Escaping the Cave of God

By Zeko of Alexandria

Al-Kahf is the most popular chapter of the Quran and so many scholars tried to explain this surah. Studies created a wide range of tafsir from identity seeking to space travels in the far future. But what does this chapter really tell us? What did people of the era understand when they read this part of the book? This work claims that it’s not necessary to teleport ourselves to the past to find the answer. This book is focused on solving the mind algorithms of the era by looking at nature with an ancient person’s eyes. This work can make you forget all past tafsirs and gain a new viewpoint on the Holy Book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zeko of Alexandria
• Release date: May 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386549857

Book preview

Foreword

Al-Kahf is the most popular surah (chapter) that is tafsired (explained) by many scholars and analysts, and the number of these tafsirs is still increasing. Some of them found an intellectual rebirth in this part of Quran; some of them, with their incredible decoding abilities, unveiled space travel experienced in the far future hidden in the verses. The main reason for this chapter’s explanation flexibility is due to its confusing wording that can make it possible to be explained in any fashion desired. A flexibility which is fueled with the rush of fixing the most ancient surah to fit it to the modern human’s logic and experiences…

The vast majority of Muslim scholars keep themselves out of studies which analyze the Quran by trying to solve verses according to Pre-Islamic myths that people of the Medieval Arabian Peninsula had believed. (We will see that those myths are not so pre-Islamic by the way). This is understandable when your religion tells you to accept that the Holy Book came with brand new words people have never heard of before.

This tafsir is the result of a work which was focused on trying to decrypt the surah, taking the social conditions and cosmological belief of the period, which gave the Quran its final shape (and this period is longer than you think). This work reveals the meanings of verses by understanding and using mind algorithms of a man who lived in the era, and tries to determine what we should understand from the surah by accepting that the Quran has been affected by legacies, universe theories and religions of different civilizations during its process of shaping. And this way, I insist, is the simplest and truest way to analyze this script.

I don’t agree that any chapter of the Quran has been written by a divine hand to remain as a light for all times. I prefer to accept that this belief makes meanings of the book more incomprehensible.

This tafsir is a part of my work named Eskilerin Masalları (Tales of the Ancients) which I studied in university. By considering suggestions made by readers, the most interesting part of the work has been separated from the other titles, simplified and published as Tanrının Mağarasından Kaçış (Escaping the Cave of God).

For a better understanding of this tafsir, studying the cosmological beliefs of the era will be helpful and of course entertaining. The Earth - Ox – Fish system and additional characters (Serpent and Angel) will be very absorbing if you’re interested in mythical creatures. Indeed, there were various types of cosmological systems around. This book includes theories which are found in the Quran and takes the Holy Book as a guide to examine cosmological theories of the area.

The Geographic Factors on the Surah

Due to the area it had been built on, the Quran has a widely-gathered structure that is built with various religions, myths, and legends from neighboring civilizations. The universe system in the book (it takes the biggest part of the surah Al-Kahf) mostly stays with the Arabian pre-Islamic universe theory but we can easily see some components of tales from the Indian, Egyptian and Persian worlds in the text. Because this area was on a crossroad between these powerful civilizations that have dominant cultures upon the weak (and easily affected because of this) Arabian tribes of the Peninsula.

Ancient people of the Peninsula, like the rest of the world, believed that the Earth had a flat shape. But their earth was supported by an ox that carries it on its mighty horns. And the ox was standing on a giant fish that swims on the surface of an infinite sea. It’s not so hard to understand why people generated a universe model like this.

Objects should be held up by another. Otherwise, they fall down. An apple can stand on a plate, the plate stands on a table