A Word Can Make All the Difference

A Word Can Make All the Difference

1985 8 August 8-9 A Word Can Make All the Difference (680) With the exception of the Qur’an, all divine scriptures are available only in the form of translations, in which distortion of the meaning of words is inevitable. So the Qur’an is the only truly authentic divine scripture that remains in man’s possession.

According to the Bible, God created the world in “six days”. This account has, in recent times, come into direct conflict with scientific data. As Dr Maurice Bucaille writes in The Bible, the Qur’an and Science:

“The idea that successive phases of the Creation .... could have been compressed into the space of one week is one that cannot be defended from a scientific point of view. Today we are perfectly aware that the formation of the Universe and the Earth took place in stages that lasted for very long periods (p. 27).”

When we read about the creation of the universe in most English translations of the Qur’an, we also find reference to a process lasting “six days” (7:54). But when we look at the original Arabic Qur’an we find that the word used for “day” (Yaum, pl. Ayyam) is one that does not necessarily refer to the interval of time that elapses between two successive sunrises or sunsets for an inhabitant of the earth. The word can also mean “a period of time” as is clear from these verses of the Qur’an:

“He governs all things from heaven to earth. And in the end it will ascend to Him in one day, a day whose space is a thousand years by your reckoning (32: 5).”

“ ... Each day with your Lord is like a thousand years in your reckoning (22: 47).”

“He is the Lord of the Ladders, by which the angels and the Spirit will ascend to Him in one day: a day whose space is fifty thousand years (70: 3-4).”

By referring to the original Arabic Qur’an, therefore, we are able to ascertain that the creation of the heavens and the earth was conducted over what we may call “six periods”, or as Abdullah Yusuf Ali writes in his commentary on the Qur’an (1934), six “stages in the evolution of physical nature (p. 1290).” There is no difficulty in accepting this description in the light of modern scientific data.

This shows how important it is that we should be in possession of the original version of divine scriptures. Translations are unable to convey the full meaning of the original and sometimes they distort the meaning beyond all bounds of credibility. By referring to the original Qur’an we are able to establish that the “days” in which God created the universe were not days as we know them; they were days as God knows them, which can extend over thousands of years. If we were able to refer to the Bible in its original, untranslated form, then no doubt we would find a word open to similar interpretation. But all we have are translations, and translations refer only to “six days”, a day being the “time for one rotation of the earth, period of 24 hours as unit of time” (Oxford Dictionary). The notion of a creation spreading over six “days” of this nature is quite untenable when viewed in the light of modern knowledge: there is no way that these “days” could have even existed when the mechanism that causes them to appear – that is, the existence of the earth and its rotation around the sun – had not yet come into being.

There have been many divine scriptures, four of which – the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel which is now incorporated in the modern Bible, and the Qur’an – are explicitly mentioned in the Quran. But the Quran is the only one that exists in its original form and in the language in which it was revealed. This means that the Quran is the only book of God which can now be a source of true guidance, for, as shown above, misinterpretation of just one word of the scriptures, which is inevitable in translations, can cause distortion of a vast realm of cosmic knowledge.