The stone which the builders refused
Psalm 118 sings: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner” (Psalm 118:22). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus takes up this verse at the end of the parable of the husbandmen. The lord of the vineyard sent his servants, then his son, and the husbandmen killed them; he “will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen” (Matthew 21:41). Then Jesus concludes:
Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
Matthew 21:42-44
The chief priests and the Pharisees perceive that he speaks of them (Matthew 21:45). The kingdom leaves Israel for another nation. Sami Ameri points it out: the argument of an election reserved to Israel here turns against the Christians themselves (Ameri, p. 150-151).
Who is the rejected stone? For Ali Ataie, it is Ishmael and his descendants, the line held in contempt; Matthew reads in this verse the departure of religious authority away from Israel. Ataie made it the epigraph of his thesis (Ataie, p. 3, 92-93). Munqidh al-Saqqar reaches the same point by another road: the rejected nation is the sons of the bondwoman whom Sarah wanted driven out, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son” (Genesis 21:10), words that Paul takes up (Galatians 4:30; al-Saqqar, p. 130).
The stone is also the one that crushes. For al-Saqqar, the nation that receives the kingdom is the one that overcame the two great empires of its time, Rome and Persia (al-Saqqar, p. 127-128). It is Daniel’s stone, cut out without hands, which breaks the image and fills the earth, and in which Ibn Taymiyya saw Muhammad ﷺ (Daniel 2:34-35; Ameri, p. 183-184).
The Prophet ﷺ took up this image himself, that of a house in which only one brick is missing: “I am that brick, and I am the seal of the prophets” (Bukhari 3535; Muslim 2286; al-Saqqar, p. 129; Ataie, p. 93).
Three texts and a hadith speak of one and the same stone: rejected, chosen, victorious, last.
“Peter says that the stone is Jesus.” Peter does say so (Acts 4:11). But in the parable, Jesus speaks of a nation: it is to that nation that the kingdom is given, and it is that nation which crushes whatever resists it (al-Saqqar, p. 129).
Ataie also links the stone, sapha, with the name al-Mustafa, the chosen one. This link rests on a single author and a single dictionary: we do not use it (Ataie, p. 94).
The nation that did not seek
In Deuteronomy, Moses had already foretold it:
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
Deuteronomy 32:21
Isaiah adds: “I am found of them that sought me not” (Isaiah 65:1). Paul cites both texts to say that the gift passes from Israel to the nations (Romans 10:19-20; Ameri, p. 150-151).
For al-Saqqar, this nation, foolish in the eyes of Israel, which did not seek God and had received no book, is the unlettered nation of the Arabs (al-Saqqar, p. 63-65). The Qur’an describes it so:
﴿ هُوَ ٱلَّذِى بَعَثَ فِى ٱلْأُمِّيِّـۧنَ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَٰتِهِۦ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ وَإِن كَانُوا۟ مِن قَبْلُ لَفِى ضَلَٰلٍ مُّبِينٍ ﴾“It is He who sent among the unlettered a messenger from among themselves, who recites to them His verses, purifies them and teaches them the Book and wisdom, though before they were in manifest error.”
And when the Qur’an describes the companions of the Prophet ﷺ as a seed that grows “that He may anger the disbelievers through them” (48:29), al-Saqqar hears in it the echo of Deuteronomy, where God provokes Israel to anger with a nation (al-Saqqar, p. 65).
“Paul sees the Greeks in it.” Paul himself writes that “the Greeks seek after wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:22). They cannot be called foolish (al-Saqqar, p. 66).
The one who comes after John
In the Gospel of Matthew, John the Baptist foretells one mightier than he:
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.
Matthew 3:11
It is not Jesus, Ali Ataie answers. Jesus is his contemporary: he does not come after him. In the Gospels, John baptizes him as a penitent, and from his prison he sends to ask him: “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3; Ataie, p. 85-89). In the Gospel of John, moreover, Jesus himself did not baptize (John 4:2; al-Saqqar, p. 145-146).
Al-Saqqar reads the Spirit of this baptism as the revelation brought by Gabriel, and the fire as the power to purify the earth of idolatry (al-Saqqar, p. 145-146). Ataie sees in it the Qur’an’s “dye of God” (2:138), and recalls that the Mandaeans, the followers of the Baptist, did not become Christians but were quick to enter Islam (Ataie, p. 88-90).
“The one who comes after John is Jesus.” Matthew adds that John refused to baptize him, and Luke and John raise Jesus above the Baptist; but Mark, the oldest, says nothing of this, and according to the source common to Matthew and Luke, John still doubts in his prison (Ataie, p. 85-88).
A kingdom still to come
In the Gospels, Jesus proclaims the kingdom as still to come: he teaches his followers to pray “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). And again: “The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached” (Luke 16:16). This kingdom that John and Jesus proclaimed was therefore not yet there (al-Saqqar, p. 124-125).
His parables tell its shape. The grain of mustard seed “indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree” (Matthew 13:32). For Ataie, it is the despised line of Ishmael, from which the universal messenger ﷺ comes forth; and the Qur’an describes the companions, in the Gospel, as a seed (Ataie, p. 92):
﴿ مُّحَمَّدٌ رَّسُولُ ٱللَّهِ وَٱلَّذِينَ مَعَهُۥٓ أَشِدَّآءُ عَلَى ٱلْكُفَّارِ رُحَمَآءُ بَيْنَهُمْ تَرَىٰهُمْ رُكَّعًا سُجَّدًا يَبْتَغُونَ فَضْلًا مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرِضْوَٰنًا سِيمَاهُمْ فِى وُجُوهِهِم مِّنْ أَثَرِ ٱلسُّجُودِ ذَٰلِكَ مَثَلُهُمْ فِى ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةِ وَمَثَلُهُمْ فِى ٱلْإِنجِيلِ كَزَرْعٍ أَخْرَجَ شَطْـَٔهُۥ فَـَٔازَرَهُۥ فَٱسْتَغْلَظَ فَٱسْتَوَىٰ عَلَىٰ سُوقِهِۦ يُعْجِبُ ٱلزُّرَّاعَ لِيَغِيظَ بِهِمُ ٱلْكُفَّارَ وَعَدَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ مِنْهُم مَّغْفِرَةً وَأَجْرًا عَظِيمًۢا ﴾“Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who are with him are hard against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves. You see them bowing, prostrating, seeking bounty from God and His good pleasure; their mark is on their faces, the trace of prostration. That is their description in the Torah. And their description in the Gospel: like a seed that puts forth its shoot, strengthens it, grows thick and stands upright on its stem, delighting the sowers, that He may anger the disbelievers through them. God has promised those of them who believe and do good works forgiveness and an immense reward.”
The labourers of the eleventh hour receive the same wage as the first: “So the last shall be first” (Matthew 20:16). Al-Saqqar connects this parable with a hadith in al-Bukhari about three groups of labourers (Bukhari 2268; al-Saqqar, p. 131-135).
“This kingdom is the Church.” The Church reigned over Europe with nothing that answers to this prophecy, and the disciples, who were waiting for the kingdom, knew nothing of salvation through the cross (al-Saqqar, p. 125-126).
Readings to hold with caution
The messenger of the covenant. Malachi foretells two comings:
Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
Malachi 3:1
The King James says “messenger” in both places, as does the French of Louis Segond; the Arabic Van Dyck uses malak, the Arabic word for angel. Ali Ataie and al-Saqqar see in the second the one who came suddenly to the Temple, on the night of the Night Journey: the Prophet ﷺ (Ataie, p. 43-44; al-Saqqar, p. 147). The first, who prepares the way, is John the Baptist, who came in the spirit of Elijah: “this is Elias, which was for to come” (Matthew 11:14). In the Gospel of John, the Baptist, when questioned, says that he is not “that prophet” (John 1:21): that one is still awaited (Ataie, p. 82-84).
Al-Saqqar goes further: he makes Elijah a coded name of the Prophet ﷺ and Jesus the forerunner, at the cost of an accusation against the text of the Gospels (al-Saqqar, p. 140-144). We follow Ataie, whose reading does not accuse the text.
The least in the kingdom. “Notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11): greater than John the Baptist. Al-Saqqar sees in him the Prophet ﷺ, least because he came last, greater by the completion of his mission (al-Saqqar, p. 148).
The dry tree that flourishes. “I the LORD … have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish” (Ezekiel 17:24): for al-Saqqar, Israel on the one side, the nation of Ishmael on the other (al-Saqqar, p. 63-64).
Each of these readings rests on only one or two authors. They add nothing that the rejected stone and the nation that did not seek do not already carry.
How this page connects to the others
- Daniel’s stone, which breaks Rome: page 6, The time.
- The sons of the bondwoman, the line of Ishmael: page 1, The prayer of Abraham.
- “Art thou that prophet?”: page 2, A prophet like Moses.
- The other Paraclete, who comes only if Jesus goes away: page 4, The Paraclete.
- The people among the threads of the convergence: page 8, The convergence.
- Elijah as a coded name, and letter calculations: page 9, The readings we do not use.
Sources for this page
- Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
- Bible: King James Version.
- Hadiths: the brick, Bukhari 3535 and Muslim 2286; the labourers, Bukhari 2268 (numbers given by al-Saqqar).
- Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 150-151, 183-184.
- Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 63-66, 123-135, 140-148.
- Ali J. Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2011, p. 3, 43-44, 82-94.