PATHEOS: I have been tracking the ancient “lost gospels” through the Middle Ages, when these alternative scriptures continued to exercise a remarkably wide influence. This was especially true in the cultures of Islam, which emerged in a largely Christian world fascinated by apocryphal writings. Even in the fifth century, Arabia was proverbially haeresium ferax: the breeding ground of heresies.
A century ago, Jesuit scholar Louis Cheikho stressed that the pre-Islamic Christian East was “literally inundated” with apocryphal works of both the Old and New Testaments (Quelques légendes islamiques apocryphes, 1910). He listed some of the influences that he could trace in the Qur’an itself: the Apocalypse of Adam, Book of Enoch, the Cave of Treasures, the Protevangelium, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Arabic Infancy Gospel, and the Gospel of Barnabas.
Cheikho also warned that we should be very careful when reading Qur’anic citations to such seemingly familiar works as the Torah, the Gospel or the Psalms. In each case, he argued, we are not necessarily dealing with the canonical versions of these texts, but rather apocryphal versions or adaptations.
Not surprisingly, then, early Islam knew a great deal about Christianity and its writings, but not in forms accepted by the mainstream churches of either East or West. Both Jesus and Mary make frequent appearances in the Qur’an, but they are portrayed very differently from what we find in the canonical gospels. Some of these changes can be easily understood in terms of the establishment of a new faith – or, as Muslims, would say, the purification of an age-old faith. It is not surprising, then, to find the Qur’an’s Jesus affirming clearly that he is not God and shares nothing of divinity. Read on and comment » | Philip Jenkins | Friday, May 17, 2013
