Ibn Abī Shayba (5574), and Tafsīr Ibn Jarīr (21/501), [and see: Tafsīr Ibn Abī Ḥātim (2/2608), and Al-ʿAẓama by Abū al-Shaykh (2/234)].

I say: Al-Bayhaqī ruled in his book Al-Asmāʾ wa-al-Ṣifāt (2/200)—in which he followed the school of the Ash'arites who divest the attributes—regarding this hadith that it is: "a rejected (munkar) hadith." He said: "If its chain of transmission is authentic, it is possible that the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, narrated it from some of the People of the Book by way of repudiation, but Qatāda b. al-Nuʿmān, may God be pleased with him, did not understand his repudiation."

I say: Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, refuted this specious argument, saying in Al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Mursala ʿalā al-Jahmiyya wa-al-Muʿaṭṭila (4/1522): "The entirety of what the falsifiers use to reject what is established from the Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, regarding informative matters of knowledge, and prescriptive matters of knowledge, is of two types:

The first: denying the signification of what he brought regarding that issue.

The second: opposing the signification with something that prevents following it.

As for the first: they employed it for the hadiths that contradict their statements and principles, attributing their narrators to lying, error, and mistakes in hearing, and believing that many of them are from the speech of the disbelievers and polytheists, which the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, was narrating from them. Thus, someone might have caught him in the middle of his speech after he had prefaced it as a narration, hearing what was narrated and believing him to be stating it rather than narrating it, and so he would say: 'The Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, said,' just as some of them said regarding the hadith of Qatāda b. al-Nuʿmān, may God be pleased with him, about lying on the back.

He said: 'It is possible that the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, narrated it from some of the People of the Book by way of repudiating them, but Qatāda b. al-Nuʿmān did not understand his repudiation, and so he said: The Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, said...'

They said: 'Because of this possibility, we abandoned using solitary reports (āḥād) as evidence regarding the attributes of God.'

So reflect upon the grave matter in this perspective: that the most knowledgeable of people regarding God, His attributes, His speech, and the speech of His Messenger would confuse the true speech of the Messenger—which he said as praise and extolment of God—with the speech of the polytheistic disbelievers, which is disparagement and a flaw, failing to distinguish between this and that, and saying: 'The Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, said' about what is actually the speech of that polytheistic disbeliever!!

What attribution of ignorance and deeming ignorant of the Companions of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, could be greater than this: that one of them cannot distinguish