Muhammad in World Scriptures Prophecies about the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the scriptures of major world religions by Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi Scholar of Hebrew, Sanskrit, and other ancient languages, Writer and Researcher on Islam and Comparative Religion, Missionary and Debator of Islam. New U.S.A. Edition Volume 1: The Bible Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore Inc. U.S.A. Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. www.aaiil.org First Urdu edition, 1936 (Part I), 1950 (Part II) Second Urdu edition both parts in 1 volume, 1988 First English edition, 1940 (Part I), 1955 (Part II) Second Enlarged 3-volume English edition, 1966 (vol. I), 1969 (vol. II), 1975 (vol. III) New U.S.A. edition, Volume 1, 1999 © 1999 by Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore, Inc. 1315 Kingsgate Road, Columbus, Ohio 43221 U.S.A. All rights reserved throughout the world. Copyright notice: No reproduction of this Edition, in whole or part, on any medium whatsoever, is allowed without the express permission of the Publisher, except that quotations from it may be incorpo- rated in reviews and other publications, provided that the book, author and Publisher are acknowledged. Warning is hereby given that the Publisher will take the most serious action in case of any violation of Copyright of this Edition in any part of the world. The Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam (Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation of Islam) was founded at Lahore, Pakistan, in 1914 by the prominent followers of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. It exists to promote a liberal, tolerant and peaceful picture of Islam, as found in the Holy Quran and the life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. It has published a vast quantity of highly-regarded literature on Islam in various languages, and has branches and members in several countries. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: ISBN: 0–913321–59 –1 Editorial Note This is Volume 1 of the new U.S.A. Edition of the well-known research work Muhammad in World Scriptures, in which the author brought to light prophecies from all major world scriptures relating to the coming of the great Promised One that were fulfilled through the advent and life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (may peace and the blessings of Allah be upon him). This Volume consists of the material relating to prophecies found in the Bible, and corresponds to the second volume of the last 3-volumed edition, printed in Pakistan during the years 1966 to 1975. In producing the present Edition, it was absolutely essential to carry out a substantial and thorough revision, correction and rearrangement of the pre- vious edition. The main reason was that the previous publication was marred by frequent misprints, typesetting errors and mispositioning of text, many of which caused serious confusion in the text, and indeed in some places made it impossible to follow the meaning. We, the Editors, briefly describe below the necessary revision and correction work that we carried out. Many of the misprints referred to above occurred within quotations given from encyclopaedias, commentaries, dictionaries and similar reference works. It was therefore necessary to find these original sources for comparison and checking. This was no easy task, and required much time and perseverance. We painstakingly searched through the computerised indexes of University libraries in England as well as the Library of the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., which are available on the Internet. The vast majority of the sources was located, the quotations were checked and corrected, and full references added in the present edition. While searching for these quotations, there were a few instances when we found some addi- tional extracts in support of the point being argued by the author. These have been added to the present edition. Checking references in the Bible and the Holy Quran was, of course, a considerably easier task, though time-consuming nonetheless. As regards the quotations from the Bible, which naturally form the backbone of this volume, the author had used the King James Version, known also as the Authorised Version (AV). In view of the archaic language of this version, we decided to replace it by the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which is much easier to v vi MUHAMMAD IN WORLD SCRIPTURES follow for modern readers. It was noticed, however, that the author in some of his own comments was referring to particular words used in the AV trans- lation which have been amended in the RSV translation. In any such case, we followed one of three approaches. (1) If the difference is inconsequential, we have also amended the words in the author’s own comments to conform to the RSV. (2) In other cases, we have indicated within the quotation from the RSV what the AV translation of certain words or phrases is. The AV trans- lation has been inserted within square brackets and printed in italics, prefixed by the letters AV. (3) In the few cases in which the author’s argument was heavily dependent on the AV translation, we have not amended the quotation to the RSV, but retained the AV translation and indicated in the footnote reference that the AV is being used. Therefore, please note that in all quo- tations from the Bible, the RSV translation has been used in this Edition unless it is specifically indicated that the AV or some other translation is used. We found that many misprints and obscurities in the previous edition could be removed by checking against the corresponding Urdu version of the contents of this book, when available, and this often cleared up a problem. The published Urdu edition of this book (under the title Mitha¯q-un-Nabiyyin) is not a complete version of the English book because the author had expan- ded and revised the English work many years after publishing the Urdu book. However, we did have access to many Urdu articles later published by the author in the paper Paigham Sulh of Lahore, which correspond to certain expanded parts of the English book. Thus a considerable part, though not all, of the English work was available to us in the original Urdu form. While this proved to be an invaluable source, the comparing of the English with the Urdu, which we carried out, added much time and effort to our revision work. In dealing with the scriptural Hebrew and Greek words and expressions occurring plentifully in this book, and also the references to other classical languages, it must be acknowledged that the work of misprint correction, revision and typesetting would have been impossible but for the fact that the second-named of the Editors below (Selim Ahmed) is well-conversant with these languages, possessing a degree in Hebrew from the prestigious University College in the University of London. Besides checking and correcting misprints in the transliterated expressions from these languages, rendering the transliteration according to modern rules, and doing general checking wherever these languages were involved, Selim Ahmed has also typeset all the Hebrew and Greek passages that appear in this book. The formatting, type-designing, proof-reading and typesetting of the whole book has been done entirely by us, the two Editors. The task of formatting was made more difficult due to two factors: (1) trying to incor- EDITORIAL NOTE vii porate Hebrew and Greek passages into footnotes, and (2) placing consecu- tively occurring short footnotes along the same line, rather than each such footnote on a separate line. As to the first problem, there were some cases in which it was not practical to place the Hebrew or Greek text within the footnote, so it has been put at the top of the following page. The printing schedule of the book has not allowed us time to compile an Index. However, we are planning to prepare an Index shortly and issue it as a separate, free booklet. The Index will be included in future printings of the book. As the first-named Editor below, I wish to state for the historical record, and not as a personal statement, that I knew the author very closely (being his maternal grandson, though physical relationship by itself confers no merit), and I had the opportunity to discuss and study some aspects of this book with him during his life. Therefore the revision and improvement carried out in this edition can, in a sense, be considered to be authorised by Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. I had promised him about a year before his death that I would arrange for the reprinting of this book, to which he was looking forward. We thank Almighty Allah that, at long last, this promise has now been fulfilled to the extent of the publication of the first half of the work. We now look forward to working on the preparation and publication of Volume 2, which will consist of the prophecies about the Holy Prophet Muhammad as found in the Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu ancient reli- gious writings, as well as in the mystic syllables and symbols of various religions. The Editors, Zahid Aziz Nottingham, England Selim Ahmed Slough, England November 1998. Dedication To Muhammad the Holy Prophet who has so much meaning to me. Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. viii Preface to the Second Edition The book in your hands was first published some twenty-six years ago, in 1940, as an inadequate liturgy. However, it won immediate recognition from the Muslim world and was acclaimed as a great achievement. It was sub- sequently rendered in Persian, and appeared in Din-o-Daanish, a magazine of Tehran, Iran, and a comprehensive review on it appeared in an Arabic paper Al-Hilal of Baghdad.