Abraham, Lot and the 'Brothers' Isaac and Jacob
- philhoraia
- Jun 6, 2022
- 3 min read
In this short post we shall be looking at S 21:71-72
Verse 71 And we saved him and Lut to the land which we had blessed for the ‘alamin.
Ibrahim and Lut were saved 'to' a land that was blessed for the worlds. Saved from where to where? This land was blessed. What land? In another surah we read of the Temple precincts that had been blessed. See my post: https://philhoraia.wixsite.com/website/post/holy-and-blessed
S 17:1 Praise be to the one who travelled by night with his slave at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose precincts we have blessed, to show him from our signs. He is the hearer, the seer.
The Temple was in Jerusalem. Regarding the verse, see: Muhammad's Alleged Night Journey to the Jerusalem Temple
Verse 72 And we gave him Ishaq and Ya’qub as a redundancy and all did we make righteous.
Was Ibrahim or Lut given Ishaq and Ya'qub? Who are 'all' that were made righteous? 'Made righteous'? Were they bad and Allah made them righteous?
The historical Isaac and Jacob were father and son, not brothers.
From an Answering Islam article:
To summarize the Quran’s errors regarding the Patriarchs:
The Quran mistakenly presents Ishmael as one of Jacob’s fathers.
The Quran mistakenly presents Ishmael as the father of Isaac.
In other texts, Ishmael and Isaac are grouped together as those whom Allah gave to Abraham, much like Allah gave him both Isaac and Jacob. This either means that Jacob is the brother of Ishmael and Isaac, or that Ishmael is Isaac’s father just as Isaac is Jacobs’ father!
The Quran mistakenly assumes that Ishmael was a prophet who received revelation.
Even Islamic scholarship sees just how confused the Quran is regarding the exact relationships between the Patriarchs and Ishmael. Noted Islamicist F.E. Peter makes the following analysis:
... The point is worth noting because in its earliest understanding, the Quran appears to have regarded Isaac and Jacob as Abraham's sons, as in 19:50, a Meccan revelation. It describes God’s regard for Abraham after his rejection of his family’s paganism ... Ishmael is in fact mentioned in the same sura, in verse 54, following Moses, and with no apparent connection with Abraham ... The immediate connection of Isaac and Jacob with Abraham and Ishmael’s separation from all three is not an isolated occurrence. It appears again in lists in 6:84-86, 21:72-85, 38:45-48, where Ishmael appears without note or particular importance amidst a miscellany, and not always the same miscellany, of prophets. The conclusion seems inescapable. While still at Mecca Muhammad was under the impression that Isaac and Jacob were Abraham’s sons, then at some point, probably at Medina, he corrected the genealogy (14:39), and eventually, for reasons more theological and polemical, placed emphasis on Ishmael (2:125, 127). (Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam [State University of New York Press (SUNY), Albany 1994)], p. 118)
If the Muslim tries to turn to the Holy Bible in order to solve this mess then they would be further compounding the problem. In the first place, the Bible contradicts the claim that Jacob’s sons identified Ishmael as one of his fathers. Jacob, in Genesis, identifies Yahweh as the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac. Secondly, the Bible rejects the claim that God gave Ishmael revelation and prophethood since it expressly says that Ishmael was not included in God’s covenant blessings that were given solely to Isaac, Jacob and his children. Thus, if the Bible is used to confirm the Quran then the same Holy Bible can also be used to falsify it. It’s as simple as that.
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