Misunderstanding Christianity

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There is a healthy amount of material taken from Christian sources in the Qur’an. One need not, however, assume that those who compiled the Qur’an and put it into something approximating its present form actually read the heretical Christian material that seems to have influenced the Qur’an. It’s much more likely that they heard this material being recited or taught, since the Qur’an’s use of Christian material clearly does not consist of word-for-word borrowings.

Sometimes the Qur’an’s appropriation of Biblical material suggests that those who put the Qur’an together had only a glancing acquaintance with the stories he was retelling; in the Qur’an’s chapter on the birth of Jesus, his mother Mary’s relatives address her as “sister of Aaron” (19:28). It would appear, and appeared to some of critics of Islam in the ninth century, that the Qur’an was confusing Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron with Mary the mother of Jesus. The two names are identical in Arabic: Maryam.

Thus a hadith was constructed to explain away the problem. In it, the Christians of Najran confronts one of Muhammad’s followers about this Qur’an passage. The Muslim then returns to ask Muhammad about it. The prophet of Islam has a ready explanation: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.” So Mary the Mother of Jesus was called “sister of Aaron” as an honor, not an error.

So goes the story, anyway. The explanation is neat enough, but it actually fails to deal with the problem adequately. This is because the Qur’an calls Mary’s mother “Imran’s wife.” (3:35) Imran, that is, Amram, was the father of Moses and Aaron. At 66:12, Mary is called “daughter of Imran.” These passages, along with 19:28, make it clear that the Qur’an confused Miriam the sister of Moses with Mary the Mother of Jesus, and assumes that Jesus is Moses’ nephew.

Another misunderstanding of Christianity in the Qur’an involves the Trinity. “And when Allah said, O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to mankind, Take me and my mother as two gods besides Allah? He said, Be glorified. It was not for me to say what I had no right to say. If I said it, then you know it. You know what is in my mind, and I do not know what is in your mind. Indeed, you, only you, are the knower of hidden things.” (5:116)

Allah asks Jesus directly if he asked his followers to take himself and his mother as additional gods along with him. Jesus, of course, denies having done so. Those who believe otherwise will be punished. Here we have not only a merely human Jesus but a misapprehension of the Trinity. The Qur’an envisions the Christian Trinity not as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons, one God, but as a trio of deities: Allah, Jesus, and Mary.

From the Muslim perspective, it is immaterial that some of the Qur’an has echoes in Christian sources, whether canonical or non-canonical, or in any other sources. It is likewise of no importance that the Qur’an gets the theology of earlier traditions wrong, for in every case, the pious Muslim assumes, the Qur’an is actually correct and the unbelievers wrong. Traditional Islamic theology holds that earlier revelations have been corrupted and altered, and thus need the corrective that the Qur’an provides — but since the original form of the earlier revelations was completely consonant with the Qur’an, it is no surprise from the Muslim point of view that some earlier books contain Qur’anic foreshadowings.

So for many Muslims, the existence of traces of Qur’anic revelation in earlier books only confirms the Qur’an’s role as correcting and superseding all earlier revelations. Islamic tradition depicts Muhammad himself speaking forthrightly about Islam’s replacing Judaism and Christianity, and on one occasion using a parable to explain how. A ninth-century tradition states:“The example of Muslims, Jews and Christians is like the example of a man who employed laborers to work for him from morning till evening. They worked till mid-day and they said, ‘We are not in need of your reward.’ So the man employed another batch and said to them, ‘Complete the rest of the day and yours will be the wages I had fixed (for the first batch).’They worked up till the time of the ‘Asr prayer and said, ‘Whatever we have done is for you.’ He employed another batch. They worked for the rest of the day till sunset, and they received the wages of the two former batches.”

This is clearly borrowed from one of Jesus’ parables in the New Testament (Matthew 20:1-16), adapted here to refer Islam completing and superseding Judaism and Christianity.