(3:54)(4:157)(5:57)(21:7-8)
The present Bible consists of four Gospels, but there is another Gospel written by Barnabas, who was a disciple of Jesus Christ. His Gospel was not included in the prevalent Bible because it gives a different picture of Jesus Christ. This Gospel was discovered by some orientalists at the beginning of the 20th century.
Jesus Christ unfolded his mission to the common Jews and convinced them that his aim was to establish the kingdom of God: a system based on values given by God that would be very beneficial for the ordinary people. A wave of terror ran through the religious ruling class; they could envisage the state of affairs which was waiting for them in the near future if Jesus was successful.
In the Gospel of Barnabas, a paragraph discusses the condition of the religious leaders. They are portrayed in a desperate condition because they could not see any respectable place for them in that system. They had learned no skills to earn their livelihood and were living luxuriously on the gifts which people had been bringing to the temple. In the new order, there was no place for folks who live in the garb of piety and enjoy the fruits of hard labor done by others.
This realization made them desperate and they started plotting vehemently against him. They could not bribe him; intimidation was out of the question. The only option open for them was to remove him from the stage forever and maintain the status quo. They viewed Jesus’ popularity with envy, jealousy, and burning hatred. They were not happy only with the plan to kill him. They wanted him to die disgracefully the death of a condemned man like a rebel or thief on the cross.
The Quran says that the Jews were making a clandestine plan to kill Christ, whereas God was also making a plan to save Christ from a disgraceful death, which was not worthy of an illustrious prophet like Jesus Christ. Jews claimed that they slew the Messiah, son of Mary, Allah’s messenger. According to the Quran it is not true. The Jews had no knowledge about what happened to Christ. The matter was doubtful. They were only conjecturing about it.
The Gospel of Barnabas gives a different description of this event in chapter 215. According to the Gospel of Barnabas, when the soldiers in the company of Judas Iscariot came to capture Jesus, Jesus heard the noise of a great company marching towards him; he went in the house where his eleven followers were sleeping. When God saw him in danger he ordered the mighty angels to take Jesus away from the world. The angels came through a window, took him, and put him on the third sky in the company of angels who were worshipping God forever.
A strange miracle took place; the face of the traitor changed and became like Jesus Christ. He woke the followers of Christ and started inquiring about him. The astonished followers said, “You are our teacher. How can you forget us?” During this period, the soldiers entered the room and caught him as Christ. He made a violent protest that he was not Jesus, but it fell on the deaf ears of the soldiers. The soldiers arrested him and he was crucified. While they were arresting him the followers ran away and saved themselves.
The Quran categorically denies the crucifixion of Christ and declares that he died a normal death in advanced age. Allah said that He has never sent a human being as a prophet with an eternal body which could exist without food and water.
An American man, Joseph Smith, shocked the religious Christian community by declaring that he was a prophet. According to his book “The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ,” he gave a long description of his vision in which he got a message from God to write the above-mentioned book. “On the evening of the September 1823…I betook myself to praying …a personage appeared at my bedside… he called me by name and said unto me… he was a messenger sent from the presence of God … God had a work for me to do…He said there was a book deposited, written upon golden plates…He told me that when I got those plates… I should not show it to person.”
Another way to narrate this story is that Joseph Smith was tilling his land when he discovered a stone box under the root of a tree. He dug out the box and found some ancient documents in it, in an unfamiliar language. These papers were about Jesus Christ and they proved that Jesus Christ migrated to America, lived and preached here. This fact proved the Quranic Verse that says that Allah told Jesus that He would die a normal death in an advanced age.
This proclamation of the discovery shook the very foundation of the established Christianity. A campaign was lodged against Joseph Smith and his followers. In it the houses were burned, the property was destroyed, and people were embarrassed to the extent that it became impossible to coexist with the Christians in the large cities. Joseph Smith was assassinated in 1944; his followers migrated to Utah. Orthodox Christians do not recognize them as Christians. They are known as Mormons.
Under these circumstances no further research was possible. Under this terrible pressure, the Mormons declared that the papers were taken back by God. The Quran says that Jesus never claimed to be the son of God, nor a sacrifice for the sins of humanity. He was a great prophet sent to Jews to bring them back to the right path.
