The Rightly-Guided Injil

Section 6: The baptism, the temptation and the return to Nazareth

The Gospel According to Islam · Chapter 2, John and the Beginning of the Ministry · Section 6

The baptism, the temptation and the return to Nazareth. 41 verses.

6

1And Jesus was about thirty years of age,1 and he came from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him. 2And when he was baptized, he went up out of the water, and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and lighting upon him, 3And he heard a voice from heaven,2 saying, Thou art of the three I have chosen.3 4Then Jesus knew that this was the hour of his appointment4 as a messenger of God to Israel. 5That he may support and continue John’s work5 of reform of Israel and prepare the way for the light which will lighten the nations.

6But in his mind the devil started to put doubts about this.6 7And Jesus, perplexed, retired in the wilderness to be by himself; but the devil followed him. 8And when Jesus hungered, the devil said, If thou be a chosen of God, command this stone that it be made bread. 9But Jesus answered unto him, It is written that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 10Then the devil saith unto him, If thou be a chosen of God, go to Jerusalem, set thyself on the pinnacle of the temple,7 and cast thyself down; for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee, 11And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

12And Jesus, answering, said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not test the Lord thy God. 13And then the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and said unto him, All this power and glory I will give thee. 14If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine. 15And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. 16With the power of these words, the devil went away. 17And Jesus came to John and told him what happened to him, and John witnessed the truth of the voice from heaven.8 And he said unto him, Wait for the word of God.

18And Jesus wandered with John in Judea and they went as far as Aenon near Salim.9 19And John, fearing no one but God, boldly reproved Herod the Tetrarch of Galilee for marrying Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, 20Saying, it is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. 21And for many other things did John reprove Herod, and he also reproved Herodias for adultery. 22But Herod Antipas added yet this above all his evils, that he put John in prison.10 23Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee,11 and tarried in Nazareth, where he was brought up.12

24And on a sabbath day, as his custom was, he went to the synagogue. 25And the attendant stood up with the Scriptures waiting for someone to come and read a passage and explain it. 26And that sabbath day it was Jesus who stood up to read. 27And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esias; and when he opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 28The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath annointed me to preach the good news unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.

29To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God. 30And having read the passage, he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all those that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.13 31And he stood up again and began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. 32When people heard this, they said one to another, Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brothers James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas: And are not his sisters here with us?

33And they were offended that one among them should speak of himself as a prophet of God. 34But Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own city. 35But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias,14 when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; 36But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto a widow of Sarepta, a city of Sidon. 37And many lepers there were in Israel in the city of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

38And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 39And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him into the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.15 40But he escaped them and went his way; and leaving Nazareth he went towards Capernaum,16 a city of Galilee. 41Preaching on the way, Repent, for the day of the Lord is drawing near.17

  1. Luke places the birth at the census of Quirinius (2:1-2), in 6 or 7 CE, and makes Jesus “about thirty years of age” at his baptism (3:23), which would put the baptism about 34 to 36 CE; Matthew places the birth under Herod the Great, who died in March of 4 BCE (2:1). The two cannot both be right, and the table of the birth accounts sets them side by side. Shafaat preferred Luke’s census and so made Jesus near forty at the baptism. This website’s timeline follows the dating most scholars accept, a birth about 6 to 4 BCE and a ministry ending under Pilate about 30 CE, so the text here keeps Luke’s “about thirty”. Nothing in the Qur’an turns on the date. ↩
  2. Mark 1:9-11; Matt. 3:13-17; Luke 3:21-23. The Gospels and the subsequent Christian tradition show great discomfort at the fact that Jesus went to John to be baptized by him and that it was this baptism that was in some way instrumental in opening the heavens to him. This discomfort is apparent as one follows tradition from the first Gospel to the fourth and beyond. Mark, and the other three Gospels, find it necessary to make John prophesy that there will come “one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose” (1:7). Matthew apparently thought that after such a prophecy, it is not fitting that John should baptize Jesus without saying something in recognition of his inferiority and so he modified Mark 1:9-10 by putting the following words in the Baptist’s mouth, “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” (Matt. 3:14). Luke so rewords the whole incident as to suggest that the opening of heavens to Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove might have taken place after the imprisonment of John (and not immediately after the baptism) and as a result of Jesus’ own practice of praying (3:19-22). The unknown author of the fourth Gospel, probably realizing the inadequacy of the other Evangelists’ solutions to the problem, omits all reference to the baptism and instead embarks on a systematic polemic against the Baptist (John 1:6-8, 15, 19-34; 3:22-36). The climax of all this reaches in the “Pseudo Clementines” where animosity against the Baptist completely overturns the original high regard for him in the heart of Jesus and his disciples as well as his usefulness as the forerunner of the Messiah and he is declared to be the Antichrist! (Hom. II, 17; cf. Recog. III, 61).

    The Qur’an, which does not mention the baptism, presents both Jesus and John as great prophets without clearly suggesting the superiority of one over the other. It, indeed, does not seem to be profitable to concern ourselves with the question of who is superior to whom among the prophets, especially if the main object of our veneration is God and not His prophets, but in case of Jesus and John, the question is also not easy to settle. For, while Jesus was destined to have a tremendous influence on history, John was destined to be the prophet who influenced Jesus’ thinking and provided the platform for his work. Without John, there may not have been the Christ Jesus, and without Jesus, John’s mission may have died soon after his own death. In the Gospels, the stories of the births of Jesus and John, of their missions, and of their deaths are tied together in such a way that it is not possible to look at any one of them in isolation or to subordinate the work of one to the other. ↩
  3. This sentence, like the one used by the synoptists (“Thou art my beloved son, in thee I am well pleased”) under the influence of Psalm 2:7, implies Jesus’ appointment as the Messiah of Israel. It avoids the connotations that later came wrongly to be attached with the word “son” in relation to Jesus. ↩
  4. Quite early in life, Jesus had no doubt an idea that he was meant for a religious vocation. (See notes 49, 50.) The experience he undergoes at his baptism was part of the mental process to define that vocation more clearly. It lead Jesus to the awareness that he was meant for no ordinary role but was ready for taking up a role in the history of his people that was comparable even to that of great Israeli prophets of old, such as Elias and Elisha (cf. Luke 4:23-27). ↩
  5. The synoptic Gospels present Jesus repeating John’s preachings (Matt. 3:2, 4:17, and parallels) after the latter’s imprisonment. Only after John’s death do we find Jesus taking a more independent direction. It is fair to say that Jesus supported and continued John’s work, just as Jesus’ own work was later carried further by the prophet Muhammad. Jesus was of the three God had chosen. ↩
  6. The Qur’an says nothing of doubt in Jesus at his appointment, and the narrative attributes the doubts to the devil’s whispering, not to Jesus, as the gospels do (Matt. 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). ↩
  7. Matt. 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13. The two Gospels say that the devil took Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, which gives the devil a power over a messenger of God that the Qur’an does not allow him (15:42; 17:65). The point of the story is not lost if the whole incident is a dialogue in which Jesus answers the devil with scripture, and that is how it is told here. ↩
  8. If in Qur’an 3:39 “a word from God” is understood as referring to Jesus (cf. note 15), then we may conclude that John witnessed the truth of Jesus’ mission. The canonical Gospels, of course, also say that John affirmed that Jesus was the Messiah. But the most natural place for the Baptist’s witness is not before the baptism, as in the New Testament, but after the experience accompanying the baptism. The exact nature of the way John supported Jesus’ mission, and the time when he did so, cannot be determined from our sources. ↩
  9. All the synoptic gospels suggest that Jesus did not start his preaching until after he went to Galilee from Judea following John’s imprisonment (Mark 1:14; Matt. 4:12-17, Luke 3:19-20; 4:14-15). The Gospel of John, however, says that Jesus was by himself baptizing in Judea, making more disciples than John the Baptist, who was in Aenon, near Salim (3:22-24; 4:1). Clearly, the fourth Gospel is trying to show by this (and by omitting reference to the baptism of Jesus by John) that Jesus was on his own from the very beginning and had nothing to do with the Baptist or his movement. ↩
  10. Mark 6:17-18; Matt. 14:1-4; Luke 3:19-20. ↩
  11. If we accept this statement from Mark 1:14 and Matt. 4:12, then it is difficult to imagine Jesus carrying independent preaching in Judea as the fourth Gospel states (see note 63) since in that case he would have no reason to leave Judea for Galilee after hearing about (Matt. 4:12) John’s imprisonment. The truth seems to be that Jesus was in Judea only to be with his teacher, and when the latter was imprisoned, he saw no reason to continue his stay in Judea and, consequently, returned to his home in Nazareth. ↩
  12. Mark 6:1-6; Matt. 4:13; Luke 4:16. Mark and Luke say that Jesus had started his preaching before he came to Nazareth. Matthew, probably rightly, states explicitly that the preaching started afterwards (4:17). We should probably think that after his return to Nazareth, Jesus thought over things for a while. What will happen to the work John had started? What should be his own role in the new situation arising out of Herod’s action against John? Maybe he should assume the leadership of the Baptist movement and continue John’s preachings. But where and how can he start? As Jesus’ mind was occupied with such thoughts, the incident we record in the subsequent verses takes place. We have assigned to it the same place as Luke (4:16-30). The two other synoptists (Mark 6:1-6 and Matt. 13:54-58) delay it until the ministry is progressed quite far. In case of Matthew, it is easy to see why he delays the incident: he wants Jesus to start preaching in Capernaum to show that the light “sprang up” from the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim in fulfillment of what he regards Esias’ prophecy about the Messiah. ↩
  13. Jesus strongly felt that the Scriptural passage he had read talked about him personally. This seemed to him to be God’s way of answering the questions that have occupied his mind lately (see note 66) and His way of authorizing him to take up the leadership of John’s movement by starting to preach and to proclaim the day of the Lord. Jesus may be imagined sitting lost and overwhelmed with such thoughts. After a while, he emerges from his thoughts, stands up again, and before the attentive gaze of the audience, makes the terse statement of the next verse. ↩
  14. The way Jesus talks about Elias does not suggest that the latter might be in Herod’s prison under the name of John the Baptist. ↩
  15. The incident at Nazareth, in spite of its tragic overtones, provided valuable experience for Jesus. It had helped him, without his consciously planning it, to present himself as what he had to be, namely, a major religious leader and reformer of his people. It also brought him face to face with the external resistence he would encounter in his mission and had to get to know. ↩
  16. Mark 1:21; Matt. 4:13; Luke 4:31. Jesus naturally expected to be more favorably received by the followers of his imprisoned teacher. He therefore headed toward the country near Jordan where John used to preach and baptize and where those who believed in him were to be found in greater numbers. Mark 1:14-21 suggests that Jesus traveled and preached in the area before making Capernaum his temporary headquarters. ↩
  17. Mark 1:15; Matt. 4:17. Note that Jesus is repeating the message of John the Baptist. ↩

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