Getting Jesus Right: How Muslims Get Jesus and Islam Wrong. James A Beverley

of any errors of fact or interpretation. And we are eager to engage in debate on the matters we address. Since there is a rich philosophical tradition in Islamic thought, we hope that Muslims will meet our perspectives and evidence with reasoned argument.

      As the authors of the book we alone are responsible for its content. But we have many people to thank, some of whom are listed. Foremost among all, we thank our respective wives (Gloria Beverley and Ginny Evans) for enduring another book project. We also express our appreciation to Tyndale Seminary and Acadia Divinity College for consistently supporting our research in general and this project in particular. We remain appreciative to Brett Potter and Dwight Crowell for helping on various research tasks. It has been a pleasure to work with our publisher, Larry Willard, and his wife, Marina, on all the details that go into getting a book into print.

      Lastly, readers will note the dedication page in memory of Jennifer Keirstead, Professor Beverley’s niece, who died unexpectedly on September 6, 2014, at the age of 21. A month before her death she sat beside him at a baby dedication and sang with others “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” We offer this book in the unwavering conviction of the truth of that simple affirmation.

      James A. Beverley

      Craig A. Evans

      Note: For spelling alternatives, we usually adopt the spelling Muhammad for the prophet and Qur’an for Islamic Scripture. We use different translations of the Qur’an but highly recommend Arthur Droge’s new annotated version (Equinox, 2014). Generally, we avoid diacritical marks. To contact authors write [email protected] and [email protected].

      A Thank-You to Colleagues, Friends and Fellow Scholars

      We express our appreciation to Tyndale Seminary (President Gary Nelson, Vice-President Janet Clark, and Vice-President Randy Henderson) for funding three research trips for Professor Beverley over the last several years in relation to his ongoing research on Islam. We also thank Dave Collison, a close friend of Professor Beverley, who helped cover costs on one research trip in February and March 2014. These forays have sometimes included interviews or contact by phone and email (Robert Hoyland, Kevin Van Bladel, Herbert Berg, David Cook and Dan Brubaker, for example) and also face-to-face contact with other great scholars of Islam and related fields, including Hans Küng (Germany), Patricia Crone (USA), Lutz Richter-Bernburg (Germany), Frank Peters (USA), Efraim Karsh (England), Josef van Ess (Germany), Christopher Tyerman (England), Michael Cook (USA), Andrew Rippin (Canada), Gerald Hawting (England) and Angelika Neuwirth (Germany), among others.

      Professor Neuwirth initiated a visit for Professor Beverley to her Corpus Coranicum project at the Free University of Berlin. The Corpus Coranicum is probably the most significant academic project on the Qur’an in history. Thanks to Professor Neuwirth and to three researchers at the Coranicum (Yousef Kouriyhe, Tobias Jocham and Laura Hinrichsen) for their assistance.

      Professor Beverley is grateful to informed friends who helped him on various debatable issues in Islamic studies and the study of religion. Among them are Jay Smith, Wafik Wahba, Sam Solomon, Andy Bannister, Eileen Barker, Bob Morris, Gordon Nickel, Tom Holland, Tony Costa, Keith Small, Rick Love, Don Wiebe, Chad Hillier, Robert Spencer, J. Gordon Melton, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Keith Small and Massimo Introvigne. Professor Beverley is also grateful to two Muslim friends, Muhammad Iqbal Al-Nadvi and Mohammed Atieque (leaders in Canada’s Islamic community), for many hours of conversation.

      We also thank President Harry Gardner and the Divinity College of Acadia University for its generous support of Professor Evans’ research, which has made possible travel to scholarly conferences as well as to archaeological excavations in Israel. Professor Evans is grateful to several scholars who over the years have served as dialogue partners and collaborators in various scholarly projects. These include Dale Allison of Princeton Theological Seminary, Bruce Chilton of Bard College, John and Adela Collins of Yale Divinity School, Jimmy Dunn of Durham University, Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Helmut Koester of Harvard Divinity School, Joel Marcus of Duke University, Scot McKnight of Northern Seminary and Armand Puig i Tàrrech of the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia in Barcelona. Heartfelt gratitude is also extended to wonderful colleagues of Professor Evans who in recent years have passed from this life. This includes Martin Hengel of Tübingen University, Bruce Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary, Ben Meyer of McMaster University, and Graham Stanton of Cambridge University. The world of biblical studies and scholarship concerned with the historical Jesus and Christian origins is challenging and rewarding, but above all it is collegial.

      Chapter 1—Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?

      Jesus and His Followers

      All competent study of the historical Jesus begins with the four New Testament Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). This is because they are the oldest sources and exhibit the features that historians expect of sources that are likely to provide reliable information. Of course, from time to time someone expresses skepticism about the New Testament Gospels. Sometimes Muslims express skepticism, especially when the Gospels and the Qur’an disagree. Therefore we begin our book by addressing the question of the reliability of the Gospels. Do these Gospels tell us the truth about Jesus, about what he taught, what he did, and what really happened to him?

      One of the reasons it is good to begin with the Gospels is because they are biographies, based in part on eyewitness testimony. They were written 30 to 40 years after the time of Jesus, while some of his original followers were still living. The sources the Gospel writers drew upon circulated during this period, when the apostles of Jesus were active, teaching and giving leadership to the new movement. The Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense, but they are biographies as written in antiquity.¹ We have good reasons for believing that these Gospel biographies in fact provide us with a great deal of useful, reliable material.

      We do not begin with the Qur’an, not only because it was written almost 600 years later than the New Testament Gospels, but because it really is not a historical narrative or a biography. There may well be historical and biographical data within it, the kind of data that historians can utilize, but the Qur’an as a whole is obviously not a historical work. Later in our book we shall look at what the Qur’an and other early Islamic sources have to say about Jesus.

      In this chapter, we will treat two important questions that relate to the Gospels as potentially accurate and useful biographical histories concerning the life, teaching and activities of Jesus. The first question asks how close the New Testament Gospels are to the time of Jesus. The second question asks if the information in the Gospels is based on the testimony of eyewitnesses.

      How Close Are the New Testament Gospels to the Time of Jesus?

      When it comes to comparing the Qur’an and the New Testament Gospels as potential historical sources, chronology and temporal proximity are very important. By temporal proximity we mean how close the written record is to the persons and events that the written record describes. Most historians agree that an account written within the lifetime of the participants and eyewitnesses is to be preferred to an account written centuries later. This is how historians think. They know, of course, that proximity is not the only criterion for evaluating the potential value a document has for historical research, but it is a very important criterion.

      So when was the Qur’an written and when were the New Testament Gospels written? Muslims believe that Muhammad received the revelations that are in the Qur’an over a period of about 23 years, from AD 610 to 632, the year that he died. After Muhammad’s death, written materials were gathered, and memorized material was committed to writing.² Within 20 to 70 years or so from the death of Muhammad, something pretty close to today’s Qur’an (“recitation”) had emerged. Most of the variant versions were gathered up and destroyed.³ Given the close proximity of the Qur’an to the lifetime of Muhammad, it is reasonable to assume