For anyone who's ever been interested in the subject matter of THE MAHDI, the idea that he isn't mentioned in the Quran is considered common knowledge. This is because any introductory discussion regarding The Mahdi, whether on a website or a Youtube video, often starts by pointing that he isn't mentioned in the Quran. If it's a Sunni sourced video, then they're also very quick to point out that he's absent from their 2 main sources of Hadiths (Bukhari & Muslim) but they believe there are narrations that elude to him. But all "Muslims" regardless of their sect agree on the fact that THE MAHDI is not named in the QURAN. As a matter of fact, they often explicitly say that the word "Mahdi" itself isn't in the Quran.
So, with that in mind, let's begin our discussion by listing the 3 verses where the word "مهد" (MAHDI) or "المهد" (THE MAHDI) are found in the Quran:
3:46
وَيُكَلِّمُ النَّاسَ فِي الْمَهْدِ وَكَهْلًا وَمِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ
3:46
And a preacher of The Mahdi to the people, and full of wisdom and from the righteous
5:110
اِذۡ قَالَ اللّٰهُ يٰعِيۡسَى ابۡنَ مَرۡيَمَ اذۡكُرۡ نِعۡمَتِىۡ عَلَيۡكَ وَعَلٰى وَالِدَتِكَ ۘ اِذۡ اَيَّدتُّكَ بِرُوۡحِ الۡقُدُسِ تُكَلِّمُ النَّاسَ فِىۡ الۡمَهۡدِ وَكَهۡلًا ۚوَاِذۡ عَلَّمۡتُكَ الۡـكِتٰبَ وَالۡحِكۡمَةَ وَالتَّوۡرٰٮةَ وَالۡاِنۡجِيۡلَ
THE FEAST 110
And God said: Oh Issa, son of Mary, remember my blessings upon you and your mother, supporting you with the holy spirit, preaching The Mahdi to the people, filled you with wisdom, I taught you Modeling ("book") and sound judgment, the Torah and The Gospel.
19:29
فَأَشَارَتْ إِلَيْهِ ۖ قَالُوا كَيْفَ نُكَلِّمُ مَن كَانَ فِي الْمَهْدِ صَبِيًّا
Mary 29
Thus she led them to him, they said how can we speak to a novice in the matter of The Mahdi
If you are wondering where I got those translations from, the answer is nowhere. They're very obvious and straightforward to me, The real question is why aren't they to the 1.8 billion or so of you? What I mean to say is when God mentions The Mahdi when discussing Jesus, why are you bending over backwards to not see it?
For starters, If you know anything about Jesus, you would know that preaching about the Messiah was a big part of his message. This is why Christians all around the world today still await the "return" of the messiah - granted they forgotten what was meant by "returning" and that Jesus wasn't talking about himself in the 3rd person, but I'll get to all that later.
For now, if you like, the button below will take you to a post about all the verses referring to the Messiah. I didn't actually go through it. I simply copy pasted the first link that google put out. But I figured the sheer length of the list would suffice to make the point that Jesus had a big role to play in teaching about the Mahdi and the end times. Compare that to "Muslims" who's belief in The Mahdi seems to be more of an extra credit - like it won't actually be on the test. Then you'll understand that's it's natural that God points out the ground work Jesus laid for The Mahdi when telling us about his mission.
Besides, what other meaning could there be for these verses? If you're still feeling tempted to accept the version that has been taught to you, let me tell you why you shouldn't. I'm guessing at this point, we haven't discussed what a miracle is, and what it can and can't be and where the divine value even lies when talking about miracles.
So, let's ignore the fact that a "talking baby" sounds like something a child would believe, or the fact that it would be the one "miracle" suspiciously absent from Christianity when there is an agreement about all the other miracles in the Islamic account of Jesus - And this isn't because Christians are uncomfortable attributing unnatural or unrealistic powers to Jesus. Even after we ignore all of that and look at the context and language used in the verses, you still can't make "Cradle" fit as the intended meaning.
3:45
إِذْ قَالَتِ الْمَلَائِكَةُ يَا مَرْيَمُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَةٍ مِنْهُ اسْمُهُ الْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ وَجِيهًا فِي الدُّنْيَا وَالْآخِرَةِ وَمِنَ الْمُقَرَّبِينَ
3:46
وَيُكَلِّمُ النَّاسَ فِي الْمَهْدِ وَكَهْلًا وَمِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ
Another word that fell victim to distortion was the word "الكهل" which means something closer to "wise" but has been altered to mean "old". I imagine it was easy to lump "elderly man" with "wise man" given that wisdom often came with age. And I'm guessing whomever was behind this effort of masking the name of THE MAHDI thought it would make it easier to push "Cradle" as its meaning if "كهلا" was also a description of Jesus's age. This is why the "tafsir" (explanation) of "كهلا" appears to be missing from all the early sources {see image below}. It wasn't until later that they decided that it means "old".
Source: مقالات في علوم القرآن و أصول التفسير
Accepting "old" to be the meaning over "wise" means accepting that God deemed it necessary to tell us on 3 separate occasions that Jesus was able to speak when he was old. Without getting into how moot it is to point that out, this contradicts your belief that Jesus was "raised up to God" when he was still a young man. On the other hand, the fact that Jesus was granted wisdom in his youth would be something worth mentioning in the Quran.
The next layer of "strain" being applied on these verses to make this false understanding stick is in the grammar. If you're going to accept "Mahdi" to mean "Cradle", then how do you explain writing "كهلا" as an adverb? Because grammatical cohesion demands that we write "الكهل" with "و" or "في" instead. In fact, people often quote the verse using "و الكهل" phrase because I'm guessing it doesn't sound correct to them the other way.
"كهلا" wasn't the only word that fell victim as a consequence of the distortion of the word "Mahdi". In a similar fashion, the meaning of the word "صَبِيًّا" has also been twisted beyond recognition in:
19:29
فَأَشَارَتْ إِلَيْهِ ۖ قَالُوا كَيْفَ نُكَلِّمُ مَن كَانَ فِي الْمَهْدِ صَبِيًّا
In this verse, "صَبِيًّا" has been understood to mean "infant" or "newborn" when it simply does not! The correct meaning is closer to "novice" or "amateur", as in a person lacking experience in the subject matter. Even today, the word never refers to a newborn (unless it's referring to its gender which i will address shortly). This is the definition I found in the dictionary
صبي : الذي يجري تدريبه على مهنة في خدمة معلم
Translation: Someone undergoing vocational training under a master, a.k.a. an apprentice
The only other mention of the word "صَبِيًّا" is in:
19:12
يَا يَحْيَىٰ خُذِ الْكِتَابَ بِقُوَّةٍ وَآتَيْنَاهُ الْحُكْمَ صَبِيًّا
If we understand "" as "infant" then we're accepting that God granted John the power to make sound judgement as a baby. Keep in mind, there is already a word believed to mean "infant" in the Quran that can be seen:
22:5
يٰۤـاَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اِنۡ كُنۡـتُمۡ فِىۡ رَيۡبٍ مِّنَ الۡبَـعۡثِ فَاِنَّـا خَلَقۡنٰكُمۡ مِّنۡ تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ مِنۡ نُّـطۡفَةٍ ثُمَّ مِنۡ عَلَقَةٍ ثُمَّ مِنۡ مُّضۡغَةٍ مُّخَلَّقَةٍ وَّغَيۡرِ مُخَلَّقَةٍ لِّـنُبَيِّنَ لَـكُمۡ ؕ وَنُقِرُّ فِى الۡاَرۡحَامِ مَا نَشَآءُ اِلٰٓى اَجَلٍ مُّسَمًّى ثُمَّ نُخۡرِجُكُمۡ طِفۡلًا
40:67
هُوَ الَّذِىۡ خَلَقَكُمۡ مِّنۡ تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ مِنۡ نُّطۡفَةٍ ثُمَّ مِنۡ عَلَقَةٍ ثُمَّ يُخۡرِجُكُمۡ طِفۡلًا ثُمَّ لِتَبۡلُغُوۡۤا اَشُدَّكُمۡ ثُمَّ لِتَكُوۡنُوۡا شُيُوۡخًا ؕ وَمِنۡكُمۡ مَّنۡ يُّتَوَفّٰى مِنۡ قَبۡلُ وَلِتَبۡلُغُوۡۤا اَجَلًا مُّسَمًّى وَّلَعَلَّكُمۡ تَعۡقِلُوۡنَ
The fact that the word "" is accepted to mean "baby" and wasn't used in lieu of "صبي" should be more than enough to dismiss the understanding it means "baby". But let's continue our discussion about "صبي" to further support my interpretation.
One great example of the use of this word can be seen in the popular TV Show "Bab Al-Hara" which tries to depict a historical version of "Al-Sham" region of the Middle East - which I will later prove to be the location of the prophet when the Quran was being revealed. Those who are familiar with the show would know that "صبي" was the term used by trade master like bakers, blacksmiths, merchants etc... called their "apprentices", even when they weren't really so young and often married with kids even.
And I am sure some of you are thinking that maybe God said "صبي" as in "boy" as we are used to saying today. I'm not sure why God would be specifying the gender of the "Son of Mary" to us but again, that is simply not what the word means. In fact, I often hear the word used by mothers or family members describing a girl "صبية" or group of girls "صبايا" who are no longer "children" - often to point out that they have reached marriage age. This goes against both understandings that the word refers to either the age or gender of Jesus. Additionally, there are already words accepted to mean "son" or "boy" in the Quran like "وَلَدٌ" and "غُلَامٌ".
Plus, there are two other words that supposedly mean "cradle" in the Quran which is "مهاد" and "مهدا"
78:6
ألم نجعل الأرض مهادا
THE REVELATION:6
20:53
الذي جعل لكم الأرض مهدا
TAHA:53
Ultimately, there seems to be a lot of bending over backwards to attach a different meaning to the word in order to deny the simple obvious truth that:
THE MAHDI means THE MAHDI
Occam's razor much?
or
you can stick to believing:
God, who gave you the gift of logic, wants you to suspend it to believe in something impossible and unrealistic (kind of silly even) using the wrong words (when the correct ones are available) and bad grammar on 3 different occasions only to inform you that Jesus could speak to people when he got old. And somehow this doesn't contradict your belief that he was "raised to God" before he got old. And then shamelessly challenge anyone to point out a single contradiction in the Quran. ِBecause this is more reasonable than believing God was speaking of the person who's coming has been foretold by every prophet who ever existed.
FANTASTIC!
17:14
كَفَى بِنَفْسِكَ الْيَوْمَ عَلَيْكَ حَسِيبًا
Today, you yourself is sufficient to hold you accountable
TESTING OUR FINDINGS
One thing my name and my purpose have in common is "TEST", so I wouldn't be living up to either, or to my "scientific standards" in approaching these problems if I didn't present you with a way to test my findings. Surely, someone as "awesome" as The Mahdi had to have been preached about by people in their day. If my "theory" that a forced false meaning was given to the word "مهد" {MHD} was correct then we would found narrations about an other "talking baby" in refference to someone preaching of the Mahdi.
I agree. And if you search the Arabic web you'll find lots of them. The button below will take you to a few that I copy pasted from a forumn that happened to be counting them. So without any further ado, here's:
Once you had a chance to wrap your head around the fact The Name "Mahdi" is mentioned more times than the name "Muhammad", then you should prepare to accept that the Majority of Quran BY FAR is talking about The Mahdi and "His TIME". Even the passages that don't directly discuss him are meant to be parables to prepare you and teach you about him. but for now
"baby steps"
But if you're hungry for more, then chew on this for a while until I had a chance to address it further. There are many reasons that "Shia" reffer to The Mahdi as "Al-Qa'im" (The Riser/Aligner-my own translation yet to be proven). But one of the main, sadly forgottenو reason is the fact that his coming is reffered to as "يوم القيامة" {yawm-ul-qiyama) in The Quran which is often translated as "The Day of Judgement". But "القيامة" means "The Rising" according to the Arabic Language, not to say that judgment isn't included in the "rising process". But I have to point out that little detail before I can point out that this means all the verses and passages talking about "The Day of Judgement" are a refference to the coming of The Mahdi - and this isn't even scratching the surface yet. For the non-muslims following along in addition to the overwhelming majority of "Muslims", here is a list of the verses that contain the phrase "Judgement Day" so you can get a sense of whether or not The Mahdi is "mentioned" in The Quran.
Note: These are only the verses that mention the entire phrase, it doesn't include those that reffer to the act of "Rising" or other phrases reffering to him. But soon my dears, very soon....For right now,
Once you had a chance to wrap your head around the fact The Name "Mahdi" is mentioned more times than the name "Muhammad", then you should prepare to accept that the Majority of Quran BY FAR is talking about The Mahdi and "His TIME". Even the passages that don't directly discuss him are meant to be parables to prepare you and teach you about him. but for now
"baby steps"
GET IT?
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I hope you appreciated that pun as much as I appreciate having to spend this much energy and effort justifying why:
BABIES CAN'T TALK!
يا ربّ إن قومي الذين بعثتني إليهم لأدعوهم إلى توحيدك اتخذوا هذا القرآن مهجورا
Oh my Lord, my people to whom you sent me to call on to them to worship you only have received and abandoned this Quran
AL FURQAN : 30
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