Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Apostate prophet is overjoyed; Mary the sister of Aaron?

In answer to the video "One Mistake Destroys Islam"

Now we get to the part most interesting to the misleading and misinformed critics of Islam. The Quran they say, made here an anachronistic error by mistaking Mary/Miriam Jesus' mother with Mary/Miriam Aaron's and Moses' sister spoken of in the Bible and who lived long before. Putting aside the fact that such critics, mainly from a Judeo-Christian background forget that such phraseologies have always been used by Israelites, including Jesus when he stated that, regardless of time and space
Mk3:35"Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother".
What these critics need to consider is that, had this been true, had the Quran truly mixed up the 2 Marys, why does the verse not depict these Jewish slanderers as resorting to the weigthiest of all arguments by singling out her other alleged brother, Moses who is mentioned in the same sentence together with Aaron, as Miriam's brother in the text from whence the Quran's author supposedly copied from Num26:59?

This passage speaks in one breath of Mary, Aaron and Moses as siblings. Even if this mysterious Quran author did not have access to the text itself, why would anyone transmitting the text orally specifically omit Moses' name? Or if that oral transmitter did not omit Moses' name, why would the mysterious Quran author want to remove it from the Quran?

Moses, in addition, in contrast to Aaron, is the sole prophet who, according to the Jewish tenets of faith up to this day, they must recognize as the greatest of all. Jewish tradition and scriptures repeatedly describe him as having superior authority, prestige and prophetic experience as echoed even in the Quran, and here are those very Jews pointing to Harun instead, a mere support and assistant of Moses, who lacked authority among his people to the point they rebelled against him in Moses' absence and even indulged in polytheism under his watch, with their scriptures even painting him as among the instigaters of the transgression?

The mentioning of Harun instead of the greater names in Mary's alleged contemporary family such as Moses, demonstrates it cannot be speaking of her literal, physical sisterhood but rather to her metaphorical descendency, as established in the usage of the word in Semitic languages. That metaphorical descendancy refers to a specific branch whose founder was Harun, and who had established a cast inside which a woman, a bat-kohen, was supposed to represent the highest standards of chastity and piety through her spiritual devotion and impeccable upbringing by a priest. 

There is a liturgical text the Christians of Jerusalem used to read around the 7th century, called the Lection of Jeremiah. In it, Aaron is called the "brother of Mary". This further corroborates the metaphorical usage of brotherhood and sisterhood in religious terminology, knowingly and without anachronism, even when the persons are non-contemporaries whose direct family members hold the same names.  Any other conclusion would imply that Christians of the Levant were confused on Mary's genealogy just as the Quran supposedly is.


The other attack against the Quran, that it should have said "daughter of Harun" as is usally done when speaking of the descendant of an illustrious character is nonsensical in that context since the verse also speaks in one breath of her biological parents who have passed away. Had the Quran used "daughter of Harun" instead it would have confused the sentence and implied that Harun was her biological FATHER "O DAUGHTER of Harun! Your FATHER was not an evil human, nor was your mother unchaste". That argument not only is nonsensical syntactically but also shoots down the critics' own argument since it invalidates their claim that the Quran confounded Mary/Miriam (Jesus' mother) with the Miriam who was Aaron's biological SISTER and lived long before.

Furthermore if, according to Christian theology, Mary was not a Levite but from the house of Judah then referencing her as "daughter of Aaron" would imply direct descendancy from him. Sisterhood on the other hand has a different connotation. And even if one accepts Mary's Levitical lineage, which is more in line with NT genealogies, then calling her the "daughter of Aaron" would still be excluded for the aforementioned reasons.

Also, the Quran speaks of Mary and Jesus as coming after Moses, clearly in a context where countless generations of messengers succeeding eachother separates them 2:87,3:50,5:43-46,etc which again negates the claim it thought they were all contemporaries due to the supposed mixing of Maryam the mother of Jesus with Maryam the sister of Aaron and Moses mentioned in the Bible.

Further, in the Quranic accounts surrounding Moses, Aaron, Jesus and Mary, the circumstances and locations are entirely different for the first 2 and the last 2, and the characters of both groups are never mixed in the same space and time nor do they interract, while they do interact among characters of the same group. For instance, Jesus and Mary are many times interacting, as is the case with Moses and Aaron yet we never see Jesus interacting with Moses or Aaron with Mary. Nor are Jesus and Mary ever seen in the same context and background as Moses and Aaron, and vice versa. Also, the Quran repeatedly speaks of Moses' sister, during the account of his infancy, without ever naming her Mary 20:40. Besides the contexts and timframes clearly separating between Moses and Jesus, how could this already grown up "Mary" during Moses' infancy, be the same young Mary to give birth to Jesus many years later?

There simply are too many converging factors, on a macro or micro-level, all indicating that the Quran was perfectly accurate, correct and aware of the usage of the phrase "sister of Harun" and its implications.

More importantly, contrary to Miriam the sister of Aaron and Moses in the Bible from where critics claim the Quran copied from, Mary the mother of Jesus was orphaned very early on per the Quran meaning that her relatives spoken of during her early years and beyond are those of people who have passed away. In 19:28, the slanderers appeal to her parents' righteousness in the past tense, because they have passed away at the time. Because of this, she had to be put under someone elses' guardianship namely the prophet Zakariya. Mary was orphaned so young and abruptly, and her importance to the eyes of the elders of the community so great, that her entourage, after casting lots to decide who would be her guardian, still objected and contended with one another 3:44.

Such measures would've been useless had her close relatives, such as her alleged brothers Moses and Harun been alive in her early years, even outliving her as stated in the Bible.

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