Jesus in the Qur'an and the Gospels

Bring both books. A summary of “what Islam says” that you have not checked against the surah will not survive the conversation.

The question

Muslims and Christians both speak about Jesus, son of Mary. They are not talking about two unrelated men, and they are not saying the same thing about him. A useful hour puts a passage from the Qur’an next to a passage from a Gospel and asks what each community is guarding.

A fair statement of the Qur’an’s Jesus

In the Qur’an, Jesus (Isa) is a prophet and the messiah. He is born of Mary without a human father. He is called a word from God and a spirit from him (Qur’an 4:171; Qur’an 3:45). He speaks from the cradle, heals, and raises the dead by God’s permission. He is not the Son of God, and sonship is rejected as something that would compromise God’s oneness. The dominant reading of Qur’an 4:157 is that Jesus was not crucified; it was made to appear so. God raised him. He is a sign, not an object of worship.

That portrait is reverent. Do not describe it as “Muslims think Jesus was nobody.” They do not.

A Christian starting point

The Gospels share the virginal conception and the honor of Mary. They do not stop where the Qur’an stops. Mark’s Gospel spends its last chapters on a public execution, a burial, and an empty tomb. John has Thomas answer the risen Jesus with “my Lord and my God.” The sermons in Acts treat the cross and resurrection as the news, not as a misunderstanding God corrected.

Christians should be able to say, without heat, which sentences they can read in the Qur’an with recognition (Mary, the birth, Jesus as messiah and prophet) and which sentences they cannot sign (the denial of sonship, the denial of the crucifixion, the refusal of worship). Then they should show those sentences in the Gospel they claim, rather than in a tract.

Ask your friend which English rendering of the Qur’an they trust, and use that one. If you only know a verse because a website printed it, say so and look it up together.

Scripture to open together

• Qur’an 19:16–34 — Mary and the birth.
• Qur’an 3:45–59 — the announcement, and the comparison with Adam.
• Qur’an 4:171 — word, spirit, and the warning not to say “three.”
• Qur’an 4:157–158 — the cross, on the usual reading.
• Luke 1–2 beside the infancy passages, then Mark 15.

Keep reading

• Tawhid and Christian monotheism
• The Trinity
• The resurrection of Jesus