An Historical Account ofJesus 13angel: 'How shall this be, seeing l know not a man?' ...
And the angel answered ... 'With Cod, nothing shall be
impossible.' And Mary said: 'Behold the handmaid of
the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.' And the
angel departed from her. (Lu1œ 1: 26-38).The same incident is described in the Qur'an as follows:
And (remember) when the angels said, '0 Mary, surely
Allah has chosen you, and He has made you pure, and
He has preferred you above all women in all the worlds.
o Mary, be obedient to your Lord, and prostrate and
bow down in worship (before Him) with those who bow
downin worship... 0 Mary, surely Allah gives you good
news of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah,
Jesus son of Mary, who will be honoured in this world
and in the next world, and who will be one of those
who are near (to Allah) - and he will speak to people
from his cradle and when he is a man, and he will be
one of those who are righteous.' 5he replied, 'My Lord,
how can l have a child, when no man has touched me?'
He replied, 'Just like that - Allah creates whatever He
wants. When He decrees something, then all He says to
it is, "Be!" and it is.' (Qur'an 3. 4247).Out of the four Gospels, Mark and John are silent about [esus's
birth, and Matthew only casually mentions il. Both Luke and Mat
thew contradict themselves by giving a human genealogy on the
father's side to Jesus, while Mark and John do not mention il. As
between Matthew and Luke, the former gives twenty-six persons
between David and Jesus, while Luke has forty-two names in his
list, Thus, there is a discrepancy between the two of sixteen peo
ple. If we accept only forty years as the average age of a person,
then there is a gap of six hundred and forty years between the two
records of Jesus's supposed lineal descent! As Dr. Maurice Bucaille
points out, however:
One must straight away note that the male genealogies
have absolutely no relevance to Jesus. Were one to give
a genealogytoMary's onlyson. whowas withouta bio
logical father, it would have to be the genealogy of his
mother Mary. 4