What is the Evidence that the Injeel Ever Existed?
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,
The Injeel is the revelation from God which Muslims believe was given to Jesus the Christ. Christians often ask, where is the historical record of such a document or where are the witnesses to its existence. Using simple logic, I’m going to demonstrate that Christ did in fact receive revelation/ revealed knowledge from God, proving the Islamic claim.
1. Jesus Christ is a Prophet (Matthew 11:9; Mark 6:15; Luke 7:16; 24:19 [parallel to Matt 21:11]; John 7:40; 9:17 – Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary).
2. A prophet is one who receives knowledge from God, whether that be in the form of commands, guidance, historical narratives etc, this is known as revelation.
3. Thus Christ received revelation (revealed knowledge) from God because he is a Prophet of God.
We don’t have to put a name on this knowledge, but the very fact that he did receive knowledge from God as a Prophet – is enough to substantiate the Islamic claim that he did indeed, receive revelation (knowledge). Thus qualifying the Islamic position.
Islam does go one step forward and names this revelation, the “Injeel“, but giving the knowledge from God to Christ a title, does not negate the knowledge itself or the probability of its existence.
Logically speaking, once a Christian accepts that Christ was a Prophet, and are claiming he received no revelation, then they are claiming one or more of the below statements:
1. Christ was not a true Prophet (as he was a Prophecy-less Prophet).
2. Christ’s knowledge from God did not truly come from God (thus he was a false Prophet).
3. If he was a Prophet (as proved above) and did not get revelation from God, then it must be Satanic in origin.
Since the Christian cannot accept these points, he has no choice but to concede that Christ did receive revelation from God and thus the Christian would have qualified the Islamic claim. There is one closing portion of advice I would like to quote:
“You must agree. You cannot say, as so many students and others do, “ I ﬁnd nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don’t agree with your conclusions.” All you can possibly mean by saying some thing like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You are not disagreeing. You are expressing your emotions or prejudices.” – How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler.
Feel free to use this quote when using the above logical argument to demonstrate the Christian’s weakness of intellect and coherent reasoning.
wa Allaahu ‘Alam.