Muslims respect Jesus as a prophet and endorse various aspects of his story. The Annunciation appears in the Koran, and so, in consequence, does the Virgin Birth. In the pains of childbirth, it says, Mary was sustained in the desert by God providing a brook at her feet and a palm-tree which she could shake to get dates. But Muslims deny Jesus’s crucifixion. The Jews said that they killed him but, the Koran declares, they did not: ‘They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did.’ Perhaps this denial is not surprising, since it is from Jesus’s death and resurrection that the claims for his divinity — which Muslims reject — arise, but it is strange nonetheless. The Crucifixion is the best-attested event in the Gospels, a moment of history. The encounter with Pilate reads like a version of a real political event, not a legend.
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