themlok :
: Oops it’s cheesy 🧀 A Comparison of Embryology in the Qur’an and the Old Testament
📖 The Book of Job states:
“Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews?”
— Job 10:10–11
🧀 The Scientific Error in the Old Testament
The text portrays the formation of the embryo by analogy with cheese-making:
“Pour me out like milk”
Then:
“Curdle me like cheese.”
According to this portrayal, semen is compared to liquid milk that is poured out, then coagulates and solidifies inside the womb, just as milk curdles and turns into cheese, with the embryo forming from this coagulated mass.
🔬 This conception does not correspond to modern embryology, because an embryo is not formed through the coagulation of semen, nor does semen turn into a solid embryonic mass. Rather, the process begins when a single sperm penetrates the ovum, forming a fertilized cell that carries genetic material from both the father and the mother. This cell then divides into multiplying cells that gradually specialize to form the tissues and organs of the embryo.
🦴 Another error appears in the sequence of the text:
“Clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.”
The text mentions skin and flesh first, then bones and sinews, giving the impression that the fleshy body had already formed before the bones were woven inside it.
🔬 Modern embryology, however, shows that embryonic cells condense at the sites of the developing skeleton, after which cartilaginous models form and define the shapes of the future bones, while muscle cells organize around these developing skeletal elements.
📖 The Qur’anic Description
The Qur’an states:
“Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging form, and We made the clinging form into a lump, and We made the lump into bones, then We clothed the bones with flesh; then We developed it into another creation.”
— Surah Al-Mu’minun, 23:14
2026-07-21 03:23:32