The Rightly-Guided Injil

Glossary

Terms used across the website, in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and the vocabulary of New Testament scholarship. Arabic and Greek are transliterated; the Arabic definite article is given where the term is usually read with it.

Arabic and Qur’anic terms

  • Injīl: the revelation given to ʿĪsā (5:46); the Qur’anic word, from Greek euangelion through Ethiopic or Syriac. Always singular in the Qur’an; never “the gospels”.
  • Tawrāt: the Torah, the revelation given to Mūsā.
  • Zabūr: the Psalms given to Dāwūd (4:163; 17:55).
  • ʿĪsā ibn Maryam: Jesus son of Mary, the Qur’an’s name for him, used twenty-five times; “son of Maryam” is the Qur’an’s insistence on his humanity.
  • al-Masīḥ: the Messiah; the title the Qur’an gives ʿĪsā eleven times, always with “son of Maryam” or in a denial that the Messiah is God.
  • Kalima: word; used of ʿĪsā in 3:45 and 4:171, read by the commentators of the creative command “Be” (3:47).
  • Rūḥ: spirit. ʿĪsā is “a spirit from Him” (4:171); he is strengthened with rūḥ al-qudus, the holy spirit (2:87; 5:110), read by the commentators as the angel Jibrīl.
  • ʿAbd: servant; ʿĪsā’s own first word for himself (19:30), and the title the Qur’an prefers (4:172; 43:59).
  • al-Ḥawāriyyūn: the disciples of ʿĪsā (3:52; 5:111-112; 61:14).
  • Āya: sign, and also a verse of the Qur’an. ʿĪsā and his mother are “a sign” (23:50); the miracles are signs (3:49).
  • Taḥrīf: alteration. Taḥrīf al-maʿnā is alteration of meaning by false reading; taḥrīf al-lafẓ (or al-naṣṣ) is alteration of the text. The Qur’an charges some of the People of the Book with distorting words from their places (4:46; 5:13, 41) and with writing scripture by hand and calling it God’s (2:79). The position of this website is stated on the measure.
  • Muhaymin: guardian, overseer. The Qur’an is muhayminan ʿalayhi, a guardian over the earlier scripture (5:48); the word gives this website its measure.
  • Ahl al-Kitāb: the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, as recipients of earlier revelation.
  • Naṣārā: the Qur’an’s usual word for Christians, probably from Nazarene (compare Acts 24:5).
  • Shirk: associating a partner with God; the sin the Qur’an names in saying God is the Messiah or the third of three (5:72-73). Tawḥīd: the oneness of God.
  • Tawaffā: to take in full, usually to cause to die; the verb used of God’s taking ʿĪsā in 3:55 and 5:117, and the centre of the dispute over whether he died. See the end of his earthly mission.
  • Shubbiha lahum: “it was made to appear so to them” (4:157), of the crucifixion.
  • Aḥmad: “most praised”, the name of the messenger ʿĪsā foretold (61:6); from the same root as Muḥammad.
  • al-Māʾida: the table; the name of sūra 5, from the table sent down to the disciples (5:112-115).
  • Sūra: a chapter of the Qur’an. Ḥadīth: a report of the Prophet’s words or deeds, with its chain of transmitters. Tafsīr: Qur’anic commentary; al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) and Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) are the two most cited here.
  • Fiṭra: the natural disposition; in the ḥadīth, the practices that belong to it, including circumcision.

Greek and New Testament terms

  • Euangelion: good news; the gospel, first as the message (Mark 1:1; Galatians 1:6) and from the second century as a book.
  • Apostolos: one sent; apostle. In Acts 1:21-22 the qualification is to have been with Jesus from John’s baptism to the ascension.
  • Logos: word; the Word of John 1:1, which “was God” and “became flesh”.
  • Paraklētos: advocate, helper, comforter; the Paraclete of John 14-16, identified by John with the Holy Spirit (14:26) and by Muslim writers since Ibn Isḥāq with Muḥammad. Periklytos: renowned, praised; the reading some Muslim writers have proposed for it, which no manuscript has. See the good news of Aḥmad.
  • Christos: anointed; Greek for Messiah. Kyrios: Lord; used of God in the Greek Old Testament and of Jesus by Paul of Tarsus.
  • Anomia: lawlessness; what the Jesus of Matthew 7:23 condemns in the prophets he rejects.
  • Ekklēsia: assembly; church. Episkopos: overseer, bishop; presbyteros: elder; diakonos: servant, deacon.
  • Synoptic: “seen together”; Matthew, Mark and Luke, which can be set in parallel columns. The synoptic problem: the question of their literary relationship. See the synoptic problem.
  • Markan priority: the view that Mark was written first and used by Matthew and Luke. Q: the hypothetical sayings source shared by Matthew and Luke (German Quelle). Double tradition: the material in Matthew and Luke but not Mark. M and L: material found only in Matthew or only in Luke.
  • Farrer hypothesis: Luke used Matthew as well as Mark, so no Q. Griesbach (Two-Gospel) hypothesis: Matthew first, Luke second, Mark an abbreviation of both.
  • Pericope: a self-contained unit of gospel text. Pericope adulterae: the woman taken in adultery, John 7:53-8:11, absent from the oldest manuscripts. Longer ending of Mark: Mark 16:9-20, likewise. Comma Johanneum: the Trinitarian clause in 1 John 5:7, found in no Greek manuscript before the fourteenth century.
  • Textual criticism: the discipline of recovering the earliest text from the manuscripts. Codex: a bound book, as against a scroll; Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the two oldest complete Greek Bibles. Papyrus 52, 46, 66, 75: early papyri of John, the letters of Paul of Tarsus, John and Luke.
  • Undisputed letters: the seven letters scholars accept as Paul of Tarsus’s own. Deutero-Pauline: letters in his name whose authorship is disputed (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians). Pastoral Letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Pseudepigraphy: writing under another’s name. See the seven letters.
  • The pillars: James, Cephas and John, so called by Paul of Tarsus (Galatians 2:9). Cephas: Aramaic “rock”, Peter.
  • Canon: the list of books accepted as scripture; for the New Testament, fixed in the fourth century. Apocrypha: books outside it; for the gospels, the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter and others.
  • Diatessaron: “through the four”; Tatian’s harmony of the gospels, c. 170 CE, used by the Syriac churches for over two centuries.
  • Nag Hammadi: the site in Upper Egypt where thirteen Coptic codices were found in 1945, including the Gospel of Thomas. Coptic: the last stage of the Egyptian language, written in Greek letters.
  • Ebionites: early Jewish followers of Jesus who kept the law, held him to be a man and a prophet, and rejected Paul of Tarsus; from Hebrew ebyonim, “the poor”. Nazoreans: another name for Jewish Christians in the fathers. See the Ebionites.
  • Messianic secret: Jesus’s commands to silence in Mark, named by William Wrede in 1901. New perspective on Paul: the reading, since E. P. Sanders (1977), that Paul of Tarsus opposed Jewish boundary markers rather than good works.

Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac terms

  • Māshīaḥ (Hebrew): anointed; Messiah. Yēshūaʿ: the Aramaic form of his name. Abba (Aramaic): father (Mark 14:36). Talitha koum, Ephphatha, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani: Aramaic words preserved in Mark (5:41; 7:34; 15:34), which the author translates for Greek readers.
  • Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), which Jesus quotes as the first commandment (Mark 12:29).
  • Peshitta: the standard Syriac Bible. Estrangela: the oldest Syriac script. Syriac is the Aramaic of the churches nearest Arabia and the likely channel for much of what the Qur’an’s first hearers knew of Christianity.