返回总目录
Was 'Uzayr (Ezra) Called The Son Of God?
Was `Uzayr (Ezra) Called The Son
Of God?
M S M Saifullah
& Mustafa Ahmed
© Islamic
Awareness, All Rights Reserved.
Last Modified:
1st September 1999
Assalamu-`alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
`Uzayr, who was exalted by a community of Jews,
is identified as Ezra by Muslim commentators. The Qur'an says:
The Jews call `Uzair
a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is the
saying from their mouth; (In this) they are intimate; what the Unbelievers
of the old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away
from the truth. [Qur'an 9:30]
Before we take care of the origin of the issue of
exalting Ezra to son of God by some Jews, let us first discuss the life of the man
himself.
Ezra (5th-4th century BC, Babylon and Jerusalem)
was a religious leader of the Jews who returned from exile in Babylon, and a
reformer who reconstituted the Jewish community on the basis of the Torah (Law,
or the regulations of the first five books of the Old Testament). This monumental
work of Ezra helped to make Judaism a religion in which law was central, that
enabled the Jews to survive as a community when they were dispersed all over
the world. Ezra has with some justice been called the father of Judaism
since his efforts did much to give Jewish religion the form that was to characterize
it for centuries after the specific form the Jewish religion took after the
Babylonian Exile. So important was he in the eyes of his people that later tradition
regarded him as no less than a second Moses(P).
Regarding the tomb of Ezra Encyclopaedia
Judaica says:
There are number of traditions concerning
the site of Ezra's tomb. According to Josephus it is in Jerusalem; other hold that
he was buried in Urta or in Zunzumu on the Tigris; but the general accepted version
is that his tomb is situated in Uzer, a village near Basra. This tradition is mentioned
by Benjamin of Tuleda, Pethahiah of Regensburg, Judah Alharizi, and other travelers,
Jewish and non-Jewish who visited Babylonia.[1]
It is to be kept in mind that the knowledge about
Ezra is derived from the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, supplemented by the
Apocryphal (not included in the Jewish and Protestant canons
of the Old Testament but present in Roman Catholic and
Greek
Orthodox Churchs' canon) book of I Esdras
(Latin Vulgate form of the name Ezra), which preserves the Greek text of Ezra and
a part of Nehemiah.
It is interesting to note that the Jews in Arabia,
during the advent of Islam, were involved in mystical speculation as well as anthromorphizing
and worshipping an angel that functions as the substitute creator of the universe.
That angel is usually identified as Metatron[2]. Newby
notes that:
...we can deduce that the inhabitants
of Hijaz during Muhammad's time knew portions, at least, of 3 Enoch in association
with the Jews. The angels over which Metatron becomes chief are identified in the
Enoch traditions as the sons of God, the Bene Elohim, the Watchers, the fallen ones
as the causer of the flood. In 1 Enoch, and 4 Ezra, the term Son of God can be applied
to the Messiah, but most often it is applied to the righteous men, of whom Jewish
tradition holds there to be no more righteous than the ones God elected to translate
to heaven alive. It is easy, then, to imagine that among the Jews of the Hijaz
who were apparently involved in mystical speculations associated with the merkabah,
Ezra, because of the traditions of his translation, because of his piety, and particularly
because he was equated with Enoch as the Scribe of God, could be termed one of the
Bene Elohim. And, of course, he would fit the description of religious leader (one
of the ahbar of the Qur'an 9:31) whom the Jews had exalted.[3]
The Islamic exegetes have mentioned that there
existed a community of Jews in Yemen who considered Ezra as son of God. Hirschberg
says in Encyclopaedia
Judaica:
H. Z. Hirschberg proposed another
assumption, based on the words of Ibn Hazm, namely, that the 'righteous
who live in Yemen believed that 'Uzayr was indeed the son of Allah.' According
to other Muslim sources, there were some Yemenite Jews who had converted to
Islam who believed that Ezra was the messiah. For Muhammad, Ezra, the apostle
(!) of messiah, can be seen in the same light as the Christian saw Jesus,
the messiah, the son of Allah.[4]
George Sale makes an interesting comment concerning
the Muslim as well as Judeo-Christian opinion on this issue.
This grievous charge against the Jews,
the commentators endeavour to support by telling us, that it is meant of some ancient
heterdox Jews, or else of some Jews of Medina; who said so for no other reason, than
for that the law being utterly lost and forgotten during the Babylonish captivity,
Ezra having been raised to life after he had been dead one hundred years, dictated
the whole anew unto the scribes, out of his own memory; at which they greatly marvelled,
and declared that he could not have done it, unless he were the son of God. Al-Beidawi
adds, that the imputation must be true, because this verse was read to the Jews and
they did not contradict it; which they were ready enough to do in other instances.
That Ezra did restore not only the Pentateuch,
but also the other books of the Old Testament, by divine revelation, was the opinion
of several of the Christian fathers, who are quoted by Dr.Prideaux, and of some other
writers; which they seem to have first borrowed from a passage in that very ancient
apocryphal book, called in our English Bible, the second book of Esdras. Dr. Prideaux
tells us, that herein the Fathers attributed more to Ezra, than the Jews themselves,
which he laboured much in, and went a great way in the perfecting of it. It is not
improbable however, that the fiction came originally from the Jews, though they be
now of another opinion, and I cannot fix it upon them by any direct proof. For, not
to insist upon the testimony of the Mohammedans (which yet I cannot but think of
some little weight in a point of this nature,) it is allowed by the most sagacious
critics, that the second book of Ezra was written by a Chrisitian indeed, but yet
one who had been bred a Jew, and was intimately acquainted with the fables of the
Rabbins; and the story itself is perfectly in the taste and was of thinking of those
men.[5]
Last but not the least, a Christian writer also proposed
that Muhammad(P) got the information of Jews exalting Ezra to son of God from
the Samaritans who said the Ezra had acted presumptuously and had changed
the old divine alphabetical character of the holy Books of the Law - a character
still used and revered to this day by rapidly dwindling Samaritan community.[6]
This author concludes in a rather unchristian way that:
But it is not at all unlikely that the
source of Mohammed's indictment of the Jews is to be found among the Samaritans or
amongst Arab tribesmen of Samaritan strain. If we found in Samaritan literature the
opposite belief that Ezra (or Uzair) was the son of Satan, we would be well-nigh
sure of having settled the matter.[7]
And Allah knows best!
Other Articles Related To The Historical Errors
Historical Errors Of The Qur'an:
Pharaoh & Haman
The 'Samaritan' Error In
The Qur'an
Al-`Aziz
& Potiphar
Qur'anic Accuracy
Vs. Biblical Error: The Kings & Pharaohs Of Egypt
References
[1] Encyclopaedia
Judaica, Volume 6, Encylopedia Judaica
Jerusalem, p. 1108.
[2] G. D. Newby, A
History Of The Jews Of Arabia, 1988,
University Of South Carolina Press, p. 59.
[3] Ibid, p. 61.
[4] Encyclopaedia
Judaica, Ibid., p. 1108.
[5] George Sale, The
Koran, IX Edition of 1923, London, p.
152.
[6] J. Walker, "Who
Is 'Uzair?", The
Moslem World, Volume XIX, No. 3, 1939,
pp. 305-306.
[7] Ibid, p. 306.
Back
To Refutation Of External Contradictions In The Qur'an
