First Corrupted Verse

[Brasco]

God is afraid: (May Allah ta'ala forgive me)

Genesis 11:1-9
The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.
6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

 

[Shoes]

So given what Graceseeker and I have said, do you still think the resting verse is corrupted/contradicts the Qur'an?

Salam,
Shoes

 

[Shoes]

God is afraid: (May Allah ta'ala forgive me)

Genesis 11:1-9
The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.
6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Why do you think this shows God is afraid?

Also, is this the first corruption? Why/why not?

Salam,
Shoes

 

[Brasco]

Do you want to have verse that contradicts the Qur'an? Sorry for not having understood you!


masalam!

 

[Shoes]

Sorry, I was referring to rpwelton's previous post, but you snuck in there first!

 

[rpwelton]

So given what Graceseeker and I have said, do you still think the resting verse is corrupted/contradicts the Qur'an?

Salam,
Shoes

EDIT: In light of Skye's post below, I will continue to uphold that this is indeed a corrupt verse. While I can see how a Christian may come to a particular conclusion and not think of God as resting by interpreting that verse a particular way, as Muslims we believe that everything is held in place perfectly by Allah, therefore His job is never "done". Therefor, such a verse makes no sense for an all-powerful God.

In the Qur'an it describes the heavens as steadily expanding, thus creation is never complete.

I'd also like to point out a few verses before the "resting" verse in Genesis, it describes God as (a'udhubillah) creating man in His image. This is another false concept leading to the idea of the anthropomorphic god which is present in Christianity.

 

[جوري]

Do you honestly think that God would cease or rest?
don't you think that once you have created something, you'd need to maintain it?

[2:255] Allah! There is no god but He, the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? He knoweth what (appeareth to His creatures as) Before or After or Behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory).


1-two points indeed, one Islam can't borrow from Christianity and stand opposing it.. that would make it another sect of Christianity and not Islam.
2- A God that pauses, rests, ceases or admires or lives in men isn't God by definition, as it would attribute to him qualities of created rather than creator!

all the best

 

[Shoes]

Yahweh ceased from creating not ceasing from doing anything whatsoever.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested/ceased from all his work.

(The dreaded NIV, italics mine.)

Salam,
Shoes

P.S. I don't think Yahweh needs to do anything.

 

[AntiKarateKid]

“Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, as a man wakes from the stupor of wine.” (Psalm 78:65)

This verse sure makes him look human.

 

[جوري]

If Yahweh doesn't need to do anything then I guess life is as good without him as it with him.. what is the point of a 'sustainer' if all he needed to do took 7 days and then eternal rest?

all the best

 

[rpwelton]

By the way, Shoes, I think you've opened up a can of worms with this thread.

 

[Grace Seeker]

EDIT: In light of Skye's post below, I will continue to uphold that this is indeed a corrupt verse. While I can see how a Christian may come to a particular conclusion and not think of God as resting by interpreting that verse a particular way, as Muslims we believe that everything is held in place perfectly by Allah, therefore His job is never "done". Therefor, such a verse makes no sense for an all-powerful God.

In the Qur'an it describes the heavens as steadily expanding, thus creation is never complete.

I'd also like to point out a few verses before the "resting" verse in Genesis, it describes God as (a'udhubillah) creating man in His image. This is another false concept leading to the idea of the anthropomorphic god which is present in Christianity.

We too believe that God continues to hold things together. The Genesis account only explains that he created past tense. As I've alluded to elsewhere, the Jews then go on in their Midrash to understand that there is an eighth day of creation.

I agree that the passage does lead to anthropomorphic ideas. If it didn't no one would assert that it teaches that God grew tired. That doesn't make that interpretation correct, at least not according to Christian understanding of the passage.

The concept of God creating man in his image is even worse in the way that people develop anthropomorphic ideas about God. They think that because they look into a mirror and see what they call their image that this is what the verse is referring to. And then they work backwards to say that God looks like a human being. Again, I say NO to this way of thinking. Just as surely as God does not need to rest like we might, God also does not look like us.

(Caution, the below is not intended to take this thread off topic, just a longer answer to the above question, but it may. If it does, mods, please edit my post at this point and delete all that is below.)


There are many different types of images.

• an iconic mental representation; "her imagination forced images upon her too awful to contemplate"
• persona: (Jungian psychology) a personal facade that one presents to the world; "a public image is as fragile as Humpty Dumpty"
• picture: a visual representation (of an object or scene or person or abstraction) produced on a surface; "they showed us the pictures of their wedding"; "a movie is a series of images projected so rapidly that the eye integrates them"
• prototype: a standard or typical example; "he is the prototype of good breeding"; "he provided America with an image of the good father"
• trope: language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
• double: someone who closely resembles a famous person (especially an actor); "he could be Gingrich's double"; "she's the very image of her mother"
• (mathematics) the set of values of the dependent variable for which a function is defined; "the image of f(x) = x^2 is the set of all non-negative real numbers if the domain of the function is the set of all real numbers"
• render visible, as by means of MRI
• the general impression that something (a person or organization or product) presents to the public; "although her popular image was contrived it served to inspire music and pageantry"; "the company tried to project an altruistic image"
• visualize: imagine; conceive of; see in one's mind; "I can't see him on horseback!"; "I can see what will happen"; "I can see a risk in this strategy"
• effigy: a representation of a person (especially in the form of sculpture); "the coin bears an effigy of Lincoln"; "the emperor's tomb had his image carved in stone"

To be an image of something may often, but does not necessarily have to imply looking like. Hence to say "image" is not to make us God's Doppelgänger. The Hebrew and Greek words behind the English term "image" are more about being a representation of something. So, what is it of God that is within us that we might be a representation of God. I suggest that it is that God didn't just give us life by speaking and we came into being, as did the rest of creation. In the creating of humankind, we are told the God breathed into us his own ruach (breath, spirit).

I think this is the way in which the scriptures mean that we are created in God's image, that God has put something of himself within us, something that I believe causes us to be incomplete unless we are joined with him in fellowship. And something that without that fellowship causes us to be spiritually dead. The very death that Adam and Eve experienced when they were kicked out of the Garden.

So, most people that you meet today, though they are descendants of people who were indeed created in God's image live a live in which that image has been seriously marred and the only way to restore it is to be reconciled to God again, and experience his Spirit once again dwelling within you.

 

[Grace Seeker]

If Yahweh doesn't need to do anything then I guess life is as good without him as it with him.. what is the point of a 'sustainer' if all he needed to do took 7 days and then eternal rest?

all the best

The truth is that all he needed to do took even less than 7 days. Less than even 6 days. Less than even 1 day. To say that God didn't need to do anything is to say that he didn't even need to create. Why? Because God is entirely sufficient within himself without the need of any creation. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't desire to create. And certainly what he creates he does sustain. I don't see how there is any difference between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam on these major ideas.

 

[جوري]

The truth is that all he needed to do took even less than 7 days. Less than even 6 days. Less than even 1 day. To say that God didn't need to do anything is to say that he didn't even need to create. Why? Because God is entirely sufficient within himself without the need of any creation. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't desire to create. And certainly what he creates he does sustain. I don't see how there is any difference between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam on these major ideas.

God didn't need to do anything, differs from God did something then rested after having done it... being self-sufficient doesn't extend itself to the creation.. having a 'desire to create' again loans him some human characteristics.. we aren't the outcome of desire, we are the outcome of truth!

all the best

 

[Shoes]

Well worms are God's creatures too.

AntiKarateKid, yes anthropomorphisms are used to describe God - simply due to the limitation of language and the description of the infinite. Does it say that Yahweh was asleep? Or it was as if he was?

Gossamer Skye, all I was saying is that Yahweh's decision to sustain his creation is not one of necessity but of his will. Clearly creation needs Yahweh to sustain it, but Yahweh doesn't need creation to be sustained.

Salam,
Shoes

 

[جوري]

this is what you initially wrote:

P.S. I don't think Yahweh needs to do anything.

so there is no retracting it, indeed what would become of the world if Yahweh took a rest? and his rest isn't measured by our laws of physics...
can't subject the originator to the human condition and expect that others would see that as Godly or uncorrupted...

all the best

 

[Shoes]

My previous post makes it perfectly clear what I meant by the comment you quoted. As noted before, Yahweh rested from creating, not from sustaining.

 

[Grace Seeker]

If God took a rest from what? From creating? From sustaining?


There are many who hold that God did indeed take a rest from everything. That he created the world and then, having finished it, simply left it to continue on its own. I don't happen to be one of those, but those who hold that view would say that nothing would happen except that the world and the universe would go on their merry way, just as they have for the last several billion years.

For my view, God has continued to sustain the world: "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word" (Hebrews 1:3). Just as the world was created by his Word, so it continues by viture of his Word. Were he to quit doing so, the world itself would cease to be.

But goes God need us? Does he need to sustain us? No. He does not.

I see no disagreement between Shoes' first statement: "I don't think Yahweh needs to do anything," and his subsequent explanation of it: "all I was saying is that Yahweh's decision to sustain his creation is not one of necessity but of his will."


God could quit sustaining us, let us disappear into oblivion and nothingness and God would be unchanged by that fact and we would never even know that it had happened or that we had ever been. Indeed God may have actually done this a million or a billion times already and we would be oblivous to it unless God were to reveal it to us, for such acts of God happen so far outside of us we have no way to even perceive it. That we are he is not because he needs us, but because he wills us to be here.

 

[جوري]

I see no concordance between this:

But goes God need us? Does he need to sustain us? No. He does not.

.

and this:

(Hebrews 1:3). Just as the world was created by his Word, so it continues by viture of his Word. Were he to quit doing so, the world itself would cease to be.
.

also, I am sure you have a good grip on English given your verbose and sometimes extremely ineffective debates, that you can tell the difference between needing us and needing to sustain us.
the things that work on their 'own volition' as in everything in creation, isn't really on its own volition sustained.

all the best

 

[جوري]

My previous post makes it perfectly clear what I meant by the comment you quoted. As noted before, Yahweh rested from creating, not from sustaining.

Does it say that in your bible or should I go by your words?
and God rested on the sabbath but continued his sustainment of what he created or he simply took the day off?

all the best