Satyarth Prakash

14. "We gave Moses the book and the miracles. We said unto them, be ye changed into scouted apes. And we made them an example unto those who were contemporary with them and unto those who came after them, and a warning to the pious." (2:53.)

C. ~ If the book was given to Moses, the revelation of the Qoran becomes meaningless. Both Qoran and the Bible assert that Moses was endowed with miraculous powers, but it is absolutely incredible, inasmuch as no man can work miracles now-a-days, and what cannot be done in our day, could never have been done in the past.

Moses must have resorted to hypocrisy in the same way as the selfish impose upon the credulity of the ignorant at the present time. Now why does not God endow anyone with miraculous powers when both He and His devotees exist in our day. Where was the necessity of sending down the Qoran when God had already given Moses a book? If the teachings about dong good and abstaining from evil are the same in the Bible and Qoran, the sending down of two different books was nothing but a mere repetition of the same. Again, did God forget to record something in the book given to Moses that He had to send down another book later on?

Now either what God said regarding their (transgressors') being changed into scouted apes in order to make an example for others never came to pass or He must have resorted to trickery.

Whoever does such things cannot be God, nor can the book containing them be divine in origin.

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The Response

Swamiji has mistranslated, skipped many verses and the reference is not totally correct. The verse, "We gave Moses the book and the miracles" is 2:53. However, the word 'miracles' in this verse is a mistranslation. The Arabic word is Furqaan فُرْقَانَ, which means Criterion and not miracle. Then, the passage, "We said unto them, be ye changed into scouted apes. And we made them an example unto those who were contemporary with them and unto those who came after them, and a warning to the pious." is 2:65 and 66.

I have already dealt with the question of the neccessity of the Quran after the Book of Moses, in response 5. Moreover, if according to Swamiji, Rishi Agni was given the Rigveda by Ishwar, then giving the Samveda to Rishi Aditya is meaningless as Samveda has verbatim repeated the 9th Mandal of Rigveda. Except for 65 or 75 ^[1]  mantras that are new, the 1800 mantras of Samved are exact repetition of Rigveda. These 65 or 75 mantras could also have been given to Agni and hence Samveda was not required. If it be said that the mantras of Samveda have to be melodiously sung and that is why they are separate, it is illogical, because it could have been written in the Rigveda that the 9th Mandal is for singing. Also, the mantras have not been exactly separated but have been inserted between the Rigvedic hymns. The real Samveda should only have 65 mantras. Hindus will save lot of paper and ink if they print only 65 mantras in a few pages.

Besides this, even the 'revelation' of Yajurveda and Atharvaveda was meaningless when the Rigveda was already given. In Swamiji's own words, may we ask, "While giving the Rigveda to Rishi Agni, did your Ishwar forget to give anything, which He later gave to other Rishis?".

 

About Miracles

Swamiji himself writes in the 8th Chapter of Satyarth Prakash that in the beginning of this world men and women were created by God as adults. May we ask, why humans are not longer created as adults? Swamiji says, "They were adults, because had God created them as children they would have required adults to bring them up." This implies that since now there are adults to look after children so human are no longer created as adults. Similarly, since there are no more Prophets, there is no display of such miracles. However, I would say this, that the Quran is a Living Miracle for those who wish to see a miracle. Since Prophet Muhammad was the Last Prophet of Almighty Allah, the miracle he was given by Allah had to be one which could be seen by later generations as well. Otherwise we would have been at a disadvatage.

Miraculous Tales in the Vedas

By mere chanting of few incantations Vishwamitra Ji managed to stop the flow of River Satluj and Beas as mentioned in Rigveda 3:33:5. Now there are two interesting points here. Firstly, Vishwamitra Ji is directly talking to rivers, while Swamiji says in Satyarth Prakash that inanimate objects cannot hear (See objection number 99 and my response). Secondly, stopping the rivers for some time by mere incantation.

Then, Rishi Vamdev spoke with Indra from the womb of his mother. This is mentioned in Rigveda 4:18:2

"Not this way go I forth: hard is the passage. Forth from the side obliquely will I issue. Much that is yet undone must I accomplish; one must I combat and the other question."

Indra reassembled those organs of the son of Agru, that had been eaten by termites. This is mentioned in Rigveda 4:19:9

"Lord of Bay Steeds, thou broughtest from the ant-hill the unwedded damsel's son whom ants were eating. The blind saw clearly, as he grasped the serpent, rose, brake the jar: hisjoints again united."

Regarding 'Be you apes'

According to Zamakhshari and Razi, the expression "We said unto them" is here synonymous with "We decreed with' regard to them" - God's "saying" being in this case a metonym for a manifestation of His will. As for the substance of God's decree, "Be as apes despicable",  the famous tabi'i Mujahid explain it thus: "[Only] their hearts were transformed, that is, they were not [really] transformed into apes: this is but a metaphor (mathal) coined by God with regard to them, similar to the metaphor of 'the ass carrying books' [62:5]" (Tabari, in his commentary on 2:65). A similar explanation is given by Raghib. It should be borne in mind that the expression "like an ape" is often used in classical Arabic to describe a person who is unable to restrain his gross appetites or passions.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] There are many versions of Vedas and the exact number of mantras are different. Some scholars say 65 while other say 75. Therefore, I have mentioned both.