“… if the equation 'Uzair = Ezra be
valid, and there seems no reason to gainsay it, then Mohammed had either been
misinformed, or had purposely invented this queer dogma”.
J. Walker
This is the opinion of J. Walker, as
expressed in his article “Who is ‘Uzair?”:
Though I have been at pains to show in articles
that the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) was not a real flesh-and-blood historical person
– but a biblical composite.
And the same is probably true of this ‘Uzair
of the Koran.
J. Walker writes:
A Koranic passage which has bewildered many students, is that anent
… the name of 'Uzair. It is the sole reference … in the Koran to a
personage whose identity is by no means certain, but is usually equated with
that of the biblical Ezra. The Sura (IX) in which it is found is of the late
Medina period, and the verse in question (30) reads: "The Jews say
'Uzair (Ezra?) is God's son: and the Christians say, the Messiah is God's
son... How are they misguided!"
The interpretation of this may be taken in the expanded form found in
Damir (Hayat al-Hayawan, trans. Jayakar, Vol. I. 553), as follows:-
"When 'Uzair claimed that God had sent him to the Jews to renew the
Pentateuch they disbelieved saying, ‘God has not placed the Pentateuch in the
memory of anyone after its being lost, unless he is His son,’ so they called
him, 'Uzair ibn Allah."
The difficulty that presents itself is the fact that no historical
evidence can be adduced to prove that any Jewish sect, however heterodox, ever
subscribed to such a tenet. What grounds were there for the accusation? Was it
a figment of Mohammed's [sic] own imagination? Rodwell frankly believes it was.
Goldziher accepts it as "a malevolent metaphor for the great respect which
was paid by the Jews to the memory of Ezra as the restorer of the Law and from
which Ezra legends of apocryphal literature (II. Esdra, XXXIV, 37-49)
originated …." But we are inclined to inquire, if it were "a
malevolent metaphor," on whose side was the malevolence? Whence originated
such an accusation? It is not probable that the Prophet uttered an indictment
of this nature in a city like Medina where Jews abounded, without some foundation.
The Jewish post-biblical writings do not seem to yield any possible
solution for this erroneous statement. The quotation from the Talmud
(Sanhedrim, 21, 2) given by Geiger … to the effect that Ezra would have been
worthy of receiving the Law had Moses not preceded him, does not assist us in
unraveling the puzzle. Lidzbarski … favors the possibility of a Jewish sect in
Arabia venerating Ezra to such a degree as to deify him; thus casting shame on
their orthodox brethren.
All these views are held on the supposition that the text of the Koranic
passage is reliable. Emendations, of course, on the other hand, have been
proposed, but it always seems a precarious operation to have resort to
conjectural alteration in order to elucidate a troublesome text. There are two
such textual emendations which have been proposed and which are worthy of
mention because of their ingenuity. The first is by Casanova … who reads 'Uzail
instead of 'Uzair, and equates with 'Azael, who, according to the Jewish
Hagada, is the leader of the "sons of God" of Genesis VI:2, 4. The
second is by J. Finkel … who alters the diacritic points, substitutes z for r,
and reads Aziz - "king" or "potentate". This emended
text he connects with the verse in the Psalms (2:7): "The Lord said unto
me, thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee."
In spite of such conjectures, however, Horovitz (op. cit. 167),
considers that there is no reason to doubt the equation 'Uzair = Ezra. He
himself in this treatment of the subject (op. cit. 127-128) suggests in
conclusion that, "it is very probable that Mohammed received his
information from a Jewish or Judeo-Christian sect who revered Ezra in similar
manner as certain sects did Melchisdek (See Epiphan. Haeres, LV, 1-9)".
To conclude, if the equation 'Uzair = Ezra be valid, and there seems no
reason to gainsay it, then Mohammed had either been misinformed, or had
purposely invented this queer dogma. Certainly among the Jews, Ezra the Scribe,
the second Moses, as leader of the men of the Great Synagogue played a most
important part in the editing of the Jewish Scriptures and the re-establishment
of Judaism in Zion after the Captivity, but so far as is known, no Jewish sect
ever held such an extreme doctrine as is herein imputed to them by Mohammed. If
the idea did not germinate in Mohammed's own mind, and since it is quite alien
to Judaism, it is obviously a slanderous accusation made against the Jews by
their protagonists. I would suggest therefore that perhaps the libelers were
none other than their old enemies the Samaritans, who hated Ezra above all
because he changed the sacred Law and its holy script. We do not readily
associate the Samaritans with matters Islamic but in a very able article (in
the Encyclopedia of Islam on the Samaritans) Dr. Gaster has demonstrated
that Mohammed seems to have made several borrowing from Samaritan sources. May
not this be another?
Let us look at the question through Samaritan eyes. Ezra had acted
presumptuously. He had changed the old divine alphabetic character of the holy
Books of the Law - a character still used and revered to this day by the
rapidly dwindling Samaritan community - for the mercantile Aramaic script. He
had acted in a dictatorial manner as if he were God Himself, or the very Son of
God. The Samaritans, thoroughly shocked, accused the Jews of following Ezra
… and accepting his new edition of the sacred text. They not only accused
the Jews of altering the sacred scriptures. Dr. Gaster (in his Schweich
Lectures on the Samaritans) indeed proposes to find in this the
origin of Mohammed's conception of the Tahrif, or the doctrine of the
corruption of the Holy Bible by the People of the Book. For example, in Sura
IV, 48: "Among the Jews are those who displace the words of the Scriptures."
If Dr. Gaster's suggestion be correct, then Mohammed had found an ally against
the Jews in the Samaritans. And if he found the accusations of the latter a
useful weapon against the former in one instance, might he not do likewise in
another instance, and that especially in the case of a personality like Ezra,
whose name was the subject of controversy between the Jews and the Samaritans?
Mohammed we know may have acquired his information from the Samaritans during
his journeying to Syria, but on the other hand there might have been Samaritan
off-shoots in Arabia, although no trace of such is discoverable in the
historical records, unless a vestige be found in the feud of Sumair between the
two Jewish tribes of Medina. That is highly problematical, and need not be
stressed. But it is not at all unlikely that the source of Mohammed's
indictment of the Jews is to be found amongst the Samaritans or amongst Arab
tribesmen of Samaritan strain. If we found in Samaritan literature the opposite
belief that Ezra (or Uzair) was the son of Satan, we would be well-nigh sure of
having settled the matter. Unfortunately, access to Samaritan records is not
possible at the moment for the present writer, and the argument from silence is
not of substantial value. ….
