a God who has revealed himself through chosen messengers, angelic and human. Adam, Noah,
Abraham Moses, and Jesus are his chief prophets.^186 But Mohammed is the last and the greatest.
Christ.
The Christology of the Koran is a curious mixture of facts and apocryphal fictions, of
reverence for the man Jesus and denial of his divine character. He is called "the Messiah Jesus Son
of Mary," or "the blessed Son of Mary."^187 He was a servant and apostle of the one true God, and
strengthened by the Holy Spirit, i.e., the angel Gabriel (Dshebril), who afterwards conveyed the
divine revelations to Mohammed. But he is not the Son of God; for as God has no wife, he can
have no son.^188 He is ever alone, and it is monstrous and blasphemous to associate another being
with Allah.
Some of the Mohammedan divines exempt Jesus and even his mother from sin, and first
proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary, for which the apocryphal Gospels
prepared the way.^189 By a singular anachronism, the Koran confounds the Virgin Mary with Miriam,"
the sister of Aaron" (Harun), and Moses (Ex. xv. 20; Num. xxi. 1). Possibly Mohammed may have
meant another Aaron (since he calls Mary, "the sister of Aaron but not "of Moses"); some of his
commentators, however, assume that the sister of Moses was miraculously preserved to give birth
to Jesus.^190
According to the Koran Jesus was conceived by the Virgin Mary at the appearance of Gabriel
and born under a palm tree beneath which a fountain opened. This story is of Ebionite origin.^191
Jesus preached in the cradle and performed miracles in His infancy (as in the apocryphal Gospels),
and during His public ministry, or rather Allah wrought miracles through Him. Mohammed disclaims
the miraculous power, and relied upon the stronger testimony of the truth of his doctrine. Jesus
proclaimed the pure doctrine of the unity of God and disclaimed divine honors.
The crucifixion of Jesus is denied. He was delivered by a miracle from the death intended
for Him, and taken up by God into Paradise with His mother. The Jews slew one like Him, by
mistake. This absurd docetic idea is supposed to be the common belief of Christians.^192
Jesus predicted the coming of Mohammed, when he said: "O children of Israel! of a truth
I am God’s apostle to you to confirm the law which was given before me, and to announce an
(^186) A similar idea is presented in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies.
(^187) Mesich Isa ben Mariam.
(^188) In rude misconception or wilful perversion, Mohammed seems to have understood the Christian doctrine of the trinity
to be a trinity of Father, Mary, and Jesus. The Holy Spirit is identified with Gabriel. "God is only one God! Far be it from his
glory that he should have a son!" Sura 4, ver. 169; comp. 5, ver. 77. The designation and worship of Mary as "the mother of
God" may have occasioned this strange mistake. There was in Arabia in the fourth century a sect of fanatical women called
Collyridians (Κολλυρίδες), who rendered divine worship to Mary. Epiphanius, Haer. 79.·
(^189) As the Protevangelium Jacobi, the Evang. de Nativitate Mariae, the Evang. Infantis Servatoris,etc. Gibbon (ch. 50)
and Stanley (p. 367) trace the doctrine of the immaculate conception directly to the Koran. It is said of Mary: "Remember when
the angel said: ’O Mary! verily hath God chosen thee, and purified thee, and chosen thee above the women of the worlds.’ "
But this does not necessarily mean more than Luke i. 28. The Koran knows nothing of original sin in the Christian sense.
(^190) Gerok, l.c. pp. 22-28. This would be a modification of the rabbinical fable that ordinary death and corruption had as
little power over Miriam as over Moses, and that both died by the breath of Jehovah.
(^191) Rösch (l.c., p. 439)Die Geburtsgeschichte Jesu im Koran ist nichts anderes als ein mythologischer Mythus aus Ezech.
47 mit eingewobenen jüdischen Zügen, der seine Heimath im Ebionismus hat."
(^192) Sura 4. This view of the crucifixion is no doubt derived from apocryphal sources. The Gnostic sect of Basilides
supposed Simon of Cyrene, the Evangel. Barrabae, Judas, to have been that other person who was crucified instead of Jesus.
Mani (Epist. Fund.) says that the prince of darkness was nailed to the cross, and wore the crown of thorns.