The Intrinsic Manifestation of God in the Universe According to the Old Testament and the Quran, Based on Mystical Interpretations of the 13th and the 7th Century

Subject Areas : Islamic Mysticism

Saideh Alvaan ¹ , bakhshali ghanbari ² , Mohammadreza Aram ³

1 - دانشجوی دکتری علوم قرآن و حدیث، واحد تهران مرکزی،دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، تهران،ایران.
2 - Associate Professor and Faculty Member, Department of Religions and Mysticism, Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch
3 - دانشیار گروه علوم قرآن و حدیث، واحد علوم و تحقیقات، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، تهران،ایران.

Received: 2021-01-31 Accepted : 2021-04-14 Published : 2023-05-22

Keywords:

Abstract :

One of the ways to know God is through the manifestation of His essence in the universe by his names, attributes and actions. The Jews, despite their adherence to monotheism, have sometimes attributed representation and incarnation to the divine essence while the Quran, despite accepting representation for some beings, denies representation and incarnation for the essence of God. God is introduced in the Old Testament by many names and in some cases has human attributes and is manifested to the Jews in tangible ways and "Shekhinah" in the Old Testament is a symbol of God's material presence, while the Holy Quran recognizes the divine presence as permanent and expresses God's closeness to man closer than the jugular vein. The divine essence is more glorious in the Quran than in the Old Testament, but in the Torah it sometimes refers to the direct presence and human conception of God However, the Jews later interpreted such verses. Nevertheless, it seems that the use of human words and human behaviors for God brings the knowledge of God from the circuit of purification into the circuit of simile. Of course, the existence of such expressions can be considered only to bring the concept of divine essence closer to the human mind, but no book like the Quran has purified God from any polytheistic belief.