American Journal of Islam and Society Vol 40 No 1-2.indb


39

The Non-Crucifixion Verse: A Historical, 
Contextual, and Linguistic Analysis

L O U A Y  F A T O O H I

Abstract
Over the centuries, there has been almost a consensus among 
Muslims and non-Muslims that the crucifixion of Jesus is denied 
in the Qur’an, mainly because of al-Nisāʾ 4:157. This overwhelm-
ingly accepted interpretation has been challenged in recent 
times, albeit by a small minority of scholars, by suggesting novel 
interpretations of 4:157 and seeking support from history and 

Dr. Louay Fatoohi has a PhD from the University of Durham, UK. His current 
areas of interest include history in the Qur’an, comparative Abrahamic reli-
gions, the historical Jesus, and Sufism. His English books include Abrogation 
in the Qur’an and Islamic Law: A Critical Study of the Concept of “Naskh” 
and its Impact (2013), The Mystery of the Historical Jesus: The Messiah in the 
Qur’an, the Bible, and Historical Sources (2007), and The Prophet Joseph in the 
Qur’an, the Bible, and History: A new detailed commentary on the Qur’anic 
Chapter of Joseph (2005). His Sufi works include editing and translating Fifteen 
Letters (Khamsata ‘Ashara Maktuban) (2014) and co-translating Purification of 
the Mind (Jila’ Al-Khatir) (3rd ed.) (2021) by ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jilānī.

Fatoohi, Louay. 2023. “The Non-Crucifixion Verse: A Historical, Contextual, and Linguistic Anal-
ysis.” American Journal of Islam and Society 40, nos. 1-2: 39–76 • doi: 10.35632/ajis.v40i1-2.3143
Copyright © 2023 International Institute of Islamic Thought



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other verses. This study first reviews how, from the early days 
of Islam, denying the crucifixion of Jesus was always seen by 
both Muslims and non-Muslims as the established Islamic view. 
It analyses the theological arguments of the minority view, pro-
moted by some early Ismāʿīlī scholars and modern scholars, that 
the Qur’an does not deny Jesus’ crucifixion. A new attempt, 
which has been gathering some support, linking 4:157 to the 
Talmud is then critiqued. This study shows that the immediate 
context of 4:157 and the broader Qur’anic narrative also refute 
the new interpretation. A detailed linguistic analysis of the verse 
in question further shows that it cannot be reasonably read to 
mean anything other than rejecting that Jesus was crucified. 
In summary, history and a detailed study of 4:157 and related 
verses show that there is hardly any basis to justify challenging 
the centuries-long semi-consensus that the Qur’an denies the 
crucifixion of Jesus.

The Consensus of Early Muslim Sources

There is only one verse in the Qur’an that directly addresses the cruci-
fixion of Jesus:

And their saying, “We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son 
of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” They did not kill him (wa-mā 
qatalūhu), nor did they crucify him (wa-mā ṣalabūhu), but it was 
made to appear so to them. Those who differ over it are in doubt 
about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of 
conjecture. They did not kill him with certainty.1 (Al-Nisāʾ 4:157)

From the early days of Islam, scholars of all persuasions—Sunnī, 
Shīʿī, Muʿtazilī, and Sufi—have accepted that this verse accuses the Jews 
of trying to crucify Jesus and unambiguously denies that they succeeded 
in doing that. The earliest meta-exegetical work of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad 
ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), for example, reflects this consensus. This 
is seen even in his commentary on the rather ambiguous root w-f-y, 



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which appears twice in the forms mutawaffīka (Āl ʿImrān 3:55) and 
tawaffaytanī (al-Māʾida 5:117) with reference to Jesus. While another 
twenty-one occurrences of the root w-f-y in the Qur’an refer to death, 
the overwhelming majority of scholars have maintained that Jesus did 
not die. They have argued that his wafāt was a wafāt nawm (wafāt of 
sleep), rather than a wafāt mawt (wafāt of death). This interpretation 
derives support from two verses, al-Anʿām 6:60 and al-Zumar 39:41, 
where w-f-y refers to sleep.2 Interestingly, even the minority opinion 
that Jesus experienced wafāt mawt, that is, he “died”, which al-Ṭabarī 
attributes to Ibn ʾAbbās and unnamed others, presumes that this death 
was not caused by the crucifixion.3

In his historical tome Tārīkh al-umam wal-mulūk, al-Ṭabarī quotes 
Wahb Ibn Munabbih (d. 114/732) on the crucifixion. The latter is known 
for introducing Jewish and Christian narratives into Islamic tradition. 
Indeed, his rather detailed narrative of the crucifixion is unambiguously 
a retelling of the Gospel story, although al-Ṭabarī does not note that 
when quoting it. It starts by mentioning Jesus’ anguish at the news that 
he was going to be killed (Matt. 26:39), before moving on to cover the 
Last Supper (Mark 14:17-25), Jesus’ prediction that Peter would deny 
him three times (Mark 14:29-31), the fulfilment of this prediction (Mark 
14:66-72), Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for thirty Dirhams (Matt. 26:14-16), and 
details of Jesus’ arrest and the abuse he received as he was being led to 
be crucified (Matt. 27:27-38). Yet even this Gospel-inspired account con-
cludes that “when they brought him to the wood log that they wanted to 
crucify him on, Allah raised him to Himself, and they crucified whoever 
was made to appear to them so”. When Mary and another woman were 
crying next to the crucified man, Jesus appeared to them and reassured 
them, “Allah raised me to Himself, and I did not experience other than 
good. This is something that was made to appear so to them.” So, even 
when al-Ṭabarī states that Ibn Munabbih said, “Allah tawaffā Jesus for 
three hours at daytime, then He raised him to Himself”, these words 
should be understood in the context of Ibn Munabbih’s claim that Jesus 
was not crucified.4

Al-Ṭabarī also mentions an obscure account about a tomb at the top 
of a mountain in Medina that someone claimed belonged to Jesus. The 



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headstone or footstone was written in an unfamiliar language that some 
Persians managed to read. It stated that it was the tomb of Jesus, son of 
Mary, whom God had sent as a messenger to the people who lived there. 
Significantly, even in this case, Jesus is said to have died, not been killed, 
so they buried him.5

If Muḥammad, and accordingly the early Muslims, had considered 
the possibility that verse 4:157 could mean that Jesus was crucified, 
we would have found at least a trace of this view. Yet there is none in 
Ḥadīth or exegetical, theological, or historical works. Had such evidence 
existed, there would have been no need for later Muslims to change this 
understanding anyway. After all, the killing of prophets is mentioned 
several times in the Qur’an, so the event itself would not have created 
any particular theological difficulty. This is not to mention the practical 
impossibility of removing all references to such an interpretation of 
4:157.

Muslim Consensus in Early Christian Sources

That Muslims denied the crucifixion of Jesus is also confirmed in early 
Christian sources. This is particularly significant because the Prophet 
Muḥammad is reported to have debated with Christians and Jews. 
For instance, on one occasion a delegation of approximately twenty 
Christians visited him in Mecca and the two parties discussed the old 
and new religions.6 The Prophet and early Muslims must have regularly 
interacted and debated with people from the other two Abrahamic faiths, 
particularly in Medina. Had the Prophet and early Muslims entertained 
the possibility of Jesus’ crucifixion, they would have shared this criti-
cal information with the Christians and the Jews. Such a major belief 
by Muslims about how Jesus’ life ended would have been preserved in 
non-Muslim writings, as both Jews and Christians already considered 
the crucifixion an indisputable fact. The crucifixion is at the heart of 
Christian theology, so Christians would have been particularly keen on 
recording the slightest indication that Muslims may accept that Jesus was 
crucified. It would have been impossible for this historical Muslim belief 
and compromise to have gone unmentioned by early Christian writers 



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and polemicists. Yet, all surviving early Christian writings presume that 
Muslims denied Jesus’ crucifixion.

The earliest possible Christian reference to the Muslim belief about 
the crucifixion comes from Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. 
Writing around 636/637 CE, he criticised the Saracens for many reasons, 
asking, “Why is the cross mocked?”7 Probably the earliest unambigu-
ous account is found in the short pseudonymous text The Apocalypse 
of Shenute, which may be dated to 690 CE. This document refers to the 
“children of Ishmael” as “those who deny my sufferings, which I accepted 
upon the cross.”8

A much more detailed early Christian account of the Muslim belief 
about the crucifixion comes from the monk John of Damascus, around a 
century after Muḥammad’s time. Having accused the Prophet of author-
ing the Qur’an by plagiarising the Old and New Testaments with help 
from an unnamed Arian monk, he goes on to say the following:

And he says that the Jews wanted to crucify Him in violation of 
the Law, and that they seized His shadow and crucified this. But 
the Christ Himself was not crucified, he says, nor did He die, for 
God out of His love for Him took Him to Himself into heaven.9

Significantly, John of Damascus’ statement mirrors the double denial 
in 4:157, that is, of the killing and the crucifixion of Jesus. He is also 
aware of the Qur’anic confirmation that God raised Jesus to Himself, 
which is mentioned in the verse that immediately follows 4:157, “Rather, 
Allah raised him to Himself. Allah is invincible, wise”, as well as in Āl 
ʿImrān 3:55.

Christian writings from the eighth century, such as The History of 
the Patriarchs of Alexandria and On the Triune Nature of God, confirm 
that Muslims denied Jesus’ crucifixion.10 The same position is found in 
the exchanges of the Catholicos of the (Nestorian) Church of the East, 
Timothy the Great, with the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī, a century and a 
half after the death of the Prophet. Significantly, when the latter cited 
4:157 as proof that Jesus escaped the crucifixion, Timothy did not respond 
by denying this meaning of the verse. Instead, he cited another verse 



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19:33, in which Jesus mentions that he will die, and 3:55, which men-
tions God’s tawaffī and raising of Jesus. Al-Mahdī retorted by explaining 
that Jesus was not dead yet but that he would die in the future, and the 
debate continued.11

Acceptance that the Qur’an denies the crucifixion is also found in 
the writings of other ninth-century writers, such as the Melkite bishop 
Theodore Abū Qurra, Syrian Orthodox ( Jacobite) Ḥabīb Abū Rāʾiṭa 
al-Takrītī, and Nestorian ʿ Ammār al-Baṣrī.12 Even though early Christian-
Muslim polemics showed at times reconciliation of viewpoints, this never 
extended to the crucifixion, in the same way it could never include the 
trinity.13 Simply put, like early Muslim sources, early Christian writ-
ings do not provide any evidence that the first generation(s) of Muslims 
ever understood 4:157 as anything other than denying that Jesus was 
crucified.

In accepting the natural and spontaneous interpretation of the 
Qur’anic statement as a denial of the crucifixion of Jesus, non-Muslim 
scholars have seen the Qur’an’s assertion as nothing more than a histor-
ical fallacy. Conversely, Muslim scholars have maintained that it corrects 
a popular, yet false claim.

Breaking with the Consensus in Ismāʿīlī Sources

Notwithstanding the consensus of Islamic sources, there are a handful 
of relatively early Ismāʿīlī scholars who treated the crucifixion of Jesus 
as a historical fact.

The earliest of these scholars is Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/933). He 
wrote a polemical book, Aʿlām al-Nubuwwa, in which he refuted various 
atheistic claims by the famous philosopher and physician Abū Bakr Ibn 
Zakariyyā al-Rāzī whom he met and debated many times. In one chap-
ter, Abū Ḥātim responded to the claim of Abū Bakr, whom he referred 
to as “the atheist,” that the prophets of various faiths contradicted each 
other, which undermined the veracity of religion in general. One exam-
ple used by Abū Bakr was that “Muḥammad claimed that Jesus was not 
killed whereas both Jews and Christians reject that and claim that he 
was killed and crucified.”14



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Abū Ḥātim responded by saying that some scholars claimed that 
verse 4:157 does not deny that Jesus was crucified but rather means that 
the Jews did not truly kill him. God raised Jesus to Himself where he is 
alive, just like the martyrs who are killed in the cause of Allah whom 
the Qur’an also describes as “alive” (al-Baqara 2:154; Āl ʿImrān 3:169). 
Abū Ḥātim then went on to liken this interpretation to the Gospels’ 
story that “Jesus died in the body but is still alive in the spirit.” He also 
quoted verses 3:55 and 5:117, which use the root w-f-y to describe what 
happened to Jesus, for further support.15

Beyond citing those four verses, Abū Ḥātim did not engage with 
the Qur’anic text to show how it might accommodate the crucifixion of 
Jesus. The scholars that he claimed adopted this view are left unnamed, 
so it is not possible to identify them. Abū Ḥātim’s focus was simply on 
refuting Abū Bakr’s criticism.

Significantly, in a separate, exegetical work, al-Iṣlāḥ, Abū Ḥātim 
agreed with the majority interpretation that the Qur’an denies the cru-
cifixion of Jesus. Furthermore, he adopted the claim common among 
Muslim exegetes that the person who led the Jews to Jesus was made to 
look like Jesus, misleading the Jews into killing him, thinking that they 
killed Jesus.16

Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. 331/942) authored a book in which he 
detailed his disagreement with al-Iṣlāḥ by his contemporary, Abū Ḥātim 
al-Rāzī. However, in his book al-Yanābīʿ, al-Sijistānī seems to accept that 
Jesus was crucified. In this work on his esoteric philosophy, al-Sijistānī 
interprets the crucifixion and the cross according to his Ismāʿīlī under-
standing of the roles of the Imams and the Qāʾim/Mahdī. For instance, he 
notes that the declaration of faith in Islam, lā ilāha illā Allah, consists of 
an affirmation and a negation and that the cross consists of one wood log 
that stands on another. Al-Sijistānī also emphasizes that it is significant 
that the declaration of faith consists of four words and that the cross has 
four endings. Al-Sijistānī does not quote the Qur’an or any other Islamic 
tradition in support of his views on the crucifixion.17

Half a century after Abū Ḥātim and Sijistānī, Jaʿfar Ibn Mansūr al-Ya-
man (380/990) reiterated the view that Jesus was crucified in a biographical 
work of prophets. This account of Jesus’ life is broadly based on the Gospels 



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but many of its details conflict with them. It is not clear whether these 
details are derived from other Christian traditions. The author links the 
story to the Ismāʿīlī concept of Qāʾim. Again, this work does not make 
any effort to show how the Qur’an may confirm the crucifixion of Jesus.18

The historicity of the crucifixion of Jesus was also confirmed by 
the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ). This group, which appeared 
in the fourth century AH (tenth century CE), considered all religions 
authentic and combined Greek philosophy with Islamic thought and 
is believed to have had close links to Ismāʿīlism. One of their fifty-two 
epistles discusses Jesus and illustrates their view that it was his human 
body that was crucified, while his soul survived the crucifixion.19 Like the 
Ismāʿīlī works reviewed here, the writings of the Brethren of Purity are 
not interpretations of the Qur’an, contrary to what some have claimed.20 
Their account of Jesus’ crucifixion and other events of his life makes no 
reference to any Islamic tradition, Qur’anic or otherwise.

The Crucifixion in Modern Muslim Scholarship

The overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars down the centuries have 
continued to believe that the Qur’an unequivocally denies that Jesus 
was crucified. However, two relatively new, relevant trends that have 
developed deserve to be mentioned here.

First, some scholars have begun to argue that Jesus was indeed put 
on the cross, but he survived the ordeal and went on to die a natural 
death later. It looks like this was first proposed in the second half of the 
nineteenth century by the Indian reformer Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. 
Ahmad Khan wrote:

Crucifixion itself does not cause the death of a man, because 
only the palms of his hands, or the palms of his hands and feet 
are pierced. The real cause of death is that when someone is 
hanged on the cross for four or five days, he dies because of the 
pains of the pierced hands and feet, combined with the endured 
hunger, thirst and exertion… When we bring the whole event 
into historical connection, it is clear that Christ did not die on 



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the cross, but something happened there which caused people to 
believe that he died… After three or four hours Christ was taken 
down from the cross, and it is certain that at that moment he 
was still alive. Then the disciples concealed him in a very secret 
place, out of fear of the enmity of the Jews… and they spread 
the rumour that Christ ascended to heaven.21

Ahmad Khan adopted a strict rationalistic approach to reading scrip-
tures. For instance, he also interpreted the virginal conception and Jesus’ 
miracles as natural events that did not involve any supernatural ele-
ments. He was also influenced by Western scholarship, which is where 
the non-fatal crucifixion theory first appeared.

The earliest form of the non-fatal crucifixion theory was proposed by 
the German theologians Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, late in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and Heinrich Paulus, early in the nineteenth century. Advocates of 
the theory of non-fatal crucifixion often cite a report by Josephus about 
someone who survived a crucifixion.22 Versions of this theory include the 
suggestions that Jesus fell into a deep swoon on the cross, pretended to 
have died, or put himself in a state of self-hypnosis. It is claimed that he 
was treated in the tomb, or that he managed to gather whatever energy 
he had left after his ordeal to escape the tomb. Surviving the crucifixion 
is then used to explain the emptiness of Jesus’ tomb and his appearances 
to his disciples. These theories have been roundly rejected on medical 
grounds and due to their failure to explain post-crucifixion events. While 
surviving a crucifixion is not impossible, it is highly unlikely.23

One person that seemed to have been influenced by Ahmad Khan was 
his contemporary Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya 
movement. The latter first held the standard Muslim belief regarding the 
crucifixion, but he changed his view in 1891 claiming that God informed 
him that Jesus had died.24 Ahmad maintained that Jesus was put into a 
swoon that was mistaken for death. A terrible earthquake happened that 
made the Jews fearful about their homes and families, so they rushed to 
take Jesus down from the cross, thinking that he had died when he had 
not. Jesus later went on to live in India.25 He is said to have later died a 
natural death and his tomb is in Kashmir.



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The second trend that contradicts the majority Muslim belief regarding 
what happened to Jesus was begun by the twentieth-century Egyptian 
reformer Muḥammad ʿAbduh. ʿAbduh claimed that Jesus died a natural 
death and denied that he will return.26 This view was adopted by prominent 
Arab scholars who were influenced by ʿAbduh, some of whom were his 
students. These include Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍa, who compiled ʿ Abduh’s 
views, Muṣṭafā al-Marāghī,27 Maḥmūd Shaltūt,28 Muḥammad Ibn ʿ Āshūr,29 
Muḥammad Abū Zahra, and Muḥammad al-Ghazālī.30 This view is based 
on reading the Qur’anic wafāt of Jesus as being a wafāt of death, not of 
sleep. Yet, significantly, this view still argued that Jesus was not crucified.31

While there is a growing minority of Muslim scholars that accepts 
that Jesus was crucified, the overwhelming majority continue to argue 
that he avoided the crucifixion.

The Qur’an’s Account in Western Scholarship

In recent years, there has been a growing tendency among a minority 
of scholars to go against the centuries-long consensus to argue that the 
historicity of the crucifixion of Jesus is not rejected in the Qur’an. These 
scholars suggest that the majority consensus is based on a misunder-
standing of the Qur’an, which Muslims have failed to correct for fourteen 
centuries.32 One work that appears to have been particularly influential 
in promoting this view, including in general public polemics, is Todd 
Lawson’s The Crucifixion and the Qur’an, which is based on a two-part 
paper by the same author published three decades earlier, itself derived 
from his 1980 MA thesis. He seeks support for his argument by noting 
that not all early Muslim scholars understood 4:157 as denying the cru-
cifixion.33 The interpretation of the overwhelming majority of scholars, 
Lawson argues, is a product of tafsīr, rather than the unambiguous text.

Lawson draws on Ismāʿīlī writings to support his argument. Yet, 
as already explained, in addition to being relatively late and few, these 
sources do not engage with the Qur’anic text in any significant way. 
This point is often overlooked by scholars who highlight Ismāʿīlī texts 
to downplay the significance of the Muslim scholarly consensus on this 
issue. For instance, when citing Abū Ḥātim’s earlier work to confirm 



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his acceptance that Jesus was crucified, these scholars do not seem to 
be aware of his more significant, exegetical book that denies the cruci-
fixion outright,34 or they simply explain it away.35 While exaggerating 
the significance of Ismāʿīlī writings on the crucifixion of Jesus, Lawson 
also acknowledges that those authors used the crucifixion for doctrinal 
purposes, namely for “propagating their own typologically iterative view 
of salvation and eschatology.”36

The primary modern alternative to the ubiquitous interpretation 
of 4:157 is that it denies the ability of man, represented by the Jews, to 
defeat the will of God, represented by his agent Jesus, even though the 
latter is said to have been killed. Jesus was crucified, it is argued, so the 
verse only denies that it was the Jews who killed him, as it was God who 
took his soul.37 Another version of this view is that the verse confirms 
that it is God who gives life and death, so had He not permitted the 
killing of Jesus, it would not have happened.38

While this alternative interpretation has been promoted by mainly 
Christian theologians, it has also been advocated by a few historians 
and Muslim scholars. Two different objectives could be seen as giving 
impetus to this new interpretation of 4:157, at times explicitly and at 
others more subtly. The first objective is the seeking of a rapprochement 
between Islam and Christianity. Mainly Christian theologians, although 
some Muslims as well, have argued that the denial of the crucifixion of 
Jesus by Muslims, because of their understanding of 4:157, is a major 
obstacle to a closer and more amicable relationship between the two 
faiths. As one Christian theologian articulated this view:

Q 4:157-58 has become an important exegetical site for repair-
ing the broken relationship between Christianity and Islam. 
Typically, authors with this goal have hoped to shift attention 
away from the Qur’an’s supposed denial of the crucifixion in Q 
4:157 and instead attempt to find common ground in its affir-
mation in Q 4:158 that God raised Jesus to Godself. Christian 
scholars, hoping to present the Qur’an in a more positive light to 
Christian readers, have labored to prove that these verses need 
not be interpreted as a denial of the crucifixion.39



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This alternative interpretation suggests that verses 4:157-158 affirm 
“the death and resurrection of Christ.”40 More broadly, it confirms “the 
story of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension as told in the New Testament.”41

Ironically, if this theological approach were effective in achieving 
Islam-Christianity rapprochement, then it could only do the opposite 
to the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Paul (1 Cor 1:23) 
stated that the concept of a crucified Christ was a “stumbling block to 
Jews.”42 But, while Paul’s statement may have certainly been true in the 
past, theological considerations arguably have much less impact than 
worldly matters on the state of the relationship between the three great 
Abrahamic faiths in today’s world. I agree with one assessment that “the 
attempt of some Christian apologists to circumvent the Qur’anic denial 
of the crucifixion is disingenuous in the extreme.”43

The second objective, which is that of some Islamic apologetics, is 
to protect the Qur’an against the accusation that it contains incorrect 
historical information. The late Mahmoud Ayoub, who is often cited as 
proof of a growing trend among Muslim scholars to not read the Qur’an 
as denying the crucifixion, has argued that the ubiquitous Muslim inter-
pretation of the Qur’an would not “answer convincingly the charge of 
history.”44 Ayoub goes beyond asserting that the Qur’an does not contain 
a denial of Jesus’ crucifixion to make the sweeping and unsupported 
statement that the Qur’anic account of Jesus, in general, is theological, 
rather than historical (italics are mine):

Why then, it must be asked, does the Qur’an deny the crucifix-
ion of Christ in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence? 
Muslim commentators have not been able convincingly to disprove 
the crucifixion. Rather, they have compounded the problem by 
adding the conclusion of their substitutionist theories. The prob-
lem has been, we believe, one of understanding. Commentators 
have generally taken the verse to be a historical statement. This 
statement, like all the other statements concerning Jesus in the 
Qur’an, belongs not to history but to theology in the broadest 
sense.45



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If the crucifixion of Jesus is accepted as historical, then the view that 
the Qur’an denies it would mean that it makes a historically false claim. 
It cannot, therefore, be the Word of God, the Omniscient. The suggestion 
that the Qur’an can be read as confirming, or at least not denying, the 
historicity of Jesus’ death on the cross would then help in protecting its 
credibility and status as divine revelation.

Ayoub claims that the Gospel narratives of the crucifixion are histor-
ical while the Qur’an’s account of Jesus is not historical but theological. 
One pointer to the arbitrariness of this apportioning of history and the-
ology is that the crucifixion is the cornerstone of the theology of the New 
Testament but it would have no theological significance whatsoever in 
the Qur’an. Furthermore, Judaism never knew of a suffering Messiah, so 
it is not a historical concept either.46

Away from the two main goals of seeking Islam-Christianity rap-
prochement and protecting the credibility of the Qur’an, some historians 
have found rejecting that the Qur’an denies the crucifixion useful in sup-
porting their reconstruction of history. One scholar, for example, has placed 
4:157-158 in a historical setting whereby the Qur’anic text is said to be 
rejecting the Sasanian accusation of the Jews that they killed Jesus because 
it was demoralising to the Christians who worshipped Jesus. Denying that 
they killed Jesus, it is also argued, was necessary for the Prophet to have any 
chance of creating the ecumenical union of monotheists that he sought.47

In some way, those who challenge the consensual meaning of 4:157 
try to address a question that is ignored by those who see a historical 
mistake in the Qur’an. Presuming that Muḥammad is the author of the 
Qur’an, there is no convincing explanation for his rejection of the cru-
cifixion of Jesus. He had nothing to gain from denying it and much to 
lose. The human nature of Jesus is repeatedly stressed in the Qur’an and 
his divinity is rejected in unambiguous terms. The doctrine of atonement 
also would not have been admissible even if the crucifixion were not 
denied in the Qur’an because it is incompatible with its theology. There 
was absolutely nothing that Muḥammad could have gained by going 
against the dominant consensus of both Jews and Christians that Jesus 
died on the cross. This observation equally applies to the suggestion that 
4:157 is ambiguous, as this ambiguity would have harmed the Prophet’s 



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mission. Furthermore, any ambiguity about this particular issue could 
not have been left without explanatory comments from the Prophet, not 
least in his debates with Jews and Christians. It looks like he had no say 
on the Qur’an’s verdict that Jesus was not crucified, which then goes 
against the starting assumption of his authorship of the Qur’an.

Reading a denial of the crucifixion of Jesus from the Qur’an also 
poses a challenge to the popular view that the text was much influenced 
by the Jews and Christians of Arabia and their sources. This is what we 
will address next.

The Qur’an and the Talmud

Western scholars have long believed that the Prophet Muḥammad 
had knowledge of Jewish scriptures, including the Talmud,48 and that 
“very much of the Qur’an is directly derived from Jewish books, not so 
much from the Old Testament Scriptures as from the Talmud and other 
post-Biblical writings.”49 This conclusion is based on similarities between 
some Qur’anic passages and Talmudic texts.50

Significantly, even works that claim that the Talmud was a major 
source for the Qur’an have had to accept that the Qur’an’s unique state-
ment on the crucifixion cannot be linked to the Talmud.51 Yet an attempt 
has recently been made by Ian Mevorach to claim that it is a direct 
response to the Babylonian Talmud,52 which has been firmly endorsed53 
or considered possible.54 The ultimate goal of this approach is to show that 
4:157 is a counterargument to the Jewish claim of responsibility in that 
tradition, not to the Christian tradition that Jesus was crucified, even when 
not linked directly to the Talmud.55 This is the Bavli passage in question:

On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days 
before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 
“He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery 
and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in 
his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf”. But 
since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged 
on the eve of the Passover! (b. Sanhedrin 43a).56



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Mevorach argues that “the sequence of events in Jesus’ execution in 
the Talmud, first stoning and then hanging, can be read as corresponding 
to the Qur’an’s double-denial that the Jews ‘did not kill him, nor did 
they crucify him’”.57

One objection to linking 4:157 to the Talmudic passage is that the 
verse does not refer to stoning even though this term appears in sev-
eral other verses (Hūd 11:91; al-Kahf 18:20; Maryam 19:46; Yāsīn 36:18; 
al-Dukhān 44:20). Even more telling, there is no mention in the Qur’an 
of any of the other details in the Bavli passage, including its second part, 
which claims that “Yeshu had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni 
and Todah,” before proceeding to justify why each had to be executed. It 
is unconvincing in the extreme to claim that the four-word pronounce-
ment in 4:157 is a response to a substantive Talmudic narrative, which is 
made up of nearly 370 words according to one English translation, only 
because the latter states that a Yeshu was hanged.

This claim is one result of the excessive focus on tracing Qur’anic 
texts to Jewish and Christian sources. The weakness of the attempt to 
link 4:157 to the Talmud becomes even clearer when we consider other 
passages from that book that are said to talk about Jesus and his mother, 
accusing Mary of adultery and making Jesus an illegitimate son. These 
claims seem to be intended to refute the Christian story of the virginal 
conception.58 This accusation is also relevant to discuss here because one 
verse leading to 4:157 that we will discuss later deals with regard to this 
particular Jewish accusation of Mary.

Writing around the end of the second century, the Christian author 
Tertullian mentioned this Jewish accusation in his depiction of a hypo-
thetical future scene in which he mocks the damned Jews after Jesus’ 
return:

“This is he,” I shall say, “the son of the carpenter or the harlot,” 
the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan, who had a devil. This is 
he whom you bought from Judas; this is he, who was struck 
with reed and fist, defiled with spittle, given gall and vinegar 
to drink. This is he whom the disciples secretly stole away, that 
it might be said he had risen—unless it was the gardener who 



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removed him, lest his lettuces should be trampled by the throng 
of visitors!”59

The Talmudic passages in question, as is the case with other defam-
atory references to Jesus, use coded names for him, presumably to avoid 
Christian persecution. The two main coded references to Jesus are “Ben 
Pandira/Pantera” (son of Pandira/Pantera) and “Ben Stada” (son of Stada), 
who is said to have been born out of an adulterous relationship. The 
following passage continues a discussion of making alterations to the 
skin as a way of invoking magical power:

It was taught. R. Eliezer said to the Sages: But did not Ben Stada 
bring forth witchcraft from Egypt by means of scratches [in the 
form of charms] upon his flesh? He was a fool, answered they, 
and proof cannot be adduced from fools. [Was he then the son 
of Stada: surely he was the son of Pandira? – Said R. Hisda: The 
husband was Stada, the paramour was Pandira. But the husband 
was Pappos b. Judah?—His mother was Stada. But his mother 
was Miriam the hairdresser?—It is as we say in Pumbeditha: This 
one has been unfaithful to (lit., ‘turned away from’—satath da) 
her husband]. (b. Shabbat 104b)

The passage shows rabbis agreeing that Ben Stada and Ben Pandira 
were one and the same, although there is disagreement on whether Stada 
was the name of his father or his mother.60

One particularly interesting passage in the Talmud, which was cen-
sored from other manuscripts from the era of Christendom, suggests 
that Yeshu, Ben Stada, and Ben Pandira are the same person. Repeating 
almost word for word a part of b. Shabbat 104b and borrowing from b. 
Sanhedrin 43a the reference to the hanging on the eve of the Passover, 
this passage identifies Ben Stada as the victim:

And this they did to Ben Stada in Lydda, and they hung him on 
the eve of Passover. Ben Stada was Ben Padira. R. Hisda said: 
“The husband was Stada, the paramour Pandira. But was not the 



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husband Pappos b. Judah? – His mother’s name was Stada. But 
his mother was Miriam, a dresser of woman’s hair? As they say 
in Pumbaditha, this woman has turned away from her husband, 
(i.e. committed adultery)”. (b. Sanhedrin 67a)

The Talmud has other passages that confirm the stoning of Ben Stada 
for deceiving people.61

Some scholars have accepted that Ben Pandira and Ben Stada are 
both pseudonyms for Jesus,62 but others dismiss most claimed coded 
names, including Ben Stada, and accept only Ben Pandira.63 The latter 
was a very common Roman name and was widely used in the Roman 
armies, with various epitaphs of Roman soldiers carrying it.64 This name 
in the Talmud is said to be reasonably identifiable with Jesus because 
of external evidence.65 The third-century Christian theologian Origen 
quotes Celsus, the Greek critic of Christianity, writing around 180 CE, 
who cited Jewish stories accusing Jesus’ mother of having an adulterous 
relationship with a Roman soldier:

When she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter 
to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, 
and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera.66

This early use of Ben Pandira has made some consider it the oldest 
reference to Jesus in Talmudic literature.67

Now, linking the simple and clear statement in the Qur’an that 
rejects the Jewish accusation of Mary to any of these confused passages, 
not to mention the uncertainty about their intended characters, is highly 
speculative and lacks any evidence. This same observation has to be 
made of the claim linking 4:157 to its alleged Talmudic target.

Also, if 4:157 is to be linked to the known claim that the Jews killed 
Jesus, then the logical source of choice should be the Gospel narratives, 
not a passing and vague reference in the Talmud. This is certainly even 
more so the case considering that the latter contradicts the main, much 
more detailed, and far more known accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, 
of the Gospels.



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To state the obvious, the Qur’an did engage with the beliefs of the 
Jews and Christians, as it did with those of the Quraysh and the Arabs 
of the Peninsula in general and even ancient peoples. In the Qur’an, 
though, there is little interest in how and when false beliefs appeared, 
what their historical development was, or whether they were traceable to 
oral or written tradition. When certain beliefs are rejected in the Qur’an, 
this comes in the form of asserting that these were not communicated 
by God through prophets but distortions of the revelations and/or total 
fabrications by people. This is the most fundamental distinction in the 
Qur’an between truth and falsehood when it comes to beliefs. Claiming 
that the Qur’an responded to the Talmud specifically is unjustified with-
out producing evidence.

Furthermore, whatever the Jews believed about Jesus and his mother 
goes back to his time, when most of his Jewish audience rejected his 
mission. This rejection and its natural development into various accu-
sations against him and his mother predate the Talmud. The latter only 
codified such beliefs; it is not their origin. To be sure, even scholars who 
are particularly generous in accepting which passages refer to Jesus and 
Mary accept that they “appear only in the Babylonian Talmud and can 
be dated, at the earliest, to the late third–early fourth century CE.” 68 
It is very hard to justify the view that the Qur’an’s rejection of centu-
ries-long common Jewish beliefs about Jesus targeted tiny, hard-to-find 
passages buried in the huge Talmudic tradition that Muḥammad was 
supposedly well familiar with! Indeed, even those who argue for a sig-
nificant Talmudic influence on the Qur’an have to concede that there is 
no evidence that Muḥammad had seen a Talmud or ever heard its name.69

We can be certain that the average Jew in Arabia at the time of 
Muḥammad would not have been familiar with such minor, not to say 
ambiguous and confusing, stories in the Talmud. It sounds unrealistic 
and farfetched to think that if an average Jew at the time was asked 
why they thought that the Christian Messiah was false, they would 
have pointed to one of those few passages in a polemical book that they 
probably had never read any part of ! That is effectively the implication 
of suggesting that the Qur’an’s discourse is targeted at the Talmud. The 
Jews believed, for example, that the Messiah would come as a victorious 



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leader, not as a lowkey teacher whose humiliation would be completed 
by his crucifixion. It is also worth noting that those passages do not 
belong to the Mishnah, i.e. the oral law, in the Talmud, but they are part 
of its detailed commentary.

But such specific linking of a Qur’anic statement to the Talmud 
has an even more fundamental problem. It is based, as one scholar has 
pointed out, on multilayered assumptions, none of which have been 
proven:

(1) That we know who these Arabian Jews actually were and just 
what type of Judaism they practiced; (2) that we comprehend 
the nature of the contact between these Jews and the earliest 
Muslims; and (3) that we can somehow show the interconnec-
tion between the Qur’an and the religious ideas that circulated 
among these Arabian Jews and others.

The reality, however, is that very little is known about any of this 
because of “the paucity of sources, the overlooking of other sources, and 
the excesses of Orientalism.”70 We do not have any evidence that the Jews 
of Arabia possessed the emerging normative rabbinic writings. In fact, 
for some unclear reasons, the Jews of Arabia are not even mentioned in 
the Mishnah and Talmuds!

It should also be noted that both the Torah and the Injīl are men-
tioned in the Qur’an, at times with a challenge to the Jews and the 
Christians to consult them. Yet there is no mention whatsoever of the 
Talmud. Had the Qur’an engaged with the Talmud, it would have prob-
ably attacked it and accused the Jews of creating a book that was not 
revealed by God.71

The Crucifixion and Other Verses

Scholars who deny the Qur’an’s denial of the historicity of the crucifix-
ion of Jesus have also called on verses other than 4:157 for support. This 
is one such verse,72 which is traditionally believed to refer to a specific 
incident in the battle of Badr:



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You [O you who have believed] did not kill them, but it was 
Allah who killed them. You [O Muḥammad] did not throw when 
you threw, but it was Allah who threw that He might test the 
believers with a good test. Indeed, Allah is hearing and knowing. 
(Al-Anfāl 8:17)

There are serious flaws with this specific attempt. First, 8:17 makes 
its point by allegorically replacing the believers with God as the true 
actor. Likening 4:157 to 8:17 wrongly implies that the former has a sim-
ilar metaphor. Second, 8:17 reports those human actions as essentially 
good because they are taken by believers to defend themselves against 
aggressive unbelievers. But the attempt to crucify Jesus is described as 
evil, so attributing it to God is theologically untenable. Third, the denial 
of the crucifixion in 4:157 is followed in 4:158 by a second action that 
is explicitly attributed to God, which is raising Jesus. There is no such 
attribution when it comes to the crucifixion.

Another creative interpretation to get around the clear meaning of 
4:157 that Jesus was not killed likens him to martyrs, who are described 
in the Qur’an as alive with God (also Āl ʿImrān 3:169):73

Do not say about those who are killed in the way of Allah, “They 
are dead”. Rather, they are alive, but you do not perceive it. 
(Al-Baqara 2:154)

This attempt ignores the fundamental fact that 2:154 and 3:169 explic-
itly talk about believers who were “killed,” whereas Jesus is described 
as having been saved.74 That martyrs are alive with God is unambigu-
ously confirmed in both verses, but so is the fact that they have been 
killed. Like 2:154 and 3:169, 4:157 and many other verses are meant to 
be statements of facts. Such verses should not be confused with rhetoric, 
allegories, euphemisms, and other such linguistic devices. This confusion 
would seriously undermine the intelligibility of the Qur’an.

The Qur’an’s confirmation of Jesus’ mortality has also been called 
upon as evidence that he was crucified.75 This assertion occurs in these 
words that are attributed to Jesus:



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Peace is on me the day I was born, the day I will die (amūtu), and 
the day I am brought back alive. (Maryam 19:33)

Significantly, this verse refers to death not killing, so it could not refer 
to the crucifixion or any other form of murder. The Qur’anic text contains a 
clear distinction between the two ways of losing one’s life, as in this verse:

Muḥammad is not but a messenger before whom the messengers 
have passed on. So if he dies (māta) or be killed (qutila), would 
you turn back on your heels [to unbelief]? (Āl ʿImrān 3:144)

It is also worth noting that in 19:33 Jesus speaks about experiencing 
one death and one resurrection, so the Gospels’ assertion that he was 
raised from the dead after the crucifixion is implicitly denied.

On the other hand, other verses indirectly indicate that Jesus was 
not crucified. The following verse confirms that God foiled the Jews’ 
attempt to harm Jesus:

They (the Children of Israel) planned, and Allah planned; Allah 
is the best of planners. (Āl ʿImrān 3:54)

That God rescued Jesus is made even clearer in the following verse 
in which God first reminds Jesus of the miracles he granted him, before 
making this statement:

And [remember] when I restrained the Children of Israel from 
you when you came to them with clear proofs. (Al-Māʾida 5:110)

As it is preceded by a verse about the Day of Judgement, most exegetes 
think that this verse describes a dialogue that will happen on the Day of 
Judgement, with only a small minority arguing that it happened at some 
point after the attempt to crucify Jesus.76 Either way, God’s reminder to Jesus 
would make no sense if he later abandoned him or was going to abandon 
him to the fatal ordeal of the crucifixion. Similarly, for an audience six cen-
turies after Jesus’ time, the reminder of 5:110 that God rescued Jesus and the 



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confirmation of 3:54 that God’s plan foiled the Jewish attempt would have 
made sense only if they were informing the audience or confirming to them 
that Jesus was not crucified. In other words, 3:45 and 5:110 would make sense 
only if 4:157 was understood to mean that Jesus escaped the crucifixion.

The Non-Crucifixion Verse in Focus

In this section, I aim to show that both the language and context of 
4:157 repeatedly and unambiguously indicate that this verse can only 
be a denial of both the killing and the crucifixion of Jesus. This is what 
underpins the consensus of Muslim exegetes in their understanding of 
this verse. Conversely, rejecting this ubiquitous interpretation is driven 
by a priori views and convictions, which I have already quickly reviewed, 
that are extraneous to the Qur’anic text.

To fully appreciate the clarity of the meaning of 4:157, we need to 
also study related verses. More specifically, we will focus on the four 
verses leading to 4:157 and the verse that follows it, as they provide 
immediate contextual information that is useful for avoiding any mis-
understanding of 4:157. We will start with verse 4:153 as it commences 
a new context in which the Jews, and later Jesus, are the main subject:

The People of the Book ask you [O Muḥammad!] to bring down 
to them a book from heaven. They had asked of Moses greater 
than that and said, “Show us Allah plainly.” So, the thunderbolt 
struck them for their wrongdoing. Then they took the calf [for 
worship] after clear proofs had come to them. We pardoned that. 
We gave Moses a clear authority. (Al-Nisāʾ 4:153)

We raised over them the mount for their covenant and We said 
to them, “Enter the gate while prostrate.” We said to them, “Do 
not transgress on the Sabbath,” and We took from them a solemn 
covenant. (Al-Nisāʾ 4:154)

[We cursed them] for breaking their covenant, rejecting the signs 
of Allah, killing prophets unjustly, and saying, “Our hearts are 



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covered.” Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, 
so they do not believe except for few. (Al-Nisāʾ 4:155)

And for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a grave 
slander (Al-Nisāʾ 4:156)

And their saying, “We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of 
Mary, the messenger of Allah.” They did not kill him, nor did they 
crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them. Those who 
differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of 
it except the following of conjecture. They did not kill him with 
certainty. (Al-Nisāʾ 4:157)

Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. Allah is invincible, wise. 
(Al-Nisāʾ 4:158)

Verse 4:153 first criticises the Jews at the time of Muḥammad for 
demanding that he show them a book descended from heaven, which 
they asked for as proof of his claim that the Qur’an was revealed to him 
by God. It points out that their fellow Jews at the time of Moses made 
an even greater demand of their prophet to make it possible for them to 
see God so that they could believe him. This transgression is referenced 
in another verse in the Qur’an that addresses the Jews directly:

[Recall] when you said, “O Moses, we will never believe you 
until we see Allah plainly”. So the thunderbolt overtook you as 
you looked on. (Al-Baqara 2:55)

The closest reference to this event in the Old Testament seems to 
be the following:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people not 
to break through to the Lord to look; otherwise many of them 
will perish”. (Exod. 19:21)



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Having gone up to Mount Sinai as instructed by God, Moses was 
ordered to go down to warn his followers against bypassing some phys-
ical boundaries to see God. The Qur’anic text, on the other hand, talks 
about a demand that Moses’ followers made of him. The ending of 2.55 
suggests that they carried out whatever they meant to do in anticipation 
of seeing God, but they were instead struck by a thunderbolt.

Verse 4:153 goes on to make another criticism of Moses’ followers, 
which is taking a calf for a god. This grave sin is mentioned several times 
in the Qur’an (al-Baqara 2:51-54, 92-93; al-Nisāʾ 4:153; al-Aʿrāf 7:148-
150). The episode of the golden calf is also found in the Old Testament 
(Exod. 32:1-33).

Verse 4:154 references other events that reflect the failure of Moses’ 
followers to honour their covenant with God, including keeping the 
Sabbath (also al-Baqara 2:65; al-Nisāʾ 4:47). The sanctity of the Sabbath 
and the command to cease work on it is mentioned in many places in 
the Old Testament, the first of which is in Exodus (16:23). It also reports 
several violations by the whole community and by individuals (e.g. Exod. 
16:27; Num. 15:32-36).

Verse 4:155 confirms God’s condemnation of the Jews for breaking 
their solemn covenant, rejecting His signs, killing prophets without 
justification, and claiming that their hearts are “covered.” The serious-
ness of the killing of prophets, who are not named, is underlined by its 
mention in several verses (al-Baqara 2:61, 87, 91; Āl ʿImrān 3: 21, 112, 
181, 183; al-Māʾida 5:70). This charge needs to be discussed in detail 
because of its particular relevance to the account of the crucifixion in 
the Qur’an.

The Old Testament describes the killing of the priest Zechariah, son 
of Jehoiada (2 Chron. 24:17-22), who is called a “prophet” in rabbinic 
writings (b. Gittin 57b), and the prophet Uriah, son of Shemaiah (Jer. 
26:20-24). They are thought to have lived in the ninth century and the 
end of the seventh century BCE, respectively. The prophet Jeremiah, who 
was contemporary to Uriah, also came close to facing death (Jer. 26:11). 
We also find passing references to the killing of multiple prophets in the 
ninth century BCE. Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, King of Israel, is said to 
have been involved in “killing the Lord’s prophets” (1 Kings 18:4). These 



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multiple murders are also mentioned by the prophet Elijah who, after 
running for his life, complained to God:

The Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your 
altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, 
and they are seeking my life, to take it away. (1 Kings 19:10)

There is also a fifth-century BCE mention of the mass murder of 
prophets, which may be referring to the same killings mentioned by 
Elijah. Several inhabitants of Judah are reported to have complained to 
God about their Israelite ancestors:

They were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your 
law behind their backs and killed your prophets, who had warned 
them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed 
great blasphemies. (Neh. 9:26)

The Jews’ killing of many prophets is also reported in the New 
Testament. Paul (1 Thess. 2:15) accuses the Jews of killing “both the 
Lord Jesus and the prophets.” Significantly, this accusation is repeatedly 
mentioned in a scathing attack by Jesus in a speech to the public (also 
Luke 11:49, 13:34; Acts 7:52):

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the 
tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 
and you say, “If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we 
would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of 
the prophets.” Thus you testify against yourselves that you are 
descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, 
the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! 
How can you escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send 
you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and 
crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue 
from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous 
blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood 



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of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between 
the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come 
upon this generation. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills 
the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matt. 23:29-37)

Zechariah son of Barachiah is not the Zechariah son of Jehoiada 
mentioned earlier. He is the prophet to whom the Old Testament’s 
Book of Zechariah is attributed. This seems to be a misidentification by 
Matthew, while Luke (11:51) does not name Zechariah’s father.77 The 
charge against the Jews of killing many prophets is also found in Jewish 
and Christian writings.78

The other accusation against the Jews in verse 4:155 is that they 
claim that their hearts were “covered.” This has been interpreted in two 
different ways. First, the Jews claimed that their hearts were already full 
of knowledge, so they did not need the teaching of prophets. Second, 
they claimed that their hearts were closed to the prophets’ teaching. This 
interpretation seems to mirror a criticism of the Jews by the Christian 
Stephen of being “uncircumcised in heart” (Acts 7:51). The concept of 
the circumcision of the heart is also found in the Old Testament (Jer. 
9:26) and Paul’s writings (Rom. 2:29). The first interpretation seems more 
plausible for two reasons. The Qur’an uses different terminology for 
the state of the heart described in the second interpretation, calling it 
“sealed” (khatama) (e.g. Q al-Baqara 2:7; al-Jāthiya 45:23). Also, it does 
not sound reasonable to say that the Jews confessed to an irrational 
rejection as their defence argument! Rather, claiming that their hearts 
do not need further knowledge sounds more like an argument that they 
would have used to reject the teaching of new prophets.

Verse 4:156 moves from the Jews’ transgression against unnamed 
prophets to their specific rejection of and hostility towards Jesus, includ-
ing his mother. Given that they rejected his claim that he was sent by 
God, let alone that he was the awaited Messiah, it is no surprise that they 
did not believe in Mary’s virginal conception—a miracle that the Qur’an 
confirms in more than one place (Āl ʿImrān 3:42-47; Maryam 19:16-22). 
The Jews accused Mary of becoming pregnant with Jesus illegitimately, 
as we discussed earlier.



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We now come to the main verse of interest, 4:157. It starts by adding 
the Jews’ boast that they killed Jesus to the sinful acts listed in the previ-
ous verses. The description “the messenger of Allah” has been attributed 
by some exegetes to God and by others to the Jews. In the former case, it 
would be a confirmation of Jesus’ status by God. If, instead, it is a part of 
the Jews’ claim, it is a sarcastic ridiculing of Jesus’ claim to having been 
sent by God. I am inclined to this reading because it is aligned with the 
fact that the title “Messiah” is used by the Jews derisorily in their claim. 
Their use of the title “Messiah” sarcastically contrasts their boast that 
they killed Jesus with their longstanding belief that the awaited Messiah 
was going to be an invincible and victorious military leader, thus derid-
ing Jesus’ claim to messiahship. Also, it seems a more natural reading of 
the text to consider the response to the Jewish claim to be starting with 
the refutative retort that “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him.”

Condemning the Jews for “saying” (qawlihim) that they killed Jesus 
is preceded by two other claims they made that are described using 
this very term. The first claim is that their hearts are covered and the 
second is of their slander against Mary, both of which are rejected by 
the Qur’an as being false. There is no justification, then, to suggest that 
the third condemned “saying,” which is about killing Jesus, is presented 
as anything other than a false claim too.

Also, two verses earlier, in 4:155, the Jews are condemned for the actual 
“killing” of prophets, yet in the case of Jesus, the Jews are denounced for 
“saying” that they killed him. Had 4:157 meant that they truly killed him, 
this condemnation would also have been of the killing, not of bragging 
about the killing. From the Qur’anic perspective, killing Jesus would have 
been far graver than failing to accept that his death was ultimately God’s 
prerogative, which is the alternative interpretation of 4:157.

Additionally, the Qur’an had just condemned the Jews for killing 
prophets, as it does in other verses, and no one would suggest those 
verses meant to imply that it was God who killed them. There is no jus-
tification for treating the supposed murder of Jesus differently.

It is difficult to see how 4:157 could have been clearer in reject-
ing that the Jews killed Jesus, in particular when it goes on to equally 
emphatically deny that they crucified him. By following its denial of the 



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killing with specifically rejecting that he was crucified, any claim that 
Jesus suffered a non-fatal crucifixion is also dismissed. The verse unam-
biguously states that Jesus was not killed or even non-fatally crucified.

When boasting that they killed Jesus, the Jews did not lie but mis-
takenly thought that they killed him. This is made clear when their claim 
is contrasted, using the word “but” (lākin), with the corrective statement 
“it was made to appear so to them.” This indicates that there was some 
ground for the Jews’ belief that they crucified Jesus. As already discussed, 
verses 3:54 and 5:110 indicate that they unsuccessfully tried to harm Jesus.

Another significant observation about the wording of 4:157 is its use 
of the construct “mā (did not) … lākin (but) …”. In all of the tens of verses in 
which this form appears (e.g. al-Baqara 2:102; Āl ʿImrān 3:67, 79; al-Anfāl 
8:17; al-Tawba 9:56), whatever follows “mā” is presented as false, because 
it is negated by “mā,” while whatever follows “lākin” is given as a true 
statement that is contrasted with the former. This is one example:

And they did not wrong Us, but they were wronging themselves. 
(Al-Baqara 2:57)

Again, there is nothing to justify reading this form in 4:157 in a 
different way. We must conclude that the verse denies the killing and 
crucifixion of Jesus while affirming that it appeared to the Jews so.

Most Muslim scholars have taken the appearance statement to 
mean that someone who looked like Jesus was crucified instead of him. 
Al-Ṭabarī has preserved several variations of the substitution theory, 
which he attributes to the Successors Wahb Ibn Munabbih, Qatāda Ibn 
Diʿāma (d. 117/735), and Ismāʿīl al-Suddī (d. 127/744).79 Some of these 
narratives may be labelled voluntary substitutionism, as they involve one 
of Jesus’ disciples, who was made or offered to be made to look like him, 
volunteering to be crucified instead of his master. Al-Ṭabarī attributes to 
“some Christians” a version of punishment substitutionism whereby the 
person who betrayed Jesus is punished by involuntarily being made to 
look like him and being crucified in his stead. Some contemporary schol-
ars have alternatively proposed that this was a case of misidentification, 
arguing that circumstances would have made it possible for the wrong 



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person to be arrested and executed.80 Such differences within Muslim 
scholarship, it should be noted, are all within the consensus that Jesus 
escaped the crucifixion.

The Muslim exegetical of substitutionism has been confused with 
what may be termed docetism substitutionism by Western scholars who 
try to trace the Qur’an’s denial of the crucifixion to this early Christian 
doctrine.81 Docetism is the doctrine that Jesus only seemed to have a 
physical body, which effectively denies his human nature. His crucifixion 
and suffering, it follows, were only an illusion, as both are experiences 
that only a body can undergo. Reports of the existence of this belief 
among some Christians go back as early as around 110 CE when bishop 
Ignatius of Antioch, Syria, wrote a letter to the Christians of Smyrna 
(today’s Izmir in Turkey) in which he complains that, “Some unbelievers 
say that his Passion was merely in semblance.”82 He criticises docetists 
who did not accept that Jesus suffered the crucifixion.83 Docetism is also 
found in the teachings of the second-century Egyptian Christian gnostic 
Basilides,84 as well as three of the Nag Hammadi books.85 Yet this concept 
is not a concept that is recognised in any form in the Qur’an.86

Furthermore, using docetism to undermine the standard understand-
ing of the earlier part of 4:157 is a case of reverse causation, whereby a 
cause and its result are mistaken for each other. The substitution theory 
was introduced to explain the clear statement of the verse that Jesus 
escaped the crucifixion, in the absence of any historical reports of a 
different interpretation. It is not the cause for understanding 4:157 as 
meaning that Jesus was not crucified, but it is its result. To be sure, 
denying the crucifixion is derived from the statement “They did not kill 
him, nor did they crucify him,” whereas the speculations about substitu-
tionism attempt to interpret the appearance statement, “it was made to 
appear so to them,” which is thought to explain how the Jews wrongly 
thought that they crucified Jesus. The substitution theory, then, is an 
attempt to explain how this confusion happened. Had there been any 
historical report available to the first generation of Muslims or had they 
had any doubts that 4:157 did not deny Jesus’ crucifixion, exegetes would 
have introduced relevant narratives to explain the appearance statement. 
No such narratives exist.



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Verse 4:157 then goes on to say, “Those who differ over it are in doubt 
about it.” The subject of this difference is the clarification just mentioned 
in the verse, i.e., that Jesus was not killed or crucified but that the claim-
ants wrongly thought so. The verse explains that the Jews’ claim is not 
based on certainty, suggesting that they did not ascertain that they did 
indeed kill him. They tried to kill him, but they failed; their claim to 
the contrary was not based on sufficient evidence. The non-crucifixion 
verse concludes by reiterating its earlier statement that Jesus’ enemies 
failed to kill him.

Breaking verse 4:157 up into its constituent statements further shows 
that it explicitly and unambiguously denies the historicity of this event:

1 The Jews’ claim is stated: “We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son 
of Mary, the messenger of Allah”.

2 The claim is unambiguously denied: “They did not kill him, nor did 
they crucify him.”

3 The Jews’ confusion is explained: “But it was made to appear so to 
them.”

4 Those who argue that Jesus was crucified are not certain about their 
claim: “Those who differ over it are in doubt about it.”

5 Their claim is not based on factual information but guessing and 
speculation: “They have no knowledge of it except the following of 
conjecture.”

6 The verse concludes with another firm confirmation that the claim 
is false and is not based on certainty: “They did not kill him with 
certainty.” (4:157)

Statements 1, 2, and 3 have this general structure, respectively: they 
claim they did X; they did neither X nor Y; but it appeared to them that 
they did. This simple breakdown of the structure of the first half of the 
verse further shows that it could not have been any clearer in denying 
the substance of the Jewish claim. If these three negations of the claim 
that the Jews killed or crucified Jesus are somehow read as confirmation 
of his crucifixion, as some have claimed, then there would be hardly any 
verse in the Qur’an that cannot be claimed to mean the exact opposite of 
what it appears to say. I would argue that such disregard for the basics 



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of Arabic would make the Qur’an unintelligible. It is difficult to think 
of another Qur’anic verse that has been subjected to such astonishing 
reversing of meaning.

Finally, I should add a note about the Arabic word root ṣ-l-b, which 
is ubiquitously translated as “crucify.” This word appears in the Qur’an 
in a verbal form six times (al-Nisāʾ 4:157; al-Maʾida 5:33; al-Aʿrāf 7:124; 
Yūsuf 12:41; Ṭāhā 20:71; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:49). In one instance, Pharaoh 
makes this threat to the magicians who accepted Moses’ claim to being 
God’s messenger:

I will surely cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, 
and I will crucify you (uṣallibannakum) on the trunks of palm 
trees. (Ṭāhā 20:71)

This use may indicate that ṣ-l-b means some kind of execution by 
suspension. There is some debate about how Jesus was crucified, whether 
he was nailed to a cross, and what shape it had, or was suspended until 
he died. One scholar has argued that the popular image of Jesus nailed 
on a cross formed by a horizontal beam affixed at a right angle to an 
upright post is a Christian interpretation of the sparse descriptions in 
the Gospels of Jesus’ execution by suspension, various forms of which 
existed in antiquity.87 This claim of ambiguity, however, is rejected by 
others. One study points out that Greco-Roman texts of crucifixion share 
many similarities with the Gospel narratives of the crucifixion of Jesus, 
although the latter are more detailed than other surviving crucifixion 
accounts.88 A third approach that falls between these two extremes 
states that crucifixion on a cross was likely one specific form within 
the broader category of human bodily suspension. The author argues 
that “this dynamic goes a long way to explain how general references 
in the Hebrew Bible to suspended bodies could later be associated more 
specifically with crucifixion terminology.”89

By the time of the Qur’an, the classical interpretation of the crucifix-
ion of Jesus using a T-shaped cross or a variation of it was already long 
established. So, the crucifixion that is rejected in 4:157 seems to be the 
commonly accepted image of the execution of Jesus.



70    A M E R i C A N  J O U R N A L  O F  i S L A M  A N d  S O C i E t Y  4 0 : 1 - 2

Following on from the confirmation of 4:157 that Jesus was not killed 
or crucified, verse 4.158 goes on to explain what happened to him: “Allah 
raised him to Himself.” Using the word “rather” (bal) to describe God’s 
raising of Jesus as a corrective fact to the Jews’ misconception that they 
killed him is another confirmation that 4:157 indicates the failure of their 
attempt on Jesus’ life. The word “but” is used in 4:157 to contrast the fact 
that the Jews did not kill Jesus with their contrary claim, and “rather” is 
used in 4.158 to contrast God’s raising of Jesus with the Jews’ uncertain 
claim of having killed him. The verse’s use of “invincible” to describe God 
may also be read as another confirmation that the divine will to rescue 
Jesus prevailed over the scheming of those who wanted to crucify him.90

Conclusion

Over the centuries, Muslim and non-Muslim writers have shown an 
almost total consensus that the Qur’an denies the crucifixion of Jesus. 
There is no indication whatsoever that the Prophet or early Muslims 
thought otherwise. This is explained by the fact that verse 4:157, its con-
text, and the broader Qur’anic narrative can only indicate that Jesus was 
not crucified. Any suggestion that the Qur’an is neutral on, let alone con-
firms, the historicity of Jesus’ crucifixion, as a minority of early Ismāʿīlīs 
and modern scholars have suggested, would have to not only present con-
vincing evidence to this effect but also explain away the many different 
textual and historical indications that seem to reject it. Additionally, any 
such attempt would also make the text look open to completely contradic-
tory and random interpretations, making it effectively incomprehensible. 
The recent suggestion that 4:157 is a response to the Talmud lacks any 
evidence while having strong counterarguments. The same is true of the 
attempts to trace the Qur’an’s denial of the crucifixion to docetism.

The attempt to deny the Qur’an’s rejection of the historicity of the 
crucifixion of Jesus is partly the result of the dominant trend that Angelika 
Neuwirth has identified and rightly criticised, which is the overfocus on the 
development process of the Qur’an from its presumed sources at the cost 
of paying due attention to the text itself. As she has put it, the focus should 
be “not the circumstances of the event of the Qur’an, but the text itself.”91



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Endnotes
1 The text of 4:157 is identical in all fourteen canonical and non-canonical readings 

(qirāʾās) of the Qur’an.

2 Louay Fatoohi, “The End of Jesus’ Life on Earth in the Qur’ān”, Australian Journal 
of Islamic Studies 8 (2023), no. 1.

3 Muḥammad Ibn Jarīr Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl ʾāy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd 
Allāh al-Turkī (24 vols.; Al-Ihsa: Dār Hajr, 2001), vol. 5, 447-453.

4 Muḥammad Ibn Jarīr Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-umam wal-mulūk, ed. Abū Ṣuhayb 
al-Karmī (Amman: Interntional Ideas Home, Undated), 200-201.

5 Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-umam wal-mulūk, 202.

6 ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Hishām, Sīrat al-nabī, ed. Fatḥī al-Dābūllī (4 vols.; Tanta: Dār 
al-Ṣaḥāba lil-Turāth, 1995), vol. 1, 489.

7 Walter D. Ward, The mirage of the saracen: Christians and nomads in the sinai pen-
insula in late antiquity (California: University of California Press, 2015), 131.

8 Mark Swanson, “Folly to the Ḥunafāʾ: The crucifixion in early Christian-Muslim 
controversy”, in ed. Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark Swanson, and David Thomas, The 
Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 239; Jos 
van Lent, “The Apocalypse of Shenute”, in ed. David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, 
Christian-Muslim relations: a bibliographical history Volume 1 (600-900) (Leiden: 
Brill, 2008), 183.

9 John of Damascus, Fountain of knowledge. trans. Frederic H. Chase, The Fathers 
of the Church: Saint John of Damascus Writings 37 (Washington: The Catholic 
University of America Press, 1958), 154.

10 Swanson, “Folly to the Ḥunafāʾ”, 243.

11 Alphonse Mingana, The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi 
(New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2009), 40-41.

12 Sandra Toenies Keating, “Defending the faith: Lines of apology”, in ed. Douglas Pratt 
and Charles Tieszen, Christian-Muslim relations: A bibliographical history, volume 
15 Thematic Essays (600-1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 197-202; Gordon Nickel, “‘Our 
Friendly Strife’: Eastern Christianity engaging the Qur’an”, in ed. Douglas Pratt 
and Charles Tieszen, Christian-Muslim relations: A bibliographical history, volume 
15 Thematic Essays (600-1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 260-261.

13 Najib George Awad, Orthodoxy in Arabic terms: A Study of theodore Abu Qurrah’s 
theology in its Islamic context, (ed.) Patrice Brodeur et al., vol. 3, Judaism, Christianity, 
and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation, (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 
2015), 268-269.

14 Abū Ḥātim Al-Rāzī, Aʿlām al-Nubuwwa, ed. Salah Al-Sawy and Gholam-Reza 
Aavani; Iran: Muʾassasat Bazuhshi, 2002), 69.



72    A M E R i C A N  J O U R N A L  O F  i S L A M  A N d  S O C i E t Y  4 0 : 1 - 2

15 Abū Ḥātim Al-Rāzī, Aʿlām al-Nubuwwa, 168-170.

16 Abū Ḥātim Al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-Iṣlāḥ, ed. Ḥasan Mīnūchahar and Mahdī Muḥaqqaq; 
Tehran: Muʾassasat Muṭālaʿāt, 2004), 243-246.

17 Abū Yaʿqūb Al-Sijistānī, Kitāb al-Yanābīʿ, ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib; Beirut: Al-Maktab 
al-Tijārī li al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 1965), 146-149.

18 Jaʿfar  Ibn Mansūr al-Yaman, Asrār al-Nuṭaqāʾ, ed. Muṣṭāfā Ghālib; Beirut: Dār 
al-Andalus, 1984), 223-225.

19 Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ wa khillān al-wafāʾ, ed. Buṭrus Al-Bustānī, 
vol. IV; Qom: Markaz Al-Nashr, 1985), 28-32.

20 Douglas Pratt, “Relational dynamics in the first millennium: A thematic analysis”, in 
ed. Douglas Pratt and Charles Tieszen, Christian-Muslim relations: A bibliographical 
history, volume 15 Thematic Essays (600-1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 41.

21 J. M. S. Baljon, The reforms and religious ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Lahore: 
Orientalia Publishers, 1958), 107-108.

22 Flavius Josephus, Life of Flavius Josephus. trans. William Whiston, The complete 
works of Flavius Josephus (London: Ward, Lock & CO. Limited, n.d.), 25.

23 William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the physical death 
of Jesus Christ”, The Journal of the American Medical Association 255 (1986), no. 11.

24 A. R. Dard, Life of Ahmad: Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement (Surrey: Islam 
International Publications, 2008), 50.

25 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Jesus in India: Jesus’ Deliverance From the Cross & Journey 
to India (Surrey: Islam International Publications, 2003), 57-58.

26 Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, 12 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Manār, 1947), vol. 
3, 316.

27 Aḥmad Muṣṭafā Al-Marāghī, Tafsīr al-Marāghī (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī, 1946), vol. 
6, 14-15.

28 Maḥmūd Shaltūt, Al-Fatāwā: Dirāsa li mushkilāt al-Muslim al-muʿāṣir fī ḥayātihi 
al-yawmiyya al-ʿāmma (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2004), 54-55.

29 Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀshūr, Al-Taḥrīr wal-tanwīr (Tunisia: Al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya Lil-
Nashr, 1984), vol. 3, 257-259.

30 Muḥammad Al-Ghazālī, Naḥwa tafsīrin Muwḍūʿī li-suwar al-Qur’an al-karīm (Cairo: 
Dār al-Shurūq, 2000), 36-37.

31 Aḥmad Shalabī, Al-Masīḥīyyah (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍah al-Miṣriyyah, 1988), 
64-67.

32 Suleiman A. Mourad, “The death of Jesus in Islam: Reality, assumptions, and impli-
cations”, in ed. Oliver Larry Yarbrough, Engaging the passion: perspectives on the 
death of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 380.



F At O O H i :  t H E  N O N - C R U C i F i X i O N  V E R S E     73

33 Todd Lawson, The crucifixion and the Qur’an: A study in the history of Muslim thought 
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2009).

34 Pratt, “Relational dynamics”, 40; David Bertaina, “Encounter and inquiry: Trajectories 
of interaction”, in ed. Douglas Pratt and Charles Tieszen, Christian-Muslim relations: 
A bibliographical history, volume 15 Thematic Essays (600-1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 
60.

35 Lawson, The crucifixion and the Qur’an.

36 Lawson, The crucifixion and the Qur’an, 94-95.

37 Oddbjørn Leirvik, “Jesus in modern Muslim thought: From anti-colonial polemics 
to post-colonial dialogue?”, in ed. Halvor Moxnes, Ward Blanton, and James G. 
Crossley, Jesus beyond nationalism: constructing the historical Jesus in a period of 
cultural complexity (New York: Routledge, 2014), 141; Ian Mevorach, “Qur’an, cru-
cifixion, and Talmud: A new reading of Q 4:157-58”, Journal of Religion & Society 19 
(2017): 12; G. Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1995), 
119; Suleiman A. Mourad, “Does the Qur’an deny or assert Jesus’s crucifixion and 
death?”, in ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds, New perspectives on the Qur’an: The Qur’an 
in its historical context 2 (Oxon: Routledge, 2011), 356; Peter Laffoon, “Polyphony 
and Symphony: A Rereading of Q 4.157”, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 32 
(2021), no. 2: 177.

38 John Kaltner and Younus Mirza, The Bible and the Qur’an: Biblical figures in the 
Islamic tradition (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 80; Gabriel Said Reynolds, 
The Qurʾān and the Bible: Text and commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
2018), 181.

39 Mevorach, “Qur’an, crucifixion, and Talmud”, 2.

40 J. Scott Bridger, Christian exegesis of the Qur’ān (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 
2016), 98.

41 Mevorach, “Qur’an, crucifixion, and Talmud”, 14.

42 All Biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible.

43 Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity (New York: State University of New 
York Press, 1991), 115.

44 Mahmoud Ayoub, A Muslim view of Christianity: Essays on dialogue by Mahmoud 
Ayoub, ed. Irfan A. Omar (New York: Orbis Books, 2007), 156.

45 Ayoub, A Muslim view of Christianity, 176.

46 Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus exist? The historical argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: 
HarperOne, 2012), 165-167; Emil Schürer, The history of the Jewish people in the age of 
Jesus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135), vol. II, ed. Géza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew 
Black (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 547-549; James D. G. Dunn, Jesus remem-
bered (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 811; Géza Vermes, Jesus the 
Jew: A historian’s reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 38.



74    A M E R i C A N  J O U R N A L  O F  i S L A M  A N d  S O C i E t Y  4 0 : 1 - 2

47 Juan Cole, “‘It was made to appear to them so’: The crucifixion, Jews and Sasanian 
war propaganda in the Qur’ān”, Religion 51 (2021), no. 3.

48 Harry Freedman, The Talmud: A Biography (London: Keren Publications, 2019), 54, 59.

49 William Tisdall, The Original Sources of the Quran (London: Society for Promoting 
Christian Knowledge, 1911), 61.

50 Tisdall, The Original Sources of the Quran; Charles  Torrey, The Jewish Foundation 
of Islam (New York: Jewish Institute of Religion Press, 1933).

51 Tisdall, The Original Sources of the Quran, 182.

52 Mevorach, “Qur’an, crucifixion, and Talmud”.

53 Laffoon, “Polyphony and Symphony”, 169, 177.

54 Cole, “‘It was made to appear to them so’”, 12.

55 Leirvik, “Jesus in modern Muslim thought”, 141; Oddbjørn Leirvik, Images of Jesus 
Christ in Islam (London: Continuum, 2010), 36.

56 I. Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. trans. J. Shachter and 
H. Freedman (London: The Soncino Press, 1969).

57 Mevorach, “Qur’an, crucifixion, and Talmud”, 12.

58 Dan Jaffé, “The virgin birth of Jesus in the Talmudic context: A philological and 
historical analysis”, Laval théologique et philosophique 68 (2012,), no. 3: 590.

59 Tertullian, De Spectaculis. trans. Gerald H. Rendall, The Loeb Classical Library 
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 30.

60 David Instone-Brewer, “Jesus of Nazareth’s Trial in the Uncensored Talmud”, 
Tyndale Bulletin 62 (2011), no. 2: 272.

61 Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midras (New York: Ktav Publishing 
House, 1975), 79.

62 Gustaf Dalman, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, and the liturgy of the syn-
agogue, trans. A. W. Streane (London: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1893), 8-10; Herford, 
Christianity in Talmud and Midras, 35-39; Bernhard Pick, “The personality of Jesus 
in the Talmud”, The Monist 20 (1910), no. 1: 11; Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 7-8; Mirosław Wróbel, “The rabbinic 
anti-Gospel in the context of the polemic between the synagogue and the church”, 
The Person and the Challenges 4 (2014), no. 2: 55.

63 Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: his life, times, and teaching, trans. Herbert Danby 
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926), 20-22; Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus 
outside the New Testament: an introduction to the ancient evidence (Grand Rapids: 
W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 114.

64 Jaffé, “The virgin birth of Jesus in the Talmudic context”, 579.

65 Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, 117.



F At O O H i :  t H E  N O N - C R U C i F i X i O N  V E R S E     75

66 Origen, Against Celsus. trans. Frederick Crombie, The Ante-Nicene Fathers IV (New 
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 32.

67 Jaffé, “The virgin birth of Jesus in the Talmudic context”, 590.

68 Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, 8.

69 D. Shepardson, “The Biblical Element in the Quran”, The Old and New Testament 
Student 10 (1890), no. 4: 212.

70 Aaron W. Hughes, “Arabian Judaism at the advent of Islam: A forgotten chapter in 
the history of Judaism”, in ed. Naomi Koltun‐Fromm and Gwynn Kessler, A com-
panion to late ancient Jews and Judaism : third century BCE to seventh century CE 
(New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020), 291; Aaron W. Hughes, “South Arabian 
‘Judaism’, Ḥimyarite Raḥmanism, and the origins of Islam”, in ed. Carlos A. Segovia, 
Remapping Emergent Islam: Texts, Social Settings, and Ideological Trajectories (Leiden: 
Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

71 For an excellent critique of the popular tendency to uncritically trace Qur’anic texts 
to Biblical tradition, see Michael E Pregill, “The Hebrew Bible and the Quran: the 
problem of the Jewish ‘influence’ on Islam”, Religion Compass 1 (2007), no. 6.

72 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, 120; Michael G. Fonner, “Jesus’ death by crucifixion 
in the Qur’an: an issue for interpretation and Muslim-Christian relations”, Journal 
of Ecumenical Studies 29 (1992), no. 3-4: 445; Mark Robert Anderson, The Qur’an in 
context: a Christian exploration (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 245.

73 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, 113; Mourad, “The death of Jesus in Islam”, 371.

74 Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity, 109.

75 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, 106; Mourad, “The death of Jesus in Islam”, 372-373.

76 Al-Ṭabarī (Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 135.) agrees with al-Suddī that the dialogue in 5:116, in 
which God quizzes Jesus about whether he asked people to take him and his mother as 
two deities, happened after God raised him to heaven, not on the Day of Resurrection. 
This suggests that the dialogue of 5:110 also happened after Jesus was raised to heaven.

77 Isaac Kalimi, “The story about the murder of the prophet Zechariah in the Gospels 
and its relation to Chronicles”, Revue Biblique 116 (2009), no. 2.

78 Gabriel Said Reynolds, “On the Qur’ān and the theme of the Jews as ‘killers of the 
Prophets’”, Al-Bayan 10 (2012), no. 2.

79 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, vol. 7, 650-660.

80 Muḥammad Tawfīq Ṣidqī, Naẓariyyatī fī qiṣṣat ṣalb al-masīḥ wa-qiyāmatihi min 
al-amwāt, ed. Khālid Muḥammad ʿ Abdu (Al-Jīza: Matkabat al-Nāfithah, 2006), 36-42; 
ʿAbd al-Karīm Al-Khaṭīb, Al-Masīḥ fī’l-Qurʾān wa’l-Tawrāt wa’l-Injīl (Cairo: Dār 
al-Kutub al-Ḥadīthah, 1965), 486-488.

81 E. M. Yamauchi, “The crucifixion and Docetic Christology”, Concordia Theological 
Quarterly 46 (1982), no. 1: 14; C. George Fry, “The Quranic Christ”, Concordia 



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Theological Quarterly 43 (1979), no. 3: 219-220; Przemysław Turek, “Crucifixion 
of Jesus – historical fact, Christian faith and Islamic denial”, Orientalia Christiana 
Cracoviensia 3 (2011): 153-156; Samir Khalil Samir, “The theological Christian influ-
ence on the Qur’an: a reflection”, in ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’an in its 
historical context (Oxon: Routledge, 2008), 153; Gabriel Said Reynolds, “The Muslim 
Jesus: dead or alive?”, Bulletin of SOAS 72 (2009), no. 2: 238.

82 Ignatius, Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans. trans. Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers 
(New York: William Heinmann, 1919), 2.

83 For other quotes from Ignatius, see Michael Goulder, “Ignatius’ “Docetists””, Vigiliae 
Christianae 53 (1999), no. 1.

84 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin 
Martyr and Irenaeus (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 1.24.4.

85 Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons, “The Second Treatise of the Great 
Seth”, in ed. James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York: 
HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 365-366; James Brashler and Roger A. Bullard, “The 
Apocalypse of Peter”, in ed. James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English 
(New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 377; William R. Schoedel, “The First 
Apocalypse of James”, in ed. James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English 
(New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 264-265.

86 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, 119; Ayoub, A Muslim view of Christianity, 160; 
Fonner, “Jesus’ death”, 444.

87 Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixion in antiquity: an inquiry into the background and sig-
nificance of the New Testament terminology of crucifixion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 
2011).

88 John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean world (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 
2019), 452. See also Craig Evans, “Hanging and crucifixion in second temple Israel”, 
in ed. Jörg Frey, Carsten Claussen, and Nadine Kessler, Qumran und die Archäologie: 
Texte und Kontexte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

89 David W. Chapman, Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion 
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 32.

90 For a detailed discussion of what the Qur’an says about Jesus after the crucifixion, 
see Fatoohi, “The End of Jesus’ Life in the Qur’ān.”

91 Angelika Neuwirth, “Qur’an and history — a disputed relationship: Some reflections 
on Qur’anic history and history in the Qur’an”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 5 (2003), 
no. 1: 4.