A Muslim View of the Apostle Paul

Exasperated! 

Fair warning…that’s how you may feel if you read this post.  Trying to understand the “other” can be maddening.  I can’t think of many topics that I find more  exasperating than this one—how Muslims through history have come to understand the apostle Paul. 

 

I’ve run into this view of Paul a number of times over the years.  I must admit that I’ve never understood where it comes from.  Some recent reading has opened a new window to the historical development behind it all.  Nevertheless, I am still not entirely sure how Muslims come out with a view of Paul so diametrically opposed to my own and that of historic Christianity. 

A little background…Islam is built around the idea of God who is all-powerful and inimitable.  Nothing which can be conceived by the human mind is like him.  Nothing compares to him and no metaphor or descriptor is adequate to describe him.  Think about that a minute and you’ll quickly see that there are some problems with the Christian idea of God becoming a man and dwelling among us.  And yet, Islam claims to be a continuation and confirmation of the preceding faiths of Judaism and Christianity.  In fact at various points, the prophet of Islam called on his followers to consult the “people of the book” (Christians and Jews) who would confirm his prophetic message because it fully corroborated their own holy books.

As you can imagine, this dual claim—the inimitability of God and confirmation of the preceding faiths—produced a conundrum.  Neither the historic Christian community nor the Jewish people, both of whom were scattered throughout Islamic lands, bought into the idea that Islam was a continuation of their beliefs…and they had their books to prove it.  Soon enough Christians were speaking Arabic and translating their Scriptures which brought the issue to a boiling point around about the ninth to the eleventh centuries.  Essentially, Muslims increasingly embraced the idea that the books of the Jews and Christians had been corrupted so that they no longer contained God’s revelation.  Since those books were available, the onus was on Muslims to explain when and how this corruption of the Scripture took place. 

Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1025) was a Muslim theologian who was educated in Iraq and moved to Rayy (in Iran) where he had been appointed as a Judge.  Abd al-Jabbar was the first to articulate a comprehensive narrative of the apostle Paul as seen by Muslims.  Brace yourself!  You won’t like this. 

Now the narrative:   As Abd al-Jabbar relates the story, a Christian delegation went to Rome to complain about the Jews with whom they were worshipping.  The Romans proffered a deal with the delegation ensuring their power while simultaneously suppressing the Jews on condition that the Christians would surrender their scriptures to the Romans.  The Christian delegation consented, but upon their return, was unable to persuade their Christian companions who refused to give their book over to pagan Romans.  Thereupon the Christian delegation returned to implore Roman assistance.  The Romans pursued the obstinate Christians, killing many of them and producing a split in the Christian community with one group having altered their religion for the sake of power (represented by the delegation to the Romans and referenced in Quranic passages such as 3:187) and the other holding tenaciously to their authoritative texts, fleeing the Roman persecution.  The first group, in collusion with the Romans rewrote the gospel of Christ to suit themselves—a stealth plan to Romanize the original gospel.  In fact they produced several gospels, each one progressively further from the original gospel which had been revealed to Jesus.  The latter group fled in the direction of the Arabian Peninsula and continued to hold fast to the gospel as they had received it.  This group constitutes the followers of Jesus who recognized that Islam was indeed the continuation of the Christian gospel.   It is this group that the Qur’an refers to as those who will gladly confirm that the revelation brought by the prophet of Islam is identical to that which came through Jesus.[1] (See Qur’an, surat Yunus 10:94)

So where is Paul in all this?  You might guess that he was part of the Roman delegation and became the main instigator in corrupting the gospel.   For Abd al-Jabbar, the saintly apostle is transformed into a wicked schemer and vindictive plotter.  He successfully hijacked the Christian gospel.  Rather than converting Rome to Christianity, Paul Romanized the gospel!  Not only did Paul corrupt the text of the gospel, he brought to Rome his despicable ideas of the Trinity and the incarnation of God through the prophet Jesus!

It bears mentioning that Christian apologists at the time of Abd al-Jabbar touted the virtues of Christianity stating that it was a religion devoid of coercion because it began without political power.  Abd al-Jabbar is attempting to show that, from his viewpoint, Christianity was replete with political power-grabbing and Paul was the main culprit.

As incredible as this story seems to our ears, it gained a foothold in Islamic thought and was passed down through the centuries.  Numerous Muslims have related to me the despicable nature of the apostle Paul, exhorting me to turn away from his deception and embrace the simplicity and purity of Islam. 

Does this help us at all to get a “fresh vision” for the Muslims of our world?  Two areas come to mind.

First, it may help us to understand what Muslims mean when they say our gospel is corrupted.  The corruption of the gospel (in Arabic: taḥrīf) has a long narrative history to support it.  Some Muslims are unwilling even to touch a Bible, so convinced are they of its corruption.  Probably our best approach is to invite Muslims to simply read the gospel with us.  And they may urge us to read the Qur’an with them—a fair exchange, don’t you think?  I wouldn't suggest starting with the apostle Paul, but inviting a Muslim to read what Paul actually wrote may confront him with the inadequacy of what he has been taught.

Second, our exasperation at this far-fetched tale of the apostle’s scheming may help us to view critically some of the “Christian versions” of cherished Islamic narrative, such as the life of Muhammad.  In reading some Christian versions of Muhammad’s life, one would deduce that only an ignorant brute would be willing to follow such a prophet.  Could it be that we have glossed over some of his noble qualities while accentuating those which build a case against him?  Perhaps our narratives of Islam are no better than Muslim narratives of our cherished faith.   Might Jesus’ exhortation be in order…to check the plank in our own eye before working on the speck in our brother’s?

20 January 2013

Beirut, Lebanon 

---

[1] This is a reader’s digest version of the events.  For a scholarly perspective, see Gabriel Reynolds, A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu: 'Abd Al-Jabbar and the Critique of Christian Origins. Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts edited by Wadad Kadi and Rotraud Wielandt. Vol. 56, Leiden: Brill, 2004.