The following verse provide information about the long time it took the human species to evolve:
{ هَلْ أَتَىٰ عَلَى الْإِنسَانِ حِينٌ مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ لَمْ يَكُن شَيْئًا مَّذْكُورًا (1) } سورة الإنسان
{Has there came upon the human being a long period of time in which he was a thing not worth mentioning?} Chapter 76:1
God Almighty tells us that humans [Al Insan] after their reaching their completeness, meaning the end of their creation process, and for a very long period of time were not a thing worthy to be mentioned, and the term Dhahr in Arabic denotes a considerable long period.
if we take the meaning of the word human [Al Insan] in this verse to mean Adam, assuming he is the first human being created, as all the early interpreters did, then we will face a problem here, because Adam was created and honored in a short time, (because God breathed into him from His spirit, appointed him as khalif and ordered the angels to bow down to him honoring him] so before Adam, there was no long time when he was not worth mentioning.
Also, Adam’s children and descendants, were honored as said in the Quran verse: {And We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and on sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with [definite] preference} Chapter 17:70 Accordingly, honoring and giving preference to the children of Adam necessarily made them worth mentioning.
So verse 1 of suraht Al Insan, must refer to a human beings who are not Adam, and are not his children or his descendants, Therefor there must be other humans who are not Adam nor his descendants, who lived before him, or contemporary with him and they, these human beings, lived for a very long time, not worth mentioning.
We know that the human species, who were the product of an evolution process that took billions of years, and even since its appearance as the first homo species in this evolutionary process, nearly ten million years had passed, before it evolved enough till a human acquired a sufficient brain size, when the homo sapiens started appearing around 130,000 years ago, and since then, it took them a considerable long time till the start of the earliest hint of a primitive civilization, during such considerable long time, man was not something worth mentioning, exactly as the verse told us.
وفي قوله تعالى:{ أُولَٰئِكَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِم مِّنَ النَّبِيِّينَ مِن ذُرِّيَّةِ آدَمَ وَمِمَّنْ حَمَلْنَا مَعَ نُوحٍ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّةِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَإِسْرَائِيلَ وَمِمَّنْ هَدَيْنَا وَاجْتَبَيْنَا ۚ إِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتُ الرَّحْمَٰنِ خَرُّوا سُجَّدًا وَبُكِيًّا ۩ (58) } سورة مريم
{Those are the ones upon whom Allah showed favour from among the prophets of the descendants of Adam and of those whom We carried [in the ship] with Noah, and of the descendants of Abraham and Israel, and of those whom We guided and chose. When the verses of the Most Merciful were recited to them, they fell down, adoring and weeping}(58)
Here we find the mention of the descendants of Adam. If Adam was the first and the only human, then all the people will be his descendants, and there will be no need to mention that they are from his descendants, but if Adam was one of many, one of the human species, and he was selected from between them, then his descendants should be mentioned, as the verse did.
{وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنسَانَ مِن صَلْصَالٍ مِّنْ حَمَإٍ مَّسْنُونٍ (26) وَالْجَانَّ خَلَقْنَاهُ مِن قَبْلُ مِن نَّارِ السَّمُومِ (27) وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ إِنِّي خَالِقٌ بَشَرًا مِّن صَلْصَالٍ مِّنْ حَمَإٍ مَّسْنُونٍ (28) فَإِذَا سَوَّيْتُهُ وَنَفَخْتُ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِي فَقَعُوا لَهُ سَاجِدِينَ (29)} سورة الحجر
قال ابن فارس : بشر فى اللغة تدل على ظهور الشىء مع حسن وجمال وسمى البشر بشرًا لظهورهم، ومنه البشرى وذلك يكون بالخير .
أما الإنسان، فقد قال ابن فارس : “أنس أصل واحد هو ظهور الشيء، وكل شيء خالف طريقة التوحش. وجاء في القاموس المحيط: “واسْتأْنَسَ: ذَهَبَ تَوَحُّشُهُ”
{And We created Al Insan (human being) from clay from altered black mud (26) And before that, We created Al jinn from intensive fire (27) And when Your Lord said to the angels: I am creating Bashar (human) from clay from altered black mud (28) So, when I have made him and have breathed into him of My Spirit, fall down to him in prostration (29)} Chapter 15:26-29
We find in these verses two name for the human being, first one is Insan, the second is Bashar.
As of Insan, Ibn Faris in his Mu3jam Maqayees Al Loghah said, “Ans denotes everything which is opposite wildness”. In Al Qamoos Al Muhit: “Ista’anas: means his wildness is gone”. Meaning not wild any more.
As of Bashar, Ibn Faris said: “Bashar in language denotes appearance of something with beauty and goodness, and “Al Bashar” (people) are named so because of their appearance, and from that came Al “Bushara” meaning Good news which is always good.”
Here in the verses of Surat Al Hijr, we find a clear separation between the creation of Al Insan and the creation of Al Bashar. The Quran was clear in showing that the creation of Al Jinn took place before the creation of al Insan. This clarification was required, because the verse of the creation of al Insan was placed before the verse of the creation of Al Jinn, which resulted in separating the verse of the creation of al Insan from the verse of the creation of al Bashar.
Although both creations are from the same elements, their names differed. This could be a separation between two different beings, or a repetition, and if it was repetition, why the different names.
قوله سبحانه وتعالى : { الرَّحْمَٰنُ (1) عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ (2) خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ (3) عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ (4) }
We take it that the verses inform us that they are different, as we can see from the different names, al Bashar is different than al Insan. We know God breathed into al Bashar of His spirit, we also find that al Insan according to the order of the verses was created before al Bashar. All this leads us to assume that Al Insan was created through an evolutionary process which lasted billions of years, and al Bashar is a later stage of this evolution, when Al Insan progressed further to a new species called al Bashar, able to speak, learn and communicate knowledge. The following verse support this assumption: {The Most Merciful (1) Taught the Qur’an (2) Created Al Insan (3) taught him eloquence [speech] (4)} Chapter 55:1-4. Ibn Kathier said: “Al Hassan said: meaning the speech…” Ibn Kathier said: “what Al Hassan said is better because teaching him the Quran meaning make recitation of the Quran easy by facilitating speech and the flow of different sounds and letters from different places in the throat, tongue and lips.” End of quote.
Evolutionists have found that the emergence of the modern humans – which we are from its lineage – coincided with a change in the skull of the first human in terms of the jawbones and throat, which made it easier to pronounce and facilitate the exit of letters, with the size of the brain reaching the current size. That was, al Bashar are the modern humans. And Adam is the first Bashar. And the story of Adam learning all the names, where the names of all things is a metaphor for language, and Adam is the symbol of human beings i.e. the human person, and that God breathed into this creature of his soul.
The story told by the Qur’an about the emergence of the modern man – the homo sapiens – which the Quran called the type “Bashar”, which means appearance of good thing, and the name of the first Bashar was “Adam”, tells us that Al Insan evolved until he advanced, note the meaning of the word Insan as in the early Muajam Al Loghah, means his wildness is gone, meaning he left the wild animal world and started to become somehow social. Thereafter, when he became complete as Insan, he advanced to become another creation that is Al Bashar. This was at the completion of the development of the brain and jaw, which enabled him to think and pronounce, thus possessing the ability to learn and speak, so he learned the language, and he was given a sense of self-conscious and the freedom of choice, then he was made a successor in the land, carrying the responsibility for its preservation and construction.
We understand from these verses that Al Insan was the penultimate [one before the last] stage of evolution and that al Bashar is the last stage, and this is clear because God ordered the angels to prostrate to Al Bashar, not to Al Insan. This is different from what some contemporary scholars said, I disagree with them, because the evidence is clear in these verses which I presented here and in many other verses. So Al Insan is the one who evolved to become Al Bashar, and the first Bashar is Adam and we are the children of Adam, accordingly we are Bashar, but because we came from al Insan, we can be called both name, however, we notice in the Quran, whenever al Bashar is used, in majority of times it is used as good, [all profits are Bashar]. As for the word al Insan, it is used for majority of times as not good.
To Be Continued in the Next Episode
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