The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought.

• Author: Thomas, David
• Position: Book review

The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought. By TODD LAWSON. Oxford: ONEWORLD, 2009. Pp. xi + 179. $80 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Among the many verses in the Qur'an in which Christians and their beliefs are mentioned, some are strikingly open and positive while others are more critical. The one that causes the most perplexity to Christians and has probably been responsible for more misapprehension and misunderstanding than all the others is Q 4:157, which states that the Jews did not kill or crucify Jesus and that God raised him to Himself. There is no more than this, and elsewhere in the Qur'an there is little to offer expansion or elucidation (in fact, some other verses, among them Q 3:55 and 19:33, if read alone suggest that Jesus died just like any other prophet or human). But this single verse has exerted such a powerful influence that throughout Islamic history there has hardly been a serious investigation of what Christians believe about the crucifixion, and the significance of the atonement has frequently been ridiculed.

In the early centuries of Islam, when Muslims were regularly challenged by Christians over this verse, interpretations were given to explain how the event that Christians commemorated may have taken place while Jesus himself was removed from the scene, so that "they [the Jews] did not kill him and they did not crucify him," and consequently both Christian recollections were acknowledged and the authority of the Qur'an was safeguarded. These interpretations usually made use of another part of the verse, where the Arabic wa-lakin shubbiha lahum is sufficiently concise and allusive to afford the alternative interpretations, "it was made unclear to them," or "he was made unclear to them" (the internal subject of the verb shubbiha could be either neuter or masculine), focusing either on the obscurity of the whole event or on the obscurity of the individual who suffered al the executioners" hands. As this book shows, the interpretations that were suggested in these early centuries established a tradition that, with a few important though largely unnoticed exceptions, has become the accepted explanation of the verse and of the crucifixion, so much so that many Muslims today accept it as the teaching of the Qur'an itself.

The Crucifixion and the Qur'an is about the long and sturdy tradition of Qur'an commentaries and how they explain this verse. In three major chapters it presents what is said on...