The Rightly-Guided Injil

Source library

Every work cited on this website, grouped by kind, with the pages that lean on it most. Where an article depends on a particular chapter or passage, the article’s own source list gives it; this page is the index. Editions are the standard ones; where a translation is used, it is named.

Codex Vaticanus, fourth century: the end of 2 Thessalonians and the beginning of Hebrews
Codex Vaticanus, fourth century, one of the two oldest complete Greek Bibles: the end of 2 Thessalonians and the opening of Hebrews. Vatican Library. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture and the base texts

  • The Qur’an. Qur’anic passages on the gospel pages are in The Clear Quran, translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab (Al-Furqaan Foundation); elsewhere the rendering is the website’s own and keeps close to Yusuf Ali and Khattab.
  • The New Testament, Greek text: Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed. English quotations follow the New Revised Standard Version unless the Authorised Version is named.
  • Ahmad Shafaat, The Gospel According to Islam (New York: Vantage Press, 1985): the base text of the gospel on this website.
  • Alham Ahmed, The Gospel According to the Quran: Jesus and His Teachings (Toronto: Noor Lal Foundation, 2021): the compilation of Qur’anic passages on The Qur’an on Jesus.
  • Thomas O. Lambdin (trans.), “The Gospel of Thomas”, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988): the Gospel of Thomas and its sections in the gospel.
  • Mark M. Mattison (trans.), The Gospel of Thomas, The Infancy Gospel of James, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and Q, public domain, gospels.net; with the manuscript information at gospels.net/manuscript. The Gospel of Thomas is printed in full on its own page.
  • Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer (trans.), “The Gospel of Thomas”, in Robert J. Miller (ed.), The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version (Polebridge Press, 1992, 1994); printed in full, with permission, on its own page.
  • James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann and John S. Kloppenborg (eds.), The Critical Edition of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000).

Ancient and classical sources

  • Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, books 18 and 20 (the census of Quirinius; John the Baptist; Jesus; the death of James). Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96.
  • Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History: 2.23 (Hegesippus on James), 3.27 (the Ebionites), 3.39 (Papias on Mark and Matthew).
  • Irenaeus, Against Heresies: 1.24.4 (Basilides on the crucifixion, woven into section 26 of the gospel), 1.26.2 (the Ebionites), 3.1.1 (the four gospels and their authors).
  • Origen, Against Celsus 5.61; Epiphanius, Panarion 30 (the Gospel of the Ebionites); the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 17 and the Letter of Peter to James, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 8.
  • The apocryphal gospels: Protevangelium of James, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Arabic Infancy Gospel, Gospel of Peter; texts in Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (Oxford, 2011). The Second Treatise of the Great Seth and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (Nag Hammadi Codex VII, 2 and 3), in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, 3rd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), translated by Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons, and by James Brashler and Roger A. Bullard; cited at section 26.
  • Ibn Isḥāq, Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, in the recension of Ibn Hishām, trans. Alfred Guillaume as The Life of Muhammad (Oxford, 1955); p. 104 for the Paraclete.
  • Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm: the two commentaries cited on every Qur’an page, on 3:33-59, 4:157-159, 4:171-172, 5:17, 5:46-48, 5:72-75, 5:110-118, 19:16-35 and 61:6.
  • Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, Book of the Virtues (the names of the Prophet) and Book of Dress (the acts of fiṭra).

The classical commentaries on the Qur’an

Eight works, translated in full on the verses about Jesus and published on the classical commentaries; the Arabic texts are the public-domain editions served at tafsir.app, and for Tanwīr al-Miqbās at shamela.ws (book 12877).

  • Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān: the oldest surviving record of the reports on 4:157, with every chain of transmission.
  • Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn ibn Masʿūd al-Baghawī (d. 516/1122), Maʿālim al-tanzīl.
  • Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān.
  • Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm: on 4:155-159 the fullest gathering of the reports on the substitution, the raising and the descent of Jesus, with his judgements on their chains.
  • Tanwīr al-miqbās min tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās, attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās and compiled by Majd al-Dīn al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1414); its chain through al-Kalbī is judged weak, and it is read as early Kufan exegesis rather than as Ibn ʿAbbās’s own words.
  • Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), Tafsīr al-Jalālayn.
  • Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), al-Durr al-manthūr fī al-tafsīr bi-l-maʾthūr: the transmitted reports on each verse gathered from the ḥadīth collections and the early commentaries.
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Nāṣir al-Saʿdī (d. 1376/1956), Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān fī tafsīr kalām al-Mannān.
  • Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (Oneworld, 2009): a survey of the commentators on 4:157 from the earliest to the modern, against which the translations here can be read.

The gospels and the New Testament

  • Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1997): dating and authorship of every book, cited on every gospel and Paul page.
  • Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (2nd ed., 1993) and The Death of the Messiah (two volumes, 1994): the infancy narratives, the genealogies, the census, the passion accounts.
  • Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible, two volumes, 1966-70), with the appendix on the Paraclete; and The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979).
  • Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia, 2007). Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, 2007). W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (International Critical Commentary, three volumes). Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible, two volumes) and The Acts of the Apostles (Anchor Bible, 1998).
  • Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed., 1994), on Mark 16:9-20, John 1:18, John 7:53-8:11 and 1 John 5:7; Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament (4th ed., 2005); Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (1987).
  • Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2001). B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (1924). E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (1989).
  • On the Gospel of Thomas and the synoptics: “Correlation Analysis” of the order of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, a statistical note on the order of the parallel sayings, using Helmut Koester’s list; R. McL. Wilson, Studies in the Gospel of Thomas (London: Mowbray, 1960); Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas Within the Development of Early Christianity (Claremont dissertation, 1988); Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). The test is set out on its own page.
  • Peter Kirby, Early Christian Writings, earlychristianwritings.com, especially the page on the Gospel of Thomas, which summarises Ron Cameron, Stephen Patterson and Stevan Davies on its date and independence.
  • Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings; Jesus, Interrupted (2009), chapter 2, on the discrepancies; Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures (2003), on the Ebionites and their gospel; Forged (2011) and Forgery and Counterforgery (2013), on the letters in Paul of Tarsus’s name.
  • Bart D. Ehrman, “The Lost Gospel of Basilides”, The Bart Ehrman Blog, 1 July 2023, on what can and cannot be known of Basilides’ account of the crucifixion.
  • J. Arendzen, “Basilides”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907): the patristic sources for Basilides, his dates, his lost gospel and commentary, and the Simon of Cyrene account as Irenaeus reports it; used at section 26 of the gospel.
  • William Wrede, The Messianic Secret (1901; English translation 1971). Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1966), on the date of the Last Supper. Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (1993).
  • Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (1998). Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (1975).

Paul of Tarsus and the first community

  • Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia, 1979). Margaret E. Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (International Critical Commentary, two volumes), volume 2 on chapters 10-13.
  • John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (1950; rev. 1987), on preferring the letters to Acts. Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (1971), on Luke’s purpose.
  • E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) and Paul: A Very Short Introduction. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998). Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (2003). Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1986).
  • C. K. Barrett, “Paul’s Opponents in II Corinthians”, New Testament Studies 17 (1971). Dieter Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (1986).
  • Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (1990). John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition (2nd ed., 2004). Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner (eds.), The Brother of Jesus: James the Just and His Mission (2001).
  • Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (2007). F. Stanley Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana (2012).

The Qur’an and Jesus in Islam

  • Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext (2010), and “The Muslim Jesus: Dead or Alive?”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 72 (2009).
  • Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’ān (1965). Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity (1991). Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (2001).
  • Mahmoud Ayoub, “Towards an Islamic Christology: An Image of Jesus in Early Shiʿi Muslim Literature”, The Muslim World 66 (1976), and “Towards an Islamic Christology II: The Death of Jesus, Reality or Delusion?”, The Muslim World 70 (1980). Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (2009), the survey of the commentators on 4:157 behind the account of the substitute on the end of his earthly mission.
  • Suleiman A. Mourad, “From Hellenism to Christianity and Islam: The Origin of the Palm Tree Story concerning Mary and Jesus in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Qur’ān”, Oriens Christianus 86 (2002). Matthias Radscheit, “Table”, in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān. Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (1938).
  • Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (2013).
  • Ismāʿīl Rājī al-Fārūqī, Divine Transcendence and Its Expression (Kuala Lumpur: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, 1983). Chapters II.C and III, on the Jewish, Gnostic and mystery-religion sources of Christian doctrine and on transcendence in Islam, cited on John, Paul of Tarsus against Jesus and a servant and a messenger; chapter III.C, on the arabesque, is the reasoning behind this website’s ornament, see the credits page.

Muslims and the gospels: the classical practice and taḥrīf

  • Ryan Schaffner, The Bible through a Qur’ānic Filter: Scripture Falsification (Taḥrīf) in 8th- and 9th-Century Muslim Disputational Literature, dissertation (Ohio State University, 2016), chapters 2 and 8.
  • Martin Accad, “The Gospels in the Muslim Discourse of the Ninth to the Fourteenth Centuries: An Exegetical Inventorial Table”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 14 (2003), the source of the count of more than 1,270 gospel citations.
  • Muhammet Tarakci and Süleyman Sayar, “The Qur’anic View of the Corruption of the Torah and the Gospels”, Islamic Quarterly 49:3 (2005).

The Islamic Dilemma and the Christian replies

  • Gordon Nickel, The Gentle Answer to the Muslim Accusation of Biblical Falsification (2015). Karl Gottlieb Pfander, Mīzān al-Ḥaqq (The Balance of Truth, 1830s; English ed. 1910). The apology under the name of al-Kindī, ed. and trans. in N. A. Newman, The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue (1993).
  • Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Reconsidering the “Islamic Dilemma” (Kuala Lumpur, first published 1 May 2026; version 1.1.0, 4 October 2026), on which the page on the Islamic Dilemma draws; and the works it rests on: Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabbān to Ibn Ḥazm (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Gabriel Said Reynolds, “On the Qurʾānic Accusation of Scriptural Falsification (taḥrīf) and Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.2 (2010); Ryan Schaffner, “The Bible through a Qurʾānic Filter: Scripture Falsification (Taḥrīf) in 8th- and 9th-Century Muslim Disputational Literature” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2016); Sidney H. Griffith, “Gospel”, in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Nicolai Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 4th rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022); Walid Saleh, In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise (Leiden: Brill, 2008); David Thomas and John Chesworth (eds.), Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
  • The four articles answered on Responses to named articles: Samuel Green (The Gospel Coalition Australia), John MacArthur (Grace to You), Entrusted to the Dirt (21 May 2025), Stand to Reason.
  • Oasis Foundation and McGrath Institute for Church Life, “The Gospel(s) in Islam and Christianity”, Reasons for Our Hope, 16 February 2022, cited on Objections and replies.

Manuscripts referred to

  • Codex Sinaiticus (London, British Library, Add. 43725) and Codex Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Vat. gr. 1209), fourth century. Papyrus 52 (Manchester, John Rylands Library, P.Ryl. 457), Papyrus 46 (Dublin, Chester Beatty, and Ann Arbor, P.Mich. inv. 6238), Papyrus 66 and 75 (Bodmer). Codex Washingtonianus (Washington, Freer Gallery), for the addition within Mark 16.
  • The Birmingham Qur’an (Cadbury Research Library, Mingana 1572a), radiocarbon dated 568-645 CE; the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest (DAM 01-27.1 and Stanford ’07); the Nag Hammadi codices (Cairo, Coptic Museum).