Wednesday, January 1, 2020

What It Means - Day 289

"And when God said, 'O Jesus son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind, "Take me and my mother as gods apart from God/"' He said, 'Glory be to Thee! It is not for me to utter that to which I have no right.'"
Quran 5:116

This verse is drawn from the fifth surah, al-Ma'idah, here rendered as "The Table Spread." We've visited this surah several times. It includes one of the two miracles that Muslims associate with Jesus that are not known to Christians, one of which gives its name to the surah. That said, the point is made, once again definitively, that miracles associated with Jesus do not mean that he is the son of God, but rather miracles occurred because God can do whatever God wants to do. Here Jesus makes it clear that not only is he not the son of God, he would never claim to be the son of God. Sometimes these passages in the Quran are read by non-Muslims as being criticisms of Jesus when, on the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead the classic Muslim argument is that assigning this status or even this claim to Jesus is an insult to both God and to Jesus.


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