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S.2 A.53-54
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And remember We gave Moses the Scripture and the Criterion68 (Between right and wrong), there was A chance for you to be guided aright 54. And remember Moses said To his people: "0 my people! Ye have indeed wronged Yourselves by your worship of the calf: So turn (in repentance) to your Maker, And slay yourselves (the wrong-docrs};6'1 That will be bcttcr for you In the sight of your Makcr." Then He turned towards you (in forgiveness) : For Hc is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.
Moses or Jesus, but arc later compilations. Modern scholarship and Higher Criticism has left no doubt on the subject. But the stories in these traditional books mny be used in an appeal to those who usc them: only they should be spiritualized, as they are here. and especially in ii. 54 below. 68. Allah's revelation, the expression of Allah's Will, is the true stnndard of right nnd wrong. It may be in a Book or in Allah's dealings in history. All these may be called His Signs or Miracles. In this passage some commentators take the Scripture and the Criterion (Furqan) to be identical. Others take them to be two distinct things: Scripture being the written Book and the Criterion being other Signs. I agree with the latter view. The word Furqan also occurs in xxi. 48 in connection with Moses and Aaron and in the first verse of Slira xxv. as well as in its title, in connection with Muhammad. As Aaron received no Book, Furqan must mean the other Signs. AI-Mu~!afa had both the Books and the other Signs: perhaps here too we take the other Signs as supplementing the Book. ef. Wordsworth's "Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong." (Prelude, Book 4). 69. Moses's speech may be construed literally, as translated, in which case it reproduces Exod. xxxii. 27-28 but in a much softened form, for the Old Testament says: "Go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour... and there fell of the people that day 3,000 men." The word here translated Maker [Bari) has also in it a touch of the root-meaning of "liberator,"-an apt word as referring to the Israelites, who had just been liberated from bondage in Egypt.
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