The Bible, The Quran & Science

66. Pub. Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore (Pakistan) 67. This verse is followed by an invitation to recognize God's blessings. It forms the subject of the whole of the sura that bears the title 'The Beneficent'.

68. Whenever the pronoun 'We' appears in the verses of the text quoted here, it refers to God. 69. 1. The city of Sanaa, the capital of the Yemen, was inhabited in Muhammad's time. It lies at an altitude of nearly 7,900 feet above sea level.

70. It is secreted by the reproductive glands and contains spermatozoons.

71. We saw in the Introduction to the third part of this book what one was expected to believe about predestination in its application to man himself.

72. One might note in passing, that this last verse is the only one in the Qur'an that refers to the possibility of a remedy for man. Honey can indeed be useful for certain diseases. Nowhere else in the Qur'an is a reference made to any remedial arts, contrary to what may have been said about this subject.

73. Pub. Flammarion, 1972, Paris.

74. It makes this journey over a period of six months, and comes back to its departure point with a maximum delay of one week.

75. Pub. G. P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1966, Paris, 76. Pub. Club Franรงais du Livre, 1971, Paris.

77. It is estimated that in one cubic centinletre of sperm there are 25 million spermatozoons with, under normal conditions, an ejaculation of several cubic centimetres.

78. God is speaking 79. In another verse (sura 6, verse 98) a place of sojourn is mentioned. It is expressed in a term very similar to the preceding one and would also seem to signify the maternal uterus. Personally, I believe this to be the meaning of the verse, but a detailed interpretation would involve much lengthier explanation which is beyond the scope of this book.

80. Now that certain notions concerning the chronology of ancient times have been established, and the imaginary dates given by the authors of the Sacerdotal text of the Old Testament are no longer credible, those dates have quickly been suppressed in Bibles. In the case of those genealogies that have been preserved, modern commentators of books intended for mass publication fail to draw the readers' attention to the errors they contain.

81. Surely 'seven' here indicates 'many', as it often does in the Semitic languages of the time.

82. We shall later see that the figure has been grossly exaggerated.