In answer to the video "Top 10 Ways Muslims Ignore the Quran"
Polemicists have misconstrued a known linguistic phenomenon so as to try another weak attack against the Quran. To enforce their obsessive claims of borrowing, they have scavenged the book for supposedly "foreign" words. These words betray the Quran's adoption of foreing concepts, as well as the fact it needed additional vocabulary to express new ideas.
Firstly, all languages, including Arabic, have eventually adopted foreign words as people have interracted. Sometimes these words retain their implicit cultural or theological baggage. At other times a completely new meaning is assumed.
In the Quran's case, foreign words do not even amount to a fraction of the totality. In addition, many of those words pointed to by the critics either are in fact Arabic, with well established triliteral Arabic roots, or have been part of Arabic vocabulary since before the emergence of the prophet, or were common to other Semitic cognate languages of the region, thus rendering their tracing very difficult.
Recently for instance, Wolf Leslau refuted Nöldeke's identification of certain Arabic words in the Quran as Ethiopic, like shaytan or jahannam, proving that the direction of borrowing was actually the opposite. The words that entered the Arabic language prior to revelation cannot be termed foreign. They are now Arabic words.
Onus is on the critics to prove that these words were borrowed post Islam. Anyone familiar with pre-islamic literature and poems knows how rich and expressive the language of the time already was. There was no need to express any of its ideas by borrowing foreign words. In fact none of the supposed words or expression do not have their synonym, either in other passages of the Quran, or in the well established Arabic language.
In any case, whether a Quranic word truly is originally foreign to Arabic and in addition retains its original meaning, by becoming part of Arabic vocabulary and common use it necessarily, as in any language, becomes an Arabic word.
In answer to the video "Top 10 Ways Muslims Ignore the Quran"
The Quran speaks of specific communities and incidents in relation to Mecca and the Kaaba with no evidence as happening anywhere but in Mecca at the time of revelation.
It in addition names places surrounding Mecca and the Kaaba, well known then and still identified today, like Arafat, Mash'ari haram, Juranah about 6hours walk from Mecca, where was located the farthest mosque in relation to the Kaaba, where the prophet used to stop and pray in the mosque that was by the spring and encouraged the Muslims to begin their minor pilgrimmage (umrah) from that place until they reached Mecca. There were of course wells and springs where the Meccans went for their water supply. Some of these wells were in the city, dug long into the pre-silamic times, others on the city's outskirts, and others further still. One of these relatively distant water sources for instance is the one in the valley of Khumm, between Mecca and Medina, given the same name by Kilab ibn Murrah who dug it long before the prophet according to the Islamic tradition. Water is still available at the place and is called Ghadir Khumm. It was a frequent passing point for the Muslims and the prophet, who according to the Shia tradition, named Ali as his successor at the spot. Water supply was certainly not plentiful and easily available, so much so that those in charge of the siqaya/providing water to pilgrims were highly regarded. Although scarce, rain fell nevertheless on Mecca, even sometimes to the point that the precincts of the Kaaba would be flooded, it happens still nowadays. This in fact is a known factor to have caused degradation to the edifice of the Kaaba throughout time. The Quraysh would gather this water in reservoirs to make sure their water supply wouldnt run dry for themselves and the yearly pilgrims.
The cave of Hira is another of those places found in the early historical records, described in a manner corresponding to a specific location in Mecca. It is about a 2hours walk on the nour mountain, outside of which one can oversee Mecca, as well as Safa and Marwa.
The word "jabal" describing Safa and Marwa in Arabic applies to any rocky elevation, small or big. The Quran for instance speaks of Ibrahim scattering chopped off pieces of a bird on surrounding jabal 2:260. Abraham wasnt going around climbing up mountains and leaving a piece of bird on each. It is also clear from the description of Hagar's ordeal, running between safa and marwa then standing successively on top of one jabal, then the other. She obviously wasnt going along climbing mountains in the desert heat.
No place in the world was refered to as Mecca, other than present day Mecca. That is not to mention the battles of Badr and Uhud, among many other specific locations where battles occured, where native tribes were met, their names and dialogues recorded, as well as the plethora of traditional records, authentic or else, isolated or known, all speaking of places and people that cannot by the furthest strech of the imagination be placed anywhere else than where they are currently located.
There isnt the slightest hint at a conspiracy the scale of which would have been required to put into place such a massive rewrite of history. Neither is there evidence for a large conspiracy to rename Mecca and all these places, nor is there archaeological support for these places being anywhere but in Mecca.
The Quran for example denounces the Arabs' idol worship and practices like animal sacrifice repeatedly, occuring in places it names in and around Mecca 2:256-7,5:3,90,16:36,22:30. All these practices were banned long before Islam by the Byzantines in the northern area of Arabia Petrae, meaning they couldnt have occured there at the time of the revelation of these condemning verses. This type of claim runs along the same lines as others who argue that the original qibla faced Petra to the north of Arabia, instead of the Kaaba in Mecca. Early Muslims, and those of Mecca in particular had a fair idea about the orientation of several astronomical phenomenon (sunrise or sunset during equinoxes, solstices, Pole star, Canopus etc) in relation to the Kaaba and used them to orient their mosques towards their respective qibla. They knew that when they stood in front of the edifice, they were facing a particular astronomical direction and reproduced the same alignments in their new location as if they stood directly in front of a particular Kaaba segment. Iraqi mosques aligned towards the winter sunset, ie facing the northeast wall of Kaaba. In Fustat, Egypt it faced the winter sunrise, ie facing the northwest wall of Kaaba. None of those mosques faced Jerusalem or northern Arabia.
Why would the entire Muslims community, a cluster of highly unruly and disunited tribes and clans, linked together only by their religion, living since times immemorial in this unnamed mysterious northern place, suddenly accept to be uprooted from its sacred location, where its prided history, cultural, economic attachments are all found, and accept relocating in a barren and isolated area. How could such a move pass unnoticed in the oral tradition. Even if every Muslim alive at the time of the alleged move vowed to keep it secret, how likely is it that the next generation of Muslims would not have leaked multiple versions of the story into the hadith?
The years following the prophet's death were times of great political and sectarian turmoil. Each group, spread geographically gave religious and legal authority to their figures, rejecting the legitimacy, beliefs, and practices of others. From the partisans of Ali in Kufa, to the Umayyads in Damascus, to the proto-sunnis that claimed to follow the schools of Mecca, Medina and Iraq or the Omani Kharijites. This led to the development of independent and various traditions. And yet the single thing they all agreed upon was the Quran and the Meccan qibla, the prophet's birth in Mecca, his death in Medina and the vast majority of the essentials of the religion. This unified tradition can only be rooted at a time where the community was united under their prophet and uncontested leader. Recent archaeology has revealed inscriptions dated to the first and 2nd centuries after hijra around Medina speaking of a Kaaba and masjid-al haram (al maghtawi).
There are even earlier open mosques in the Negev area, none of them are oriented towards northern Arabia or Jerusalem and all of them are aligned to Canopus thus facing the northwest wall. Some more recent polemicists, the likes of Gibson, stubbornly insisting on such flimsy claims have deceptively tried using satellite images of mosques to make them appear as if they face the Petra region. The flaw in that method is that, as anyone familiar with mosques knows, it is impossible to ascertain eachone's mihrab (a niche in the interior of the wall of a mosque denoting the direction of prayer for worshippers in the mosque) except if one sees it from inside the building. One could just as easily align them with Hawaii rather than Petra. Even today, and within one and the same country, certain mosques face different cardinal points depending on whether they base their direction to Mecca on a flat map, or on the shortest distance around the globe. Among other flimsier claims are those of Crone and Cook, misquoting Jacob of Edessa so as to make it appear as if the Muslims prayed towards Jerusalem in the early 8th century. The actual quote refutes their distortions and confirms Muslim historical accounts;
"The Jews who live in Egypt, as likewise Mahgraye (the Syriacized form of muhajirun, in reference to the invading Muslim Arab immigrants) there, as I saw with my own eyes and will now set out for you, prayed to the east, and still do, both people - the Jews towards Jerusalem, and the Mahgraye towards the Kʿabah (K‘bt'). And those Jews who are in the south of Jerusalem pray to the north; and those in Babylonia and nhrt' and bwst' pray to the west. And also the Mahgraye who are there pray to the west, towards the Ka‘ba; and those who are to the south of the Ka‘ba pray to the north, towards the place. So from all this it is clear that it is not to the south that the Jews and Mahgraye here in the regions of Syria pray, but towards Jerusalem or Kʿabah, the patriarchial places of their races".
Robert Hoyland further observes that
"Jacob had studied in Alexandria as a youth and so would have been in a position to observe the Muslims there at first hand, which makes his testimony particularly valuable. His information about Syria is also likely to be accurate, for there were Muslims resident in Edessa while he was bishop of that town. What he makes abundantly clear is that the intention of the Muslims was to direct themselves towards a specific site, which they called the Ka'ba. This is presumably to be identified with the "House of God," "the locality in the south where their sanctuary was," which is mentioned by Jacob's contemporary, John bar Penkaye, a resident of north Mesopotamia".
The list of empty claims, sensational conspiracies and revisionism of established history goes on and on. And yet, the language of the Quran itself, its consonantal text is in the old Hijazi. That Arabic dialect is attested in the Hijaz region from about the 1st to the 7th centuryCE. Other humorists, have proposed similar massive conspiracies, citing Quran verses describing locations and landscapes apparently nowhere near Mecca's surroundings. It is well known and established that Mecca was a seasonal city where people flocked in during the pilgrimage period only. 28:57 refers to this fact, that it is a safe sanctuary by God's grace, where people flock in and bring in it thamaraat/produce of all kinds. All year long outside this pilgrimage season where people brought in their goods, the caravans of the Arabs and the Quraysh had to travel outside the Peninsula to the north, to Syria and Jordan to do their trade. They passed through all types of landscapes along the way especially in the more lush areas of the north
23:17-20"..then with that rain We caused vineyards and palmgroves to spring up in which you have plentiful of fruit that you eat. As well as the tree that springs from mt Sinai producing oil and relish for the eaters".
They were also familiar with agriculture and rich farming lands, such as those of Ta'if, famous for its grapes, pomegranates, figs etc, and located less than a 100km from them. It is to be noted that since the earliest revelations, the Quran was a message, not only addressed to the Meccans but to
42:7"the mother city and those around it".
Umm al qura/mother city refers to Mecca being a center point of pilgrimage for the cities around it. There was no mother city in anyway shape or form in northern Arabia at the time, and Petra had gone into decline for long before Islam. These Meccan voyagers also passed through several locations where nations were known, prior to Islam, for having been destroyed. One of those locations was that of the people of Lut. The city of Lut is traditionally believed to be located somewhere along the Dead Sea, between Israel and Jordan, is said to be a frequent passing point of those people addressed by the Quran
37:133-8"And Lut was also of the messengers...you pass by their ruins by day and by night".
On their northern trips, the Meccans passed this location "by night and by day". Notice the clear Quranic words, not "daily and nightly". The verse 11:89 as a side note is quoting the prophet Shuayb, the Midianite 11:94,29:36-7 telling his people about the land of Lut not being far away. Midian is to the north of the Hijaz.
In answer to the video "Top 10 Ways Muslims Ignore the Quran"
Although others in the Bible were referred to with matronyms such as Shamgar son of Anath, "son of Mary" isnt a known name in the Christian world, while it is in the Muslim world. The Gospel writers had no interest in tracing Jesus' genealogy through Mary since it goes against Jewish law. Secondly, their object was to fulfill the HB's tribal requirements for the messiah. To that end they invented 2 (conflicting) genealogies through an adoptive father, Joseph. Jesus was thus described with the patronym "son of Joseph".
In the process, they made flaws in both genealogies cancelling any legitimate claims to the throne of the King Messiah (see the Jeconia curse, among other blunders).
The Quranic matronym "son of Mary" carried several deep implications, besides being simply an appellation. In 3:45 the angels give Mary the news that she will soon conceive of a child. This information in itself doesnt indicate anything special, unless it was given to a barren old lady with an equally barren old husband, as in Sara's case who was consequently incredulous at the angelic declaration 11:71-3. Mary would have naturally understood she would conceive in a normal way and there wouldnt have been any reason for her to be surprised at the news 3:47,19:20-1. But by adding the information that the future child will be named "son of Mary", among other names, the angels were telling her he would be born without the agency of a father, in a miraculous way. In semitic tradition a person was identified by the father's name so nothing could have been more striking in the psyche of a woman of the time to be told that her son will not be identified by his affiliation to a male, but to a woman.
This miraculous conception is a sign not only Jesus would be known by, but also his mother and the name "son of Mary" implies exactly that; she would jointly share this sign with him forever as both of their names will be mentioned together
23:50,21:91"and made her and her son a sign for the worlds".
Jesus as well as his mother were chosen to be made jointly, "A" single sign of the power of the Maker and Creator over all things. So from a Quranic perspective, that miracle equally sets Mary and Jesus apart from humanity. Before discussing the implications of this sign, it is worthwhile noting that by honoring Mary in such a way and joining her name to that of one of the most illustrious individuals to have walked the earth, God has defeated in His final revelation and until the resurrection, the slanderous talk of some among her contemporaries and those that followed, who wanted to put a stain on her and abase her.
As regards the sign, it consists in demonstrating how the resurrection of bodies isnt a difficult task to God. We deem it impossible for a female to give life without the necessary biological process yet God did it, so just as He easily creates life in conditions we think are impossible then similarly He is able to bring the dead back to life even if the conditions make it unfeasable from our perspective. The rejection of the concept of resurrection by many Jews of the time adds to the relevancy of that miracle. One can even argue that Jesus was given the greatest evidence for resurrection among God's prophets who all equally stressed the importance of that tenet to their people.
This is because Jesus is the only explicit case in the prophetic history where a human's birth did not result from mating. The Quran doesnt even state that Adam was born in such a way, ie that he was not the result of sexual reproduction.
Other miraculous births are recorded in the Quran, including around the time of Jesus as was the case for the prophet John/Yahya. But they primarily served the purpose of a reward and were not meant to be disclosed and shared openly other than within the circle of the people concerned. Jesus' birth not only was different than all others in its prominence because as already said, intercourse between a man and a woman did not even precede it, but also because it was primarily meant as a sign for all of humanity. As a testimony to this, the Quran uses a linguistic subtlety, showing again and again how it uses words surgically in order to maximize the impact. There is a slight different wording between God's answer to Mary
3:47"Even so Allah creates what he pleases"
and to Zakariya
3:40"Even so does Allah whatsoever He pleases".
The nuance -creates vs does- lies in that the miracle of a child born of a virgin is definitely more striking than a child born to a couple, even if barren. It must be kept in mind the Quran was recited in the form of speech, publicly and instantly as it came to the prophet, with no chance a re-editing and modifying, and the 2 verses are very closely located. How would one, let alone a known illiterate without any background in poetry or any form of oral eloquent speeches, instantly and naturally make such a distinction in a flowing discourse?
The NT writers firstly wanted Jesus to be traced up to King David to fulfill the criteria for the Messiah's lineage. But Jesus had no father as both the Bible and Quran agree, hence the introduction of an adoptive father, Joseph. Now Jesus had to be known under the patronym "son of Joseph" in his community, instead of "son of Mary" as affirmed in the Quran. In addition to providing a fabricated lineage, they were now, in their eyes, "protecting" Mary's public image and that of Jesus. She was now engaged before her pregnancy and married when she delivered, not, as the Quran says, completely alone when she met God's messenger, as well as all throughout her pregnancy, including when she secluded herself to deliver the baby.
According to the Greek writers, the virgin birth was a secret yet this particular miracle was, according to those same writers that base themselves on the infamous mistranslation of Isa7:14 in the Greek Septuagint, one of the most crucial fulfilments of HB prophecies. This "secret" virgin birth supposedly was among the signs the Israelites had to know from the very beginning to identify the awaited savior
Isa7:14,Matt1:22"All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel".
It is no surprise that in his purported letters, Ignatius the bishop of Antioch and supposed disciple of the apostles declares that Mary's virginity and child bearing were secrets only made known to the world through a "star".
This is not to mention the cultural ignorance of the non-Jewish Greek writer who penned the story.
A Hebrew wedding is celebrated in two parts. In ancient times, the interval between the two ceremonies could take up to several weeks in order to allow time for the new home to be arranged. But to avoid secret encounters between the newly wedds who could not hold their urge to come together, the wedding ie the second ceremony was arranged at the earliest possible opportunity. It is clear from Deut22:23 that a girl described as "betrothed" to a husband already has the status of a legally married woman which is why a newly-married couple normally consummate their union immediately after their betrothal ceremony to complete it and make it legally valid and binding. This makes it all the more absurd to paint Mary as "bethroted" prior to her pregnancy.
The fact is that this non-existent virgin birth prophecy of the HB was inserted into the NT narrative retrospectively. From a theological viewpoint, Christians needed to solve the problem of having the perfect, sinless human sacrifice born of a human mother, while all humans are sinful in nature and that they pass on that depravity to their progeny. They thus neglected and forgot the true purpose of that miracle, and assumed that the object of the virgin birth was to guarantee Jesus would be born without the inevitable sinful stain. Back in these times people didnt know that women contribute just as much if not a bit more (in terms of genetic material) to the formation of a baby than men did. And so by believing that women were a mere passive vessel, in the absence of a human father Jesus would necessarily be free of original sin. 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 accommodate the false notions retrospectively applied to them. For example Jesus did not need to come from a virgin to circumvent human depravity, something Jesus never even spoke of. Neither did Jesus need to combine 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.
Jesus had to be known, according to the NT writers themselves, as special since the very beginning, yet not only was the virgin birth obscured to the people through the absurd introduction of a husband but the NT also repeatedly says how the young Jesus was completely unknown in any particular way prior to his ministry in adulthood, see Matt13 for example.
The absurdity doesnt end here, the same NT that tells us his people knew nothing special about him prior to his ministry also tells us of all the wonderful signs and wonders surrounding his first moments as an infant, the celestial signs that prompted both friends and foes to look for him even from outside Palestine, people such as the Magi coming "from the east" to worship the newly born "king of the Jews". Signs of the messiah's impending rise were supposedly so obvious that king Herod, fearing for his throne, began slaughtering all male infants born in Bethleem at that particular time. Mary was prompted to flee with her son to Nazareth to hide and protect him Matt2.
Part of the NT establishes the fact that it was well known in and outside Palestine that the awaited savior had come, and countless people identified him with Jesus since his youngest days. Elizabeth for instance refers to Mary as "mother of my Lord" as she saw her pregnant Lk1. Shepherds, informed by the angels, rushed to Bethleem to see the newly born messiah. After confirmation
Lk2:17"they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them".
Anna, the daughter of Penuel as well as Simeon recognized in the newly born Jesus the awaited savior and told others about him Lk2. Both rabbis and laymen at the Temple were astonished at the child Jesus' display of wisdom and knowledge. And yet we read elsewhere that nobody knew of the virgin birth miracle, neither was Jesus known as anything special prior to adulthood.
This last incident at the Temple is preceded by the improbable scenario of Jesus' parents travelling from Jerusalem where they had attended Passover, back to their hometown of Nazareth and only noticing after a day's walk that the little Jesus had been left behind. So they return to Jerusalem, and only find him after 3 days search. Astoundingly, the NT writers also paint Mary and Joseph, the very ones who witnessed first hand the virgin birth, as completely ignorant of what Jesus meant when he stated that he
"must be concerned with the affairs of my Father".
Jesus made that statement in response to Mary's scolding him because of his disappearance Lk2:42-50. Did Mary and Joseph suddenly forget all the miraculous signs and fame surrounding his infancy just 12 years after his birth, as if they had never heard of them and their obvious implications as regards his identity? In another context, Mary, who gave birth to him miraculously, and his brothers James and Jude even thought he had gone mad Mk3.
The Quran, far from copying the above NT absurdities, says the virgin birth was a miracle made known to all. It would be foolish to provide a miracle of virgin birth, while the woman supposed to carry the child is married. For an unmarried woman, in addition known for her piety and chastity, to show up with her own baby would immediately attract the eyes of an entire community upon her, maximizing the impact of the absolving speech of the infant Jesus at once, as vividly and eloquently described in sura Maryam. None would have spontaneously came to her had she been married prior, nobody would have inquired because there would have been no scandal of a woman dedicated to worship in God's temple suddenly showing up with a child.
According to the NT depiction, the married Mary now has to prove the vigin birth miracle by going out of her way and pleading repeatedly to the unsuspecting community. It would have been inefficient and debasing. In the Quranic version of the story, the blessed Mary did not need to utter a single word to defend her innocence, preserving her honor and avoiding her the difficulty of having to argue and dispute with a crowd, and neither did the child need to be overexposed so as to repeat his speech senselessly.
The protection of the virgin birth reaches such an extent in the Quran and in such eloquent and intricate details, that whenever Jesus is quoted as addressing the Israelites, he does not once call them "my people" or "my nation" as other Israelite prophets like Moses are quoted as saying in the Quran. Jesus always calls them "Bani Israel" because they, contrary to him, could trace their lineage up to Israel from their fathers, which wasnt his case. Jesus had no worldly father, neither one involved in his conception, nor the made up one of the NT whom the writers needed to create a messianic lineage.
Son of Mary is an appelation used by those that testify to the miraculous circumstances of Jesus' birth, contrary to those calling him by the patronym of the NT.
While the Quran does agree on certain points with the NT just as it does with the HB in other instances the Quran corrects the errors that have crept into these Books and further adds unknown, obscured or forgotten information. If Muhammad was copying from them, then one has to explain how the very subtle differences, which are loaded with meaning, let alone the major differences are there in the Quran.
In answer to the video "Top 10 Ways Muslims Ignore the Quran"
In 45:16-18 the Quran addresses Muhammad, telling him just as another nation was vouchsafed revelation, he too is now chosen and put on the straight path, thus stressing the continuation of the divine message. As a side note, the suras speaking of God choosing prophets indiscriminately, that prophets outside the line of Israel were sent to mankind, with Muhammad being the last of these chosen noble individuals, and that all of them bore witness to the same truth and pattern (suras ghafir, al anaam, al shuaara etc) precede the revelation of both 45:16 and 29:27. This bellies the idea that Muhammad first acknowledged prophethood to be the sole prerogative of the Israelites until he later extended it to non-Israelites.
As to the efforts of some (mainly, if not only, Bible-ignorant Christians) to exclude Ishmael's progeny (or any other non-Israelite branch) from potential chosenness for prophehood based on Ishmael's supposed exclusion from the Abrahamic covenant, firstly, God in the Torah is reported to have announced several covenants with Abraham, not only one, and none of them is related to prophethood being the sole prerogative of one branch or another. In Gen15:18-21,17:2,8,10 we read about the covenant of dominion over the land of Canaan by Abraham's offspring, the covenant that would increase his descendants in numbers, and the covenant of circumcision of his male children including all those living in his household that are not his male offspring.
We read in Gen17:17-27 that Ishmael was made fully part of the covenant of circumcision. This practice remained among some of the pre-islamic Arabs of Mecca that had maintained the tradition.
The passage also says that the covenant of blessed and fruitful nation will apply to Ishmael.
The only covenant that isnt explicitly mentionned as covering him is the one of dominion over the land of Canaan. This is why God in Gen17:19 is reported to have accepted and did not deny Abraham's request that Ishmael might "live before the Lord" (an expression of righteousness and sacrifice to God). But God added further qualification in relation to the land covenant
(judaica press translation) "And Abraham said to God "If only Ishmael might live before you!" And God said, "Indeed, your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac, and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his seed after him.."
That is the covenant continuously spoken of all over the Hebrew scriptures as applying to the Israelites only, lamented over, prophesied about to be restored following every destruction. This covenant will eventually forever be reinstated in the Messianic era. See for example Jer11:1-5 or when Isaiah prophesied the renewal of the covenant he stated
Isa49:8"I will make you for a people of a covenant, to establish a land, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages".
The psalmist remembers the covenant in this way
Ps105:9-11"Which He had made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, And He set it up to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, Saying, "To you I shall give the land of Canaan, the portion of your heritage.""
A reminder of that covenant with the seed of Isaac, and it being related to land rights is reiterated in 1Chr16:15-18. King David, in his last days, as he gathered the leaders of the community and announced his succession through his son Solomon, as he told them that the responsibility to build the Temple to shelter the Ark of God would rest upon his son, he reminded everyone that
1Chr28:8"And now, before the eyes of all Israel, the congregation of the Lord, and in the ears of our God, observe and seek all the commandments of the Lord your God, in order that you inherit the good land and bequeath it to your sons after you forever".
In answer to the video "Top 10 Ways Muslims Ignore the Quran"
An overview on the Quranic style will be sufficient to answer that objection.
In the Quran when it comes to reminding of past narratives and anecdotes, the objective isnt dry storytelling and genealogies as in most of the Bible where one can easily and quickly lose track of names, places and other details. These little details, if omitted wouldn't make humanity miss out on anything in terms of guidance, and in fact confuse the reader and distract his attention to trivial matters. The Quran is not a historical record or dry, impartial document: it is argumentative and impactful to get people to believe and actively reform themselves and their environement.
Its powerful statements are in an intellectual, spiritual and emotional language that every culture across time and space can appreciate. The Quran's objective isnt story telling, but "message telling" and maximizing its audience's attention to the precept(s) of the story. We thus find in the Quran that most of the characters recognizable through their Biblical counterparts have their stories retold without necessary links and in disconnected episodes. As a result, they largely lose their temporal and spatial dimensions, thus perfectly fitting into the Quranic moral style of narrative. The Quran therefore is not a story book in a beginning to end format, it is a never ending cyclical experience. Like the word or speech of God, it has no beginning or end.
Muslims will not be asked on the Day of Judgment the details of the people of the cave or how Noah's flood occurred, how many generations passed between a person and another, the names in a genealogy or whether they memorized the names of people in the Quran. They will be questioned as to how they responded to the lessons from the different incidents and stories related in the Quran. Thus to focus on the message, the Quran injects the passage of a well-known story, whenever the larger context a sura requires it. And when it does so, it only puts the details of that story that are relevant to that specific context. That is why one sees variations in repetitions, but never contradictions. The only exception to that style of narrative is the story of the prophet Joseph/Yusuf which takes the form of a beginning to end narrative in one place, and a highly eloquent, intricate one at that.
Those unable to appreciate that Quranic style speak of contradictory, or incomplete repetitions. This is because first and foremost they approach the Quranic text with the above Biblical paradigm in mind; the Quran, instead of being read on its own is seen as a garbled version of multiple Judeo-Christian sources. If, however, the text is approached according to its own thematic unities, its lack of historical detail and absence of chronological order become unproblematic. And this is the prevalent approach among western scholarship nowadays.
The second common problem for those reading the text occurs when they are unable to connect the different repetitions properly among one another and fail to grasp the manner in which each repetition fits in the context of a particular sura. This a side note isnt circular reasoning as it doesnt presume the notion of textual coherence. It is textual coherence that objectively establishes itself, through consistent repetitions, recurrence of similar themes and notions in different contexts.
These repetitions always retain a core meaning, and are always thematically correlated with similar passages in other suras, like conversations and dialogues between the suras. The brilliant pakistani scholar Islahi called the recurrence of themes in several suras "complementarity".
What is remarkable from a linguistic perspective is that the Quran was uttered publicly, live and as a speech, which prevents any type of editing and yet it forms one incredibly well knit whole, from verse to verse, paragraph to pararaph, sura to sura. If we take the example of sura baqara, the longest of all and revealed over the course of 10 years while other suras were being simultaneously revealed, it is structured in an interconnected manner allowing it to be thematically structured in many different ways.
This is a vast field of Quranic studies, with many sub-branches, studied by both Muslims and non-Muslim scholars; the interconnection between suras, passages, verses, words and even letters and how the whole thing remarkably fits together. The idea of the Quran being a dull, boring or incomprehensible repetitive book is a discredited proposition, not only by the scholars of Islam all throughout their exegetical works spanning centuries, but also more recently by non-Muslims who have been doing, and keep on doing, a remarkable job at unveiling the intricate connections of the text, from verse to another, paragraph to paragraph and sura to sura. See Norman Brown's work on sura 18 for instance. That weak assertion is only still circulating among uneducated critics of Islam, and missionaries.
For most of modern Islamicists, the Quran has to be approached as a text on its own, with its own internal coherence to be properly understood. So long as explanations to its passages are sought from the perspective of its alleged, ellusive and countless proposed sources, the Quran will remain an obscure book for those approaching it. Here is just one of the thematical structuring of sura Baqara, in a symetrical construction called ring structure; - 1st subject from v1-20 faith vs unbelief/Last subject v285-6 dua about belief-hypocrisy-disbelief. - 2nd subject from v21-39 God's creation and knowledge/2nd subject from down God's creation and knowledge v254-284 - 3rd topic v40-103 the Israelites receive the law/3rd subject from down from down about the laws given to Muslims v178-253 - 4th subject Ibrahim faces tests v104-141/4th one from down Ibrahim's nation, the Ishmaelites are tested v153-177 - middle section culminates with the new direction of prayer, the Kaaba symbolizing that new nation and its new law
And all this symetrical ring structure leads to the statement of the Muslims having been made the ummatan wasata/balanced nation, a statement located in the center of a sura composed of 286 verses, at exactly verse 143. Every single Quranic sura on its own forms, like baqara, a cohesive argument.
Also, because many of its passages can be read through the lens of another passage from within the sura, other analysts have approached its structuring in a pericope. For example, the story of Adam in sura Baqara pericopes throughout the sura. The Israelites were told to enter a town and enjoy its sustenance v58 similarily to the instructions previously given to Adam and his spouse upon entering the garden v35. But just as Adam and his spouse werent content with what they were given, the Israelites began grumbling for the sustenance they had in captivity v61. And just as Adam and his spouse found their Lord forgiving once they repented, some of the Israelites were eventually forgiven for their worshipping the calf and desisting prior to Moses' return v54.
