Adam or Jesus?
Sura 2:34 tells us:
And behold, We said to the angels: "Bow down to Adam"
and they bowed down. Not so Iblis: he refused and was haughty:
He was of those who reject Faith.
This passage may have been borrowed from a misunderstanding of Hebrews 1:6 :
And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world,
he says, "Let all God's angels worship him."
W. St. Clair Tisdall says:
Muhammad seems to have been greatly struck with this verse,
and, since he (as usual) misunderstood it by fancying that
"the first-begotten" meant not Christ but Adam, he repeatedly
introduced its equivalent into the Qur'an. This may have been
done as an argument against worship being offered to Christ,
for in a verse already quoted (Surah III., 52) he tells us
that in God's sight Jesus was just as Adam, doubtless in
having no human father (as 'Abbasi and Jalalain explain it),
but that he was not to be accounted Divine on that account.
Qur'an Commentary Index
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