Islamic position

Qur’an 61:6 is the verse in which ʿĪsā announces a messenger to come after him: “And when ʿĪsā son of Maryam said, ‘O Children of Israel, I am the messenger of God to you, confirming what came before me of the Torah, and giving good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Aḥmad.’ But when he came to them with clear signs, they said, ‘This is plain sorcery.’” The verse states three things about him in one sentence: that he was sent to Israel, that he confirmed the Torah, and that he foretold another. This page takes the three in turn, and then the question Muslims and Christians have argued over for twelve centuries, whether the gospels preserve the prophecy.

Sent to Israel, confirming the Torah

The Qur’an is consistent that ʿĪsā was sent to the Children of Israel (3:49; 43:59; 61:6), not to the nations, and the gospels agree: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24); “Go nowhere among the gentiles” (Matthew 10:5-6). The mission to the gentiles was Paul of Tarsus’s, by his own account of his commission (Galatians 1:16; 2:7-9), and the first community disputed it (see James and the Jerusalem church). The Qur’an is equally consistent that he confirmed the Torah (3:50; 5:46; 61:6), and so is Matthew: not one stroke of the law will pass (5:18). A messenger to Israel who confirmed the law is the Jesus of the earliest gospel tradition. The one who ended the law for all nations is the Christ of Paul of Tarsus.

The good news of Aḥmad

Aḥmad, “most praised”, is from the same root as Muḥammad, “praised”, and Muslim tradition has always read the verse as foretelling him; the ḥadīth record Aḥmad among the Prophet’s names (Bukhārī, Book of the Virtues). The verse says that ʿĪsā gave this good news to Israel, and the Qur’an says elsewhere that the People of the Book find the Prophet “written with them in the Torah and the Injīl” (7:157) and recognise him “as they recognise their own sons” (2:146). The Qur’an’s claim, then, is that the Injīl given to ʿĪsā contained a prophecy of Muḥammad. Whether the four gospels still do is a separate question, and the Qur’an does not say that they do.

The Paraclete

The earliest Muslim biography of the Prophet, by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767), quotes John 15:23-27 in a Syriac-flavoured Arabic and identifies the Paraclete, whom Jesus promises will come after him, with Muḥammad; the passage is in Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Hishām, page 104. The argument has been made ever since. In John 14-16 Jesus promises “another Paraclete” (paraklētos, advocate, helper, comforter) who will come when he has gone, who will teach the disciples all things, remind them of what he said, bear witness to him, convict the world of sin, guide them into all truth, not speak on his own but speak what he hears, and glorify him (14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-15). Muslim writers point out that every one of these is said of Muḥammad in the Qur’an, and that a Paraclete who cannot come until Jesus goes (16:7) cannot be a spirit that was already present.

Scholarly consensus

Scholars of the New Testament identify the Paraclete with the Holy Spirit, because John 14:26 says so in as many words: “the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name”. Some Muslim writers since the Middle Ages have argued that the Greek originally read periklytos, “renowned, praised”, which translates Aḥmad, and that it was altered to paraklētos. No Greek manuscript of John has periklytos, and the word is not used elsewhere in the New Testament; the argument rests on the similarity of the two words and on nothing in the textual record. This website does not use it.

Where this page stands

The verse is the Qur’an’s own witness that ʿĪsā foretold a messenger, and Muslims hold it as revelation. Whether a trace of that prophecy survives in John’s Paraclete is a question of reading, and the honest position is this: John’s Paraclete is called the Holy Spirit by John, and the periklytos emendation has no manuscript support; but John’s Paraclete also does things no spirit does, he speaks what he hears, he does not come until Jesus has gone, and the gospel calls him “another” of the same kind as Jesus, which is to say a person. Readers may weigh that for themselves. What this website relies on is not a disputed Greek word but the Qur’an’s plain statement, and the plain fact that the gospels record a Jesus who spoke of one to come after him. The Gospel According to Islam gives the promise in section 24, with the Qur’anic passage “Jesus Prophesied the Coming of Muhammad” standing in the text.

Sources

Alfred Guillaume (trans.), The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, p. 104.
Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, Anchor Bible, appendix on the Paraclete.
Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr, commentary on 61:6 and 7:157.
Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, on the early Muslim use of the Paraclete passages.