Verse 35

2179

Commentary:

Perhaps there is no individual of any prominence in religious history about whom so many and so far-reaching differences exist as about Jesus, the son of Mary. The Jews, the Christians and the Muslims all hold widely different views about Jesus’ birth, the manner of his death, and about the account of his life. The Jews believe that he was born out of legal wedlock and therefore his birth was illegitimate. He was a false Prophet and therefore deservedly met an accursed death on the cross. The Christians hold that Jesus’ mother became conceived of the Holy Ghost, therefore he was the son of God. He persuaded himself to be put on the cross and by his death he atoned for the sins of all humanity. He remained dead for three days and then rose up to heaven. He is a part of the Holy Trinity and yet is God Himself. Orthodox Muslims believe that he was miraculously born without the instrumentality of a father as the result of a special Divine decree. He was an Israelite Prophet. The Jews tried to crucify him but instead succeeded only in crucifying another person who by God’s special decree was made to look like Jesus and Jesus bodily went up to heaven where he is sitting by the right hand of God and will someday descend from heaven to win for Muslims the kingdom of the whole world. The so-called modernists among Muslims think that he was the son of Joseph the carpenter, and died a natural death, and so there was nothing miraculous or unusual about his birth, death or his life. He was only an Israelite Prophet. The orthodox Ahmadis, however, believe that his birth took place without the agency of a father as the result of a special Divine decree, and that this unusual form of birth constituted a rebuke and a warning to the Israelites that on account of their persistent rejection of truth and God’s Messengers, and their immoral practices the whole Israelite nation had been rendered quite unfit to give birth to a Prophet of God and therefore prophethood, in accordance with God’s covenant with Abraham, was transferred from the House of Israel to that of Ishmael (see Introduction to this Surah). They further believe that Jesus was hung on the cross by the Jews but did not die there and was taken down from it alive and for three days remained in a tomb hewn out of a rock and then travelled to Kashmir to preach his Message to the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. He lived up to the ripe old age of 120 years, died a natural death and lies buried in Khanyar street in Srinagar, Kashmir. In fact, the existence of so many and so serious differences about Jesus implies a rebuke to Christians that there is nothing certain about their god.

The expression "son of Mary" (ابن مریم) is Jesus’ distinctive name. Whereas on the one hand it seems to point to his fatherless birth, on the other it confers on him a name which is incapable of being confused with that of anybody else. The Gospels have also used for Jesus the epithet ابن آدم (son of man) but this epithet has been used in the Bible for other persons also. So ابن مریم (son of Mary) is at once a distinctive and descriptive name of Jesus.