Noah and Abraham: a comparative study

Cenotaph of the grave which is believed
to be Abraham's. 

I am not going to argue whether Noah and Abraham were historical figures or not (although I personally believe that they were). Here I just want to share a single observation: the portrayal of these characters in the Quran makes it possible to observe a very interesting difference in their presentation of a common message, and I presume that this difference might be meaningful.

Both prophets preached the Unity of God, and both were opposed by the elite. The Quran tells us that the elite in the society of Noah resorted to personal criticism rather than discussing his message, and from an unrelated discussion they arrived at the conclusion that the ideas presented by Noah could not be sound:

“We can see that you are nothing but a mortal like ourselves, and it is clear to see that only the lowest among us follow you unthinkingly. We cannot see how you are any better than we are. In fact, we think you are liars.”

So just because he was human and people from the lowest classes subscribed to his ideas, those ideas could not be true? This is the kind of thinking which fails to make logical connections between things because it cannot rise above personal likes and dislikes.

To this type of mind, Noah responds by appealing to the appreciative self rather than the efficient self. He tries to show them that although it seems to you that your logical mind is accepting or rejecting evidence, the truth is that your heart and your will have already told your minds what should be accepted as convincing and what should be rejected: “My people, think: if I did have a clear sign from my Lord, and He had given me grace of His own, though it was hidden from you, could we force you to accept it against your will?” (all above quotations are from Chapter 11 of the Quran).

This is a remarkable dialogue: an appeal for temporarily suspending the judgemental efficient self, so that one may sink deep into the holistic appreciative self. Essentially, the message of Noah can be summed up as this: trust your deeper self to be correct about the external world. 

It is quite significant that the society whose elite rejected this call met its nemesis in a natural disaster about which an early warning had been received through intuition. The masses had paid heed and were saved; the elite denied and perished. The writers of The Epic of Gilgamesh presented the Great Flood as a vengeful act of whimsical deities but the Quranic version makes it possible for us to interpret the event as a "reminder" about the natural consequence that would probably arise whenever people make the kind of mistake which the elite made in those times.

The message of Abraham is also the Unity of God, but civilization seems to have moved on a bit and this development is reflected in the dialogue ascribed to Abraham in the Quran.

The Quran offers anecdotes from various phases of the career of Abraham. Interestingly, in almost all glimpses from his early life we find him engaged in arguments, and in every argument his opponents are denying the evidence of sense-perception: the idol-worshippers of Ninenvah ascribe divinity to idols, stars, moon and sun; and the king (possibly Nimrod) claims divinity for himself because he thinks that he has the power to “grant” life and death just like God.

Hence, the arguments presented by the opponents of Abraham can be understood as a misrepresentation of the message of Noah. It is almost as if the followers of Noah had set up a civilization based on his message that intuition could be trusted. Then, in the course of time, they forgot that sense-perception also had a role to play. This mental lethargy has made a mess of the whole point about connecting with one’s inner self. Now injustice is being perpetuated in the name of esoteric wisdom.

Quite understandably, a poetic appeal to the evidence of sense perception is the common strand in Abraham's dialogue with all these opponents: he rejects idols because they cannot hear and speak; he argues that the celestial bodies could not be gods because they go down; he denies the divinity of the king because the king cannot change the course of the Sun.

Thus in the transition from the message of Noah to the message of Abraham, civilization comes full circle. Noah had shown that the reports of our deeper self could be true about the external world. Abraham preached that the evidence of the external world could also be true about our souls.

This video from Youtube may not be
directly relevant but it is not
completely irrelevant either: enjoy!