Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 105
You may have noticed that I treat Quranic evidence and. Islamic evidence as synonymous. Muslim scholars state that there are several sources of knowledge of what Islam is. First the Quran, then the practice of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and then the collected body of the sayings of the Prophet,. Many add to these such sources as consensus and rational insight. Whatever the learned scholars of different schools have been inclined to say about the classification of these sources, I for my part, and those who think like me, underline the simple historical fact that the Quranic revelation that came to Muhammad over a period of 23 years from 610 to 632 A. D. and was committed to memory and writing simultaneously, is in all respects a perfect and sufficient document from which we gain all necessary evidence about our faith. . Whatever is reported from the Holy Prophet is by way of interpretation of this evidence. That is to say, what the Holy. Prophet said has no independent status; it is all through secondary, though it serves to elucidate many a point. Yet it can never add any essential knowledge to that which we possess in the Holy Quran. Reason can with all its inherent weaknesses help us to understand the Message, but just as interpretation is already incorporated in the Message, likewise are rational arguments as I have already pointed out. . There remains one single perfect source of Islamic evidence: the Holy Quran. . The plan of my address. The outline of the material gathered by me from the. Quran will be presented in three sections: 1. The mortality of man. 2. The mortality and death of all Prophets. 3. The mortality and death of Jesus. In the last section I shall treat in some detail with the two texts that are specially relevant for the understanding of the deliverance of Jesus from death on the cross. . As I have said, I shall restrict myself primarily to the. Quranic evidence, applying the principle that the Quran is the best interpreter of the Quran, i. e. to discover the correct connotation of a phrase we must have recourse to other texts in which the phrase has been used. We may also have recourse to classical dictionaries, but only as a possibly helpful medium, without placing too great confidence in all the 109