Uzair

Uzair (Arabic: عزير, romanized: ʿUzayr) is a figure who is mentioned in the Quran, Surah at-Tawbah, verse 9:30, which states that he was "revered by the Jews as the son of God". Uzair is most often identified with the biblical Ezra. Historians have described the reference as enigmatic since such views have not been found in Jewish sources. Islamic scholars have interpreted the Quranic reference in different ways, with some claiming that it alluded to a "specific group of Jews". A priest at the Aqsa compound also named Uzair is also said to have been in some commentaries to be the person who is identified as the protagonist in the Parable of the Hamlet in Ruins in surah Baqara (2:259). Implying he found Jerusalem in ruins from the Babylonian captivity and died for a 100 years like a sleep then God made him woke up. When awaken he was asked by God how much he slept and he said " maybe a day or a part of a day" while God then said that he was like it for a hundred years.

Ezra the priest is sometimes mentioned as being "raised to divine" or closely divine in some Syriac texts like Visions of Ezra as a metaphor. Which may have been the Quran's rebuttal of it.

Hythem Sidky and Holger Zellentin identified Uzayr as Eliezer ben Hurcanus, one of the most prominent Rabbinic sages of the Mishnah. Additionally, Ibn Ishaq's biography of the Prophet Muhammad describes that some Jews of Medina believed that Uzayr was the son of God, and that the Quranic revelation relates to that belief.

According to Ibn Kathir, Uzair lived between the times of Sulaiman and the time of Zakariya, father of John the Baptist Some Quranic commentators viewed Uzayr as a learned scholar who sought to teach the people the forgotten laws of God. Some Islamic scholars held Uzayr to be one of the prophets. Although there is a hadith that reports that God expunged Uzayr from the list of prophets because he refused to believe in predestination, this hadith is considered da'if (weak) and is rejected by most Islamic scholars.

Ibn Hazm, al-Samawal al-Maghribi and other scholars put forth the view that Uzair or one of his disciples falsified the Torah and this claim became a common theme in Islamic polemics against the Bible. Many aspects of later Islamic narratives show similarity to Vision of Ezra, an apocryphal text which seems to have been partially known to Muslim readers.

Classical Muslim scholars who were aware of Jewish and Christian denials of belief in Ezra explained that it was only one Jew or a small group of Jews who worshipped Uzayr, or that the verse refers to the extreme admiration of Jews for their rabbis.

Many classical Muslim scholars suggest that the description of Ezra as the son of God does not mean the same as it does for Christians in Jesus Christ, but rather it means the same as the son of God in Judaism, and that the Qur’anic verse rejects the use of the term “son of God.” In Islam, the use of the term “son of God” is completely forbidden, considering it a lie against God, as mentioned in the verse 18:4-5

Authors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia viewed the Quranic reference as a "malevolent metaphor" for the reverence accorded to Ezra in Judaism. Some modern historians have favored the theory that a Jewish sect in Arabia venerated Ezra to the extent of deifying him. Gordon Darnell Newby has suggested that the Quranic expression may have reflected Ezra's possible designation as one of the Sons of God by Jews of the Hijaz.

Other scholars proposed emendations of the received spelling of the name, leading to readings ‘Uzayl (Azazel), ‘Azīz, or ‘Azariah (Abednego).