A number of Qur’anic exegetes have claimed that the three men were disciples of Jesus, that the town was Antioch, and that the believing man was called Ḥabīb the Carpenter. Some go further and say that the Messiah sent them while he was still alive. Yet what the Christians themselves maintain is that the people of Antioch accepted the disciples, followed them, and were therefore never destroyed by Allah.

The Qur’an, however, makes it clear that Allah did, in fact, destroy the people of the man who believed in the messengers.

Moreover, the Christians state: “Those envoys came to the inhabitants of Antioch only after the Messiah had been taken up, and there were just two of them, no third. One is said to have been Simon Peter, the other Paul. The people of Antioch believed in them, and they make no mention of Ḥabīb the Carpenter or of any man who came from the farthest part of the city. Rather, they say that Simon and Paul prayed to Allah until He brought the king’s son back to life.”

Thus, according to the Christian record, the figures named in the Qur’an were not disciples, and this is the sounder of the two opinions in the view of the scholars