ABSTRACT
In several passages the Qurʾān tells us that God’s messengers or apostles (rusul Allāh) were frequently rejected on the grounds that they were merely men or human beings (occasionally rijāl but more commonly bashar). Many of those Qurʾānic passages refer to messengers sent by God to earlier communities, but they clearly relate to the predicament of the messenger of the Qurʾān himself since some passages indicate that he was faced with the same argument. In response, God’s messengers are presented as disavowing any claim to a superhuman status, sometimes expressed as a denial that they were angels (malak, pl. malāʾika).
