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A
History of Creation
Part
III
Zeeshan
Hasan
The assimilation of polytheist
images for the purpose of establishing monotheism may seem
bizarre from our perspective, since we are the product of
millennia of monotheist thinking in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim
traditions. However, in Biblical times there was evidently
no difficulty with accepting images of God which seem difficult
from our developed monotheist perspective. It seems likely
that the Bible was itself in the process of assembling a
monotheist picture of God over many centuries, and in the
meantime God could be represented in language which echoed
the tale of Marduk slaying Tiamat, especially since this
enabled P to reinforce the sabbath as the Jewish ritual
day of rest.
Finally, done with our lengthy detour into
Israelite and Babylonian religion, we can finally come back
to the Qur'an. The remarkable thing is that the Qur'an keeps
P's week-long creation story, along with it's Enuma Elish-derived
story of the splitting of the heavens and earth from a single
primordial entity. Muslims have been blissfully unaware
of this, even though the Qur'anic use of P's Babylonian-inspired
account requires some sort of explanation, since it seems
to contradict the commonplace view that the Qur'an is divine
revelation and hence “pure” of any trace of polytheism,
mythology, etc.
While it is impossible to question the divine
origin of the Qur'an in a Muslim context, the traces of
non-monotheist Babylonian myth in the Bible and the Qur'an
can be dealt with if we realise that is basically similar
to an old Muslim philosophical debate about the nature of
revelation. This was the debate over whether the Qur'an
was “created” by God for the specific historical circumstance
of seventh century Arabia, or existed alongside God eternally
as an “uncreated” truth. The argument can be briefly summarised
as a philosophical debate over the nature of truth. Medieval
Muslim philosophers argued as to whether the Qur'an, as
revelation and hence the ultimate truth, was “created” by
God for the particular historical occasion of Muhammad's
prophecy. The question arose because Muslim philosophers
borrowed heavily from the classical Greek philosophy of
Plato, which regarded the absolute truths as unchanging
and ahistorical (in the manner of Platonic “forms”, the
unchanging truths which underly the changing physical world).
Both sides of this argument believed that the Qur'an was
the word of God; the question was whether God intended the
same revealed truth to hold for all times (implying an uncreated
and unchanging revelation) or different revealed truths
to hold for different times (implying that God changed the
revelation itself over time). Notably, however, the classical
Muslim debates were completely theoretical and philosophical
in nature; at the time, there was no scope for historical
analysis of the changing nature of revealed creation stories.
Knowledge of the evolution of the Biblical and Babylonian
creation stories has only been discovered in the last century,
through the immense efforts of historical Biblical scholarship
on the one hand and archeological excavation of Babylonian
cities and translation of cuneiform tablets found in them.
Our investigation into the Biblical and Babylonian roots
of the Qur'anic creation story is a powerful empirical argument
for the Qur'an (and revelation in general) being created
by God for specific historical circumstances. Since the
creation stories as expressed in J, P and finally the Qur'an
are seen to change significantly, we must conclude that
each of these revelations was created by God for a specific
historical context and to address specific religious needs.
The issue of createdness and historical
specificity of revelation is not just an academic question.
It has immense consequences for Muslim law, since the concept
of an “uncreated” and ahistorical Qur'an implies that Qur'anic
laws should be applied to all times and places. However,
if the Qur'an was indeed “created” by God specifically for
Muhammad's time, then there is no reason that those time-specific
laws should be applicable outside those particular historical
circumstances. The task then becomes to search for the ethics
underlying the Qur'anic laws, which would represent their
eternal and unchanging aspect. Our discussion, by providing
real evidence for a changing revelation and a Qur'an “created”
for a specific time and place, negates the idea of universally
applicable Qur'anic law.
Finally, we may look at what the Qur'an
has to say about all this. Although it does not address
the development of revelation directly, support for a view
of a historical context-specific revelation can be found
in the verses discussing abrogation (Arabic naskh) of older
revelations by newer ones. The following Qur'anic verses
are illuminating:
And when We exchange a verse in the place
of another verse - and God knows very well what He is sending
down -- they say, 'Thou art a mere forger!' Nay, but the
most of them have no knowledge. Say: "The Holy Spirit
sent it down from thy Lord in truth, and to confirm those
who believe, and to be a guidance and good tidings to those
who surrender." And We know very well that they say
'Only a mortal is teaching him.' The speech of him at whom
they hint is barbarous; and this speech Arabic, manifest.
(Qur'an 16:102-5)
The naskh referred to above seems to be
the replacement of old Biblical stories by new Qur'anic
ones. Hence the countering of the allegation of opponents
of Islam, who claimed that Muhammad was being coached by
a local Jew in Biblical stories; this is denied as altogether
impossible, as the stories that Muhammad is telling are
Arabic, and are in fact different from the Hebrew / Biblical
ones. In the specific example of the creation story, P's
account has been retained only in summary, with references
to Tiamat and the justification of the sabbath having been
removed or condensed. But at the same time, the Qur'an repeatedly
asserts that it is continuing the Judeo-Christian revelation;
the implication is that the different revelations themselves
are created by God for each age.
From our perspective, the idea of historical naskh also
holds a useful assumption that each revelation addresses
specific needs and circumstances; hence P's revelation can
contain references to the Babylonian myth of Marduk and
Tiamat, as the need of that time was to integrate Babylonian
ideas to create an image of the Israelite God as a cosmic
creator, a necessary step in the development of true monotheism.
Muslims naively consider themselves part
of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but have not explored
the Bible and its pre-Biblical roots sufficiently to understand
what that really means. The Qur'an has really been considered
the only revelation worth thinking about, and because it
was then considered in isolation, “revelation”has been considered
to be an isolated, ahistorical event. This separation of
revelation from history in turn leads to a conservative
and unchanging view of religion as a whole. However, the
Biblical evidence is that the divine revelation as represented
in the Judeo-Christian tradition has changed greatly over
time, incorporating different ideas at different times.
The Judeo-Christian revelations were not the same as the
Qur'anic one, but through a process of evolution gradually
evolved to the point where the Qur'an fit as a next step.
Given that, it is reasonable to assume that Islam is still
evolving and will continue to evolve over time, and that
this should not be condemned as “innovation”, but rather
seen as part of the larger divine plan of the religious
evolution of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion.
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