Proof #7: On unnatural lifespans

We granted not everlasting life to any human being before thee. If then thou shouldst die, shall they live here for ever? Every soul shall taste of death; (21:35-36) 

In simple idiomatic terms this verse declares that no one before the Holy Prophetsaw was granted a life span longer than common human experience such that he or she still lives. Those who were born before the Holy Prophet and can reasonably be expected to have died, have all died. The word everlasting does not mean eternal, since eternity cannot be squeezed “before” any event in time. Once a limit is put on the arrow of time, in this case, the birth of the Holy Prophet, eternity stands breached since it cannot exist in bounded space. No one could have existed, or not existed for that matter, in eternity, before the Holy Prophet. What follows lays bare the intent of the verse. It builds a conclusion on the opening statement and puts the question: “If then you should die”. Here if then can only mean that the Holy Prophet will experience death because those before him all experienced death in the normal course.

There is another fundamental problem with the contention that everlasting means eternal. In that case a question is being posed to the Holy Prophet which he is not capable of answering. From his perspective, eternity has not yet expired, nor it ever can expire for him or anyone else. So it is impossible for him to be a judge of someone “before him” being still alive when eternity ‘happens’. Projecting this scenario to the future does not help either for two reasons: one, eternity is unreachable and, two, he is mortal, which is also the conclusion of this verse. Holy Prophet can only be a witness to unusual life spans, and that is exactly what is being denied here.

Jesus as who preceded the Holy Prophet saw by about 600 years is firmly in the cross hairs of this verse and cannot possibly survive its clear verdict.