تاریخ احمدیت (جلد 22) — Page 424
سال 1964ء 424 تاریخ احمدیت۔جلد 22 Jesus a person closely resembling him (according to some accounts, that person was Judas), who was subsequently crucified in his place۔However, none of these legends finds the slightest support in the Quran or authentic Traditions, and the stories produced in this connection by the classical commentators of the Quran must be summarily rejected۔They represent no more than the confused attempts at "harmonizing" the Quranic statement that Jesus was not crucified with the graphic description, in the Gospels, of his crucifixion۔The story of the crucifixion as such has been succinctly explained in the Quranic phrase wa-lakin shubbiha lahum, which I render as "but it only appeared to them as if it had been so" -implying that in the course of time, long after the time of Jesus, a legend had somehow grown up (possibly under the then-powerful influence of Mithrai beliefs) to the effect that he had died on the cross in order to atone for the "original sin" with which mankind is allegedly burdened; and this legend became so firmly established among the latter-day followers of Jesus that even his enemies, the Jews, began to believe it - albeit in a derogatory sense (for crucifixion was, in those times, a heinous form of death penalty reserved for the lowest of criminals)۔This, to my mind, is the only satisfactory explanation of the phrase wa-lakin shubbiha lahum, the more so as the expression shubbiha li is idiomatically synonymous with khuyyila li, "[a thing] became a fancied image to me!", i۔e۔, "in my mind" -in other words, "[it] seemed to me" (see Qamus, art۔khayala, as well as Lane II, 833, and IV, 1500)