Peace all,

This is mostly directed to all you arabic proficient people out there.

The issue is all about the translation of THUMMA in relation to some "creation verses".

1. It is written in the quran (25:59) that the Earth and Heavens were created in 6 days/periods.
2. If you read about this in other certain verses (41:9-12), the count of days of creation amounts to 8 instead of 6, and this is one of the favorite things by anti-quran people, to point out in order to show that the quran contains contradictions and therefore is unreliable.

However, I heard a lecture by this guy Dr Zakir Nike from India saying that this contradiction arises when you translate all the THUMMA in those verses as THEN. He said that THUMMA can also be translated into something like SIMULTANEOUSLY or MOREOVER. This would make the two extra days (making it 8 ) a PART of the 6, and NOT 2 extra. (similar explanation here http://www.submission.org/answering-Islam.htm#confusion)

So, can someone verify this for me: How many translations are there of THUMMA? Are there more meanings than THEN?

thank you

Peace OPF

yea, true, the yawms could be thought of as having any length... so if one yawm can be of a different length than the next yawm (it won't be very logic though!) then any number of yawms can equal any other number of yawms, just like 60 min would equal 1 hr which would render it 60 yawms = 1 yawm. I really don't believe this though. It makes no sense at all.
Actually, the issue was not about yawms and their length or even their number, but rather about thumma and this word's different meanings.

thanx for the input though!

(Z)ulf

Thank you OPF!! 

Siki, I would most surely be wary of that interpretation. Using "yaum" in the "period of time" sense and hence as "stages" seems a more logical explanation for two reasons.

Look at this: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cutting/ageuniv.htm (maybe the people who plotted that are blind, but there isn't enough data there and it doesn't show a curve, that shows a steady increase to a sharp jump - but this is irrelevant)

People have been arbitrarily (well, not so, but in this sense, yes) declaring the age of the universe to be some random number for millenia. Just because 3*4.5 = 13.5 does not mean the Quran means that.

I think you got that from speed-light.info - I would take everything from there with a pinch of salt.

The other, is that supposing the Quran is indeed timeless, and we do not know the time it is invalid - i.e. the day of judgement, we CANNOT say that because 4.5 * 3 = 13.5, the verse refers to that specifically. For all you know, we may survive for an additional 10 billion years with ridiculously advanced technology and an insatiable thirst for resources (i.e. alien invasion!!!), and that definition would be completely invalidated - (13,5 + 10)/(4.5 + 10) = 1.62. In other words, absolute rubbish.

But if the Quran is to be timeless, then that cannot hold!

Of course, that is pure conjecture.

Correct, but there may be a time when the "revelation time" is forgotten .