1. In the Qurʾān: JESUS
WARNING
This article on Jesus is the first of five documents that Brother Bruno presents in the appendix to Volume II of his study. These documents contain the preliminary conclusions that he draws on five subjects, after having completed his translation of the first three sūrahs of the Qurʾānic text. Brother Bruno gives the references to the Qurʾānic verses that justify his conclusions. So as not to deprive further our readers of these conclusions we present them here giving in parenthesis the Qurʾānic verse references but, for the moment, without a link to Brother Bruno’s translation of them. The reason for this is simply that we have not yet reached this point in our English version. It would, however, be useless for our readers to refer to these verses in any other English translation of the Qurʾān. As Brother Bruno abundantly proved in the Preface to Volume I of his study, translations previous to his do not give what the author of the Qurʾān actually wrote, but what the Islamic “tradition” invented in an attempt to give meaning to a text that was no longer understood. When we complete the English version of Brother Bruno’s scientific translation, the references given in parenthesis will be replaced by links to the actual translations of the Qurʾānic verses.
The author of Sūrah 2 presents himself as a new Moses (Q 2:151-153) who is leading the children of Abraham and Ishmael, the beneficiaries of the first Covenant (Q 2:144-214), to conquer the Promised Land. (Q 2:125-126)
Sūrah 3 reveals that this enterprise was a failure. At first allied with the Persians in 614, and with them victorious over the Christian armies of Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, the children of Ishmael, the “Saracens” mentioned in Jewish and Christian chronicles, were driven out by their very allies, the Persians, and robbed of their victory.
The author, however, did not abandon his intention, drawing the strength to endure this “calvary” (Q 3:140) without losing the hope of a victorious “return”. (Q 3:124-129) from the example of Jesus Who was “betrayed” (Q 3:54).
The reference to Jesus is well known, but the historical context remains misunderstood. This is why it is often proposed as the basis for a possible “rapprochement” between Islam and Christianity. ●
For our part, we will only attempt to specify the idea that the author has of the Person of Jesus, starting from the data already provided by our scientific exegesis of Sūrahs 2 and 3. We are aware that, in doing so, we will be violating the prohibition in force since the beginning, according to which: “One should not hasten to attribute to the Qurʾānic texts meanings elaborated independently of the prodigious effort of thought brought to bear by the Muslims in order to overcome the difficulties that their sacred texts may present.”●
JESUS, SON OF MARY
The first of these “difficulties” arises from the genealogy attributed to Jesus by the author of Sūrah 3.
JESUS
The name “Jesus,” ʿīsā●, is not a transposition of the Greek Jèsous Mt 1:21; Lk 1:31, nor of the Hebrew yéšūʿa, a contracted form of yehōšuʿa, abbreviated to yéšū by rabbinic tradition. “This name poses an enigma,” as Jeffery acknowledges, not only to Muslim commentators, but also “to science.”● Since, according to the same author, “the form ʿĪsā does not occur before the Qurʾān”●, we must in any case consider it as an invention of the author
The permutation of the consonants shin and aïn distorts the name of “Jesus” with a precise intention: that of depriving it of its etymological meaning of “Yahweh saves.” The author has in mind the theme that he has concealed under the acronym ALM, an abbreviation of the biblical expression ʾel lemōshāʿōt, “God for the salvations.” Q 2:1 God alone is “for the salvations.” For the author, Jesus is not God, the Son of God, “the saving God.” He is but a man, “son of Mary.”
MARY
Jesus was “born” (Q 3:196) of a “woman,” (Q 3:36); cf. Ga 4:4 ʾunṯā, and the name of this Woman is Mary●: “Jesus, son of Mary,” ʿīsā bna maryama. (in Q 2:87, Q 2:253, Q 3:45)
The name “Mary,” Maryam (in Q 2:87, Q 2:253; Q 3:36, Q 3:37, Q 3:42, Q 3:43, Q 3:44, Q 3:45 [twice]), is the pure and simple transposition of the Greek mariam. Thought to be the “daughter of Amran,” (Q 3:35-36) the Mother of Jesus is thus confused with Miryam, sister of Moses and Aaron. Nb 26:59
As we have said●, orientalists hasten to explain this confusion by “Muḥammad’s lack of education”. For Muslims, this is an unacceptable solution. Since, “the Qurʾān is the uncreated word of God, it cannot include mistaken identities,”●, so they declared the genealogy of Jesus in the Qurʾān to be based on a spiritual kinship of generations faithful to God, rather than on a carnal kinship. At the same time, however, they negate this explanation by having recourse to “the existence of two Marys, two ʿImrāns and even two Aarons,” and by affirming that “the generations of these homonyms are separated by eighteen centuries.”●
The truth, brought to light by a scientific exegesis of the texts, seems simpler than all these arbitrary and contradictory hypotheses. The author of Sūrahs 2 and 3 shows so much knowledge of the Old and the New Testament that any “confusion” between the Mother of Jesus and the sister of Moses was certainly conceived in his mind, not due ignorance, but for a deliberate purpose.
Applying a rule of rabbinical exegesis according to which: “In the Torah, nothing is anterior, nothing is posterior”● – a rule that the author of the Qurʾān extends to both “the Torah and the Gospel” (Q 3:3) –, he commits a gross anachronism, capable of “making void” 1 Co 1:17 1° Jesus’ divinity, 2° His Messiahship. Likewise, in the Qurʾān, “Son of Mary,” ʿibn maryam obliterates “Son of the Most High” Lk 1:32 and “Son of David.” Mt 1:1; Lk 1:32
SON OF MARY
Already in Sūrah 2, Jesus was reduced to the rank of a simple commentator of Moses (Q 2:87). According to Sūrah 3, it is still in this capacity that God would “teach him Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel.” (Q 3:48) Far from being greater than Moses, as the “Nazoreans” mistakenly thought because of a “deceitful interpretation” (Q 3:94; cf. Q 2:78-79, Q 2:113, Q 2:176), He is similar to him. This presentation, moreover, finds an apparent basis in the New Testament, where Jesus is a new Moses, fulfilling what Yahweh had foretold to the founder of the Chosen People: “I will raise up a prophet like yourself for them, from among their own brethren.”●; cf. Jn 6:14; Ac 3:22-23; Ac 7:37
Thus is explained the sequence “Moses and Jesus,” (in Q 2:136 and Q 3:84) expressed as though Jesus immediately succeeded Moses (Q 2:87) as a nephew succeeds his uncle. By his genealogy of “Jesus, son of Mary” that goes back to “Adam” through “Noah,” through “those of Abraham,” and through “those of Amram,” (Q 3:33) the author abolishes all temporal distance, going so far as to make no further “distinction” between the uncle and the nephew.
He concludes the aggadah on Jesus in the same way that Saint Luke ends his genealogy of Jesus “Son of Adam, Son of God,” Lk 3:38 but in doing so, his intention is the exact opposite of the Evangelist. He is denying Jesus’ divinity: “Yes, the likeness of Jesus, in the eyes of God, is similar to the likeness of Adam. He fashioned him from offspring. Then he said to him, ‘Be,’ and he was.” (Q 3:59)
Born of Mary, on “a word” from God, (Q 3:47); cf. Lk 1:38 Jesus is “like” a new “Adam,” for the author of Sūrah 3 as for Saint Paul,1 Co 15:45 with this exception: here it is not a “new creation” 2 Co 5:17 since it is identical to the first one in every respect.
The reader of this strange “gospel,” ʾinjyīl, (Q 3:3) can but draw the conclusion that it is a pure and simple contradiction of the Christian Faith: the “second man” does not “come from Heaven” at all, but he is “earthly,” like “the first man, he is of dust,” 1 Co 15:47 Thus the author dismisses any divinisation of Jesus. “Son of Mary,” ʿibn maryam, obliterates “Son of the Most High.”
CHRIST JESUS
“Son of Mary,” ʿibn maryam, also obliterates “Son of David.” The deliberate confusion between Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Myriam, sister of Moses, which abolishes a span of thirty generations, all oriented towards the future, in expectation of the King-Messiah, breaks the orthodromic continuity of Sacred History.
It is true that the name “Messiah,” masīḥu, is associated once with that of “Jesus” in order to form a compound name preceded by the article, “the Christ Jesus,” ʾal-masīḥu ʿisā, (Q 3:45) which is found six times in the New Testament: “Christ Jesus”, ho christos Jèsous. (Ac 5:42; Ga 5:24; Ga 6:12; Ep 3:1; Ep 3:11; Col 2:6; cf. Mt 1:16) Here, however, this expression is nothing more than a retroversion into Hebrew, and from it, into Arabic, of the Greek proper name deprived of all Messianic signification. “The Christ Jesus, son of Mary” is never called “son of David”.
Here again, it must be acknowledged, the author follows the “Gospel,” ʾinjīl, in this precise sense of the term: the Gospel prior to the “changes” introduced “subsequently,” baʿīdin, by the “Nazarenes.” (Q 2:176) According to this pure Gospel, in fact, Jesus “would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew Him.”● He also imposed silence concerning His Messianic identity on those whom He healed, (Mk 1:44; Mk 5:43; Mk 7:36; Mk 8:26;) and even on the Apostles. (Mk 8:30, Mk 9:9)
This order would be lifted, it is true, after His death.Mt 10:27 Six hundred years later, the author of the Qurʾān re-establishes it in perpetuity, by committing an omission, which is surely not fortuitous, at the precise moment when “Jesus, son of Mary” comes to his mind, no longer in the shadow of Moses, (as in Q 2:87) but after King Saul, (Q 2:246-248) and after King David, (Q 2:250-251) in the line of those whom God declares to have “favoured” in particular, by giving them “authority.” (Q 2:253) Immediately after mentioning “David [who] killed Goliath,” and to whom “God gave kingship and wisdom,” (Q 2:251) the author names “Jesus, son of Mary,” to whom God gave “understanding,” but not “kingship.”
A FIGURATIVE MYTH
The omission is all the more flagrant because the author was awaiting the establishment of a kingship: “Show us our princes, manāsika-nā,” implores Ishmael. (Q 2:128, cf. Q 3:26) However, under the veil of an Aggadic narrative, he has already implied that Jesus was not this expected king, contrary to Christian Messianism. (Q 2:258)
This is not all: in Sūrah 3, not only is “Jesus, son of Mary” deprived of His divinity and His Messianic kingship, but He even loses all historical consistency. “Nevertheless,” admits Father Jomier, “His figure remains very vague and it would be quite difficult to represent Him if one relied only on the Qurʾān ●.” Father Abd-el-Jalil makes the same remark: “The earthly life of Christ, moreover, is of a very vague nature in the eyes of Muslims.”●
Still, it is necessary to understand how the author created this “vagueness” and to what end.
“ANNUNCIATIONS”
The aggadah devoted to Jesus tells of the “annunciations,” ʾanbāʾ (Q 3:44) of His birth, of His miracles, of the treachery whereby “those who were following [him],” ‘al-hawāriyyūn (Q 3:54) “betrayed [him]” makarū. (Q 3:52)
The lack of any account of the nativity of “Jesus, son of Mary,” between that of the annunciation to Mary by “the angels” and that of the annunciation made by Jesus to the children of Israel, “makes void,” to use the expression of Saint Paul, 1 Co 1:17 not only “the Cross of Christ,” but even His historical existence.
The author omits to relate the birth of Jesus, merely contenting himself with announcing that, like the first creation, he will be a pure “word,” ʾamran, decreed by God, thus virginal, in accordance with the vow of Mary saying: “Master, will there be a child for me even when no flesh will touch me?” (Q 3:47)
It makes you wonder whether this “word” really became “flesh.” Nevertheless, “the angels” announce that “he will be great in this world and in the other,” and he will be “among the victims” mina l-muqarrabīn. This allusion to the prophecy of the old man Simeon, Lk 2:33-35 misunderstood by all the commentators, is the key to the enigma.
The whole public life is “announced” also, by Jesus Himself, promising to accomplish brilliant miracles, not by His own power, but “the God fulfilling,” bi-ʾiḏni llāhi. (Q 3:49)
The first of these miracles would consist in giving life to the clay model of a turtledove. Here, this puerile legend, invented by authors of apocryphal Gospels, is marked by the sobriety and dignity proper to the author of the Qurʾān. It reveals a precise and manifestly reductive intention: to interpret the apparition of a dove coming down from Heaven upon Jesus, after His baptism, as a miracle of His thaumaturgical power, equal to Abraham’s. Thus, are eliminated both the divinity of the Holy-Spirit and the Messianic anointing of the “Christ Jesus,” ʿal-masīhu ʿīsā whose enthronement was marked by this evangelical scene of His baptism.
No nativity, therefore no life, hidden or public, no death or resurrection. Only “annunciations,” like Old Testament prophecies.
REALISATIONS
Suddenly, verbs change to the perfective tense, leaving the future, the imperfective of the “annunciations of the mystery,” ʾanbāʾi l-ġaybi. (Q 3:44) The tone of the style becomes more dramatic to relate “the denial,” ʾal-kufra, of “those who followed,” ʾal-ḥawāriyyūn, Jesus.
“We are the Nazoreans of the God,” naḥnu ʾanṣāru llāhi, they maintained, declaring themselves “perfect,” muslimūn, and taking Jesus as their witness. (Q 3:52) Nevertheless, they “betrayed [him],” makarū, (Q 3:54) in spite of their profession of islām. The “Nazoreans” have always betrayed islām. This is the lesson of the story of Jesus “betrayed,” and “victim” of his own. The author’s intention, which is difficult to contest, is to propose Jesus as the figure of the one who is to come, “taken from among” the children of Ishmael: the author himself, the new Moses, the fulfilment, realisation, historical incarnation of the veritable beloved prophet and salutary victim, “betrayed” in turn by the perfidious treachery of false brethren (Q 3:64-83; Q 3:122-123) to suffer a true “calvary,” qarḥun. (Q 3:140)
Therefore, in Sūrah 3, the “Torah and Gospel” are merely “the prophecy” of what is fulfilled by the hands of the children of Ishmael, (Q 3:79) under the leadership of the author himself, the veritable object of divine favours and by the same token of the expectation of men, the muḥammadun, the “beloved, the desired”.●
And the “people of Scripture,” Jews (Q 3:98) and Nazoreans, (Q 3:99) are the witnesses to this fulfilment.
Cf. for example, Charles Ledit, Mahomet, Israël et le Christ, La Colombe, 1956.
Canon Charles-Jean Ledit, priest of the Diocese of Troyes, France (1908-....). Ordained in 1931, he served as chaplain of the boys’ high school in Troyes, of the University Parish and of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul conferences. He received the French Academy’s Teissonnière Award for Mahomet, Israël et le Christ (1957). He was named a Canon of Troyes Cathedral in 1964. From 1960 to 1972, he was an Associate Member of the Academic Society of Aube.
J. M. Abd-el-Jalil, o.f.m., La vie de Marie selon le Coran et l’Islam, dans Maria, études sur la Sainte Vierge, vol. 1, p. 189
found in Q 2:87, Q 2:136, Q 2:253 ; Q 3:45, Q 3:55, Q 3:59, Q 3:84
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1:21
Mary will bear a Son, and You shall call his name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:31
And behold, You [Mary] will conceive in Your womb and bear a Son, and You shall call His name Jesus.
Arthur Jeffery, Australian Methodist minister and renowned scholar of Middle Eastern languages and manuscripts (1892-1959). He taught at the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo (1921-1938), then from 1938 until his death jointly at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is the author of extensive historical studies of Middle Eastern manuscripts. His important works include Materials for the history of the text of the Qur’an: the old codices and The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (1938), which traces the origins of 318 foreign (non-Arabic) words found in the Qur’ān.
“The name is still a puzzle to scholarship” (Arthur Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān, Baroda, 1938, p. 219)
“The form ʿĪsā, however, does not occur earlier than the Qurʾān” (Arthur Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān, Baroda, 1938, p. 220)
Qurʾān 2:1
Blessed be the Name of the God of mercy, the Merciful One, God of deliverances.
Q 3:1 repeats this blessing as does the first verse of 24 other sūrahs. For thirteen centuries the abbreviation ALM has frustrated the ingenuity of all exegetes until Brother Bruno. Here is what he wrote about his discovery in his commentary on Q 2:1 “All share the suspicion that the letters appear to be abbreviations […]. This is precisely what they are. In the system used in rabbinic literature, the three letters ALM form the abbreviation of an expression perfectly suited to the context of the başmala while expanding on the eulogy in such a way as to announce in advance the whole theme of the future developments: ʾel lemōshāʿōt, “God for the salvations” (The Book of Psalms 68:20 “Our God is a God of salvation; and to Yahweh, the Lord, belongs escape from death.”). A stands for alif, the initial letter of the Hebrew ʾel, in Arab ʾilāh; L is the preposition, the initial M of mōshāʿōt, in the plural to emphasise the richness of the unique salvific plan of God throughout history
The Epistle to the Galatians 4:4
When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of Woman, born under the law.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:27
The Virgin’s name was Mary.
The Book of Numbers 26:59
The name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; and she bore to Amram Aaron and Moses and Miriam their sister.
The Qurʾān, Translation and Systematic Commentary, Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, Vol 2, p. 177: Western orientalists are aware of this [identification of Mary, Mother of Jesus with Miryam, sister of Moses] and attribute it to Muḥammad, the uneducated Bedouin, who get everything mixed up. This “rationalist” type of explanation is, moreover, incompatible with the “fundamentalist” Muslim thesis, which uses this legendary “Muḥammad’s” lack of education as an argument in favour of the Qurʾān being a work dictated by God in person. How is it possible to imagine such confusion in God’s own mind?
This, however, does not hold water, and our study resolves the dilemma. The uneducated “Muḥammad” does not exist. The author demonstrates such knowledge of the Gospels and of the New Testament as a whole, that the confusion between Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Miryam, sister of Moses and Aaron, appears to be a totally original way of “making void,” as Saint Paul would say (1 Co 1:17), the divinity of Christ.
Roger Arnaldez, Jésus fils de Marie prophète de l’Islam, Desclée, Paris, 1980, p. 33.
Roger Arnaldez (1911-2006) authored some thirty works on Islam, medieval philosophy and the thought of Averroes. He began Islamic studies after earning his university degrees as professor of Philosophy. Although profoundly Christian, Arnaldez was a man of dialogue. All his life, he worked in the service of what he called “the spiritual values of a religious humanism.” He was partisan since the 1930s of an ecumenical approach and openness to other religions. He served as consultant to the section for Islam of the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians. He was also an active member of the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association of France. Professor at the University of Lyon from 1956 to 1968, then at the University of Paris-Sorbonne until 1978, he was elected in 1986 to the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. His international reputation earned him an associate membership in the Royal Academy of Belgium, and a corresponding membership in the Academy of Arabic Language in Cairo. In 1980, Roger Arnaldez, publishing a book under the somewhat enigmatic title of Jesus, Son of Mary, Prophet of Islam, opened a new avenue of research. It was not the hackneyed comparison of the Qurʾānic Jesus with New Testament sources, but the meticulous exploration of the commentaries of the Qurʾān in order to bring out the completely Muslim figure of Christ that they reveal.
J. M. Abd-el-Jalil, o.f.m., La vie de Marie selon le Coran et l’Islam, dans Maria, études sur la Sainte Vierge, vol. 1, p. 189; cf. Arnaldez, Jésus fils de Marie prophète de l’Islam, Desclée, Paris, 1980, pp. 23-24, and its chapter II, Problems in the genealogy of Jesus, wherein are quoted “the ingenious translations of Professor Hamidullah” who tries to harmonise everything: “For him,” Arnaldez writes, “there is only one ʿImrān, the biblical Amran (sic!). He renders: ‘imraʾatu ʿImrān’ by: ‘this amranite,’ and he explains that it is a woman descendant of ʿImrān, which name is understood to be the eponym of a tribe. This often occurs in Arabic; she is, he says, Anne, wife of Joachim and mother of Mary.” (p. 34) The method is indeed ‘ingenious,’ but is without any foundation, neither linguistic nor historical.
The Qurʾān, Translation and Systematic Commentary, Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, Vol 2, p. 177
The First Epistle to the Corinthians 1:17
For Christ did not send me [Saint Paul] to baptise but to preach the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the Cross of Christ be made void.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:32
He [Jesus] will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1:1
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:32
He [Jesus] will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David.
The Book of Deuteronomy 18:18
The Gospel According to Saint John 6:14
When the people saw the sign which He had done, they said: “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
The Acts of the Apostles 3:22-23
22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as He raised me up. You shall listen to Him in whatever He tells you. 23 And it shall be that every soul that does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.
The Acts of the Apostles 7:37
This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as He raised me up.’
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 3:38
[…] 38 the Son of Enos, the Son of Seth, the Son of Adam, the Son of God.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:38
Mary said: “Behold, I am the Handmaid of the Lord; let it be to Me according to your word.” And the angel departed from Her.
The First Epistle to the Corinthians 15:45
Thus it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians 5:17
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
cf. The First Epistle to the Corinthians 15:47
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from Heaven
The Acts of the Apostles 5:42
And every day in the Temple and at home they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (τὸν Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν).
The Epistle to the Galatians 5:24
Those who belong to Christ Jesus (τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ) have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The Epistle to the Galatians 6:12
It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ (τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ).
The Epistle to the Ephesians 3:1
For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus (τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ) on behalf of you Gentiles […].
The Epistle to the Ephesians 3:11
This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realised in Christ Jesus (Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ) our Lord.
The Epistle to the Colossians 2:6
As therefore you received Christ Jesus (τὸν Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν) the Lord, so live in him.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1:16
[…] and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, Who is called Christ (Ἰησοῦς ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός).
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 1:34.
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 1:44
Jesus said to him [the cleansed leper]: “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people.”
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 5:43
Jesus strictly charged them [Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue, and his wife] that no one should know this, and told them to give her [their daughter whom Jesus had just raised from the dead] something to eat.
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 7:36
Jesus charged them [those who had seen Him make the deaf and mute man hear and speak] to tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 8:26
Jesus sent him [the blind man he had just cured] away to his home, saying: “Do not even enter the village.”
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 8:30
Jesus charged them [His disciples] to tell no one about Him.
The Gospel According to Saint Mark 9:9
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus charged them [His apostles Peter, James and John] to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of man should have risen from the dead.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 10:27
What I [Jesus] tell you [the Apostles] in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops.
Father Jacques Jomier (1914-2008) was a French Dominican and orientalist. He graduated from the Dominican Faculty of Saulchoir with a degree in Theology and a doctorate in Literature. In 1932, he entered the Dominican Order, and was ordained priest in 1939. Later on he was sent to the Dominican priory in Cairo. It had been founded in 1928 to be an extension in Egypt of the École Biblique de Jérusalem, devoted to the study of archaeology in Egypt in connection with Biblical studies. Unfortunately, international events blocked the project. In 1953, Father Jomier became one of the three founders of the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies (IDEO) dedicated to Islamic studies aimed at “making Islam better known and appreciated in its religious and spiritual dimensions.”)
Jacques Jomier, o. p., Un chrétien lit le Coran, dans Cahiers Évangile, Cerf, non daté, no. 48, p. 55.
Father Jean Mohammed Ben Abd-el-Jalil, Moroccan Catholic priest (1904-1979). Ben Abd-el-Jalil was born into a family of Muslim notables from Fez on April 17, 1904, Mohammed Ben Abd-el-Jalil received a bilingual and Muslim education. He began by learning the Qurʾān at the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, and then accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca at the age of 9. Between 1922 and 1925, he attended the Gouraud High School while boarding at the Foucault School, run by Franciscan Fathers in Rabat, the capital of the French Protectorate in Morocco. It was at this time that Mohammed developed an interest in the Catholic religion. He obtained his baccalaureate in 1925.
That same year, he went to Paris for higher studies to obtain a degree in Arabic language and literature. He was also interested in philosophy and theology, frequenting Jacques Maritain, Maurice Blondel, and especially Louis Massignon, who maintained a long friendship and correspondence with him. The celebration of Christmas 1927 was an important step in his conversion, and he asked to be baptised. He was baptised the following year on April 7, in the chapel of the Franciscan College in Fontenay-sous-bois, with the Orientalist Louis Massignon as his godfather. He chose Jean as his Christian name. In 1929, he entered the Franciscan Order, and was ordained a priest in 1935.
In the 1930s, he published anonymously in the magazine En terre d'Islam, an appeal “proposing to the faithful to devote Fridays to pray for our distant brothers." He also founded a “Friday Prayer League for the conversion of Muslims.” In 1936, he was called as a professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris, where he gave a course in Arabic language and literature, as well as a course in Islamology at the chair of History of Religions. He was forced to resign this post in 1964 due to a cancer. He retired to his convent and led a secluded life. He did, however write a report on the current state of Islam for the bishops of France at the Second Vatican Council. He was received by Pope Paul VI in 1966.
J. M. Abd-el-Jalil, o.f.m., La vie de Marie selon le Coran et l’Islam, dans Maria, études sur la Sainte Vierge, vol. 1, p. 188
The First Epistle to the Corinthians 1:17
For Christ did not send me to baptise but to preach the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the Cross of Christ be made void.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke 2:33-35
Jesus’ father and Mother marvelled at what was said about Him; 34 and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His Mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that shall be contradicted, and Your own soul a sword shall pierce, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
Cf. The Qurʾān, Translation and Systematic Commentary, Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, Vol 2, appendice II, p. 231-244, 259-264.: muḥammad