Lists of contradictions in the Quran circulate widely online, often with dozens of entries. Most rest on a small number of patterns: numbers that seem not to add up, time spans that seem to clash, and acts attributed to more than one agent.
The four points below take the Quran’s own test and three of the best-known cases, with the answers the classical commentators gave.
Number 1: The Quran sets its own test
The Quran asks whether people do not reflect on it, and states that had it come from anyone other than God, they would have found much inconsistency in it.[1] Critics take up the challenge and present lists of verses that appear to clash. The classical commentators met the same questions centuries earlier, and recorded their answers.
Three of the most frequently cited cases are set out below, each with the reconciliation the commentators gave.
Number 2: Six days of creation, or eight?
One passage says that God created the earth in two days, set mountains on it, blessed it and measured out its provisions in four days, and then formed the seven heavens in two days.[2] Added together, that seems to make eight days, while other verses speak of the heavens and earth created in six.[3]
Al-Tabari recorded the explanation of a grammarian of Basra: the four days include the first two, as a man might say that he married one woman yesterday and two today, one of whom was yesterday’s bride. On this reading the earth and its provisions take four days in total and the heavens two, which makes six.[4] The commentators read the verse this way from the start, so the reconciliation predates the modern objection.
Number 3: A day of a thousand years, or fifty thousand?
One verse says that a day with God is like a thousand years of human reckoning, another that God’s command ascends to him in a day whose measure is a thousand years, and a third that the angels and the Spirit ascend to him in a day whose measure is fifty thousand years.[5]
The verses describe different things. Ibn Kathir recorded four views of the fifty-thousand-year day, among them the report from Ibn Abbas that it measures the full span of God’s command from the lowest earth to above the heavens, while the thousand-year day measures its descent from the sky to the earth and its return.[6] Al-Qurtubi added the view of several early authorities that the fifty-thousand-year day is the Day of Resurrection, which for the unbelievers will seem to last that long.[7] A day of one length and a day of another, said of different events, contradict nothing.
Number 4: Who takes the soul at death?
The Quran says that God takes the souls at the time of their death,[8] that the angel of death who is put in charge of people takes them,[9] and that God’s messengers take a person when death comes.[10] Critics ask which is true.
All three are, in the way that a ruler and his officers can each be said to act. Al-Tabari read the first verse as a proof of God’s sole power to give life and death,[11] and the other verses name the angels who carry out that decree: one angel in charge of death and the messengers who act with him. The Quran attributes the act to God as its source and to the angels as its agents.
Notes
- Quran 4:82.
- Quran 41:9–12.
- Quran 7:54.
- Al-Tabari, Jami al-Bayan, commentary on Quran 41:10. Tabari (Dar al-Tarbiya wa-l-Turath edition, Shamela text): 41:9–10, vol. 21, pp. 431–435.
- Quran 22:47; 32:5; 70:4.
- Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Quran al-Azim, commentary on Quran 70:4.
- Al-Qurtubi, al-Jami li-Ahkam al-Quran, commentary on Quran 70:4.
- Quran 39:42.
- Quran 32:11.
- Quran 6:61.
- Al-Tabari, Jami al-Bayan, commentary on Quran 39:42. Tabari (Dar al-Tarbiya wa-l-Turath edition, Shamela text): 39:42, vol. 21, pp. 298–299.
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