THE TRUTH OF MARIAM, THE SISTER OF AARON IN THE QUR'AN & THE BIBLE

(Explanatory Study)

Abstract

 Muslims believe that the Holy Qur'an is the book of Allah—between whose words and verses falsehood cannot intervene—and that it is the eternal miracle of the seal (i.e., final) of the Prophets (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). It is the book that Allah, the Almighty, has saved from distortion, and will remain so until the Day of Resurrection, but some of the violators of this heavenly book among the people of the Book (i.e., the Jews and Christians) and others have sought throughout the ages, by throwing their arrows of ignorance, to question His revelation, to scratch His sanctity and spirituality, and to cast suspicions about the true knowledge that came through His crystal-clear verses. One of those suspicions about the Qur'anic revelation is the suspicion of the story of Mariam, the Mother of Christ (peace be upon him). It was mentioned in the Qur'an—when talking about the story of Mariam, the Almighty said: [O sister of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil, nor was your mother unchaste.](Mariam: 28) A team of Christians considered that the Qur'an had fallen into confusion and disorder - God forbid - when he described Mariam as the sister of Aaron, with the time difference between Aaron the Prophet and Mariam, the mother of the Christ. Historians said that there was more than a thousand and three hundred years between them, and perhaps the interval between them was even more than that. In contrast, the Bible differentiated between two women named Mariam. It did not fall into this confusion and disorder as they claim, as it mentioned only Mariam as the the mother of the Christ, and the daughter of Imran, not the sister of Aaron, and therefore they claim that this proves the occurrence of error in the Qur'an. This is the core of their suspicion, and our research in this article is on this suspicion and its refutation through an analytical explanatory study.