Ali Ataie – Christianity in a Nutshell The Basics of World Religions (Part 5)
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AI: Transcript ©
This is,
Thursday evening,
August 18th. We are live from MCC,
for our class, the basics of the world
religions.
Tonight, we're going to start
a 2 part program or session
on,
Christianity.
So we finished
Judaism,
last week, inshallah.
So we're gonna start Christianity,
and we're going to begin tonight by
talking about the New Testament,
that is to say the Christian scriptures.
And then, next week, next Tuesday,
we're going to look at the Nicene Creed,
Orthodox
creed, Trinitarian creed,
as well, as the trinity.
So that's the plan
for Christianity.
And, again, we are live.
I'm looking at the chat box here. So
if there are any questions I I forgot
to mention this in weeks past, unfortunately.
But if there are people that want to
ask questions, you can go ahead and type
them into the chat box,
and, I'll answer them if they're appropriate.
I'll answer them on the,
on the air
inshallah.
Okay. So
last week, we said that the primary text
of Judaism,
is the Old Testament. Of course, again, Old
Testament. It's Christian terminology.
It's called the Tanakh in Hebrew,
which of course again stands for Torah, Nabi,
Ketobim.
The the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five
books, the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and the writings, like Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
1 and 2nd Kings, so on and so
forth.
Okay.
With the new testament,
we have
something interesting. So so the Christians now, they
believe in the Old Testament.
Right?
They believe it to be the word of
god. However, they have their own set of
primary scriptures.
And these scriptures are not
affirmed
by,
the Jews.
So it doesn't look like
the video is working here.
It'll come back.
So I can, if people have questions, we
can deal with that.
So New Testament,
right,
it's called the
Literally the New Testament.
Now the phrase New Testament is actually in
the Old Testament. It's in Jeremiah 3131,
where there's this promise of God that I'm
going to establish what's called a in
Hebrew, which literally means New Testament.
Of course, the Jews take that to mean
something completely different than the Christians.
In Jewish circles,
Jeremiah is prophesizing that towards the end of
time, during the reign of the messiah,
the messiah will implement the Jewish law, and
that's going to be new for most people
because most people
are not Jews.
And it's going to also be sort of
a renewal for Jews that weren't practicing,
the law. But, nonetheless,
this is the name of the Christian scriptures,
the New Testament.
So what is the essence of the Old
Testament?
The old birit. The word birit means testament.
It
basically is the following. It is if you
adhere to the law of Moses,
if you follow the law of Moses,
then you will gain salvation.
Right?
That's that's basically
the the essence of the law,
the
essence of the law in a nutshell.
Let me just quickly try something here,
so I can
try this again.
Sorry about that.
Okay. I think we're okay now.
Yes. So let me just reiterate.
It's Tuesday, August 18th, Tuesday evening. We are
live.
For people out there that want to ask
me a question, feel free to type that
into the chat box.
Okay. So
the the essence of the Old Testament is,
or the Mosaic covenant, which is preferred language
according to Jews, is that if you follow
the law of God, you follow the mitzvot,
right, and you will be saved. You will
gain salvation. And this is interesting because
this is the answer of Jesus, peace be
upon him, at least according to the New
Testament gospels.
And we'll talk more about these, you know,
what are these gospels.
There are 4 gospels in the Christian New
Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You have
this,
pericope or this,
this story
in 3 gospels where a a Jewish scribe
comes to Jesus, and he says to him,
good master, what must I do to gain
eternal life?
And then Jesus says to him, why are
you calling me good? There's no one good
but 1, and that is god. And then
he continues, follow the commandments,
and you shall enter the life. Right? And
there's variations. I mean, that's the the reading
in Mark.
That's how Mark has it. There's slight variations
in Matthew and Luke. That's Mark 10 18.
And you have it in Luke 18 18
and Mark, Matthew 1917.
So here,
Jesus, peace be upon him, according to this
Christian text, these Christian texts
is affirming the old, the Mosaic covenant.
But then by gospel's end, right, later on
in the gospel, Mark 14, Matthew 26, and
and Luke 22,
we are told that Jesus celebrates
the
Passover,
the last supper with his disciples,
and he takes the bread and he gives
it to them and
says, this is my, the bread and the
wine. And he says, this is my body.
This is my blood of the new covenant,
right, of the new testament. So now he's
establishing
a new covenant.
Right? A new agreement.
So what that means is now is that
the old covenant that god made with the
Israelites at Sinai,
this,
covenant has been revoked. It is abrogated.
Right?
And now,
one has to simply believe,
in
Jesus as lord,
as Paul says, and that god raised him
from the dead, and you shall be saved.
Right? So that's the essence.
Paul states this, I believe, in 1st Corinthians.
That's the essence of this new covenant then.
Okay. So let's take a closer look then
at the the New Testament.
So
there are 39
books in the Old Testament. There are 27
books
in the New Testament.
It's called a canon of 27 books.
There are
4 4 major types of books in the
New Testament.
The first major type of book is called
a gospel.
So a gospel is basically a narrative
about Jesus
that really focuses on
the passion.
Right?
The last week of Jesus' life
according to these texts.
So they're basically 4 extended passion narratives. The
real focus is on
the suffering and death resurrection
of Jesus.
That's really where the focus is.
So you have you have,
gospel.
One of the types of books of the
New Testament. There are 4 of them, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. We'll talk more about
them.
Then you have a book of history, one
book of history in the new testament. It's
the 5th book of the new testament.
It's called the book of Acts,
a c t s, also called acts of
the apostles
in in the Catholic,
in the Catholic version, English versions.
So basically, this is early ecclesiastical
history, early church history.
There are 3 main characters, really 2 main
characters. There's Peter and there's Paul, but there's
also James.
Right? Acts chapter 15,
You have the famous Jerusalem Council. This is
really this sort of seminal
event,
in, the early Christian movement,
and the sort of prototype
of the later
church councils, ecumenical church councils
that are going to follow in the 4th
century all the way into the,
21st
century,
or 20th century. We haven't had one. There
hasn't been an ecumenical church council in the
21st century. The last one was in the
19 sixties called Vatican 2.
So the sort of, prototype,
of that, the archetype was,
the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15.
And the issue of that time was
how much of the Mosaic law
is required for these gentile proselytes,
for these Greeks. The Greeks are becoming Christian.
How much of the law of Moses
should we impose upon them? That's why they
held the council, basically.
So you have early church history, the book
of Acts. And then you have something called,
the epistles,
which simply means letters,
and there are 21 of them. So 4
gospels.
There's one book of history called the book
of Acts.
Then you have 21 epistles
or letters,
and these are written by various
apostles, right, various apostolic authorities,
various,
disciples of Jesus, at least according to Christian
Christian tradition.
So these epistles, they deal with the doctrine.
They deal with counsel instructions.
They deal with,
just different issues that arise in various congregations.
According to,
historians,
7 of these 21
epistles
were genuinely written by Paul.
Right? The apostle Paul. We'll talk about him.
So
scholars agree almost by consensus that that 7
of them are written by Paul.
7 of them
another 7 of them are disputed,
but claimed to have been written by Paul.
Right. In other words, someone pretending to be
Paul.
So scholars have deemed these to be
pseudo Pauline,
which is sort of a nice way of
saying they're forgeries.
Right? Someone is writing these letters pretending to
be Paul, and they're not Paul. They're forging
these letters,
pretending to be Paul. And then you have
7, what are known as Catholic epistles. Not
Catholic with a capital c, not Roman Catholic,
but Catholic with a lower case c,
which simply means universal
epistles. And these are written by various,
apostles as well, like James and Peter, and
John, and Jude. Although, again, the vast majority
of historians
do not believe that
these men actually wrote these books,
that bear their names. These are also forgeries.
When it comes to the gospels, they're called
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but in reality,
they are anonymous.
None of the authors identify themselves.
Church tradition,
assigns them or attributes these books
to 2 disciples of Jesus, Matthew, the tax
collector, who's also called Levi,
and John
Yohanan, the son of Zebedee, who's one of
the disciples of Jesus, the beloved disciple according
to the gospel of John. Although it's disputed
whether
John, the son of Zebedee, is the beloved
disciple. That's the dominant opinion.
Historians do not believe that these two men
actually wrote these gospels.
And then you have the gospel of Mark.
Mark,
was according to church tradition, he was a
student of Peter,
so he's like a tabiri.
And then you have the gospel of Luke
who is a,
a friend of Paul or Paul's traveling companion.
So this is very interesting, we notice,
that you have the gospel of Mark, which
is accepted by the church as totally
canonical,
and written around,
according to the vast majority of historians,
probably around 70 of the common era or
so.
Most historians put the even many confessional,
Christian scholars, they place the date of Mark's
gospel around 70, around the time of the
destruction of the temple.
But there's also something called the gospel of
Peter.
The gospel of Peter is not accepted as
canon.
And the reason is, well, it's just too
late.
That's one sort of way of looking at
it.
Another way of looking at it is that
it
contains material that is that is offensive,
to the early Christian movement.
So in the gospel of Peter,
it states that,
Jesus, when they were crucifying him, he was
silent as if he felt no pain.
So that doesn't work with the early church
because
for the early church, at least the early
Pauline church, Jesus needs to suffer. It really
needs to hurt. You
know, his pain is our gain, as they
say.
It's the most painful death ever. He's bearing
the sins of the world. He's smitten and
afflicted.
He's bruised for our iniquities. He's crushed for
our transgressions as Isaiah chapter 3 53 says,
which Christians believe to be referencing Jesus. So
it seems like in the gospel of Peter,
he's just he's not feeling pain or perhaps
his soul has left his body. They're crucifying
an empty shell. Something's going on there. The
church didn't like it. So the gospel of
Peter is rejected, but the gospel of Mark,
who's who's Peter's student, is accepted,
right, as canonical.
And then the gospel of John,
there's good reasons for placing John around 70
or even earlier as well, but the vast
majority
of historians
place the gospel of John
anywhere from about
90
to 110
of the common era. If we just take
the low number,
right,
the earliest date of 90,
right,
it's that's called the terminus post quem. Right?
The earliest of date,
90. So
it's, you know, gospel the the the the
apostle John who wrote the gospel was probably
let's say he was, I don't know, 30
years old,
at the crucifixion,
around the age of Jesus, probably the same
age.
Right? The disciples were probably not old men.
They were probably young men around the age
of Jesus. So he's 30 years old, right,
in the year 30.
So he waited then
60 years,
right, to write his gospel
around 90. Again, we're taking the low end
date of 90.
So he's 90 years old.
Right? And he's writing this gospel.
And he's writing it in Greek,
and it's quite sophisticated Greek.
And John, the son of Zebedee, is supposed
to be a Galilean fisherman.
And,
95%
probably
of of people in Palestine at the time,
certainly, you know, fishermen and peasants, they were
illiterate. They could not read or write. They
were unlettered.
So how is it that he can produce
this gospel where he's talking about
or referencing the logos, which is a
Hellenistic
philosophical idea
that goes back to Heraclitus.
Maybe he studied for 60 years, but
it still doesn't make a lot of sense
that he would write it in Greek and
not in Aramaic or in Syriac.
Another issue
is that in John,
so if you ask a Christian,
where does Jesus claim to be God in
the New Testament,
in the 4 gospels, right, invariably,
the Christian will quote something from the gospel
of John.
Right? It is the highest Christology.
So a Christian would say, well,
John 10:30, the father and I are 1.
There you go.
John 8:58,
before Abraham was, I am.
Right?
So so, Right? Present tense. Before Abraham was,
I am. I already was before Abraham. So
here Jesus, he's intimating his preternality
that he predates
Abraham.
Or they'll say,
I am the way, the truth, and the
life.
Right? John 14:6.
So we have these I am statements. That's
what these are called. The famous I am
statements of the Johannan or
gospel of John, the Johannan gospel.
We find none of these I am statements
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these three gospels,
which are called
the synoptic
gospels.
Right? Synoptic meaning one eyed.
Basically, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they follow
basically the same chronology of events
in the life of Jesus.
Whereas in John, we have this drastic
departure,
from the synoptic chronology.
Not only in chronology, but in content.
So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the preferred
method of teaching, his preferred
pedagogical
method of teaching is through parable.
But in John,
he is giving these very long
monologues
about his relationship with the father, making big,
big claims. He's he's engaged in these long
and, sometimes,
very, tense debates
with, the Jews as it says. Right? The
Jews. I mean, it's very clear in the
gospel of John that the enemies of Jesus
are not scribes and Pharisees.
Right? I mean, you find that language in
Matthew,
which is written around 70 or 80, 85.
But by the time John comes around, there's
a there's a clear departure.
You have Christians and you have Jews.
Right?
In in earliest of Christianity,
the the Christians,
were a sect of Judaism.
They're called the or
the Nazarenes
or the Evunim,
which means like the spiritual paupers,
the poor people,
but now we have a definitive
split in the late 1st century. These are
Jews, so it's very clear if you read
the gospel of John,
right. The Jews
are the enemies,
of Jesus and Jesus is always
butting heads with the Jews.
So it's very, very interesting.
But the main point I was gonna make
is
that these I am statements, which are supposed
to be divine claims of Jesus,
Jesus is claiming to be God in these
I am statements.
If he truly made these statements,
then we really have to sort of give
an
f to Matthew, Mark, and Luke
for how they wrote their gospels.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention, all 3 of
them mention, that Jesus,
he rode a donkey into Jerusalem.
When he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday,
he rode a donkey into Jerusalem. All three
of them
mention that.
Right? You might think, well, is that really
important?
Apparently, there's something in the book of Zechariah
or Zephaniah that
says, you know, the king of Zion comes
to you seated humbly upon a donkey.
So it's a fulfillment of prophecy.
Okay. Still doesn't seem very important,
but if Jesus is making a divine claim,
he's claiming to be god.
He said before Abraham was, I am the
father and I are 1.
I am the way, the truth, and the
life. I am the good shepherd.
I am the door. Right?
These big, big claims that he's making in
the gospel of John,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke a 100% failed
in recording these divine claims. How could they
not record
these divine claims of Jesus?
So the answer is they're completely inept,
and they've done a horrible job at writing
their gospels.
Or
Jesus never made those statements.
Right?
And
the majority of historians nowadays,
they believe that the latter is actually true,
that the gospel of John is really
an ahistorical
document.
It's really just sort
of a Christological
meditation
of a certain community of Christians called the
Johannan community.
And you know, this this community, if if
you read the gospel of John, for example,
he,
and he's aware that you have Matthew, Mark,
and Luke floating around,
in that in in the Mediterranean.
But he at times deliberately contradicts the synoptics.
Right? For example,
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it says Jesus
was crucified
on,
the day of Passover,
which is a strange day to be crucified.
But John says that he was crucified on
the eve of Passover.
So the question then becomes,
who's right?
Can they both be right?
Were there 2 crucifixions?
How can these texts be inerrant?
Right? And this is the position of, like,
fundamentalist bible colleges, like the Moody Bible Institute,
probably Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, that these
books are inerrant. How can both of these
be true?
Was Jesus crucified
on Passover or the eve of Passover? Which
is it? Were there 2 crucifixions?
Somebody got it wrong,
or they're they both got it wrong.
Right?
It says in the synoptic gospels
that when Jesus was
going to be crucified
for no apparent reason,
the Romans
pulled a random guy out of the crowd
named Simon of Cyrene
and compelled him to bear the cross.
Right? So he took the cross of Jesus,
probably the cross beam. It's a staros, which
is like a a stake or a beam,
probably just a crossbar,
and made him bear the cross, while Jesus
sort of just followed in front or behind.
I don't remember,
what it says in the synoptics, but that's
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John knows this, but John goes out of
his way to contradict the synoptics,
and he says Jesus bore his own cross
to Golgotha,
the place of the skull where the Romans
used to crucify Jews, insurrectionist,
Jews or troublemaking Jews.
So why does John do that?
Right?
Well, there's probably
some sort of Christological
or polemical reason why he does that.
Now we know
that there were early Christian groups that denied
the crucifixion of Jesus.
One such group
was the were the Basilidians,
named after Basilides. I might have mentioned him
in the past.
He was a Christian teacher in in Egypt,
Alexandria
in the Q1 of 2nd century.
And Thucydides,
his
opinion
was that Simon of Cyrene
was transfigured
he uses that word in Latin,
transfiguratum,
transfigured to look like Jesus,
and Jesus, the maid, was transfigured to look
like him, and so the Romans grabbed,
you know,
the apparent Jesus.
So this is called substitution theory,
supernatural identity transference.
And so Jesus was able to escape the
crucifixion.
So,
it seems like
John is familiar with this belief
around the time when he's writing at 90,
CE or at a 100 CE, possibly 110
CE. So what he does is
crystallogical
reason.
Even though he knows he's contradicting the synoptics,
and even though his readers will eventually know
that he's contradicting the synoptics.
Right. But his whole point is to teach
you is is not to give you accurate
history.
John admits at the end of the gospel,
these things have been written to convince you
that Jesus is the son of God.
Right? That's the whole aim. That's the telos.
That's his of writing his gospel
is to convince you by any means necessary
that Jesus is the son of God,
right,
and that he died for your sins. So
don't get it twisted.
He wasn't substituted.
He died on the cross. And then John
tells us something else at the crucifixion scene.
So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we're told
that Jesus is on the cross for a
few hours.
In Mark, it's maybe
3 hours, and this is why Pilate marveled.
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor,
this man has died already after just a
few hours on the cross. Pontius Pilate made
a career of crucifying Jews.
So if he's astonished and he's and he's
marveling
that this man has died already, then there's
something happening there. There's something to look into.
How can he be dead already?
And of course, Christians will say that, well,
Jesus, you know, he was beaten beyond recognition
and,
you know, he was flogged
front and back down to his bowels. I
mean, his intestines were falling out. You read
things like this in
in in in Christian polemical writings like by
Joshua McDowell and,
and others.
Michael Acona and things like that.
So he's just, you know, he's a *,
* mess. You know, he's going into,
his body's going into shock, and and so
3 hours. I'm surprised he even lasted,
3 hours. Why is Pilate shocked?
Pilate is an expert Jew killer.
He is an expert Jew crucifier,
and he is it says he marveled.
This man is dead after 3 hours? Are
you sure he's dead?
How can he be dead?
And he oversaw all of, you know, these
so called beatings and floggings
and so on and so forth.
I mean, nowhere in Matthew, Mark, and Luke
does it say that he was nailed to
a cross.
Right? That's not mentioned in the synoptic tradition.
We find that in John, and it's not
mentioned directly.
It's when, you know, in the upper room
where the, you know, the doubting Thomas and
Jesus shows his hands, you know, and his
feet, apparently, the marks of the the crucifixion.
So we find that in John.
Alright. But something else that happens in John
is
Jesus is on the cross, and he's impaled
on the cross.
We don't find this in Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. Why didn't Matthew, Mark, and Luke? If
Matthew is an eyewitness
this is what Christians believe,
at least traditional Christians.
Matthew is an eyewitness of the ministry of
Jesus.
Right?
Why didn't Matthew so well, he he forsook
Jesus and fled. I mean, that's what it
says in Matthew, Mark, and Luke when Jesus
was on it was in the,
on the Mount of Olives in the Garden
of Gethsemane.
The Jewish
temple guard came to arrest him and his
all of his disciples forsook him and
fled, so Matthew wasn't there. Okay, but Matthew
could have there were there were people that
were there. Matthew could've interviewed somebody, an eyewitness.
And how what happened at the crucifixion?
And Matthew seems to know a lot about
what happened at the crucifixion even though he
wasn't there. Matthew records the final words of
Jesus on the cross. How did he know
that? Somebody told him. Why didn't somebody tell
him
that Jesus was impaled on the cross?
John that's what John says, writing in 90
or a100.
Well, it probably didn't happen. That's why. It's
not historical.
Why does John say that Jesus was impaled
on the cross?
Because apparently there might have been Christians who
had the belief that Jesus was put on
a cross,
but he didn't actually die.
He might have swooned. He might have survived
the cross.
Right?
Therefore, that's that's why he was seen alive
in his fleshy body
after the supposed
his supposed death.
Well, John eliminates
this type of,
heresy according to him and says, no. No.
No. No. Don't get it twisted. He was
impaled on the cross.
He's dead.
There's no doubt about it.
Right?
So, basically
okay.
So we went a little bit off
course here,
but that's okay.
So
we said that there's 4 gospels. There's the
book of Acts.
There's,
21 epistles,
and then we have 1
apocalypse.
Right? Apocalypse
is a Greek
word, meaning
an unveiling
or a disclosure.
It's called.
And this is sort of
a book that describes visions
of the eskaton, the
towards the end of time.
It's very, very cryptic. It's very symbolic.
It's very, very strange,
very enigmatic.
I mean, you have, you know, the 4
horsemen, and you have, you know, this lake
of fire, and
it's a very strange book. You have the
mark of the beast,
the mark of the in
Greek,
which is 666.
It's stated in Revelation,
chapter 13
verse 18. So this book is called the
book of Revelation.
Right? In the Catholic
version, it's called the apocalypse.
So you have all these strange things happening.
The mark of the beast, the antichrist
is 666.
Nobody knows what that means. Some people believe
it's the numerical value of his name. Some
scholars believe that it's a reference to Nero,
the,
the Roman, emperor
who,
was
who who,
was compared
today by Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump.
He said I think he said Sanders said
today what did he say? He said when
Rome was burning,
Nero,
was was playing his fiddle,
but Trump was golfing.
Right.
So Nero is sort of seen as
this this,
this sort of prototypical,
horrible
leader. Right?
So some scholars believe that the numerical value
of
of emperor Nero is 666.
Okay.
So you have these 27 books.
Okay. Now
the first books of the New Testament to
be written
were not the gospels.
Okay.
The first books chronologically
of the New Testament
were the Pauline epistles,
Right?
The letters written by Paul.
So who is Paul? So Paul,
his actual name is
Saul of Tarsus.
He was a Benjaminite
Jew from Sicily
who was also a Pharisee,
who early on was a very zealous
Christian persecuting Pharisee. So he would persecute the
earliest of of Christians, like the disciples.
Right? Before they were actually called Christian,
they were, they were the Nazarenes.
Right? So Jews who happened to believe
that Jesus was the messiah.
Paul was the,
the man that the the high priest would
call upon
to,
according to his own words, he would bind
them up, capture them, and bring them back,
to Jerusalem for trial.
So he was a persecutor of the early
Jesus
movement.
And then according to
Paul,
he had some sort of
conversion experience,
on the road to Damascus where
he claims that he had an encounter with
the resurrected Jesus
who commissioned him to go into all nations
and admonish the gentiles.
Right. So he's the apostle to the gentiles.
So then Paul goes
to different major
metropolitan areas around the Mediterranean,
and he begins to preach what he calls
my gospel.
That's what he says.
My gospel. Remember Jesus of the seed of
David
rose from the dead
according to my gospel, he says. And he
uses that phrase three times
in his in his
in his letters. 2 of them are genuinely
written by Paul. 1 of them is pseudo
Paul. So when Paul says my gospel, it
seems like he's making a distinction between what
he is saying and what this other gospel
is saying. And he actually says that in
the book of Galatians.
He chastises
his congregation in Galatia, which is in Turkey,
for believing in quote, another gospel. So there's
another gospel.
And,
according to Christian historians,
the story is this. Paul went to Galatia,
and he made a lot of converts
to his gospel, his understanding of the gospel,
that Jesus was
the divine son of god and that he
died for your sins,
and that's the new that's the new covenant.
And,
and and then he left Galatia.
And then a group of
apostles
from Jerusalem
sent by James,
who is Jesus's brother or cousin.
It's not really clear what brother means.
Half brother or cousin, possibly stepbrother.
Nonetheless, the book of Acts tells us that
James is the leader of the Jerusalem apostles.
He sends messengers,
other apostles, into Galatia
to
correct Paul's deviant teachings.
Right?
And so they're able to convince these Galatians,
that Paul was wrong
about many fundamental,
issues.
So then Paul writes now the book of
Galat his letter to the Galatians,
where he chastises the Galatians.
How dare you believe in this other gospel?
Right? We didn't bring this gospel. And then
he goes on to accuse,
Peter, James, and Barnabas
of hypocrisy
in the book of Galatians. So Paul is
butting heads. He has fundamental
big issues
with actual disciples
of Isa alaihis salam. He admits this in
the book of Galatians.
He refers to them sarcastically,
so called pillars.
That's what he says. These so called pillars
of the church. He says, these these super
apostles, you know, who do they think they
are? These super apostles.
This is his sarcasm.
Who is he talking about? He's talking about
actual disciples
of Isa alaihi sallam. He says I don't
need a letter of recommendation,
you know. I have my
I, I have my experience. I experienced the
resurrected Jesus.
What does he mean? I I don't need
a letter of recommendation. According to New Testament
scholars,
these apostles
that are coming into these cities in Paul's
wake and correcting his deviant gospel
have actual
Ijazat.
They have these
teaching licenses
that they've brought from Jerusalem, signed by James,
who is the leader of the Nazarenes,
the early Christian movement.
Paul has no such letter because he's a
freelance
self appointed
apostle.
So he says to his congregations, I don't
need a letter. I had this
experience.
And he's and he brags. I don't I
didn't take this teaching from any human being,
from any man. I took it directly from
Christ.
This is what he says. Yet he is
at odds.
Big time.
Fundamental issues. He's butting heads
with the actual disciples
of Isa alaihis salam.
Alright?
So Paul is a highly problematic person, to
say the
least.
So
so then so Paul began writing
around 52.
His his first letter was to his congregation
at Thesalonica,
a major Greek city.
Right? It's called 1st Thessalonians.
And in 1st Thessalonians,
Paul is very clear, and there's certain
central Pauline themes.
This is how scholars, like textual critics, can
tell
if this is written by Paul or not.
So you have these 14,
epistles that are claimed to have been written
by Paul.
According to historians,
7 of them are by Paul because, you
know, they they they
they would
analyze the text
through certain textual measures,
and the other 7 are deemed to be
forgeries in the name of Paul.
Right?
So the 7 genuine letters
The first genuine letter is called first Thessalonians.
And then you have,
Galatians,
Philemon,
first Corinthians, second Corinthians,
Philippians, and Romans.
And in these seven letters, you have these
central Pauline themes.
The second coming of Jesus will be in
his lifetime.
This is absolutely fundamental
to Paul's understanding of his gospel,
what he is claiming he has taken from
Jesus.
Absolutely fundamental.
We're going to be,
transformed in the twinkling of an eye, he
says in first Thessalonians.
Caught up in the clouds
with the lord.
And all of his advice
on marriage, celibacy,
on commerce,
all of it is predicated upon
his belief
that at any moment,
Jesus will manifest
in his second coming and set up his
kingdom of god on earth,
right, as as the Jews believed the Jewish
Messiah would do.
Right?
And of course this never happened.
It never happened,
you know. So we have here
a a a falsifiable
claim of Paul.
Paul is very, very clear. He believes the
second coming will occur in his lifetime.
In fact, the author of Mark's gospel and
these four gospels
so so you have the Pauline letters
that are written between, you know, 52
and 65 or something,
and then you have the first gospel, Mark.
So
the 4 gospels
are highly influenced
by Pauline doctrine.
Right?
And, again, that's why in these four gospels,
I mean, they're basically four extended passion narratives
because the cross is so central for Paul.
Paul says in 1st Corinthians, if Christ is
not raised, our faith is in vain.
If Christ did not raise from the dead,
if he was not resurrected,
our faith is in vain. There's no point
to this religion.
Right?
So you can see how
Christians are,
oftentimes
offended
by the Muslim suggestion,
that Isa alaihis salam was never crucified.
He's never crucified. He's never killed. He's never
resurrected.
And Christianity is in vain.
But this is what Paul says in 1st
Corinthians.
So now in Mark,
right,
you have Jesus saying
that among those standing here,
right, he says,
there are some standing here
that shall not taste death
until they see the son of man coming
in the clouds.
Right? And for Mark,
the son of
man seems to be,
a,
a, a, a title of Jesus himself.
Coming in the clouds, he's paraphrasing
something found in the book of Daniel chapter
7,
the apocalyptic
son of man, which Christians will mark at
this point believes to be,
a prophecy of the Jewish Messiah,
the
son of man who's exceedingly powerful on the
earth.
Jesus is saying there's some standing here.
He's telling this to Jews around 29 or
30 of the common era.
There are people here now alive that will
see me coming with great power in the
clouds.
Now we cannot possibly attribute such a statement
to Isa alaihi salam because that would make
him a false prophet.
And true prophets do not make false prophecies.
Right? Christians have ways of sort of working
around
these things.
But what's very interesting is
Mark wrote that
around 70.
So he's, you know, he's taking a big
risk because,
you know, if if there are few people
alive in the generation of Jesus around 70
of the common era.
But it seems like Mark believes,
because because of what's happening
in Jerusalem
around the time of Mark's composition,
Mark believes it is the end of the
world.
What's happening in Jerusalem
between 67
and 73? It's the Jewish war that Josephus
writes about. So you have an all out
assault,
upon the Jews in Palestine
by the Roman war machine.
Right? So there was an insurrection
by the
the the the the zealots or the proto
zealots.
These were Jewish insurrectionists
that tried to seize the land,
and implement Jewish law from the heathen colonizers,
the Romans.
They were absolutely crushed
over this 6 year period. The Romans started
in the north in Galilee where Jesus was
raised, and they just swept
right down the entire country,
destroyed the temple in 70,
and massacred,
you know, men, women, and children. They have
that mass,
suicide that happened at the fortress in Masada
around 73 of the common era. So Mark
believes this is the end of the world.
Right? So if this is the end of
the world, then the second coming of Jesus
is imminent, so he has no problem saying,
putting the words into the mouth of Jesus,
there are some standing here that shall not
taste death until until they see the son
of man coming in the clouds with great
power.
Alright?
We would not attribute this false prophecy
to a true prophet, Isa alaihi sallam. Mark
is influenced by Paul who made this false
prophecy. Paul believed the second coming was imminent.
It did not materialize.
Paul also believes in justification
by faith
alone.
He believes that the law of Moses was
abrogated
almost completely,
and he believes
in vicarious
atonement.
This idea
that Jesus
was
a savior, man god,
a divine son of god
who died for your sins.
Right?
What's also interesting about Paul is that he
does not mention anything about the historical Jesus.
Paul does not quote Jesus accurately one time
in any of his letters, whether they're genuine
Paul or pseudo Paul.
Paul never mentions a miracle of that Jesus
performed,
like these exorcisms that are such a big
part of the synoptic tradition, the healings.
Right?
The resurrection of Lazarus.
He doesn't mention any of these things.
Paul does not mention anything about the historical
Jesus. He's completely focused
on the crucifixion and resurrection,
the significance of the death of a savior
man god.
That's what his
attention is almost exclusively focused on.
Right?
He doesn't mention the virgin birth of Jesus.
Why wouldn't he mention that?
Very, very strange.
He actually says Jesus, who was of the
seed of David
I mean, it seems like he believes that
Jesus was just born,
as a descendant of David in the conventional
sense.
Right? Why wouldn't he mention these things? He
doesn't quote,
he doesn't quote the Jesus of the gospels.
If there's an oral tradition
floating around
where Jesus is making divine claims that are
recorded by John,
Paul doesn't seem to quote it. He doesn't
quote them. Why doesn't he quote them?
Either he doesn't care that Jesus claimed to
be god, and I think he would care,
or these statements did not exist,
And John invented them out of
whole cloth
in order to convince his audience that Jesus
is the
son of god.
Now Paul does something quite radical.
What he does is
he appropriates
an old pagan motif.
Okay. This is known as the dying
and rising savior man god
motif.
So this was a motif, a belief that
predated Christianity
by 100 and 100 of years.
This idea that
some sort of
incarnation,
a divine son of god,
comes to the earth, suffers, and dies for
the sins of humanity.
It's a very beautiful story.
You have a personal savior.
Right?
What Paul does is that he gives it
a Jewish makeover,
and he uses it to explain
what he believes
to be the gospel.
Right? So what Paul basically does, I liken
it to, like, a Christmas tree,
a Christmas tree. Right.
So we have this tree
which is brought into the home,
which is what the ancient pagans used to
do. I mean, in Jeremiah, I think, chapter
10 verse 2,
he says, imitate not the way of the
heathen,
the infidel
who brings a tree
into their house
and decks it out with gold and silver.
That's what the tree worshipers used to do.
Today, we call them tree huggers. No. I'm
just kidding.
But that's what they used to do. Right?
What Paul is doing is basically he's taking
a tree, a Christmas
tree, a a symbol of paganism, that's his
foundation, and he's putting a star of David
at the top of it.
Right?
So he takes paganisms
He takes paganism
as his foundation, and he kind of dresses
it up with the trappings of Judaism.
Before Christianity,
you had Osiris,
the savior man god of Egypt,
Adonis of Syria,
Romulus of Rome,
Salamoxus
of Thrace, who's mentioned by Herodotus
in his histories.
Inanna of Sumeria, who's a female
daughter of god.
And of course, Mithras,
the Persian sun god, who although he didn't
actually die, he did suffer
for the sins of his people.
There's a book called The World
The World's 16 Crucified
Saviors by Kersey Graves written 18/75.
There are some problematic elements to this book
from a historical standpoint, but it's an interesting
book.
Christianity Before Christ is the subtitle. There's another
book by Tom Harper
called The Pagan Christ, which is quite interesting,
as well.
So Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Almoxes, Inanna,
Mithras, all savior gods,
all sons of god with the exception of
Inanna, who's a daughter of god. But basically,
all, you know, all children of god, but
not the god.
They are not the god.
Right?
So all of these traditions are what's known
as henotheistic.
And I am convinced that Paul himself was
a henotheist.
I do not believe that Paul is a
monotheist.
Alright.
Paul believes that Jesus is a second deity.
Paul is highly, highly influenced
by Hellenistic
philosophy,
Hellenistic
motifs like this one here, the dying and
rising, save your man god motif, but also
this idea
of, you know, this middle platonic
idea
that the godhead
is 3,
unique
deities,
where there's a hierarchy of being,
the one,
the word, the logos,
and the spirit.
Right?
All 3 are divine.
The latter 2
are the effect of the cause who is
the one. He's the the the the source
and origin of everything even though the the
logos
and the spirit.
So even though the logos and spirit
are from the very essence, your ex Deo,
they're from the very essence of god,
They are not as exalted
as the one
who is without origin,
right, who is the origin
and, and is the the cause of the
others. So you have this hierarchy of gods.
Right? So Paul is borrowing this idea.
So is John. John directly calls Jesus the
logos.
Right?
So it's hard to
very difficult.
I mean, eventually,
Christian apologists in the 3rd 4th century, they
had a way of sort of working out
how this is still monotheism.
It's not monotheism according to the Islamic definition
of monotheism,
but
they they sort of took these middle platonic
and neo platonic
ideas of a hierarchy of god, of of
a hierarchy within the godhead and said there's
really no hierarchy of being, just of person.
So kind of sleight of hand. We'll talk
about that,
next week,
But anyway, you have the savior, man gods.
They all undergo a passion,
some sort of suffering,
and they obtain victory over death.
It's very interesting. You know? The Quran says
that the Christians say
that Christ is the son of God.
That is a saying that issues from their
mouths in this day, but imitate
what the unbelievers
of all these ancient pagans used to say.
It's all the way back
100 and 100 of years.
And of course, Hellenistic religion tended to be
sync syncretistic.
Right? They would mix and match different elements.
So like the cult of Mithras
was an amalgamation
of Hellenistic,
meaning Greek, as well as Persian beliefs.
The cult of Dionysus
was an amalgamation
of Hellenistic
as well as Phoenician beliefs.
The cult
of Pauline Christianity
is an amalgamation
of Hellenistic
and Jewish beliefs. So now you have this
kind of new hybrid
religion.
And when that happened,
now you have this definitive
split. Paul set the foundation.
Right? In the middle of the 1st century,
by the end of the 1st century, you
have this definitive
split. These are not Jews.
These are a separate religion. They're called Christians.
They worship Christ as a god.
Right? So that's
so you have these 27 books then. Just
to, wrap up.
Four gospels, 1 book of Acts, 21 epistles,
1,
1 apocalypse.
Okay.
I think that's
good for tonight
So we will see you
next time.
I think that's a good place to stop.
I don't wanna start a new I know
there's a few minutes left here, but I
don't wanna get into a new topic. This
is gonna take a bit of explaining to
do.
So we'll save that for next time, and
we'll talk, we'll finish our discussion on the
gospels. There's one more thing I wanted to
say
about about what's known as backward Christology, which
is very, very interesting that we find in
the 4 gospels, Christology in the making, James
Dunn, this idea.
We'll talk about that, and then we'll go
into the Nicene Creed and talk about,
the trinity.
Okay.