Islamic position
The Injīl is the revelation God gave to ʿĪsā son of Maryam, Jesus: “We gave him the Injīl, in which is guidance and light, confirming the Torah that was before it” (5:46).
It is one of 4 scriptures the Qur’an names. The Tawrāt went to Mūsā, the Zabūr to Dāwūd, the Injīl to ʿĪsā and the Qur’an to Muḥammad, and belief in all of them is part of Muslim faith (2:136; 4:136).
The meaning of Injil
Scholarly consensus
Injīl (إنجيل) is the Arabic word for “gospel”, so in English the Injīl is the Gospel. Arthur Jeffery traces it in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān to the Greek euangelion, “good news”, which reached Arabic through Ethiopic wangel or Syriac ewangeliyōn.
Injil, Injeel and Enjil are English spellings of one word, said in-JEEL. With the article it is al-Injīl.
Arabic-speaking Christians call each of the four gospels an injīl (Injīl Mattā, the Gospel of Matthew), and in Malay and Indonesian Injil is the everyday word for a gospel (Injil Matius). The Qur’an keeps the word for something narrower: the revelation given to one prophet.
The Injīl in the Qur’an
The Qur’an names the Injīl 12 times: 3:3, 3:48, 3:65, 5:46, 5:47, 5:66, 5:68, 5:110, 7:157, 9:111, 48:29 and 57:27. Sidney Griffith notes that it is always singular; the plural anājīl, “gospels”, never occurs.
What the verses say of it:
- God sent it down, with the Torah, as guidance for people (3:3), and gave it to ʿĪsā (5:46; 57:27).
- ʿĪsā was taught the Book and wisdom, the Torah and the Injīl (3:48; 5:110).
- It is guidance and light, and it confirms the Torah before it (5:46).
- Its people are to judge by what God revealed in it (5:47), and to uphold it (5:66; 5:68).
- The Prophet is found written in the Torah and the Injīl that are with them (7:157). The promise of Paradise to those who strive is in the Torah, the Injīl and the Qur’an (9:111).
- The believers are likened in the Injīl to a seed that puts out its shoot and grows strong (48:29). Mark keeps the likeness: the seed that grows by itself, “first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:26-29).
- God placed compassion and mercy in the hearts of those who followed ʿĪsā (57:27).
Each passage is read verse by verse on Jesus in the Qur’an.
Is the Injīl the Bible?
The Bible is a library: 66 books in Protestant editions, 73 in Catholic ones. The Injīl is one revelation, given to one prophet.
The four gospels themselves remember it. Jesus “came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God”, and told his hearers to “believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15), decades before any of the four was written.
The nearest the Bible comes to that gospel is the four books, and even they are books about Jesus. The New Testament around them holds 27 documents, 14 of them letters attributed to Paul of Tarsus. The Old Testament holds the Torah and the Psalms, which the Qur’an calls the Tawrāt and the Zabūr (see the Torah in Islam).
Scholarly consensus
Raymond Brown dates the gospels between about 70 and 100 CE, decades after the ministry. All four are anonymous and written in Greek, and Luke says he compiled his from earlier accounts (Luke 1:1-4). Their authors and dates are on the Five Gospels.
Islamic position
Muslims hold that the gospels carry the Injīl in part, beside other material, and that the Qur’an, guardian over the earlier scripture (5:48), is the measure of which is which. That gap between the revelation and the books about it is the answer to the Islamic Dilemma.
In what language was the Injīl revealed?
The Qur’an says only that every messenger was sent in the language of his people (14:4).
Scholarly consensus
His people spoke Aramaic, and so did he: Joseph Fitzmyer’s survey of the languages of first-century Palestine makes Aramaic the everyday speech of Galilee. Mark keeps some of his Aramaic words: talitha koum, “little girl, get up” (5:41), ephphatha, “be opened” (7:34), abba, “father” (14:36), and the cry from the cross (15:34).
The gospels were written in Greek. So the oldest written record of his teaching is already a translation.
How was the Injīl revealed?
Islamic position
The Qur’an says God gave it to him (5:46; 57:27) and taught it to him (3:48). The infant ʿĪsā says: “He has given me the Book and made me a prophet” (19:30).
A report in the Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (16984), from Wāthila ibn al-Asqaʿ, puts the revelations in Ramaḍān: the scrolls of Ibrāhīm on its first night, the Torah on the 6th, the Injīl on the 13th and the Qur’an on the 24th. Ibn Kathīr cites it on 2:185; al-Albānī graded it ḥasan, and others have faulted its chain.
Was the Injīl written down?
The Qur’an calls it a book (kitāb, 19:30) and speaks of the Injīl “with them” in the Prophet’s day (7:157).
Scholarly consensus
No writing by Jesus survives, and none is reported. His sayings reached the gospels by word of mouth and through earlier collections: the sayings source scholars call Q (see the synoptic problem) and the sayings kept in the Gospel of Thomas.
What happened to the Injīl?
Islamic position
The Qur’an says that some of those given it forgot part of what they were reminded of (5:14), and that some of the People of the Book wrote scripture with their own hands (2:79). Camilla Adang’s survey of 9 Muslim authors found that most held the meaning had been changed and the text itself had not.
The Injīl survives in part in the canonical gospels, in Tatian’s harmony of the four, in the Jewish-Christian gospels and in the oral tradition behind them. For Muslims the Injīl is the revelation itself, and those books carry it in part.
The Gospel According to Islam reads them that way, with the Qur’an as the measure.
Is the Gospel of Barnabas the Injīl?
Scholarly consensus
The Gospel of Barnabas is a late work. It survives only in Italian and Spanish manuscripts of the sixteenth century, and its Jesus says the jubilee “now cometh every hundred years”: the interval Pope Boniface VIII set in 1300, and which Clement VI cut to 50 years in 1343.
It also gives the title Messiah to Muḥammad, where the Qur’an gives it to ʿĪsā alone (3:45; see the Messiah in Islam). The 52-page Syriac manuscript that Turkish newspapers linked to it in 2012 has not been published, and no test of its age has been released.
Its part in the story of the crucifixion is on the end of his earthly mission.
The Qur’an and the Bible compared
The Qur’an is 114 surahs given to one messenger over about 23 years (610-632), in Arabic, and speaks throughout as the word of God. The Bible is 66 to 73 books by many hands, in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, written over about a thousand years; most of it is narrative, law, poetry and letters about God and the prophets.
They agree on one God, on the prophets from Ādam to Mūsā and ʿĪsā, on the virgin birth and on the Day of Judgement. They part on whether Jesus is God or His son (5:72; 19:35), on the Trinity (4:171), on the crucifixion (4:157) and on whether one soul bears another’s sin (53:38).
Each point of difference is weighed on the measure. The charge that the Qur’an cannot affirm the Bible and correct it at once is answered on the Islamic Dilemma.
Questions about the Injīl
What is the Injil in English?
The Gospel. Injīl is the Arabic form of the Greek euangelion, “good news”, and in the Qur’an it names the revelation God gave to Jesus (5:46).
What does Injeel mean?
Gospel, or good news. Injeel and Injil are two English spellings of the Arabic Injīl, the scripture given to ʿĪsā, Jesus (5:46; 57:27).
Who was the Injil revealed to?
To ʿĪsā son of Maryam, Jesus: “We gave him the Injīl” (5:46; 57:27). The Torah went to Mūsā, the Zabūr to Dāwūd and the Qur’an to Muḥammad.
Is the Injil the same as the Bible?
The Injīl is the revelation given to Jesus. The Bible is a collection of 66 to 73 books, and its four gospels were written about Jesus by others, decades later; Muslims hold that they contain the Injīl in part.
Is the Injil the New Testament?
The New Testament is 27 documents, 14 of them letters attributed to Paul of Tarsus. The Injīl is the message given to Jesus himself, which its four gospels carry in part.
How many times is the Injil mentioned in the Qur’an?
12 times, always in the singular: 3:3, 3:48, 3:65, 5:46, 5:47, 5:66, 5:68, 5:110, 7:157, 9:111, 48:29 and 57:27.
Does the Qur’an say the Injil is corrupted?
It says that some of its people forgot part of what they were reminded of (5:14), and that some of the People of the Book wrote scripture with their own hands (2:79). The same book tells the people of the Injīl to judge by what God revealed in it (5:47). How the two fit is set out on the Islamic Dilemma.
Is the Gospel of Barnabas the Injil?
It is a late work, known only from sixteenth-century Italian and Spanish manuscripts, and it calls Muḥammad the Messiah, a title the Qur’an gives to ʿĪsā alone (3:45).
What is Injil Sharif?
“The noble Injīl”: the name with an Arabic word of honour, as in Qur’an Sharif.
Where can I read the Injil?
In the gospels, read with the Qur’an as the measure of what in them is his. This website sets them out that way in The Gospel According to Islam.
Sources
- The Qur’an: 2:79, 136, 185; 3:3, 45, 48, 65; 4:136, 157, 171; 5:14, 46-48, 66, 68, 72, 110; 7:157; 9:111; 14:4; 19:30, 35; 48:29; 53:38; 57:27.
- Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), s.v. Injīl.
- Sidney H. Griffith, “Gospel”, in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
- Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Languages of Palestine in the First Century A.D.”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 32 (1970).
- Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), on the dates and authorship of the gospels.
- Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabbān to Ibn Ḥazm (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
- Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, on 2:185 and 5:46-48.
- Lonsdale and Laura Ragg (eds.), The Gospel of Barnabas (Oxford, 1907), with the editors’ introduction on the date and provenance of the work.