“What we have in the Gospel of John is a biblical portal between Christianity and Islam. If we choose to walk through it in faith we will discover that our religions issue from the same divine source; we will discover that we are siblings in faith, meant to bear witness to the truth side by side (John 15:26-27) and collaborate in manifesting God’s will on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
―Rev. Dr. Ian Mevorach
Quite honestly, the first thing to mind reading through the Rev. Dr. Ian Mevorach’s reflection on the Gospel of John as a predictor of Islam is to recall that nobody has quite figured out how to deal with the question of pages or single-page, the difference between flipping back and forth and scrolling up and down.
And it’s true; in the end, books still have contexts that the internet simply can’t match.
As to useful commentary, though, we might simply start with the milquetoast proposition that it is a strong, albeit obscure effort; it is easy enough to say, “Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith”, but actually drawing the connections that run deeper than the superficial, obvious point of “Abramism” is harder, and seemingly offers a low return on investment unless the larger community of the corpus Christi decides to pay genuine, faithful attention. That is to say, this is not the kind of discussion suited to sound bites.
And, of course, we ought not pretend that any given Muslim will agree, or even appreciate the effort.
Still, though, Mevorach’s missive is intended for Christians, and in that context it is worth suggesting that the basic term synoptic gospels, in my own experience, actually confuses many Christians who never learned what the phrase means; one wonders just how obscure the question of Christianizing the Hebrew experience post hoc actually is. It doesn’t come up much in broader discourse, but is also at the heart of a dispute among Christians regarding the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which was in turn replaced by the New Revised Standard Version, and there are plenty who claim the further revision only made the problem worse; the original complaint was that the RSV showed too much respect to the Hebrew experience. (No, really, part of this was about whether Christians should rewrite the definitions of Hebrew words in order to smooth rough spots on the long-accepted article of faith that Jesus fulfilled old prophecies.)
The sum of that critique, quite simply, is that Mevorach’s entry for the Huffington Post probably won’t find much audience among those Christians who most need reminding. To that end, we can only wish the Reverend good luck and Godspeed.
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Mevorach, Ian. “Did Jesus Predict Muhammad? A Biblical Portal Between Christianity and Islam”. The Huffington Post. 25 April 2016.
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