Day 8: 3 - 4 - 5 ?

Heather did a post the other day about Surah Ar-Rum and her thoughts about it. If you look over at her original post, I had a few things to say about it. :)

But one question I thought was interesting enough (at least to me, and that's all that really matters, isn't it?) to have it's own post over here.

"(Side note: It is from these verses (30:17-18) that many Quranists I know draw their belief that we are ordered to pray/worship 3 times per day, rather than the traditionalist Sunni/Shi'a 5 times.)

My translation says this: '17. So glory be to God when you approach the eve or the morn. 18. And His (alone) is the Praise in the heavens and the earth, and at dusk, and when you approach at noon.'

Wouldn't that establish 4 prayers? Morning, noon, dusk (sunset) and an evening prayer? Otherwise, if 'eve' and 'dusk' are meant to be the same time, then why is it repeated but not morning? All the other times are listed only once in these two verses talking about prayer." (Heather's original text is the bold italics, my response is just the plain italics.)

Keeping in mind that I in no way shape or form read any Arabic, I'm working off of translations here. I personally have only two different translations of the Qur'an, but I checked out some more at www.quranexplorer.com and they all say the say thing, with variation of exact wording/word choice which is to be expected. I still count four prayers mentioned in this section.

When I was researching for this post I was also trying to track down where the traditional five daily prayers are derived from. I assumed that they weren't listed in the Qur'an itself, since if they were then there wouldn't be (again, I *assume*) Quranists who believe that there are only three mandatory prayers. However, a) I have so far failed to track down the hadith (which I assume is where the five come from!) (and let me take this opportunity to tell you how confusing I find ahadith...it's very confusing.) and b) found many claims that all five prayers are mentioned in the Qur'an.

By my count (and the sites I've found claiming that all five are in the Qur'an), I've got four of them covered. The fifth, according to these sites, is mentioned in Surah Hud: (113) And establish regular prayers at the two ends of the day and at the approaches of the night: for those things that are good remove those that are evil: be that the word of remembrance to those who remember (their Lord):

So...'two ends of the day' would be dawn and dusk, yes? and 'the approaches of the night'? I have to assume that the 'approaches of the night' is not, in spite of what it sounds like to me in English, dusk because that would be weirdly repetitive, especially right after praying at dusk is already mentioned. So that's an 'after dark' prayer, by my personal understanding. Which would already be covered by the reference in Surah Al-Room.

My question, assuming that there is a question and that you've made it this far through my amature text readings, is are the five prayers detailed in the Qur'an? Is this something that I'm missing because I'm using a translation and it's clear in the original text that the words I'm taking to mean the same times are actually referencing different times in the original language? And if they aren't laid out in the Qur'an, where do they come from?

I remember a story about Mohammed (I think this was when he was taken up into heaven for a brief visit, but don't quote me on it) arguing God down from 50 prayers daily to five. I thought it was a story in the hadith, but like I said, I haven't been able to find it.