Sources of the Koran 2

The Light Shines in the Darkness...

Scales and Balances

The belief that mankind will be sent to either heaven or hell based on the weight of good and bad deeds being placed in a balance (Surah 42:17, 101:6-11) is based on the Jewish Testament of Abraham.

One Hundred Year Death

The story in Surah 2:259 about the man that died for a hundred years and woke up perfectly fine was an apocryphal Jewish fable about Ezra.

Resurrection of Moses

The belief that Moses was killed by lightning and resurrected in Surah 2:56-57 came from the Jewish Talmud and in Tract Sanhedrin (Part 5). Even the Muslim commentator, Yusuf Ali, admits:

“We have hitherto had instances from the Jewish traditional Taurat (or Pentateuch). Now we have some instances from Jewish traditions in the Talmud, a body of exposition in the Jewish theological schools. They are based on the Jewish scriptures, but add many marvelous details and homilies.”

-Yusuf Ali, Commentary on the Koran (4: p.30, ft.70)

The Jewish Village Turning into Apes and Swine

The tale in the Koran (Surah 2:65, 5:60) where a Jewish village was turned into apes and swine because they broke the Sabbath was an old Jewish fable. Even the Muslim translator of the Koran, Yusuf Ali, admits:

“…there must have been a Jewish tradition about a whole fishing community in a seaside town, which persisted in breaking the Sabbath and were turned into apes.”

-Yusuf Ali, Commentary on the Koran (4: p.34, ft.79)

God’s Word Written on Tablets in Heaven

The belief that the Koran was written by God on preserved tablets in heaven (Surah 85:21-22) came from a legend that arose amongst the Jews that the whole of the Old Testament and the Talmud were written on stone tablets in heaven. In fact, this legend included the belief that the two stone tablets that Moses had written the Law on were duplicate copies of those written by God.

Christian Legends

Speaking Baby Jesus

The story in Sura 19:29-30 where the baby Jesus speaks from the cradle is from the apocryphal Christian legend, The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ. Here is Sura 19:29-30:

“Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy? He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet…”

-Sura 19:29-30

Now, compare that to The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ:

“…Jesus spake even when he was in the cradle, and said to his mother: “Mary, I am Jesus the Son of God. That word which thou didst bring forth according to the declaration of the angel…”

-from The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ

Jesus Turning Clay into Birds

The tale in the Koran in which Jesus took clay and turned it into living birds (Sura 3:49) is undoubtedly from Thomas’ Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ. Here is Sura 3:49:

“And will make him a messenger unto the Children of Israel, (saying): Lo! I come unto you with a sign from your Lord. Lo! I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and I breathe into it and it is a bird, by Allah’s leave.”

-Sura 3:49

Now, compare that to Thomas’ Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ:

“Then he took from the bank of the stream some soft clay, and formed out of it twelve sparrows…Then Jesus clapping together the palms of his hands, called to the sparrows, and said to them: “Go fly away.”

-from Thomas’ Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ

The Romance of Alexander

The story in Sura 18:83-97 about “Dhu’l-Qarneyn” is beyond all shadow of a doubt from the 6^th century Christian legend, The Romance of Alexander. Because the passages are so long, I will not cite them here, but instead, I will list the literary parallels that prove that this Koranic story comes straight out of The Romance of Alexander:

1. Both characters travel so far west that they reach the place where the sun sets.

2. Both stories have the sun setting in or near a murky body of water.

3. Both the Romance and Muhammad in the Hadith on this Sura (Bukhari 6.326) have the sun going up into heaven and worshipping God.

4. Both characters then travel so far east that they reach the place where the sun rises.

5. Both narratives have the people who live near this place try to hide themselves so that they won’t be scorched by the rising sun.

6. Both characters then travel to a place where two great mountains separate an oppressed people from Gog and Magog.

7. Both stories have these people ask the characters to build a barrier so that the armies of Gog and Magog cannot pass through.

8. Both characters end up building a giant gate made of iron and copper which the armies of Gog and Magog could not pierce.

9. Both narratives say that God will open up the gate in the last days so that the armies of Gog and Magog will sally forth and meet their doom.

[For a fuller discussion of this passage, go here: http://debate.domini.org/newton/index.html#q]

The Protevangelion’s of James the Lesser

The story about ‘Imran, his wife, and Mary in Sura 3:35-37 does not come from the Biblical account in the Gospels but from an apocryphal Christian fable called The Protevangelion’s of James the Lesser. Here’s Sura 3:35-37:

“(Remember) when the wife of ‘Imran said: My Lord! I have vowed unto Thee that which is in my belly as a consecrated (offering). Accept it from me. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Hearer, the Knower! And when she was delivered she said: My Lord! Lo! I am delivered of a female – Allah knew best of what she was delivered – the male is not as the female; and lo! I have named her Mary, and lo! I crave Thy protection for her and for her offspring from Satan the outcast. And her Lord accepted her with full acceptance and vouchsafed to her a goodly growth; and made Zachariah her guardian. Whenever Zachariah went into the sanctuary where she was, he found that she had food. He said: O Mary! Whence cometh unto thee this (food)? She answered: It is from Allah. Allah giveth without stint to whom He will.”

-Sura 3:35-37

Now, compare that to The Protevangelion’s of James the Lesser:

“And Anna (wife of Joachim) answered, “As the Lord my God liveth, whatever I bring forth, whether it be male or female, I will devote it to the Lord my God, and it shall minister to him in holy things, during its whole life…and called her name Mary…And the high-priest received her, and blessed her, and said, “Mary, the Lord God hath magnified thy name to all generations, and to the very end of time by thee will the Lord shew his redemption to the children of Israel…But Mary continued in the temple as a dove educated her there, and received her food from the hand of an angel. Then the high-priest (Zacharias) entered into the Holy of Holies, and taking away with him the breastplate of judgment made prayers concerning her.”

-from The Protevangelion’s of James the Lesser

Persian Legends

Paradise

The descriptions of Paradise (Suras 37:42-49, 76:19-21) with its regenerating-virgin ‘houries’, rivers of wine, endless food, and gardens are all from Zoroastrianism and its paradise.

Azazil

The name, Azazil, as the original name of Satan comes from the name of a demon in Zoroastrianism.

The examples of legends and fables in the Koran could cause this article to go on ad infinitum. For more go here: www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Sources/index.html

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An Objection

There is one objection that needs to be answered before moving on. Some Muslims will respond to this by saying, “Yeah, but your Bible is accused of having legends and fables in it by modern scholarship such as Mithraism and other things too. If you use these arguments, then your Bible goes down with the Koran.” However, this is the fallacy of equivocation. The Muslim is assuming, here, that the evidence for the myths and legends accusation of modern “scholarship” is the same as the evidence for the Koran’s myths and legends when, in fact, it is not. When one looks at the arguments of modern “scholarship”, one sees that the arguments actually aren’t well founded. They draw on small similarities between two completely different stories, and in the end, one finds out that the similarities aren’t very similar at all (see Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1993), p.306-309). On the other hand, when we look at the evidence for the myths and legends of the Koran, we do not come across small similarities, but literary parallels. The stories in the Koran are the exact same narratives that are found in the fables of the ancient Arabs, Persians, Jews, and Christians. The only difference that one sometimes finds is that the characters have different names. To further the point, some examples will be provided.

Modern “scholarship” frequently will draw upon the example of the similarities between Mithraism and Christianity. They say that Mithra (i.e. a pagan deity) was considered to be the son of a god, born without the sexual union of a man and a woman, and gave new life to the human race. However, as Ronald Nash points out, the similarities aren’t that similar after all:

“We do know that Mithraism, like its mystery competitors, had a basic myth. Mithra was supposedly born when he emerged from a rock; he was carrying a knife and torch and wearing a Phyrgian cap. He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithra slew the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race…Allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth-at least during its early stages…During the early stages of the cult, the notion of rebirth would have been foreign to its basic outlook…Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary people like the early Christians.

Perhaps the most important argument against an early Christian dependence on Mithraism is the fact that the timing is all wrong. The flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, too late for it to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity.”

-Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), pp.144, 147.

So, we see that there are absolutely no similarities between Mithraism and Christianity. Furthermore, Mithraism was invented after Christianity. This means that even if there were any similarities, it would be Mithraism borrowing from Christianity and not the other was around.

In Islam, on the other hand, we have direct literary parallels between the stories in the Koran and ancient fables. It would be as if a man who claimed to be a prophet started reciting a story saying that it was a revelation from God. The story he told was about a girl who ran away from home, gets caught in tornado, and wakes up in a land of magic, witches, yellow brick roads, munchkins, red slippers, and a fake wizard. The girl meets a tin man, scare-crow, and a cowardly lion. She then clicks her red slippers three times and wakes up home in bed. Now, anyone who has seen the movie knows that the story being told by the so-called ‘prophet’ is actually “The Wizard of Oz” and that the claim that the story is Divine revelation is absurd. This is exactly what we find in the Koran. The stories in the Koran are almost the exact same narratives that are found in the ancient fables except for the names of the characters in some cases.

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Unless stated otherwise, all Koran quotes are from Pickthall’s translation.

Some helpful online reading can be found here:

http://www.light-of-life.com/eng/answer/a4990et2.htm#p94

www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Sources/index.html

http://debate.domini.org/newton/index.html#q

Also, Dr. Robert Morey’s Common Logical Fallacies Made by Muslims is found here:

http://answering-islam.org/Resources/Morey/logic.html