An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part Fourteen: Exodus. Again. Plus: Unbelievers are like dogs (The Elevations (al-A’raf) 101-206)

The Elevations (al-A’raf) 101-206
Exodus. Again. Plus: Unbelievers are like dogs.

Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0

For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com

And now:

The Elevations (al-A’raf) 101-120

 “Then after them We sent Moses with Our signs to Pharaoh and his elite, but they wronged them. So observe how was the fate of the agents of corruption!”

The verses for this part are all really short, so it breezes pretty quickly through the story of Moses having a magic contest against Pharaoh’s magicians (example V107 “Thereat he threw down his staff, and behold, it became a manifest python.”)

It all goes down much the same as in Exodus, except Aaron is nowhere to be seen in this version. Moses asks Pharaoh to “let the Children of Israel go with [him]” and performs the magic tricks of turning his staff into a python, and having a white hand (it makes no more sense in the Qur’an as it does in the Bible). Pharaoh summons his magicians who ask what’s in it for them if they succeed (there’s an interesting textual note here that depending on the version used, the magicians either say “We shall indeed have a reward if we were to be the victors” or “Shall we indeed have a reward if we were to be the victors?” To be honest this sounds like me speaking French and posing a statement with a rising intonation rather than have to think about how to phrase an expression in the interrogative, but I thought that, if this is a matter of dispute, what else could be?

Anyway, Moses’ snake eats the magicians’ ones (although you need to have read the original to work out what “And behold, it was swallowing what they had faked” is supposed to mean, I think) whereupon (or “whereat”) the magicians are vanquished and prostrate themselves.

The Elevations 121-140

“So We took vengeance on them and drowned them in the sea, for they denied Our signs and were oblivious to them.”

The recounting of Exodus continues, with Pharaoh getting angry at his magicians for accepting that the miracles of Moses (and Aaron, who now gets a mention but with absolutely no context) are due to Allah. There then follow the various plagues, in which the Egyptians each time ask Moses to ask his God to stop the plagues, then decide afterwards that this was due to natural causes and not Allah after all. Interestingly, in this version compared to the Biblical one the blame is widely spread amongst the Egyptians and not purely blamed on Pharaoh, and neither is Pharaoh “hardened in his heart” by Allah – it appears in the Qur’anic version that it’s entirely down to human disobedience of the divine – “But whenever any good came to them, they would say, ‘This is our due.’ And if any ill visited them, they took it for ill omens attending Moses and those who were with him. (Look! Indeed the cause of their ill omens is with Allah, but most of them do not know)”

It’s funny, because I’ve seen the reverse concept used by some theists – that any good is the will of God, and any evil that befalls them is because they have sinned somehow. As I’ve addressed before, this is the kind of mental gymnastics that need to be engaged in order to justify an omnipotent ominbenevolent deity.

This section passes through the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea, which here is only given as Allah drowning the Egyptians, nothing about parting the Sea in the first place. Also of interest, the Israelites are given the lands to the “west and east” of Egypt. West? Odd. The section ends with the Israelites asking Moses for a god like the ones of, we presume, the Canaanites, and Moses chastising them for wanting idols.

The Elevations 141-160

“And We wrote for him in the Tablets advice concerning all things and an elaboration of all things, [and We said], ‘Hold on to them with power, and bid your people to hold on to the best of [what is in] them. Soon I shall show you the abode of the transgressors.”

In these verses the text goes over Moses going up the mountains to receive the Commandments, the Golden Calf, and briefly at the end mentions manna and quails. There is also a brief diversion that I think are a few verses with Allah addressing the Prophet; it reads a bit like the text is directed at Moses, but given that it refers to the “Evangel” (ie New Testament) it’s probably set in the present tense rather than referring to the time of Moses.

There are a few differences compared to the Exodus version. The mountain is un-named (neither Sinai nor Horeb), but then the Qur’an so far has tended to be lighter on the specifics and proper nouns compared to the Bible (no long lists of begetting, for example). When Moses asks God to reveal Himself, here God causes a mountain to crumble as evidence of His existence, which seems a lot more godlike compared to the showing of “back parts” as seen in the Bible – one instance where the Qur’anic reboot of the Bible has improved on the story-telling. The Golden Calf story goes down pretty much the same; Moses doesn’t break the “Tablets” of law, but there are still transgressors killed in an earthquake. In this version the calf gives out “a lowing sound”, which is kind of cool.

Also, Moses shows mercy to Aaron and the majority of the Israelites for worshipping the Golden Calf because he picks up the Tablets and, it is implied, reads of Allah’s mercy on them.

The Elevations 161-180
“But the wrongdoers changed the saying with other than what they had been told. So We sent against them a plague from the sky because of the wrongs they used to commit.”

There’s really very little of much substance in these verses. Mostly they just repeat the assertions that disobedience to God is bad, and obedience is good, in various different ways. Any specific actions are alluded to rather than stated outright. For example, V168 “We dispersed them into communities around the earth: some of them were righteous, and some of them otherwise, and We tested them with good and bad [times] so that they may come back” is delightfully vague. “People went to different places, and some were good, and some were bad, and good and bad things happened to them”. Well, people are good and bad, and good and bad things happen so that’s pretty clear evidence of a God, right? Also sometimes it rains and sometimes it’s sunny.

There’s also the instruction to “Relate to them an account of him to whom We gave Our signs, but he cast them off. Thereupon Satan pursued him, and he became one of the perverse” which suggests that a specific example is about to follow, but it doesn’t. The non-believer is likened to a dog that “lolls out his tongue” when called or not called, and then a few verses that explain that Allah has made people like this from the start – “Certainly We have created for hell many of the jinn and humans”, which is kind of stupid and cruel.

The Elevations 181-206

“As for those who deny Our signs, We will draw them imperceptibly [into ruin], whence they do not know.”

Allah here comes across like a dangerous undertow – if you are aware of Him then you are safe, but if you chose to ignore Him, He will draw you into disaster. Which all seems a bit sneaky and underhanded to me, but I can see the psychological effect on a believer, they get the feeling that they are a red pill taker, that they see the Matrix and have some kind of hidden knowledge over the non-believer. A cunning bit of manipulation, and it’s funny that from the point of view of non-belief it seems to be the other way around.

There’s a confusing bit about pregnancy – not sure if this is meant to be Adam and Eve or just men and women in general, and possibly it’s meant to imply that procreation is the domain of Allah as well, because this leads into a diatribe against idolatry. Taken as a whole, the implication is that the only “true” creator of anything is Allah; anything man-made (such as idols) have no power. I suppose by implicating God in pregnancy it removes the capacity to claim that humans can create new life through reproduction – they can, but only via the will of Allah.

And that’s pretty much it for The Elevations. It was a bit less obtuse than some of the previous surah(s); it still jumped around a lot in topics, but on the whole stuck to one or two themes and simple descriptions. I liked the earlier D&D-style sections, the retelling of Exodus was less interesting, probably because that’s gone over three times in the Bible, but the little differences were quite telling in what they left out and what they included.