How this gospel was composed

Islamic position

This page sets out, step by step, how The Gospel According to Islam on this website was put together: whose text it is, how that text was arranged, where the Qur’anic passages and the sayings of Thomas come from, how the notes are numbered, and the rule that decided what was kept and what was set aside. Nothing in the gospel was composed in secret, and a reader who wants to check any part of it will find the source named here.

A practice with a history

A Muslim gospel is not a new idea. From the first centuries of Islam, Muslim scholars read, quoted and retold the gospels through the Qur’an. In the ninth century al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm (d. 860) reworked Matthew’s story this way. Medieval Muslim authors cite all four gospels; one survey counts more than 1,270 references across twenty writers. They did not treat the gospels as forbidden books. They treated them as books that contain the Injīl and other things besides, and they used the Qur’an to tell the two apart. This gospel continues that practice with the tools that now exist: a critical Greek text, dated manuscripts, and two centuries of research into who wrote the gospels and when.

The base text: Ahmad Shafaat, 1985

The words of the gospel are those of Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, The Gospel According to Islam (New York: Vantage Press, 1985). Shafaat set himself a clear task. He counted ninety-three verses of the Qur’an that refer to Jesus, and between them they speak to almost every part of his story: his family, birth and childhood, the nature of his person and his titles, his signs and his message, his rejection by the Jews, his death and exaltation, and the meaning of his work for Jewish history and for the history of the world. Shafaat took that outline and filled it out with material drawn mainly from the New Testament, sometimes changed to agree with the Qur’anic revelation, to form a gospel of about the size of Mark. He then added extensive notes to explain and support the text, with references to the Qur’an and the New Testament throughout, and he kept the results and debates of modern critical research in view as he wrote. His introduction, in which he explains why a new gospel is justified and asks the Christian reader to read it as he would read a book from another church, is given in full on the Introduction page.

Shafaat’s book has twenty-seven chapters. On this website they are the twenty-seven sections, in his order, under his titles, with two titles changed where the text changed. His text is the base of this gospel. The rule is the measure, and where his text or his notes departed from the Qur’an they have been changed. Scanning errors in the copy from which it was typed were corrected (stray marks, broken references such as “Micah 5:2” and “Mark 11:1-11”, “Bethsaida!” for Bethsaida), and in the notes “Paul” is written “Paul of Tarsus”, as on every other page of this website; those corrections are in the corrections log. The departures of substance are listed here.

Where this gospel departs from Shafaat

Shafaat wrote in 1985 as a historian as much as a believer, and in a few places his reconstruction follows his own reading of the sources rather than the Qur’an. This website takes the Qur’an as the measure of his text as of every other, and has changed the following. Each change is marked in the notes of the section where it falls.

• The end of the story, in sections 26 and 27. Shafaat proposed that a namesake, Jesus Barabbas, was crucified by a clerical error, that Jesus was released, walked to Emmaus and Galilee, fell ill and died, and that the reports of his rising grew from his escape. The text now follows the Qur’an: they did not kill him, nor crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them, and God raised him to Himself (4:157-158; 3:55), with the classical commentators’ reading that another was seen in his likeness, no name given for him, the empty tomb as Mark leaves it (16:1-8), the reports that went round as the sources record them, and his return before the Hour (4:159; 43:61). The notes to the end of the story are this website’s.
• The Messiah. Shafaat read the Qur’an’s “his name will be the Messiah” (3:45) as a reserve about the title, and his notes have Jesus “exploring” and “resolving” that he was the Messiah through a dream (his notes 19, 127, 129, 130, 132, 136, 148). The Qur’an gives the title without reserve, from the angel’s mouth, and those notes are rewritten: the reticence before the crowds is prudence, not doubt.
• The signs. Shafaat’s note on the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law called a miracle “as much a product of the faith of the miracle worker as of his subjects”. The Qur’an attributes every sign of Jesus to God’s permission (3:49; 5:110), and the note (74) says so. The notes on the temptation (60, 61) no longer read the devil’s words as thoughts in the mind of Jesus.
• The chronology. Shafaat dated the birth by Luke’s census and so made Jesus “approaching forty” at his baptism. The text reads “about thirty” (Luke 3:23), in step with the website’s timeline, and note 55 gives both datings.
• Words for God. Where Shafaat’s own composition had Jesus say “my heavenly Father” (section 10), and where he kept Mark’s “only the Father” (section 24), the text reads “the Lord”, as the Qur’an has Jesus speak (7:187; 19:36); the note says what Mark reads. Quotations of the gospels elsewhere, such as the Beatitudes, keep their wording. “Through thy seed I shall save the world” (section 3) is restored to Genesis 22:18 as it stands.
• Tone. Shafaat’s phrase “a messianic trinity” for the three figures Israel awaited (note 33), his note comparing the difference over Muhammad to the difference over the pope (22), and his note on what Christianity “lacked” (176) are rewritten in the plain terms this website uses everywhere. The compiler’s footnote on the substitute at the cross, on the Qur’anic passages, is aligned with the commentators: the Qur’an names no one.

The arrangement: The Narrative of Jesus, Son of Mary

Shafaat printed his gospel in chapter and verse, with the notes at the back. The text here follows a second arrangement of the same material, The Narrative of Jesus, Son of Mary, in which the verses run on as paragraphs, the twenty-seven sections are grouped into six chapters, and the notes stand at the foot of the section they belong to. The six chapters are:

1. Birth and Childhood (sections 1 to 4): the family of Amran, Zacharias and John; the annunciation and the birth; the promised messenger, Joseph and the creation of Jesus; the presentation in the temple and the visit to Jerusalem.
2. John and the Beginning of the Ministry (sections 5 to 8): John the Baptist; the baptism, the temptation and the return to Nazareth; Capernaum; the leper, the sabbath and the Beatitudes.
3. The Ministry in Galilee (sections 9 to 13): publicans and fasting; the traditions of the elders; the blind man and the Samaritan woman; Jairus’s daughter and the death of John; the twelve and their mission.
4. Preaching, Signs and the Disciples (sections 14 to 18): the bird of clay and Beelzebub; signs, the rich man and Lazarus; the table from heaven, Caesarea Philippi and the vision; the parables of the leaven and the tares; greatness, the Samaritans and the children.
5. Jerusalem (sections 19 to 24): the rich man and the request of James and John; the entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple; the questions in the temple; the vineyard; the last supper and the Man of perfection; the hour and the promise of the Counsellor.
6. Arrest, Trial and Aftermath (sections 25 to 27): Gethsemane, the arrest and Peter’s denial; the trial, Barabbas and the raising of Jesus; the empty tomb, the reports and the return.

The narrative opens with the Opening of the Qur’an, al-Fātiḥa, and closes with the Qur’an’s own statements on the oneness of God: the Throne Verse (2:255), the Beautiful Names (59:22-24) and Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112). A gospel written in the light of the Qur’an begins and ends where the Qur’an does, with God alone. Each section page carries a line naming its chapter, the text in paragraphs, its notes, and links to the previous section, the next, and the contents. A visitor can read the whole from section 1 to section 27 without returning to the index.

The Qur’anic passages set in the story

Shafaat’s text paraphrases the Qur’an where the story needs it. The arrangement used here goes a step further and sets the Qur’an’s own words into the narrative at the points where they fall. The passages come from Alham Ahmed’s compilation The Gospel According to the Quran: Jesus and His Teachings (Toronto: Noor Lal Foundation, 2021), which gathers 145 verses on Jesus and his teachings from thirteen chapters of the Qur’an, in 45 passages, each under its own heading. The translation is The Clear Quran by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, which the compiler acknowledges using with the permission of the Al-Furqaan Foundation.

Twenty-two of these passages stand inside the sections, under the compilation’s headings: “Jesus Is a Messenger” and “Jesus and His Followers” where the disciples are called; “Do Not Say Trinity”, “One God, Not Three” and “Jesus Is Not God” where the gospel reaches the question of his nature; “Jesus Prophesied the Coming of Muhammad” at the promise of the Counsellor; “Conspiracy Against Jesus” and “Jesus Was Neither Killed nor Crucified” at the arrest and the trial; “God’s Favour upon Jesus” and “Jesus Denying Claim to Divinity” after the reports of the empty tomb. Every verse is numbered by chapter and verse in a green mark, so a reader always knows when the Qur’an is speaking and when the gospel text is. The full compilation, in the order of the Qur’an, is on The Qur’an on Jesus, and the same ninety-three verses are grouped by theme on Jesus in the Qur’an.

The notes

There are 237 notes. Most are Shafaat’s own; those this website rewrote are listed above, with the reason, and the notes to the last three sections are the website’s. Each note is printed at the foot of the text of the section in which its marker appears, in small type under a rule, as in a reference Bible, and numbered from 1 on each page. A raised number in the text leads to the note; an arrow at the end of the note leads back. Where a note refers to another (“see note 19”, “notes 49 and 50”), the reference is a link to that note on its own page. The notes give the Qur’anic and New Testament passages behind each sentence of the text, say where and why Shafaat departed from a gospel source, and set out the critical scholarship that bears on a passage, with the dates and manuscripts that matter. They are the apparatus of the gospel, and a reader who wants to know why a sentence reads as it does should start there.

The Gospel of Thomas

One body of material is this website’s own addition. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings with no narrative: no birth, no miracles, no arrest, no crucifixion. Scholars date it between the late first century and the middle of the second, and about half its sayings have a parallel in Matthew, Mark or Luke. It was not available to the classical Muslim writers, and Shafaat did not use it. Every one of its sayings was tested against the measure below, and the result is recorded saying by saying.

Seventy sayings are placed in the gospel, under the heading “From the Gospel of Thomas” at the end of the section they belong to, each with its saying number, a colour mark and a note giving its canonical parallel and the Qur’anic verse it agrees with or the reason for its mark. Forty agree with the Qur’an as the measure and are marked green. Sixteen are beyond the measure, meaning that the Qur’an says nothing either way; they are included and marked blue. Fourteen are unclear, because the text is damaged or the sense is not settled; they are included and marked gold. The other forty-four are set aside: thirty-seven because they say what the Qur’an denies or deny what it affirms, and seven because they only repeat a saying already used. Each is listed with its reason on the page of sayings set aside. The saying numbers follow the standard edition; the summaries are this website’s own, prepared from Thomas O. Lambdin’s translation in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Brill, 1988).

One rule of reading is worth stating. Thomas often says “the Father” where Matthew says “heaven” or Mark says “God”. Where the canonical parallel makes the same point in other words, the saying is used and the note says so. A saying is set aside only when “Father” carries a claim of sonship or shared nature, which the Qur’an rejects (5:18; 19:35; 112:3). The Qur’an itself does not call God “Father”, so this is a reading and not a settled rule, and it is applied in the open.

The early witnesses to the substitution

Three further passages are woven in, at section 26, where the gospels have Simon of Cyrene carry the cross. All three are early Christian witnesses to what the Qur’an states in 4:157, that the crucifixion was made to appear otherwise to those who carried it out. The Gospel of Basilides, if it was a gospel, is lost; what Basilides taught in Alexandria in the early second century is known only from Irenaeus, who reported it around 180 CE to condemn it: that Simon was made to look like Jesus and Jesus like Simon, that Simon was crucified in his place, and that Jesus was not crucified but returned to the One who sent him. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, a third-century Coptic text found at Nag Hammadi, has the risen Christ say that he did not die in reality but in appearance, that another drank the gall, another was struck with the reed, another, Simon, bore the cross, and another wore the crown of thorns. The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, from the same codex, has Peter watch the crucifixion and ask who is on the tree, and the Saviour answer that the one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is a substitute made in his likeness, while the living one stands near, released. Tested against the measure, the substitution itself agrees with the Qur’an and with the reading of the classical commentators, and it is kept, marked green, in each case with a note naming the source and its character. What surrounds it is set aside, and the notes say exactly what: the laughter all three texts attribute to Jesus, which is the Gnostic contempt for the body and not the Qur’an’s messenger of mercy; the Seth and Peter texts’ denial that he had a real body; the Peter text’s division of souls into immortal and doomed, and its quarrel with bishops; and the Seth text’s mockery of Adam, Abraham, Moses and the prophets, and of the God who says there is no other beside Him, which the Qur’an makes its first truth. The three texts are kept as witnesses, not as teaching. The rule for Thomas applies to them: what conflicts with the Qur’an is left out, and the reader is told.

The measure, applied

Beneath the text of fourteen of the sections stands a block headed “From the commentaries”: what the classical Muslim commentators wrote on the Qur’anic verses that section rests on, each work given in full and folded away until opened. Eight works are translated, from al-Ṭabarī in the tenth century to al-Saʿdī in the twentieth, on the verses that tell the story of Jesus; the same texts, gathered by passage, are on the classical commentaries. They are the Islamic record of how these verses were read, and the gospel is meant to be read with them.

Everything above answers to one rule, stated in full on the measure. The Qur’an judges which gospel material is kept. Where gospel material agrees with the Qur’an, it is used. Where it contradicts the Qur’an, it is set aside, and the page says so. Where the Qur’an is silent, material is used only if mainstream critical scholarship treats it as early, and it is labelled as such. The Qur’an calls itself a guardian over the earlier scripture (muhaymin, 5:48), and that is the office it holds here. The rule is not a licence to keep what is congenial. A saying of Thomas that is pleasant but conflicts with the Qur’an is set aside, and the reason is printed; a gospel passage that is hard but agrees with the Qur’an is kept.

The colour marks make the rule visible. Green means the material agrees with the Qur’an. Blue means the Qur’an is silent and the material is kept on the strength of its attestation. Gold means the material is unclear and is kept with that warning. Red means conflict, and grey means repetition; material under those two marks appears only on the set-aside page, never in the gospel. A reader can therefore see at a glance, on any page, how much of what is in front of them the Qur’an confirms, how much it allows, and how much it leaves open.

What this gospel is not

No manuscript of the Injīl given to ʿĪsā survives, and this website does not claim to have found one, so this is not a translation. A harmony of the four gospels keeps everything, and this gospel sets things aside. A historian’s life of Jesus weighs every source alike and has no place for revelation. This is a gospel in the sense Shafaat gave the word: the story of Jesus told so as to bring out its meaning for faith and for history, written in the light of the revelation given to Muhammad. The Christian reader is asked to read it as he would read a book from a church other than his own, and to judge it by the sources it names.

Where each part comes from

• Text and notes of sections 1 to 27, and the Introduction: Ahmad Shafaat, The Gospel According to Islam (New York: Vantage Press, 1985).
• Arrangement in six chapters, paragraphs and running notes: The Narrative of Jesus, Son of Mary.
• Qur’anic passages and their headings: Alham Ahmed, The Gospel According to the Quran: Jesus and His Teachings (Toronto: Noor Lal Foundation, 2021), in The Clear Quran, translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab (Al-Furqaan Foundation).
• Gospel of Thomas sections, colour marks and their notes: this website, from Thomas O. Lambdin’s translation in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988).
• The witnesses to the substitution, at section 26: this website, paraphrasing Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24.4 (Basilides), the Second Treatise of the Great Seth (NHC VII, 2, after Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons) and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII, 3, after James Brashler and Roger A. Bullard), both in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Brill, 1988); on the lost gospel, Bart D. Ehrman, “The Lost Gospel of Basilides”, The Bart Ehrman Blog, 1 July 2023, and J. Arendzen, “Basilides”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (1907).
• Section titles, cross-links, the pages around the gospel, and every correction: this website. See the Credits page and the corrections log.
• On the classical practice: Schaffner, dissertation ch. 8 (Ohio State, 2016); Accad, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 14 (2003).

If any sentence of the gospel seems to you to break the rule stated here, the contact page says how to report it. A reported error is corrected on the page and recorded in the log, with what the page said and what it says now.

Questions about how the gospel was composed

Whose words are in The Gospel According to Islam?

Ahmad Shafaat’s, from his 1985 book, for the Introduction and all twenty-seven sections and their 235 notes. The Qur’anic passages are in Mustafa Khattab’s Clear Quran translation, from Alham Ahmed’s compilation. The Gospel of Thomas sections and their notes are this website’s own, from Lambdin’s translation.

What was changed in Shafaat’s text?

Scanning errors in the copy it was typed from, listed in the corrections log; “Paul” in the notes written “Paul of Tarsus”; and the departures listed under “Where this gospel departs from Shafaat” above, where his text or notes conflicted with the Qur’an as the measure: chiefly the end of the story, which now follows 4:157-158 and 3:55, the notes on the Messiah and on the signs, and the chronology of the baptism. Everything else is his.

Where do the Qur’anic passages in the gospel come from?

From The Gospel According to the Quran (Alham Ahmed, 2021), which gathers 145 verses on Jesus in 45 passages under headings. Twenty-two passages stand inside the sections where they fall in the story; all of them are on The Qur’an on Jesus in the order of the Qur’an.

How were the sayings of Thomas chosen?

Every one of the 114 was tested against the measure. Seventy are placed in the gospel: forty agree with the Qur’an, sixteen are beyond it, fourteen are unclear, each with a colour mark and a note. Forty-four are set aside, thirty-seven for conflict and seven for repeating another, with the reason for each on the set-aside page.

What do the colour marks mean?

Green: agrees with the Qur’an. Blue: beyond the measure, the Qur’an says nothing either way. Gold: unclear, the text or sense is uncertain. Red: conflicts with the Qur’an. Grey: repeats a saying already used. Red and grey appear only on the set-aside page, never in the gospel.

Is this a translation of the lost Injīl?

No. No manuscript of the Injīl given to Jesus survives and this website does not claim to have one. This is a gospel in Shafaat’s sense, the story of Jesus told to bring out its meaning for faith and history, written in the light of the Qur’an, with every source named so that the reader can check it.