Tacitus, and others (see question 39). Jesus’ death and
resurrection are acts essential to His person, life, and
mission — to deny them (or any one of them) is to alter our
understanding of the reality of Jesus and render Him less
than who He truly is.
39. How then do Muslims explain the
biblical accounts of Jesus’ passion
and death?
Because the Koran says that ‘‘it appeared’’ to those
present that Jesus was crucified (see Sura 4:157), some
Muslims accept the Bible’s accounts at face value, but they
insist that the Gospel writers and their sources were in error
about the identity of the man on the Cross. Some say that it
was actually Judas, made to look like Jesus by Allah.
Others repeat the traditional Muslim assertion that the
biblical accounts have been corrupted, a charge we will
soon examine in detail. Suffice it to say at this point that this
charge flies in the face of a great deal of evidence. There are
no nonIslamic sources to support the idea that Jesus was not
crucified. On the Christian side, the historical evidence for
the crucifixion is overwhelming. Christians do not even
need to cite biblical sources to prove the crucifixion of Jesus
occurred. Secular sources include Tacitus, in Book XV of
his chronicle The Annals of Imperial Rome; Suetonius’Life
of the Emperor Claudius; Pliny, the governor of the
Province of Bithynia Pontus, in book ten of his Epistles; and