Transcription
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Here, the Quran makes the claim that Jesus foretold that Muhammad, upon whom be peace, would be sent after him. Looking to the New Testament, we find mention of a similar prophecy in the Gospel of John, in a series of passages known as the Paraclete sayings, in which Jesus said, "But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away; unless I go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; he will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. When the Paraclete comes, he will testify about me. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may be with you forever. He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."
Note the characteristics of the Paraclete whom Jesus proclaimed would be sent after him. It is said that he will not speak on his own, instead speaking only what he hears. In other words, the Paraclete will not be someone who talks from his own desires; rather, he will be inspired with God's words. This perfectly describes the revelation of the Quran, the very speech of God dictated to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel. The chapters of the Quran literally start with the words, "In the name of God."
The coming Paraclete is also said to "tell you what is yet to come," meaning that he will be given knowledge of the future. Both the Quran and Muhammad's teachings happen to contain numerous detailed prophecies which have been proven to be accurate—again, a perfect fulfillment of the prophecy. Please check out my video series, "Mindblowing Prophecies," for many such examples.
The coming Paraclete is also said to testify about Jesus. Muhammad affirmed the messiahship of Jesus, his miraculous virgin birth, as well as the second coming when Jesus will return to the world to defeat the Antichrist. Many Christians are unaware that the Quran mentions Jesus by name more times than Muhammad himself. There is even an entire chapter of the Quran that is named after his Blessed Mother, Mary.
The coming Paraclete is also said to be someone who will remind us of Jesus's teachings. This actually implies that the original true teachings of Jesus will somehow become compromised, such as being forgotten or distorted. A good example of this is Christians today who worship a trinity, which contradicts the strict monotheism that Jesus taught. Islam corrects Christians in this regard by reminding them that Jesus never claimed divinity for himself, but rather preached and worshiped the same one God as Old Testament prophets such as Abraham and Moses.
In summary, we can see that the Paraclete foretold by Jesus was perfectly fulfilled with the coming of Muhammad, upon whom be peace. The New Testament scholar Robert Price fully acknowledged that the Paraclete was plausibly a human figure who could be interpreted in light of Muhammad. "Well, there is some reason to think that Jesus is predicting another human being to follow him to explain his teachings more because early, some early Christians thought Paul was the, the, the Paraclete. Uh, others said Marcion or Montanus or Priscilla or Aquila or Elai or Mani, and then finally, uh, Muslim said Muhammad was the Paraclete. I, I have to admit there, there is some, uh, strength to that theory."
Let's now take a closer look at the language of the prophecy. The word "Paraclete," that is used to refer to the individual who will come after Jesus, is a transliteration of the Greek "paracletos." This word has posed a great challenge to New Testament translators, which is why it has traditionally been interpreted in various ways, including Advocate, Comforter, and Helper. However, the problem with all such translations is that none of them adequately captures the full range of functions that Jesus attributed to the Paraclete. Recall from our earlier analysis that the coming Paraclete will be someone who will perform a rich variety of functions: he will speak the divinely inspired words of God, he will prophecy about the future, and teach the world about Jesus.
This profile of a multifunctional teacher-Prophet has greatly troubled many New Testament scholars who say that it cannot be reconciled with the meaning of the word "Paraclete" or "paracletos" as it is rendered in the original Greek. All the common translations, such as Advocate, Comforter, and Helper, fail to adequately satisfy the profile given by Jesus, who spoke of an individual to come whose functions are far more active and go far beyond a mere Advocate, Comforter, or Helper. To give a simple analogy, it's like saying, "I will send a bus driver to perform heart surgery," which is obviously problematic because a person with the job role of bus driver cannot carry out the medical function of heart surgery.
As Professor Glenn Neelon informs us, "There is a visible gap between the vital Paraclete and the function John assigns to it. The difficulty reveals itself in the attempt to translate the term, but none of the translations have met with widespread approval; they all fail to capture accurately and comprehensively John's use of the title, a title to which he has given such roles as teacher, reminder, witness, and convictor."
The Bible scholar Raymond Brown, widely considered to be an authority on Johannine New Testament studies, wrote, "We find that no one translation of 'paracletos' captures the complexity of the functions that this figure has." The New Testament scholar Gary Burge wrote, "The etymology of 'paracletos' and its Johannine meaning has proved to be a baffling problem." We can see that none of the common New Testament translations of the Greek "paracletos," such as Advocate, Comforter, and Helper, adequately solve this linguistic challenge that academia has dubbed the "Paraclete problem." This is apparent when one compares different Bibles. Several Bible publications have, in fact, given up on even attempting to translate the word, instead using the transliteration "Paraclete," which is meaningless in English. The Jerusalem Bible, published in 1966, initially translated it as Advocate, only to then later change it to Paraclete in its revised 1985 edition.
It's not only modern scholars who have been troubled by the term; even the early church recognized the problem. For example, Jerome, a Christian theologian who is widely recognized as the most learned of the Latin church fathers, wavered when it came to translating the term. In his famous commentary on Isaiah, Jerome cross-referenced the Gospel of John, rendering "paracletos" as "consolator," while in his work, the Latin Vulgate, Jerome used transliterations such as "paracletus" and "paraclet."
Amazingly, it is the Quran that provides the solution to this linguistic riddle. Recall that the Quran claimed that Jesus referred to the one to come after him by his personal name, Ahmed. Let's now take this Quranic approach and apply it to John's Gospel by interpreting "paracletos" as a name rather than a function to see whether it solves the Paraclete problem at hand.
According to Greek lexicons, the word "paracletos" is a compound of the prefix "para" and the verbal adjective "cletos." The prefix "para" can be understood to mean "besides" or "alongside," and the verbal adjective "cletos" can be understood to mean "called." So it's understandable why New Testament interpreters sometimes translate "paracletos" in terms of a legal Advocate, as it carries the meaning of "called alongside." However, as we have already seen, it is this common meaning that poses the linguistic issue known as the Paraclete problem.
Now, these words also carry other meanings. The preposition "para" is defined as follows in Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: "above, beyond, equivalent to, more than." The Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon likewise defines it as follows: "past, beyond, over and above, in addition to, more than, in excess, over." So "para" can be translated in the quantitative sense of "more than" or "in excess over." "Para" retains these quantitative meanings even when it's part of a compound word, as in the case of "paracletos," as strong exhaustive concordances confirm. In compounds, it retains the same variety of application. Linguistics Professor Despina Chilla-Marcopo confirms that "para" carried this quantitative meaning of excess at least as far back as Hellenistic times, citing the example of the compound word "paraga," which means "to age excessively." The Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, provides a scriptural example of "para" being used in a compound word in the quantitative sense: "Otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue him in a rage." Here, the word translated as "rage" is the Greek compound word "paroxus," which carries the literal meaning of "heat to excess."
Let's now consider alternative meanings for the second word in "paracletos," namely "cletos." The verb-adjective "cletos" has two possible etymologies: that it can be derived from. The first etymology carries the meaning "to call," and the second etymology carries the meaning "to praise" or "glorify," as the ancient Greek grammarian Hesychius of Alexandria confirms: "cletos, the one called by name, all glorious." Professor Gregory Nagy, a specialist in archaic Greek poetry, wrote that the second etymology verbal forms are usually translated as "praise" and "be praised." The New Testament itself even uses the related noun form "cleos" in the context of praise or glory. For example, the First Epistle of Peter says, "For what praise, glory is it if when you sin and are buffeted for it you shall take it patiently."
Given that the New Testament employs the noun form "cleos" in the context of praise and glory, it's not unreasonable to derive the same meaning, "praised and glorified," using the related verbal adjective form "cletos" as it is found in the Gospel of John. The Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, also used the related noun form "cleos" in the context of glory: "But my scepter shall be the book of the copy of the law, that that shall be my boast and my incontestable glory."
Putting all this analysis together, an alternative literal translation of the "paracletos" prophesied by Jesus is "praised in excess over" or "glorified in excess over." This just happens to match the Arabic word "Ahmed" with great precision, as it means "more praised and glorified." Hence, both the Gospel of John and the Quran—both "paracletos" and "Ahmed"—eloquently convey the point that the coming person is more praised and glorified than everyone else. We can see that by adopting the Quranic methodology and interpreting the Greek word "paracletos" as a name rather than as a function, such as Advocate, Comforter, or Helper, as New Testament translators typically do, the millennia-old linguistic riddle known as the "Paraclete problem," highlighted earlier, is elegantly resolved.
This suggestion that the word "Paraclete" might be better treated as a name should not be too controversial. Bible scholars themselves have suggested leaving the term untranslated so that it can serve as a name. As the eminent Johannine scholar John Ashton argues, "The best solution to the Paraclete problem is to use the transliteration 'Paraclete,' since it 'provides a distinct and recognizable name for the personage identified in the farewell discourse.'" Moreover, we've already seen that some Bible versions use the transliteration "Paraclete" rather than translating it into English, so just as I am suggesting, they're effectively treating the term as if it's a name anyway.
One might be wondering, why didn't the author of the Gospel of John just use the word "Ahmed"? Why is "paracletos" present instead? It is possible that the author came across the word "Ahmed" in a Semitic language that Jesus originally spoke the prophecy in and decided to translate its meaning into the Greek equivalent "paracletos" in order to make it easier to understand for its Greek-speaking audience. This phenomenon of biblical authors modifying foreign names is not at all uncommon. For example, the Gospel of John contains the following account in which the Apostle Simon is said to have been given the name "Cephas" by Jesus: "Jesus looked at him and said, 'You are Simon; you will be called Cephas,' which when translated is 'Peter.'" The name "Cephas" happens to be Aramaic in origin and has the meaning of a rock. Despite this name being personally bestowed upon Simon by none other than Jesus himself, we only find a handful of instances—around nine in total—of the original Aramaic name being retained within the entirety of the New Testament. For the vast majority of cases—over 150 instances—the New Testament authors translate the Aramaic name "Cephas" to the Greek "Petros," which also carries the related meaning of "stone." Clearly, the New Testament authors had no issue converting foreign language names into Greek equivalents based on similar meaning. With precedents such as this, it is easy to conceive that the author of John's Gospel changed "Ahmed" from its original Semitic language by replacing it with the Greek equivalent in meaning, "paracletos."
A common objection that needs to be covered is that Muhammad cannot be the Paraclete because John's Gospel explicitly defines the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit in the following prophecy: "But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name…" There are, in fact, major issues with this identification of the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit. Firstly, we've already seen that Jesus made it a condition that he must go away so that the Paraclete may be sent by God. This is at odds with the fact that the New Testament tells us that Jesus was already filled with the Holy Spirit when he went into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. The New Testament also informs us that Jesus was casting out legions of demons from people by the power of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament also tells us that the disciples themselves had already received the Holy Spirit before the departure of Jesus. Since the Holy Spirit was clearly already present, it stands to reason that it cannot be the same Paraclete who is said to only appear at a later date after Jesus departed.
There are also historical and contextual reasons to doubt the authenticity of the mention of the Holy Spirit in the prophecy. Professor Gary Burge informs us that some manuscripts omit the word "holy" from this prophecy. A few manuscript variants omit "holy," while others read "Spirit of Truth." Some scholars have refused to identify the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit. The renowned New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger mentioned that scribes had a habit of adding the word "holy" with the word "Spirit." The tendency to add "holy" was both natural and widespread among Christian scribes. Copyists introduced a variety of modifications. The scholar George Johnston suggested that scribes added the word "holy" because of theological reasons. The insertion may have been done innocently by a scribe in order to bring the text into harmony with other New Testament passages and with the Creeds. This alternative reading of the Paraclete as a spirit can indeed refer to a human figure, as other passages of the New Testament associate the mention of spirit with human prophets. Now, for the sake of argument, even if we take the reading describing the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit to be legitimate, this phrase can still refer to a man. A first-century Jewish apocryphal work known as the Assumption of Moses referred to Moses as the Holy Spirit. In conclusion, all the various interpretations that one can take for the mention of Holy Spirit in the Paraclete prophecy happen to fit very well with the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace.
Another objection worth covering is that interpreting "paracletos" to be the name "Ahmed" creates absurd scenarios in other passages where the Greek "paracletos" also occurs. For example, John 14:16 mentions Jesus stating that God will give you another Paraclete, which implies that Jesus is also a Paraclete. So if "paracletos" is the name "Ahmed," as I have argued, then the implication is that Jesus is also Ahmed, which is nonsensical.
In response, there is a big assumption being made in this objection, namely that a single author called John is responsible for recording all the Paraclete sayings. There are, in fact, good reasons to believe the Gospel of John has multiple authors. For example, the end of John's Gospel informs us: "This is the disciple who testifies to these things, and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true." Note the plural pronoun "we," indicating that the commentator here is not a single individual but rather a group or community of people. As the Bible scholar Raymond Brown confirms, "We discussed the phenomenon of duplicate discourses in John, and here seemingly we are dealing with another instance of this phenomenon. The same themes and even the same sayings have been preached, gathered, and written down in two different collections that may stem from different periods in the history of the Johannine tradition or from different circles in the Johannine community."
Regarding the Paraclete sayings specifically, these demonstrate evidence of multiple different sources. Recall that the Paraclete sayings we have covered in this video occur in three separate chapters in the Gospel of John: chapters 14, 15, and 16. Note the following comments by the disciples in chapter 14: "Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don't know where you are going.'" We can see that chapter 14 has disciples asking Jesus questions about where he is going, yet chapter 16 then oddly has Jesus commenting that no one is asking him where he is going: "None of you asks me, 'Where are you going?'" It is clear that the Paraclete sayings in chapter 16 represent a stream of tradition that is different to that of the Paraclete saying from chapter 14, as they contradict one another. This conclusion that the Paraclete sayings are composed from multiple sources is widely accepted in academia, as the textual scholar Bart Ehrman confirms: "Readers have devised different ways of explaining these kinds of literary problems over the years, but perhaps it is simplest to say that they have resulted from the author's decision to weave different written sources into his narrative." There is a repetition between chapters 14 and 16 because they were, in fact, two accounts of the same event joined together. We can see that the various chapters containing the Paraclete sayings were not taken from a single source but rather are multiple sources joined together. Hence, it is not inconceivable that these different sources applied the term "paracletos" in different ways. As the theologian Kenneth Bailey confirms, "If it seems improbable that different meanings of 'paracletos' should be present in such close proximity, it may be replied that John 14 and John 15-16 are now widely regarded as variant forms of a final discourse, presumably composed to suit different situations."
Another possibility to consider is that the authors of the sources that call Jesus a Paraclete were uncomfortable with the notion that there could be someone coming after Jesus who will be more praised and glorified than him. In other words, Jesus was transformed into another Paraclete for theological reasons. One chronological sequence that explains how such a situation might arise is as follows: first, the author of the earliest Paraclete saying source changed "Ahmed" from its original Semitic language by replacing it with the Greek equivalent in meaning, "paracletos," as we have already discussed. Second, the later authors of other texts which explicitly refer to Jesus as a Paraclete were aware of this earlier Paraclete saying source when composing their writings. They would have also been aware of the multiple meanings of "paracletos," one of which is "praised in excess over" or "glorified in excess over." They could have been disturbed by the notion that someone might be more praised and glorified than Jesus. Hence, for theological reasons, they decided to call Jesus a Paraclete as well in order to elevate his status to be on an equal footing with the prophesied Paraclete. This scenario is not so far-fetched considering that we have already seen evidence that scribes inserted the word "holy" into the Paraclete sayings in order to transform the Paraclete from a human figure to the Holy Spirit. Moreover, there are many examples throughout the four Gospels in which their authors manipulated accounts about Jesus in order to elevate his status. Some examples include the incident of the woman in the crowd (compare Mark 5 with Matthew 9), the incident on the boat in the storm (compare Mark 4 with Luke 8), the incident of the man questioning Jesus (compare Mark 10 with Mark 19), and the incident of Jesus on the cross (compare Mark 15 with Luke 23). For more details of all these examples, please refer to my video, "Were the Gospel Authors Divinely Inspired?"
So, in summary, Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, could well have been the original and only Paraclete, whereas Jesus was transformed into one for theological reasons. For more information on biblical prophecies about the coming of Muhammad, upon whom be peace, please download your free copy of the book "Abraham Fulfilled" at the link below.