In answer to the video "Quran, Mysticism and the Ignorance of Allah"
Back to the Quranic account of Solomon's encounter with the Queen, every step in the story revolves around Solomon's wisdom and talent to reform her heart and bring her progressively to willfully surrender herself to God.
First through a letter beginning in a way unheard of for the purely materialistic conquering kings of ancient times, starting with a mention of Allah, al Rahman 27:30.
Al rahman is the most intensive form of rahma, usually translated as mercy. This is because Allah is the most merciful and this is why the attribute of mercy is the only one said to be "written" upon God
6:12,54"your Lord has written mercy on Himself".Rahman stems from R-H-M meaning WOMB. In order to imagine the implication of the meaning, one has to picture the womb and what it does to the fetus. It nurtures, protects, provides warmth, love etc. The Hebrew equivalent of "rhm", is also found in the Hebrew Bible as well as the writings attributed to David Deut4:31,Ps86:15 again to stress an important attribute of God from a human perspective. Many Christian and Jewish South-Arabian pre-Islamic inscriptions refer to God with Rahmanan. So it certainly was not a strange terminology for a Semitic prophet to use.
The Second manner in which Solomon cleverly brought the Queen to spiritual submission, was by his rejection of the gifts, proving his wisdom. This is probably one of the deepest and most significant difference between the Quran version and the incomprehensible Biblical depiction of the encounter. Here is a most wise and knowledgable king, having such wealth that the Queen was left breathless, having access to the deep realities, but yet after his exchange in which he demonstrated his knowledge, was content in receiving all kinds of material gifts, instead of having the Queen reform herself spiritually as a result of his demonstration 1Kings10.
The third device put into place to bring the Queen to submit herself to the sole Creator, was by displacing the Queen's throne between the time she had last seen it and her arrival to Solomon's palace, he demonstrated what he had previously affirmed to the queen's envoys
27:36"what Allah has given me is better than what He has given you".Notice Solomon's intricate answer, besides demonstrating his wisdom in refusing the gifts, points to them that whatever riches they posess isnt from them but from Allah who gave it to them. The envoys must have reported to their queen of this other peculiarity of the king, in relation to his piety. Finally to have in his posession such an impressive structure as a floor of glass, but nevertheless remain a pious, grateful and God-conscious king was the last thing the queen needed to be convinced of the right spiritual path upon which Solomon was walking. The Quran reflects this special feature of Solomon in several places, including as he prayed Allah to make him the owner of something that can never be passed on, spiritual excellence 38:35.
The queen of Sheba's encounter with the prophet Solomon is a story related in many different ways in oral and textual tradition, both within and outside the current Bible canon.
For example in the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Gittin 68a-b), both the background and the details are far from the Quran version. In this Talmud, the bird is described as having the power to cause the wilderness to bloom, thanks to a magical stone, which was sought by Solomon. He needed it to cleave blocks of rock for the building of his temple. Using his mastery of magic, Solomon tricks the demon lord Ashmedai, to give away the stone's location. No interraction between Solomon and the hoophoe is depicted at any point. We find elements of the story scattered throughout different midrash. In Jewish understanding, a midrash is a story within the Talmud, meant at explaining a Biblical passage or conveying a moral point. The story may be historical or not, partially modified or kept as received, so long as the writers' intention is correctly conveyed. As to the current Biblical canon anyway, it is far from constituting the standard of historical accuracy. Very little in terms of authenticity, distinguishes it from what is arbitrarily deemed "apocrypha".
These different Solomonic stories agree with the Quran in minor places, because there are remnants of truth common to the Quran and these traditions, whether they were canonized or deemed apocrypha by the unknown Bible compilers and editors throughout the ages. What is remarkable is the coherent and intricate manner in which these minor points commonly found in several channels of transmission, come together in the Quran. One would expect to find a recipe for theological, reasonable, inner textual and historical disaster as is found in the canonized text of the Bible. Yet all these points correlate not only in the story itself, but within the larger sura and the Quran overall from a theological, reasonable and inner textual standpoint.
For instance the background of the story itself is something unheard of in the traditions of the past. The Quran states that the whole encounter was triggered by a bird whose tiny heart was moved at seeing the false worship of a people, then reported it to the prophet Solomon 27:20-27. The Quran in many places states that the entire creation, animate and inanimate glorifies and worships Allah in a manner humans cannot perceive 2:58,13:13-15,16:48-50,17:44,22:18,24:41,45:37,55:6,29,62:1,64:1. That glorification had reached particular intensity in the time of Solomon's father, the prophet David, whom most of creation would join him in his praise of Allah 21:79,34:10,38:17-9. David was known according to Jewish scriptures and oral tradition for his talent for music and divinely inspired poetry very early on 1Sam16:16-23. David is often quoted refering to that universal and unfathomable glorification of God in the Hebrew Bible in
Psalms19,148,69:35"Heaven and earth will praise Him, the seas and everything that moves therein".Other passages allude to this glorification too, including Job38:7.
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