31 Preface وَجَعَلَني مُبارَكًا أَينَ ما كُنتُ وَأَوصاني بِالصَّلاةِ وَالزَّكاةِ ما دُمتُ حَيًّاYusuf Ali“And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live;1There is a parallelism throughout the accounts of Jesus and Yahya, with some variations. Both the parallelisms and the variations are interesting. For instance Jesus declares at the very outset that he is a servant of God, thus negativing the false notion that he was God or the son of God, The greatness of Yahya is described in 19:12-13 in terms that are not applied to Jesus, but the verses 19:14-15 as applied to Yahya are in almost identical terms with those applied to Jesus here (19:32-33). Devotion in Prayer and Charity is a good description of the Church of Christ at its best, and pity, purity, and devotion in Yahya are a good description of the ways leading to Prayer and Charity, just as John led to Jesus.