Salaam to all.
I recently had a debate with a friend (who is shia), about these verses:
[27:39] A powerful being from among the Jinn said, "I will bring it to you before you rise from your station. For I am strong and trustworthy."
[27:40] One who had knowledge from the book said, "I will bring it to you before you blink." So when he saw it resting before him, he said, "This is from the grace of my Lord, so that He tests me whether I am thankful or whether I reject. As for he who is thankful, he is thankful for himself, and as for he who rejects, then my Lord is Rich, Bountiful."
My traditional understanding was that the person in 27:40 was a Jin who had extra-human powers which enabled him to bring the queen in the twinkling of an eye...... but this verse does not say that he was necessarily a Jin. So could he be a human too?
This friend that I talked to quoted some shia commentaries (which I was obviously not interested in) that that person was not a Jin but a human (infact he quoted from a shia commentary which said the person in 27:40 was a cousin of Solomon, and then drew his parallels with Ali) I was not interested in the shia point of view which compared him to Ali, but I still thought he had a point when I re-read both the verses. Verse 27:39 just says "One who had knowledge from the book", not "the Jin who had knowledge from the book". In 27:39 we come to know that the offer made by a Jin, even though he was powerful, was inferior to the one made by this person in 27:40 who had the knowledge from the book.
It seems to me that what enabled the person (human or Jin) in 27:40 to bring the throne faster than the Jin in 27:39 is that he had the knowledge from the book not because he may have been a Jin or even a powerful one. Which may mean a human given that particular "knowledge from the book" could also perform that feat? So what does that leave us with, tele-transportation?
