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    Published : 2014-10-30
    Vol. 61 No. 9 (2014)

    Jesus as ’the Servant of Allah’ and ‘the Messiah’ in the Quran and Muslim Interpretations

    Robert Maszkowski



    Abstract

    Regarding the theological titles of Jesus, the Quran contained basic knowledge about Him, about His dignity, peculiarity and mission. Muslim commentators took up the development of His Quranic image and created numerous interpretations of the terms used for Jesus. In this article two Quranic titles of Jesus, `The Servant of God' and `The Messiah' are discussed. The first title expresses the common feature of all Muslims and eventually refers to all humans. The title also exhibits the humanity of Jesus and His membership to the human kind. Thereby His divine filiation is excluded. The second title distinguishes Jesus from other people and prophets, because only He is named like this in the Quran and He constitutes the bridge by which Christians are attracted to the proclaimed message even if one refuses Him being of God's dignity. Both titles give Him Muslim identity and delineate Him as a man connected to God with a bond of service and sacrifice. However, as both of them reject Jesus being Son of God, they deny what constitutes the focal point of Christian faith. Their Christian theological meaning is replaced by a theocentric Muslim view, as the interpretation does not refer to the Gospel, but to the Quran. Henceforth, it is not appropriate to translate the Quranic title al-masî? to `The Christ', but to leave it in the simplified notation al-masih or as `The Messiah'. Similarly `abd Allâh by no means should be translated to `The Servant of Yahweh', but remain in a simplified form abd-Allah or `The Servant of God' or `The Servant of Allah'.

    Keywords:

    the Quran, Muslim interpretations, Muslim tradition, Jesus, Jesus' titles in Koran, “the Messiah”, “the servant of Allah”, “the son of God”, “the People of the Book”, The Christianity, Islam



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    Roczniki Teologiczne · ISSN 2353-7272 | eISSN 2543-5973 · DOI: 10.18290/rt
    © Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II

    Artykuły w czasopiśmie dostępne są na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa – Użycie niekomercyjne – Bez utworów zależnych 4.0 Międzynarodowe (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)