The Koranic Jesus

Kamal Salibi

This Koranic information concerning the 'Jesus' who was Issa can be distilled into a coherent narrative. Originally, this narrative relates, the people of Israel were organized into a religious community by Moses, who gave them the Torah.  Later, two other apostles were sent to them, first Ezra, then Issa. The followers of the first became the Jews; the followers of the second the Nazarene Christians; and each of these two communities came to revere its special apostle as a son of God.  Among some 'Nazarenes' (here the Christians in general) Jesus even came to be worshipped as God himself. Born of a virgin, Issa was a miraculous being whose human person was a living manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the divine kalimah, or prophetic 'word'. He performed miracles, and was able to raise the dead back to life. As a man, he was a consecrated or ordained person, which implies an association with priesthood. While he accepted the essence of the Mosaic law, he made a point of alleviating some of its rigour in his own preaching, which was the Gospel. In life, he was surrounded by a select group of followers called al-Hawariyyun, apparently because they wore special white robes.  The Jews, however, opposed his mission and scoffed at his miracles, and there was a claim among them that they actually succeeded in putting him to death, either by crucifixion or in some other manner. There were even Christians who accepted this claim. The person who was really crucified, however, was not Issa himself but someone else with whom his identity was confused. The real Issa was assumed to heaven, regardless of whether or not he died a natural human death. Before leaving the earth, he prophesied the coming of another apostle called Ahmad. Ultimately, Issa was to return to life, to pass the final judgement on mankind on the day of the Resurrection. There are two points in this reconstructed Koranic story which are particularly remarkable. First, it makes the correct distinction between the Mosaic monotheism of the early Israelites, and the Jewish faith which began to evolve from it in post-exilic times – with the career of Ezra, by general reckoning. Second, the story clearly depicts Judaism and the original Christianity of the Nazarenes as different departures from the original religion of Israel, and thus suggests a new vision of the origins of Christianity as a sister religion to Judaism, rather than as a runaway Jewish sect, as has long been the common view

While the Koran does not fix a place or date for the mission of Issa, it does give the general impression that, as a latter-day prophet to Israel, he was active in the same environment where Islam was born, i.e. in Western Arabia; also, that Nazarene Christianity emerged at a time when the Israelites, as a people, as distinct from the Jews as a latter-day religious community, still existed – which implies a date for the mission of the Koranic 'Jesus' which is perhaps closer to the fifth century BC than to the first century AD. While there is nothing in Islamic literature to endorse such an early date for the career of Issa, there is at least one indication in this literature that Christianity (certainly, the religion of the Nasara) originated in Arabia rather than Palestine. Writing his geographical dictionary alRawd al-mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar in the fourteenth century AD, Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Himyari, a North African Arab originally from the Yemen, expanded on the history of pre-Islamic Christianity in the region of Najran, on the north-eastern peripheries of the Yemen, remarking unequivocally that 'the origin of this religion was in Najran' (wa-kan asl dhalik al-din bi-Najran).* That Christianity should have originated in Arabia before making a fresh start and assuming a new form in Palestine is not implausible. As indicated in the introduction, I remain personally convinced that the history of the Biblical Israelites ran its full course in Western Arabia, and that the original monotheism of Moses as well as the Judaism that evolved from it have their roots there, and not in Palestine. In terms of historical geography, Palestine can be viewed as a northward extension of Western Arabia, and some Arabian Israelites apparently did arrive to settle in that country in Biblical times. Later, during the Hellenistic period, Judaism under the Hasmonean dynasty came to have one of its main political centres in Palestine, where the principal Jewish city was called Jerusalem after the older, Israelite (and hence Biblical) Jerusalem of Arabia - probably the present village of Al Sharim in the Asir highlands, once referred to in ancient Arabi literature as Uri Shalim.

* See al-Rawd al-Mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Beirut, 1984), p. 573.)

From; "Who was Jesus?". Kamal Salibi