In answer to the video "The Quran, Abraham, Zarathustra and the Furnace"
Some polemicists, based on a very superficial reading as usual, have claimed that the Quran borrowed the story of Abraham and the idols, his miraculous escape from the furnace, from several Judeo-Christian writings. These writings disagree among oneaother on the details of the story let alone the story itself.
But the critics wont be asked to substantiate their charge by presenting a collage of various passages from several sources to show how the Quranic story came to be. The task will be too diffcult for them.
The main source of the Quranic story supposedly is the Genesis Rabbah. This source too has vast differences, and not minor ones. The differences are loaded with theological meaning. Secondly there is zero proof of the story circulating either in textual or oral form among Jews of Arabia around the time of Islam, much less among the lay men of their communities. There is also the known fact that both Gen. rabbah and Talmud Yerushalmi, which is believed to have preceded it by a short time, were composed in a way so as to allow additions and extensions to the texts throughout time. This means the boundaries of the original texts are very difficult to ascertain.
The composition date of this midrash is simply unknown. Long after the advent of Islam, the text of Gen. Rabbah was still undergoing redaction as seen from the multiple sources on which it draws, many of them such as the Tanhuma post dating the Quran by several centuries. In addition to the non-uniformity of its manuscripts, no manuscript of Gen Rabbah predating the 11th century was found. All this, yet again and as is almost always the case whenever a "borrowing" charge is levelled against the Quran, shows that the "borrowing" might well have been the reverse, with the Quran and its commentaries influencing Jewish tradition.
And once more, similarities doesnt entail borrowing. One first has to establish that the supposed (illiterate) author of the Quran had access to the similarities. One then has to explain how he cherry picked among a long list of books and traditions, besides other philosophies and thought systems, to form a well knit, flawlessly intricate narrative in its literary form that left the masters of eloquence of the time dumbfounded, as well as depth of contents that has not finished unravelling its subtleties.
Why wasnt the source ever exposed nor came out to denounce him, leaving him reap the fruits of their labor. How wasnt this source detected given the largely exposed lifestyle of the time, the open circumstances in which the prophet lived and received revelation, as well as many other factors, not the least being that the Quran never claims to be relating something unknown in that particular narrative, repeatedly says it is a revelation in a long tradition of revelations.
This means the superficial similarities might be remnants of revealed truths that eventually found their way into these apocrypha. In those writings from which the Quran supposedly draws, one can many times see how the superficial similarities are poorly weaved into the fabric of the story. The apocryphal writer, or his source, was aware of certain elements of the story but poorly integrated them in the whole account.
This is precisely why the Quran refers to itself as the Muhaymin (Guardian), when talking about the textual and oral traditions contemporaries to it. It points out major mistakes in them, filters the Truth from falsehood
21:24"this is the reminder of those with me and the reminder of those before me".
The Quran confirming the past scriptures, as well as any tradition, oral or written, in which divine truths still remain 2:41, means that the principles taught by Muhammad come from a common source, which Muslims believe is the Source of creation, and can be found throughout these textual and oral traditions. This is pointed to in the common phrase "musaddiqan lima bayna yadahi". With the passage of time these traditions were burdened with additions, suffered from corruption and/or neglectful transmission. The Quran then acts as a criterion that distinguishes truth from falsehood.
Therefore, and for argument's sake, to Muslims, it is irrelevant whether a story bearing similarities with a Quranic passage was even in circulation during and before Islam. It is even less relevant to Muslims whether the similarities were cannonized in the Bible or not. By what standard is the current Bible canon more reliable than the apocrypha? And what proof is there that the unknown Bible compilers rejected these traditions based on these points common to the Quran? Does the current Bible canon even claim to relate every single aspect of the life of its Biblical characters? Is it quiet possible that during the tumultuous process of transmission of the Bible, more particularly the HB which was lost at least twice as recorded in the Bible itself, some parts of the overall transmitted traditions were retained by the editors charged with reconstituting the lost text, and who reflected their own socio-cultural background in the process? Could they have been Selecting what was appropriate for their storytelling purposes and what was not? Of course from a secular viewpoint, the Quran, as a later text, is irrelevant in determining the authenticity, original versions or actual beliefs of those who originated or penned the previous oral and written traditions, canonized or not. But then so is the NT irrelevant in determining those matters from the HB, just as within the HB itself parts are far removed in time and space from other parts, making certain books insignificant when exploring these matters from earlier or later books. However, as soon as one introduces the divine into the equation, then all groups Jews-Christians-Muslims are equal in their claims as regards the authority of one scripture over another. The only factor from a non-secular view point enhancing one claim over another, would be the group with the most authentic, contradiction-free scripture.
In today's mainstream academia, no Islamicist asserts the Quran was influenced by the textual and oral traditions of its milieu, let alone copies from them. Simply because there is no possibility to know whether the human mind who supposedly authored the text had access to those traditions or understood them. What academics do at most, is present what they see as similarities, without disregarding or minimizing the vast differences. On the other side of the spectrum are Judeo-Christian religious zealots and apologists whose methodology and ideas are vastly inherited from their medieval peers' polemical writings. In order to enforce their untenable, unproven claims of borrowing, they retrospectively cherry pick convenient snippets from within larger stories that have very little to do with the corresponding Quranic passages. Then, not only do they disregard the significant differences loaded with theological meanings, but go on magnifying the tiniest similarities to the maximum so as to serve their paradigm. In the process, they inadvertently attribute to Muhammad an encyclopediac knowledge of texts and traditions, as well as an army of unseen informants from a variety of backgrounds and cultures following him around. This weak methodology can be applied to any thought system so as to build up a case for plagiarism.
The Judeo-christian scriptures themselves relate, through the successive prophets and inspired personalities, different stories that were known to the addressees. This doesnt mean their statements were inspired by these traditions floating around. Rather, the common truths found between these traditions, and the statements of the prophets come from God. There is a myriad of similarities between the HB and stories, texts, inscriptions, including the Ugaritic mention of Adam and Eve, the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgamesh where he is cheated of immortality by a snake who eats a plant (had Gilgamesh eaten it, it would have made him immortal. The elements are the same but play out differently). There are other such myths circulating in Babylon where the Israelites spent a long time in exile, of a hero tricked out of immortality through the device of a plant/food. One could extend the parallelism with the laws of Hammurabi, or the global flood, among many examples, all predating Moses' supposed writing of the Torah. Some of these similarities might be due, as in the Quran, to being remnants of ancient truths partially preserved by these different cultures. But other biblical parallels with predating writings and traditions obviously are copies of unsophisticated legends floating in the region. The oldest and original account of creation in the Bible isnt found in Genesis but in Isaiah, Job or the Psalms. God in these crude stories divides the seas and fights off aquatic monsters. The same is found in the Ugaritic tablets and in a language very similar to Hebrew, with the myth that creation began when the storm god Baal vanquishing the god of the sea Yam and his sea monster-serpent-dragon helpers. Isa27:1 has a very close wording to what a Canaanite says about Baal
"When you killed Litan, the fleeing serpent, annihilated the twisty serpent, the potentate with seven heads".
One shouldnt forget that the canonization of the Bible was a long and controversial process, influenced by men with doctrinal bias, and that the current Biblical text is far from being a valid criterion of what truly constitutes divine knowledge from purely human invention.
One might also ask Jewish and/or Christian polemicists if Gideon's story of the destruction of his father's idols by night, the inquiry of the people until they encircled his home and brought him out, desiring to execute him, the argument against the idols' capacity to defend their own selves etc. Judges6:25-31 were all inspired from the story of Abraham revealed much earlier on? Did other aspects of Abraham's story, namely Isaac's miraculous birth, serve as a blueprint for several other biblical stories written down later on, like the angelic announcement of Samson's miraculous birth to Manoah's barren wife Judges13:2-3, Elisha's prophetic announcement of the birth of a son to the old and barren Shumenite couple that had shown kindness and piety 2Kings4:14-17 or the angelic announcement of John's birth to Zakariyya's old wife or the angelic announcement of Jesus' birth to the virgin Mary Lk1:11-38? Is the story of the old host that sheltered a group of travellers and whose house was surrounded by homosexuals trying to force their way and capture the visitors until he offered his own virgin daughter and a concubine Judges19:20-25, inspired by Abraham's nephew, Lot's story who experienced long before almost the same incident Gen19? Does the Levite Elkanah's marital history 1Sam1:1-11 with the 2 bickering wives, one barren and the other normal, find its source in Abraham's 2 mates, Sarah and Hagar? Many other parallels can be drawn, within and outside Abraham's story. For example is the story of the giant warrior taunting the Israelites until one hero stood up to him and killed him 2Sam21:20-21, inspired by David and Goliath 1Sam17? Is the public confrontation of the prophet Elijah against the false prophets, under the eye of the polytheist king Ahab with the aim of determining, through a supernatural event which side speaks the truth 1Kings18:16-45, inspired by the story of Moses and Pharao's magicians, and the contest to determine the truthful side through a supernatural device Ex7? Are Elijah and Elisha's miracles of dividing a wide expanse of water to allow it to be crossed on foot, and turning a source of water from undrinkable to drinkable 2Kings2:8,14,19-22 inspired from Moses' splitting of the sea and his turning the bitter water in the desert of Shur into drinkable water? Did Joshua's splitting of the water also find inspiration in Moses' earlier story Josh3:6-17? Is the story of Daniel, appointed over the king's affairs following his successful interpretation of the king's dream, taken from the similar story of Joseph written centuries before Gen41,Dan2?
Even this tradition on Abraham's miraculous escape from the fire has a very similar precedent in prophetic history, recorded in the Biblical canonical texts. See Dan3.
This story of Abraham was well established in oral tradition, even placed among the famous 10 trials of Abraham. But because it did not find its way into the canon of the HB, the master exegete rabbi Jonathan ben Uzziel, in his 1st century Targum, explicitly refers to the event. A Targum is an Aramaic translation and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Without such a text the majority of the Jewish population wouldnt have been able to reconnect with their scriptures due to the loss of knowledge of the Hebrew language by most 1st century Jews. So this rabbi in his Targum consciously and willfully renders Gen15:7 as
"I am the Lord who brought you out of the fiery furnace/Ur of the Chaldeans".The Hebrew Ur may mean "fire" or the name of a city. That Jonathan consciously rendered it "fire" can be seen from the fact that elsewhere in Gen11:31 he renders it as a name of an actual city. If one wants to argue that Gen15:7 was purposefully corrupted and mistranslated to lay the ground for a false story then one has to first establish a similar pattern within the Targum, and also explain what would be the all-important purpose for such a blatant departure from the original textual intent. It is to be noted that among the extra biblical Jewish texts we have today, the Targum Jonathan is among those that were first completed, preceding even the writing of the Talmud, which is why no text has been found as of yet predating it that mention Abraham's trial with the fire. The earliest indirect reference to the incident, to my knowledge, can be traced to Eusebius who quotes a 2nd century BCE poem in which it is said
"For this one [Abraham], who left the splendid enclosure Of the awesome race [that is, Babylon], the Praiseworthy One [God] with thundering sound prevented the immolation".
Targum Jonathan thus draws on earlier oral tradition, a tradition highly regarded in orthodox Judaism, accepted as authentic and going back to Moses, in its interpretation of the HB. The Targum uses the word Ur with a dual meaning to reflect that tradition. He neither corrupted the text nor made a mistake.
This isnt the case of theological considerations becoming biographical facts as typically happened to the Gospels. The scribes superimposed their own theological agenda and racial prejudices into events, some actual and other fictions, in Jesus' life. They many times did so clumsily, especially in their scavenging for prophecies alluding to Jesus, as seen with their poor grasp of the language of the Hebrew Bible. A case in point is that of Matthew's virgin birth prophecy, taken from Isaiah whose Greek Septuagint describes the woman about to give birth with "parthenos". Whether it could mean a virgin in Greek is irrelevant; if Matthew had gone back to the original Hebrew in which Isaiah wrote, he would have found that this word was almah, which means simply “a young woman”. Hebrew has a word for virgin, bethulah, but Isaiah chose not to use it. He was predicting a perfectly natural birth. There is no idea of virgin birth in Isaiah’s original prophecy. Matthew can only use it as a proof text because of this mistranslation form Hebrew into Greek.
So here one can clearly see a case of plagiarism far surpassing in ignorance the one falsely attributed to the Quran and its story of Abraham and the furnace.
It is to be noted, that whole part of Abraham's early life is absent from the HB. Targum Jonathan attempts to fill that void with whatever arrived to him of that original oral tradition, as he learned it from his teacher who learned from another all the way back to Moses, shedding light on that omitted part from the HB, of Abraham's early life up to the time God commanded him to migrate. Obviously Abraham wasnt chosen haphazardly at 70 years old to serve God's purpose. He was already a prophet, a pure monotheist, who knew and trusted the Creator long before he was commanded to go on a far away journey. Understandingly, most of the HB was redacted by Israelites who wanted to focus on the history and origins of their own people. From that perspective, the most significant aspect of Abraham's life is his travel to the land of Canaan. The HB doesnt even speak of Abraham's monotheism prior to that time.
The only allusion to his life pre-migration is when it says it is God who inspired him to leave his native land of Ur in Mesopotamia, which historically was a great center of idol worship, unto a land where he and his descendants after him will be blessed Gen11:30,12:1,15:7,Acts7:2. Although the circumstances are obscure, he convinced his father Terah to come along, as well as a few other family members including Lot. Just like Noah before him, or Moses and Muhammad after him, Abraham was divinely ordered to migrate out of a land of evil, sin and oppression
37:98-100"Surely I go to my Lord; He will guide me: My Lord! Grant me of the good ones"
21:70-2"And We delivered him as well as Lut (removing them) to the land which We had blessed for all people".
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