Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 23 Issue 5

Volume XXIII Issue V Version I 5 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) A © 2023 Global Journals A Quranic Concept with Universal Appeal: The Innate Monotheistic Disposition ( Fitra ) Divine Institutes , II, 1, 17. If God wanted us to look up to heaven, it's not without reason. We have been given our own right to fix our gaze on heaven, standing firm, so that we may seek religion up there ( ut religionem ibi quaeramus ) and contemplate God with our spirit, who has his seat up there, since we cannot do so with our eyes. This is precisely what he who worships bronze or stone, earthly objects, does not do". (Lactantius alludes in this same passage to the rejection of the worship of celestial bodies, but in a more abbreviated form than the Qur’an. He specifies, in order to differentiate the religion of the transcendent god from astral cults): ( Divine Institutes , II, V, 20-25) "As the philosophers did not distinguish between skill and divine power in the organization of the courses of the stars, they mistook these stars for living beings. If, then, it is not possible for the planets to be gods, neither can the sun and moon be gods." 23 (See also Epitome of the Divine Institutes 21, 1-5). This rejection of the divinization of the stars in favor of the one, transcendent God corresponds point for point to the Qur'anic notion of hanîfiyya . Qur’an (30, 30-31) Raise your face (towards heaven) in view of worship (the worship of God which consists in turning away from all material idols) as a pure monotheist ( hanîfan ), (as a man who has also rejected the worship of astral divinities) in accordance with the innate nature according to which God created mankind. No substitution for God's creation (or: no substitution for God's conception of man). This is unchanging worship ( ad-dîn al-qayyim ). But most people have no knowledge of it. Return repentant to God, fear Him, perform the prayer, do not be among the polytheists. ( Hanîf is the characteristic that most often refers to Abraham in the Qur’an. It refers to a particularity of this patriarch: his refusal to worship idols, but also heavenly bodies, divinized, as the following verse indicates): (6, 76-77): "When night enveloped him, he saw a star and said, 'Behold my Lord'. But when it had disappeared, he added: "I do not love those who disappear". When he saw the moon rising, he said: "This is my Lord. But when it disappeared, he said: "If my Lord does not guide me, I shall be among those who go astray". When he saw the sun rising, he said: "This is my Lord, he is the greatest. But when it was gone, he said: "O my people, I disown what you associate with God". This argument is itself very old and widespread; one of its earliest known attestations appears in the Apocalypse of Abraham (VII, 1, 7). 24 Following Philo, it was taken up by almost all theologians and Church Fathers. 25 The demonstrative elements follow one another and are organized in both corpora according to an almost identical argumentation, the only difference being that the Qur'an adopts a mostly allusive and discontinuous formulation. In contrast Lactantius' text develops each stage of the demonstration in an explicit and linear manner. This supports the hypothesis that the earliest readers and listeners of the Qur'anic text were able to refer to the hermeneutical threshold represented by the Christian theologian's thought, at least for grasping these passages. Both texts refer to the argumentation that had developed in monotheistic circles, especially from the first century of the Christian era onwards, in response to the theories of Greek philosophers. In addition to the views of Philo of Alexandria, the injunction to abandon false astral divinities is present in several texts of Late Antiquity, for example in the Book of Jubilees. 26 Such a reaction is alluded to in verse (Q 37, 89), which shows Abraham sickened by the idea of worshipping the stars, thereby referring to the content of verses (Q 6, 76-79) 23 See also Epitome of the Divine Institutes, 20, 10. 24 "More than the earth, I will call the sun worthy of veneration, because it illuminates the world and the different atmospheres with its rays. But neither will I place it among the gods, for at night its course is obscured by the clouds" and "Nor will I call the moon and the stars "g od s", for they too, in their time, at night, obscure their light". P. Crapon de Caprona, Le Coran aux sources de la parole oraculaire : structures rythmiques et sourates mecquoises, Publications orientalistes de France, Paris, 1981, p 105 considers that this attitude of the hanîf who turns away from idols in the same way as Abraham turns away successively from the moon, the sun and the stars is reflected in the concordance of the two paragrammatical roots h.n.th and h.n.f, one of whose primary meanings is "to turn away". 25 For Philo (De vita contemplativa, 3, 5) : "Will they be those who adore the celestial influences, the sun, the moon, the other stars, fixed or wandering, the whole sky and the world? These beings, no more than the others, are not self-made; they are the work of a demiurge, of a profound science". The theme of the standing man, looking up at the sky in search of pure worship, was not exclusive to monotheistic circles, as this passage from the Mathésis of Firmicus Maternus, written before his conversion to Christianity, a period when he seems to have been sensitive to a neo-Platonist type of henotheism, proves: "We must not entertain any earthly thoughts, especially since we know that God, our creator, has made us, with the mastery of a divine craftsman, in such a way that the shape of our erect body remains free from any humiliating abasement, and that we see nothing else, as soon as we open our first gaze, but the Sun, the Moon, the stars and their magnificent and immortal home, the world" Mathesis, VIII, I, 3. edition and translation by Pierre Monat, books III-V, CUF, Paris, 1994, t. III, p. 232. 26 For the Apocalypse of Abraham, see VII, 1-7, Jubilees XII, 16-17; for Philo: De decalogo, 53; De specialibus legibus, II, 255; Letter of Jeremiah, 59-62. See also: Targum Neofiti on Genesis, XVIII, 1; Chronicle of Nestor, year 6494. which define this attitude of the patriarch as that willed by God, following way he created ( fatara ) the world (Q 4,