Islamic position
The Qur’an tells the story of Maryam and the birth of ʿĪsā twice, and more fully than it tells the birth of any other prophet. Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:33-47) sets it in the history of a family: the wife of ʿImrān dedicates her unborn child to God, the child is a girl, Maryam, and she is raised in the sanctuary under the care of Zakariyyā, where the angels announce to her a word from God whose name is the Messiah, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Sūrat Maryam (19:16-34), which takes its name from her, tells the birth itself: the withdrawal, the spirit in the form of a man, the palm tree, and the infant who speaks. Between them the two passages give the Qur’anic account of how he came into the world, and the account is the measure for the two gospel nativities.
Maryam before the annunciation
“Remember when the wife of ʿImrān said, ‘My Lord, I dedicate what is in my womb entirely to Your service, so accept it from me’” (3:35). When the child is born a girl, her mother names her Maryam and asks God’s protection for her and her offspring from Satan (3:36). God accepts her “with gracious acceptance” and makes her grow in goodness; Zakariyyā is given charge of her, and every time he enters her sanctuary he finds her provided with food, which she says is from God (3:37). The angels tell her that God has chosen her and purified her and chosen her above the women of the worlds (3:42). None of this is in the four gospels, which begin Mary’s story at the annunciation. It is in the Protevangelium of James, a Christian text of the second century, which tells of Mary’s dedication by her mother, her upbringing in the Temple and her being fed by an angel. The Qur’an and that text share a tradition about Mary that the canonical gospels left out.
The announcement
In 3:45-47 the angels speak: “O Maryam, God gives you good news of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, ʿĪsā son of Maryam, held in honour in this world and the next, and one of those brought near. He will speak to people in the cradle and in maturity, and he will be of the righteous.” She asks how she can have a child when no man has touched her, and the answer is: “So it will be. God creates what He wills; when He decrees a matter, He only says to it ‘Be’, and it is” (3:47). In 19:16-21 the scene is told again, alone. She withdraws from her people to a place in the east and screens herself; God sends His spirit to her, and it takes the form of a well-made man; she takes refuge in God from him; he says he is only a messenger of her Lord, to give her a pure boy; she asks how, since no man has touched her and she has not been unchaste; he answers that it is easy for God, and that the child will be a sign for people and a mercy from God, “and it is a matter decreed” (19:21). Luke 1:26-38 tells the same scene with the angel named as Gabriel and the child announced as the Son of the Most High who will reign on the throne of David for ever. The Qur’an announces a word from God, a Messiah and a sign; it does not announce a son of God, and the difference is the whole difference between the two books.
The birth
“So she conceived him and withdrew with him to a distant place. The pains of labour drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, ‘I wish I had died before this and been a thing forgotten.’ Then a voice called to her from below her: ‘Do not grieve. Your Lord has placed a stream beneath you. Shake the trunk of the palm towards you and it will drop fresh ripe dates upon you. So eat and drink and be comforted’” (19:22-26). There is no Bethlehem, no inn, no manger, no shepherds and no magi. There is a woman alone, in pain, fed by a palm and a spring. The palm tree does not appear in Matthew or Luke. It appears in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a Latin text of the sixth or seventh century, where the child Jesus on the flight to Egypt commands a palm to bend and give his mother its fruit, and a spring to rise at its roots. Scholars have argued in both directions about which tradition is older; the Qur’an sets the palm at the birth, Pseudo-Matthew on the road to Egypt.
The infant speaks
Maryam brings the child to her people, who accuse her: “O sister of Hārūn, your father was not a bad man, nor was your mother unchaste” (19:28). She points to the child. They say, “How can we speak to one who is in the cradle, a child?” And he speaks: “I am the servant of God. He has given me the Book and made me a prophet. He has made me blessed wherever I am, and enjoined on me prayer and almsgiving as long as I live, and kindness to my mother; He has not made me arrogant or wretched. Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I am raised alive” (19:30-33). The speech is at once a defence of his mother and a statement, in his first words, of what he is: a servant, a prophet, a man of prayer and alms. The Qur’an then adds its own comment: “That is ʿĪsā son of Maryam, the word of truth about which they dispute. It is not for God to take a son; glory be to Him” (19:34-35). The speaking infant appears in the Arabic Infancy Gospel, a text later than the Qur’an, where Jesus in the cradle tells his mother that he is the Son of God. The Qur’an has him say the opposite.
What the Qur’an does not say
It does not name Joseph, and it does not give Maryam a husband. It does not place the birth in Bethlehem or in any named town. It has no census, no star, no massacre, no flight into Egypt and no genealogy. Where the two gospel nativities contradict each other (see the discrepancy tables), the Qur’an takes neither side, because it tells a different story, with a different purpose: not to prove descent from David, but to show a sign of God’s power to create without a father, as He created Ādam without one (3:59).
Compare
Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 agree with the Qur’an that Maryam was a virgin, that the conception was announced by a messenger from God, and that the child was a sign. They differ from it in what the sign meant. The virgin birth in the Qur’an is a proof of God’s creative word, not of the child’s divine nature; the Qur’an says so in the same breath (3:47; 3:59; 19:35). The Gospel According to Islam on this website follows the Qur’anic account in section 2, and the Qur’anic text itself stands there under its own heading.
Sources
- Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, on 3:33-47 and 19:16-34.
- Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext, chapters on Mary.
- Suleiman Mourad, “From Hellenism to Christianity and Islam: The Origin of the Palm Tree Story concerning Mary and Jesus in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Qur’ān”, Oriens Christianus 86 (2002).
- Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, for the Protevangelium of James and Pseudo-Matthew.