Four words in Sanskrit carry the whole argument of this article: na tasya pratimā asti, "there is no likeness of Him." They are sung in the Yajurveda and repeated in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad. The same sentence stands in Hebrew on Isaiah's lips, and in Arabic in the Quran. We let each scripture say it in its own translation, and only then set the Quran beside it. The reader who already loves one of these books is not being asked for a new belief, but for an old one.
The Veda says it first
The Yajurveda, in the translation of Devi Chand, a Hindu scholar, reads at 32:3: "There is no image of Him whose glory verily is great. He sustains within Himself all luminous objects like the Sun etc. May He not harm me, this is my prayer. As He is unborn, He deserves our worship." The Sanskrit of the opening phrase is identical to Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4:19, which Radhakrishnan renders, "There is no likeness of Him whose name is great glory."
The next verse says why no image can be made: "His form is not to be seen; no one sees Him with the eye" (Shvetashvatara 4:20, Radhakrishnan). The fortieth chapter of the Yajurveda, which is the Isha Upanishad, describes Him in Griffith's translation: "He hath attained unto the Bright, Bodiless, Woundless, Sinewless, the Pure which evil hath not pierced." The Sanskrit words are akāyam, bodiless, and svayambhū, self-existent.
The Quran: "There is nothing that equals Him. He is the Hearer, the Seer." (42:11). "No visions can encompass Him, but He encompasses all visions. He is the Compassionate, the Cognizant." (6:103). The Veda's aja, unborn, is the Quran's "Never did He beget. Nor was He begotten." (112:3). The Veda's na tasya pratimā asti is the Quran's "None equals Him." (112:4).
One more Vedic line belongs here, with its reading stated. Yajurveda 40:9, in Griffith: "Deep into shade of blinding gloom fall asambhuti's worshippers. They sink to darkness deeper yet who on sambhuti are intent." The Arya Samaj reads asambhūti as the natural elements and sambhūti as things that are made, so that the verse condemns the worship of fire and sun, and more sharply of what hands produce; Shankara reads the two words as the unmanifest and the manifest. The verse plainly says both kinds of worshipper enter darkness; which objects it means is a reading, and we say so. The Quran has no ambiguity: "Do not prostrate before the sun, nor the moon; you shall fall prostrate before the GOD who created them, if you truly worship Him alone." (41:37).
Sinai and Isaiah
The Torah's commandment needs no commentary. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:3–5, KJV; repeated in Deuteronomy 5:7–9). Isaiah asks the question the Upanishad answers: "To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto Him?" (Isaiah 40:18, KJV).
The Quran's commandment is the same commandment: "You shall worship GOD alone - do not associate anything with Him." (4:36). And it records the moment Genesis records, when Jacob gathered his household: "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves" (Genesis 35:2, NIV). The Quran has the scene at his deathbed: "Had you witnessed Jacob on his death bed; he said to his children, 'What will you worship after I die?' They said, 'We will worship your god; the god of your fathers Abraham, Ismail, and Isaac; the one god. To Him we are submitters.'" (2:133).
Abraham and the statues
Jacob's grandfather is the man every one of these communities claims. The Quran tells of his argument with his people in several suras; Genesis does not tell it. "What are these statues to which you are devoting yourselves?" (21:52). They answered that they had found their parents worshipping them. He broke the statues while they were away, left the largest standing, and told them to ask it; when they admitted it could not speak, he said: "Do you then worship besides GOD what possesses no power to benefit you or harm you?" (21:66), and "You have incurred shame by worshiping idols beside GOD. Do you not understand?" (21:67). In another sura the argument is one line: "How can you worship what you carve?" (37:95) "When GOD has created you, and everything you make!" (37:96).
The Quran also gives his reasoning before he spoke to anyone. "When the night fell, he saw a shining planet. 'Maybe this is my Lord,' he said. When it disappeared, he said, 'I do not like (gods) that disappear.'" (6:76). The moon rose and set. The sun rose, and he said, "This must be my Lord. This is the biggest." (6:78). It set too. Then: "I have devoted myself absolutely to the One who initiated the heavens and the earth; I will never be an idol worshiper." (6:79).
The project holds a Jewish text, written around the end of the first century and preserved in Slavonic, that tells the same story from inside Abraham's house. The Apocalypse of Abraham is tradition, not scripture, and is cited as such; the project's Quran-aligned edition keeps its first eight chapters as they stand. In it the young Abraham, sent to sell his father Terah's idols, watches three of them smash when a donkey bolts, and reasons: "Is he not rather the god of his gods, since they come into being through his chisels and lathes and his skill?" (Apocalypse of Abraham 3, Quran-aligned edition). To his father: "It is your gods who are blessed by you, for you are their god, since you made them; for their blessing is ruin, and their power is vain" (chapter 4). Then he reasons from fire to water to earth to sun, moon and stars, and of each says "I do not call even it God," because each is subject to something else (chapter 7). The voice that answers him says: "You are seeking, in the understanding of your heart, the One God and Creator; I am He" (chapter 8).
That is 37:96 and 6:76–79 in a Jewish voice eighteen centuries old: confirmation, not authority. The Quran's own verdict on the man: "Abraham was neither Jewish, nor Christian; he was a monotheist submitter. He never was an idol worshiper." (3:67).
The apostles refuse to be gods
The image-ban reaches the New Testament whole. When Paul healed a cripple at Lystra the crowd shouted, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" and "Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes" (Acts 14:11–12, NIV); the two apostles tore their clothes in protest. Paul's letter to Colossae warns: "Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize" (Colossians 2:18, NIV). And Jesus, in John's Gospel, gives GOD no form: "God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth" (John 4:24, KJV).
The Quran says what Paul and Barnabas said at Lystra: "Others deified the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded to worship only one god. There is no god except He. Be He glorified, high above having any partners." (9:31). And what Colossians said: "Nor would he command you to idolize the angels and the prophets as lords." (3:80).
What "avatar" can mean
The hardest question here is put by the Gita, quoted in Prabhupada's translation: "Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion — at that time I descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium" (Bhagavad Gita 4:7–8).
Beside it, the Quran: "We have sent a messenger to every community, saying, 'You shall worship GOD, and avoid idolatry.'" (16:36), and "Every community must receive a warner." (35:24). The two texts describe the same event: religion decays, and GOD acts, age after age, to restore it. They differ on the mode: "I descend" against "We have sent." This is the project's reading, stated as ours: the function of the avatar in Gita 4:7–8 is the function of the messenger in 16:36, and "descend" is where the Veda's own rule, na tasya pratimā asti, must govern the Gita. The Veda is śruti, heard; the Gita is smṛti, remembered; the avatar doctrine is found in the second, not the first.
Nor does the Quran pronounce on Rama or Krishna: "Messengers we have told you about, and messengers we never told you about." (4:164). The project neither names them as prophets nor denies it, having no verse to do either; it says only that if they carried a message from GOD, it was the message every messenger carried.
Why does GOD send rather than descend? He is "the Initiator of the heavens and the earth, and He feeds but is not fed" (6:14). "Never a moment of unawareness or slumber overtakes Him." (2:255). A creator who became what he creates would eat, sleep, tire and die, and would no longer be the one who feeds but is not fed. The same rule governs the incarnation: "The Messiah, son of Mary, is no more than a messenger like the messengers before him, and his mother was a saint. Both of them used to eat the food." (5:75).
An illustration, and only an illustration, since the verses carry the argument: the maker of a machine need not become the machine to know how it should run. He writes the instruction manual, and sends it.
When a scripture gives GOD a body
The Bible in places gives GOD a body and a body's weaknesses: "the Lord came down to see the city" (Genesis 11:5); "thou shalt see my back parts" (Exodus 33:23); "the Lord smelled a sweet savour" (Genesis 8:21); "on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed" (Exodus 31:17); "it repented the Lord that he had made man" (Genesis 6:6); "the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine" (Psalm 78:65). All KJV. Most Jews and Christians read these as figures of speech; Isaiah 40:18 is the reason.
The Quran reads them the same way. Against rest: "We have created the heavens and the earth, and everything between them in six days, and no fatigue touched us." (50:38). Against forgetting: "My Lord never errs, nor does He forget." (20:52). Its explanation for how such lines entered a scripture concerns scribes long dead, not any living reader: "Therefore, woe to those who distort the scripture with their own hands, then say, 'This is what GOD has revealed,' seeking a cheap material gain." (2:79).
A Hindu reader may ask whether the Quran keeps its own rule, since it says, "The whole earth is within His fist on the Day of Resurrection. In fact, the universes are folded within His right hand." (39:67). The Quran itself declares some of its verses allegorical: "He sent down to you this scripture, containing straightforward verses - which constitute the essence of the scripture - as well as multiple-meaning or allegorical verses." (3:7). The "right hand" of 39:67 is governed by 42:11, exactly as a learned Hindu governs the Veda's images by na tasya pratimā asti. The principle is the same in both houses.
What to show first
To a Hindu, begin with Yajurveda 32:3 and 40:8 in Devi Chand and Griffith, then Shvetashvatara 4:19–20, and let the listener draw the conclusion about images; name no deity. Accept gladly that Creator and Sustainer are true attributes, since "He is the One GOD; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the most beautiful names." (59:24); object only to the body, which the Veda itself denies Him. Only then open Gita 4:7–8 beside 16:36, as the project's reading. To a Jew or Christian, read Exodus 20 and Isaiah 40:18, then 42:11 and 4:36, then Acts 14 beside 9:31, and keep the anthropomorphisms for a listener who has already agreed with Isaiah. With everyone, the illustration comes after the verses, and no listener's image is mocked: "Do not curse the idols they set up beside GOD, lest they blaspheme and curse GOD, out of ignorance." (6:108).
Where the evidence is strong, and where it is not
Strong, and used freely: Yajurveda 32:3 and Shvetashvatara 4:19 (the Sanskrit formula is in both; the translators are Hindu and orientalist, not Muslim); Shvetashvatara 4:20; Yajurveda 40:8; Exodus 20:3–5; Isaiah 40:18; Genesis 35:2 beside 2:133; Acts 14; Colossians 2:18; the Quran's Abraham narratives and its argument that the Creator feeds but is not fed; and the Biblical anthropomorphisms, which read as quoted.
Moderate, and used with the reading stated: Yajurveda 40:9, whose idol-application is the Arya Samaj reading, not Shankara's; John 4:24, which Christians read without our conclusion; Gita 4:7–8 as a parallel to 16:36, where the function is shared, the mode is not, and the reading is ours; the absence of the avatar doctrine from the Veda; and the symmetry question about 39:67, answered from 3:7.
Not relied on, and why: the popular claim that Rigveda 2:1:3 names "Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Sustainer" is weak, because the hymn is to Agni and "Brahmā" there most likely means the priest; we take Creator and Sustainer from 59:24. Atharvaveda 20:58:3, "God is verily great," addresses the sun. The Dasatir's imageless description of GOD is from a late text. The Apocalypse of Abraham is labelled tradition and never cited as scripture, and Genesis has no idol-breaking episode. Deuteronomy 4:15–19 and Isaiah 44:9–20, which would fit here, are not yet in the project's verified notes and are not quoted. The etymologies that match names of GOD across languages by sound are dropped; that every people knows GOD by some name rests on "Call Him GOD, or call Him Most Gracious; whichever name you use, to Him belongs the best names." (17:110), and needs no etymology.
The Quran asks the reader to check all of it: "You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself." (17:36).
The next article, Let Jesus speak, reads Jesus' own words from the Gospel beside the words the Quran gives him.
Sources
- Yajurveda, tr. Devi Chand (32:3); Yajurveda Samhita, tr. Griffith (40:8–9); The Principal Upanishads, tr. Radhakrishnan (Shvetashvatara 4:19–20).
- Bhagavad-gita As It Is, tr. Prabhupada (4:7–8).
- Bible: KJV (Exodus 20:3–5, 31:17, 33:23; Isaiah 40:18; John 4:24; Genesis 6:6, 8:21, 11:5; Psalm 78:65); NIV (Genesis 35:2; Acts 14:11–12; Colossians 2:18).
- Quran: The Final Testament, Authorized English Version, tr. Rashad Khalifa (all Quran quotations).
- The Apocalypse of Abraham, Quran-aligned edition (Theory of Everything project, from Box and Landsman, 1918), chapters 3, 4, 7, 8.
- One Message, Many Witnesses, the project's master document: Strand 2; ledger rows 2.1–2.3, 2.5–2.7, 2.9–2.17; rows 1.14–1.16, 1.20, 1.36 named as weak.
- Popular presentations consulted: Zakir Naik (IRF) on the concept of God in Hinduism; Ahmed Deedat, "What Is His Name?"; the Submitters' tables.