The Injīl and the letters

Missionaries answer the witness of the Qurʾān with a dilemma of their own. Christian missionaries press what they call the “Islamic dilemma”. The Qurʾān, they say, confirms the Torah and the Gospel.

Either the Bible in their hands is that Gospel, and the Qurʾān confirms it, or the Gospel the Qurʾān confirms no longer exists, and the Qurʾān contradicts itself. The argument is a petitio principii: it assumes the one thing it must prove, that the Injīl (الإنجيل, “the Gospel”) of the Qurʾān is the New Testament.

The Qurʾān defines the Injīl in its own terms. It is a book that God revealed, as He revealed the Torah.

نَزَّلَ عَلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ بِٱلْحَقِّ مُصَدِّقًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ وَأَنزَلَ ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةَ وَٱلْإِنجِيلَ

“He has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.”¹

It was given to ʿĪsā ibn Maryam himself.

وَقَفَّيْنَا عَلَىٰٓ ءَاثَٰرِهِم بِعِيسَى ٱبْنِ مَرْيَمَ مُصَدِّقًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةِ ۖ وَءَاتَيْنَٰهُ ٱلْإِنجِيلَ فِيهِ هُدًۭى وَنُورٌۭ

“And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which came before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light.”²

The New Testament answers to neither description. Thirteen of its twenty-seven books are letters in Paul’s name, and the church long counted Hebrews a fourteenth.

Its four gospels are accounts of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam written by others, in Greek, after those letters.³ None of it is a book given to him.

When the Qurʾān tells the People of the Injīl to judge, it binds them to what God revealed in it.

وَلْيَحْكُمْ أَهْلُ ٱلْإِنجِيلِ بِمَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ فِيهِ

“And let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein.”⁴

The command reaches whatever of that revelation survives in their hands. The letters of a man who never met ʿĪsā ibn Maryam fall outside it. The Qurʾān, for its part, comes “confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it”.⁵

What it confirms, it also measures. The dilemma has a third horn it never states, and Paul stands on it.

The disciples

Against the man who called himself an apostle, the Qurʾān sets the men ʿĪsā ibn Maryam chose.

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ كُونُوٓا۟ أَنصَارَ ٱللَّهِ كَمَا قَالَ عِيسَى ٱبْنُ مَرْيَمَ لِلْحَوَارِيِّـۧنَ مَنْ أَنصَارِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ ۖ قَالَ ٱلْحَوَارِيُّونَ نَحْنُ أَنصَارُ ٱللَّهِ

“O you who have believed, be supporters of Allah, as when Jesus, the son of Mary, said to the disciples, ‘Who are my supporters for Allah?’ The disciples said, ‘We are supporters of Allah.’”⁶

The ḥawāriyyūn (الحواريون, “the disciples”) are the witnesses the Qurʾān recognizes. Their head was James, the brother of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam; their spokesman was Peter; their record was effaced by the church that Paul’s letters built.⁷ A man who never met ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, who was refused by these men when he first came to them, and who cursed them afterward, has no place among them.

The same verse ends in a victory, and missionaries read it, with Āl ʿImrān 3:55, as proof for Paul. The followers of ʿĪsā, they argue, were to prevail until the Day of Resurrection; the church that Paul’s letters built prevailed; so it must be the church of his followers.

فَـَٔامَنَت طَّآئِفَةٌۭ مِّنۢ بَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ وَكَفَرَت طَّآئِفَةٌۭ ۖ فَأَيَّدْنَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ عَلَىٰ عَدُوِّهِمْ فَأَصْبَحُوا۟ ظَٰهِرِينَ

“And a faction of the Children of Israel believed and a faction disbelieved. So We supported those who believed against their enemy, and they became dominant.”⁸

وَجَاعِلُ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّبَعُوكَ فَوْقَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ

“And [I will] make those who follow you [in submission to Allah alone] superior to those who disbelieve until the Day of Resurrection.”⁹

The classical exegetes read both verses against that conclusion. On al-Ṣaff 61:14, al-Ṭabarī records from Ibn ʿAbbās that when ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was raised, his followers split three ways.

One party said that God had been among them, another that the son of God had been, and a third that “the servant of God and His messenger” had been. The two parties of disbelief joined against the third and killed its members, “and Islam remained effaced until God sent Muhammad” ﷺ.¹⁰

Al-Ṭabarī explains the victory in the same terms. God strengthened the believers against their enemy through the Prophet’s confirmation of their witness, “that ʿĪsā is the servant of God and His messenger”, and his rejection of all who called ʿĪsā a god or the son of God.¹¹

The victory of the verse is a victory of proof. The numbers lay with the other side.

On Āl ʿImrān 3:55, al-Ṭabarī reads “those who follow you” as those who follow ʿĪsā “upon your path and your religion, of Islam and its natural disposition”, and cites Qatādah: “they are the people of Islam”. He records a second view as well, from Ibn Zayd, that the verse sets the Christians above the Jews.¹²

Ibn Kathīr grants that the Christians long held the upper hand over the Jews, and still concludes that “Muslims are the true believers in ʿĪsā”, who will stand above them until the Day of Resurrection.¹³ Neither exegete counts the church of Paul among the followers of ʿĪsā.

The witness that does not change

Every other witness on this site can be argued with. Luke’s narrative contradicts itself; the church fathers wrote to condemn; the Muslim scholars wrote centuries after the event. The Qurʾān claims to be the word of God, preserved without alteration, and Muslims hold that claim to be true.¹⁴

On that claim the case against Paul rests finally. The revelation says that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was a messenger, that messengers had passed away before him, that his mother was a woman of truth, and that both of them ate food.¹⁵ Paul said otherwise, and the church believed Paul.

1. Sūrah Āl ʿImrān 3:3. ↩
2. Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:46. ↩
3. See How Paul came to own the New Testament. ↩
4. Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:47. ↩
5. Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:48. ↩
6. Sūrah al-Ṣaff 61:14. ↩
7. See James, the brother of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and The first witnesses against Paul. ↩
8. Sūrah al-Ṣaff 61:14. ↩
9. Sūrah Āl ʿImrān 3:55. ↩
10. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl Āy al-Qurʾān, on al-Ṣaff 61:14, from Abū al-Sāʾib, from Abū Muʿāwiyah, from al-Aʿmash, from al-Minhāl, from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, from Ibn ʿAbbās. The report calls the first two parties by the names of later sects, the Jacobites and the Nestorians. ↩
11. Ibid. ↩
12. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad Shākir, vol. 6, on Āl ʿImrān 3:55: al-Ṭabarī’s own reading before report no. 7149; Qatādah at no. 7149; Ibn Zayd at no. 7155. ↩
13. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, on Āl ʿImrān 3:55, in the abridged English translation published on quran.com. ↩
14. Sūrah al-Ḥijr 15:9. ↩
15. Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:75. ↩