Christians allowed into the Paradise Gardens?Intermezzo by Marlies ter Borg My father, Frits Neervoort, was born in what was then the world’s second largest Muslim majority country, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, specifically in the Dutch East Indies. He grew up in Bandung as the child of parents who met in the Lutheran orphanage in The Hague. He was in his eighties when he and I discovered together that the figure, central to his faith, also played an important role in the Qur’an – Jesus. In the meantime, back in Holland, he had in his eighties, befriended an Afghan refugee who helped him with chores in house and garden. They…

Both the Qur’an and the Bible hold out the prospect of a reward for the righteous faithful and the righteous which they will receive when they are raised from death. The images used to describe this afterlife differ. The Hebrew Bible offers the image of the new Jerusalem, coupled to a new heaven and a new earth. In Revelation, this beautiful city has twelve pearly gates. In it a river flows bordered by a tree of life. The New Testament sometimes speaks of paradise, which in the Qur’an is the main focus. The everlasting gardens or Jannah to which the good and the faithful may aspire imply a return to…

The continuity and development of the concept of hell in Bible and Qur’an can be understood from the underlying Greek word ‘Gehenna’, used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible to refer to the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where children were sacrificed to the heathen god Moloch. The practice was outlawed by Josiah, but Jeremiah still had to warn the people of Judah to refrain from burning their children in Hinnom valley. God can destroy with fire, but in the Hebrew Bible, this refers to world of the living. The idea of hellfire as a punishment after death, as mentioned in the New Testament and elaborated…

Interpreting hell in an interfaith contextIntermezzo by Mehmet Pacaci In 2009 I gave a course on eschatology in Bible and Qur’an at a Christian seminary in America. Of course we couldn’t avoid the concept of hell, which occurs both in the Bible and in the Qur’an. Suddenly I felt that the immensity of the topic fell upon the classroom and smothered us all. My students, from a wide variety of ages, sat shrouded in a sad silence. They apparently could not admit this perception of terrible punishment by God. I understood from their later responses that they followed a figurative interpretation of the lake of fire in the New Testament,…

The story of the Last Day can be found in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. It reaches its climax in the expressive language of Revelation, the final of the Bible. In Isaiah and Daniel, the prophets receive a revelation during an ecstatic rapture. Likewise, the book Revelation is also the result of the visionary experience of someone named John. The relevant passages in the gospels are prophetic words ascribed to Jesus. The Last Day is mentioned many times in the Qur’an, with certain surahs describing various aspects, such as The Day of Noise, and Clamor, The Convulsion, and The Folding Up (of the heavens). In this…

Individual responsibility and the Afterlife in the Qur’anintermezzo by Mehmet Pacaci Afterlife is one of the main themes of the Qur’an. The abode in which one will face the retribution of worldly deeds is called akhira. It is the opposite of the prevailing but transient life on earth (al-hayat al-dunya). Akhira is the future and unending period starting after the end of man’s worldly life, (eschaton). For a Muslim, faith in life after death is concomitant with the faith in Almighty God manifested in his creative power. The eschaton is closely related to God’s creative power. God has the absolute power over creation, death and resurrection or recreation; over the…

For centuries the images concerning the Life after death played a great role in Christianity. The Book of Revelations, the Last Bible book was often recited. Images of the Divine Judge were carved into churches. Painters pictured the lost souls falling to the left and the redeemed souls rising to heaven. Composers reproduced the sounds of trumpets heralding the Dies Irae, the day of Gods wrath. Recently these images seem to have faded. The Last Day is something many Christians don’t talk about, don’t know about even. An example is the excellent book by Wimmer and Leimgruber: Von Adam bis Muhammad. Bibel und Koran im Vergleich. The comparison ends quite…

The suffering and death of Jesus on the cross is of essential importance to the New Testament as is his resurrection from the dead. Together, they embody the idea of redemptive suffering. By taking his undeserved suffering upon himself, Jesus saved humankind from the burden of sin he had laid upon himself in the beginning. This event is commemorated every year on Good Friday, followed by Easter Sunday. In the New Testament, the ascension of Jesus is a separate event, remembered on Ascension Day. The Last Day will see the second coming of Jesus. In the Qur’an, the suffering of Jesus figures barely or not at all. It dismisses outright…

Jesus is the major figure in the New Testament, where he appears as the savior of humankind. He is also a major prophet in the Qur’an. Just as in its reference to the birth of Jesus, the Qur’an is very positive about His life and work. Jesus is viewed as one of the greatest prophets, named together with Abraham, David, Isaac, Ismail and Jacob and placed on equal footing with Moses and Muhammad. In both books, Jesus continues building on the Law of Moses, the Torah, introducing a number of important innovations. Jesus cures the blind and lepers and raises the dead. The Qur’an and the Bible both portray Jesus…

The stories of the birth of Jesus demonstrate that He is a major figure in Bible and Qur’an. In both books, his mother Mary becomes pregnant while still a virgin. Her pregnancy is a miracle. The birth of Jesus is announced by the angel Gabriel in the Bible; the name of the divine messenger is not specified in the Qur’an, but presumably it was the same angel Gabriel who brought Muhammad the Qur’an. In the Bible, Joseph marries Mary and cares for her child. Angels tell of its birth. Shepherds adore the baby, and Wise Kings travel from afar to visit it. In later stories, an adoring ox and ass…