Saturday, March 30, 2019

What It Means - Day 12

"Truly your Lord is God, Who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then mounted the Throne.  He causes the night to cover the day, which pursues it swiftly; and the sun, the moon, and the stars are made subservient by His Command.  Do not creation and command belong to Him? Blessed is God, Lord of the worlds!"
Quran, 7:54

"That God created the heavens and the earth in six days is similar in certain ways to the Biblical creation narrative in which God creates the world in six days, but then rests on the seventh. The Quran, however, attributes no such resting to God, for neither slumber overtakes Him nor sleep and protecting the heavens and the earth tires Him not (2:255); and in 50:38, mention of the creation in six days is followed by the statement that no fatigue touched Him. For this reason, there is no Sabbath (in the Jewish and Christian sense) in the Islamic tradition. The Quranic account also differs from the Biblical in that it provides no specific sequence for the creation of various phenomena on different days, although some Muslim commentators mention the association of certain days with the creation of various orders of creatures.  In the Islamic tradition, the six days are said to have begun on Sunday and continued through Friday (al-jumu'ah). On this Friday, Islamic tradition maintains that God created Adam and gathered together (jama'a, from the same root as al-jum'ah) all creation, although the name jumu'ah (from the root meaning 'to gather') seems more directly related to the fact that Friday was the day of congregational prayer.  The tradition that Adam was created on this day nonetheless gave Friday a particular religious preeminence in Islam."

No comments: