Maryam 19:27-33

"She brought him to her people, carrying him… Mary pointed to the child. 'How shall we speak with a child in the cradle?' they said. The child said: 'I am the servant of God. He has given me the Book and made me a prophet.'"

The first word of the sentence must be recorded: innī ʿabdu'llāh — "I am the servant of God."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the sūra: in the eighty-eighth verse the sūra will take up the claim wa qālu'ttakhadha'r-Raḥmānu waladā (they said: al-Raḥmān has taken a child). And the first word out of the mouth of the person who is the subject of that claim is ʿabd.

The answer is thus given fifty-eight verses earlier, inside the account. This is a structure that can be verified from the text.

فَرِيًّا — root ف-ر-ي: to cut, to cut out; and to fabricate. The lexicographers explain the word here as "unheard of, astonishing" or "fabricated"; I transmit both readings.

يَٰٓأُخْتَ هَٰرُونَ — "O sister of Aaron (Hārūn)!"

Different explanations of this form of address are transmitted in the classical commentaries: that in Arabic a person may be named by attribution to a righteous or well-known figure, or that a relative of hers bore that name. I confine myself to transmitting the explanations; I issue no definite ruling.

And Jesus's words overlap with what was said about John:

There is overlap in four items, and in the third a single word changes. This is a symmetry that can be verified within the sūra.

And the difference in the second row is worth recording: for John wālidayh (his parents), for Jesus wālidatī (my mother). The text records with a single word the difference that arises from the account itself.