Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
The Gospels of Mark and John
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Jesus forgave sins, which drew the reaction, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” He applied the divine name to himself, saying, “before Abraham was, I AM,” after which listeners tried to stone him for blasphemy. He also accepted worship rather than refusing it.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The strongest claims to divinity are in John, the latest Gospel, which most critical scholars think doesn’t preserve Jesus’s own words. Can’t a Muslim accept the historical Jesus and reject John’s theology?
This is the key scholarly objection, and the argument does not depend on John alone. The forgiveness of sins (Mark 2), the claim to be Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2), the Son of Man coming on the clouds at the trial (Mark 14:62, which the high priest treats as blasphemy), and Paul’s pre-Johannine attribution of divine identity to Jesus all predate John. The Trinity case assembles that Synoptic and Pauline evidence in full. John 8:58 is the sharpest single statement, but the case rests on the cumulative pattern, and a Muslim who sets John aside still has Mark and Paul to answer.
- “Before Abraham was, I am” may simply be an emphatic statement of preexistence. And the crowd’s reaction proves what they heard, not what Jesus meant.
Both points are fair. The crowd picked up stones for blasphemy, which requires more than a claim to be old, and John deliberately echoes the divine I am of Isaiah 43; but reactions show reception, and John may be shaping the scene. The preexistence reading should be on the table as the alternative. Even on that reading, a man who claims to have existed before Abraham and whom the crowd tries to stone for it is not merely a prophet, and the cumulative pattern across Mark, Paul, and John is what the claim rests on, not this one verse.