Fihi Ma Fihi

I once said to a Koran reader, “The Koran says, ’Say, if the sea were ink to write the words of my Lord, verily the sea would fail before the words of my Lord would fail.’ Now for fifty drams of ink one can write out the whole Koran. This is but a symbol of God’s knowledge. If a druggist put a pinch of medicine in a piece of paper, would you be so foolish as to say that the whole of the drugstore is in this paper? In the time of Moses, Jesus, and others, the Koran existed; that is, God’s Word existed; it simply wasn’t in Arabic.”

This is what I tried to make that Koran reader understand, but when I saw it was having no effect on him I left.

[Discourse 18, tr. Thackston].