Running along both sides of the building’s arcade, a series of verses disparaged the doctrine of the Trinity. ‘The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was only a messenger of God.’10 This was not merely to reopen theological debates that Christians had thought settled centuries before, but to condemn the entire New Testament, gospels and all, as a fabrication. Squabbles among those who had written it, so the Dome of the Rock sternly declared, had polluted the original teachings of Jesus.
