Uzair
Uzair (Arabic: عزير, ʿUzayr) is a figure who is mentioned in the Quran, Surah at-Tawbah, verse 9:30, which states that he was "revered by the Jews as the son of God".
[1][2] Islamic scholars have interpreted the Quranic reference in different ways, with some claiming that it alluded to a "specific group of Jews".
[4] Ibn Hazm, al-Samawal al-Maghribi and other scholars put forth the view that Uzair or one of his disciples falsified the Torah and this claim became a common theme in Islamic polemics against the Bible.
[1] Many aspects of later Islamic narratives show similarity to Vision of Ezra, an apocryphal text which seems to have been partially known to Muslim readers.
[9] Gordon Darnell Newby has suggested that the Quranic expression may have reflected Ezra's possible designation as one of the Sons of God by Jews of the Hijaz.
[10] Other scholars proposed emendations of the received spelling of the name, leading to readings ‘Uzayl (Azazel), ‘Azīz, or ‘Azariah (Abednego).
[4] It further condemns Jewish and Christian leaders of the time for deceiving the masses into taking "their priests and their anchorites to be their lords in derogation of God".
[4] In casting doubt on claims about the divine status of Uzayr and Christ, the Quran also instructs Muslims to reject such beliefs.
And look at the bones ˹of the donkey˺, how We bring them together then clothe them with flesh!” When this was made clear to him, he declared, “˹Now˺ I know that God is Most Capable of everything.” -Quran 2:259The history text Zubdat-al Tawarikh, dedicated to Ottoman Sultan Murad III in 1583, narrates a story of Uzair's grief for the destruction of Jerusalem.
[15] According to the classical Quranic exegete Ibn Kathir, after Ezra questioned how the resurrection will take place on the Day of judgment, God had him brought back to life many years after he died.
[16] The modern Quranic exegesis of Abul A'la Maududi states: Uzair (Ezra) lived during the period around 450 B.C.
The Jews regarded him with great reverence as the revivalist of their Scriptures which had been lost during their captivity in Babylon after the death of Prophet Solomon.
[17]According to the Ahmadiyya Muhammad Ali's Quranic commentary, there indeed existed a group of Jews who venerated Ezra as the son of God.
[18] Ibrahim Awad, a writer, critic and translator from Egypt, says:[19] Al-Jahiz mentioned that a group of the remnants of those who believed that Ezra was the son of God were still in his time in Yemen, Syria, and within the lands of the Romans.
There were arguments of this kind between him and Jew Ibn al-Ghazala, so why did he not accuse him of lying when he said that a group of his co-religionists believed that Ezra was the son of God?Ibn Hazm, an Andalusian Muslim scholar, explicitly accused Ezra of being a liar and a heretic who falsified and added interpolations into the Biblical text.
Ibn Hazm provided a polemical list of what he considered "chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text", Hava Lazarus-Yafeh states.
[30] In A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam,[31] scholar Gordon Darnell Newby notes the following on the topic of Uzair, the angel Metatron and the Bene Elohim (lit.
"Sons of God"): ...we can deduce that the inhabitants of Hijaz during Muhammad's time knew portions, at least, of 3 Enoch in association with the Jews.
The angels over which Metatron becomes chief are identified in the Enoch traditions as the sons of God, the Bene Elohim, the Watchers, the fallen ones as the causer of the flood.
It is easy, then, to imagine that among the Jews of the Hijaz who were apparently involved in mystical speculations associated with the merkabah, Ezra, because of the traditions of his translation, because of his piety, and particularly because he was equated with Enoch as the Scribe of God, could be termed one of the Bene Elohim.
[33] Mark Lidzbarski and Michael Lodahl have also hypothesized existence of an Arabian Jewish sect whose veneration of Ezra bordered on deification.
[9] Paul Casanova and Steven M. Wasserstrom read the name as ‘Uzayl (عزيل), a variant of Asael (Enoch 6:8) or ‘Azazel (Leviticus 16:8), who is identified as the leader of the fallen angels called "sons of God" in Genesis 6:2.
[9][11] J. Finkel instead reads the name as ‘Azīz (عزيز, potentate), connecting it to the phrase "thou art my son" in Psalms 2:7.
[9] Viviane Comerro, Professor in Islamic literature at INALCO, considers the possibility of Quranic Uzair not being Ezra but Azariah instead, relying on Ibn Qutaybah, and identifying a confusion committed by Muslim exegetes.
