r/CritiqueIslam • u/TinkercadEnjoyer • 23h ago
The “bones, then flesh” verse (Quran 23:14) and what the tafsirs say, what embryology shows, and why the “it means cartilage” defense creates more problems than it solves
TL;DR: Apologists say 23:14 anticipated embryology because cartilage forms before muscle. But every classical tafsir understood ʿiẓām as bones, and no mufassir read it as cartilage. If the “cartilage” reading is true, then either the Prophet didn’t understand his own revelation or he let his Companions misunderstand it, and Allah chose a word He knew would mislead its audience for 1400 years.
1. THE CLAIM
ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا ٱلنُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْمُضْغَةَ عِظَٰمًا فَكَسَوْنَا ٱلْعِظَٰمَ لَحْمًا ثُمَّ أَنشَأْنَٰهُ خَلْقًا ءَاخَرَ
“Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging clot (ʿalaqa), then made the clot into a chewed lump (muḍgha), then made the lump into bones (ʿiẓām), then clothed the bones with flesh (laḥm), then produced it as another creation.” (23:14)
The apologetic argument states that modern embryology shows the skeleton forms as a cartilage model, and muscle develops around it. So the verse is “scientifically accurate,” if we read ʿiẓām as cartilage or “early skeletal structure.” Some versions add that bone cells appear before muscle cells.
I’ll look at this in three steps: what the verse’s earliest interpreters said, what embryology actually shows, and what follows if the apologetic reading is adopted
2. WHAT THE CLASSICAL TAFSIRS SAY
I went through the major tafsirs on this verse (all available at quran.com). None of them says or implies cartilage
| Tafsir | What it says on ʿiẓām |
|---|---|
| Ibn Ashur (al-Taḥrīr wa’l-Tanwīr) | “The creation of the mudgha as bones is the formation of bones inside that mudgha, and that is the beginning of the formation of the human skeleton of bone and flesh.” He explains kasawnā as the flesh being like a “covering” (kiswa) for the bones. |
| Ibn Kathir | “We shaped it with a head, two hands and two legs, with its bones, sinews and veins.” Flesh is then placed over it “to cover it, bind it and strengthen it.” He also cites Ibn Abbas that this refers to the spinal bone, and the hadith that all of a person decays except the tailbone, from which he was created and from which he is reassembled, which treats the bone as the hard part that survives. |
| al-Tabari | Reports Ibn Masud’s reading ʿaẓman wa ʿaṣaban (“bone and sinew”), then “We clothed it with flesh.” This discussion focuses more about what “another creation” means. |
| al-Baghawi | Discusses the singular/plural readings (ʿaẓm vs ʿiẓām): the plural is used “because a human has many bones.” He also mentions forty days between each stage. |
| al-Qurtubi | Refers the reader to Surat al-Hajj for the stages. His discussion here is about “another creation” and “best of creators.” |
| al-Jalalayn | Brief gloss. Khalaqnā means “We turned it into,” and he notes the singular reading. |
| al-Wasit (Tantawi) | “We turned this lump of flesh... into a small, delicate bone, according to what our wisdom required.” |
3 points:
- No mufassir mentions cartilage. The closest thing is Ibn Masud’s “bone and sinew,” and sinew isn’t cartilage.
- They all describe the same sequence. The mudgha becomes bones, and flesh then covers them. Ibn Ashur says explicitly that this is the formation of “the human skeleton of bone and flesh.”
- The modern claim appears only in the modern tafsir. Tantawi (20th century) quotes “some scholars” saying bone cells appear first and flesh cells only after the skeleton. That is a modern claim added to the tafsir, not something from the earlier tradition.
The same word is used in 2:259 (“Look at the bones, how We assemble them and then clothe them with flesh”), 36:78 (“Who will give life to bones when they have decayed?”) and 17:49. In these verses ʿiẓām plainly means ordinary hard bones, including bones that have rotted.
3. WHAT EMBRYOLOGY ACTUALLY SHOWS
Roughly (timing varies by source and by how you count):
- Around weeks 3-4, somites form and begin giving rise to muscle precursors (myotomes).
- Around weeks 4-5, the limb buds appear and mesenchymal cells condense.
- Around weeks 5-6, cartilage models appear. Muscle precursors migrate into the limbs at roughly the same time.
- Around weeks 6-8, the first ossification (true bone) begins.
Two problems for the verse:
Muscle precursors appear at about the same time as cartilage, or before bone. So “bones are formed, then clothed with flesh” is not a clean match for the actual developmental order. Skeleton and muscle develop in parallel from related mesenchymal and somite tissue. There is no flesh-lump stage that turns into bones. The embryo isn’t an undifferentiated piece of meat from which a skeleton later emerges. So even the “scientific” reading needs the word stretched and the sequence loosened. (I’m not an embryologist, so correct me if I have any timing wrong.)
4. "CAN IT POSSIBLY MEAN CARTILAGE?"
The verse uses ʿiẓām, the ordinary word for bone, which everywhere else in the Quran means hard bone (36:78, 17:49, 19:4). The claim that Arabic had no word for cartilage fails: ghuḍrūf is defined in the classical lexicons as “every soft bone” (Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Muḥīṭ fī l-Lugha), and it appears in a report describing the Prophet’s body (the Seal was “at the place of the ghuḍrūf of the shoulder”), so the language of his time already had a more precise term for exactly this tissue.
Even granting this, that definition makes cartilage a kind of ʿaẓm, so the word can stretch that far. But “can” is not “does,” and if Allah meant cartilage He chose the general word, knowing the Prophet, the Companions and every classical scholar would read it as hard bone, when a precise term existed and was in use. That is the real problem, and it leads into the dilemma of what the Prophet knew.
5. THE DILEMMA: WHAT DID THE PROPHET KNOW?
If the intended meaning of 23:14 is “cartilage,” then at the time of revelation:
A. The Prophet didn’t know. Then he recited, taught and passed on a verse whose intended meaning he didn’t grasp. By his own understanding, it meant bones.
B. The Prophet knew and said nothing. Then he knowingly left his Companions with a false understanding, despite 16:44 (“so that you may explain to the people what was revealed to them”).
If the Prophet’s understanding of revelation can diverge from its intended meaning, his explanations become unverifiable. Every tafsir that relies on his explanation rests on the assumption that what he understood is what God meant. Once you grant that this can fail, you can’t say where it stops. How do we know his explanation of any other verse isn’t another “bones, but really something else”?
The same goes for the Companions. Ibn Abbas is called the “interpreter of the Quran,” and he is quoted in the tafsirs on this very verse. If he and every classical mufassir missed the real meaning, on what basis do we trust their reading of the verses on law, theology, or the afterlife?
6. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR ALLAH’S CHOICES
Ibn Kathir, commenting on 26:195 (“in a clear Arabic language”), explains that God revealed the Quran “in perfect and eloquent Arabic, so that it may be quite clear, leaving no room for excuses and establishing clear proof, showing the straight path.” Take that at face value:
- The Quran presents itself as clear to its first audience, in their language.
- So the meaning the original audience understood is the meaning God intended. Clarity means the intended meaning is the one communicated.
- The Prophet, the Companions and the classical scholars understood ʿiẓām as bones, a word the Quran uses for ordinary hard bone everywhere else.
- Therefore the intended meaning is bones.
The apologist can only escape by saying God’s intended meaning was not what the audience understood, which contradicts 26:195 directly