Relative Proportion of Ethical Teaching versus Historical Events concerning Jesus in Early Islamic and Christian Historical Documents

Abstract

The relative proportion of reports of events in the life of Jesus versus reports of his teachings are compared across the Qur'an and a sample of the New Testament (Luke 2–21). A much larger number of teachings (74) appear to be mentioned in the New Testament; at the same time, there are more teachings than events (52) reported, while the opposite is true (15 events, 3 teachings) in the Qur'an. The difference is significant statistically ( p < .002). More research is needed to assess the sources of such differences.