Is Muhammad the Paracletos in the Gospel of John?

Muslim apologists, since the early days of Islam, have tried to find mention of Muhammad in the Gospels and the Torah. The motivation for this search is grounded in the following two Quranic texts:

And [remember] Jesus, son of Mary, who said: “O Children of Israel; I am the messenger of Allah to you, confirming that which was before me in the Torah and bringing good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.” Yet when he came to them with clear proofs, they said: “This is manifest magic.” [1]
(Q 61:6)

“Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find described in their Torah and Gospel—he will enjoin on them good and forbid them evil, he will make lawful for them all good things and prohibit for them what is foul, and he will relieve them of their burden and the fetters that were upon them—those that believe in him, honor him, support him, and follow the light which has been sent down with him: they are the successful.”
(Q 7:157)

As you can see, the Quran itself claims that Jesus Christ prophesied the coming of Muhammad, and that Muhammad is mentioned in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Now, anyone who is familiar with the Bible or its history will know that not only is Muhammad nowhere to be found in the Bible, but also that there is no historical evidence that he was ever mentioned in the Bible. But this hasn’t stopped Muslim apologists from trying to twist Biblical verses out of context in order to find Muhammad mentioned therein.

A popular example of such a desperate attempt, held to by many Muslim scholars and apologists since the early days of Islam [2], is that Muhammad is the Paracletos mentioned in chapters 14–16 of the Gospel of John. It is the purpose of this blog post to refute this baseless contention.

In essence, the general claim is that the word paracletos (παράκλητος), meaning “helper” or “advocate”, in chapters 14–16 of the Gospel of John (where Jesus talks about sending the paracletos to the disciples), refers to Muhammad. The word paracletos, it is claimed, is a corruption of the original periklytos (περικλυτος), meaning “praised one”. And so the connection with “Ahmad” and “Muhammad”, which also denote one who is praised, is thereby taken to be established.

However, there are thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts, some predating Islam—and not even one, to my knowledge, has the word periklytos instead of paracletos in these Johannine passages. Furthermore, the word periklytos does not appear anywhere in the Greek New Testament lexicon.

But even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the original word was indeed periklytos, the context of the Johannine verses makes it clear that Muhammad could not have been its referent. Let’s look at some of the contextual reasons why Muhammad could not have been mentioned in these passages.

John 14:15–17

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another paracletos (παράκλητος), that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”

  1. In this verse Christ calls God his Father, and the Paraclete [3] is explicitly said to be sent by the Father. But in Islam God is a father to no one, in neither the bodily, metaphysical, or metaphorical sense.
  2. The Paraclete is said to abide with the disciples forever. But Muhammad did not abide with the disciples forever—he wasn’t even around when the disciples were on earth!
  3. The disciples know the Paraclete. But Muhammad didn’t exist in the time of the disciples, so a fortiori Muhammad was not known by the disciples.
  4. The Paraclete abides and will abide in the disciples. But Muhammad didn’t exist in the time of the disciples, so a fortiori Muhammad did not abide in the disciples.
  5. It is implied that the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, is invisible to the naked eye. But Muhammad was not invisible to the naked eye.

John 14:26–27

“These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the paracletos (παράκλητος), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. ‘Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.’”

  1. Here the Paraclete is explicitly identified with the Holy Spirit. And obviously Muhammad is not the Holy Spirit. Even in Islamic theology, the Holy Spirit is taken to be the angel Gabriel, not Muhammad.
  2. The Father—i.e., God—is said to send the Paraclete in the name of Jesus Christ. But according to Islam, Muhammad was not sent in the name of Jesus Christ.
  3. The Paraclete is said to bring the disciples to remembrance of all that Christ said to them. But Muhammad hardly did such a thing. The little “new” information about Christ that is present in the Quran is generally derived from ahistorical apocryphal sources (like the Arabic Infancy Gospel, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew).

John 15:26

“When the paracletos (παράκλητος) comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.”

  1. Here Christ said that he will send the Paraclete from the Father. But in Islam, Christ did not send Muhammad, God did.
  2. The Helper is said to “proceed from the Father.” Christians have generally understood this to indicate a metaphysical relation between the Father and the Holy Spirit. But Muhammad does not proceed from the Father.

John 16:7–8

“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the paracletos (παράκλητος) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.”

  1. Christ says here that he will send the Paraclete. But in Islam Christ in no sense sent Muhammad.
  2. Christ says that the sending of the Paraclete is contingent upon his departure. But his words here would be utterly irrelevant if “Paraclete” refers to Muhammad. In fact, as James White points out, “everything Jesus says to the disciples [in the context of the Paracletos in John] would be completely irrelevant to them if he was simply speaking of the coming of Muhammad in the seventh century.” [4]

John 16:13–15

“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.”

  1. Here, continuing in the context of the Paraclete sayings, Christ says that everything that the Father has is his—therefore raising himself up to divine status. And this is why the Spirit of truth will take what is his and make it known to the disciples. But that Christ is divine utterly contradicts Islam. So the Spirit of Truth—the Paraclete—cannot be Muhammad.

The contextual and manuscript evidence here is absolutely compelling. Muhammad is most certainly not the Paracletos mentioned in John 14–16. The fact that many Muslim scholars and apologists have advanced, and still do advance, this claim is utterly embarrassing.

Footnotes

[1] “Ahmad” (أحمد), meaning “highly praised”, is essentially synonymous with “Muhammad” (محمد), and is derived from the same triconsonantal root—viz., Ḥ-M-D (حمد). It is also noteworthy that in many hadith narrations, including those found in Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, Muhammad says that his name is also Ahmad (cf. e.g., Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, Book 60, Hadith 419).

[2] E.g., Ibn-Ishaq, Ibn-Taymiyyah, Ibn-Qayim-Al-Jawziya, Ahmad Deedat, Zakir Naik, Shabir Ally, etc.

[3] The word paraclete is the anglicized version of the Greek paracletos.

[4] White, James. What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Quran. Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 208.