Islamic position
Twice the Qur’an lists the signs given to ʿĪsā: once in the angels’ announcement to Maryam (3:49) and once in God’s own words to him on the Day of Judgement (5:110). The two lists are nearly the same, and in both of them one phrase is repeated after almost every sign: “by God’s permission” (bi-idhni llāh). That phrase is the key to how the Qur’an reads the miracle stories of the gospels, and it is the measure this website applies to them.
The two lists
3:49: “I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I will make for you from clay the shape of a bird, then breathe into it, and it will become a bird by God’s permission. I will heal the blind from birth and the leper, and I will give life to the dead, by God’s permission. And I will tell you what you eat and what you store in your houses. Surely in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.”
5:110: “O ʿĪsā son of Maryam, remember My favour upon you and upon your mother, when I strengthened you with the holy spirit so that you spoke to people in the cradle and in maturity; when I taught you the Book and wisdom, the Torah and the Injīl; when you made from clay the shape of a bird by My permission, then breathed into it and it became a bird by My permission; when you healed the blind from birth and the leper by My permission; when you brought out the dead by My permission; and when I held back the Children of Israel from you, when you came to them with clear signs and those who disbelieved among them said, ‘This is nothing but plain sorcery.’”
The signs one by one
- The bird of clay. He shapes a bird from clay, breathes into it, and it lives. The gospels have no such story. It is in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a Greek text of the second century, where the child Jesus makes twelve sparrows from clay on the sabbath and claps his hands to send them flying (2:1-5). The Qur’an takes the story out of a child’s game and makes it a sign given to the messenger, and adds the words the infancy gospel does not have: by God’s permission.
- The blind and the leper. The healing of the blind (Mark 8:22-26; 10:46-52; John 9) and of lepers (Mark 1:40-45; Luke 17:11-19) runs through all four gospels. The Qur’an specifies the blind from birth (akmah), which is the case of John 9, where the disciples ask whose sin caused it and Jesus answers that it was so that the works of God might be shown in him (9:3).
- The dead raised. The gospels record three: the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:35-43), the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17) and Lazarus (John 11). In every case the gospels, like the Qur’an, show Jesus praying or acting under God; at the tomb of Lazarus he says aloud, “Father, I thank you for having heard me” (John 11:41).
- What they eat and store. Only 3:49 has this, and it has no gospel parallel. Commentators have read it of knowledge given him by God of what was hidden, a prophet’s gift like that of Yūsuf.
- Speech in the cradle, in 5:110 and 3:46, is the sign told in full at 19:29-33; see the annunciation and the birth.
The refrain
Seven times across the two passages the Qur’an says the sign was by God’s permission. The gospels do not deny it; they say Jesus did his works by the finger of God (Luke 11:20) and that the crowds glorified God, “who had given such authority to human beings” (Matthew 9:8), and Peter in Acts calls him “a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him” (Acts 2:22). The later church read the miracles as proof of his divinity. The Qur’an and the earliest preaching read them as proof of his mission: God did them, through him, for a people who asked for a sign. The refrain is the Qur’anic correction of a reading, not of a record. Every sign the gospels give him the Qur’an gives him too, and it gives him one more; what it withholds is the inference.
“Plain sorcery”
Both passages end with the response of those who disbelieved: that this was sorcery (5:110), and the Qur’an says elsewhere that they plotted against him (3:54). The gospels record the same charge in the same words: “By the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (Mark 3:22), and the same answer, that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The Gospel According to Islam places that exchange in section 14, with the bird of clay beside it.
Why it matters here
The signs are the point at which the gospels and the Qur’an are closest in matter and furthest in meaning. The gospels record more signs than the Qur’an lists: water into wine, the calming of the storm, the walking on the sea, the feeding of the multitudes. The Qur’an does not deny them; it names the healings, the raisings and the bird of clay, and leaves the rest where the measure leaves everything the Qur’an is silent on, to be kept if early and marked as such. What the two books share, the same healings, the same raisings, the same accusation of sorcery, they read differently: in one a man through whom God acted, in the other, by the time the creeds were written, God himself acting. The Qur’an’s phrase settles which reading the gospels’ own words support. A servant does signs by permission. The one who gives permission does not need it.
Sources
- Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr, commentary on 3:49 and 5:110.
- Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext.
- Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, for the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
- Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature.