Salaam/peace;


regarding Bible , Ismail (p) is not a Prophet but only an unwanted child of Prophet Abraham (p) ..who was wrongly born before Isaac (p) ? ??

I guess , many Jews & Christian believe he was not even a legal child ????


why birthright means nothing ????? It was God who gave all Firstborn sons the right ......so why Ismail (p) will be an exception ???


why ??

where it says that firstborn son will be deprived from inheritance ??

may be , second son of Abraham ( p ) will be the Prophet of the chosen people but only Jews will live there ???? Does this verse says so ???

So many Christians live in the holy land ....do u think they have any right to live there ? If yes , how ?


so many disagreements between Jews , Christian , Muslims ....do we have to wait till last day for all these matters settled down ?

Regarding Ishmael, in the Bible he is not a prophet. But neither are Abaraham, Isaac, or Jacob.

Actually I never think of that one way or the other. If you were to ask me if he was illegitimate, I would only be able to think in terms of the culture I live in today, and that is irrelevant with respect to Ishamael. As I understand Abraham's culture, he would have been a true son of Abraham. Even Sarah recognized this, which is why Sarah suggested that Abraham try to have a son via her handmaiden, Hagar.



I didn't say that birthright means nothings. (If I did I was too extreme in my word choice.) My point was, that in this case, the promise of the covenant that God made with Abraham to have a son with his wife Sarah trumps the culture of the firstborn.

There are other instance of the blessing going not to the first born but to a later born child in the history of Israel, the most notable being the sons and grandsons of Isaac himself.

Isaac had twin sons Esau and Jacob. As they were born Esau's foot was delivered first and the midwife tied a string around the ankle to identify him. But then the foot was withdrawn and Jacob was born. Nonetheless, Esau is recognized as the firstborn, but Jacob gains Isaac's blessing.

Jacob had 12 sons and several wives. His favorite wife's oldest son, Joseph, is the one that received Jacob's favor. But Joseph was not the oldest son, and the older sons were all jealous of the attention that Jacob gave Joseph.

So, it seems that there are lots of exceptions not just Ishmael. And as the nation of Israel takes it's name from that fact that Jacob had his name changed to Israel by God and they are descendants of these sons of Israel, it seems highly unlikely that you are going to find a Jew who looks on birth order as more important that what God personally promises.





I don't think you are listening. I'm not talking about depriving anyone of anything. Where does it say that Ishmael should inherit this piece of land rather than that piece of land?

There is nothing I know of in the Bible with regard to the holyland being a gift to anyone based on birthorder. And in terms of it being the land only for the Jews, that does not come out of either the Ishmael or Isaac stories but out of the story of the Exodus, that God would have Moses lead the people to a "Promised" land.

I personally think that religion has nothing to do with one's rights to live any place.


Not necessarily. If everyone would realize that I was always right and then just do what I said and we would have peace. But it seems that not everyone is willing to give me that much authority.

Salaam/peace;


in my Bible's translation , the word Hazrat is used before Abraham & Isaac (pbut).

Normally we Muslims used this word for Prophet . But also it can be used to address respected religious Muslim leader. I wonder if they are not Prophets in Bible , then why our local Christian society used this word ?

I read in an article that in Muslim majority countries , Christians publish Bible using Islamic words to attract Muslim readers . Is that the reason both Abraham & Isaac ( pbut ) are Hazrats in my Bible ?



but later Ahraham (p) married her ?? If yes , then is not it better to address her as the respected wife of a blessed person ?








neither do they give the authority to me ...too bad

verses we all need for this life & the hereafter






God invites [man] unto the abode of peace, and guides him that wills onto a straight way.

-Quran (10:25)

I think its so nice when non muslims ask questions and really get to know Islam for what it really is. I converted from christianity and I have found a lot of similarites..Jesus (peace be upon him) is mentioned in the Qu'ran more than Muhammad (peace be upon him) is. I hope you learn a lot about Islam. Best Wishes to you

And to you as well.



Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are indeed respected religious leaders. In my English Bible the word that is most commonly used to describe them is "patriarch". In many ways they are thought of as the "founding fathers" or "forefathers" of Judaism and the nation of Israel in both a religious and a political sense.

You're asking me to draw a conclusion regarding someone I have never meant or spoken to. That probably is not very fair to them or to you. For, I really have no information with regard to anyone's motive. But if pressed, I would say, probably that is NOT the reason. I suspect that it is because in trying to stress the important place of Abraham and Isaac in the life and history of the community that they adopted a word from the language of the culture that they were translating into that they understood to most closely fit their understanding of the role of Abraham and Isaac to the subsequent nations of Judah and Israel and to the Jews of Jesus' day who became the Church.

Sometimes they have to pick words that are not always the right translation of the term in order to get at the idea behind the word, and that may have been what happened here. Let me give you another (true) illustration from the country of Guatemala.

There is a group of Indians in Guatemala for whom some translators were trying to translate the Bible. And they came to a verse in Luke (2:19) where Mary is remembering all of the miraculous events surrounding Jesus' birth, and the verse says: "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." And they wanted to translate it into the language spoken by these Guatemalan Indians, but they were having trouble with the last word of the verse. It is καρδια (kardia) from which we get English words like cardia or cardiac. And so in English it is translated "heart". And likewise in Spanish the word is "corazon", meaning heart, because in both English and Spanish speaking cultures the heart is often understood to be the place where one's greatest emotions are stored. If you've ever been "in love" you may have even felt that tightness that can grip you in the chest or stomach and if you lost someone dear to you felt like your "heart was breaking".

Well, in Guatemala, these Indians had the same emotional and physiologocial reactions to love as well. It is a universal human condition. But as they grasped their chest or abdomen, they did not sense that the pain or joy they were feeling was located in the organ we call the heart, they who would often hunt birds for food found a organ in the bird that was very close to where they felt this in their own bodies. And this organ was filled with small pea-sized gravel. It was the bird's gizzard. And whenever they felt those pains in their own chest, it made them think of the rocks in the bird's chest cavities. So, they attributed the pain not to the heart, which was just another organ like the stomach or instestines, in their common language when they loved a person they loved them with all of their gizzard. If they missed someone, they were not heart-broken, but gizzard-broken. And they stored their most precious memories of people not in their hearts but in their gizzards.

I know that might sound strange to people who have grown up speaking of feeling things with one's heart, but these Guatemalan Indians didn't feel things with their hearts, they felt love and other personal emotions with their gizzards. So, when the Bible translators translated that verse into the dialect of this small group of Guatemalan Indians they had to decide do they say that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her "heart" -- as this was the best translation of the word that Luke had written? Or do they say that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her "gizzard" - which was not the word Luke had used, but communicated the idea to these Guatemalan Indians in the way they were most familiar with thinking? Eventually, the translators chose "gizzard" as they decided that Luke chose the word "heart" as a figure of speach for where we feel things most deeply, not because it was the organ that pumps blood through our bodies. And for these Guatemalan Indians, the figure of speech that they used to express the idea that Luke was trying to express was not "heart" but "gizzard", so gizzard was actually the better translation of what Luke was trying to say, even if it wasn't the word he had actually used.

I don't know, but I suspect that some similar process was used in selecting "hazrat" in the Bible passages you are referring to. It wasn't done to attract Muslims as much as the translators were trying to communicate the idea of a person who was a leader of great respect among the people of the religion who were telling his story.

Qatada,

Love your posts. So clear, precise and from Quran...perfect combination.

Could the same "mistranslation" have happened in the translation of the word that became "Son" when applied to Jesus because we know that Allah can not "father" or "sire" a son with a woman as we understand the process.

Salaam/peace;


they could put the word heart & within bracket / in explanation/ footnotes --they could used gizzard to give them a clear picture.


After many years , if anybody translates the line in to English or other language , s/he will surely make a mistake & may be there won't be any learned person to explain them the background .


Verses we need for this life & hereafter


Ayah Of The Day
All that is in the heavens and all that is on earth extols God's limitless glory:

His is all dominion, and to Him all praise is due;

and He has the power to will anything.

-Quran (64:1)

After many years, if anybody translates the line into English or other language, hopefully they will be translating from the original Greek and not from the Guatemalan Indian language translation.

Translating from a version that is already itself a translation usually results in a mistranslation, as we can see with some of the older English translations that depended on Latin translations rather than the original Greek and Hebrew.

I don't think that "Son" is a mistranslation because the Greek phrase υιος του θεου (huios tou theou) is very simple to translate. υιος = son and [/i]θεου[/i] = God and του is the definite article "the". The only thing that is tricky is to pay attention to the declension and case. In this instance του θεου is in the genitive case which expresses possession. In certain grammatical constructions the genitive has other means, such as agency, but this is such a simple construction that it is quite easy to recognize that "son of God" (or literally "son of (the) God") is the proper English translation of the Greek phrase.

What you might wish to consider but didn't touch on is the possibility not of mistranslation, but misinterpretation of a correct translation. Remember, interpretation involves more than just getting the right word, but understanding what is meant by those words. Mustafa, you've been in my house and you have seen pictures on my walls of persons that I did not sire that I still call my children. Luke records a geneology of Jesus that goes from Joseph back to Adam: (Let's leave aside some of the obvious anomalies in the list for another thread so that we can focus on the interpretation issue at the moment.)

Even if you don't speak Greek, you can probably see one of the interesting things in this passage: The term υιος is used just once and applied to the whole list of names. Each of the other persons is baiscally "of ___________". Thus, Adam is "of God" (or the "son of God") in the same way that Isaac is "of Abraham" (or "the son of Abraham"). Now Muslims, Jews, and Christians don't agree on a whole lot, but we do agree on two things. (1) God created, he did not sire, Adam. (2) Abraham did in fact sire Isaac. Yet in one passage, one sentence, we see this term used to refer to both events.

Why is that important? It means that to say that Jesus is "the son of God" does NOT mean that one is saying that God sired Jesus anymore than it is to say that God sired Adam. But it is to say that Jesus is "of" God in the same way that Isaac is "of Abraham" and Adam is "of God". Well, how is that? They both come from, have their genesis, their beginnings, in the one they are said to be "of".

So, the phrase "Son of God" could mean several different things. It could mean that God sired Jesus -- but it doesn't. It could mean that God created Jesus -- but it doesn't mean that either. It simply means that Jesus is "of" God. That he comes from God, that he has his beginning with God in some way. To place futher interpretation into that term, one has to go beyond the mere words of the text and see how it is used in the context of the larger passages of which it is apart. It is in that reading, not the three-word phrase, that we see the divinity of Jesus being delineated and the term "Son of God" come into use as a title to mark his divinity for it is used and applied to Jesus in a completely different way than it is to Adam and others who are termed "sons of God" or "children of God".

Salaam/peace;


but what if they do ?


Apparetly there was a spelling mistake in Quran when in chapter Araf , verse 69 ( 7: 69) the word Bastatan was written with Swad not seen. This spelling was not used by Arabs in the form we see in Quran .



Even the same word was written with seen not with swad in chpater 2 , verse 247.



when the companions were surprised & asked Prophet (p) about it , ans was ' revelation came to me like that ...so write it as Angel Gabriel (p) taught.

In last more than 1000 yrs , no one dared to ''correct ' the spelling mistake (!).

Only God knows why this spelling is different here , there is a human explanation ...if u want to hear , let me know

My point is original word should not be changed as words of holy books came from God Almighty .....explanation can be given in bracket.


Verses we need for this world & hereafter

74. Surah Al-Muddathir



30. Over it are nineteen (angels as guardians and keepers of Hell).



31. And We have set none but angels as guardians of the Fire, and We have fixed their number (19) only as a trial for the disbelievers,


in order that the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) may arrive at a certainty [that this Qur'ân is the truth as it agrees with their Books i.e. their number (19) is written in the Taurât (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel)] and the believers may increase in Faith (as this Qur'ân is the truth)


and that no doubts may be left for the people of the Scripture and the believers,


and that those in whose hearts is a disease (of hypocrisy) and the disbelievers may say: "What Allâh intends by this (curious) example ?"


Thus Allâh leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills. And none can know the hosts of your Lord but He. And this (Hell) is nothing else than a (warning) reminder to mankind.

something interesting in Grace Seeker's last post, the son of 'the' god is none other than Adam notJesus since that sentence follows Adam's name not Jesus's.
-may god's blessings be upon all the prophhets-