Parallelism: Jesus Christ and Clay Birds

This is an old stub article, the main article has been moved to Parallels Between the Qur'an and Late Antique Judeo-Christian Literature, please do not make any edits here.

For the full article with many more examples than are included in this series, see

Qur'anic Account

According to the Qur'an, Jesus (with the permission of Allah) created a clay bird which he blew into and brought to life.

Apocryphal Account

Gabriel Said Reynolds in his 2018 academic commentary on the Quran remarks on this parallel: "The miracle of Jesus' creating a bird (or birds) from clay, and his bringing it to life with his breath (cf. 5:110) is known from the apocryphal Childhood of the Saviour (second century AD; commonly, and erroneously, referred to as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). In the Christian context, the point is to have Jesus create a living being in the way God creates Adam (Gen 2:7)"^[1] The Childhood of the Saviour survives primarily through a few Greek manuscripts, but was also translated at an early time into other languages including Syriac. The following is from a critical edition of the Childhood of the Saviour based on the best manuscripts by Tony Burke, Professor of Early Christianity, York University, Toronto (the opening attribution to the apostle Thomas is ommitted in his translation because the earliest textual witnesses are anonymous).

A similar story appears in the Arabic Infancy Gospel (also known as the Syriac Infancy Gospel), combining elements from the Childhood of the Saviour, Protoevangelium of James, and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. However, the dating of that version is disputed and academic scholars tend to doubt that it is pre-Islamic.

Muslim Apologetics

This parallelism has never been explained by Muslim apologists except to use it to perversely claim that the Bible is corrupted. They argue that the original Bible contained the apocryphal story of Jesus making and animating clay birds, and that the Qur'an was merely correcting a wrongful exclusion of these apocrypha from the canon.^[2]

Interestingly, the sirah itself narrates how Muhammad, far from receiving these stories from Allah (via the angel Jibreel/Gabriel), heard it from three Christians. Saifullah & Azmy of Islamic-awareness write more on this here. While the narrative seems to serve a mixture of apologetic and polemical purposes, as well as a kind of "occasion of revelation", it could possibly reflect some historical memory of Muhammad learning from regional Christians about their religious traditions.

The parallelism between the Qur'an’s ‘Jesus animating clay birds’ verses and the apocryphal story is strong, suggesting a very mundane and earthly source of the Qur'an's revelation here. As to the historical reliability of the document itself, there are various reasons why the apocryphal stories in the Childhood of the Saviour are not included in the canon; These apocrypha contain verses that contradict the canonical Gospels and their late date reveals itself both in style and substance.