<a href="https://biblicalmissiology.org/blog/author/mark-durie/" target="_self">Mark Durie</a>

Mark Durie

Mark is an Australian pastor and author. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Australian National University (1984), and a ThD (on Qur'anic Theology) from the Australian College of Theology (2016). He is a member of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

13 Comments

  1. Gerald

    We shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. True is a personality that cannot be buried forever but has the will to resurrect.

  2. Gerald

    Just as we cannot separate our actions from our being even so we cannot separate GOD from his WORD.

  3. Samron

    The Article has good explanation. But Adam and Eve commited Sin and they were not holy. But if we talk about Jesus he was pure and Holy. As he he Spirit from God.

    Who can raise a person from dead?

    Only God and Jesus!

  4. Oc peters

    The Jesus mentioned in the Qur’an isn’t the same with the one mention in Christian book. Sometimes it looks like the Qur’an was intentional about altering the personality of Christ as God. The understanding of Christ as God was so strong in the days until about 500 years, the Qur’an was introduced to seduce people out of the truth. Even the bible said that people were bribed to deceive others that the resurrection was a lie.

    If not, why would Jesus be mentioned more that 100 times and Mohammed a few times? Its as if a conscious amount of time was intentionally dedicated to discredit the authentic nature, identity and personality of Christ. Was Mohammad there during bible days? The answer is NO which means he had to read the Bible to even get the real story in other to alter it. This is so easy to understand.

    JESUS IS GOD.

  5. ALADINE

    This is a nicely written article. BUT when in the days of Moses when God sent the plagues. Each plaque was “explained away” by the magicians and scientists of their day. Moses’ signs, God’s wonders where “explained”. Yet that did not change the truth that Mose’s signs and God’s wonders had NOTHING to do with their “explanations”.

    As Christians, Jesus is called the Word which carries powerful significance. This means EVERY-TIME God spoke .. such as “Let it be” or “Adam where are you?” This was Jesus because Jesus is the WORD.

    And just become the poetry or other arabic writings would call human kind “sperm” or even “word” or “breath” does NOT really mean much because the idea of calling Jesus the WORD and only Jesus, comes from the Christian faith, Islam is to be the evolution of God’s religion. Just like Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, Islam has to come out or from or be built upon Christianity. And therefore we have to go back to the people of the BOOK to get understanding …. Not Arab poets of the colloquial language of the time.

  6. The Truth

    It is true Jesus was born by the Spirit of God. But in the Quran , Jesus was born during Moses time. Mary sister of Aaron. Quran 19:28 . Mary’s father was imran, imran was also father of Moses and Aaron. Quran 66:12. The true Jesus was born during Romans expire time and Mary father’s is Joachim. You can see Jesus in the Quran and the Bible is 1500 years apart. And I want to say, Jesus is God, God the Father is inside Jesus. John14:8-12. Mary wasn’t mother of Jesus, Mary was just a surrogate woman, God used her to give birth to Jesus.

  7. Miya

    I wonder why some one is mentioned a hundred and sixty something times and is called a prophet, a messenger a word of God, a spirit of God,etc etc and is regarded merely as a messenger of God while some one who is only mentioned 3 times once as his real name, another time as a title and the third time with a name which is a variation of his real name, and this one is revered most and called the prophet of God. Is there common sense in this???

  8. Emmanuel O.

    I couldn’t have given a better description of my grand dad more than my uncle did. I could only shuffle and amend my uncles records.

  9. FRANK DONKOR

    it might seem so because you think the research answers your heart troubles. However, christians cast out demons in the name of Jesus but on whose name does muslims cast these? Muslims are now running into the temple of christians to seek refuge because they can actually feel the presence of spirit at the mention of the name Jesus. Just hope if you actually respect the quran, you would actually heeds to its instruction to ask the people of the book if you dont understand anything. I can only blame it on your own selfish desire without contacting the people of the book for further explanation. Hypocrites

  10. Noah Karp

    This comment, while obviously well-intentioned, does not attempt to resolve any of the theological issues raised in this article. The Quran, while according Jesus special status amongst prophets, unequivocally states that Jesus was only a man, that he is not the Son of God, that he faked his death on the Cross, and that he advocated death for those who called him divine. It further states that God is unknowable, impersonal—which directly contradicts the whole of the Biblical record of YHWH. So by using the name of the Quranic character, Christians are referring to a completely different character, in a completely different context—and rather than trying to redefine “Isa” to agree with the Bible, it is easier to explain how Yesu is a different person altogether.

    These things obviously do invite discussion, as it is helpful for Muslims to understand what the true gospel says. The claim posed by this article is that Christians do damage to the Word of God, and close Muslims off from hearing the gospel, when they attempt to amend the beloved character of the Quran, rather than insisting on a biblically faithful interpretation of who Jesus is.

    A final note: the Quran was written perhaps 500 years after the Bible. The Bible was written by many authors, over thousands of years; the Quran was written by one man who seems to have a cursory understanding of some Biblical stories. The Bible retains incredible theological consistency and thematic integrity in all it says, and then a half-millenium later, the Quran asserts a number of incredible changes that exist in direct contradiction to the core tenets of Christian faith.

  11. Julian Bond

    Yet, clearly, Jesus is particularly distinct in the Qur’an. He is called the ‘Word’ because of its Biblical reflections, and it is linked to his Virgin Birth/conception. He has a special status amongst other prophets. Of course Islam is a different religion, but it is connected to Christianity. It exists, through the Qur’an, in tension between both rejection of Trinity and acceptance of some special characteristics of Jesus – an invitation to dialogue rather than a marker of error or falsehood.

  12. Isa

    Nicely researched and succinctly presented. I rejected Christianity and accepted Muhammad as God’s final Prophet and Messenger, and I had sometimes wondered about the Qur’an’s depiction of Jesus / Isa as being seemingly singularly pointed out as the Word or Spirit of God. This commentary reaffirms my faith that the Qur’an in its entirety is the Word of God, just as these arguments allow reaffirmation of the People of the Book’s faith in Jesus as son of God. As a Confirmed Catholic during my childhood, I will always love Jesus, just not in the manner that you do, and while I do not appreciate the comment that the Qur’an depicts Jesus as “marks of being common, everyday and ordinary”, just as Ibrahim, Musa and Adam are not common, everyday and ordinary, I I do appreciate that your intent is not another misguided attempt to insert new meaning into the Qur’an to manipulate either Muslim or Christian belief. We all can respectfully disagree and live together on this God-given Earth by remembering the 109th Surah:

    “Say, “O disbelievers, I do not worship what you worship. Nor do you worship what I worship. Nor do I serve what you serve. Nor do you serve what I serve. You have your way, and I have my way.”

    Amin. May God bless you.

  13. Adam Simnowitz

    Mark, thank you for writing this much-needed article. I am reminded of what Tilman Nagel wrote in, The History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present:

    I deliberately refrain from rashly pointing out parallels or similarities between Islam and Christianity, because this tends to be misleading. For what do we learn from an analogy which is sometimes made-of Christ as the “logos” and the Koran as God’s word? Statements of that kind only feign similarities between Islam and Christianity; the naive European reader is led to believe that Islam has a logos theory comparable to that of Christianity. That is utterly wrong! The religious pedagogues’ zeal in finding and inventing as many similarities between the world religions in order to reduce tensions by way of a superficial harmony is something I find deplorable-it attests to an (even badly disguised) ignorance of all foreign religions, to an intolerable lack of seriousness. It is more important and helpful to recognize and accept-the different nature of the other faith.
    (Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000, xi)

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