The Qur’an says jesus is “Christ”
The Qur’an Agrees with Christians that Jesus is “Christ” but What Does This Mean?
In the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus arrives at a spot in the north of Palestine named Caesarea Philippi, where water rushes down from the melting snows of Mount Hermon. There he asks the disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” They reply, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Jesus continues, “But who do you say that I am?” At this Simon Peter alone replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus praises Simon for this answer: “Blessed are you!” he says and continues by emphasizing his special role: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” So far so good for Peter.
It’s at this point that the conversation changes dramatically. Matthew tells us: “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” At this Peter rebukes Jesus, “God forbid Lord! This shall never happen to you.” In turn he is rebuked by Jesu: “You are not on the side of God, but of men.”
This passage tells us something about the heart of Jesus’ mission. He was not “John the Baptist” or “Elijah” who had returned. He was not simply “one of the prophets.” He was more than that. He was the Christ. The English term Christ comes from a Greek word (kristos) that translates the Hebrew mashiach, meaning “messiah” or literally, “the anointed one.” In fact it meant much more than that to the Israelites. To be anointed meant to be a king, and the Jews were waiting for a new king like David. The book of Isaiah speaks of a child to be born who will sit on the “throne of David” and be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). This is what they were expecting from the messiah.
What happened at Caesarea Philippi, however, revealed something surprising, almost shocking. Peter was right in identifying Jesus as the “Christ,” but he was incorrect in thinking that the Christ would be a mighty earthly king. When Jesus announced to him that the Christ was rather going to be more like a figure described elsewhere in the book of Isaiah, a suffering servant:
3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.
(Isa 53:3-5 RSV)
Elijah was thinking of things in a very human way: that the Christ must be powerful as humans understand power. For this Jesus told him, “You are not on the side of God, but of men.” The shocking truth is that when the messiah came, he came to offer himself, out of love, to humanity. He offered himself as a “great sacrifice” (Qur’an 37:107).
It is intriguing to find that the Qur’an speaks of Jesus as the Christ, in Arabic masīḥ (cognate to Hebrew mashiach). But what does the Qur’an mean when it calls Jesus masīḥ? When the angels announce to Mary in Surah 3 (Āl ʿImrān) that she will have a son, they declare: “O Mary, Allah gives you good news of a Word from Him. His name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, highly distinguished in this world and the next, and one of the nearest.” The Qur’an seems to insist that Jesus’ name (ism) is “Messiah Jesus” or “Christ Jesus.” When Mary is given the news of a son in Luke’s Gospel, the angel Gabriel tells her: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
What is to explain this difference? Why does Luke have the angel tell Mary that the son will simply be named “Jesus,” while the Qur’an gives his name (even from birth) as “Christ Jesus”? It seems quite likely that the author of the Qur’an simply thinks of “Christ” (masīḥ) as another name for Jesus, and not a title of an expected redeemer. In fact Christians at the time of the Qur’an’s origins regularly referred to Jesus as “Christ.” For example, Jacob of Serugh (d. 521), writing in Syriac speaks in his Festal Homilies of “the perfect teaching of Christ (Syriac mashīḥā)”. A Greek inscription (by the Ghassanid Arabs) from Syria (between Damascus and Palmyra) and dated to AD 569 speaks of “Jesus Christ, savior of the world, who takes away the sins of the world.” A South Arabian Inscription from the time of Abraha (d. 560’s) declares “With the power, the help, and the mercifulness of the Merciful (raḥmānān), his Messiah, and the Holy Spirit.”
That the Qur’an simply assumes – presumably under the influence of Christian ways of speaking – that another name for Jesus is “Christ” or “Messiah” is suggested by an intriguing reference in Surah 4. Here the Qur’an surprisingly has the Israelites refer to Jesus as Messiah, when they say: “We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah” (Q 4:157). In fact a central principle of Judaism is that Jesus was not the messiah or the messenger of God, but that the messiah is still to be expected. In order to explain this peculiar turn of phrase the Muslim Qur’an commentator Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1200) relates a tradition that they meant, “He claims to be the messenger of God” and another tradition that the phrase “messenger of God” is actually a citation of God, not of the Israelites.
Another sign that “Messiah” is simply a name in the Qur’an, and not a theologically-rich title, is the way in which it sometimes completely replaces the name Jesus. For example, in Surah 5 the Qur’an declares “They disbeliever those who say, “Allah is the Christ (masīḥ), the son of Mary” (Q 5:17; cf. 5:72, 75).
So how did Muslim scholars understand the term masīḥ in the Qur’an? Raghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. 1109), author of a classic dictionary of the Qur’an, begins his definition of this name by saying that Jesus was called masīḥ because he “wiped” (masīḥan) the earth. He explains that Jesus was among those who would travel around (“wiping” the earth with his feet). He then cites another tradition that Jesus came out of his mother’s belly anointed (mamsūḥan) with oil. Intriguingly, he is also aware of the opinion that masīḥ is an Arabized word from Hebrew. Al-Iṣfahānī presumably doesn’t have more to say about the religious meaning of the term masīḥ because the Qur’an itself doesn’t give it religious meaning.
In fact, the way in which the word masīḥ is used in the Qur’an helps us understand more of the historical circumstances in which Islam emerged. Clearly Christians were an important part of the Qur’an’s context (even if the Islamic tradition states that Christians were not prominent in Mecca or Medina). The Qur’an adopts the common use of Messiah/Christ as a name for Jesus by Christians in its time and place. It is not interested in (or aware of) the immense theological value of this term in the New Testament. In fact, to call Jesus “Christ” is to affirm, with Peter, that he is “the son of the living God” and to invoke the prophecies of Isaiah of one who is both “Emmanuel” (God with us) and a redeemer “by whose stripes we are healed.”
