In answer to the video "Quran, Mysticism and the Ignorance of Allah"
The Quran in that story of Solomon and the Queen maintains a remarkable consistency with the overall message of the book, despite its illiterate author and stealthy, unseen assistants, selecting in a plethora of oral and written traditions, cherry picking along the way the covenient parts that agree with its most subtle meanings, without ever being noticed, then putting together this intricate discource free from any discrepency.
When a tiny bird with limited mental capacities is hurt by the sight of mankind's ungratefulness towards its Creator, that even inanimate objects devoid of any mental faculties are praising God, that the most massive among them such as mountains wouldnt be able to bear the spiritual weight of a revelation the like of this Quran 59:21,13:31 then what is amiss in mankind that many are unable or unwilling to worship the One Creator? Man is blessed with the most advanced reasoning capacities in creation, combining concrete and spiritual perception 20:50,30:30,76:3,90:8-10,91:7-10. Man is ingrained at birth with a cognizance of the higher realities 23:78,46:26,67:23,76:2 aided with guidance through revelation 2:38-9,7:35-6,20:123. Why would he not, under such circumstances recognize and bow to his Creator?
This is precisely why the Quran refers to itself as the Muhaymin (Guardian/Arbitrer), when talking about what is contemporary to it in terms of revealed truths, whether available in oral or writen tradition, such as the Torah and Injil. 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 there is a common real, historical source that runs through these textual and oral traditons. One doesnt undermine the Quran by finding parallels between certain of its passages and supposedly contemporary accounts, since the Quran itself does not claim to bring a new core message. What the Quran says is that it restaures the forgotten or altered truth that is found in those parallel accounts. It is the Muhaymin/guardian, the Furqan/criterion, the Dhikr/reminder.
The Targum Sheni of Esther, whose version of Solomon's interraction with the animal realm most closely resembles the Quran story, was actually redacted in its final form in the end of the 7th century, long after the Quran was established in textual form and spread throughout Muslim lands. This strikes right at the core of the borrowing claim against the Quran, making the Quran the potential source of the Targum. And even if one were to assert that the Targum draws on an oral source common both to it and the Quran, there is no way of knowing what this source looked like during the rise of Islam, much less prove that this oral version was known in the Hijaz during the advent of Islam. This Targum's earliest manuscript dates to the 12th century, which greatly undermines the notion that it was widely known and popular.
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 burdenned 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 particularily 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.
The Hekhalot literature, which this youtuber makes a mountain of, do contain a few minor similarities with the Targum Sheni, but this doesnt mean that the Targum draws a few of its elements from the Hekhalot. This is because the Hekhalot themselves draw their material from even earlier sources now lost, and re-adapted to suit the mystical conjectures of the scribes. No manuscript of these Hekhalot was found predating the 12th century. The fragments found at the Cairo Genizah show significant differences with these 12th century Hekhalot manuscripts. This means the Hekhalot literature was circulating in a wide variety of forms throughout different regional channels until very late after Islam. The nature and content of these forms, the relationship among its various parts, even the time and social climate of its composition prior to the 12th century are impossible to ascertain. That is why scholars dispute their dating to anywhere between the 3rd and 8th century. For example, in one scholarly opinion some of the themes it contains cannot be the product of rabbinical thought, but rather reflect the presence of Islamic influence from sources of the 8th and 9th centuries (Heinrich Graetz).
The critics of Islam will never be able to find this illusive preexisting source, written or oral, on which the document post dating the Quran could have been based upon. They will forever remain in their uncomfortable corner, maybe even coming to the conclusion that the "borrowing" might just have been in the opposite direction, with the Quran and its commentaries serving as the sources of these post Islamic works. Continuing with the Hekhalot, there isnt even scholarly consensus on the dominant theme of this corpus. According to this view, far from being a mystical tradition, the Hekhalot are originally the product of mainstream orthodox Judaism of the 1st century, and then redacted and readapted in many different ways and channels in the following 7 centuries (Scholem). Others, disagree on that 1st century dating and instead place it anywhere up to the years 500, within the circles of the Amoraim rabbis (MS Cohen, PS Alexander, MD Swartz). While some see a mystical pattern running through the corpus, others including Urbach and even Halperin, whom this youtuber vaguely alludes to, argue that the ascent theme shouldnt be seen more than a literary development unrelated to mysticism.
This is because there is no indication by the scribes as to whether the mystical ascent was practiced at all (Schafer). There is simply no firsthand testimony within this fractured and multilayered work of anyone experiencing any of the revelations described. The Hekhalot is an anonymous corpus that remained in flux as it was transmitted and actively revised by later scribes, they are certainly not the source of the material they contain and which is commonly found in other traditions, such as the Targum Sheni. Finally it is mind boggling how certain "scholars" would distinguish within these traditions between historical and purely exegetical passages when none of the events, much less the characters of the story can be independantly verified in the first place, outside a religious context.
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