An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 107: What It Is? I’m Not Going To Tell You (The Catastrophe (al-Qari’ah))
The Catastrophe (al-Qari’ah)
What It Is? I’m Not Going To Tell You.
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
The Catastrophe (al-Qari’ah) 1-11
“The Catastrophe!
What is the Catastrophe?
What will show you what is the Catastrophe?”
What? What will show me what is the Catastrophe? If that’s supposed to mean “what the Catastrophe is”. Well, I’m going to leave that hanging for a bit for dramatic suspense. Firstly, although the last line is oddly phrased, that’s a nice opening with gradually increasing verse length repeating the word “Catastrophe”; this highlights the importance of the Catastrophe, particularly as a subject matter for this surah.
The Arabic word used is “l-qāriʿa”, which, according to the notes is “the repeated sound that shall resound through all the earth as it is being pulverized in the cataclysm at the end of time”. So evidently to an Arabic-speaking listener this opening has an onomatopoeic element to it that’s lost in English. I have to admit, it doesn’t sound much like the sound of grinding rocks to me, but then onomatopoeia in different languages often seem odd to a non-native speaker.
Okay, so what will show you what the Catastrophe is?
“The day mankind will be like scattered moths,
and the mountains will be like carded wool.”
Huh.
Okay.
That’s telling me what you think will happen. I suppose it’s expounding on “what it is”, but I thought there would have been more.
Anyway, some unusual similes employed there, and again the choices make more sense when you look at the Arabic; the two verses end with “l-mabthūth” and “l-manfūsh” respectively (which I think are the adjectives employed). You can see there’s a kind of para-rhyme going on there, and at least a bit of alliteration. The images work fine enough as well – mankind dashing about with no evident rhyme or reason like moths fluttering about, and the usually solid mountains becoming insubstantial and flimsy like carded wool. Although, fluffiness is not normally a property I’d associate with apocalypses.
Next we get to the inevitable judgement of mankind.
“As for him whose deeds weigh heavy in the scales,
he will have a pleasing life.
But as for him whose deeds weigh light in the scales,
his home will be the Abyss.”
This seems straightforward enough. To me, the relative masses of good and evil seem to be reversed from what I’d normally expect. Perhaps I’m thinking of Anubis weighing the heart against a feather, but I tend to associate the idea of a pure or sinless soul, or deeds, as being light, and bad deeds or a wicked soul as being heavy. Marley’s chains in A Christmas Carol come to mind as well. I think it’s because the heavy soul gets dragged to Hell and the light soul floats up to Heaven.
I realise that what’s being weighed is the net mass of good deeds, and within that framework it makes sense, but it feels like the metaphor would be better the other way around.
Finally, we get an even less satisfactory offer of being shown “what it is” concerning the Abyss.
“And what will show you what it is?
It is a scorching fire!”
Again, I don’t think that answers the question. Quran.com has the same, or at least very similar, wording, so it’s not a weird translation artefact. I like the poetic layout of this one, however.
What It Is? I’m Not Going To Tell You.
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
The Catastrophe (al-Qari’ah) 1-11
“The Catastrophe!
What is the Catastrophe?
What will show you what is the Catastrophe?”
What? What will show me what is the Catastrophe? If that’s supposed to mean “what the Catastrophe is”. Well, I’m going to leave that hanging for a bit for dramatic suspense. Firstly, although the last line is oddly phrased, that’s a nice opening with gradually increasing verse length repeating the word “Catastrophe”; this highlights the importance of the Catastrophe, particularly as a subject matter for this surah.
The Arabic word used is “l-qāriʿa”, which, according to the notes is “the repeated sound that shall resound through all the earth as it is being pulverized in the cataclysm at the end of time”. So evidently to an Arabic-speaking listener this opening has an onomatopoeic element to it that’s lost in English. I have to admit, it doesn’t sound much like the sound of grinding rocks to me, but then onomatopoeia in different languages often seem odd to a non-native speaker.
Okay, so what will show you what the Catastrophe is?
“The day mankind will be like scattered moths,
and the mountains will be like carded wool.”
Huh.
Okay.
That’s telling me what you think will happen. I suppose it’s expounding on “what it is”, but I thought there would have been more.
Anyway, some unusual similes employed there, and again the choices make more sense when you look at the Arabic; the two verses end with “l-mabthūth” and “l-manfūsh” respectively (which I think are the adjectives employed). You can see there’s a kind of para-rhyme going on there, and at least a bit of alliteration. The images work fine enough as well – mankind dashing about with no evident rhyme or reason like moths fluttering about, and the usually solid mountains becoming insubstantial and flimsy like carded wool. Although, fluffiness is not normally a property I’d associate with apocalypses.
Next we get to the inevitable judgement of mankind.
“As for him whose deeds weigh heavy in the scales,
he will have a pleasing life.
But as for him whose deeds weigh light in the scales,
his home will be the Abyss.”
This seems straightforward enough. To me, the relative masses of good and evil seem to be reversed from what I’d normally expect. Perhaps I’m thinking of Anubis weighing the heart against a feather, but I tend to associate the idea of a pure or sinless soul, or deeds, as being light, and bad deeds or a wicked soul as being heavy. Marley’s chains in A Christmas Carol come to mind as well. I think it’s because the heavy soul gets dragged to Hell and the light soul floats up to Heaven.
I realise that what’s being weighed is the net mass of good deeds, and within that framework it makes sense, but it feels like the metaphor would be better the other way around.
Finally, we get an even less satisfactory offer of being shown “what it is” concerning the Abyss.
“And what will show you what it is?
It is a scorching fire!”
Again, I don’t think that answers the question. Quran.com has the same, or at least very similar, wording, so it’s not a weird translation artefact. I like the poetic layout of this one, however.
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