Some Thoughts on Yahya
- philhoraia
- Apr 28, 2024
- 2 min read
S 19:7-15 Zakariyya, we give you good news of a boy whose name is Yahya. We have not made for him before samiyyan. / He said: Lord, how can I have a boy when my woman was infertile and I have reached savage old age? / He said: Thus said your lord: It is easy for me and I created you before when you were nothing, / He said: Lord, make me a sign. He said: Your sign is not to speak to people for three nights straight. / Then he went out to his people and indicated to them to praise in the morning and in the evening. / Yahya, take the book with strength. And we gave him the judgment as a boy / And affection from our presence and purity and he was pious / And righteous towards his parents and was not a disobedient tyrant. / And peace is upon him on a day he was born and on a day he dies and on a day he is raised alive.
'We' give Zakariyya good news of a boy, whose name is Yahya. This suggests that the boy might be pre-existent. Zakariyya, it would seem, begins to address one that he calls 'lord'; does 'we' refer to angels and the one that he calls 'lord' his deity that has accompanied them? They appear to have a conversation in which his 'lord' speaks of what Zakariyya's 'lord' (!) supposedly said. He once again addresses his 'lord' and he is told that he would not speak to people for three nights straight, although it's three days elsewhere.
Zakariyya goes out from somewhere to his people, whoever they are. Yahya is to take 'the book'. Who is saying this? He was given 'the judgment' as a boy. Was Yahya a judge? Was he, like Isa, given a book as a baby? Who is invoking peace upon him? Surely not Allah? Should we understand "And peace is upon him on a day he was born and on a day he dies and on a day he is raised alive." as 'Peace be upon him', etc.? Is/are 'we' making a wish? Should we actually understand that Yahya was alive in the 7th Century?
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