Christmas Story in the Qur’an – Spectrum of Science

After this episode, Surah turns into Maria. She is described as having retreated from her people to an eastern position, and covering herself with a curtain. Through the Spirit of God in human form, Mary learned that she would bear a son. And when she objects that she is still a virgin, God Almighty says: “This is easy for me.” Mary then retires alone to a remote place and gives birth to Jesus under a palm tree, as described above.

Jesus is the son of Mary, not the son of God

As the surah of the Qur’an continues to say, the son of Mary will bear witness to God’s mercy. But the surah must make clear one thing above all: Jesus is the son of Mary, not the son of God. This is where Christians and Muslims differ.

The third surah also deals with Jesus as the son of Mary. This section begins with an introduction to the genealogy of Jesus. His grandmother belonged to the Imran clan. Therefore, she is a member of one of the families chosen by God. We also learn about the descent of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: however, not the ancestors of Mary are listed there, but the ancestors of Joseph. Joseph appears only indirectly in the third sura – as the one chosen by lot to take care of Mary.

The third surah also contains a special feature: it describes the birth and infancy of Mary. After Maria’s mother gave birth to her daughter, she is said to have made a vow to dedicate the girl to God. That is why Maria was brought up in the Temple, so the priest of the Temple, Zacharias, took care of her, and God provided her with food. What is interesting about this story is that it has no equivalent in the books of the New Testament. A similar story is found in the “Protigyl of Jacob”, the Proto-Gospel or Pre-Gospel – it is about the childhood of Jesus. It did not come into existence until about AD 160, roughly two generations after the most recent writings of the New Testament.

Traditions from the New Testament and from the context of the Bible appeared in the Qur’an, but they were interpreted in the sense of Islamic theology.

This writing is one of the so-called apocrypha of the New Testament, which arose from its milieu but was not included in the canon of Scripture. The canon, now known as the New Testament, came about in part because scholars selected what they considered authentic texts for it.

So what are the similarities between the early Bible and the Qur’an? In the “Initial Gospel of James,” Mary’s mother, Hannah—here by name—delivered her daughter to God and let her grow up in the Temple. Similarly, Mary is miraculously nourished: she receives food from the hands of an angel. And just like in the Qur’an, a lottery decides who takes care of Maria.