Historical Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

=== Haman in ancient Egypt ===

The Quran places a man called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman_(Islam) Haman] 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 Haman] and 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:

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.}}