The particularities of Yahya/John and Jesus' births, do not make any of them different or special than other human beings in terms of their physical nature, neither were these miraculous circumstances necessary to accomodate some false notions retrospectively applied to these special circumstances.
Jesus did not need to come from a virgin so that he might circumvent inherited human depravity, which is an unscriptural idea, alien to Jesus' teachings. Neither did Jesus need to be a combination of the immaterial/RUH of Allah, with the material/human mother so as to assume his dual human/divine nature. All humanity has exactly this same dual aspect as Jesus, without any of us being divine.
Man has both a principal and a secondary nature. His secondary nature returns to dust and his essence is related to Allah. This is why the Quran attributes the spirit to Allah and the body to the earth 38:71-72.
The Quran thus establishes that man is hardwired with a connection to its Creator. In reference to that intimate relation, the prophet said
"He who knows his soul knows his Lord".
On the other hand the Quran warns
59:19"And be not like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget their own souls".
Man has both a principal and a secondary nature. His secondary nature returns to dust and his essence is related to Allah. This is why the Quran attributes the spirit to Allah and the body to the earth 38:71-72. A similar notion can be found in the Hebrew Bible in
Ecc12:7"The body reverts to the dust that it was before, and the ru'ah returns to God who gave it".
Nafs and ruh are 2 different but interrelated entities. Nafs is the receptacle that allows physical life to be combined with the spiritual entity with which every human being is endowed with, the ruh. It is man's principal nature. It is thus only the nafs that breaks down and dies, the receptacle allowing the biological and spiritual to be interwoven 3:185,21:35. The soul, the ruh does not die. It is this spirit coming from Allah, infused into Adam for the first time, to inspire him the understanding of good and evil that creates the human thirst for guidance and worship
91:7-10"And (by) a soul and He Who proportioned it. And inspired it with its wickedness and its virtue. One has succeeded whoever purified it. And one has failed whoever corrupted it".
Contrary to the convoluted HB, this peculiar human feature was not hidden in a forbidden "tree of knowledge" but hardwired in mankind, since its inception. This is the spark, when nurtured and developed, that leads one to fulfil the goal of human creation; the worship of God.
Jesus' very first words in the Quran were to declare his servitude to God, besides declaring other lofty aspects of his identity, as well as empasizing the tenets of monotheism 19:30. The Quran leaves no room to the kind of conjecture trinitarians are known for when approaching their own Bible, let alone the Quran. It is interesting noting the consistent Quranic approach of taking up the major trinitarian themes and labels associated to Jesus, then recasts them in a monotheistic, unitarian perspective. It is the case with the kalima, just as with the RUH/spirit or the name "messiah".
Jesus and John were mortals, made from exactly the same elements as other humans, and could not have come into existence without God's word 2:117"Be". The word symbolizes that nothing escapes His grasp in the chain of causality. He may use His command to initiate the chain by creating out of nothing, or He may us it to intervene in a pre-existing chain of causality so as to result in the outcome that He wills
3:59"Surely the likeness of Isa is with Allah as the likeness of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, "Be", and he was".
This is an instance of Allah using His word to complete a process. Both Adam and Jesus came to completion through Allah's word. Prior to that completion Adam was fashionned from inorganic earthly elements, or as the Quran quotes Allah
38:75"him whom I created with My own hands".
All things were, and are created by Allah's direct involvement. Mankind is no different but because it is a specie with a special connection with its Creator, the Quran uses the image of Allah using His own hands doing so, as a metaphor of special care in fashioning and forming it. When that fashionning process reached physical completion, Adam was ready to receive the spirit from Allah 38:71-2. It is at that point that Allah "said to him, "Be", and he was". That command is what triggered all components within Adam, the physical and the spiritual to fuse and ignite, resulting in what is understood by a "human being"; a creature whose flesh and spirit function simultaneously and interdependantly.
Without God's word, the mere entry of the spirit within the flesh would not cause this creature to function as a human being. One can finish building a robot, then place its batteries, but it will only function once the switch is turned on. God's word is the switch that ignites the human being, allowing its material and spiritual components to work together.
The process that preceded Allah's command was different in Jesus' case. Unlike Adam, he was not first fashionned from earthly substance, but through the RUH that entered the body of his mother so as to allow her to conceive. At some point during the development of the fetus, Allah's word was cast towards Mary. This was the trigger allowing the fusion of the RUH that had entered her prior, with the fetus, resulting in a creature whose flesh and spirit function together.
A question one might ask is why, if all human beings, including Adam and Jesus, were brought to completion through Allah's word, why did the Quran choose to parallel Adam specifically with Jesus in order to deny Jesus' divinity? Adam is the archetypical human being, made from the dust of the earth. No human being after Adam, endowed with the spirit of Allah, is closer to its original earthly substance than him. In the context of refuting Jesus' divinity, and stressing his humanity, no point of reference among any human being is more appropriate than the human who is closest to its wordly, earthly, humble origins than Adam. Further, the one who is alleged to be a god-man, is as helpless in the process of his completion than a human being made of dust. What kind of deity cannot come into existence in whatever shape and nature, without the intervention of a higher power?
The main idea behind the statement, "then said to him "Be" and he is", often used for God's creative action, is that Allah masters the laws of causality. The imperative form gives a sense of absolute control, contrary to the similar but softer Biblical "Let there be". Grammatically, the statement "kun fa yakun/be and he is" is an idiom. Its constituents, like the gender/tenses/persons remain unchanged regardless of the sentence in which the idiom is integrated. The present tense, although speaking of a past event, also serves as a literary device to involve the audience/reader, making him the spectator of the event as it is unfolding, as if the coming to existence is happening now, in front of him.
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