What Was the Injeel?

By Cyril Anderson

 One of the teachings about Jesus found in the Qu’ran is that Jesus came with a major teaching known as the injeel.  This word injeel has its origins in the Greek term "evangelion," which means Gospel.  What is not completely clear from these references is what the nature of this teaching was.  Was it simply an oral tradition?  Was it a book?  A common Islamic opinion is that it was a book revealed through Jesus to his followers that is no longer extant.  But at the same time, the Qu’ran instructs Christians and Muslims to refer to the Injeel for guidance.  This can only refer to the existing canon of the New Testament, which had been fixed about 150 years before the time of Muhammad, plus perhaps those non-canonical Gospels which were not canonized, yet highly regarded nonetheless.  How can this be reconciled?

 One possibility is the following: Jesus is referred to in the Qu’ran  as “kalimatullah,” a "Word from God."  That is, Jesus is considered a manifestation of the word of God, which is the active force behind divine revelation.  He himself was a manifestation of this revelation through his words and actions.  In this light, we can speculate that perhaps the injeel was thus not a physical book, but that rather, Jesus himself was in a way a book.  In this light, his actions and his words would be like the pages of this book.

 The various books or Gospels written detailing different aspects of the life of Jesus can then be seen as providing slices of his life.  None of these can really be called "The Injeel" because the book of Jesus' life overspills any of these limited accounts.  The best we can get is a sample, a taste of what this man was about. 

 In this light, one can see the compatibility between instructions to turn to the Gospel as a source of spiritual guidance with the belief that the full Gospel is not preserved.  The Gospel accounts cherished by Christians doubtless record sizeable portions of the life of Jesus, and thus, illuminate important parts of the life and mission of Jesus and are thus useful as spiritual teachings.  The fact that there is something authentic in these beautiful and moving accounts is unmistakable to those who read them with an open heart.  However, it must be understood that these accounts give only an incomplete picture.

 It is not necessarily true that any of these accounts 100% correct.  At best, we can take them together, weighing the various accounts to try to produce a sort of "composite picture" of Jesus and his life.  Indeed, numerous accounts exist, with various composition dates from the mid first century to the early third century CE.  There are the canonical Gospels of the Bible of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  As well, a number of non-canonical Gospels that are well known such as the Gospel of Thomas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and Infancy Gospel of James.  Adding considerably to the picture in recent decades are the so-called Gnostic Gospels, which tend to be more bizarre, but fascinating reading.  These date from the early centuries of the common era.  Until the 1940’s, the only source of information on Gnostic teachings was from their contemporary opponents.  The find of a number of nearly 2000 year old Coptic language texts in Nag Hammadi in Egypt and the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls near the location of the ancient Essene Jewish settlement of Qumran has revolutionized study in this field, and has been fuel for active research into these very different pictures of Jesus and of the early Christian communities.   Finally, of course there are the Qu’ranic accounts of Jesus, who is in fact one of the most oft-mentioned prophets in the Qu’ran, and the accounts given in the ahadith, the Islamic oral traditions.

 One can then weigh all of these accounts, with some taken more heavily than others, to try to get some sort of idea of who Jesus was and what his mission and teachings were about.