1. Midrashic and Gnostic Origin:
The text describes a primordial covenant (mīthāq) extracting all future souls from Adam's loins. This conscious pre-existence is absent from the Bible, instead mirroring late-antique Jewish Aggadic Midrash and Gnostic speculation circulating in the Near East.
2. Anthropological Divergence:
Polemically, this contradicts biblical anthropology, which holds that individuals are created uniquely at biological conception rather than existing as a pre-incarnate collective. This breaks continuity with earlier scriptures.
3. Mythological Accountability:
The verse invents a prehistoric contract to establish universal human accountability. Polemically, this functions as an ad hoc explanation to justify judgment, grounding a core doctrine in regional folklore rather than established scriptural history.
The Quran Verse
Surah 7:172:
And when your Lord took from the children of Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify of themselves, "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we have testified."
This "Pre-existence of Souls" concept is found in Jewish Aggadic Midrash and Gnostic thought, but it contradicts the biblical understanding that humans are created individually and do not exist as conscious entities prior to their biological conception.
By claiming all humans "signed" a contract with Allah before birth, the Quran attempts to solve the problem of why people reject Islam, but it does so by inventing a mythical event that lacks any historical or scriptural precedent in the earlier Abrahamic tradition.