Koran is the knowledge and his reading, and al-Koran or the Koran is the Noble Book par excellence. Mohamed did not try to found a new, different, distant or enemy religion. But gathered and departed from the written and oral traditions of the Jews (the Torah or our Old Testament (OT) and Christians (a very poor Gospels) of his epoch. Because all of them were adorers of the Only, Eternal and Almighty God. That personally approaches the men, good and bad, to reveal them His full, happiest and self-sufficient existence. And to give them a message of eternal salvation, by His freest will. In the Koran are narrated and repeated through numerous chapters the histories of different and numerous Jewish prominent figures of the OT. Even, like in case of Joseph, the son of Jacob, it spreads in details that are not in the Jewish and Christian texts.
Approximation to the Koran.
The matters treated in the Koran relate directly to the worries and pains that, along his flow of live, were in Mohamed’s soul. At the beginning of his preaching, during his first stay in Mecca, the descended suras are religious and then, after the Hejira’s, the medinesas gather orders from a statesman, an organizer, a driver command. From the point of view of his style, the Koran is written in the rhythmic prose (say), which was used by the priests and magicians of the idolatrous Arabia. But, unlike the language used by these, it does not use high-sounding, dark or without meaning words. But it possesses an unusual wealth of new ideas, which do it a model of the Arabic literature. The text of the Koran is a stone of scandal for many men, because not they all treat it with the perfection that it asks and deserves. In effect, some take it textually, interpreting it to the letter, without admitting any possibility of ideological variation or of logical adjustment; but others, probably too studious of the language and his expressions, understand almost everything allegoric, veiled.
The Koran has 114 chapters or suras, that contain around 6200 verses or aleyas. The discrepancies in his number, according to the compiler schools, led to the inventory of his words, 77934, and of his letters, 323631, as these numbers were coinciding. The Koranic language is simple and nearby and the methodology of expression is simple and very repetitive. The Koran is directed to humble and uncultured peoples. That have to learn his messages, procedures and mandates with allegoric and metaphorical literary formulas. Using bucolic, hunting and pastoral similes, that turn out to be near their simple and natural ways of life. And to remember and assimilate them by their frequent repetition, firstly in local group (the first madrassas or Koranic schools) and then in the loneliness with God.
Again and again, the Koran insists that the obligations of the Muslims are to establish the daily prayer (the salat), to give the canonical alms (the sakat) and to do the good in general. It is evident that, before any obligation and his fulfillment, it is the recognition and the submission to Allah, specified in the recitation by the neophyte of the ritual formula «Only God (Allah) is God (Allah) and Mohamed is his prophet”. Formula that would have a similar effect to the Christian baptism. The peregrination to The Mecca and his holy places is more blurry, because in the stage of the descent of the suras from Allah, the Muslims were a minority, were not organized and well established, and were threatened by multitude of unfaithful enemies.
In 28, 37 specify: «As Allah does the Good, also do you the good and do not promote the disorder (the Evil) in the Earth». The Evil would comprise, among other things, the murders or homicides of innocent, the drugs and drunkenness, the unnecessary destructions of all classes of goods or crops and useful trees. Also the Koran warns the Muslims, against the mistaken and smug attitude of the villains, the false announcers and apostles in his name. That are, in turn, leaded away by Allah, in order that they suffer the punishment for their malicious and recalcitrant actions. 2, 10 «When it is said to them: Do not commit disorders (crimes) in the earth, they answer: Far from it, we introduce in her the good order (the good)». 2, 11 «Ah!, they commit disorders, but they do not understand it». But, Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful, always will punish the villains and the unfaithful person, below the deserved by their sins, crimes and ungratefulnesses.
Origin, need and transmission of the Islamic Tradition.
The histories orally transmitted of “the customs and sayings» (the Sunna) of Mohamed, were transformed soon in writings, which were, in turn, objects of big summaries. Every story or written comment is called the hadith or hadis. The term also is used to refer the generality of them. The length of the hadithes is very variable, depending on the theme. Its intelligent internal structure is highly interesting and important. This characterizes them and gives faith of their verisimilitude. In each hadith is usually first exposed the «transmission chain» up to its writing or the checking of her, from his oral origin, with the figure of the «transmitter». Nowadays, we would call this its historical traceability. Aixa or A’isa, the second and preferred wife of the Prophet, and Alí, his nephew, are of first importance as «transmitters» of the hadithes. Then, there comes the content of the story or the comment, called the «matn».
The Koran in 4, 59, guarantees and grants a special power of decision and explanation to the Prophet or Envoy of God and to the sovereign, successors or Muslim caliphs, who are those who hold the authority in the Umma. This would explain and justify the need of a qualified interpretation, foreseen by Allah, for the practical application of the Koran along the geography and the history of the peoples. With Mohamed acting as interpreter, as exceptional and privileged «intermediary» of Allah.
There exist hundreds of thousands hadithes that have come up to us. And between them appear numerous contradictions. In addition, their total text is excessive for have commented or said and lived or realized by Mohamed. Even using for it all his life. From almost the beginning, the doctors and apologists of the Islam saw this. The hadithes were in risk of turning into a chain of myths, tribal embellished stories and realities more or less preserved of a vaporous and insecure Tradition of the Prophet. And soon was established a system of critique of the «isinad» or transmission, to guarantee the quality of the content in strict sense or «matn» of the hadithes as written Muslim Tradition.
God, his manifestation and his multiple anthropological expressions.
The God’s names arise in the Jewish religion and in the Islam as the impassioned expression of the overflowing qualities of the only divinity. They do not include only the name with which God wants to be called by the men (Yave, Allah, God), but also the name of his most out-standing and transcendent or near the man anthropological characteristics. Famous «99 Allah’s names» of the Islam are principally based on the qualities that likewise Allah assumes in the verses of the Koran. And in the deduced with the qiyas or analogical reasonings by the ulemas and mufties during the first centuries of the Islam.
It is interesting the origin and the development of some of these meanings. The Jews of the Kabalah claim their «72 God’s names» from Exodus 14, 19 to 21. Each verse in Hebrew has 72 letters and taking a letter of each one, are created the only 72 combinations of the Hebrew letters. The mystical interpretation says that they would be like the spiritual vibrations of a divine diapason. These esoteric frequencies would protect the men from the negative energies of the ego (the deviant, enlarged and exclusive ego) and would communicate them, at their low level and according to each receiver capacity, the powers of the divinity. Nowadays, it would be said that they act in the DNA, the telometers, the mother cells and the mithchondrias, to reach every benefited person.
These «special wonderful sounds», these rhythmic mantras, appear in other books of the OT. That was the method decided by God to knock down the walls of Jericho, happened during the conquest of the Promised Territories to Israel and is narrated in Josue’s book, chapter 6. For 6 days, the people surrounded once a day in total silence the perimeter of the sieged city. 7 priests were accompanying his march, sounding their trumpets. There was going the «God’s presence» and the Ark of his Alliance with the people. At the seventh day, at one time, Josue also ordered the Jews to clamorously shout, each one in his position in the line of march and looking to the city. The action powered by God knocked down the walls of Jericho. And the Israelite milites, an infantry between light and irregular, already without defensive obstacles to overcome to get at close combat, assaulted her. And gave to the edge of the sword men and women, children and old men, oxen, sheep and asses of the city.
The Jewish tradition in the Koran.
Mohamed was influenced in his formation by Jewish merchants taken root in Arabia, who not necessarily were rabbis. Not even they were taking the totality or the purity of the Torah with them. Along numerous chapters of the Koran appear the histories of different prophets or witnesses of God and some of his enemies, taken from the Torah and forming a similar story with the Sacred History of our infancy. The passages referred to every prophet or informer of Allah are distributed along a part of the text, even intermingled between them. This way, the specific story is not fluid and continues, but, rather divided and repeated, as didactic method to illiterate people. Some specific episodes, such as Joseph and the wife of his master Potiphar, have narrative unity.
The prophets, apostles or warners of Allah are successively sent to put in order the various ancient peoples. «I have not destroyed any city, without having sent before a warner.» But in general, the words of his envoys fell in many «deaf ears», idolatrous, evil, stubborn. They disdained the apostles and warners because were mortal men like them and preach against their ancestral beliefs and customs, inherited from their parents. They also required them to prove their doctrine, using special and distinctive «signs», that almost always the apostles did not give. But they answered, preaching the obvious and multiple signs of the creation of the Unique God: Who is like him? And they also called them the attention of if their false gods were capable of helping them, of doing something for them or of saving them in the vicissitudes and the misfortunes. Also they were reproaching their headstrong and their mean and crooked quality: the pagans were turning more or less to God, looking for his benevolence and his refuge, when the things were twisting and were pressing them. But, when the danger or the need was eliminating, they were turning sure, ungrateful and disobedient to God. These were called again and again fools, ingrates, bads and losts. Their end was the gehena, the sakar, the immortal fire. Allah also repeatedly calms his envoys: «your mission is to preach my teachings; you are not responsible for the final conduct of your listeners».
This way, in the Koran appear with sufficient extension the histories of Adam (Adam), Abel (Habil), Abrahan (Ibrahim), Noe (Nuh), Lot (Loth), Job (Aiiub), Jonas (Junis), Moses (Musa), the Pharaoh (Firaun), the king Saul (Talut), David, Zacarias (Zakariyya). Being connected with the Torah and developing it, to demonstrate the base and the continuity of his doctrine of the submission to Allah, as The Only God. About Abrahán does not speak of the legal primogeniture of Isaac, miraculous son of Sara, who was sterile and already major, about the God’s promise: «I Will do of you a great people and your descent will be major that the number of the stars», that extends in the future through him. The Arabs descend from Ismael, older than Isaac and son of Abrahan and Agar, slave of Sara. Isaac is mentioned together with Jacob, his son, in the line of the prophets and warners of Allah.
(TO BE CONTINUED)