Deuteronomy 18 and the Paraclete: 4 points on Muhammad in the Bible

The Quran describes the unlettered Prophet as one whom the People of the Book find written in their Torah and Gospel.^[1] It also records Jesus telling the Children of Israel that he confirms the Torah before him and brings good news of a messenger to come after him, whose name is Ahmad.^[2]

Muslim writers have pointed to two biblical passages in particular: the prophet like Moses عليه السلام in Deuteronomy, and the Comforter promised in the Gospel of John. Christian writers dispute both readings. The points below set out each passage, the Muslim case and the Christian reply.

The earliest Muslims looked for the description as well as the name. Al-Bukhari records that Ata ibn Yasar asked Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As رضي الله عنه, a Companion who read the earlier scriptures, how the Prophet was described in the Torah. Abdullah answered that he was described there with some of his description in the Quran: “O Prophet, We have sent you as a witness, a bearer of good news and a warner, and a guard for the unlettered. You are My servant and My messenger. I have named you the one who relies on God. He is neither harsh nor coarse, nor loud in the markets.”^[3]

The words recall the servant song of Isaiah 42, where God speaks of His servant in whom His soul delights, who will not cry out or lift up his voice in the street, and who will bring justice to the nations; the same chapter calls on the villages where Kedar lives to lift up their voice.^[4] Kedar is named in Genesis as a son of Ishmael.^[5] Christians read the song as a prophecy of Jesus, and Matthew applies it to him. Muslim readers note that the servant brings a law to distant lands, and that the Arabs of Kedar are the people called to praise.

The name Ahmad in 61:6 has prompted another argument. Some Muslim writers have proposed that the Greek of John once read periklytos, the praised one, which is close to the meaning of Ahmad, in place of parakletos. No surviving Greek manuscript of John has that reading, and the argument is better left aside. The case for the Comforter, set out below, rests on the description in the text as it stands.

In Deuteronomy, God tells Moses that he will raise up for the Israelites a prophet from among their brethren, like Moses, will put his words in his mouth, and that the prophet will speak all that God commands him.^[6] Muslim writers note that the same book closes by saying that no prophet like Moses arose again in Israel,^[7] and that the Torah calls other peoples the Israelites’ brethren, as with the children of Esau.^[8] On that reading, the brethren of Israel include the descendants of Ishmael, and a prophet who brought a law, led a community and spoke words put in his mouth fits Muhammad.

Christian interpreters answer that the earlier verse in the same passage places the prophet in the midst of Israel, from among thy brethren,^[9] and that the Book of Acts applies the prophecy to Jesus.^[10] The Muslim reply is that Acts is a later Christian reading of the text, and that the comparison with Moses, a lawgiver and ruler, fits Muhammad more closely than Jesus. The verses themselves allow both readings to be argued.

Muslim writers press the comparison with Moses point by point. Moses was born of a father and a mother, married and had children, led his people as their ruler, brought them a law, fought their enemies, and died a natural death and was buried. Muhammad shares each of these, they argue, where in Christian teaching Jesus was born of a virgin, did not marry, ruled no state, and rose from the dead. The prophet of Deuteronomy is also one into whose mouth God puts His words, and Muslims point to the Quran as speech the Prophet recited as he received it.^[6]

The Gospels themselves show that “the prophet” was expected as a figure distinct from the Messiah. When priests and Levites came from Jerusalem to question John the Baptist, they asked him three things in turn: whether he was the Christ, whether he was Elijah, and whether he was “that prophet”. He said no to each.^[11] The questioners treated the prophet like Moses as someone other than the Christ.

The Christian reply is that the same Gospel has crowds hail Jesus as “the Prophet that should come into the world”, and that his followers came to see in him both the Messiah and the prophet.^[12] On brethren, Christians hold that the word in Deuteronomy refers to the tribes of Israel, as the law of the king in the previous chapter uses it.^[13] Muslims answer that Genesis says Ishmael would dwell, and died, “in the presence of all his brethren”, so the Torah itself calls the descendants of Abraham through his other sons brethren.^[14]

Deuteronomy also gives a test. A prophet who speaks in the name of God and whose word does not come to pass has not spoken from God, and whoever will not hear the words the true prophet speaks in God’s name will be answerable to Him.^[15] Muslim writers take the fulfilled promises of the Quran, among them the victory of the believers and the spread of the faith, as meeting that test. Christians apply the same test to Jesus. The passage sets a standard both faiths accept.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises that the Father will give the disciples another Comforter (parakletos in Greek), who will come only if Jesus goes away, who will guide them into all truth, who will not speak of himself but will speak whatever he hears, and who will glorify Jesus.^[16] Muslim writers compare the last line with the Quran’s description of Muhammad, who does not speak from his own desire, for it is revelation revealed to him.^[17]

The Christian objection is direct: the same discourse names the Comforter as the Holy Ghost, sent in the name of Jesus.^[18] Muslim interpreters answer that a figure who comes only after Jesus departs, and who speaks what he hears, reads more naturally as a person than as a spirit already present with the disciples. Here too the dispute turns on how the passage as a whole is weighed.

The word “another” is part of the Muslim case. Jesus promises “another Comforter”, which implies that he himself had been one, and the First Letter of John calls Jesus an advocate, parakletos, with the Father.^[19] If Jesus was the first parakletos and a man, Muslim writers argue, the second is most naturally another man sent by God. Jesus also says that he has many things still to tell his disciples that they cannot bear yet, and that the Comforter will tell them, and that he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgement.^[20] That reads to Muslim eyes as a promise of further revelation with public authority.

The strongest form of the Christian reply rests on the same chapters. The Comforter is “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive”, who “dwelleth with you, and shall be in you”, and who will be with the disciples for ever.^[16] The Book of Acts describes the Spirit coming on the disciples at Pentecost, weeks after the departure of Jesus, and the church has read the promise as fulfilled there.^[21] A figure who lives inside the disciples, Christians argue, cannot be a man born six centuries later.

Muslims reply that the promise of a Spirit within the believers and the promise of a coming one who speaks what he hears may be two strands woven into one discourse, and that the identification of the Comforter with the Holy Ghost in 14:26 is the one verse that names him.^[18] The disagreement is old, and each side has to explain the verses that favour the other.

Muslim engagement with John is not a modern invention. Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet’s first major biographer, quoted a passage from the Gospel of John on the coming Comforter in a Syriac form and commented that the Munahhemana in Syriac is Muhammad, and in Greek the paraclete.^[22]

Alfred Guillaume, the translator of Ibn Ishaq, identified the source of the quotation as the Palestinian Syriac Lectionary, which uses the word rendered Comforter, where other Syriac versions keep the Greek paraclete.^[23] The detail shows that Muslims of the eighth century were reading Christian scripture in the forms their Christian neighbours used, and drawing their conclusions from it.

The debate continued in the courts of the caliphs. Around the year 781, the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi questioned Timothy I, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, in Baghdad, and the Patriarch’s own record of the exchange includes both Deuteronomy 18 and the Paraclete. The caliph put the Muslim reading of each, and Timothy answered with the Christian one.^[24] Five centuries later Ibn Taymiyya devoted long sections of his reply to Christian polemic to the same passages, reading them as prophecies of Muhammad and answering the Christian interpretation.^[25]

The record matters for a simple reason. The Muslim case was put to Christian scholars who knew the texts in their own languages, and they answered it. The arguments in circulation today, on both sides, are largely the arguments of that period, which a reader can still weigh in the original sources.