What does the Quran say about Jesus?

More than most people expect. The Quran names Jesus (Isa) some twenty-five times - more often than Muhammad - and affirms things many are surprised to find. It teaches his virgin birth without hesitation (Surah 3:47). It affirms his miracles, even ones the Gospels don't record, such as forming living birds from clay and raising the dead (5:110). It calls him al-Masih, the Messiah, and gives him titles it gives to no one else: a 'word' from God and a 'spirit' from Him (4:171).

But it denies, in the strongest terms, the two things the Gospel cannot do without. It denies that Jesus is God or the Son of God (4:171; 5:72). And on its dominant classical reading it denies the crucifixion - 'they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him' (4:157) - which collides with what secular history holds most firmly. Even the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman calls Jesus' death by crucifixion 'one of the most certain facts of history.'

A minority of serious Muslim scholars (Gabriel Reynolds, Mahmoud Ayoub) read 4:157 more narrowly - as denying that the Jews triumphed over Jesus, not that he died - and a Christian should acknowledge that reading fairly. But on no reading does the Quran affirm the crucified-and-risen Savior of 1 Corinthians 15, whose death for our sin is the hinge of the Gospel. The honest result: the Quran preserves a strikingly exalted Jesus, yet stops exactly where salvation is found. That is a question worth exploring with a Muslim friend, not a trap to spring.