The Qur’anic Threesome: Jesus, Mary and Allah The Qur’an quite emphatically rejects the Christian belief as a triad of deities and names them as Jesus, his mother Mary, and Allah – in that order! In three passages this concept is assailed as polytheistic and blasphemous. The first reads as follows: And do not say: Three. Desist – it is better for you! Truly Allah is only One. Glorified be he above taking a son to himself. Surah 4:171 The word used here for three is thalathah, a common Qur’anic word appearing nineteen times in the book. It always means three and cannot be translated or rendered Trinity. The command not to speak of Allah as a threesome is contained in a passage exhorting Christians generally not to exaggerate in their religion. By contrasting the oneness of God with the threefold Christian deity it is clear that the Qur’an is unaware of the essential unity of the Christian doctrine of God. In another passage the Qur’an actually identifies the three different deities which Christians supposedly worship. Interestingly all three passages which deal with this subject come from the very last portions of the Qur’an to come to Muhammad and it seems that it was only late in his life that he first heard of a Christian divine threesome without ever having the opportunity to discover precisely what the Trinity represents. The second verse on this subject reads: They speak blasphemy who say that Allah is the third of three. There is indeed no god except the one God. Surah 5:73 The words used in the first sentence to express the third of three are thalithu thalathah. Once again there is no specific reference to the Trinity or any awareness that the Christian God is a Triune being. The distinction, yet again, is purely between one and three with no allowance for a threefold unity. A few verses later the Qur’an identifies the other two deities in the triad Christians are supposed to worship: The Messiah son of Mary was only a messenger; messengers before him had passed away. And his mother was upright. They both had to eat food. Surah 5:75 The argument is quite clear. Jesus and his mother Mary were only human beings. Though he was a messenger of Allah others just like him had preceded him. And his mother was no more than a righteous servant of Allah. After all, they both had to eat food to sustain themselves. So how could they be deities along with Allah? The Qur’an has clearly mistaken the Christian doctrine and represented it as a triad of Jesus, Mary and Allah. It is most significant to find Allah described only as the third of these three. In the Christian doctrine of the Triune God the Father at least has first place! There were various sects such as the Nestorians, Monophysites and others in the vicinity of Arabia who had confusing beliefs about God, Jesus and Mary but none of them represented the Trinity as consisting of these three. You can see why Muslims think our beliefs are based on the Egyptian Father-Mother-Son family of Osiris, Isis and Horus. What is most probable is that Muhammad was totally unaware of the actual Triune God of the Christian faith and simplistically confused it with pagan beliefs in a Father-Mother-Son triad. If God was indeed the author of the Qur’an it is hard to see how he could make such a mistake and not even remotely represent the Christian doctrine, held to by all the major Christian churches of the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one eternal Supreme Being. The third passage which canvasses the supposed Christian belief in three separate deities is this one: And when Allah will say: O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you say to mankind Take me and my mother as two gods besides Allah? He will say, Glory to you! I would not have said what I had no right to say. If I had said it, you would have known it. You know what is in my mind though I do not know what is in yours. You are the Knower of the Unseen. Surah 5:116 Once again the other two deities are said to be Jesus and Mary. The veneration of Mary has been a major article of Roman Catholic belief and the Ethiopian Church, in particular, has historically revered her as the mother of God. It seems, however, that their excesses and confusion have only resulted in the Qur’an compounding the confusion! No Christian Church, no matter how much it reveres or glorifies Mary as, for example, the Queen of Heaven, has ever confused the Trinity or made it out to be what the Qur’an represents it to be. When Muslims challenge the doctrine of the Trinity and will not allow that it is an expression of divine unity in a different form to the unitarian concept of the Qur’an it is important to raise these texts as evidence, firstly, that the Qur’an misrepresents the doctrine completely and, secondly, that it is the source of the erroneous Muslim conviction that we believe in three separate gods. It is also important to know that the true Christian doctrine was known in Arabia prior to Muhammad’s time. Edward Glasser, an explorer in Yemen, discovered an inscription there in 1888 in a narrative about the revolt against the Ethiopian rule in the country in pre-Islamic times. The inscription dates to 542 AD – twenty eight years before Muhammad’s birth – and it reads in Arabic (without vowels which were not written in the Arabic of the time): Rhmn w mshh w rh qds – (In the power of) the Compassionate, and the Messiah, and the Holy Spirit. Thus the true nature of the Christian Trinity was known in the Arabian Peninsula many years before the Qur’an ever came to be written and the book’s total misrepresentation of the doctrine can only be ascribed to Muhammad’s personal ignorance of Christian theology. youtube/watch?v=r2nlXvBwIqc
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 20:45:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015