Verse 42:23 and how to interpret it, disciplines of interpreting Quran.

[Bucky Ball]

I find it fascinating how the Quran is full of cultural "appropriations" from surrounding cultures, and how Islam relates so closely to its Pre-Islamic moon-god culture.

Many stories in the Qur'an were "borrowed" from surrounding cultures, and well known circulating myths, and cultural historians know exactly where they came from : 

1. Moses and the Fish, (came from Babylon/Ugarit/El myths), 
2. Solomon listening to the ants, common fairy tales, existing all over the Ancient Near East,
3. Jinns, (genies) working for Solomon, both common fairy tales, existing all over the Ancient Near East, 
4. Mary in the temple, (stolen from one of the proto gospels), 
5. Jesus talking in the crib, (from the known Proto Gospel after Jacob)
6. The Egyptian child stories, (from the Arab Child Gospel, and The Thomas' Child Gospel), both just made up fairy stories. 
7. Jesus making birds from clay, (known source, .."The Child Gospel after Thomas vs 1-4), 
8. Mary and the Palm, was taken from the Proto Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 20. 
9. Mo's Night Journey to Heaven, taken from either the Hebrew Merebah, or the well known Gnostic "Enoc's Journey to Heaven", which is identical to to Ibn Ishaq’s story after Abu Said al-Chudri)
10. The Sleepers in the Cave, straight from the fairy story from Ephesus, (Mo got the dates wrong, but the story is right), 
11. Alexander the Great, (Surah 18), (straight plagiarism), AND there was NO place in the world with enough iron blocks to close off a whole valley in 330 BC. 
12. The myth about Ad. Straight from Arab folk tales. 
13. Thamud – same as 12. 
14. Median – copied from Arab folk tales.

The point in common which Islam has with Judaism, in fact, is not Yahweh, historically, but another god in the Sumerian pantheon, called "Sin". The god Sin, had many iterations, and there are hundreds of archaeological confirmations of this fact. The god Sin was a moon god, and was, and still is, in it's present iteration, (Allah), associated with the symbol of the Crescent Moon. Sin is ubiquitous in parts of the Ancient Near East.

Over and over, in Hebrew culture, they were instructed, in the Bible texts, to STOP their worship of the moon-god, which was a constant recurring "falling from grace" theme, and return to the sole worship of Yahweh. The Old Testament constantly rebuked the worship of the Moon-god (Deut 4:19;17:3; II Kings 21:3,5; 23:5; Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13; Zeph. 1:5, etc.) This is PROOF that the god Sin, the moon-god, (and the god concept from which Allah developed), was NOT Yahweh. Sin is not Yahweh. So we're partway there. Now I just have to prove that Sin is Allah. 

We know from archaeology, that camels were not domesticated until 1000 BCE, thus regular cultural exchange between Canaan, and Arabia did not occur before that, and reached it zenith, around 700 BCE. BOTH the worship of Sin, and the worship of Yahweh were flourishing LONG before that. They had diverged many centuries before. Yahweh was not worshiped in Arabia, (however, there are some who think some elements of the Southern Javeh god's characteristics may come from an Arabian rain god, which would make sense, as it's closer to Egypt, and the Moses traditions). Sin was worshiped all over the ancient Near East. 

So where did the Sin god come from, and how do we know that Sin developed into, and actually was Allah ?

From the mountains of Turkey, in the North, to the banks of the Nile, in the South, archaeologists have uncovered proof that people in the Ancient Near East worshiped a moon god. As shown by Drs. Sjoberg and Hall, the ancient Sumerians worshiped a Moon-god who was called many different names. The most popular names were Nanna, Suen and Asimbabbar. His symbol was the crescent moon. Just owing simply to the amount of artifacts unearthed, the worship of Sin, was clearly the dominant cult in ancient Sumer. The cult of the Moon-god was also the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Akkadians took the word "Suen", which was one of the names of the Moon god, and transformed it into the word Sin as their favorite name for the Moon-god. As Prof. D.T. Potts pointed out, "Sin is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites". ("Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur", D.T. Pots et all).

During the nineteenth century, Amaud, Halevy and Glaser went to Southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean, and Qatabanian inscriptions which were subsequently translated. In the 1940's, the archeologists G. Caton Thompson and Dr. Carleton S. Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia. During the 1950's, Wendell Phillips, William Foxwel Albright, Richard Bower and others excavated sites at Qataban, Timna, and Marib (the ancient capital of Sheba). Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in Northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the "daughters of Allah" have also been discovered. THIS IS INCONTROVERTIBLE proof, that Allah predated any possible connection with the Hebrew god Yahweh, and they could not possibly be the same deity. The three daughters, al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the Moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them. The archeological evidence demonstrates the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon god. There is no doubt about that. This moon god bore absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the Yahweh god, and his wife, (Ahsera). They were simply two different deities. How do we know that ?

1. Archaeology and location. The cult of Yahweh flourished to the North and West, of the sites where the Sin was prevalent.The artifacts are different. The "consorts", (wives) are different. Sin had mythological children. Yahweh did not. They cannot be the same god.

2. Scholarly consensus. 

"Allah is found ... in Arabic inscriptions prior to Islam" (Encyclopedia Britannica, I:643)

"The Arabs, before the time of Mohammed, accepted and worshiped, a supreme god called allah" (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Houtsma, Arnold, Basset, Hartman; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1913, I:302)

"Allah was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs; he was one of the Meccan deities" (Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. Gibb, I:406)

"Ilah ... appears in pre-Islamic poetry ... By frequency of usage, al-ilah was contracted to allah, frequently attested to in pre-Islamic poetry" (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1971, III:1093)

"The name Allah goes back before Muhammed" (Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, "The Facts on File", ed. Anthony Mercatante, New York, 1983, I:41)

The origin of this (Allah) goes back to pre-Muslim times. Allah is not a common name meaning "God" (or a "god"), and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity" (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1908, I:326)

Scholar Henry Preserved Smith of Harvard University stated:
"Allah was already known by name to the Arabs" (The Bible and Islam: or, the Influence of the Old and New Testament on the Religion of Mohammed, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, p.102) 

Dr. Kenneth Cragg, former editor of the prestigious scholarly journal Muslim World and an outstanding modern Western Islamic scholar, whose works were generally published by Oxford University, comments:
The name Allah is also evident in archaeological and literary remains of pre-Islamic Arabia" (The Call of the Minaret, New York: OUP, 1956, p.31) 

Dr. W. Montgomery Watt, who was Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Edinburgh University and Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at College de France, Georgetown University, and the University of Toronto, has done extensive work on the pre-Islamic concept of Allah. He concludes:
"In recent years I have become increasingly convinced that for an adequate understanding of the career of Muhammad and the origins of Islam great importance must be attached to the existence in Mecca of belief in Allah as a "high god". In a sense this is a form of paganism, but it is so different from paganism as commonly understood that it deserves separate treatment" (Mohammad's Mecca, p.vii. See also his article, "Belief in a High God in pre-Islamic Mecca", Journal of Scientific Semitic Studies, vol.16, 1971, pp.35-40) 

Caesar Farah in his book on Islam concludes his discussion of the pre-Islamic meaning of Allah by saying:
"There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and Jews" (Islam: Beliefs and Observations, New York: Barrons, 1987, p.28) 

According to Middle East scholar E.M.Wherry, whose translation of the Qur'an is still used today, in pre-Islamic times Allah-worship, as well as the worship of Baal, were both astral religions in that they involved the worship of the sun, the moon, and the stars (A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1973, p.36).
"In ancient Arabia, the sun-god was viewed as a female goddess and the moon as the male god. As has been pointed out by many scholars as Alfred Guilluame, the moon god was called by various names, one of which was Allah (op.cit., Islam, p.7)
"The name Allah was used as the personal name of the moon god, in addition to the other titles that could be given to him.
"Allah, the moon god, was married to the sun goddess. Together they produced three goddesses who were called 'the daughters of Allah'. These three goddesses were called Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat.
"The daughters of Allah, along with Allah and the sun goddess were viewed as "high" gods. That is, they were viewed as being at the top of the pantheon of Arabian deities" (Robert Morey, The Islamic Invasion, Eugene, Oregon, Harvest House Publishers, 1977, pp.50-51). 

The Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend records:
"Along with Allah, however, they worshiped a host of lesser gods and "daughters of Allah" (op.cit., I:61). 

The Encyclopedia of Religion says: "'Allah' is a pre-Islamic name ... corresponding to the Babylonian Bel" (ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1908, I:326). 

It is a well known fact archaeologically speaking that the crescent moon was the symbol of worship of the moon god both in Arabia and throughout the Middle East in pre-Islamic times. Archaeologists have excavated numerous statues and hieroglyphic inscriptions in which a crescent moon was seated on the top of the head of the deity to symbolize the worship of the moon-god. Interestingly, whilst the moon was generally worshiped as a female deity in the Ancient Near East, the Arabs viewed it as a male deity.

(excerpts from a paper I wrote a few years ago)