Did Jesus Die on the Cross?

Bring Qur’an 4:157 and a passion narrative to the same table. The conversation is about what each book says happened, not about who respects Jesus more.

The question

Muslims honor Jesus, and almost all of them deny that he died on a Roman cross. Christians say he did die there, that he was buried, and that God raised him. The short portrait of both books is Jesus in the Qur’an and the Gospels. The Christian case for the resurrection, including the doubts that are not specifically Muslim, is the resurrection of Jesus. This page stays on the Qur’an’s sentence and on the historical reports.

What Muslims say

The reading almost all Muslims share is that Jesus was not killed and was not crucified. God made the event appear otherwise, and raised Jesus to himself. The people who boasted of his death were wrong. God would not hand a faithful prophet to that kind of end. Some add that another person was made to look like Jesus and was crucified in his place, so the disciples and the soldiers were looking at the wrong man.

That is a serious claim about God. It is meant to protect Jesus, not to insult him. Saheeh International even supplies the word “another” in brackets, which shows how naturally the substitution reading suggests itself to translators. The brackets matter, and they are discussed below.

A smaller reading stays closer to the boast the verse is answering. The speakers say, “We have killed the Messiah.” The verse answers that they did not kill him, for certain. Some Muslims press that denial against the claim of success, without building a full story in which God disguises a bystander. Christians should know the majority story, and they should not pretend every Muslim has filled in the same details.

What the Qur’an says

Qur’an 4:157–158 (1), Saheeh International:

And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, the messenger of Allāh.” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. [158] Rather, Allāh raised him to Himself. And ever is Allāh Exalted in Might and Wise.

The verse is an answer to a saying: “we have killed the Messiah.” It says they did not kill him, nor crucify him, that the matter was made to resemble something to them, that those who differ are in doubt and are following assumption, and that they did not kill him, for certain. God raised him to himself.

The word “another” is inside square brackets. In Saheeh International, brackets are words the translators add so the English will read clearly. The Arabic sentence is represented in their English by “was made to resemble him to them,” and they insert “another” to say who or what was made to resemble him. A reader who treats “another” as a word in the Arabic is ahead of the translation. The substitution story is the usual explanation of the verse. It is not a noun sitting in the Arabic of this line.

Qur’an 3:55 is the other passage Muslims and Christians both bring:

[Mention] when Allāh said, “O Jesus, indeed I will take you and raise you to Myself and purify [i.e., free] you from those who disbelieve and make those who follow you [in submission to Allāh alone] superior to those who disbelieve until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me is your return, and I will judge between you concerning that in which you used to differ.

Saheeh International says “I will take you and raise you to Myself,” and it glosses “purify” as “free.” It does not, in this rendering, say “I will cause you to die.” Christians should not smuggle a different translation in and pretend it is this one. What the verse does say is that God will take Jesus, raise him, and make those who follow him superior to the unbelievers until the Day of Resurrection.

Qur’an 19:33 is Jesus speaking from the cradle, in the surah’s scene:

And peace is on me the day I was born and the day I will die and the day I am raised alive.”

The sentence includes a day on which he will die. Muslims commonly place that death in the future, after a return at the end of history, so that it does not collide with 4:157. The verse itself names a death. It does not say the death was cancelled.

Qur’an 5:117 is Jesus, on the day of judgment, speaking to God about his followers: “And I was a witness over them as long as I was among them; but when You took me up, You were the Observer over them.” The translation says “took me up.” Qur’an 61:14 says the disciples told Jesus they were God’s supporters, and that God supported those who believed against their enemy, “and they became dominant.”

A Christian response

The Christian texts say the death was public and intended. Mark 8:31 (2): “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Mark 15:24 says they crucified him. Mark 15:37 says he cried out and gave up the ghost. Luke 24:26 (4) has the risen Jesus ask, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” and then explain, from Moses and the prophets, the things about himself.

1 Corinthians 15:3–4 (3) is earlier than the written Gospels. Paul says he delivered what he also received: “how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,” and “that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” A Christian is not asking a Muslim to prefer a legend that grew for a century. The death is in the earliest summary the church wrote down, and in all four passion narratives. The longer ending of Mark is a separate textual question, and the resurrection article says so. The crucifixion in Mark 15 is not that disputed ending.

Two writers who were not Christians also place the death under Pilate. Tacitus, in The Annals 15.44, explaining the name “Christian” in Nero’s Rome, says: “Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” (5) That is a Roman historian, hostile to the movement, saying the founder was executed under Pilate.

Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3, as William Whiston translated it, includes this clause: “And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross.” (6) The paragraph also calls Jesus the Christ and says he appeared alive on the third day. Scholars have long argued that those Christian-sounding phrases were added or enlarged by a later Christian copyist. The article does not treat the whole paragraph as an untouched Jewish confession. It treats the execution under Pilate as the clause that matches Tacitus, Paul, and the Gospels. A disputed paragraph is still not silence. A fair reader says what is disputed and what is repeated everywhere else.

The substitution story has a further cost inside the Qur’an’s own wording. If the person on the cross was made to resemble Jesus, the people who saw the crucifixion were looking at a likeness God had arranged. Qur’an 3:55 says those who follow Jesus will be made superior to the unbelievers until the Day of Resurrection. Qur’an 61:14 says God supported the believers among them and they became dominant. The people who followed Jesus in the first decades preached that he had been crucified and raised. That is the message in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4. A Christian asks, quietly, whether God made the likeness, and then made the community that believed the likeness superior until the last day. The question is not an insult. It is what the two texts do when they are read together.

Sahih al-Bukhari 6929 (7) records Muhammad describing a prophet whose people beat and wounded him, wiping the blood from his face and saying, “O Lord! Forgive my, people as they do not know.” The King James Version of Luke 23:34 has Jesus say, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Some early manuscripts of Luke do not include that sentence, so a Christian should not rest the crucifixion on it. The wounding and the prayer for the attackers, in the hadith, still show a prophet suffering in his own person. The Gospel’s claim is that Jesus did, on the cross.

Christians say Jesus is God, and that he truly died as man. That confession is the deity of Christ. It is not a claim that the Father died, or that God ceased to exist for three days. The Son took a human nature and died in that nature. Muslims who hear “God died” as nonsense are often rejecting a sentence Christians also refuse. The sentence Christians affirm is narrower, and it is the one the Gospels tell.

Common objections

The Gospels were written late, by people who were not there. Mark’s passion is not a transcript. 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 still says the death and burial were the message Paul received and passed on, early enough that he can speak of it as tradition already in his hands. Tacitus does not depend on a Gospel manuscript. A late written Gospel is not the same thing as a death nobody reported.

God would not allow his prophet to be humiliated. The Qur’an does not say that in 4:157. The verse denies the killing and the crucifixion in answer to a boast. The Bible’s prophets are not protected from violent death. Jesus, in Mark 8:31, says the suffering is necessary. Christians do not think the cross was God’s failure. They think it was the way he bore sin. A Muslim who does not share that meaning can still see that “a prophet cannot suffer” is an extra premise, not a line in 4:157.

“They did not kill him” only means their plot failed because God raised him. That is the minority reading, and it should be heard. The same verse says “nor did they crucify him,” which is more than “they did not have the last word.” Saheeh International’s text denies both the killing and the crucifixion. Christians think that denial is the point of disagreement, and they think the historical reports are on the other side of it.

Someone else was made to look like him, so the witnesses were honestly wrong. That is the majority story, with the bracketed “another.” It asks a reader to believe that the public execution, the burial, the appearances, Paul’s received tradition, and Tacitus’s notice all go back to a likeness. It also has to sit beside Qur’an 19:33, where Jesus names the day he will die.

Keep reading

• Jesus in the Qur’an and the Gospels
• The resurrection of Jesus
• The deity of Christ
• If Jesus is God, why did he pray?