
In his 2023 academic book on Quranic cosmology, Julien Decharneux observes that the 6th century CE Syriac Christian writer Jacob of Serugh repeatedly used birdflight as an illustration of the concept of ''remzā'' ("[The remzā] is, both in Narsai and Jacob, the medium through which God’s power operates."<ref>Julien Decharneux (2023), ''Creation and Contemplation: The Cosmology of the Qur’ān and Its Late Antique Background'', Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 149</ref>) | |||
A very close similarity with Q. 16:79 can be seen in this homily: | |||
{{Quote|Jacob of Sarugh, ''Homily on the Chariot that Ezekiel saw'', Homilies 4:551, translated by Julien Decharneux<ref>Ibid. p. 160</ref>|See! They are suspended and stand like a bird who is suspended in the air with nothing on which it rests except the remzā.}} | |||
A more elaborat passage makes the parallel with the Quranic concept clearer: | |||
{{Quote|Jacob of Sarugh, ''Homily on the fifth day of Creation'', ''Homilies 3:96'', translated by Julien Dechaneux<ref>Ibid. p. 160</ref>|Look at the bird when it is standing erect and relaxed and its feathers are spread out and it is standing on nothing, and it is not heavy for that nothing on which it is set, but its wing is stable and rests as if on something, and its feet and wings are spread to and it stands there and that empty space where it is please is like the earth for it, and when it is not leaning nor resting, hanging in the air and imagining the earth hanging on nothing. The hidden force [ḥaylā kasyā] of the Divinity, that is that something on which all the creation hangs and with which it is held.}} | |||
Just as the Quran uses the same verb to say that Allah holds up the birds and the heavens (as noted above), Jacob uses the concept of remzā (God's action in the world) also for the firmament. | |||
{{Quote|Jacob of Sarugh, Homilies 3:35 quoted by Julien Decharneux<ref>Ibd. p. 146</ref>|[The firmament] became like an arch hanging and standing without foundation [d-lā šatīsē], borne not by columns [law ʿamūdē], but by the remzā.}} | |||
==See Also== | ==See Also== | ||