|
to take care of; and he placed her in a chamber shut off from anyone else to
enter. But the angels came there to tend and nourish her.
|
Again, we read in the same Surah, vv. 37-42:
|
Now when the angels said, O Mary, verily God hath chosen thee, and purified
thee, and hath chosen thee over all the women of the world: O Mary, be devout
towards thy Lord, and worship, and bow down with those who bow down. This is a
secret history. We reveal it unto thee, although thou wast not present with them
when they cast their rods as to which of them should have the education of Mary;
nor wast thou with them when they strove among themselves. When the angels said,
O Mary, verily God sendeth thee good tidings regarding the Word from himself;
his name is Jesus the Messiah son of Mary honourable, in this world and in that
to come, and one of those that approach nigh to the Almighty. And he shall speak
unto men in the cradle, and when he is grown up, and he shall be one of the
righteous. She said, Lord, how shall I have a son, since no man hath touched me.
He said:- Thus the Lord createth that which he pleaseth. When he decreeth a
thing, he but saith unto it, Be, and it is.
|
The notice here given of the "casting of rods" is thus explained by
Beidhawi and Jelal ood Deen. Zacharias with six and twenty other priests who
sought to have the charge of Mary, went to the river, in order to choose which
should be the favoured one, and cast their rods into it. All sank but that of
Zacharias, who thus became Mary's guardian. Regarding all this we read in Surah
xix. 16-31, as follows:
|
And in the Book make mention of Mary, when she retired from her people to a
place towards the East, and took a veil, apart from them. And we sent unto her
our Spirit, who appeared unto her as a real man. She said, I flee for refuge
from thee unto the Merciful, if thou fearest the Lord. He answered:
|
|
|
Verily I am the Messenger of thy Lord that I may give unto thee a holy Son.
She said, How shall I have a son, for no man hath touched me, and I am no
harlot. He said, So shall it be. Thy Lord saith, This is easy with me, and we
shall make him a sign unto mankind, and a mercy from us; for it is a thing
decreed. Whereupon she conceived him, and retired with him (in her womb) to a
distant place; and the pains of childbirth came upon her by the trunk of a
palm-tree. She said, Would to God I had died before this, and had become a thing
forgotten, lost in oblivion! And one from beneath her called out:Grieve not:
verily thy Lord hath provided a rivulet under thee; and do thou
shake the body of the palm-tree, and it shall let fall upon thee ripe dates
ready gathered; so do thou eat and drink, and comfort thine eyes. Moreover, if
thou seest any man, say, I have vowed a fast unto the Merciful, and I will speak
to no man this day. So she came to her people, carrying the child in her arms.
They said, O Mary, thou hast done a strange thing: O sister of Aaron, thy father
was not a bad man, neither was thy mother a harlot. Then she made signs to the
child. They said, - How shall we speak to an infant in the cradle? Whereupon the
child said, Verily I am the servant of God: He hath given me the Book and hath
made me a prophet.
|
Such, then, are the tales regarding the Virgin Mary which we find in the Qur'an and ancient
Muslim Commentators. From whence did such strange fictions
come? Clearly not from the true Gospel; but nearly all of them from the
schismatic writings of ignorant men, spread abroad in ancient times amongst a
people given to wild fictitious stories. To prove this, we now give full and
satisfactory evidence. In the Protoevangelium of James the Less, written in
Hellenic Greek, we have the following:
|
Anna looking upwards to the heavens, saw a sparrow in its nest, and sighed
saying, O me! O me! Would it were the same with me. O me! to what thing
am I alike? Not like
|
|