CHAPTER ONE The Quran: The Book of God

posterity.’ How extraordinary this verse must have appeared when it was revealed. At that time no one knew that the Pharaoh’s body was really intact, and it was nearly 1400 hundred years before this fact came to light. It was a Professor Loret who, in 1898, was the first to find the mummified remains of the Pharaoh who lived in Moses’ day. For 3000 years the corpse had remained wrapped in a sheet in the Tomb of the Necropolis at Thebes where Loret had found it, until July 8, 1907, when Elliot Smith uncovered it and subjected it to proper scientific examination. In 1912 he published a book entitled The Royal Mummies. His research had proved that the mummy discovered by Loret was indeed that of the Pharaoh who ‘knew Moses, resisted his pleas, pursued him as he took flight, and lost his life in the process.’ His earthly remains were saved by the will of God from destruction to become a sign to man, as is written in the Quran. In 1975, Dr. Bucaille made a detailed examination of the Pharaoh’s mummy which by then had been taken to Cairo. His findings led him to write in astonishment and acclaim: Those who seek among modern data for proof of the Holy Scriptures will find a magnificent illustration of the verses of the Quran dealing with the Pharaoh’s body by visiting the Royal Mummies Room of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo! As early as the seventh century A.D., the Quran had asserted that the Pharaoh’s body was preserved as a sign for man, but it was only in the 19th century that the body’s discovery gave concrete proof of this prediction. What further proof is needed that the Quran is the Book of God? Certainly, there is no book like it, among the works of men. Natural Phenomena The Quran was revealed at a time when little was known about nature. Rainfall, for example, was believed to come from a river in heaven which gushed down on to the earth. The earth was thought to be flat and the heavens a kind of vault resting on the hilltops which provided a roof over the earth. Stars were considered to be shining silver nails set in the vault of heavens or thought of as tiny lamps which were swung to and fro at night by means of a rope. The ancient Indians held that the earth rested upon the horns of a cow and when the cow shifted the earth from one horn to the other, this caused earthquakes. Up till the time of Copernicus (1473–1543 A.D.) it was generally believed that the earth was stationary and that the sun revolved around it. (Two thousand years earlier, Aristarchus of Samos had anticipated this theory, but his ideas did not gain ground).