The remarkable points
of difference between the Quranic and the Biblical narrations
suggest unmistakably the purpose of the Quranic narration.
1. The Quran omits
the serpent and the rib-story altogether. The former omission
is obviously meant to free the story from its phallic
setting and its original suggestion of a pessimistic view
of life. The latter omission is meant to suggest that
the purpose of the Quranic narration is not historical,
as in the case of the Old Testament, which gives us an
account of the origin of the first human pair by way of
a prelude to the history of Israel. Indeed, in the verses
which deal with the origin of man as a living being, the
Quran uses the words Bashar or Insan, not Adam, which
it reserves for man in his capacity of God's vicegerent
on earth. The purpose of the Quran is further secured
by the omission of proper names mentioned in the Biblical
narration–Adam and Eve. The word Adam is retained
and used more as a concept than as the name of a concrete
human individual. This use of the word is not without
authority in the Quran itself. The following verse is
clear on the point:
‘We created
you; then fashioned you; then said We to the angels,
“prostrate yourself unto Adam”’ (7:
ii).
2. The Quran splits
up the legend into two distinct episodes–the one
relating to what it describes simply as `the tree' and
the other relating to the ‘tree of eternity’
and the ‘kingdom that faileth not’. The first
episode is mentioned in the 7th and the second in the
20th Surah of the Quran. According to the Quran, Adam
and his wife, led astray by Satan whose function is to
create doubts in the minds of men, tasted the fruit of
both the trees, whereas according to the Old Testament
man was driven out of the Garden of Eden immediately after
his first act of disobedience, and God placed, at the
eastern side of the garden, angels and a flaming sword,
turning on all sides, to keep the way to the tree of life.
3. The Old Testament
curses the earth for Adam's act of disobedience; the Quran
declares the earth to be the ‘dwelling place’
of man and a ‘source of profit’ to him for
the possession of which he ought to be grateful to God.
‘And We have established you on the earth and given
you therein the supports of life. How little do ye give
thanks!’ (7: 10). Nor is there any reason to suppose
that the word Jannat (garden) as used here means the supersensual
paradise from which man is supposed to have fallen on
this earth. According to the Quran, man is not a stranger
on this earth. ‘And We have caused you to grow from
the earth’, says the Quran. The Jannat, mentioned
in the legend, cannot mean the eternal abode of the righteous.
In the sense of the eternal abode of the righteous, Jannat
is described by the Quran to be the place ‘wherein
the righteous will pass to one another the cup which shall
engender no light discourse, no motive to sin’.
It is further described to be the place ‘wherein
no weariness shall reach the righteous, nor forth from
it shall they be cast’. In the Jannat mentioned
in the legend, however, the very first event that took
place was man’s sin of disobedience followed by
his expulsion. In fact, the Quran itself explains the
meaning of the word as used in its own narration. In the
second episode of the legend the garden is described as
a place ‘where there is neither hunger, nor thirst,
neither heat nor nakedness’. I am, therefore, inclined
to think that the Jannat in the Quranic narration is the
conception of a primitive state in which man is practically
unrelated to his environment and consequently does not
feel the sting of human wants the birth of which alone
marks the beginning of human culture.
Thus we see that
the Quranic legend of the Fall has nothing to do with
the first appearance of man on this planet. Its purpose
is rather to indicate man's rise from a primitive state
of instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of
a free self, capable of doubt and disobedience. The Fall
does not mean any moral depravity; it is man's transition
from simple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness,
a kind of waking from the dream of nature with a throb
of personal causality in one's own being. Nor does the
Quran regard the earth as a torture-hall where an elementally
wicked humanity is imprisoned for an original act of sin.
Man's first act of disobedience was also his first act
of free choice; and that is why, according to the Quranic
narration, Adam's first transgression was forgiven.
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
