neves said:
Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? (21:30)
Everyone is able to understand this verse in their own way...for me this describes to Big Bang perfectly... thus the material for the earth was created at the same time as the materials for stars...
Er, no.
In science, the Big Bang occurred billions of years before the Earth was ever formed in our solar system. So, it would be mistake to assert this little passage (21:30) in the Qur'an to have anything to do with the Big Bang.
If you compare it with the Genesis, this 21:30 has more to do with the firmament (sky), the separation of the sky from the earth and water:
Genesis 1:6-8 said:
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
There is nothing special about verse 21:30, because it uses the common theme of Near Eastern myths.
In the Babylonian myth, called
Enuma Elish, there was nothing but watery abyss known as Apsu (fresh water abyss). A battle between Marduk and Tiamat (salty water abyss), where the young god killed Tiamat, split her body in two, one to make land (earth) and the other half a dome of the sky, hence firmament. (
The Epic of Creation, tablet 4, page 255, translated by Stephanie Dalley, in her book -
Myths from Mesopotamia, Oxford World's Classics, 1989.)
The order of creation in the Enuma Elish is surprisingly similar to the Genesis, chaos or abyss first, then light, firmament, luminaries, and lastly man, before Marduk declare rest.
An even older myth, from Sumerian myth, say that Enlil took the earth, while An (heaven) took the sky. This is found in the Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh and the Netherworld:
Bilgames and the Netherworld 6-12 said:
...after the ovens of the land had been fired up with bellows,
after heaven had been parted from earth,
after the earth had been separated from heaven,
after the name of mankind had been established -
then, after the god An had taken the heavens for himself,
after the god Enlil had taken the earth for himself...
The separation of earth and heaven is nothing unusual in Middle Eastern religions.
