BIRTH OF CHRIST:
The birth of Jesus Christ is an incident of great significance for the Christians. It is on the basis of this incident that the Christians claim that Christ was the son of God. Therefore, in view of the delicate nature of this subject we shall deal with it in some detail. In this connection we will also discuss the question whether Jesus was actually the son of God or the Biblical statement of Jesus being the son of God refers to some different matter. Both the Qur’an and the different versions of the New Testament have described the birth of Jesus Christ in their peculiar styles. Let us first take the details given by the Qur’an. In the chapter entitled “Mary,” it is said:
“Relate in the Book (the story of) Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place in the East. She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent her to our angel, and he appeared before her as a man in all respects. She said: ‘I seek refuge from thee to (God) Most Gracious: (come not near) if thou dost fear God.’ He said: ‘Nay, I am only a messenger from thy Lord (to announce) to thee the gift of a holy son. She said: ‘How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me and I am not unchaste?’ He said: ‘So (it will be): thy Lord saith, “That is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us”: it is a matter so decreed.’ So she conceived him, and she retired with him to a remote place” (xix. 16-22).
God created Jesus Christ without any father to make him a special sign. When the angel gave the glad tidings of the birth of Christ to Mary, she cried: “How is it possible? I am not married and I am chaste. How can I have a son?” The angel said: “This is not difficult for God. When He commands something to be, He says ‘Be’ and it is.”
The Christians have developed strange beliefs about Jesus Christ in view of his unusual birth, but the Qur’an has made the point clear by saying:
“The similitude of Jesus before God is that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, ‘Be’ and he was” (iii.59).
What the Qur’an means is this: that if you hold that to be born fatherless makes one the son of God, what have you to say about Adam who was both fatherless and motherless? When, in spite of this, you do not treat Adam as God, but as the first man, how is it that you treat Christ as the son of God, when his birth was not so strange as that of Adam? When we study the history of Greeks, we find that even the superstitious people among them used to treat many of their gods and other famous men as the sons of God. This belief was based on the idea that they were born fatherless. It seems that the Christians, under the influence of the Greeks, adopted this belief, but they forgot that the claim made about some persons to have been born fatherless, like Jesus, bears testimony to the fact that God can, whenever He likes, create a man who has no father. Such incidents are unusual, no doubt, but they are not impossible.
1. Draper[1] in his book, Conflict Between Religion and Science, says about Plato that he was born at Athens 429 years before Christ. His mother Paraction was betrothed to Arus but, before they could come together, Paraction conceived of Apollo, who was the Holy Ghost of the Greek Pantheon. This god (Apollo) appeared in a dream to Arus and threatened him saying: “Your fiancée has conceived of me. Therefore, do not go near her, because you must honour the Holy Ghost.” This is the reason why the Egyptian disciples of Plato believed that he is the son of God. It is an historical fact worth consideration that the spread of Christianity owes much to Constantine,[2] who believed that Apollo was the sun-god. He also firmly held and zealously preached that this sun-god was the father of Plato. When Constantine was converted to Christianity, he not only made Christianity the state religion of his domains but also made special efforts to propagate the doctrine that Jesus Christ was the son of God.
2. According to the belief of the Romans and the Greeks, Hercules was not the son of any human being. He was born through the agency of Zeus who is regarded as being the vicegerent of the Holy Ghose.
3. A similar incident relates to the god Bacchus, famous among the Greeks. His mother Semele was the daughter of the ruler of Thebes. The god Platour injected his own spirit in Semele, as a result of which god Bacchus came into being. The Greek intellectuals and philosophers hold that god Bacchus is the god of wine. It is for this reason that Bacchanalian is the name given in English to top drunkards.
4. Draper also says that De Scovia, the mother of Romulus, the founder of Rome, was a virgin when she be got a son through the grace of God or through the power of the Holy Ghost and Rome was named after her son.
5. The famous Western historian, Gibbon,[3] in his book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Draper in his above mentioned work say that Alexander had married a daughter of Darius. The Greeks believed that the mother of this daughter of Darius was born of the Holy Ghost.
6. Pythagoras was born 575 years before Christ. The greeks believed about him too that he was born without a father and that he was the son of God.
It is not our purpose to enumerate all such historical incidents. What we want to show is that history gives us a long list of children born without a father. This also proves that just as the superstitious people among the Greeks, when they saw some of their ancestors being born of virgin mothers, declared them to be sons of God, similarly the Christians also declared that Christ was the son of God.
This, of course, relates to our ancestors. Even in our own times incidents occur which cannot be understood by reason. We can only say that they are extraordinary events brought about by Nature. All the noted English newspapers in Pakistan have recently published a news with reference to an English medical weekly journal, The Lancet, published in England, according to which an unmarried girl gave birth to a child. She claimed that no man had ever touched her. A team of doctors reviewed her case. The adopted all possible scientific devices and came to the conclusion that they could not legitimately contradict her claims. The news is reported thus:
