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Muhammads Miracles: Difference between revisions
→Qur'anic Evidence: I have put in some modern academic views on the moon splitting verse as an alternative explanation (which also indirectly highlights its failed eschatological prediction).
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{{Quote|{{Quran|2|3}}|Their hearts toying as with trifles. The wrong-doers conceal their private counsels, (saying), "Is this (one) more than a man like yourselves? Will ye go to witchcraft with your eyes open?"}} | {{Quote|{{Quran|2|3}}|Their hearts toying as with trifles. The wrong-doers conceal their private counsels, (saying), "Is this (one) more than a man like yourselves? Will ye go to witchcraft with your eyes open?"}} | ||
==== Modern Historian Views of Quran Verse 54:1 ==== | |||
Many modern academics view the moon splitting verse in the Qur'an simply as a natural astronomical phenomena that may have occurred during the time of Mohammed; which he believed was a sign the hour was imminent, a common belief in antiquity that appears in Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings in the centuries preceding Islam (and during early Islam),<ref>For examples of this in Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrianism literature in the centuries preceding Islam, see Shoemaker, Stephen J. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16t6jmh. ''The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam.''] University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. ''Chapters 1 - 4'' | |||
For Muslim's similar beliefs in early Islam, see ''Chapters 5 and 6''.</ref> which later commentators and biographers writing hagiographic material exaggerated to be a miraculous literal splitting. Uri Rubin and Rudi Paret for example suggest it was a partial lunar eclipse,<ref>''Muhammad’s message in Mecca: warnings, signs, and miracles [The case of the splitting of the moon (Q 54:1-2)].'' Uri Rubin in Jonathan E. Brockopp, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (Cambridge, 2010), 39-60. Noting Rudi Paret's opinion in footnote 9 pp. 44. | |||
</ref> while David Cook notes it may have been a comet.<ref>Shoemaker, Stephen J.. The Death of a Prophet ''(Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) (p. 161).'' University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition. </ref> | |||
{{Quote|Neuwirth, Angelika. <i>The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 2.1: Early Middle Meccan Suras: The New Elect (p. 56 - 58).</i> Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.|The assertion that the “hour” is near picks up on a threatening sign that had already been used once in early Mecca (in Q 79:42). “The Hour” was there the subject of the question: yasʾalūnaka ʿani l-sāʿati ayāna mursāhā (“They ask you about the hour when it will come”; see HC 1, 246, on Q 79:42), but which did not allow an answer... | |||
...In the spirit of this awareness, the reality of the ‘drawing near hour’ is affirmed in v. 1. This happens for the first time through an empirically observed natural phenomenon: a ‘moon splitting,’ perhaps a lunar eclipse, if one wishes to follow Rubin (2010) with the interpretation of the word in the sense of a poetic-pictorial dressing of the well-known phenomenon. The listeners are familiar with such changes in the celestial bodies from the eschatological predictions clothed in so-called idhā series (see the text type SKMS, 188ff.). Thus a change in the moon in Q 75:8 stands in the context of an eschatological scene. The short sentence Q 75:7–13 rhymes with the same schema 3Car as Q 54, it is obviously evoked here. In Q 75 the ‘disappearance’ of the moon is followed by the prediction of a merging of the sun and moon and finally the projection of the last day... ...A phenomenon known from apocalyptic literature as a sign of the end of the world, which had already been part of the proclamation, is explained as being present in the now: the change in a celestial body has now actually occurred; so the “hour” is near. However, this upgrading of the natural phenomenon was met with ridicule from the opponents... | |||
..As Bell (1939: 544ff.) and Paret (KKK, 495) have already emphasized, v. 1 is about a natural event that may have actually taken place at the time of the Meccan proclamation. The interpretation of iqtarabat (and inshaqqat) as “Perfectum propheticum,” as an indication of a future event, which older translators advocate (cf. Blachère 1949: 140ff.), is anachronistic, obviously owing its origins to Islamic tradition. It occurs because the “sign” of the splitting of the moon, which according to a hadith of Ibn Masʿūd was observed by Masʿūd himself and therefore had early relevance in the biography of the prophet, could no longer function as an eschatological sign that had already occurred, as the associated announcement of the imminent end of the world had not come true. It was now understood by some as a mere prediction of an apparition, by others as a sign actually wrought by the prophet himself, a confirming miracle (see Andrae 1918: 55–57; Schimmel 1985: 69–71; and especially Rubin 2010; for the discussions of the theologians who, like al-Naẓẓām [d. 844/845], had to deal with the nonfulfillment of the prediction of the end of the world, see van Ess 1992: 415ff. and 1995: 167ff.).}} | |||
==See Also== | ==See Also== | ||