A Barrier Between Two Seas and the Cosmic Ocean: Difference between revisions

The Quran refers to two different bodies of water, emphasizing there is one sweet and one fresh, and that they meet but there is a barrier between them. Both early and medieval Muslims, and modern Academic scholarship, have identified this with an ancient belief of there being a cosmic ocean of water surrounding the world.<ref>Tesei, Tommaso. Some Cosmological Notions from Late Antiquity in Q 18:60–65: The Quran in Light of Its Cultural Context. Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 135, no. 1, American Oriental Society, 2015, pp. 19–32, [https://lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/jaos/article/view/1669 https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.1.19.] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.1.19</ref> Other classical scholars have attributed it to the way fresh water bodies of water are separate to the salty seas and oceans in general, rather than two specific bodies of water, not taking the verse literally.<ref>Tasfir Ibn Kathir on [https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Kathir/25.51 verses 25:51-54]</ref><ref>Tafsir Al-Jalalayn on [https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/25.53 verse 25:53]</ref>