al-Tabari and Q2:69

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 17, 2014 at 09:22

Hi Mike you wrote

[Moses told the people] "...she is a yellow cow. Bright is her color." (Chapter of The Cow: Qur'an 2.069)

There is no doubt that the early Ulama were puzzled about Q2:69 as you shall see and this is the Arabic text

انها بقرة صفراء فاقع

Or: It is a cow that is bright yellow

And yes the Arabic text does not tell you if this is the color of skin of the cow or the color of only part or parts of the cow and as usual the Ulama helped.

When you read al-Tabari you realize that he was familiar with the verse in Numbers and that the color of the cow was red and in islamic exegesis this is called تبرير or trying to explain what is difficult to explain

Here is the link to al-Tabari's exegesis use googletranslate and it is very interesting reading and keep in mind that what got in the Qur'an from the OT really got into the Qur'an via the Syrian tradition or the Peshitta and notice that even the color of the cow was not a clear matter and was it black or yellow and which part was black or yellow and check this

وَاخْتَلَفَ أَهْل التَّأْوِيل فِي مَعْنَى قَوْله : { صَفْرَاء } فَقَالَ بَعْضهمْ : مَعْنَى ذَلِكَ سَوْدَاء شَدِيدَة السَّوَاد

Or al-Tabari is saying: the Masorites disagreed on the meaning of the word yellow some of them said this means very dark black

This really means that they had no clue why is this cow "bright yellow" and how come it is not red

Here is the link

http://www.quran-for-all.com/t-2-3-69.html

Muhammad was a plagiarist and he was not even good at that

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