Creation, as told in the Qur’an and Genesis

The first Sura in the Qur'an, by order of revelation, begins with the creation of man.  Let's compare that to what's in Genesis, from the Jewish Torah / Christian Bible.

In the translation that I’m using, this verse is called The Embryo. In others, it is called “The Clot”.  
The Arabic word used can be translated in various ways, including "clump of mud".
In any case, it's meant to show that the creation of man was a wondrous event.

 

 

To get some background on how Islam, Christianity and Judaism all claim Abraham as the "father" of their religion, please see this post on What religion was Abraham?". 

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 Sura 96 - The Embryo

Order of Revelation - 1
Traditional order in Qur’an - 96

The Qur'an is not presented by order of revelation to Muhammad.  Rather, it is arranged by the length of each Sura (or chapter) in the original Arabic language.  Therefore, I will give both the order of both the revelation to Muhammad and the printed Qur'an.

This first Sura is actually two parts.

The first part is verses 1-5, which is about the creation of man. The revelation is believed to have taken place in a cave in Mecca. This post will talk about just the creation topic.

The second part is verses 6 - 19, which were apparently revealed later (although included here) and covered unbelievers and their response to the daily prayers. Part 2 will be covered in the next post.

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The creation of man

 In the translation that I’m using, this verse is called The Embryo. In others, it is called “The Clot”.

The Arabic word used can be translated in various ways.
In any case, it's meant to show that the creation of man was a wondrous event.

The first 5 verses are:

[96:0] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
[96:1] Read, in the name of your Lord, who created.
[96:2] He created man from an embryo.
[96:3] Read, and your Lord, Most Exalted.
[96:4] Teaches by means of the pen.
[96:5] He teaches man what he never knew.

 

Let’s look at these verses in more detail -

[96:2] He created man from an embryo.

As mentioned, the Arabic word translated as “embryo” could have been several other things - such as clot of blood (as in some translations) or clump of mud.

As we saw in the very first article, the Qur’an encourages looking to other sources for validation of what it says. This includes the Bible - especially the Torah (1st 5 books of the Old Testament), the Psalms, and the Injil (The Gospels, especially those of Matthew, Mark and Luke).
While this may be surprising to some, it shouldn't be.  when he was younger, Muhammad had considerable exposure to both Jewish and Christian people.  In fact, he was concerned about his people (the Arabs) having hundreds of "gods" while the Jews and Christians had only one.  The theme of monotheism (one God) was very important to Muhammad, and is prominent throughout the Qur'an.

The clump of mud is very much like the Biblical translation that we read in Genesis 2:4-7 -

Ge 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens— 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground— 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

In chapter 1, we continually read “God said” - as He is in the process of creating the universe and everything in it.
God speaks - and things happen - things get created.

But here -
for the first time (out of two occurrences) -
God actually gets physically involved in what He’s doing.

Ge 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

God actually formed Adam Himself -
not just speaking it and it happens.

All of creation is a wondrous thing, to be sure.

But for God - the creator of everything -
to get physically involved in creating man -
this indicates a much more personal involvement in this act.

And then God goes further -
breathing into Adam’s nostrils -
giving Adam life -
again not by just speaking him to life -
but by breathing God’s own breath of life to to give life to Adam.