A Very Concerned Reader and more from Mr. Khattab's translation and the elusive "mountain"

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 1, 2021 at 11:52

Now, let us read Surat al-Shu'ara' 63 and it is about Moses and the story of Exodus.

The verse says that Allah inspired Moses to hit the sea with his staff/stick! then it says:

فَانفَلَقَ فَكَانَ كُلُّ فِرْقٍ كَالطَّوْدِ الْعَظِيمِ

This can be rendered as: Then it (the sea) did spilt (and) each part (notice that the verse does not mention the number) like al-Tuud the great.

Notice that I left the word al-Tuud untranslated because the meaning of the word is not clear.

al-Tabari must have been guessing with Moses and the Jews heading to the Sinai that this "Tuud" must be, and you guessed it, means mountain and this is what we find in his tafsir

كَالطَّوْدِ الْعَظِيمِ ) يقول: كالجبل العظيم

Or the great Tuud, he says, like the great mountain and another Tabrir

However, it very well could be a misreading of the Syriac word for mountain, Tura.

So here is the word Tura in Syriac: ܛܘܪܐ. Here is the letter R in Syriac: /ܪ/ Notice the dot above the slope. Now, if we replace the letter R for the letter D in Syriac this is what we get: ܛܘܕܐ
Notice that the Syriac D's morphology is the same as R except that the dot goes under the slope /ܕ/
Most likely happened is the scribe was Arabizing a Syriac text and misread Syriac R and read it as D. But once the change happened, there was no going back.

Here is Mr. Khattab's translation:

>Each Part like a huge mountain

And not a single word about explaining how did he come up with his claim that the word Tuud means "mountain.'

Here is tafsir al-Tabari

https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/tabary/sura26-aya63.html

More? He translates the Basmala as: In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, most merciful

I do agree that the word Allah is the proper name of the God of Islam. However, where can we find the word "most" in the text? He is making things up

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-arabic/most

I believe that Luxenberg is correct that al-Rahman al-Rahim really means (and this is from Syriac): The Loved and Beloved and this is indeed in the Qur'an 5:54 it says:

يُحِبُّهُمْ وَيُحِبُّونَهُ

(Allah will bring people that) He loves and they love him! And this must be the meaning of al-Rahman al-Rahim

https://quran.com/26/63?translations=131

Really bad translation

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