Our church’s two year preaching trek through Luke will end this November just a week before Advent begins. Odd timing, eh? It means my wife and I are wondering about Jesus’s resurrection these days and that has us wondering what Muslims think about it and the death that necessarily must precede “rising from the dead.”
Many Christians will be surprised to discover that Muslims, like Christians, think Jesus is alive. While we believe he returned to life after an effective Roman execution, Muslims believe he didn’t die in the first place.
In a comforting example that we’re not the only ones who build spurious convictions on scant, and often tricky, verses of scripture, the main Quranic evidence that Jesus didn’t die comes from a single verse that might not be saying that after all.
That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’; – but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not. Q4:157
Scholars believe this verse, when looked at in the context of surrounding text, intends to comment primarily on the short falling of Jews, rather than the reality or nature of Jesus’s death.
Of course this verse is a linchpin of a broader Islamic argument about the essential nature of God and Jesus:
• God is one and has no son. Therefore Jesus is not the son of God.
• Jesus is a messenger of God and God would not allow him to suffer the shame of defeat by his enemies.
• Jesus is coming back some day, so that means he’s alive and didn’t die.
But what if the linchpin is a little shaky?
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