Sub-section Four: A brief analysis of the four Gospel:

From our discussion here the weakness of the chain of narrators of this Holy Scripture will be very manifest.

1.     Concerning the Gospel of Matthew:

Who is Matthew? It is claimed that he was one of the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him) and it is also said he was something else. So, his personality was not known for sure. Critics deny the attribution of this Gospel to the Disciple Matthew and attribute it to one of his followers who put the name of “Matthew”, the Disciple of Jesus, on it to make people satisfied with it and willing to accept it since he was one of those who co-existed with Jesus and observed his states.

Rahmatullah al-Hindi confirms that the Gospel attributed to Matthew was not authored by Matthew the Disciple. If he had been the author of this Gospel, it would have been clear somewhere in his speech that it was he who wrote about the situations he witnessed and would have used the words of a first person narrator, as was the habit of the people before and after his time, This habit had not been given up at the time of the Disciples, either.

When did Matthew write his Gospel? According to some people he wrote it in 41 AD, or to some others it was written in 60 AD.[1]

What was the language that Matthew wrote his Gospel in?  Some say it was Hebrew and others say it was Aramaic. Whatever the language of the origin was, the alleged origin is lost and what does exist is the Greek translation of the alleged lost origin. The translator is also unknown and the date of the translation is unknown, too, which along with the loss of the origin would make it impossible to verify the correspondence of he translation to the origin,[2] if there had been any origin. Now we wonder whether what the Christians have today is the Gospel that Matthew wrote and whether what Matthew allegedly wrote is the Gospel revealed to Jesus (peace be upon him).

2.     Concerning the Gospel of Mark:

Was Mark one of the disciples of Jesus? There are three possible answers:

a.      One party claim that Mark was one of the students of Jesus or one of the 71 Apostles—as Christians believe—whom Jesus sent to propagate the new religion in the cities that Jesus intended to visit.

b.     A second party see that Mark was neither one of the twelve disciples, nor one of the seventy or of the 120 persons whom Peter addressed, but he was an obscure ordinary man.

c.      A third party suggest a compromise by considering Mark as a student of Peter, who was a student of Jesus (peace be upon him).[3] Mark never mentioned in his Gospel that he had heard from Jesus (peace be upon him) and did not mention the sources of his information.

Other questions: When did Mark write his Gospel? What language did he write in?

Mark wrote his Gospel in 61 AD and it was written in Greek. The origin is lost, i.e. the manuscript that Mark had supposedly written is non-existent.[4] Not two exactly identical manuscripts are found among the available manuscripts, and the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark is not agreed upon.[5]

3.     Concerning the Gospel of Luke:

No Christian claims that Luke was one of the students of Jesus (peace be upon him). But as usual many Christians try to ascribe the attributes of sacredness and apostolic quality to the writers of the Gospels, either directly as they alleged about Mark or indirectly as they claim regarding the author of the third Gospel. They claim that Luke was the student of Paul. Paul is considered by them as an Apostle, which means that the Gospel of Luke was written by means of inspiration and with the help of the Holy Spirit of which the alleged Apostle Paul was filled.”[6] This Paul did not see Jesus (peace be upon him). Luke wrote his Gospel without mentioning the sources of his narrations or their chain of narrators. He does not claim that it is the Word of God, for in his introduction he says: “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.”[7]

When did Luke write his Gospel? He wrote it in 63 AD and the origin is non-existent.[8] 

4.     Concerning the Gospel of John:

Who is John? In the view of Christians, he is one of the twelve Disciples, but it is most probable for some scholars that the Gospel of John was most probably not written by John the Disciple. This is declared by Encyclopedia Britannica, which is co-authored by 500 Christian scholars who cannot credibly conspire to tell lies against their religion and the disciple of their Messenger Jesus. Encyclopedia Britannica says: “As to the Gospel of John, it is doubtlessly a fabricated book whose author wanted to raise through it a controversy between the two Disciples, i.e. saints “John” and “Matthew”. This lying writer claimed in the text of the book that he was the Disciple whom Christ favored. The church accepted this statement as it was and confirmed that the author was really “John” the Disciple and placed his name on the book though its author was definitely someone other than John. The book is like some of the books of the Torah that are ascribed to authors that had nothing to do with them. We really pity those who exert themselves in an attempt to find the faintest connection between the philosopher—who wrote the book in the second generation—and the Disciple John, the Galilee hunter. Their efforts are futile because they act haphazardly without guidance.”[9] Horn says: “This Gospel was written for the purpose of declaring the divinity of Jesus after “Shir yantus” and “Ibson” and their followers were teaching Christianity and declaring that Christ was only a human being.”[10] What also confirms that the author of this book is not “John”, the Disciple, is that it was written in 98 AD, which was a long time after Christ (peace be upon him) had been raised to heaven. If this John was the Disciple of Christ, why was he so late in writing his Gospel? People do not usually write when they are very old. If the author of the book was the Disciple John, he must have been over seventy then, and it would be inconceivable that at such an age he could remember what had been said 65 years or more before.       

Is the original copy of the Gospel still existent?  No. The original copy is lost, and chapter 21 was added to the Gospel later on.

Another question: Where is the Ingil (Gospel) of Jesus (peace be upon him) referred to by the Holy Qur’an?  The Gospel that Jesus (peace be upon him) conveyed and delivered to his students and ordered them to propagate does not exist now. What exists is a group of stories invented by the students and other people and are not free from corruption, deformation, additions and deletions,[11] as we will see. In his book “Izhar al-Haqq”, Rahamatullah al-Kirwani says: “We several times challenged their prominent scholars to present a connected uninterrupted chain of narrators, but they could not, and some of the priests apologized in a debate between them and me. We also scrutinized the books of chains of narrators and we found nothing but conjectures and guessing.”[12]

So, these are the four Gospels that are approved and sanctified by Christians. The student of these Gospels will find so many errors that any university in the world would reject it if it were submitted by one of its students as a research, let alone its ascription to Allah (SWT) with such multitude of errors.

“The church clerics admit that there are still more than fifty thousand errors in these Gospels. The magazine “Awake” mentioned this about half a century ago in its issue no. 17, Vol. 38.”[13]

The reader of the Gospels will recognize the contradictions among them, on the one hand, and within the single Gospel, on the other hand. He may even find in the same page contradictory items.