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of the Prophet of Nazareth would have preserved their
purity and integrity until the appearance of the Periqlit
- Ahmad. However, such was not the case. Each writer
took a different view about the Master and his religion,
and described him in his book -which he named Gospel
or Epistle- according to his own imagination. The high-
soaring flight of thought concerning the Word; the
prophecy about the Periqlit; the inexplicable discourse of
Jesus (pbuh) upon his flash and blood; and a series of several
miracles, events, and sayings recorded in the Fourth
Gospel were unknown to the Synoptics and consequently
to a great majority of the Christians who had not seen it at
least for a couple of centuries.
The Fourth Gospel, too, like every other book of
the New Testament, was written in Greek and not in
Aramaic, which was the mother tongue of Jesus (pbuh) and
his disciples. Consequently, we are again confronted with
the same difficulty which we met with when we were
discussing the “Eudokia” of St. Luke, [1] namely: What
word or name was it that Jesus (pbuh) used in his native
tongue to express that which the Fourth Gospel has
translated as “the Paraclete” and which has been converted
into “comforter” in all the versions of that Gospel?
Before discussing the etymology and the true
signification of this unclassical or rather corrupt form of
the Paraclete, it is necessary to make a brief observation
upon one particular feature of St. John’s Gospel. The
authorship and authenticity of this Gospel are questions,
which concern the Higher Biblical Criticism; but it
is impossible to believe that the Apostle could have
written this book as we have it in its present shape and
contents. The author, whether Yohannan john) the son
of Zebedee, or someone else under that name, seems to
be familiar with the doctrine of the celebrated Jewish
[1] Vide Islamic Review for January 1930.