The History of the Idea of a Literal Connection between the Words “Ahmad” and “Paraclete” in the Qur’an and the Gospel of John مقاله

In recent years, some people, comparing the word “Ahmad” in a Quranic verse speaking of Jesus’ prophecy about Prophet Muhammad (Qur'an 61:6) with the word “Paraclete” in the Gospel of John (14:26, etc.), have tried to make a connection between them. They have ascribed to Muslims (and even to the Prophet himself) the idea that the word “Paraclete” is a distorted form of the word “periclete,” the meaning of which, in turn, is approximately equal to the Arabic word “Ahmad,” to which the Quranic verse refers. In this article, we examine this idea and conclude that the claim has stemmed from a mistake in the writings of some western scholars during the eighteenth century, and does not have any actual basis in Christian or Islamic literature.

"In the Gospel of John, we have the word "Paraclete" (14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 20, 22), which means comforter and is used in a famous prophecy by Jesus Christ about one who would come after him, regarded by most Muslim scholars to have been Prophet Muhammad. Paraclete in Early Islamic Sources Some Muslim scholars, who believed that the relevant verse of the Qur’an has to do with a prophecy about the Prophet in the Four Gospels, tried to find the equivalent of "Ahmad" therein, so they settled on the word "Paraclete," which was written as a transliteration in both the Syriac and Arabic versions of the Gospel, notably without translation. For example, Mir Muhammad Baqir Husayni Khatunabadi, an Iranian Shi‘ite scholar of the eighteenth century, in his commentary on the Persian translation of the Gospel of John, mentioned only three meanings for the word Paraclete: "teacher, consoler, and intercessor"; he never argues for "Ahmad" or "Muhammad" as meanings of the word, or for the existence of the explicit name of the Prophet in any of the versions of the Gospel of John. The Original Source of the Idea of a Literal Connection between the Words "Ahmad" and "Paraclete" As we said, the claim that the Gospel was distorted in the case of Paraclete has no precedence in the early Islamic sources, and can be found only in the works of Muslim scholars after the nineteenth century."