It is quite sometime I think about the story of Prophet Adam (as). In Islamic teaching, Adam is regard as the first Man and the ancestor of all human races in this world. The story that puzzles me is the advantage that God gives to Adam. He was given the ability of to know names.
'And He taught Adam the Names, all of them; then presented them to the angels and said, “Tell Me the names of these, if you are truthful.” (Al Baqarah, 2:31)'
My questions are:
1. Why having the ability to know Names makes Adam superior than angels?
2. What are the important lessons that we need to know?
The misconception of Adam story is long and destructive. We tend to read from Christian and Jews, in our terminology we called it as Israeliyyat. One of the misconceptions is regarding the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. We were told that was the Fruit of Knowledge. Some story said, the Fruit of Immortality. The sad part we tend to believe. Make it more convincing when we read and watch Da Vincci code. The fallen of human is because we were restrained to gain knowledge. Is it true?
Let me put it in my point of view.
The important part in modern scientific world is taxonomy. This is the science to name things. Why we need to name things? The reasons is to classify, clusters, group, associate with particular behaviour, identification with its physical outlook, predict uncertainties, know its historical formation, know the origin and elements consist in that things, and thousand more reasons. If I need to list it all, it will be lengthy and time consuming.
This is the evidence that shows Prophet Adam (as) had been equipped with unlimited knowledge. “He taught Adam the Names, all of them.”
The lesson that I need to learn from this narrative that human being will be given sufficient knowledge to maintain at correct path. This knowledge will help him to determine his worldview, then from that ideology. Both of this strong foundation (worldview + ideology) requires us to act. The fruit is the trial we need to pass. Either we understand the knowledge and we act on it, or we lead Devil to win and we ourselves fail.
When we decided to act according to our understanding, knowledge, set of believe, be sure Devil will be there to tempt us.
Of course we believe that we are weak, because of that we need to cling closely to Al Quran. Believe in His Words. Although we are weak, read this what stated in the Quran, “Those who strive in Our way, verily We will guide them to the right paths.”
4 comments:
have you realized how amuse it is to see that we can actually have names for every single thing around us. Like things from field, or road or inside house or groceries shop or even jungle? amazing, kan.. pokok2 renek dengan nama yang pelbagai - senduduk, pokok jati, cengal, bawang, serai, kunyit - padahal kalau ikutkan mana ada dalam bahasa perbuatan yang bercerita nama pokok tu..contohnya semalu - sbb pokok itu malu2 bila disentuh menguncup, jadi dinamakan semalu. pokok serai? serabai? sekali rai? hehe contoh la kan..
and don't you think it is amazing too that these names actually existed in many languages? Contoh: kunyit - turmeric, haldi, etc. limau purut - kaffir lime, combava etc.
one thing for sure, we will ask : who gave those names? how would they be able to identify those names? how come it can be refereed to by many languages and different continent? how come there are thousands of words for every single thing in this entire world and then translated into hundreds languages, where it will multiply the number of words to hundreds thousands.. Wow! cant count on it.
your blog maybe the answer for all this.. masyaAllah.
It is amusing right? How many language in this world? In their own word, but we understand the same thing.
He teach Adam names, all of them.
Let share, hopefully we can find the answers for all questions that we ask.
...and Adam itself is indeed a beautiful name.
indeed, Adam is a man of virtues and wisdom.
He is our ancestor. He taught us a lot. Adam story in the Quran, said all.
You a man with knowledge. You will be tempted with wispher and misguidance by you own enemy, the Devil.
Stone them full heartedly! Stone them 70 times! Stone them with hatred, do not make any alliance or you will misguided.
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