Question: Why does the Quran claim that the Jews call Ezra son of God? The Jews never did that. Answer: Assalamu-`alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu: `Uzayr, who was exalted by a community of Jews, is identified as Ezra by Muslim commentators. The Quran 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 but imitate what the Unbelievers of the old used to say. Allahs curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the truth. [Quran 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). Ezra has 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)*. 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, 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. Newby(a scholar) writes that: ...we can deduce that the inhabitants of Hijaz during Muhammads 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 ( 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 themerkabah, 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 Quran 9:31) whom the Jews had exalted.* 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. 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. And Allah knows best! Adapted from islamicawareness.org
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 13:11:32 +0000
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