Dear Mohamed,

Thanks for your response.

I am aware of the Muslim position on Paul and Christian theology.

If Jesus was in reality a genuine prophet and messenger of God, does it really matter whether Paul received his teachings from Jesus or from God directly?

I understand that Muslims believe in the absolute authority of the Quran and Sunnah, but of course Christians (or at least many of them) believe in the absolute authority of the Bible. All this proves is that any religious person tends to believe in the absolute validity of their own scriptures. It is up to outsiders, hopefully objective, to investigate such claims and criticise them as necessary.

The fact/suggestion that the Quran has made some correct predictions/ prophecies does not prove that it is infallible in everything it says.

The lost gospel of Issa was indeed an assertion/hypothesis by my primary source, the scholar Kamal Salibi. His arguments seem good to me. That is not to say that many of the Quranic references are about Jesus, which they clearly are.

I'm not sure what the relevance of a pre-Jesus prophet it is to Quran 2.111. However, in the light of that quote presumably Muslims think that only they will enter Paradise, since they alone follow the Quran. Is it possible that that is their wishful thinking? The text continues (2.112): “Only he who surrenders to God with all his heart and also does good, will find his reward with his Lord...” There is no mention of just Muslims there. So does that exclude Hindus and Buddhists? And does it also exclude women?