Islam - Part 12c: Still not Convinced?

For Islamic teaching to be true, it is not enough for Yeshua to simply deny Deity; Yeshua has to proclaim that He is merely a human prophet. 

But the earliest records are categorically against Islam on this point. 

Even a cursory glance at the Gospels shows us that Yeshua sees Himself as greater than a mere human. 

Yeshua considers Himself able to forgive sins, transform water to wine, receive worship, silence the storm with a spoken word, walk on water, heal the blind, the lame, and the diseased in his own authority, cast out demons, raise the dead, demand the honor that is due to God, hear and answer prayers, ransom mankind by his death, and exist even before Abraham was born. 

Yeshua also commended people who called him God (John 20:28), claimed to be the King of another realm (John 18:36–37), descended from heaven (John 3:13), and claims to be the Judge on the day of judgment (John 5:22–23). 

Such teachings are not just found in John’s gospel; the Synoptic Gospels agree that Yeshua is the King over an eternal Kingdom (Matt. 25:34), that He is the one who will judge mankind (Matt. 25:32), that He has the authority to grant people salvation (Luke 23:43), that He has elected people who will go to heaven (Mark 13:27), and that His return to earth will be as the return of the Master to his own house (Mark 13:35). 

Of course, this is all in the context of Yeshua's claim to be heir of God’s throne from Psalm 110, sitting on the throne of God, and as the divine Son of Man from Daniel 7 who is worshiped by all men in his eternal Kingdom. These are the teachings of the Gospels, the earliest biographies of Yeshua's life, produced during the lifetimes of Yeshua’s disciples. 

There is absolutely no early Christian record of a merely human Yeshua.

All evidence indicates that Yeshua’s followers uniformly believed Him to be Divine, unquestionably more than a mere human. 

How can the Islamic model account for this?  Why is it that the followers of Yeshua preached a superhuman Yeshua, in fact God Himself?  

Without dismissing the history, there is no alternative explanation. Islam requires us to believe that Yeshua was so incompetent as a Teacher and Prophet that He was not able to instill this most simple fact in His followers’ minds: that He was merely a human.  Given that Islam’s central proclamation is tawhid, this means Yeshua was an abject failure. In fact, He was worse than a total failure, since He left his disciples believing the exact opposite of tawhid.

[Quran 5:72]  “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary’ while the Messiah has said, ‘O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.’ Indeed, he who associates others with Allah – Allah has forbidden him Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers.”

[Quran 5:116–117] “And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, ‘O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, “Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?”’ He will say, ‘Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen.’” [117] “I said not to them except what You commanded me – to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. And I was a witness over them as long as I was among them; but when You took me up, You were the Observer over them, and You are, over all things, Witness.”

That is what Islam requires you to believe if we are to take the historical evidence seriously.  The records of Yeshua’s identity are not just slightly mismatched with Islamic teachings; the records of Yeshua’s identity are categorically incompatible with Islam. If Yeshua truly taught tawhid, he was an entirely incompetent Messiah, worse than an abject failure.