The Heavens and Earth Were Joined, Then We Split Them
The cosmic origin as a single entity that expanded
21:30 says 'the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them'. The Big Bang model, proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1927 and confirmed by Hubble's observations, describes the universe originating from a single dense state.
Lemaître (1927) proposed what he called the 'primeval atom' hypothesis — that the universe began as a single point and expanded. Penzias and Wilson (1964) discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, providing strong evidence for the Big Bang. The model is now the standard cosmological model.
Classical tafsir (Tabari, Ibn Kathir) read 21:30 primarily as referring to the separation of sky from earth in the creation narrative, and to the rain cycle ('And We made from water every living thing'). They did not frame it in cosmological terms.
The classical reading of this verse is about the rain cycle and the establishment of the cosmos, not specifically about the Big Bang. The cosmological reading is a 20th-century interpretation. The verse remains theologically significant for many reasons beyond this claim.
big-bang