Who Fash­ioned The Gold­en Calf ?

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3 responses to “Who Fash­ioned The Gold­en Calf ?”

1. 

   Mustafa Ahmed

   May 2, 2018

   it’s amaz­ing how Star­jade claims Samiri means Samar­i­tan. whats more inter­est­ing about his claim is, he is using mod­ern day Eng­lish trans­la­tors to defend his pathet­ic argu­ment. the Ara­bic text is clear ​“SAMIRI” peri­od. not Samar­i­tan. im shocked on why you haven’t shown any clas­si­cal Arab com­men­ta­tors who claimed Samiri is Samar­i­tan. in fact let me help you with this name. Here is a link to an Aca­d­e­m­ic site, where this bogus lie is refuted.

   http://​www​.islam​ic​-aware​ness​.org/​Q​u​r​a​n​/​C​o​n​t​r​a​d​/​E​x​t​e​r​n​a​l​/​s​a​m​a​r​i​t​a​n​.​h​tml

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2. 

   aian jaafar

   January 11, 2006

   hi star­jade,

   the koran dif­fers from the old tes­ta­ment because it CORRECTS the old testament.

   the old tes­ta­ment also dif­fers in some details with the sup­pos­ed­ly pagan sto­ries from ancient mesopotamia, like the expul­sion of man from par­adise, the flood, the tow­er of babel, etc. but these sources (such as the sumer­ian enu­ma elish, which recounts the sto­ry of the flood) pre­date the bible. who ever said that the old tes­ta­ment is the orig­i­nal source of these data ? lest you say that you are not talk­ing about gen­e­sis but moses, then the point is quite sim­ply this : it appears that you are com­mit­ting the com­mon chris­t­ian fal­la­cious inter­pre­ta­tion that since the old tes­ta­ment pre­dates the koran, then the old tes­ta­ment is the cor­rect account and any dif­fer­ence between them would make the koran incor­rect. then why did the ancient mesopotami­an pagans know about the Flood when the bible was not writ­ten back then ? could these pagans be the source of the bib­li­cal sto­ry as well ?

   chris­tians and jews will have dif­fi­cul­ty with such ques­tions, but mus­lims do not. we believe that every nation has been sent a prophet, and that prophet def­i­nite­ly taught them some­thing. those teach­ings may have been lost, tam­pered, or altered, or they may have been abro­gat­ed by God. it is God who is the source of all these infor­ma­tion, in their pure, unal­tered form. i do not care what the writ­ers of the jahvist or the elo­hist text of the pen­ta­teuch say about moses ; what i care about is what moses him­self said. if you will insist that what you have right now are the orig­i­nal writ­ings of moses, then please pro­vide an unbro­ken chain of trans­mis­sion through trust­wor­thy nar­ra­tors that that is what exact­ly moses wrote or said (please do not invoke the ​“lying pens” of the jew­ish scribes, as prophet jere­mi­ah said) thus, we have no prob­lems if you see some­thing sim­i­lar between the koran and the old tes­ta­ment, or any oth­er book for that mat­ter. that por­tion of that book may have been taught by a prophet, so we accept it if it agrees with the koran, not because it pre­dates the koran, but because the Beloved Prophet (saws) taught us about it. as for the dif­fer­ences, it may be caused by alter­ations in the text of the old tes­ta­ment or enu­ma elish, just like what pro­het jere­mi­ah said in jere­mi­ah 8:8 about the law of the Lord being turned into false­hood by the lying pens of the scribes. as for your alleged error regard­ing samar­i­tans, that has been refut­ed by the islam­ic aware­ness team in their website.i am mere­ly address­ing your state­ment which says ​“It is an inter­est­ing point that the Koran account dif­fers from the Old Tes­ta­ment account. The Old Tes­ta­ment is the orig­i­nal scource of the data and yet the Koran con­tra­dicts that Old Tes­ta­ment state­ment.” that would be all. a reply would be high­ly appre­ci­at­ed. may the God of abra­ham, Isaac and Jacob guide us all to the truth. Amen. and God knows best.

   one final note : lest you force me to accept the old tes­ta­ment since i quot­ed jere­mi­ah, then i would like to remind you that the bur­den of believ­ing what is said in the book of jere­mi­ah is not upon me, but upon you.

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3. 

   Starjade

   January 9, 2006

   It is an inter­est­ing point that the Koran account dif­fers from the Old Tes­ta­ment account. The Old Tes­ta­ment is the orig­i­nal scource of the data and yet the Koran con­tra­dicts that Old Tes­ta­ment statement.

   The Qur’an says that the calf wor­shipped by the Israelites at mount Horeb was mold­ed by a Samar­i­tan (sura 20:85 – 87, 95 – 97). Yet the term ​‘Samar­i­tan’ was not coined until 722 B.C., which is sev­er­al hun­dred years after the events record­ed in Exo­dus. Thus, the Samar­i­tan peo­ple could not have exist­ed dur­ing the life of Moses, and there­fore, could not have been respon­si­ble for mold­ing the calf.

   It is inter­est­ing to notice that while Yusuf Ali attempts to change this word to ​“Samiri” and Pick­thall to ​“As Samirii,” Arber­ry in the Eng­lish, and Kasimirs­ki in the French both cor­rect­ly trans­late it ​“Samar­i­tan.” Yusuf Ali, in his foot­notes, ​“bends over back­wards” to explain his choice by sug­gest­ing that the name could mean ​“She­mer,” which denotes a stranger, or ​“Shomer,” which means a watch­man, the equiv­a­lent of ​“Sama­ra” in Ara­bic, which he implies is close enough to the Samari he is look­ing for. Once again we find an awk­ward exam­ple of Ali attempt­ing to twist the trans­la­tion in order to get out of a dif­fi­cult sce­nario, sim­i­lar to the exam­ples of ​“Perik­ly­tos,” or the word ​“Mach­mad” which he uses to sig­ni­fy Muham­mad in the Bible. The Ara­bic sim­ply does not give Ali the lee­way to con­coct oth­er mean­ings for this word. To be con­sis­tent with the Ara­bic he should keep his trans­la­tion con­sis­tent with the text, as Arber­ry and Kasimirs­ki have done.

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