Home > Surah 5 - The Table Spread
Surah 5:110 acts as a comprehensive summary of the life and miraculous ministry of Jesus (Isa), presenting his power as a direct extension of divine favor while highlighting the persistent rejection he faced from his own people.
Surah 5:110:
When Allah will say, 'O Jesus, Son of Mary, remember My favor upon you and upon your mother when I strengthened you with the Pure Spirit and you spoke to the people in the cradle and in maturity; and when I taught you writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel; and when you designed from clay like the form of a bird with My permission, then you breathed into it, and it became a bird with My permission; and you healed the blind and the leper with My permission; and when you brought forth the dead with My permission; and when I restrained the Children of Israel from you when you came to them with clear proofs and those who disbelieved among them said, "This is not but obvious magic."'
The focus is on the source of Jesus' knowledge. Surah 5:110 says Allah taught Jesus the Torah and the Gospel.
If Jesus was taught the Gospel by Allah, then Jesus' own followers; who were eyewitnesses to his life and recorded his teachings; were recording what Allah had taught.
If the New Testament we have today is the result of that ministry, and it teaches the Divinity of Christ, then either Allah taught Jesus the Divinity of Christ, or the "clear proofs" were insufficient to keep his closest friends from the most "extreme" form of error (shirk).
This verse includes the miracle of the clay birds, which is found in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas rather than the Canonical Gospels which are 2nd and 3rd-century legendary traditions.
If the Quran is "correcting" the Bible by adding these legends, it is confirming the "Guidance and Light" of the Gospel (5:46) while simultaneously relying on texts the early church rejected as non-authoritative.
This creates a confusion of sources: which "Gospel" did Allah teach Jesus? Is it the one his disciples wrote, or the ones the early church called fables?
The verse ends by noting that disbelievers called his miracles "obvious magic." This mirrors the biblical accounts where Jesus was accused of working by the power of Beelzebub.
The Quran admits that Jesus brought "clear proofs." If those proofs were clear enough to justify the condemnation of his enemies, they must be clear enough for us to trust the message they validated.
That message (the Gospel) centers on the Cross and the Resurrection which are the very things the Quran denies. If we accept the "clear proofs," we must accept the message they signed.
Surah 5:110 is a divine testimony to the authority of Jesus. By listing the Torah and the Gospel as the content of his divine education and framing his miracles as "clear proofs," the Quran leaves no room for the idea that Jesus’ message was obscure or easily lost.
If Allah taught Jesus the Gospel and backed it with undeniable miracles, then the Gospel remains the authoritative Word of God.
Since the Gospel's core message is the redemptive work of the Son of God, the Quran’s own endorsement of Jesus’ ministry becomes the evidence for its own theological inconsistency.