Islamic position
Four published articles are used to argue about the Gospel and Islam. Each is answered here: the claim is stated as the article makes it, then answered. The replies rest on the Qur’an as the measure and on the manuscript record. Where an article is right, this page says so.
Where the four articles disagree with one another
- Stand to Reason says the Injīl of the Qur’an is “most likely” the four gospels.
- Entrusted to the Dirt says the Qur’an does not know there are four gospels, and that its Injīl is “almost certainly” Tatian’s single harmonised gospel, the Diatessaron.
- The Oasis video, answered on the objections page, says the Gospel is the message of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and not a book at all.
- Samuel Green says the charge that the Bible has been changed “is not what the Qur’an teaches”. John MacArthur says Islam “undermines and denies every fundamental doctrine” of the Bible.
Four Christian writers give three different answers to the question what the Injīl is. They cannot all be right. The disagreement shows that the question is not settled by pointing at the four gospels.
1. Samuel Green, “Introducing the Gospel to a Muslim” (The Gospel Coalition Australia)
Claim. Muslims do not believe all the prophets. They believe one man, Muhammad, and what he says about the prophets. “Islam is the religion of one man telling you what to believe about the prophets.”
Islamic position
Reply. The Qur’an presents itself as revelation from God, not as one man’s opinion: “He does not speak from desire. It is only a revelation revealed” (53:3-4; compare 69:40-43). The claim assumes the point it needs to prove.
The same argument runs the other way. Christians believe what Paul of Tarsus, whose name stands on thirteen letters, and four anonymous gospels say about Jesus, and they receive the list of books through bishops and councils. Athanasius’ Easter letter of 367 CE is the first list of the twenty-seven books in the form Christians now use. No Christian reads the prophets without a church telling them what they mean. Paul of Tarsus writes that Christ is the end of the law (Romans 10:4). ʿĪsā, in the Qur’an, confirms it (3:50).
Claim. Show a Muslim the Bible’s table of contents, with prophets such as Isaiah, Hosea and Amos, to prove that Muslims do not believe all the prophets.
Reply. The Qur’an says God sent messengers it names and messengers it does not name (4:164; 40:78). A Muslim believes in Isaiah and Amos by that rule, without having read a book under their names. Belief in a prophet does not depend on owning a particular canon.
Claim. The charge that the Bible has been changed “is not what the Qur’an teaches”.
Reply. The Qur’an does charge some of the People of the Book with distortion: they alter words from their places (4:46; 5:13; 5:41), and they write the book with their own hands and say it is from God (2:79). Scholars have read this as distortion of meaning (taḥrīf al-maʿnā) and of text (taḥrīf al-lafẓ). Green is right that the Qur’an does not say every book was wholly replaced, and this site does not rest its case on that charge.
2. John MacArthur, “The Gospel According to Islam” (Grace to You)
Claim. “Jesus was merely a man.”
Reply. The Qur’an calls him the Messiah, a word from God and a spirit from Him (4:171), born of a virgin (3:47; 19:20-21), who spoke in the cradle (19:30) and healed the blind and raised the dead by God’s permission (3:49). A servant and a messenger, yes. “Merely”, no.
Claim. Islam rejects the God of the Bible.
Reply. The Qur’an says to the People of the Book: “our God and your God is one” (29:46). It rejects the Trinity and says so (4:171; 5:73). It does not claim a different God.
Claim. Only Muslims can be saved.
Reply. The Qur’an promises reward to those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good, among Muslims, Jews, Christians and Sabians (2:62; 5:69). Scholars read these verses in different ways, but the text is there. The Qur’an also calls Ibrāhīm a muslim (3:67) and the disciples of ʿĪsā muslims (3:52).
Claim. “The only sure pathway to heaven is killing and being killed in jihad, a holy war.”
Reply. The article cites no verse and no tradition, and none says this. The Qur’an says that whoever kills a soul unjustly is as if he had killed all mankind (5:32), forbids compulsion in religion (2:256), and tells believers to deal justly and kindly with those who do not fight them (60:8). It tells sinners not to despair of God’s mercy (39:53) and says believers who do good “shall have no fear” (2:277). The claim confuses the teaching of the Qur’an with the acts of men who claim its name.
Claim. “There is no atonement in Islam, no forgiveness, no savior, and no assurance of eternal life.”
Reply. The Qur’an teaches forgiveness: “God forgives all sins” to the one who repents (39:53; 4:110; 25:70). It teaches that no soul bears another’s burden (6:164; 53:38), so forgiveness comes by repentance and not by atonement. Whether atonement is needed is the point in dispute. It is not a proof that forgiveness is missing.
Claim. Islam denies that Jesus died on the cross and rose.
Reply. The denial is stated on this site, with its verses and its range of readings, on the end of his earthly mission. It is a claim about what happened, and the article gives no evidence against it beyond the gospels’ own testimony.
3. Entrusted to the Dirt, “Why the Qur’an Doesn’t Seem to Know There Are Four Gospels” (21 May 2025)
Claim. The Qur’an assumes every prophet brought a book. That is not true of Jesus, who “didn’t come revealing a book from heaven”. His disciples later wrote the four gospels.
Reply. This states the Qur’anic complaint and calls it an error. The Qur’an says the Injīl was given to ʿĪsā (5:46). The article agrees that what Christians have is four accounts by others. That is the point of the Islamic Dilemma, answered: the book given to him is not the books in the churches. Luke itself says that many had written before him and that he used what they handed down (1:1-4).
Claim. Muhammad “likely didn’t have access to a Bible he could read”, but drew on oral tradition.
Reply. This is an assertion about the Qur’an’s source, made without evidence. The same reasoning would trace any revelation to its surroundings. It also undoes the Stand to Reason article, which holds that the Qur’an refers to the four gospels as the Christians then held them. A writer who never saw a Bible could not refer to four books in it.
Claim. The Qur’an’s Injīl is “almost certainly” the Diatessaron, the harmonised gospel Tatian made in Syriac about 170 CE.
Reply. Five points.
- The article quotes a paper, “ʿIsa and Yasūʿ: The Origins of the Arabic Names for Jesus”, with no link and no page. This site has not been able to verify the quotation. In any case it is a modern scholar’s inference, not evidence.
- Tatian’s harmony was used in Syriac. The Christians of the Hijaz are poorly documented, and “almost certainly” goes further than the record.
- If the claim is true, it grants that the gospel in use in that region was one book and not four. That is the Qur’anic picture.
- The Syriac churches later replaced the Diatessaron with the separate gospels, and Rabbula of Edessa had copies removed in the fifth century. The article itself says Tatian came to be called a heretic. On this account the Qur’an’s Injīl would be the work of a man the church condemned.
- The article’s own lesson is that harmonising “loses the unique message and emphasis” of each gospel. That grants that the four differ in their message, which is what the discrepancy tables record.
4. Stand to Reason, “Get to the Gospel with Muslims”
Claim. “There is no historical evidence whatsoever that Jesus received or was given any document.”
Reply. True, and not a difficulty for the Qur’an. The Qur’an speaks of revelation given to ʿĪsā (5:46), not of a codex found in an archive. The gospels themselves report him saying that his teaching was not his own but of the one who sent him (John 7:16). That no book from him survives agrees with the claim that the Injīl was not preserved as such.
Claim. The Injīl the Christians held in the seventh century was the four gospels, so the Qur’an refers to them.
Reply. The Entrusted to the Dirt article says the opposite. Qur’an 7:157 says the unlettered prophet is found “written with them in the Torah and the Gospel”. The four gospels do not name him. Either they are not the Injīl the Qur’an has in view, or their meaning has been altered (see the good news of Aḥmad).
Claim. The Qur’an commands obedience to the Injīl (5:47; 5:68; 4:136), so the Injīl cannot be corrupted.
Reply. Qur’an 5:47 tells the people of the Injīl to judge by “what God has revealed in it”. That is a command to follow the revelation as given. It does not certify every text in circulation, and the same Qur’an speaks of distortion (2:79; 5:13; 5:41). The argument also proves too much. If the four gospels as they stand were what 5:47 commands, the Qur’an would be certifying accounts it denies on the crucifixion (4:157). It cannot be used to certify what it contradicts.
Scholarly consensus
Claim. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus date from a few hundred years before the Qur’an, and the Bibles we have today are consistent with them.
Reply. The two codices show a stable text from the fourth century, about three hundred years after Jesus. They are not consistent with every Bible in use. Both omit John 7:53-8:11, the woman taken in adultery, and Mark 16:9-20 (Vaticanus leaves a blank column after 16:8). No Greek manuscript earlier than the fourteenth century has 1 John 5:7 as the King James Version prints it. Faithful copying of a text is a different question from whether that text is the Injīl (see Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament).
Islamic position
Claim. Ask a Muslim: “Are you 100% certain you are going to Heaven?” None will say yes.
Reply. This is a question, not an argument. The Qur’an teaches hope and fear together: God’s mercy encompasses all things (7:156) and believers who do good “shall have no fear” (2:277), yet no one is to presume on it. Certainty about one’s own judgment is not the test of a religion. It also says nothing about what the Injīl is.
What follows for this site
- The question is what ʿĪsā was given, and the four articles do not agree on the answer.
- The case is argued from the Qur’an as the measure and from the manuscripts, not from the charge that every book was replaced.
- The Islamic Dilemma in its recent secular form, with its two steps and four exits, and the historical-critical reply to it, are answered on The Islamic Dilemma without theology.
- A fairly stated objection is answered on the objections page. A short form is in the FAQs.
Sources
- Samuel Green, “Introducing the Gospel to a Muslim”, The Gospel Coalition Australia.
- John MacArthur, “The Gospel According to Islam”, Grace to You.
- “Why the Qur’an Doesn’t Seem to Know There Are Four Gospels”, Entrusted to the Dirt, 21 May 2025.
- “Get to the Gospel with Muslims”, Stand to Reason.
- Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament.