I am in the midst of reading this book right now and I find it erudite....and stunning.
I did not know, for instance, that Jesus appears in 93 verses of the Qur'an and in 15 different chapters.
I did not know that he was referred to by Prophet Muhammad and by the early Islamic world as the Messiah. And that the Prophet chided the Jewish Christians by saying that their Messiah had already come but they did not recognize him.
Further, the Prophet believed that this Messiah, this Jesus, would come again at the end of time.
Neither the Prophet Muhammad nor his subsequent followers believed that Jesus was co-equal to God, and in this they broke from what became Pauline Christianity. They believed, however, that he was a Higher Being, perhaps an Angel, or an Archangel.
I was not aware that Jesus' mother Mary was so highly admired by the early Islamic community. I discover that in the more than 6,000 verses of the Qur'an only one woman is mentioned by name, and it is her. Not Aminah the mother of the Prophet Muhammad. Not Khadijah, his first wife, nor Fatima, his daughter. Only Mary. She is mentioned more in the Qur'an than she is mentioned in the New Testament.
In fact, the Qur'an, as it turns out, holds great similarities to the texts of the early Jewish Christians, those who continued under the leadership of Jesus' brother James. Who largely opposed Paul.