Where is the Injil, is it the Q document or ‘Q?’

Source: Islam for the West

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

The word Injil occurs several times in the Quran (3:4, 3:49, 3:66, 5:47, 5:67, 5:69, 5:111; 7:158; 9:111; 48:30; 57:28) and refers to the revelation to Isa (Jesus). Muslims believe that Injil was the Gospel given to Jesus, may peace be on him. We do not believe that the Injil in the Quran refers to the four Gospels as they today exist in the New Testament. In Quran, the Injil is instruction for the righteous. According to the Holy Quran:

And We (Allah) caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, fulfilling that which was revealed before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Injil which contained guidance and light, fulfilling that which was revealed before it in the Torah, and a guidance and an admonition for the God-fearing. (Al Quran 5:47)

What is the present day equivalent of what the Holy Quran describes as Injil? Could it be the Q document? Q is sometimes called the Synoptic Sayings Source. What gave me this idea was a comment by one of the experts in the four hour PBS documentary ‘From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians.’ Elaine Pagels says in the documentary, “Whoever collected the sayings of ‘Q’ wasn’t interested in the death of Jesus, wasn’t interested in the resurrection of Jesus, thought the importance of Jesus was what he said, what he preached.” This description parallels what the Holy Quran has to say about Injil.

The New Testament comprises of 27 books of four different genre or kind:

(I) Four Gospels written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, between 60 and 100 AD.

(2) Acts, which is the history of the Church, written by Luke in 65 AD.

(3) Epistles, which comprise letters, which were mostly written by Paul.

(4) Revelation which was written by John around 95 AD.

As there was no Prophet of God between Jesus and Muhammad, may peace be on both, the Quran does not recognize the Acts, the Epistles and the Book of ‘Revelation,’ as part of Injil, unless accidentally quoting, what was revealed to Jesus. According to the Quran, interpolations were made in the ‘Tauraat’ and the Injil (2:75 & 2:79). However, the Books of the Old Testament and the Gospels still contain many fragments of the original Revelations and teachings, which were affirmed by the Quran, and referred to as ‘Hudan wa Noor’ that means, guidance and light. (5:44-47)

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, as it talks about the Q document:

‘Q’ biblical literature in the study of biblical literature, is a hypothetical Greek-language proto-Gospel that might have been in circulation in written form about the time of the composition of the Synoptic Gospels—Mark, Matthew, and Luke—approximately between 65 and ad 95. The name Q, coined by the German theologian and biblical scholar Johannes Weiss, is a reference to the German word Quelle (‘source’).

Most biblical scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke based their written accounts largely on The Gospel According to Mark. Matthew and Luke, however, both share a good deal of material—largely made up of logia (Greek: ‘sayings’) attributed to Jesus—that is absent from Mark. This led biblical scholars to hypothesize the existence of an undetermined source from which the shared material was drawn: Q, sometimes called the ‘lost source.’ While no actual source document has been found and some scholars doubt that Q ever existed, others have attempted to reconstruct it through intensive textual analysis.

Please read this article along with the article about the Gospel of Thomas, as there are several parallels between the two.

The Holy Quran states about Injil:

Allah is He besides Whom there is no God, the Living, the Self-Subsisting and All-Sustaining. He has sent down to thee the Book containing the truth and fulfilling that which precedes it; and He sent down the Torah and the Injil, before this, as a guidance to the people; and He has sent down the Discrimination (the Quran).  (Al Quran 3:3-5)

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