Hi there. Today I'm going to talk about Jesus and Islam - the copy pasted prophet. So to begin, I'm going to assume that Jesus was a real person, and that he really existed. Dr. Carrier has made a good argument in the book, "On the Historicity of Jesus", that Jesus may not have actually existed. Rather than exploring that idea I'm going to go by the mainstream understanding that Jesus was a real person and that he really existed, and you know we'll assume that to begin. So first of all, what does Islam say? Islam says that it sets the record straight. That it has a final and correct story and everything before that was corrupted, and whoever agrees with Islam is right, but whoever doesn't agree with Islam is incorrect. Now let's take a look at this and see if it makes any sense. One of the other claims the Quran makes is that these stories Muhammad could not have known them, and because he knows them he's a true prophet from God, because Allah told them these stories. It says in 3:44 And in 18:13 And in 11:120 This is 11:120. And in 2:79 Allah says So basically the Quran is saying that we were giving you the were giving you the correct story. You couldn't have known these things You know, you're just a man. And the reason you know them is because I'm going to tell you these things. Because they're from the heavens above. The first thing that's interesting about about the story of Jesus in Islam is that Jesus has no father and was born to the Virgin Mary. Now, in relation to Christianity this makes sense, in relation to the doctrine of Christianity that says that Jesus is the Son of God and that God is a father. Now, in Islam, Jesus is not the Son of God and God is not his father, yet Allah decided to give him a virgin birth. It's kind of strange, out of the millions of babies born every year Allah simply decided to just give Jesus a virgin birth. But it just seems strange. It makes sense in Christianity, in context of what they're trying to claim, but in Islam it's a very strange idea. Not only that, the idea for virgin birth has been a long since antiquity. If you look at ancient Egypt there was Horus, who was born to the virgin Isis. As well as many other references to virgin births. This idea has existed a long time in Egypt, in Paganism, and in Hinduism. You can find ancient stories of virgin births. When did the idea come into Christianity? Well to tell you the truth, this is something I found very interesting as well. The virgin birth was not in the earliest Gospel. There's four Gospels of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The first Gospel, Mark, does not include the virgin birth. But now it's interesting. Why didn't he include the virgin birth if this was a well-known story and it was true? What we find is the later Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, 70 years after the, you know, supposedly event decided to include the story and they included the story to prove that Jesus was, like I said, the son of God. But the Quran decides to take the story, by the time it reached the Prophet, he took it as a fact and included it in the Quran that he had a virgin birth. But interestingly enough this wasn't in the earliest Gospel. This is something that came about later. And as well, we find parallels to virgin birth ideas in other religions and we also find that this makes more sense in the context of a Christian claim, not an Islamic claim. Jesus, the Messiah. The next claim is that Isa is a Masih Now what does that mean? So Jesus was a Jew, and he was a Messianic Jew And he was a Jew that was claimed to be the Messiah. Now what does that mean? The Messiah is supposed to be a king. Is supposed to be someone that's going to bring peace to the world. Its kind of like the idea of the Mehdi in Islam. And you know, it says in the Torah This is a prophecy of the Messiah. So Jesus actually didn't fulfill any of these claims. He didn't restore peace to the Earth, he didn't become the ruler of the Jews, and in fact he was crucified like a common criminal. So the Jews, of course they don't accept Jesus is a Messiah. They don't accept that. And you know the Christians actually change the idea of Messiah to be someone that died for the sins of humanity, but in Islam the Messiah, Jesus, it doesn't seem to fit, you know? It doesn't match the prophecy of the Jews. As well, the next point I have is about the Injeel of Jesus. Now interestingly enough, what does the Quran say about Jesus and the Injeel? This is in Quran chapter 5 verse 46. So Allah says in the Quran that he gave Jesus the Injeel, just like Moses got the Torah. So the Torah is a revelation of God to Moses, and he's saying the Injeel was a revelation of God sent to Jesus. Now interestingly enough, when we look at what the Christians claim Christians don't have any recollection or any trace of a book that was sent to Jesus. All that we have is the four Gospels. Not one Gospel, but four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are considered the inspired speech of God. Not the verbatim revelation sent to Jesus. In fact these are stories about Jesus describing what Jesus did. It's not a revelation sent to Jesus. It's a totally different claim than what the Quran is coming with. But it seems that Mohammad thought the Injeel, the Gospel, was a book. I don't know if this is a mistake he made, if this is a misunderstanding, or was there really an Injeel that was completely lost and we have no recollection of it, even though much less important texts were preserved and saved, yet the Injeel was completely lost. It's very strange. We know the four Gospels. We don't know much about the authors but we know they were Greek speaking Christians. We know, forty to a hundred years after the death of Jesus, they wrote down these books, and this is what is considered to be the New Testament - the four Gospels. We don't have any evidence or recollection of any sort of revelation sent to Jesus himself. Now the Infancy Gospel stories. Some of the stories included in the Quran we've actually found sources for them. And these are documents that even less reliable than the Gospels - than the four Gospels. For example, the story of Jesus making clay birds and bringing them to life, which is mentioned in the Quran, is found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which scholars agree, or they believe was written in the mid to late second century to show more miracles of Jesus. It says in... I'll read it This is in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and of course the same stories are in the Quran, where it says And this is in chapter 5 verse 110. So we find interesting that there is an Infancy Gospel which was considered to be a doubtful apocrypha, which is a story that was written in order to prove certain political points, and to satiate the need for miracle stories. And then there's another Gospel called the Syriac Infancy Gospel, which was in the 5th to 6th century. It's also called the Arabic Infancy Gospel. This was much later, closer to the time of Muhammad, and which has more miracles of Jesus which also ended up in the Quran. It says for example in the Arabic Infancy Gospel So interestingly, in this document which was believed to be written within the 5th to 6th century, was based on the previous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, it's said that he spoke as a baby, and the Quran says This is in chapter 19 verses 29 to 34. So interestingly enough, the Quran decided to include a story of Jesus, both stories which were included in documents, which were considered fabricated, were considered a apocrypha, meaning less reliable historical documents about Jesus. Those stories ended up in the Quran as if they were true stories. It's also interesting that these stories were available in a language, and in a time close to the time of Muhammad. So just to summarize everything that I said... The first point I made was that the story of Jesus having no father, born as a virgin birth The story doesn't make sense in the context of Jesus just randomly, you know, God just decided to make him have a virgin birth, and then the fact that the virgin birth wasn't in the earliest sources of the New Testament and came a little bit later. The fact that Jesus is a Messiah, yet this whole idea of a Messiah, you know, the prophecy of the Messiah doesn't doesn't match what we know about Jesus, and Jews would also say the same thing. The fact that Jesus was crucified, but at least the claim was made that he was crucified or killed, whatever the case is. That again goes against the idea that Jesus is the Messiah, because the Messiah was not supposed to be taken advantage of, and these things are not supposed to happen to the Messiah. The fact that there's not one Injeel or Gospel, but there's actually four Gospels, and these are not the book of Revelation, which is actually the inspired word of God according to Christians. The fact that doubtful stories from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Syriac Infancy Gospel such as Jesus bringing clay birds to life or Jesus speaking as a baby. All of these stories ended up in the Quran and we know where they came from. So these are just a few interesting points think about. You know, the story of Jesus in Islam and there's a lot more that could be said about it. This is a very big topic. I just wanted to go into a few small, quick points and as usual thank you for watching. If you like these videos please subscribe, and you know keep up with me on on social media. Thank you very much.