No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

  10. Since there is no narrative account of James seeing the risen Jesus, only the report from 1 Corinthians 15, the reason for James’ conversion has less scholarly consensus. Regardless, Habermas tells us that the majority of critical scholars concede that James was converted as 1 Corinthians 15 reports, on account of a resurrection appearance. Habermas and Licona list the following as examples of scholars who hold this view: Allison, Betz, Byrskog, Conzelmann, Craig, Davis, Derret, Ehrman, Funk, Hoover, Kee, Koester, Ladd, Lorenzen, Ludemann, Meier, Oden, Osborne, Pannenberg, Sanders, Spong, Stuhlmacher, Wedderburn and Wright. M. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 460–61.

  11. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 334.

  12. Please note that the phrase “and later Paul” was in parentheses in the original, but for the sake of clarity in this text I have placed the phrase in commas. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 280, emphasis mine.

  13. David R. Catchpole, Resurrection People (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2002), 158.

  14. Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story and Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus and His Family (London: Continuum, 2003), 107–9.

  15. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, 280.

  Chapter 26: The Islamic Response

  1. See also 5.111 and 61.14.

  Chapter 27: Assessing the Islamic Response

  1. Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).

  2. Karen Armstrong, The First Christian: Saint Paul’s Impact on Christianity (London: Pan, 1983), 12.

  3. For an excellent treatment of the topic, see David Wenham, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). See also E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

  4. Thomas J. Herron has given strong arguments for dating 1 Clement before AD 70 in his book Clement and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, though others disagree and date it circa AD 90. Even the latter date is still within the lifetime of those who knew Paul, but the former date is nigh immediate by historical standards.

  5. F. F. Bruce, The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Epistle to the Galatians (Exeter: Paternoster, 1982), 117.

  6. Galatians 2:12 NIV says “certain men came from James,” and some take this to mean that everything these men did was sanctioned by James, and by taking issue with them, Paul was taking issue with James himself. None of that is found in the text itself; there is no indication that James sanctioned their activities nor that Paul ever had an argument with James.

  7. It might be useful to also note that Antioch had about fifteen times the population of Jerusalem at this time in the first century, and a church schism here could have been dangerous. It was Paul’s duty to remind Peter of the disciples’ earlier decision.

  8. Acts 15:7–11 NIV says, “Peter got up and addressed them: ‘Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.’ ”

  9. Some assume that Matthew 5:18 means the law will always apply. But again, the Law here refers to the Pentateuch, and regardless, the verse clearly says “until everything has been accomplished” (NIV), meaning there will be an end, and there is good reason to think that the end is the cross. Some point to verse 19 to say that people need to follow the law to be saved, but that cannot be what Jesus means because the verse explicitly says that even those who do set aside the commands and teach others to do so will still be in the kingdom of heaven.

  10. Jews were required to take certain oaths as part of the ceremonial laws. By telling His followers not to, Jesus was telling them to break Jewish law.

  11. An assumption that Stanley Porter challenges in his recent book, When Paul Met Jesus: How an Idea Got Lost in History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

  12. C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1944), 16.

  13. 1 Corinthians 4:11–13; 7:10–11; 9:14; 11:23–25; 13:2–3; 15:3–5.

  14. Of course, the epistle to the Romans is the exception that proves the rule. It is the one Pauline letter sent to a congregation where Paul had not been, and it is also the one letter that is most systematic and careful in explicating its theology.

  15. Cf. Quran 61.14: “O ye who believe! Be Allah’s helpers, even as Jesus son of Mary said unto the disciples: Who are my helpers for Allah? They said: We are Allah’s helpers. And a party of the Children of Israel believed, while a party disbelieved. Then We strengthened those who believed against their foe, and they became the uppermost.”

  16. See Tafsir al-Qurtubi 61.14, as well as Tabari’s History.

  Chapter 29: The Positive Case

  1. That both words refer to Jesus is firmly established by the Granville Sharp Rule. See Daniel Wallace, Sharp Redevivus? A Reexamination of the Granville Sharp Rule, https://bible.org/article/sharp-redivivus-reexamination-granville-sharp-rule.

  2. “In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, ‘Before Abraham was, I Am’; ‘I Am’ is the name of God in the book of Exodus . . . Jesus’ listeners know full well what he’s saying. They pick up stones to stone him because they think he’s committed a blasphemy, claiming himself to be God.” Bart Ehrman, “The Earliest Gospels” (lecture, “History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon,” the Great Courses).

  3. These are the exact words used to in the Greek Old Testament to address God in Psalm 35:23.

  4. For a more detailed treatment, see Richard J. Bauckham, “Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John” in Contours of Christology in the New Testament, ed. R. N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 148–66.

  5. Ehrman, “The Earliest Gospels.”

  6. The consensus dating for John is circa AD 90, though this date has been challenged because it relied on a scholarly assumption which is now defunct (i.e., John’s reliance upon the synoptics). Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, who dates the gospel of John between the fifties and sixties. See Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 307. Regardless of its correctness, my reason for rejecting John was because it was written sixty years after Jesus’ death.

  7. Although the consensus dating for Mark is AD 65–70, this dating, like the consensus on John, relies upon obsolesced assumptions. Maurice Casey dates Mark near AD 40 in his work Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel. For different reasons yet with a similar result, James Crossley has suggested in his monograph The Date of Mark’s Gospel that Mark was written sometime between the midthirties and midforties. I presently find a date in the early forties more compelling than any alternative, though my set of reasons are not exactly the same as either Casey or Crossley. With differing degrees of likelihood, it is possible that: Mark presupposed his hearers knew Pilate, Caiaphas, Bartimaeus, Rufus, and Alexander; that he did not want his hearers to know the identity of the boy fleeing naked and the apostle striking the high priest’s ear for purposes of protective anonymity; that his account predates the early church discussions about the law; that he was concerned about the impending statue of Caligula standing in the temple; that the gospel was spurred by Peter’s departure from Jerusalem; and that he wrote early enough to supply a standard text about Jesus’ ministry for those who had seen the risen Jesus themselves. Combined, these features would indicate a date around
AD 40–44. Though that specific date is my position, it is consensus that Mark’s gospel is the first of the four.

  8. Rikk Watts, “Mark,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).

  9. The word used for “Lord” here is adonai, a word commonly used for Yahweh but also applicable to humans. However, in context, this is the Lord of the temple, which is Yahweh.

  10. Malachi 4:6 says God will “come and strike the land with total destruction” (NIV). Of course, Christians understand the latter portion of the prophecy to relate to Jesus’ second coming.

  11. Cf. Philo, On the Embassy to Gaius 368 and On Dreams 2.131.

  12. A charge we also find in John 10:33.

  13. The antecedent of the participles is Yahweh, and I have included the antecedent in my translation as “he.”

  14. Deuteronomy 33:26; Psalm 104:3, Isaiah 19:1.

  15. It should be remembered that this is not the first time in the Old Testament that Yahweh is depicted as two persons, or as being in two separate places. See chapter 6.

  16. The potential exception is the Exagoge of Ezekiel, a Hellenistic Jewish drama in which Moses has a vision of a throne on Mt. Sinai, where a noble man sitting on the throne gestures to Moses with his right hand that Moses take his place on the throne, giving Moses his crown and scepter with his left hand. The noble man could be God, and Moses might actually sit on the throne, though neither is said explicitly. Exagoge, lines 68–76.

  17. Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms: A Commentary, trans. Hilton C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988–89), 2.348–49.

  18. Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14:64,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26, no. 4 (2004): 379.

  19. As stated in a previous note, I prefer a date for Mark in the early forties, and therefore I am not one of those who believe Paul writes earlier than Mark. But I am in the great minority.

  20. Ernst Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zu Phil 2, 5–11 (Heidelberg: Winter, Universitätsverlag, 1961), 4.

  21. Colin Brown, “Ernst Lohmeyer’s Kyrios Jesus,” in Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2, eds. Ralph P. Martin and Brian J. Dodd (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 10.

  22. Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus, 8.

  23. J. M. Furness, “The Authorship of Philippians ii.6–11,” Expository Times 70 (1958), 240–43.

  24. Ralph P. Martin, “Carmen Christi Revisited,” in Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2, eds. Ralph P. Martin and Brian J. Dodd (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 2.

  Chapter 31: Assessing the Islamic Response

  1. Or at least a theology of multiple persons within one Godhead.

  2. A few verses later, Jesus cleansed a leper in his own authority, a miracle that no prophet from the Old Testament had ever done and one which could give away his identity. So “Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: ‘See that you don’t tell this to anyone’ ” (Mark 1:43–44 NIV).

  3. John 7:30.

  4. Parallels in Matthew 16:16–20 and Luke 9:21.

  5. Mark 8:30 and 9:41 imply that Jesus is the Messiah, but neither verse shows explicit admission, the kind that Muslims often seek for a claim to deity. In addition, both are private conversations, not public proclamations. Matthew 16:16–20 is the exception that proves the rule; here, in private, Jesus admits that he is the Christ, but insists that he himself did not tell them this, nor does he want them to tell anyone. (Parallel in Luke 9:21 without clear admission.) The same can be said of John’s gospel; the clearest admission is John 4:26, when he agrees that he is the Messiah, but it is a private conversation. Publicly, many continue to be upset that he has not clearly said who he is (see John 10:24). Also, if John 4:26 suffices as a claim to be the Messiah, so should John 20:29 suffice to be a claim to deity.

  6. There is textual contention as to the original form of the verse.

  7. The title is used in didactic, apocalyptic, and historical settings.

  8. The criterion of dissimilarity suggests that a historical datum must be sufficiently dissimilar from its context if we are to be certain that it was not imposed onto history. In the case at hand, Jews were not expecting the Messiah to be the Son of Man, so we would not expect such a claim to be imposed upon Jesus; perhaps more important, the early church virtually abandons the title, thus making it unlikely that the gospel authors would have retroactively projected the words onto Jesus. The only likely reason that they portray Jesus using this title so regularly is because he actually did use it for himself.

  9. Approximately twenty-two times. Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 29.

  10. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 3. Kindle ebook. Emphasis mine.

  Chapter 33: The Positive Case

  1. Quran 61.6.

  Chapter 34: The Response

  1. Sahih Bukhari 1.2.12.

  2. Sahih Bukhari 1.2.16.

  3. Sahih Bukhari 1.2.18.

  4. Sahih Bukhari 3.46.694.

  5. Sahih Bukhari 9.87.111.

  6. He is later identified as Gabriel.

  7. This is the translation of the word ghatt provided by Lane’s Lexicon, the standard English lexicon for classical Arabic. Vol II, 2269.

  8. Sahih Bukhari 4.52.50.

  9. Sahih Bukhari 4.52.44.

  10. Sahih Bukhari 4.52.72.

  11. Sahih Bukhari 5.59.297.

  12. Sahih Bukhari 5.59.449.

  13. Sahih Bukhari 4.52.182.

  14. E.g., Sahih Bukhari 5.59.370.

  15. Sahih Bukhari 5.59.369.

  16. Sahih Bukhari 7.71.589.

  17. Sahih Bukhari 1.11.584.

  18. Sahih Bukhari 4.52.256.

  19. E.g., Sahih Bukhari 5.59.362 with Banu Quraiza; Sahih Bukhari 5.59.512 with the inhabitants of Khaibar.

  20. Sahih Bukhari 1.2.25.

  21. Sahih Muslim 1767.

  22. See more at David Wood, “50 Reasons Muhammad Was Not a Prophet,” AnsweringMuslims.com, April 6, 2014, http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2014/04/50-reasons-muhammad-was-not-prophet.html.

  23. Sahih Bukhari 7.71.661.

  24. Sahih Bukhari 4.53.400.

  25. There is a passing reference to the satanic verses in Sahih Bukhari 2.19.177, in which Muhammad recites Sura Najm, causing jinn and pagans to prostrate with him. This is part of a much larger account, found in thirty-seven early Islamic records. Shahab Ahmed, a Muslim scholar who graduated from Princeton University and taught at Harvard University, submitted his 1999 doctoral dissertation on this topic, arguing that Muhammad actually did proclaim the satanic verses.

  26. Sahih Bukhari 6.60.139; Sahih Muslim 3248.

  27. Sahih Muslim 3481; see also Sahih Bukhari 7.62.64.

  28. Quran 23.1–6; Sahih Bukhari 5.59.459; Sahih Muslim 3371 and 3384.

  29. Sahih Bukhari 3.48.826.

  30. Sahih Bukhari 2.18.161.

  31. “How, then, are the other parts formed? Either they are all formed simultaneously—heart, lung, liver, eye, and the rest of them—or successively . . . As for simultaneous formation of the parts, our senses tell us plainly that this does not happen.” Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), 147.

  32. “The embryo obtains its growth through the umbilical attachment. Since the nutritive faculty of the Soul, as well as the others, is present in animals, it immediately sends off the umbilicus, like a root, to the uterus.” Galen, On the Natural Faculties, trans. Arthur John Brock (London: W. Heinemann, 1916), 239.

  33. Ibid., 21.

  34. Sahih Bukhari 4.55.546; 5.58.275.

  35. As a Muslim I found it unbelievable that the Quran would say this, but it is verified in hadith as well. Sunan Abi Dawud 4002: “I was sitting behind the Messenger of Allah who was riding a donkey while the sun was
setting. He asked: Do you know where this sets? I replied: Allah and his Apostle know best. He said: It sets in a spring of warm water.”

  36. Sahih Bukhari 7.71.673.

  37. Sahih Bukhari 7.71.592.

  38. Sahih Bukhari 7.71.590.

  Chapter 35: Assessing the Response

  1. Found in Ibn Hisham’s notes. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), 691.

  2. We can be sure the disgraceful material and distressing facts are related to Muhammad, since Ibn Hisham had already discussed excising material that was not related to Muhammad earlier in his list of omissions.

  3. The Life of Muhammad, 494.

  4. Ibid., 675.

  5. Ibid., 675–76, with supplemental details from Ibn Sa’d: “Umayr Ibn Adi came to her in the night and entered her house. Her children were sleeping around her. There was one whom she was suckling. He searched her with his hand because he was blind, and separated the child from her. He thrust his sword in her chest till it pierced up to her back. Then he offered the morning prayers with the prophet.” Muhammad Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, trans. S. Moinul Haq, vol. 2 (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1972), 30–31.

  6. The Life of Muhammad, 515.

  7. Ibid., 308.

  8. Andrew Higgins, “Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2008, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122669909279629451.

  9. Some may respond by objecting that Ahmad is a title for Muhammad, but that is begging the question.

  10. For more on Western scholastic approaches to studying early Islam, read F. M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998). For a more popular-level, engaging read, consider Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire (New York: Random House, 2012).