When history is not the measure of truth: rethinking Jesus, faith, and meaning

When history is not the measure of truth: rethinking Jesus, faith, and meaning

by: Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford
16/11/2025

The religious commitments of Muslims and Christians converge on the figure of Jesus, yet diverge sharply on the significance of certain events in his life. Muslims must affirm what many educated Christians today regard as “myth”, the virgin birth and the miracles. Conversely, Muslims must deny what those same Christians insist is certainly historical: the crucifixion. These opposing attitudes toward the events of Jesus’ life raise a deeper question that rarely receives full attention: what is the relationship between history and truth?

The key issue, if only I could articulate it with complete clarity and to my own satisfaction, is that the historicity of an event, being sure that it happened, is not the same as its meaning or its truth. Historicity is an assertion that something occurred in a particular manner and not in another, based on our ability to trace a sequence of causes leading up to the event. Where evidence is incomplete, we rely on analogy and experience of similar events to fill in the gaps. Yet the more important question is how that event matters to us now, how meaningful or significant the knowledge of its occurrence is for our lives today. Once we shift from fact to significance, we leave the realm of bare occurrence and enter the realm of interpretation. We begin to construct narratives, explanations, and theories that help us understand how the event should shape our present and future, how it should be remembered, and how its importance should be conveyed to others. Thus, the truth that nourishes the soul is not necessarily the same as the truth that satisfies the historian.

In observing modern Christian scholarship, I am increasingly inclined to think that many learned Christians, and many ex-Christians who still struggle with their Christian identity, are embarrassed by their inherited beliefs. They often wish to disbelieve and disown them, and the supposed “non-historicity” of much of the Jesus story provides a convenient basis for that disowning. In reality, their personal and collective behaviour over centuries suggests that they had informally abandoned the essence of Jesus’ teachings long before they formally questioned their historical foundations. For more than sixty years, academic scholars have attempted to isolate the core sayings that may be reliably attributed to Jesus from the layers of narrative, dramatization, and theological interpretation later added to them.

The so-called red-letter gospels, where this core of reliable sayings appears in red ink, while the surrounding narrative is printed in black, reveal something remarkable. Across nearly all surviving textual traditions, the sayings exhibit striking consistency. And all of them, without exception, preach the dīn (discipline, way) of the ḥunafā’, the pure monotheistic faith of Abraham. Within these sayings, Jesus calls people to turn to Allah, seek nearness to Him, worship and rely upon Him alone, and uphold righteousness in the form of charity, forgiveness, kindness, justice, and compassion. This message mirrors the teachings and example of Ibrahim, `alayhi s-salām, and of all the Prophets who came after him. Jesus appears not as the founder of a new religion, but as a reformer attempting to deepen the spiritual life of Judaism while preserving most of its legal and ritual structure.

Equally striking is what these sayings do not contain. There is no mention of crucifixion, resurrection, atonement, incarnation, the Trinity, or any doctrine that later came to define Christianity within the Roman Empire. When many Christians encounter the Qur’anic account of the dialogue between Isa alayhi s-salām and Allah, they are moved to tears because, at some deep level, they already sense that Jesus never asked anyone to worship him in place of, or alongside, God. This awareness exists in tension with the doctrinal edifice later constructed around him. Yet the same core of authentic sayings also makes no reference to Jesus’ miracles, to reviving the dead, or even to the virgin birth. Here I find myself stuck, for these elements are essential in the Islamic understanding of Jesus and cannot be dismissed simply because they do not appear in what modern scholars deem the most historically reliable material. Their absence demonstrates once again that historicity is not the measure of truth; a truth may be historically inaccessible and yet religiously indispensable.

In an interesting development, recent Western scholarship has begun, often unwittingly, to realign itself with perspectives long affirmed in the Qur’an. Scholars now increasingly acknowledge the crucial role of John the Baptiser (Yahya, `alayhi s-salām), contemporary with Jesus, preaching the same message of repentance and purity, and identifying Jesus as the awaited Messiah who would restore the kingdom of Israel. They also highlight the importance of the earliest community of Jesus’ followers, particularly James (Ya‘qov), the brother of Jesus, whose leadership and teachings have long been overshadowed by later developments in Christian theology. This earliest community remained fully Jewish, observing Jewish law with slight modifications. The Letter of James, still preserved in the New Testament, sets forth ethical and dietary regulations that closely parallel the Qur’anic commands given to Muslims, an intriguing continuity that is seldom acknowledged in Christian self-understanding.

The deeper one looks, the more evident it becomes that Jesus’ teachings reflect the Abrahamic monotheism affirmed by Islam, that many later Christian doctrines have little connection to Jesus’ own message, and that modern appeals to historicity are often selective, embraced when convenient and rejected when inconvenient. If historical reconstruction alone were the measure of truth, modern Christianity would be compelled to abandon much of what it holds central. But if meaning and spiritual truth stand above mere historicity, then Muslims must also recognize that the absence of certain events from the reconstructed “historical core” does not undermine their truth or significance.
History may tell us what happened.
Meaning tells us why it matters.
Revelation tells us what history cannot reach.

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