Uzair

Uzayr - could be identified with the Judeo-Christian Ezra (عزير, 'Uzair) or eleazar and enoch - is a figure mentioned in the Qur'an, in the verse 9:30, which states that he was revered by the Jews as "the son of God". Historically, some Muslim scholars have interpreted this verse as referring to a small group of Jews making such a reverence.

Uzayr is not Ezra but Uzayr is Enoch, Because Ezra is another version of Esdras and is actually Idris_(prophet). Idris also having believed to be taken into heavens.

Although not explicitly mentioned in the Quran among the prophets, Ezra is considered as one by some Muslim scholars, based on Islamic traditions. Uzayr could also be the high priest Eleazar or could also be Enoch, and according to some scholars lived between the times of King Solomon and the time of Zachariah, father of John the Baptist.

On the other hand, Muslim scholars such as Mutahhar al-Maqdisi and Djuwayni and notably Ibn Hazm and al-Samaw'al accused Ezra or one of his disciples of falsification of the Torah. Several sources state that the Qur'an refers to Jews who began to call uzayr who could be the biblical Eleazar, Enoch or Ezra a "son of God" due to his religious achievements coupled with the misunderstanding of his position in the Jewish faith as a Bene Elohim.

Other western scholars, relying on exegetical material from Ibn Abbas and Ibn Qutaybah, consider Uzayr not to be Ezra but Azariah, mentioned in the Book of Daniel as Abednego.

Quranic statements about Jews giving the title of Bene Elohim

The Quran says that Jews call Uzayr Bene Elohim:

The Jews call uzayr bene elohim, and the Christians call the Christ a son of God. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. May Allah destroy them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! (Quran 9:30)

However Prophet Muhammad never assert that the Jews Held Ezra to be the son of god, that is a mistranslation of the verse of the Quran, which actually says that the Jews call Ezra bene elohim (give him that title), and the Jews do give the title of bene elohim son of God to a person who they deem to be highly pious but there is a misunderstanding of the verse of the quran as the verse says that the jews say that 'Uzayr is bene elohim', but does not accuse the jews of polytheism or of that the jews say that Uzayr is god the son, like it explicates that to christians as when they say that God is 3 parts, or jesus is the god the son. Rather the verse explicates that even giving the title of Bene Elohim to someone is disliked by god and it does imply things to god which neither he has commanded legal in the torah but is rather a word of mouth of the rabbinic traditions.

View by modern Muslim scholars

sheikh Ahmad Kutty has said this verse referred to a specific group of Jews who called Ezra "the son of God".

Scholar Gordon Darnell Newby notes on the topic of Uzayr the following in his work "A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam" while also bringing up the topic of the creator-angel Metatron (that some called lesser YHVH) which had been involved in debate between Orthodox Judaism (or Rabbinism) and Karaite Judaism and while also mentioning the topic of the Bene Elohim Sons of God found particularly in Genesis 6:2;

"we can deduce that the inhabitants of Hijaz during Muhammad's time knew portions, at least, of 3 Enoch in association with the Jews. The angels over which Metatron becomes chief are identified in the Enoch traditions as the sons of God, the Bene Elohim, the Watchers, the fallen ones as the causer of the flood. In 1 Enoch, and 4 Ezra, the term Son of God can be applied to the Messiah, but most often it is applied to the righteous men, of whom Jewish tradition holds there to be no more righteous than the ones God elected to translate to heaven alive. It is easy, then, to imagine that among the Jews of the Hijaz who were apparently involved in mystical speculations associated with the merkabah, Ezra, because of the traditions of his translation, because of his piety, and particularly because he was equated with Enoch as the Scribe of God, could be termed one of the Bene Elohim. And, of course, he would fit the description of religious leader (one of the ahbar of the Qur'an 9:31) whom the Jews had exalted."

Scholar Abdal Hakim Murad (Timothy Winter) has stated the following on this issue; "on Uzair as ‘son of Allah’, this Uzair clearly has nothing to do with Ezra the Scribe (whose name is not Uzair in Arabic anyway). Looking at the etymology, Gordon Newby (‘The Jews of Arabia’, p. 60-1) has identified him with Enoch, whom Jews often assimilated to Metatron, a creator-angel who was one of the ‘sons of Allah’ (b’nai elohim) in rabbinic Judaism in the period. The Qur'an is apparently taking the side of the Karaites against the Rabbinites, who had effectively divinised Enoch through identifying him with Metatron. There is not the flimsiest piece of evidence suggesting that Ezra is meant."

Jewish tradition and literature

Such as in Islam, a fundamental tenet of Judaism is that God is not bound by any limitations of time, matter, or space, and that the idea of any person being God, a part of God, or a mediator to God, is heresy. The Book of Ezra, which Judaism accepts as a chronicle of the life of Ezra and which predates Muhammad and the Qur'an by around 1000 years, gives Ezra's human lineage as being the son of Seraiah and a direct descendant of Aaron. Tractate Ta'anit of the Jerusalem Talmud, which predates Muhammad by two to three hundred years, states explicitly that “if a man claims to be God, he is a liar.” Furthermore Exodus Rabba 29 says, "'I am the first and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God' I am the first, I have no father; I am the last, I have no brother. Beside Me there is no God; I have no son." However the term 'sons of gods' occurs in Genesis. There are differing interpretations of what this means.

However, the Encyclopedia of Judaism makes clear that this title of Son of God is attributed a person whose piety has placed him in a very near relationship to God.

The Qur'anic verse on Ezra appears in one of Maimonides's discussions about the relationship between Judaism and Islam where he says “…they [Muslims] lie about us [Jews], and falsely attribute to us the statement that God has a son.”

Abraham Geiger remarked the following concerning the claim that Jews believed Ezra to be the son of God: “According to the assertion of Muhammad the Jews held Ezra to be the Son of God. This is certainly a mere misunderstanding which arose from the great esteem in which Ezra was undoubtedly held. This esteem is expressed in the following passage ‘Ezra would have been worthy to have made known the law if Moses had not come before him.’ Truly Muhammad sought to cast suspicion on the Jews’ faith in the unity of God, and thought he had here found a good opportunity of so doing.”

However Prophet Muhammad never assert that the Jews Held Ezra to be the son of god, that is a mistranslation of the verse of the Quran, which actually says that the Jews call Ezra bene elohim (give him that title), and the Jews do give the title of bene elohim son of God to a person who they deem to be highly pious but there is a misunderstanding of the verse of the quran as the verse says that the jews say that 'Uzayr is bene elohim', but does not accuse the jews of polytheism or of that the jews say that Uzayr is god the son, like it explicates that to christians as when they say that God is 3 parts, or jesus is the god the son. Rather the verse explicates that even giving the title of Bene Elohim to someone is disliked by god and it does imply things to god which neither he has commanded legal in the torah but is rather a word of mouth of the rabbinic traditions.

In some Islamic narrations, Ezra is the person mentioned in the following Qur'anic verse:

Or (take) the similitude of one who passed by a hamlet, all in ruins to its roofs. He said: "Oh! how shall God bring it (ever) to life, after (this) its death?" but God caused him to die for a hundred years, then raised him up (again). He said: "How long didst thou tarry (thus)?" He said: (Perhaps) a day or part of a day." He said: "Nay, thou hast tarried thus a hundred years; but look at thy food and thy drink; they show no signs of age; and look at thy donkey: And that We may make of thee a sign unto the people, Look further at the bones, how We bring them together and clothe them with flesh." When this was shown clearly to him, he said: "I know that God hath power over all things." (Quran 2:259)

According to Islamic scholar, Ibn Kathir, after questioning how the resurrection will take place on the Day of judgment, God had him brought back to life many years after he died. He rode on his revived donkey and entered his native place. But the people did not recognize him, nor did his household, except the maid, who was now an old blind woman. He prayed to God to cure her blindness and she could see again. He meets his son who recognized him by a mole between his shoulders and was older than he was. Ezra then led the people to locate the only surviving copy of Torah as the remaining were burnt by Nebuchadnezzar. It was rotting and crumpled, so Ezra had a new copy of the Torah made which he had previously memorised. He thus renovated the Torah to the Children of Israel. Ibn Kathir mentions that the sign in the phrase "And that We may make of thee a sign unto the people" was that he was younger than his children. After this miracle, Ibn Kathir writes that Jews began to claim that Ezra was the 'son of God'.

The commentary of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi states: Uzair lived during the period around 450 B.C. The Jews regarded him with great reverence as the revivalist of their Scriptures which had beat lost during their captivity in Babylon after the death of Prophet Solomon. So much so that they had lost all the knowledge of their Law, their traditions and of Hebrew, their national language. Then it was Ezra who re-wrote the Old Testament and revived the Law. That is why they used very exaggerated language in his reverence which misled some of the Jewish sects to make him 'the son of God'. The Qur'an, however, does not assert that all the Jews were unanimous in declaring Ezra as 'the son of God'. What it intends to say is that the perversion in the articles of faith of the Jews concerning Allah had degenerated to such an extent that there were some amongst them who considered Ezra as the son of God.

Accusations of falsification

Ibn Hazm, an Andalusian Muslim scholar, explicitly accused Ezra of being a liar and a heretic who falsified and added interpolations into the Biblical text. Ibn Hazm provided a polemical list of what he considered "chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text", Hava Lazarus-Yafeh states. In response to attacks on the personality of Ezra, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III defended Ezra as a pious, reliable person. The Jewish convert to Islam al-Samaw'al (d. 1175) accused Ezra of interpolating stories such as Gen. 19:30-8 in the Bible in order to sully David’s origins and to prevent the rule of the Davidic dynasty during the second Temple. The writings of Ibn Hazm and al-Samaw'al was adopted and updated only slightly by later Muslim authors up to contemporary times.

Uzayr as Azariah

Viviane Comerro, Professeur in Islamic literature at INALCO, considers the possibility of quranic Uzayr not to be Ezra but Azariah, relying on Ibn Qutaybah, and identifying a confusion committed by Muslim exegetes. She declares : "There is, from Muslim traditionalists, a confusion between two distinct characters, Ezra ['Azrà] et Azariah ['Azarya(h)](...) Thus, it is possible that the quranic vocable Uzayr could find its origin in Azariah's one."

The deuterocanonical version of the book of Daniel confirms this hypothesis. The Theodotion's version, used by Catholics and Orthodox Christians contains the Prayer of Azariah, an apocryphal prayer added by Hellenistic rabbis in the Septuagint version of the book of Daniel, which curiously mentions Abednego by his other name, Azariah, rather than Abednego which is used in the whole chapter 3 of the Hebrew and Protestant version, without any mention of the name "Azariah" in this chapter. This mention precedes the appearance of an angel qualified by Nebuchadnezzar as having the form of the "son of god". Legends from Jewish communities of Arabia which were using the Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel made the confusion between the fourth character, the angel who is like the son of god, and Azariah himself, as confirmed by H. Schwarzbaum.

In this perspective, the quranic narrator seems to blame the Jews who believed in such a legend and who considered Azariah as the son of God, legend which finds its origin in a confusion due to an addition in the original biblical corpus by the rabbis who elaborated the Septuagint.

Title of son of God in Judaism

The title of son of God is used by the Jews for any pious person as is evident according to Encyclopedia of Judaism which states that the title of son of God is attributed by the Jews "to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God (see Wisdom ii. 13, 16, 18; v. 5, where "the sons of God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclus. [Sirach] iv. 10). It is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood." Jews consider Ezra among the pious.

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