Question—And he would not have said that the Sun becomes concealed in, or sinks into a murky pool, whereas the Sun is 90 million times larger than the Earth, so how can it possibly be concealed in a pool of murky water?
Reply—Dear critic! It is nowhere written in the Noble Quran that the Sun becomes concealed in, or sinks into a murky pool. The Christian priests have wrongly believed for a long time that it is written in the Quran, whereas it is not so written in the Quran. The fact is that at one place, the Noble Quran gives the account of that Dhul-Qarnain who is mentioned in the Book of Prophet Daniel 8:4. And it is stated therein that when that King of Media and Persia went on achieving victories and reached the western region of the Levant, then, in the western part of that particular territory, at one place Dhul-Qarnain saw what appeared to be the ‘Sun setting in a pool of murky water’. It is most likely that Dhul-Qarnain had occasion to witness this scene when he reached the banks of the Black Sea or the Danube.
I accept that the Sun is a great deal larger than the Earth, but because it is so very distant from us, it appears to be very small, and due to the spherical shape of the Earth, it appears to us at the time of sunset that it is setting behind some part of the Earth or the peak of a mountain, or behind a tree on the horizon for the viewer, or if there is water and marshy land to the west of us, as was the case for Dhul-Qarnain, then the Sun will appear to be setting into that water and marshy land at the time of sunset.