The Rightly-Guided Injil

Chapter 22: The end of the public ministry, and the vineyard

1 Then spoke Jesus to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:

2 All therefore that they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

3 All their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

4 And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

5 And greetings in the market places, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.1

6 And after two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread; and the chief priests, and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft.

7 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people;2 even though many of the people would not fight for Jesus.

8 And Jesus knowing that the chief priests and the scribes sought now to take him by force, he hid himself with his disciples.3

9 Thus ended the public ministry of this messenger of God to Israel. He came to his people with a sign from their Lord in that he would make for them the figure of a bird out of clay, and would breathe into it and it would become a bird by God’s leave:

10 And he would heal those born blind, and the lepers, and would quicken the dead by God’s leave:

11 And he would declare unto them what they ate, and what they stored in their houses.

12 Surely in this there was sign for them if they did have any faith.

13 But they received him not, save a few.

14 And the unbelievers plotted and God too planned, and God is the best of planners.4

15 He made Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the unbelievers plots a means of their own punishment and a means for the coming of the Saviour of the nations.5

16 And this is the parable concerning the children of Israel and the prophets sent to them.

17 A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the wine fat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.

18 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from them of the fruit of the vineyard.

19 And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.

20 And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.

21 And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.

22 The lord of the vineyard therefore came and destroyed the husbandmen, and gave the vineyard unto others.

23 So likewise God will take away the kingdom of heaven from the children of Israel because of the way they treated John and Jesus and other prophets, and He will give it to the children of Ishmael and Kedar:

24 As the Scriptures say, The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.

25 This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.6

26 Thus did God make the coming of Jesus a preparation for the Saviour of the nations, and Jesus did indeed announce his coming.

27 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

28 And the night Jesus hid himself from the world, he had a vision and he saw a fig tree, very old and without much fruit.

29 And he saw people coming to it, and seeking of its fruit that they might satisfy their hunger and thirst, but they find nothing but leaves.

30 And Jesus curseth the fig tree and it withered from the roots.

31 Then there came another planter from afar and he planted a tree that it might give fruit unto the end of time.

32 And people of all kinds came to it and ate of its fruit.7

From the Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas has no Jerusalem narrative, but it keeps sayings that belong to these days. Green agrees with the Qur’an, blue is beyond the measure.

  • Agrees Thomas 39. The Pharisees and scribes have hidden the keys of knowledge and neither enter nor let others enter. Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. (Compare Matthew 23:13; 10:16.)8
  • Agrees Thomas 40. A vine planted apart from the Father is unsound and will be uprooted and destroyed. (Compare Matthew 15:13.)9
  • Agrees Thomas 65. A vineyard owner sends servants to collect his share from tenants, who beat them. He sends his son, whom they kill. (Compare Mark 12:1-9.)10
  • Agrees Thomas 66. Show me the stone the builders rejected: it is the cornerstone. (Compare Mark 12:10.)11
  • Beyond the measure Thomas 71. Jesus will destroy this house and no one will be able to rebuild it. (Compare Mark 14:58.)12
  • Agrees Thomas 102. Woe to the Pharisees, who are like a dog sleeping in the oxen’s feed trough, neither eating nor letting the oxen eat.13
  • Agrees Thomas 104. Asked to pray and fast, Jesus asks what sin he has committed. When the bridegroom leaves the bridal chamber, then let them fast and pray. (Compare Mark 2:18-20.)14

Sayings that conflict with the Qur’an, and sayings that only repeat another, are listed with the reason for each on the page of sayings set aside.

← Chapter 21 · Contents · Chapter 23 →

Notes

  1. Mark 12:38-40; Matt. 23:1-6. Jesus still accepts the authority of Moses and has not the slightest idea that in a few days he will die to free his people from the Mosaic Law. He is only disapproving the rigidity, extremism and hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees in general. ↩
  2. Mark 14:1-2; Matt. 26:1-5; Luke 22:1-2. Temple authorities could not catch Jesus by words, so they plan to use force. The disturbance he had caused by casting the traders and money changers out of the temple was serious enough from the point of view of the authorities, but perhaps they may have ignored it were it not the fact that they found Jesus too clever and ambitious to be left alone. The canonical gospels imply that the chief priests had heard that Jesus might be planning to launch himself as the Messiah (Mark 14:61, etc). This might have come from hearsay generated by some of Jesus’ ambiguous claims of Messiahship or the disciples’ public profession of it, or the information might have come from someone close to Jesus, such as Judas Iscariot. In any case, the information had the effect of increasing the authorities’ concern about Jesus, and they decided to arrest him before he went too far. To minimize the public discontent, they planned a secret arrest for the last day of the festival, hoping that the pilgrims will disperse before the news of the action gets out. They did not want to wait for too long either because then Jesus might have left Judea and successfully avoided his arrest. ↩
  3. John 12:34-36. The Gospels do not say how Jesus came to know of the chief priests’s plot. But it seems that Jesus had disciples or sympathizers among the temple authorities (cf. John 18:16), and it was probably such a sympathetic priest who informed Jesus about plans of his arrest. This brought an end to Jesus’ dramatic performance during the last few days of the feast and put him on the defensive. His disappearance from the public scene made the authorities only more determined to arrest him. ↩
  4. Qur’an 3:49-54. Jesus’ public ministry has now come to an end. If at this point we look back at it, it does not appear very successful. We find that by and large Jesus’ people rejected or ignored him. The stories about his extraordinary thaumaturgical performances in Galilee and his bold speech and action in Jerusalem during the festival week won him some admiration, but for the most part this admiration was indifferent and temporary. In Galilee, he managed to make and keep only a few dozens of disciples, while, in Jerusalem, the attention he gained did not win him any real support: there was, for example, no uproar when he was arrested and condemned to death.

    Yet whatever little following Jesus left behind turned out to be sufficient to provide the desperately needed nucleus for crystalization of discontent within Judaism and in the Roman empire, and there evolved a political force that defeated the two systems that collaborated in trying to put an end to Jesus’ mission. This was the planning of God, the best of planners. ↩
  5. The force of opposition generated by Jesus’ work (see Note 4 above), however, did not lead to anything very positive until the advent of Islam. What the world needed was a basis for constructive integration of the experience of mankind to advance it on the path of spiritual and material development. Christianity could not provide such a basis. For one thing, it itself lacked integrity. For another, it was too exclusive to even see the need for such integration. Jesus was the only begotten son of God, he was the way, and salvation was possible only within the Church (John 1:18; 14:6; 15:4-7). Without Jesus and outside the church, there was darkness and death (John 15:4-7), not possibly valid experience to be integrated. Islam, on the other hand, by teaching true unity and transcendence of God and genuinely rising above exclusiveness was able to provide the much needed basis for constructive integration of human achievements. In this highly significant development Christianity, of course, played an important role. First, it prepared the way for Islam itself, and, second, it considerably enriched human experience even after the advent of Islam. ↩
  6. Cf. Mark 12:1-12, Matt. 21:33-46; Luke 20:9-18; Isa. 5:1-7. The synoptists no doubt look toward the Gentile mission (even though they have preserved ample evidence to show that the question of such a mission did not arise during Jesus’ life [cf. Note 1, Chapter 4]). ↩
  7. Cf. Mark 11:12-14, 20. Matt. 21:18-19. ↩
  8. Matthew 23:13; Luke 11:52. Qur’an 2:75-79 and 3:78 on those who conceal and distort the Book. ↩
  9. Matthew 15:13, which reads “my heavenly Father”. Qur’an 14:26: the evil word is like a bad tree, uprooted. ↩
  10. Mark 12:1-9; Matthew 21:33-41; Luke 20:9-16. The Qur’an records the killing of messengers (2:87; 3:21). It does not say that ʿĪsā was killed (4:157); the parable is read here of the people’s habit toward messengers. ↩
  11. Mark 12:10; Psalm 118:22. Compare the tradition of the brick that completes the house of the prophets (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book of Virtues). ↩
  12. Mark 14:58 gives this as the testimony of false witnesses. Thomas makes it Jesus’ own and leaves out the rebuilding. The Qur’an has no Temple saying. ↩
  13. Matthew 23:13; Luke 11:52. The image of the dog in the manger is an old Greek proverb. Qur’an 62:5 likens those who carry the Torah and do not act upon it to a donkey carrying books. ↩
  14. Mark 2:18-20; Matthew 9:14-15; Luke 5:33-35. Qur’an 2:183 prescribes fasting; the saying defers it rather than abolishing it. ↩