(note: I wanted to use Arabic names for the Islamic counterparts to avoid confusion, but that ended up being more confusing so I used the English names for all of them. Sorry in advance if it's still confusing)
I cannot comment on the historicity because I'm not really well-educated enough on the topic and have not read the Gospel of James, but you've captured my feelings on it very well.
I'm biased as a Muslim, sure, but the Mary in the NT seems. Idyllic. So to speak. She accepts God's will and we rarely get her feelings on the matter.
I'm only going to be referring to the Gospel of Luke here since that's what I've read, and I might have missed something because I have not read the NT entirely, so forgive me if I get something wrong. (Using the NIV version).
Let's talk about Luke 1: 26-30 and compare it to a part of Surat Maryam to explain myself.
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee
27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be
30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God
This just. Feels odd to me, in a way. The angel tells Mary not to be afraid, but we barely even get her reaction to the angel appearing in front of her. She seems more confused than anything.
Plus, I know Mary's virginity has importance in Christianity I'm not well informed about, but it feels strange to me that she's first introduced as a virgin, then we're given her name.
But, in Surat Maryam verses 16-18 (using Muhammad Asad's Translation as it's my preferred, however it is a bit difficult to read sorry. I removed the footnotes but I do recommend going to see them yourself).
19:16 AND CALL to mind, through this divine writ, Mary. Lo! She withdrew from her family to an eastern place
17and kept herself in seclusion from them, whereupon We sent unto her Our angel of revelation, who appeared to her in the shape of a well-made human being
18 She exclaimed: "Verily, 'I seek refuge from thee with the Most Gracious! [Approach me not] if thou art conscious of Him!”
It shows her shock, clearly, and her agency. She's afraid of this stranger and immediately tells them to leave, before even listening to what they might have to say because they approached her while she was secluded. Which is just a great way of showing her emotions, you know.
And, she's first introduced by her name and that she's secluded in the temple. Her virginity is never alluded to, except when she questions the angel about how she'll bear a son.
In fact, not once in the Qur'ān is Mary described as bikr (بكر) or ‘athrā’ (عذراء) or any word meaning virgin, now that I think about it. Huh…I'll ponder on it later.
Now, unlike the Gospel of Luke, it's unclear whether she tells anybody about her pregnancy beforehand
But. Considering Joseph Does Not Exist in Islam, and that she was on her own while in labour? I can only infer she kept it secret and ran away to Bethlehem when she started showing. Though that's only conjecture.
I won't talk much about Yahyā (ع)/John the Baptist, but it is worth noting that Surat Maryam has a similar framing to Luke 1 where it cuts from the news of John's conception and his birth to Jesus. But the parallels between these two are for another time.
This is when the stories diverge greatly.
Again, Joseph Does Not Exist in Islam. It's all just Mary (in fact, depending on your reading of 19:20, Mary could be telling the angel that she has no desire to be with another human to begin with. So. Uh. Do with that what you will. All I know is that it's been vindication for me as an AroAce Muslim)
With Jesus' birth in Luke 2 it also feels idyllic, like a fairytale. A story you'd tell a child before going to bed. That's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's just an observation.
His birth is not described at all, it was just that Joseph and Mary were expecting him, and there he was. Like you said. Poof Jesus. In fact we get more of the shepherds’ reactions and feelings than Mary or Joseph.
The whole birth is focused on Jesus, the miracle, the Messiah.
Which is understandable given his role in Christianity as God but it's in direct contrast to Surat Maryam, where the birth is all about Mary, and not in any way whimsical or magical. There's a miracle, sure, but it still feels grounded, in a sense. And it's Mary's miracle, Not Jesus'.
19:22 and in time she conceived him, and then she withdrew with him to a far-off place
23 And [when] the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree,17 she exclaimed: "Oh, would that I had died ere this, and had become a thing forgotten, utterly forgotten!”
This, to me, paints a much more striking image, you know?
A young mother seeking safety from her people who would judge her or do worse for bearing a child out of wedlock (not that they'd understand the miracle), who is overcome by pain and can barely reach the trunk of a palm tree to support herself against, before the pain of labour strikes her again.
And that part? “forgotten, utterly forgotten”? It's the closest English to the Arabic “nasyan mansiyya[n]” (نسياً منسياً).
This is a special grammatical case in Arabic I can't remember the name of and it can never really be properly translated to English but I'll try to give you a feel of it.
You know when you forget something but you remember that you forgot it and it keeps bugging you till you can remember?
Well, Mary wishes she was more than that. That she was forgotten and nobody remembered the empty space in their memories where she would've been.
In other words, Mary wished she never existed to begin with.
And, God, isn't that chilling?
This verse genuinely hit me hard during some of the lowest points I had in my relationship with faith and worst days with my mental health because of it.
But what's really important to me isn't just her suffering, no, it's what happens after.
There's a weird impulse among Muslims (and Christians, from what I've seen, but I can't personally comment) to romanticize suffering due to the general understanding of the concept of istishhād/martyrdom (id say misunderstanding, personally, but that's not the point).
The worst victim of this is Āsiyā, the wife of the Pharaoh of Exodus in Islam. But she deserves her own essay.
Moreover, there's a weird push to just accept God's will and never feel bad about anything ever because God willed it. Obviously that's the extreme end of people, but it does exist and this Surah just exists to directly oppose that I feel.
If that sentiment had any morsel of truth, Mary here would've been chided for questioning God's will and wishing death upon herself (which. yk. I'm sure you've heard of the “suicide is a sin” squad).
But that's not what happens, is it?
No, God instead comforts Mary after everything by blessing her with a stream of water to quench her thirst and allowing palm dates to fall down so she can eat them to rest after the entire ordeal.
19:24 Thereupon [a voice] called out to her from beneath that [palm-tree]: "Grieve not! Thy Sustainer has provided a rivulet [running] beneath thee
25 and shake the trunk of the palm-tree towards thee: it will drop fresh, ripe dates upon thee.
26 Eat, then, and drink, and let thine eye be gladdened! And if thou shouldst see any human being, convey this unto him:`Behold, abstinence from speech have I vowed unto the Most Gracious; hence, I may not speak today to any mortal.
I don't know if you've seen a palm tree before, but those things are huge and their trunks are big. You can't just shake them and take the dates, you need to climb or wait for the dates to fall on your head. But God specifically made it so that Mary can easily just shake this enormous tree and take from its fruits
“Let thine eyes be gladdened” here is “قَرِّی عَیۡنࣰاۖ”. I don't know how to translate it into English but it's an idiom for allowing yourself to rest.
And I can't lie and say it means that, but it always brings an image to my head of a Mary, whose throat was wrecked from screaming and eyes turned red from crying, wiping away her tears as she reached for the water and the dates and felt calm and rest for the first time in months.
That phrasing is also just very gentle in Arabic, it sounds a bit harsher in English but it is just comforting to an Arabic speaker. I just can't describe it, it's one of those things lost in translation.
This is actually part of a running motif of sorts in the Qur'ān of childbirth being described as the ordeal it is and used as a reason for why people should respect their mothers and like women in general. That's its own topic but a real quick example is Surat Al-Ahqāf, verse 15.
46:15 NOW [among the best of the deeds which] We have enjoined upon man is goodness towards his parents. In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth; and her bearing him and his utter dependence on her took thirty months [...]
I think it's really important that she took a vow of silence. Not only as a parallel to Zechariah's own vow, but to me it feels like an extension of God making it up to Mary, for lack of better phrasing.
To a degree, it is obviously to allow the miracle of Jesus speaking in the cradle present in Islam to unfold, but it does feel like Allah telling Mary that They will be the one to inform her people and bear the brunt of delivering the news, not just her, and she needn't worry about their reactions.
And Mary's people immediately assume the worst. They tell her that what she brought, Jesus, was “شيئا فريا”. A thing shocking, unexpected, monstrous.
It's dehumanization of her and Jesus both by describing him as a “thing” she brought, they don't care about her suffering or that she fled and gave birth on her own, no, all they care about is the unexpected monstrous thing she'd brought. That she conceived and bore a child out of wedlock.
Not that she was young and clearly tired and had to survive on her own with a newborn, no, just that she failed their expectations as a woman.
28 O sister of Aaron!* Thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a loose woman!
*For this sister of Aaron thing, I do recommend just going to Muhammad Asad's footnote and reading that because I can't be bothered to explain right now.
“wicked man” here is more literally “a man of evil”.
Your Father was not a man of evil, Mary, not like you.
“a loose woman” as a translation of بغيا obviously means “adulteress” or “unchaste” or. Well. In more crass terms: a whore.
Your Mother was not a whore, Mary, not like you.
That's what they focused on...not Mary's well-being or Jesus', just that she failed their expectations.
She is evil, wicked, unchaste and a whore. Not Mary, the young and tired mother carrying a newborn infant in her arms and travelling on her own being attacked from all sides by people who only wish to judge her, not help her.
And it just breaks my heart, honestly
Which makes Jesus' miracle of speaking in the cradle more powerful to me. Not just as a proof of prophethood, but as God directly defending her. And God doesn't defend her by emphasizing that she's still a virgin or that Jesus was conceived miraculously, no, God defends her by having Jesus declare that he, her son, will be a great man blessed by God and that God instructed him to treat her well.
19:29 Thereupon she pointed to him. They exclaimed: "How can we talk to one who [as yet] is a little boy in the cradle?”
30 [But] he said: "Behold, I am a servant of God. He has vouchsafed unto me revelation and made me a prophet,
31 and made me blessed wherever I may be; and He has enjoined upon me prayer and charity as long as I live,
32 and [has endowed me with] piety towards my mother; and He has not made me haughty or bereft of grace.
33 "Hence, peace was upon me on the day when I was born, and [will be upon me] on the day of my death, and on the day when I shall be raised to life [again]!
Mary is defended against those accusations in other places as well, notably in Surat An-Nisā', but never in the context of the moment she presented Jesus to her people like this.
And that just hits harder for me? The first people to see Jesus other than his mother were not a loving stepfather or three shepherds there to witness the messiah in the manger, no, they're Mary's people who spew endless cruelty at her and she's alone and God defends her through her son.
And UGHHHH I LOVE IT SO MUCH I COULD TALK ABOUT IT FOREVERRRRRRR AKKWOEKDJCOS XHOQJANCNVNV GLAKSHUDHDDIDJZBN
OH YEAH!! I think a huge point of comparison as well is the focus on different parts of Jesus' lineage.
In the NT (from what I've seen), there's a bigger emphasis on him being the “son of David”, which makes complete sense since that's part of the prophecy that the Messiah will be born from the House of David. Oh and especially focusing that that was through Joseph being from the house of David, meanwhile he just doesn't exist in Islam.
However, that prophecy and that requirement for the Messiah (or Al-Masīh) is irrelevant to Islam, which, between Abraham's two sons, is more focused on Ishmael's lineage than Isaac’s to begin with.
For all intents and purposes, genealogy of prophets and venerated figures in Islam isn't as important as it is in either Judaism or Christianity, beyond establishing that Prophet Muhammad (ص) was from the lineage of Abraham through his first son Ishmael, because Islam frames itself as the fulfillment of God's promise to Ishmael of a great nation in Genesis 17 (indirectly referenced in Surat Al-Baqarah, 2:128-129, framed entirely differently tho
It is more important in Shī'ā Islam, but even then it's only focused on the genealogy of Muhammad's family (Ahl ul-Bayt).
Sure, it's generally accepted that all prophets that came after Abraham are from his lineage, but even then there's some ambiguity with prophets like Shu’ayb (ع), Hūd (ع) and Salih (ع) (who don't even have biblical counterparts and are exclusive to Islam).
Not to mention that Islam defines “prophet/nabiy” differently and has an entirely separate category of “messenger/rasūl”. And it rejects priesthood so figures like Aaron (ع), who's a priest in the Torah, are understood as prophets.
With all that context, I can get to the point. The Qur'an doesn't emphasize his relation to David at all, doesn't even hint at it, but it keeps emphasizing multiple times that he's the son of Mary and no one else.
Arabic names (*as understood in Pre-Islamic/Jahiliya Arabia) are traditionally patronymics, you don't really have a last name except your tribal name.
You have a given name that's yours, and nasab which is all direct your male ancestors as far back as you can trace them. There's also kunya but that’s irrelevant
Jahiliya Arabs put a large emphasis on bloodlines, and liked keeping track of their nasab as far back as they could.
For example, let's take Hamza (ر), the Prophet's uncle.
His given name is Hamza, but his nasab would be (copy pasted from wiki cos I value my sanity):
Ḥamza ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy ibn Kilāb ibn Murrah ibn Ka'b ibn Lu'ayy ibn Ghālib ibn Fihr ibn Mālik
“Ibn/bin” means “son of” and bint means “daughter of”.
So, going back to Hamza, his name is literally Hamza son of Abdul Muttalib son of Hashim, etc.
Pre-islamic Arabia was a strictly patriarchal and tribal society, so patronymics and lineage were extremely important. Matronymics were never a thing, as far as I'm aware.
A lot of the times, people will just be referred to as “Ibn/Bint X”. Notable examples include Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Hanbal.
The Qur'ān does, in fact, use this naming system occasionally.
For example, Cain and Abel aren't named in the Qur'ān, but they're referred to as “Ibnay Adam”, The Two Sons Of Adam.
And Mary is called "Maryam bint ‘Imrān" in the Quran once in Surat At-Tahrīm, 66:12.
Imran is typically understood to be Joachim from apocrypha….or a way denoting tribal lineage, and should be understood less as “ Maryam daughter of Imran” and more “Maryam The Imranite”, and since that verse above implied Maryam is the descendant of The Aaron, I'm one of those who choose to understand her name as a tribal denotation meaning “Maryam The Amramite” to show her relation to Aaron and Moses
What's really noteworthy is the one subversion to the typical patronymic system the Qur'ān and the Arabs employed: ‘Isā ibn Maryam. Jesus son of Mary.
This is extremely important. Jesus could have just been ‘Isā ibn ‘Imrān to denote his tribal lineage or just have him take his grandfather's name or not use a nasab for him at all but no, he's specifically referred to as Mary's son.
That's his nasab. His name. His lineage. Mary's Son.
Now, I'm sure this was probably preposterous to the pre-Islamic Arabs who already hated the Qur'ān, but that's not what we're here for.
I'm trying to show here that it shows a great level of respect to Mary as his most important and emphasized ancestor by giving him a matronymic instead of a patronymic, subverting the typical naming conventions at the time.
Mary is his most important and emphasized ancestor. Not David, not Aaron, not Jacob, not Isaac, not even Abraham– Mary.
In fact, Maryam is always referred to by her first name in the Qur'ān, her nasab only being mentioned once alongside her first name
But Jesus? Almost always paired with “ibn Maryam”. Sometimes it'd be “Al-Masīh ibn Maryam”, The Messiah Son of Mary.
And occasionally? Just “Ibn Maryam”.
Like in 23:50 (Surat Al-Mu’minīn) and 43:57 (Surat Az-Zukhruf).
You're supposed to immediately understand that the son of Mary is him. That's his biggest identification. That's enough to know who he is. That is who he is.
More than the messiah, more than Jesus, he's Mary's boy.
Mary is never referred to as just “Bint 'Imrān”.
Now, part of this is the Qur'ān’s vehement denial of Jesus being the son of God, thus emphasizing his fully human mother, however it cannot be denied that a part of it is out of respect for Mary as his mother and as her own person and a great subversion of patriarchal Arabian expectations.
This is even emphasized before Jesus is born.
As you know, the Qur'ān is non-chronological, it's not a history book.
So, the annunciation is recounted a couple of other times with different phrasing, the one that stands out to me besides the one in Surat Maryam is the one in Surat Ālī Imrān (The Amramites or the Family of Imran). Verse 45 to be specific.
3:45 Lo! The angels said: "O Mary! Behold, God sends thee the glad tiding, through a word from Him, [of a son] who shall become known as the Christ/Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, of great honour in this world and in the life to come, and [shall be] of those who are drawn near unto God
Before he was even born it was decided that he would bear his mother's name, alongside proclamations that he'd be the messiah and one of the closest to God. And that's just. It makes me emotional okay.
Even in hadiths, he's called Ibn Maryam.
I have a lot of feelings about Qur'ānic Jesus and Maryam and could go on for longer but that's enough for now.
Sorry about rambling I just love discussing parts of the Qur'ān. If I misinterpreted any part of the NT do let me know!!
