Ali Ataie – DEBATE vs. Mike Licona (2006)
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
We're about to start the program,
so if you can try to find a
seat, please do so. I know it's kinda
hard.
I just wanna introduce myself. My name is
Shazam Khadar
and I'm a representative of the Muslim Student
Association.
And this event is actually
a, a cooperative effort between the Muslim Student
Association,
the Campus Crusade for Christ, and College Life
of UC Davis.
So, I'm not the moderator or anything for
this event. I'm just gonna do a quick
intro, sort of give you a background on
how how this event came about and how
this idea was sort of conceived.
So,
the first thing I I sort of want
to touch on is the fact that,
I think that this sort of interfaith, the
dialogue
is is extremely beneficial.
And it seems that
a lot of times when people use the
phrase interfaith, they sort of misconstrue it to
mean that it only refers to
focusing on our religious similarities.
Right?
Often times it has this connotation that interfaith
is is focusing on our similarities. But I
think an integral ingredient of interfaith work
is understanding our differences.
You know? Understanding our differences. This is a
key component of interfaith work.
And so,
I know a lot of people when they
hear this word debate,
they it it sort of conjures up images
of animosity. Right? And,
like, distrust,
animosity, hostility between organizations and individuals.
But But the fact of the matter is,
is that it doesn't really have to be
that. In fact, I think,
if we understand our differences, it can have
the opposite effect.
It can have the opposite effect on people.
Because imagine, what is the alternative?
What is the alternative of not having a
dialogue like this?
People would remain ignorant. Right? I mean, granted
we have differences
and that's something we we accept.
And I think the best thing we can
do,
having said that we have differences is trying
to understand our differences.
I think this is the key to building
bridges and and having an understanding.
So, like I said, I know a lot
of people have this, or a debate, you
know, what what's that going to do? It's
it's just going to increase hostility between organizations
and groups and things like that, But I
ask you like, what is the alternative?
And I think, I think we should have
more more dialogues like these. Because if you
ask me, there's not enough
dialogues or discourses in which we discuss things
which are significant to people. You know, we
live in an age in which the trivial
is is emphasized
and the significant
is relegated to the periphery. Right?
We're talking about the fate of Jesus. This
is an this is an issue which affects
so many people. Right? It's an issue which
affects so many people, Muslims, and Christians, and
and non Muslims, and non Christians alike. It
it affects so many people. So I think
it's it's healthy and it's good to talk
about these things and and and understand our
differences
rather than just focusing
strictly on our similarities.
And
I said that, you know, a lot of
times people think that,
it's just going to create hostility and things
like that. But I just wanna give you
an example. When I started,
bringing up envisioning the idea, and the reason
I'm sort of doing this introduction is because
MSA is the organization that initiated this event.
So, like, we approached, College License and the
Campus Crusade for Christ and we said, you
know, would you guys be interested in doing
this this sort of,
event? And when I when I first met
with, one of the, or the director of
college life at UC Davis, Bronwyn Lee,
I sort of sort of, you know, outlined
our vision. What do we want to do?
What do we want to accomplish? Right?
And, it was interesting because
the one of the first things that she
told me was, you know, I have a
friend
and, this friend told me that before you
make any sort of commitment in participating in
this thing, make sure you're not dealing with,
radicals.
Right? Make sure you're not dealing with an
extremist group here. So I was I was
sort of struck by that and I asked
her, what do you think? And she said,
the very fact that you guys are coming
to us, I don't even have to ask
you that question.
Right? So this is just an illustration of
the fact that
this sort of event doesn't create feelings of
distress rather it has the opposite effect.
So that's just my my short little intro
and I will hand off the mic over
to our moderator for tonight,
Jahan Matthew, who is, a representative of college
life.
I want to start off by introducing tonight's
speakers, but before I do that, I'm gonna
ask that you turn off any cell phones.
We don't want those going off in the
middle and disrupting, the speakers.
So I'm gonna introduce the speakers. Invited by
the Muslim Student Association
is Ali Atay. Mister Atay was born in
Tehran, Iran and moved to California in 1979.
He attended Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo
where he earned a bachelor of science degree
in accounting. He also served as a president
of the Muslim Student Association in Cal Poly.
Since graduating in 2000, mister Atay has taught
religious studies and apologetics at Cal Poly and
at the World Alliance For Humanity in Fremont,
and is the founder and president of the
Muslim Interfaith Council. He has authored books titled
In Defense of Islam, Confronting the Christians with
Their Own Scripture
and Injeel Al Haq, the true gospel of
Jesus Christ.
Invited by Campus Crusade and College Life is
Mike Licona. Mister Licona serves as director of
apologetics and interfaith evangelism at the North American
Mission Board in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his
MA in religious studies from Liberty University and
is a PhD candidate in New Testament at
the University of Pretoria.
He coauthored the case for the resurrection of
Jesus
as well as Paul meets Mohammed, which is
a fictional debate between the apostle Paul and
the prophet Mohammed
on the resurrection of Jesus.
I'm gonna go over the rules of the
debate just so you are aware of this.
This has already been gone over with the
both speakers. The debate will consist of 3
rounds. You can follow along on the yellow
card that you received as you walked in.
In the first round, each speaker will get
20 minutes to present their side his view
on the issue.
In the 2nd round, each speaker will have
15 minutes to respond to the 1st speaker's
presentation.
In the 3rd round, each speaker will have
8 minutes to conclude.
These 3 rounds will be followed by a
question and answer session because I'm sure we
have questions that we want to ask.
Beneath your seat, each one of you will
find a note card and a pencil.
You'll have the chance to write questions on
that, and we'll collect the questions after the
second round. I wanna encourage you not to
write the question down until the second round
because your question may be addressed in the
rebuttal.
At the top of the note card, this
is imperative. At the top of the note
card, you must write down the name of
the person to which the question is addressed
because we will be going through the note
cards, both the MSA and Campus to Save
with College Life. We'll select the top 3
or 4 questions and we'll present them to
the speakers. So it's important that you write
the speaker's name on the top of that
card.
As a reminder to the audience,
what was said by Shazeb tonight was
the purpose of tonight was to create an
awareness of different perspectives, and you may have
already come tonight with a perspective and a
subsequent bias, but I want to ask that
you would, leave that and not bring that
into tonight's debate as we respect people with
different views around us. This is not intended
to be hostile in any way, but rather
to be a civil and orderly debate. We
will strictly adhere to the debate rules, and
I ask you as the audience would respect
that and would also abide by the rules.
And in that spirit, I ask to refrain
from any outburst, any applause, or any agreement
or disagreement with the speakers. We'll have a
chance at the end where you can all
applaud. But I would ask the audience to
not make any noises or interactions with the
speakers while they're giving their presentations.
And I'd like to remind the speakers that
you will see visual cues at the preset
times in your presentation, letting you know how
much time you have left. At the 5
and 1 minute mark, I will announce the
time left. And once the stop card is
held up, you will have 10 seconds to
stop upon which I will take the floor.
As was previously agreed upon by both groups
hosting this event, mister Lacono will begin followed
by mister Itay.
Mister Lacono, you have the floor for 20
minutes.
Well, thank you and good evening. It's great
to be with you all. I'd like to
thank, Campus Crusade for inviting me to participate
in tonight's debate.
Assalamu alaikum. Tonight's debate concerns
the 1st century fate of Jesus.
Did Jesus die and rise from the dead
shortly thereafter
as the early Christians taught,
or did God rescue him from death by
crucifixion as the Quran teaches?
Well, our question must be answered historically
and fortunately,
Muslims have relied on historical investigation for centuries.
Most of what we know from Mohammed comes
from the Hadith,
and, the Hadith contains a huge amount of,
legendary,
literature
in
it. And, historians for years Muslim historians have
developed criteria
for weeding out that which is false from
the genuine material about the life of Muhammad.
For example, Sahih al Bukhari,
found that there were about 600,000
traditions about Muhammad in his day, which was
a little more than 200 years after Muhammad
died.
And so by applying
criteria for historicity,
Bukhari was able to weed a lot of
it down and came to about 74100,
traditions or about 1.2%
of what existed out there.
Now that's not really a problem. Christians have
the same kind of problem, because gnostic gospels
and the non canonical literature through which historians
have to weed through
tons of coal before they can find just
a few historical nuggets, if any, in in
any of these. So,
the thing is that we have to look
for criteria.
My point is that all although I hold
that the new testament is the inspired and
inerrant word of God, it
order for us to mine through it in
order to find historical nuggets. And in fact,
historical Jesus scholars, even very skeptical ones,
that's precisely what they do. Even though they
don't believe it's the word of God or
an errant in any respect, they still believe
that they can find historical truths within it.
Now what's nice, Ali himself acknowledges this in
his book, In Defense of Islam. He writes,
although,
the present day bible is not the word
of God, elements of truth still exist within
its text.
So, whether I'll even though Ali and I
disagree on the bible being inspired and an
and an errant, we both agree that the
bible contains truth.
The question is, what criteria
is Ali and I what are we going
to use? What criteria we're gonna use for
identifying that truth?
Now again, I wanna say I wanna hasten
to say, without apology, I believe the bible
is the inspired and inerrant word of God.
However, I'm not going to be approaching it
that way this evening,
because that is not tonight's debate.
And so I I can't ask you to
give the bible a privileged position,
and I'm not gonna grant a privileged position
to the Quran either.
So, if Ali were to say, well, the
reason that, we should believe this is because,
well, the Quran says that I believe it
and that settles it for me, or the
Quran is God's holy word. That that's not
gonna fly for debate. You gotta show evidence
for what your position is, and thus, I'm
gonna do that as well for the bible
or,
for what I'm establishing.
So I'm not out to establish that the
bible's inspired or inherent, but I'm out to
establish the points that I'm gonna make in
order to build a historical case
using the criteria historians, professional historians would use
for establishing the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Because in the end, I I would I
would just hope that, as the moderator said,
that we would try both Christians and Muslims
to for the next half hour and a
half, to shed our biases and to try
to look at things as objectively as possible.
Because even as Tom Cruise said in the
movie A Few Good Men, it doesn't matter
what I believe, it only matters what I
can prove.
Now
I wanna make one further observation before proceeding.
This debate concerns the 1st century,
fate of Jesus.
It is not a debate on the character
of Muhammad.
It is not on the question Islam or
religion of peace. It is not on does
the atonement make sense theologically,
and it's not on the inerrancy or inspiration
of the New Testament. It is on these
are all important issues,
but they are not the subject of tonight's
debate. And if we're not careful, we will
get off topic and not be able to
cover
our topic,
adequately.
So let's start by looking at our, four
facts for which there is strong historical evidence.
In fact, it's so strong that the majority
of today's scholars regard them as historical facts,
including skeptical ones.
Fact number 1 is Jesus's death by crucifixion.
Let me provide two reasons why we can
be confident that Jesus died as a result
of being crucified.
First, it is reported by a not number
of sources, both Christian and non Christian, and
that are ancient. Josephus,
Tacitus, Lucian, Marbar, Sarapion all mentioned the event.
2nd, the chances of surviving crucifixion
were very, very bleak.
A number of ancient sources describe the ancient
practices of scourging and crucifixion.
For example, Josephus tells of a man who
had been whipped so severely
that he was filleted to the bone.
He also mentions a group of Jewish men
who were whipped until their intestines were laid
bare.
A second century text named the Martyrdom of
Polycarp
tells of, how the Roman whip was said
to expose a person's veins and arteries.
The person was then forced to carry their
cross beam outside the city walls, where soldiers
using nails much like the one I'm holding
in my hand. This is a replica of
the,
nail discovered in the remains of the only
crucified victim ever found in Jerusalem,
a guy named Johan.
Victim was left hanging in excruciating pain.
In fact, the word excruciating comes from the
Latin, out of the cross.
Described crucified victims as having battered and ineffective
carcasses,
maimed,
misshapen,
deformed,
nailed,
and drawing the breath of life amid long
drawn out agony.
Only one account exists of a person surviving
crucifixion in antiquity. Josephus reported seeing 3 of
his friends crucified,
so he appealed to his friend the Roman
commander Titus who ordered that all 3 be
removed immediately
and provided the best medical care Rome had
to offer.
In spite of this, 2 of the 3
still died.
Thus, even if Jesus had been removed prematurely
and medically assisted, his chances of survival, at
least by natural causes, are very bleak.
So taking the theistic equation out of the,
the theistic,
component out of the equation for a moment,
we can see that there is fantastic evidence
for Jesus death by crucifixion.
In fact, even the atheist new testament critic,
Gerrit Ludemann,
writes, Jesus' death is a consequence of crucifixion
is indisputable.
Now, I realized that Muslims believe that God
can do anything and that he made it
only appear that Jesus died according to surah
4 verses 15758.
Well, Christians have always believed that God can
do anything,
but the question isn't what God can do.
The question is what God did.
And as far as the historical evidence is
concerned, unless we have sufficient
adequate historical evidence to the contrary, well, the
historian must conclude that Jesus was crucified
and that the process killed him.
Fact number 2 is the empty tomb.
Let me provide three reasons why can we
can be why we can be confident that
Jesus' tomb was empty.
1st is the Jerusalem factor.
Jesus was publicly executed and buried in Jerusalem,
and then his resurrection was proclaimed there publicly.
So it would have been impossible for Christianity
to get off the ground in Jerusalem if
his body was still in the tomb.
The Roman and Jewish authorities would have only
had to visit the tomb and view the
corpse and the misunderstanding
was over.
There is no evidence that this occurred. In
fact,
the response of the Jewish leadership was quite
different, and that leads us to my second
reason.
The Jewish leaders were reporting that the disciples
of Jesus had stolen the body.
This is reported by Justin Martyr and Tertullian,
and,
corroborating out, these are outside reports corroborating a
similar report by Matthew.
And it seems to be an attempt to
account for a missing corpse.
It was just like the 10 year old
who tells his teacher that the dog ate
his homework. You wouldn't say this if you
had it to turn in, And likewise, you
wouldn't claim that the disciples of Jesus had
stolen his body if it was still in
the tomb.
This information from unsympathetic
reports is very powerful in eyes of historians.
Paul Meyer, distinguished professor of ancient history at
Western Michigan University states the following,
Jewish polemic shared with Christians the conviction that
the sepulcher was empty, but gave natural explanations
for it, and such positive evidence within a
hostile source is the strongest
kind of evidence.
The third reason we can be confident about
the empty tomb is because the claim of
resurrection infers an empty tomb.
Oh, what I do there? Okay. It infers
an empty tomb.
The first Christians were Jews, and Jews held
a variety of views for, regarding the afterlife.
There were the Sadducees
who didn't believe in life after death. Rather,
they held that when you died, that was
it. No heaven.
So they were sad, you see.
Other Jews, like Josephus and Herod, held to
a form of reincarnation,
in,
Isaiah who
writes, your dead will come back to life.
Your corpses will rise up.
Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live
in the ground.
Now, this is all important because it helps
us understand what the early Christians meant when
they claimed that Jesus had been resurrected.
And so I'm
gonna understand what the early Christians meant when
they claimed that Jesus had been resurrected. They
meant that the body that dies is the
same body that is raised and transformed into
an immortal, glorious, and powerful body that will
never break down. And
and powerful body that will never break down.
And so, of course, this infers an empty
tomb when they're saying that Jesus was resurrected.
And you see, if if he wasn't resurrected,
and yet they still saw him in some
sort of a spiritual or ethereal ghostly kind
of state, they could have said that Jesus
was somehow still alive as as Jesus himself
had said, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still
living.
But they would not have said resurrection,
a term that referred to bringing the corpse
back to life.
So we discovered that there's good evidence for
the empty tomb, the Jerusalem factor, it's witnessed
by Jesus' enemies, and the claim of resurrection
infers an empty tomb.
The historical Jesus scholar, Geza Vermes, who rejects
the resurrection writes the following,
when every argument has been considered and weighed,
the only conclusion acceptable to the historian
must be that the women who set out
to pay their last respects to Jesus found
to their consternation
not a body but an empty tomb.
Fact number 3,
Jesus' friends believed that he had resurrected and
had appeared to them.
Now I'd like to focus on a major
passage, which is an early creed found in
1st Corinthians 15. It reads,
Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures, and that he was buried, and that
he was raised on the 3rd day according
to the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Peter, then to
the 12,
then he appeared to more than 500 at
one time, most of whom are still alive,
but some have died, then he appeared to
James, then to all the apostles.
There's a consensus among scholars that Paul did
not create this creed.
Not only does he say that he was
delivering to them what he himself had received
from others, which are 2 technical terms,
later used by the rabbis for the imparting
of oral tradition,
there were also a number of of non
Pauline terms. That is terms that Paul just
did not use,
as we look through all his letters.
Now, of course, one could propose that, Paul
was sat on,
the 1st century committee for the misleading of
future historians,
but,
most thinking people would not find this too,
convincing.
Now scholars state this creed as very early,
usually within 5 years of the crucifixion of
Jesus.
Jesus's death, burial, resurrection, and 5 post resurrection
appearances are reported. Appearances are reported.
Paul also adds that the disciples were teaching
this and refers to it as kerygma,
a term used to identify the official and
formal teaching of the early Christian leaders.
Of a special interest are the writings
of 2 leaders in the early church, who
were actually mentored by 2 of the leading
apostles,
the apostle Peter and the apostle John, and
those are Clement of Rome and Polycarp.
Now, Clement of Rome,
who mentored the apostle Peter, mentor mentored by
the apostle Peter reported that the disciples had
taught the resurrection of Jesus.
He writes,
therefore, having received orders and being fully assured
by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ
and full of faith in the word of
God, the disciples went forth.
In fact, Clement mentions Jesus death and resurrection
twice,
and a disciple of John named Polycarp mentions
the death of Jesus 6 times and his
resurrection 5 times.
So they were getting this from the original
apostles whom they knew.
Now all of these fill the criterion of
early reports, the criterion of eyewitness reports, and
the criterion of multiple independent reports.
We have what amounts to be a certifiably
official
proclamation
of the disciples
on the resurrection of Jesus.
Simply put, the earliest
followers of Jesus
were proclaiming his death and resurrection
even before Paul's conversion.
Now, we can go further though.
A number of ancient sources report that these
disciples were willing to suffer continuously
and even die for their beliefs that Jesus
had been resurrected.
Now, of course, this doesn't prove that their
beliefs were true. We're all too aware that
others of, of people of all different sorts
of religious beliefs are willing to die and
suffer for their Five lives remaining.
Willing to suffer and die for their convictions.
However, I'm not saying that their beliefs were
true because they,
were willing to die for it. What I
am saying though is they were willing to
die for it because they sincerely regarded their
beliefs as being true.
Liars make poor martyrs.
So we can establish that the original disciples
of Jesus not only claimed that he rose
from the dead, they really believed
it. Paula Fredriksen, a skeptical scholar from Boston
University writes, the disciples conviction that they had
seen the risen Christ
is historical
bedrock.
Facts known, past doubting.
Fact number 4, Jesus' foes believed that he
had resurrected and appeared to them.
Paul terrorized the early church. He arrested Christians,
beat, imprisoned them, and consented to their executions
for being Christians, and then he became one
because he believed the risen Jesus appeared to
him.
What evidence do we have for this? Well,
Paul himself testifies to it. Luke confirms it
in Acts, and there appears to be an
early oral tradition that predates the writing of
the New Testament and says, he who persecutes
the church or he who persecuted the church
now proclaims the faith he once sought to
destroy.
So we have early eyewitness and multiple testimonies
to Paul's conversion.
Folks, this is the kind of evidence historians
drool over.
Moreover,
we can establish that Paul was willing to
suffer and die for these beliefs, because,
he really believed that Jesus had risen from
the dead. Again, liars make poor martyrs.
In addition to Paul, we can add that
the skeptic James, the brother of Jesus, likewise,
converted to Christianity
when he too believed that the risen Jesus
appeared to him.
The gospels report the embarrassing fact that none
of Jesus' brothers believed in him during his
ministry.
Now most historians regard this as as authentic
because
this would have been extremely embarrassing and potentially
damaging to the early church. And so the
criterion of embarrassment applies here. And, thus, it's
very interesting
when later on, it's reported that James became
a leader in the Jerusalem church after Jesus'
death. And then later on, we have three
reports, even from Josephus, a non Christian, and
also Hagosippus and Clement of Alexandria,
that James,
believed his brother was the messiah and died
as a martyr for it. Now what on
earth would create such a radical change?
Most believe that it's, the answer is in
the creed mentioned a few moments ago that
says, then Jesus appeared to James.
Now with this in mind, in, my final
2 minutes, I'd like to, pull all of
this together
and make 2 major contentions.
1st,
there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion
that Jesus died by crucifixion and rose from
the dead.
And second, there are no sufficient reasons for
preferring the Muslim view that God rescued Jesus
from death.
In support of my first major contention, I
provided 3 major historical facts.
I arrived at these not by appealing to
the divine inspiration of the new testament,
but by numerous criteria for establishing historical facts
employed by professional historians.
Because these,
four facts are so strongly evidenced, any reasonable
hypothesis is going to have to account for
all of them and do so without strain,
and as though, you you can't do it
as though trying to force a piece of
a puzzle to fit where it doesn't go.
That's not a good historical hypothesis.
Now the position that, that, Jesus died and
rose from the dead,
that hypothesis
explains all of the facts and does so
very easily without straining.
And so,
in the absence of any equally plausible
explanation, Jesus' resurrection is the best explanation of
the historical facts.
So what about alternate theories?
Well, tomorrow at 1 o'clock, I don't know
where it is here at UC Davis, but
I'm gonna be giving a lecture and dealing
with a lot of the objections that One
minute remaining. The secular,
folks deal with secular objections.
But, tonight, I'm just concerned about the Muslim
view, and, in a moment, we're gonna hear
an alternate theory from Ali.
Will it be based on sound historical principles
used by historians or or in that kind
of a manner?
Or will it be more of a Quran
says that I believe it and that settles
it? Or, well, it just doesn't agree with
my theological presupposition, so I can't be bothered
by the historical facts.
Well, we'll see in a moment,
and I'll be interested to see how he
does provide evidence, because honestly, I don't think
he has any.
So,
I'd like to encourage all of us to
look for 2 things in Ali's presentation that
he'll give in a moment. 1st, does he
present any historical evidence to support his rescue
theory? And second, does he have any method
for determining what happened in the past, rather
than just because it agrees with his rhetoric?
We'll have a spirited debate. It'll be fun,
but when all the dust settles and you're
able to sort through the rhetoric, you'll see
that there's only one explanation, and that is
that Jesus rose from the dead. Thank you.
God tells us in his final revelation, the
holy Quran,
Mary, the messenger of God. But they did
not kill him,
nor did they crucify him.
But it was made to appear so unto
them and those who differ therein are full
of doubts with no certain noses, but follow
only conjecture,
guesswork,
hearsay.
For a surety, they killed him not. Then
what happened to
him?
God raised him up unto himself. He ascended
unto God.
And God is great and wise. Now the
question that we Muslims get all the time
is,
why don't you Muslims just read the New
Testament?
Right?
Just read the New Testament. All 4 canonical
gospels are essentially 4 extended passion narratives,
and the crucifixion of Christ is central. And
even if the gospels were written at the
end of the 1st century, they still predate
the Quran by over 500 years. Who does
the holy prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
think he is? Expounding this apparent gnostic Christology.
He's an unlettered man, a shepherd from Mecca.
What does he know? I can imagine the
Pharisee saying the very same thing to Jesus
Christ, peace be upon him. Who do you
think you are telling us that we've overlooked
the weightier demands of the law, calling us
blind guides and whited sepulchers and vipers and
hypocrites. Our traditions date back 1500 years to
Moses. You're just a peasant carpenter from Nazareth.
Right?
Now, certainly in general terms,
the closer to the source, the more accurate.
This is true. But God is outside of
time. God is the creator of time. The
past, present and future are all the same
to him. Our duty is to recognize truth
whenever it comes to us and submit to
it.
We hear and we affirm. And you know
what?
Sometimes,
the truth hurts. Who spoke the truth? Moses
or Jesus? Both. But at the time of
Jesus, peace be upon him, who spoke the
truth? Jesus or the so called heirs of
the Mosaic tradition, the scribes and the Pharisees?
Jesus, peace be upon him, who taught the
Jews the true spirit of the law in
light of the gospel,
but never abrogated the law. For as long
as heaven and earth endure, not a jot
or a tittle shall pass by the law.
Paul is the abrogator of the law, who
in 14 letters and epistles fails to accurately
quote Jesus one time. He never quotes from
oral tradition. John 316,
the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer,
the Beatitudes, or even a single parable given
by Christ according to the canonical Gospels. Can
you imagine a Christian missionary going into Pakistan
today
and evangelizing Pakistan and never teaching them the
Lord's prayer?
Never quoting his master one time? Then what's
he saying? And who is telling him to
say it? Mister Lacona has written a book,
Paul meets Mohammed. Right?
Paul meets Mohammed. Why didn't he call it
Jesus meets Mohammed?
Right? Doesn't that sound more logical? Jesus meets
Mohammed? The reason is because Jesus Christ, peace
be upon him, and the Holy Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, are in perfect agreement.
I agree with him. Paul is problematic.
And the alleged crucifixion and resurrection
of the Jewish Messiah is the essence, the
crux, the foundation of Pauline Christianity.
A stumbling block for the Jews and utter
foolishness to the Greeks. He says in 1st
Corinthians 1517,
if Christ is not raised, our faith is
in vain. You are yet in your sins.
In other words, if no crucifixion,
no resurrection,
no Christianity. He says in 2nd Timothy 28,
remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David,
and he was not from the seed of
David, but that's a different debate, was raised
from the dead according to my
gospel. That's the gospel of Paul and the
Hellenizers.
That's not the gospel that was in Galatia
when Paul wrote his epistle to them. Isn't
it amazing?
Just 20 years after the Ascension of Christ,
there was another gospel in Galatia and apparently
in Corinth also, free of Pauline dogmatism. A
gospel that predated Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Did that gospel say Jesus was killed and
resurrected from the dead?
Allahu Alam. We don't Allah knows. We don't
have we don't have access to that. Who
spoke the truth? Jesus or Muhammad peace be
upon them? Both. But at the time of
the holy prophet Muhammad, who spoke the truth?
Muhammad, peace be upon him, or the so
called followers of Jesus? We say, Muhammad
the spirit of truth, the apocalyptic son of
man, the universal messenger and seal of the
prophets. He glorified and honored Jesus by telling
the world the truth about him.
God saved Jesus from crucifixion and death. In
fact, according to most Christians, the historical name
of Jesus of Nazareth was Yeshua. Look up
the name Yeshua in any Bible concordance. Yeshua,
like the Lexicon Strong's concordance. What does his
name mean? He is saved. That's what his
name literally means.
Now Christians believe that before the foundation of
the world, God the Father and God the
Son entered into a metaphysical covenant, stipulating that
the latter would enter into human flesh in
the year 4000,
4000 after Adam, and commit an act of
self immolation,
suicide essentially,
to vicariously atone for the sins of mankind.
But look how he's acting. Let's analyze this.
On the garden,
in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount
of Olives, begging for his life
with sweat like blood.
Remove this cup away from me, yet not
as I will but as thou will. And
according to his own teaching, God must answer
him. He says, God will grant you whatever
you ask him. Would any father among you
give his serp give his son a serpent
when he asked for a fish?
Would any father among you do that? I
wouldn't do that to my son. But we're
supposed to believe that God did it to
his son, son in quotes. And we're supposed
to believe that rather than,
answering his beloved son's request, he was arrested,
mocked, spat upon, beaten beyond recognition,
flogged down to his bowels, nailed to a
cross between 2 thieves, and sent to *
for 3 days?
My respected brothers and sisters, this is not
love. This is not love. This is first
degree murder. In fact, the rejection is so
severe that while he's literally hanging on the
cross, he wails, Elahi Elahi, lama sabachthani.
Are these the words of a willing sacrifice?
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why did you allow this to happen
to me? Why did you ignore me when
I called upon you? The real question is,
why does God need to sacrifice himself
in order to save people he created
from his own wrath?
It's a paradox. The Christian answer is because
blood must be shed. There must be sacrifice
and who better to shed his blood than
God himself. This idea of dying and rising
savior man gods called sotters, very very prevalent
in ancient Greco Roman mystery religion. Jesus tells
the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 9, quoting the
Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh,
Hosea 66. He says, go and learn what
this text means in Hebrew.
I require mercy,
not sacrifice.
Mercy, not sacrifice. And the knowledge of God
more than burnt offerings. It's not about blood
and sacrifice anymore. That doesn't affect the heart.
It's about believing in a merciful God and
having knowledge of him. That's Islam. A scribe
tells Jesus in Mark chapter 12 that the
oneness of God, the love of God, and
the love of neighbors
means far more than any and all whole
offerings
and sacrifices. You understand what the word all
implies,
whether it's an ox, a sheep, a goat,
a lamb, or a man. Now if Jesus
were sent to die for our sins, he
would have said not more than my sacrifice.
How does he respond to this Pharisee, his
so called enemy? He says, ye are not
far from the Malakutha d'Allaha,
which is Syriac for the kingdom of God.
Yet Paul in Ephesians calls Jesus an offering
and a sacrifice.
Besides, how can a crucified God be justified?
Through prophecy?
The disparity between Christian theology and Judaism is
so wide
that many early Christians
actually believe that the God of the Old
Testament was a different God, an inferior god.
They called him the demiurge, the illegitimate
son of Sophia, the 12th aeon of the
Pleroma.
There are 2 gods, they said. This is
what the Marcionites believed. Well, you might say,
well that was just a small splinter group
of gnostic heretics who faded out of history.
No. Probably the greatest pre Nicene, a Christian
apologist and heresy hunter of all time, Tertullian
of Carthage, He wrote a 5 volume refutation
of Marcionism.
This was a major
Christian
movement. Yet, Tertullian was denied a sainthood
because he died as a Montanist. He believed
that the Pericleate of the Gospel of John
was this man Montanist of Phrygia. In other
words, he died a heretic. Origen of Alexandria,
also a famous proto orthodox
theologian who wrote over a 1,000 books. He
believed that Jesus was equal to the father
by the transference of his being and equally
and ultimately
subordinate to and created by the father on
first principles, book 1, section 3. In other
words, he died a heretic. What's my point?
My point is, who's to say that the
orthodox Christian position during the 1st 3 centuries
was not the belief that Christ was never
crucified or that he wasn't God. And especially
in light of what was found at Nag
Hammadi in 1945,
and I'll get to that little doozy in
a minute, God willing.
The Ebionites didn't believe that he was God
nor did the Nazarenes. And these were 1st
century, Syriac speaking, Palestinian
Christians.
In fact, they also believe Paul was an
apostate,
the Ebionites.
It was only after the synod at Nicaea,
in 325 of the common era, that these
terms orthodox and heresy
came to mean what they mean today. And
it's anachronistic
to use them before that time. It's like
saying Jesus and his apostles had cell phones.
It's just like saying that. My belief is
that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was
the penultimate messenger of God, meaning second to
last, who confirmed the theology of the Torah,
Which is what the Quran says. And also
gave his people glad tidings.
That's what the gospel is. Bushra, glad tidings,
good news of a messenger to come after
him, Ismuhu Ahmad. His name shall be Ahmad,
which is the superlative form of the name
Muhammad.
In the Syriac lectionary, he's called Munahma.
In the movie, The Passion of the Christ,
he says,
That's from the movie The Passion of the
Christ in Syria. Do not be afraid. Munahma
is coming who speaks the truth about Allah.
But back to my point.
The Torah says, thou shalt not commit murder.
The Torah says, whoever is hanged on a
tree is accursed by God. The Torah says
drinking blood is forbidden. A perpetual statute. Blood
and Kosher. The Torah says in book of
Deuteronomy,
every man shall be put to death for
his own sin. The Torah says in Numbers
23/19,
God is not a man. Yet Christians believe
that God became a man who sacrificed his
son, essentially himself, by hanging him on a
tree, thus accursing him to vicariously atone for
the sins of mankind. And how was this
celebrated? By drinking his blood and eating his
flesh.
So ultimately, I don't agree with them. There's
only one God. The Marcionites had a point
regarding the Bible. They had a point. You
have to keep it real. They had a
point. Now let's look at these 4 Gospels.
These are 4 theologically motivated. In other words,
subjective accounts of Jesus' passion in reality,
so called passion, that were written many decades
after his ascension
in a foreign language to Jesus and his
apostles. None of the evangelists ever identify themselves
and none of them ever claimed to be
writing while inspired by the Holy Ghost. They're
pseudonymous,
which is an antiseptic way of saying they're
forgeries.
As the Quran says, their forgeries have deceived
them even about their own religion. They weren't
even named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John until
the end of the 2nd century.
Now back to my original question.
Why don't you Muslims just read the New
Testament? Did you know that there were several
Christian denominations
in the 1st 3 centuries that did not
believe Jesus was crucified?
A fraction of their scriptures have been found
at Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Why were they buried there? Because shortly after
the church synods at Nicaea and Constantinople
in 325 and 381 of the common era
respectively,
Any Christian community that did not dance to
the Trinitarian
tune was subsequently
exterminated
and their scriptures burned. Many of these communities
went underground
and buried their scriptures in the sands. Hence,
the Nag Hammadi Library. Hence, the discovery of
the Gospel of Thomas, which many scholars believe
predates the Synoptic tradition.
Right? Why was it not included into the
final New Testament canon? Because it lacks a
passion
narrative.
Jesus must die and be raised or else
Christianity is in vain, according to Paul.
They found the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter which
actually states a semblance,
a look alike was killed in Jesus's place.
Well, that can
which is almost what the Quran says. They
found the second treatise of the Great Seth,
which says Simon of Cyrene was killed in
Jesus' place. You know, the man who bore
the cross according to the synoptic tradition, he
was killed. Other recent discoveries, Papyrus Egrton, number
2, also called the unknown gospel, no passion
narrative. The Gospel of Peter, which was extremely
popular in the 1st 4 centuries.
A docetist gospel. It says that when they
were nailing Jesus to the cross, he was
silent as if he felt no pain. That
wasn't good enough for the proto orthodox and
it was deemed heretical. The gospel of Barnabas,
which is on a 5th century papal list
of forbidden books, it says that it was
Judas Iscariot, but that's in a 14th century
manuscript. So So I don't give it a
lot of weight. There's too big of a
gap there. In the Acts of John, the
son of Zebedee, written in the 2nd century,
Jesus is quoted as saying, you heard that
I suffered yet I suffered not. That I
was pierced and hanged, but I was not
hanged. That blood flowed for me, yet it
did not flow. Therefore, I have suffered none
of the things they will say of me.
And finally, you have the sayings gospel, also
called q, a source document that Matthew and
Luke had access to. Most scholars believe was
written in the fifties, which makes it pre
Pauline. Q contained the Sermon on the Mount,
the Lord's Prayer, the sign of Jonah, the
ministry of John the Baptist and many parables.
But where is Q now?
Lost, burned, and probably buried. Why? No passion
narrative.
That's why. So you have the Docetes, Basilidians,
Marcionites, Corinthians, Corporations, all of these communities.
So don't ask us. Let's resurrect these extinct
Christian communities
and let's ask them, why didn't you just
read the new testament?
Why didn't you just read the new testament?
What's the answer? Because there was
no New Testament.
Athanasius was the first to propose
the present 27 books as authoritative and final.
That was in 367
of the Common Era, 340
years after the ascension of Jesus Christ, peace
be upon him. And it wasn't until 3.93
of the Common Era at Hippo
that an ecumenical council was undertaken to canonize
the present 27 books. That's why the oldest
versions, complete versions of the New Testament in
Greek date to this period, 375
of the Common Era, the Codex Vaticanus, the
Codex Sinaiticus.
5 minutes left to respond. So this belief
that Christ wasn't killed
is not a novel Muslim idea created by
the Quran.
This is a fact. It was a Christian
belief
that predated
the formation
of the New Testament canon, possibly an orthodox
belief. A belief that perfectly agrees
to established
Jewish messianic
expectations. And I'll talk about that when I
come back, God willing. In closing, crucifying Jesus
would make him accursed
according to the law of God. Make him
accursed. And that's what Paul says in the
book of Galatians. He was a curse.
No, sir. The Quran says exactly the opposite.
That he was a blessed man.
He was a blessed man. That's why I
tell Christians all the time,
I love
Jesus Christ.
Peace and blessings of God be upon him.
The son of Mary, peace be upon him.
I love him too much
to become a Christian. He's not a curse.
Again, it's not with Jesus Christ, peace be
upon him, that we have issues with. Our
issues are with the canon of the New
Testament
and Christian theology.
We love Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.
He's honored in the Quran as Al Rasul,
a messenger of God. An Nabi, a prophet
of God. Al Masih,
the Christ of God. The true Jewish Messiah.
Amongst the company of the most righteous.
In the company of those nearest to God.
The Quran confirms his miracles
such as healing the blind and the lepers
and raising the dead.
By the permission of God. He is considered
one of the 5 most exalted human beings
to ever walk the planet Earth. But the
Quran also corrects as well as confirms, you
see.
And,
God willing, I'll come back,
and after hearing from my colleague, mister Lacona,
and, we'll talk more about,
prophecies and things of that nature. God willing.
Thank you very much.
Mister Laconah, you have the floor for 15
minutes.
Thank you, Ali.
If you recall in my opening statement, I
said that I was gonna approach this as
a historian because you have to look at
this question,
historically speaking. This is how we're going to
establish the 1st century fate of Jesus.
And recall that what I did was I
provided 4 historical facts
that were grounded in criteria,
commonly used by professional historians,
such as the criterion for early reports, the
criterion for eyewitness reports, the criterion for multiple
multiple
independent reports,
the criterion of embarrassing reports,
and a number of others.
And, based on this, we established 4 facts,
and then we argued for the best explanation,
and we said the resurrection of Jesus fits
all includes all of those facts and does
so without straining any. So in the absence
of any plausible,
natural,
other explanation, natural or even supernatural,
Jesus' death and resurrection is the best explanation
for the facts.
What's interesting is even though I presented these
four facts and gave all these reasons to
it, Ali didn't respond with a single argument
against these. And so for all practical purposes,
this debate is over, and Ali has lost.
But we have a lot of time left,
and so I'd like to have fun with
some of the things that he, did mention
within his opening statement.
He first mentioned that,
Paul never quotes Jesus he says.
And so,
he must not be even following his teachings.
Well, he does quote Jesus in,
first Corinthians,
chapter 11, and he quotes his saints from
the Last Supper. The reason Paul doesn't talk
a lot about the historical Jesus is that
is not his,
his,
reason for writing. If you picked up Ali's
book, In Defense of Islam, it doesn't give
a historical account of the historical Mohammed and
why we should believe certain things about him.
That's because that's not his purpose in writing,
and Paul wasn't writing a history of Jesus.
He wasn't there when Jesus was doing his
ministry.
He was writing to address,
various issues that was going on in the
church in his day. Now, he says, he
wasn't even preaching the same gospel because he
says,
he calls it my gospel. This is a
different gospel than what the apostles were teaching,
he says. But this is mistaken.
He said let let me say this too.
This is from his book, In Defense of
Islam, page 324. He says, you will notice
that when cornered, Christians often resort to slander
and ridicule.
Make sure that if you plan on debating
a Christian in a public forum, you let
him know during a preliminary meeting that you
have 0 tolerance for such tactics.
Remind him that he must stay on the
topic as you will do the same. Have
a strong moderator who will not be afraid
of enforcing the rules.
And and and I agree with this. I
wished he had followed his own advice though.
What does Paul's gospel have to do with
the historical facts that I provided?
The thing is with Paul,
he's not preaching the gospel that is different
from, what went to the Gentiles.
He is preaching
a gospel,
and if just read the commentaries. The gospel
that he's talking about is one that says,
that the gospel is now available, not only
to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles.
Because even though Jesus, on a number of
occasions,
talked about how the gospel would need to
be preached to all nations into and to
the world,
at the end, after he had risen from
the dead and ascended,
it seemed like it was,
Israel centric, Jew centric,
and Paul was saying, no. We've got to
go out and talk to the Gentiles as
well. It's not limited. That's what he means
by my gospel. And if you look at,
Galatians chapter 2, if you look at,
Acts 15, you'll find that the Jerusalem apostles,
Peter, James, and John, the pillars of the
church, shook on this with Paul. They shook
hands and said, we certify your teachers as
being in accordance with our own. And proof
of this is if you go to the
Apostolic Fathers, this will be Clement of Rome
and Polycarp, who I mentioned in my opening
statement,
disciples of the apostles themselves, of these Jerusalem
apostles, they say the same thing about the
death, the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, they
speak in glowing terms of Paul,
calling him the blessed and glorious,
disciple.
The blessed and glorious Paul. In fact, they
quote his writings and refer to it as
part of the sacred scriptures.
You're not going to be doing this if
Paul is teaching essentially different doctrines
than what your mentors were.
He says, well, I'm, you see, find Jesus
begging for his life, having second thoughts in
the garden, and on the cross, he's crying,
why have you forsaken me, God?
Folks, this is precisely why historians regard these
as historic historical.
These are embarrassing statements. Jewish martyrdom
literature, which are souped up with, embellished details
about how, their the Jewish heroes died,
courageous deaths.
I'm not doubting that they died courageous deaths,
but it's very easy to tell where legend
separates from history within these, and yet, they're
not doing these within the gospel accounts. They're
even reporting the embarrassing facts, and this be
speaks of their historicity.
He says, well, God would have heard his
prayer. Well, Jesus did pray, said never the
the second half of that prayer after a
say, Lord, if it be your will, let
this cup pass. He says, nevertheless, not as
I will, but as you will. That is
Jesus' prayer, the whole prayer. So don't just
Ali, just don't select
half of the verse. You gotta look at
the other half too. This is a selective
criticism, and we find this throughout his writings
as well, through Ali's writings that is. He
says, well, why would God need a sacrifice?
Folks, this is theological.
This is a theological topic. It is not
the topic of,
the reasonableness
of atonement within a Muslim frame of of
reference is not our debate this evening. And
I would say to Ali, we've got to
put,
history first and look at what we can
what history tells us, and then we try
to work out the theology.
And if history points to the death and
resurrection of Jesus, it may be time for
Ali to change his theology.
He says that Jesus said,
mercy, not sacrifice. But Jesus also said that
this that he came,
not to be served, but to serve and
to give his life as a ransom for
many. We have to look at the totality
of what Jesus says, not just select what
we want to hear and avoid the rest.
This is a criterion
of convenience, folks. This isn't a criterion of
early reports or a criterion of eyewitness reports.
This is what Ali is using as a
criterion of convenience. In other words, if it's
convenient with my own views, well, then it
must be historical. But if it isn't, well,
this must have been something just rejected. We
can't trust
it. Well, this is Folks, this is a
cafeteria criticism. It's no different than you going
through the school cafeteria
and picking what you like for dinner, and
leaving what you don't like. Well, that may
work at the school cafeteria when you're gonna
eat, but it doesn't work in academic discussion,
and if Ali were to use this in
a history 101 class, he would flunk.
He also mentioned he says that the, one
guy was talking and Jesus said, folks or
he said to the guy, you're not far
from the kingdom of God. Well, the last
time I checked in Aramaic, Greek, and English,
not far does not mean that you're there.
Jesus says, you're not far. He says, you're
on the right track, but you still have
to go further. You have to give yourself
for my name.
Tertullian and Origen, he mentioned, and and these
these were early church fathers, and he says,
many regarded them as heretics. Again, that's irrelevant
to our discussion this evening. That has to
do with,
theology,
not with the historical,
events we're talking about what on the 1st
century fate of Jesus. Again, I encourage Ali
to get back on the topic. I've come
to debate the 1st century fate of Jesus,
not the theological differences between Christians and Muslim.
He says, how now it's orthodox? We've got
the non kamati manuscripts.
We've got the the,
the treaties of Seth and all these other
ones.
So how do we know what's orthodox? Folks,
this is why historical
investigation with sound historical methods
is so important, and that's how we can
weed through this stuff.
All these other things, the Gnostic gospels and
everything, are much later.
The earliest Gnostic gospel is probably the gospel
of Judas, which was written around 1:50.
The next one would be the gospel of
Thomas.
Someone I've debated on a couple of occasions,
Elaine Pagels at Princeton, thinks it's back in
90, but hardly anyone thinks that. They place
it around,
in fact, Nicholas Perrin, who, did his PhD
dissertation on this and now has a book
out on the subject, has, put together a
very cogent argument on dating of Thomas and
showed that it's originally not in Greek, but
in Syriac,
because certain catchwords
make sense, and the whole gospel makes sense
in that context. In Syriac, it doesn't make
sense in in, Greek,
or Coptic, what it's found in. And because
of that, he says he even ties it
and says,
Thomas was familiar with the Diatesserin, which was
written by Tatian around the year 170,
which postdates Thomas to 170.
So it's not as early as many scholars,
I shouldn't even say many, because not a
only a only a few I thought it
was very early,
those on the theological fringe of the theological
left.
He said Mohammed is coming, and it's predicted
in The Passion of the Christ.
Okay.
Mohammed's coming? What does that have to do
with any?
What does that have to do with anything?
Folks, let me conclude with just a little
bit of, he's gonna rely on the Quran.
So let's talk about that for a moment.
How much time do I have left?
About 5 minutes. 5 minutes? Okay. I wanna
talk about the, the Quran, and,
let me grab something.
Should we believe the Quran?
And I think we shouldn't. I don't think
it's worthy of our,
of our trust. And here's why, the Quran,
well, there's a couple of reasons. Let me
go back to this. Jesus predicts his violent
and imminent death. We can prove this historically.
Let me give you 6 historical reports very
quickly.
These Jesus' predictions about his imminent and violent
death
are in early reports. There are multiple independent
reports,
embarrassing reports. They meet the criterion of dissimilarity.
I wish I had time to go over
this. The criterion of plausibility, and they lack
signs of theology. Notice that none of them
do. They talk about the atonement or the
significance of Jesus' death.
There is no reason to question that Jesus
predicted his imminent and violent death,
but that creates a problem
for Muslims, because of what we would call
the Islamic catch 22.
You see, if Jesus did not die as
he predicted,
that makes him a false prophet, and the
Quran calls him a true prophet. And so
if he died an imminent and violent death,
imminent being in the 1st century, that means
the Quran is wrong.
The other option is that Jesus died,
as he predicted,
which means the Quran is wrong too, because
the Quran in Sura 41 57, as Ali
quoted, said, he did not die. It only
appeared that way. Folks, either way, the Quran
is wrong. You can't get out of it
by saying that, he made these predictions while,
not acting in the capacity of a prophet,
because he did. For example, in Mark 83132,
he began to teach them that the son
of man must suffer many things and be
rejected by the elders, chief priests, scribes, be
killed, and after 3 days rise again, and
he was stating the matter plainly.
Also, in John 1224 to 32, he says,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains alone, but if
it dies, it bears much fruit. And I,
if I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself.
Here, Jesus is teaching about bearing fruit and
predicting his re his death and resurrection,
or his death there,
his predictance for coming death in order to
do that. So, again, we've got the Islamic
catch 22. Either way, the Quran is wrong,
and we can establish that Jesus did predict
these, his imminent and violent death.
I think even just as damaging is the
Quran's test for divine authorship.
The Quran says in Sura 103738,
this Quran is not such as can be
produced by other than Allah. On the contrary,
it is confirmation of revelations
that went before it, and a fuller explanation
of the book, wherein there is no doubt,
from the lord of the worlds, or do
they say, he forged it, meaning Mohammed.
Say, bring then a Surah like unto it
and call to your aid anyone you can
besides Allah, if it be ye, speak the
truth.
Now what's interesting is many times Muslims won't
even appeal to this. They like to appeal
to bogus
scientific evidence, which is only accepted,
by a few scientists outside of the Islamic
community.
Many most scientists have not found it persuasive,
and I wanted to ask Muslim apologists who
do this, why do you feel that you
have a superior test to validate the Quran
than what Allah gave? He only gave one
test, and it's this test that I've just
given you here.
Muslims curse and threaten imprisonment and death to
those who wanna take the test the Quran
invites others to take.
Again, instead, they focus on dubious scientific evidence
that has convinced few.
But folks, this is like a used car
lot that invites people over the radio to
come test drive their cars, because they're better
than anyone else, any other cars. And when
you get there, the used car salesman doesn't
let you test drive the car, but instead
points you to the new tires.
Folks, don't buy it.
El Elyse says, you may marvel at the
words of Wordsworth and or Coleridge more than
Shakespeare, but you will never make the mistake
of comparing the Quran's eloquence to anything.
Well, take the test. Read surah 1, and
then turn to read Psalm 19. You'll find
Psalm 19 is a whole lot more pregnant
with thought and meaning and beauty in its
words. You can't argue that, well, it's not
written Arabic. Arabic has this flow to it.
Well, Hebrew has this flow to it in
the Psalms because it's a song.
So it all comes down it all comes
down to what you like better, Arabic or
Hebrew. It's an arbitrary choice arbitrary choice, like
choosing between McDonald's and Burger King.
The True For Khan is a book that
came out a couple of years ago that
was translated in that was
understand classical
he says, no. It's the new holy Quran.
And he jumped out of his seat and
screamed, impossible. And he said, well, you've just
said it said it yourself.
I myself contacted a guy who has a
PhD in Arabic dialects at an Ivy League
school. I'm not gonna give his name for
obvious reasons. And he said, it seems to
me he read the true Furqan. He hadn't
read it, and I asked him to read
it, and he read it, and he got
back to me, and he says, it seems
to me that the Arabic and the true
Furqan is good. It does not have any
obscure terms like the Quran, and in some
places, it seems more beautiful to me than
anything I've seen in the Quran. There it
is, folk. The only thing that Ali has
to stand was the Quran. It's flunked its
own test. It was not from God. Thank
you.
Thank you, mister Locona.
I would like to hand over the floor
to mister Itay.
I'd like to remind you that after mister
Itay is finished, in 15 minutes, we'll be
collecting, the cards that you have questions on.
If you haven't already, write the name of
the person to which the question is addressed.
I'd like to remind the audience one more
time to refrain from any applause or any
interaction with the speakers.
Miss
the resurrection cannot be proved historically.
It is the
least plausible explanation for the empty tomb, and
is outright rejected by objective historians.
It is not historical fact. It is a
faith conviction.
It is a faith conviction.
This is a theological debate. This is at
the heart of the issue.
Let's talk about prophecy.
You know, Christians asked me, what about Psalm
22 or Psalm 34? The the dogs have
encircled me, they divide up my garments, he
keepeth all his bones. Aren't these prophecies of
the crucifixion? What about Isaiah chapter 53? Right?
The golden egg of passion predictions. The first
frame of the movie, The Passion of the
Christ, was a passage from Isaiah chapter 53.
The suffering servant, he is smitten and afflicted,
a man of sorrows. He was wounded for
our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities. He was as a
dumb lamb led to the slaughter. He was
cut off out of the land of the
living. So if this isn't Jesus, then who
is it then? I'll tell you who it
is. It's Jeremiah.
God sent Jeremiah to the Bani Israel, the
Israelites, the chief priests to warn them about
the impending Babylonian
doom on the horizon. He was rejected, beaten,
mocked, whipped in prison and finally killed for
his troubles. He says in Jeremiah 11/19,
I was as a dumb lamb led to
the slaughter. I was ignorant of the snares
I had laid for me. I was cut
off out of the land of the living.
He uses the same verbiage of Isaiah chapter
53 and applies it to himself. Scholars believe
that either Isaiah chapter 53 was written by
Isaiah or another prophet prophesizing what prophesizing Jeremiah
or it was written in retrospect in Babylon
by someone, a scribe who remember who was
remembering what had happened to Jeremiah. Either way,
it has nothing to do with the Jewish
Messiah. Let's look at the real messianic prophecies.
You You know, Isaiah chapter 53, Psalm 22,
the word messiah, mashiach
in in Hebrew does not appear anywhere in
the text of these passages, yet Christians qualify
them as messianic predictions.
But when it does appear, like in Psalm
20 verse 6, it's suddenly ignored.
Why? Because of what it says? This is
what it says and I quote it to
you in the language of David himself. He
says,
I know God saves his Messiah.
He shall hear him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.
Or Psalm 91,
which was believed by 1st century Jews to
be a messianic prophecy. As evidence in the
new testament,
no disaster shall befall you. No calamity will
come near you for he has given his
angels charge over you to keep you in
your ways. They shall bear you up in
their hands, lest ye dash your foot against
a stone. The Jewish Messiah will not even
stub his toe
because he has set his love upon me.
Therefore, I will deliver him on high because
he has known my name. He shall call
upon me and I shall answer him. Remember,
my my father, remove this cup away from
me. Yet not as I will but as
thou will, which is how a Muslim speaks.
He says, insha'Allah, God willing, if it is
your will, I will be with him in
trouble. I will deliver him and honor him
with long life. I will satisfy him and
show him my my salvation.
Or Psalm 18, he delivers me from my
enemies. Thou liftest me up above those
who rise against me.
Exactly what the Quran says. I will be
with him in trouble. I will deliver him
and honor him with long life. I will
satisfy him and show him my salvation.
I'm sorry.
Great deliverance giveth he to his king and
show with mercy unto his anointed, his Messiah,
his Christ. Now by one ten of the
common era, the so called gnostic elements within
Christianity had recruited far too many people. So
the Yochanan community turned out the gospel of
John, basically, to tie up the loose ends.
This gospel was written primarily
to resolve 2 main issues,
to prove the deity of Jesus. Number 1,
how does it do this?
By employing these I am statements. Right? I
am the way, the truth and the life.
Before Abraham was, I am. I am the
resurrection and the life. I am the true
vine. I am the bread of life. I
am this and I am that. These are
not found in the synoptic gospels. You know,
all 4 evangelists mentioned that Jesus rode a
donkey into Jerusalem. He rode a donkey into
Jerusalem. All 4 evangelists. Is it really binding
on my faith? Is it really binding on
my salvation that Jesus wrote a donkey into
Jerusalem? Is it really that important? No. But
the essential divine claims are missing from 3
quarters of the gospels.
Also, it was written to prove his death
and resurrection.
How does it do this? By contradicting the
synoptics. We are told in the synoptic tradition
that when Jesus was being led to be
crucified, the Romans pulled a man out of
the crowd, the Simon of Cyrene, and compelled
him to bear the cross. There were many
Christians in the 1st 2nd century who believed
it was Simon who was killed, like the
Basilidians.
So what does John do? He completely omits
this entire episode and says, Jesus bore his
own cross to Golgotha, thus contradicting
the synoptics.
We are told in the synoptic gospels
that at the most crucial juncture in the
life of Christ, all of his disciples forsook
him and fled. Not a single one of
them was witnessed to the crucifixion.
Yet in the gospel of John, the beloved
disciple, the son of Zebedee was at the
crucifixion. In fact, standing at the foot of
the cross, thus contradicting the synoptics. We are
told in the synoptics, the gospel of Luke,
that after just 3 hours on the cross,
3 hours on the cross, this news was
brought to Pilate, he marveled.
This man is dead already. This is a
man who made a career of crucifying Jews.
And he was there to see the beat
down and the flogging and this and that,
yet he marveled, this man is already dead.
You see,
many Christians in the 1st 2nd century believed
Jesus swooned that he survived the cross. Right?
Thus fulfilling the sign of Jonah, which is
from the q source document, which predates Paul.
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after signs.
No sign shall be given unto it except
the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as
Jonah was 3 days 3 nights in the
belly of the whale, he was alive. So
shall the son of man,
referring to himself, be 3 days 3 nights
in the heart of the earth. So what
John does is, he invents the story that
Jesus was impaled on the cross. He was
impaled to ensure non survival. And finally, the
gospel of John says that he was anointed
on the night of the crucifixion.
On the night of the crucifixion,
by the secret disciples, Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus, thus contradicting the synoptics. So there's
a definite theological agenda at work here. It's
a polemical tractate. He didn't swoon, He wasn't
a substitute,
and it wasn't an illusion.
He died. Now, what's interesting is all 4
gospels
differ as to who went to the
It's different in all 4. And there are
no post there is no post resurrection narrative
in the earliest gospel, in the gospel of
Mark.
Most scholars believe that the best and oldest
versions of the gospel of Mark end at
Mark 16:8.
Therefore, no one saw a resurrected Jesus according
to the oldest canonical gospel.
There are 5,500
versions of the New Testament in Greek that
date from the 3rd century to the Middle
Ages, but no 2 are identical.
Scholars estimate that there are between
200,000,300,000
differences in those 5,500
manuscripts.
In other words, there are more differences in
those manuscripts
than there are words in the new testament.
These are not reliable as history. Okay. Let's
look at the historical records.
How are are they strong? No. They're weak.
The great Hellenized Jewish philosopher,
Philo, a contemporary of Jesus Christ, never mentioned
the crucifixion or resurrection. In the Annals of
Tacitus, the Roman historian simply repeated what what
Christians were saying in Rome at the time,
during the burning of Rome in the in
the at the end of the 1st century.
This doesn't prove that it's history. This is
what the Christians were saying at the time.
And what about the celebrated passage in the
antiquities of Josephus
that Jesus was condemned to the cross and
he appeared alive on the 3rd day? Every
single reputable scholar today, Christian or otherwise, read
the book, The Case for Christ. He has
admitted that this is a forgery, a fabrication.
The first person ever to quote this was
Eusebius of Caesarea in the 4th century. A
man notorious
for advocating fraud and deception in order to
catch fish for Christ. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which
used to be gospel truth before the Internet,
it says that just Josephus wrote the passage
as it now stands, no sane critic can
believe. The Chambers Encyclopedia says, the famous passage
of Josephus, it generally conceded to be an
interpolation,
a fabrication,
a forgery, a fraud. Finally, you might say,
well, if Christ was never killed, why would
the disciples be willing to die for a
lie? Right?
The very question is faulty. They didn't. They
died defending the truth against other Christians. This
is very important. The original Christians
were not Christians. They were practicing Jews. They
were practicing Jews who did not believe that
Jesus was Adonai Elohim,
the Lord God, or that the Hebrew God
was killed by Gentiles.
Bart Ehrman says, from a historical point of
view, from a historical point of view, it
appears that the Ebionites did indeed teach an
understanding of the faith that would have been
close to that of Jesus's original disciples, Aramaic
speaking Jews, who remained faithful to the Jewish
law and who kept Jewish customs even after
coming to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
End quote. They didn't go around teaching the
Nicene Creed, the Athanasian creed, begotten sonship, divine
incarnation, belief in a triune God. That would
insult the very fabric of their religion.
When the proto orthodox positions eventually won
following the conversion of Constantine,
the entire history of the internal conflicts of
early Christianity were rewritten to make it seem
as if there had been very little conflict.
But today, we know that's not true and
only books that demonstrated a relatively congenial relationship
between the judicizers and the hellenizers, in other
words, between Peter and Paul or James and
Paul, they were accepted as canonical. And everything
else and everyone else was completely marginalized. You
read the book of Acts. Read a sermon
of Paul in the book of Acts, sermon
of Paul, and compare it to a sermon
of Peter in the book of Acts. They're
virtually identical. It's like the same speaker. But
in Galatians, there is a hint of this
deep conflict when Paul accuses Peter and Barnabas
of hypocrisy
and brags about withstanding Peter to his face.
They're literally standing toe to toe, ready to
throw down, as they say. In the homilies
of Clement, Paul said Peter says to Paul,
how can we believe you even if he
has appeared to you? But if you were
visited by him for the space of an
hour, and were instructed by him, and thereby
have become an apostle,
Then proclaim his words,
expound what he has taught, be a friend
to his apostles and do not contend with
me who man who am his confidant
for you have in hostility
withstood me. A reference to what happened in
Antioch that Paul describes in Galatians. For I
am a firm rock, the foundation stone of
the church. A reference to Jesus telling him,
and to Kepha, that art Peter the rock.
So,
history is written by those who hang heroes.
History is written by those who hang heroes.
And the Romans, thinking they had killed Jesus,
eventually became Christian, and then rewrote the entire
history of the conflict.
Where are all the Jewish Christian writings?
Where are all the Jewish Christian writings? These
were the original Christians. Where are their books,
their polemics, their apologies?
Gone.
Gone with the wind.
The gospel of the Ebionites,
lost. The gospel of the Nazarenes,
lost. The gospel of the Hebrews,
lost. How convenient.
How convenient.
We only know about them because proto orthodox
apologists
and polemicists
used to quote them in their refutations of
them. But that's only one side of the
story. What about the other side of the
story?
But God sent his final messenger,
his holy apostle, Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam to restore that which was
lost.
You see? To restore the true theology of
the prophets, to give us back the true
Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. God says
in the Quran, after explaining the true position
of Jesus,
Such was Jesus the Son of Mary.
This is a statement of truth about which
they are vainly
disputing.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, mister Atay.
May all praise, honor, and glory be to
god the father and to his son, Jesus
Christ.
In his online book, In Defense of Islam,
Ali writes the following.
I hope you can see the differences between
the logical, lucid Muslim argument and the ignorant
Christian ramblings.
That's on page 325.
My friends, I think it's been crystal clear
this evening that precisely the opposite is true.
Ali continued to go,
off topic. He I mean, look at his
last, he focused only on the theological discussion.
So this isn't historical. This is a theological
debate. Folks, this is a historical debate on
what was the first century fate of Jesus.
Was he, did he die by crucifixion and
rise from the dead? Or was he rescued
by, death by crucifixion
by God? This is a historical case.
And again, I'd say, you gotta deal with
the history first, and then after that, you
figure out where the theology fits. And if
the
history, evidence points historical evidence points to the
death and resurrection of Jesus, it's high time
that Ali changed his theology.
Ali believes that the bible contains truths. Remember,
he said, although the present day bible is
not the word of God, elements of truth
still exist within its text.
Remember I said, we gotta look at what
criteria
each of us use for identifying
that truth.
Now,
one my made 2 major contentions my first
major contention is that there are sufficient reasons
to believe the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I gave four facts. I provided criteria used
by professional historians to establish those as facts,
and I showed that the death and resurrection
of Jesus is the best historical explanation for
this. Well, Ali came back in his, rebuttal,
and he said the resurrection is the least
plausible explanation.
But notice, that's just an assertion.
He did not provide a single shred of
evidence to support his view, not one argument
to show that it was the least plausible.
He just dropped it like a ton of
bricks and moved on.
He said it is a theological debate. Again,
it's not.
Now his response, he said, the dogs surround
me, bones visible, Isaiah 53, see its theology.
Yes. It is. But it was a theological
interpretation of historical events,
events that I provided lots of criteria for
establishing the historicity of these things. He talked
about Simon of Cyrene,
being substituted for Jesus, that this is what's
happened.
But then he quoted the sign of Jonah,
that Jesus would be 3 days 3 nights
in the heart of the earth and then
come forth, and he wasn't there for 3
days 3 nights. Folks, there's a contradiction of
these two views here. See, if Simon Cyrene
was substituted for Jesus, then what's Jesus doing
in the heart of the earth for 3
days 3 nights? You can't have it both
ways. We're back to the criterion of convenience,
where you go through the buffet line, and
you take whatever you want, you leave what
you don't. That doesn't work outside of the
cafeteria.
No resurrection in Mark. Almost all commentators say
that Mark knew of it. It was a
rhetorical device that he left it out,
and the reason he doesn't he that he
we know he's aware of it is because
in Mark 1428,
he says, after I have risen, I will
go ahead of you into Galilee and meet
you there. The angel in in Mark 16/7
tells the women,
he is going ahead of you into Galilee,
and there you will see him just as
he told you. It's very clear that he
knows about it. He talked about 300,000
differences within the manuscripts,
but he gets that from airmen. In fact,
he almost quoted airmen with that. But,
airmen himself says he said on National Public
Radio that e even so, we can still
look at all these and come back to
a text, which is virtually pure to what
the original said. And he forgets that there
are a lot of variations in the Koranic
manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts we have are the
Yemeni manuscripts, and they contain 1,000, if not
tens of thousands of variations.
In fact, there are no manuscripts that,
within 300 years of when the Quran was
written,
300 years, none of them agree with the,
Quran that you hold in your hand today,
the 1924
Cairo edition.
He talks about, Ehrman, saying the Ebionites teach,
teachings were close to Jesus.
Ehrman is an agnostic, probably an even an
atheist, who also rejects the Quran. Is this
really who he wants to appeal to?
Besides, Ehrman himself says it's indisputable
fact that the original disciples of Jesus
believed that he had risen from the dead
and appeared to them. This is the same
Ehrman he quotes. The dead and appeared to
them. This is the same airman he quotes.
He says,
Paul opposed Peter face to face. Yes.
Because Peter refused to eat with the gentiles.
Read the text in in act in,
Galatians chapter 2, something that the, Jerusalem apostles
already shook shook hands on. And remember, Clement
of Rome and Polycarp, they agree with Paul
on this, and yet, they were disciples of
Peter and John.
Where are all these Jewish and Christian writings?
He talks about the gospel of Hebrews lost.
Where are the 4 Surahs that were talked
about that,
one got eaten up, and, they weren't included
in the Quran. The 4 witnesses
to which Mohammed gave the 4 primary witnesses
from which they were supposed to get the
Quran, and yet they testify, 4 of these
Surahs are gone. Where are they? Lost is
where they're at. There's a there's a,
again, there's a double standard here. So in
summary, there are no good reasons for believing
that God rescued Jesus, and very strong reasons
for believing that Jesus died by crucifixion
and was resurrected shortly thereafter.
Now Ali says this in his writings. The
purpose of debate is to convince. The goal
of a debate is to make your non
Muslim friends agree with Islam and the Muslims.
In the same spirit, I offered the following.
Tonight, you've seen that the historical evidence points
only to Jesus' death and resurrection,
and away from the truth of the Quran.
You don't have to be a scholar in
order to take a personal step to seek
truth in these matters. Jesus said, ask and
it shall be given. Seek and you will
find. Knock and the door will be open
to you. Fed
up with what they've been seeing in the
last several years coming out of Islam and
have been seeking God on the matter.
In fact, Al Jazeera reported December 12, 2000,
that 6,000,000
Muslims every year in Africa are leaving Islam
and becoming followers of Jesus.
Last year, in Iran, where Ali was born,
250,000
Muslims
left Islam and followed ISA, Jesus.
And in the last 2 to 3 years,
a 1000000 Arab Muslims in Arab countries have
become followers of ISA, and there would have
probably been a lot more had they not
been threatened with their lives.
Many of them aren't responding to the intellectual
arguments, because they're not getting them over there,
but they are praying, and Jesus is, wondrously
appearing to them in dreams and visions and
telling them that they've got to follow him
and leave Islam.
In fact, 3 of these have been reenacted,
on a high quality DVD, and I'd like
to give one to every as a gift
to every Muslim in here that'll be available
on the table,
outside.
I have a personal friend named Nabil Qureshi,
and he was a very pious Muslim,
and,
he was disenchanted by the,
arguments by, Muslims. And he went and talked
to scholars in the UK, and Tehran is
still in disenchanted.
And, actually, he ended up,
becoming a Christian just a year ago, and
this is his baptism. He's a medical student,
and now he's planning to go into ministry
full time. He's already baited his first Muslim.
I'd like to challenge all of you this
evening, especially the Muslims.
Jesus is out there, and he wants you
to come to him. And if you will
seek the truth, you will find it in
him. He said, I'm the way, the truth,
and the life, and no one comes to
the father but by me. And I'd encourage
you to seek
the truth.
You can never be hurt by the truth.
You can bury it, bend it, burn it,
but it's still the truth,
and it can't hurt us. Thank you very
much for your attention, and I appreciate your
coming here. Thank you, mister Licona. Mister Itay,
you'll have the floor for 8 minutes, and
you can begin when you'd like. Please refrain
from applause and any outburst, not show disrespect
to the other people in the room.
Referring to the Quran that there's a 300
year gap. You can go to a museum
in Turkey right now, and you can pick
up the Quran of Uthman Radiallahu Anhu, one
of the chief companions of the holy prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him. His his Quran,
which was probably,
promulgated 20 or so years after the death
of the prophet, exactly word for word the
same as any Quran in the world right
now. And you say, why do you know
it's Uthman's Quran? Because while he was reading
it, he was martyred and his blood is
so splattered on the pages. This is the
Uthmani Musaf. This is his Quran. It's in
Turkey. You can check it out.
Within 20 30 years of the prophets, and
the whole Quran was written during the time
of the prophet. This is in in all
of our sources, the entire Quran was written
by the prophet down during the prophet's life.
It's on different pieces of material.
There were thousands of people who had the
entire Quran even put the memory. So it
didn't didn't even need to promulgate it into
1 codex until after the death of the
prophet, about 2 or 3 3 2 or
3 years after the death of the prophet,
you see.
About, you know, Islam, people are converting, you
know, away from Islam, this and that.
According
to many consensus, Islam is the fastest growing
religion in America,
amongst American born people. I'm not talking about
immigration or anything like that. Now, the explanation
is, oh, you know, Islam allows more than
one wife so this is why. They could
The men want more than one wife. I
don't know a single American Muslim that has
more than one wife. Oh, Islam is spread
by the sword.
This is why it's going so fast in
America. Do you see a sword on me?
Do you see Maybe I left it outside
next to my camel.
Well like, yo,
Indonesia. Right? How did Indonesia become Muslim? Do
you know the story of Indonesia? What it's
No, there's no record of any Muslim soldier
ever stepping foot on the soil of Indonesia.
Today, there's 200,000,000
Muslims in Indonesia, more than the entire Arab
world put together.
Why? Because 8 traders, 8 businessmen,
they went to Indonesia, and the people were
so smitten by their honesty that they just
started converting to Islam by the truckloads.
Why are people leaving Islam today? Because they
don't realize what Islam has has has has
to offer them. The even these Muslims in
these so called Muslim countries, are these really
Muslim countries? That's what we have to do.
Do they do they inform Islamic law? Do
people pray? I went to downtown Tehran, you
know, in the year 2000, during in the
middle of the day they made Adhan. There
was a handful of people in the mosque.
Right? So we need to present Islam to
these people because, you know, this is a
post colonial world and whatnot and there's a
lot of influences coming from different nations. So
it's very foggy.
Now,
doctor Albert Schweitzer, I'm gonna quote him, in
search of the historical Jesus, mister Lacona likes
to talk about history and, you know, historicity
of things and whatnot. In search of the
historical Jesus, page 22. He says, no miracle
would prove that 2 and 2 makes 5,
or that circle has 4 angles, and no
miracles,
Christianity.
Doctor H. Ramirez,
who is a trailblazer
in biblical criticism,
he wrote a series of writings called The
Fragments.
There were 7 of them, from 17 74
to 17 78. He wrote them in German
over these 5 years,
over 4,000 pages.
4000 pages over 5 years. What was his
conclusion?
A complete rejection of the historical reliability
of the gospel of the gospel accounts of
Jesus' resurrection. A complete
rejection.
So again, the the resurrection
cannot be proved historically.
This is a faith conviction.
It is the least plausible
explanation for the empty tomb. Now let's look
at this from a naturalistic point of view,
and I'm not a naturalist. I believe in
miracles. I believe the prophet Jesus, peace be
upon him, raised the dead by the permission
of God. I I believe the holy prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, 1 night, split
the moon in Mecca and then and then
put it back together again. I believe these
things happen. Can I prove it historically? No.
This is a faith conviction.
Which, you know, Occam's razor, as they say.
The simplest explanation, all things being equal, is
probably the correct one. Which is more plausible?
Which is more plausible that Jesus survived the
cross, and mister Lacona pointed out erroneously, however,
in the in the Jewish war, Josephus goes
to Tekoa, he sees 3 of his friends
crucified,
they are brought down from the cross, one
of them survived. I believe he said all
3 died. 1 of them survived. So it's
possible to survive the crucifixion.
Which is more plausible, that Jesus survived the
cross or that Jesus, as a God, resurrected
himself from the dead? Which is more plausible?
Which one sounds more like history and which
one sounds more like a faith conviction?
You see? Which is more plausible? That Jesus
was substituted
and then seen alive by people
after they thought he had been crucified?
That's also a miracle. He escaped the clutches
of death. People thought he'd been crucified.
It was made to appear so unto them
that he had died. And now here he
is alive, and that would have, you know,
changed the heart of the apostles and would
have gone out and preached this message that
Jesus is alive. He's alive. The word used
in in the in the New Testament is
alive. He's alive. Why do you seek the
living amongst the dead? Mary Magdalene came, he
is alive. But they believe not. The word
is always alive. Would you say resurrected, resurrected,
resurrected,
resurrected, resurrected.
Which is more plausible?
That he was substituted
and seen alive by people who have thought
he had been crucified, or that as God
in the flesh, he died and then resurrected
himself as a man God. You know, these
Muslim theories, we hear a lot from Christians
from Christians that, you know, these Muslim theories,
you know,
the the the swoon theory,
the substitution theory, this theory that it was
Judas Iscariot, or this theory that it's Jesus
Barabbas because the first name of Jesus Barabbas
was actually Jesus in the Codex Korodethi, which
is a Syriac manuscript. It says his first
name was Jesus. So it actually says that
Pilate released Jesus, Barabbah,
Jesus the Son of the Father, and crucified
Jesus the Son of the Father. That sounds
a little confusing. Which one did he crucify?
So in the later editions of Matthew, they
they took out the name Jesus and said,
let's just call him Barabbah, Barabbas.
That's weak. Simon of Cyrene, that's also weak.
You know, the Thomas, because Thomas might have
been the twin brother of Jesus and they
could have Those are weak. These are untenable
and contrived. Right?
This is what we hear all the time.
This idea that Jesus,
was swoon he swooned or he was substituted
is untenable and contrived. You know what sounds
untenable and contrived to me? The belief that
God essentially killed himself on a cross, and
then asks himself why he has forsaken himself,
and then commends his own spirit into his
own hands, and then resurrects himself from the
dead.
That's a faith conviction. This is not history.
This is rejected by objective historians.
Christ the son of Mary was only a
messenger.
Many were the messengers that passed away before
him.
And his mother was a woman of truth.
They both had eat of their daily food.
See how clearly we make our signs for
them.
Yet see in what ways they are deluded
away from the truth. In the in the
Quran it actually challenges the Jews and the
Christians.
Through the prophet,
produce your proof if you speak the truth.
You say these are eyewitness accounts. Most scholars
have abandoned that Matthew wrote Matthew, that Luke
wrote Luke, that Mark wrote
Mark, and that John wrote John. Most scholars
have abandoned these identifications.
Most scholars have abandoned these identifications.
You see? No one believes This is what,
you know, the lay people believe. J. P.
Phillips in his in his gospel commentary, the
gospel of Matthew, he says, quote, J. P.
Phillips, the Gospels in Modern English. Early tradition
has ascribed this gospel to the apostle Matthew,
but nowadays, almost all scholars reject this view.
The scholar whom we can still conveniently call
Matthew has drawn upon these mysterious q source
document and he has borrowed from Mark's gospel
freely. In other words, he's plagiarizing from Mark.
Matthew is an eyewitness, yet he's plagiarizing 90%
of Mark's gospel who's not even there. Does
it make sense? Did Matthew write his gospel?
Why did John wait 70 years to write
his gospel in a in a foreign language?
It doesn't make sense. These are rejected as
historical
records and salaam alaik.
Thank you mister Atay. That concludes the debate
portion of the evening. The second portion now
is gonna be a question and answer time
where your questions will be asked to the
speakers.
Alright. We'll begin with you, mister Atay.
Can you give a brief account of the
story of Jesus' rescue? What were the events
of that day? Where can this account be
found in the Quran and or historical documents?
You have 2 minutes.
The Quran does not go into specifics as
to exactly what happened. You see, the Quran
says he was saved, that he wasn't killed,
he wasn't crucified.
And based on the,
reliability of the text of the Quran and
also on the life example of the holy
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who is
the most universal messenger, he's the most historical
messenger,
you see, we take these statements as true
until they are proven false. Now,
what exactly happened to him? There are theories.
Muslims have devised like I was saying, the
substitution theory. And these aren't some things that
we invented by ourselves, you see. These have,
some some background in in gnostic gospels, as
he says or gnostic gospels or heretical gospels
and whatnot. And these things were found just
recently. You know, prior to 1945 when they
found the Nag Hammadi gospel, it was common
knowledge that only the Christology of the Quran
says Jesus wasn't crucified. But now, we know
based on recent discoveries, like the second treatise
of the Great Seth, you know, where's the
first treatise of the great Seth? Maybe we'll
find that another 20 years that'll be very
very close to the time of Jesus and
they'll say, no, he wasn't crucified. You see,
these things Christian beliefs are evolving over time.
When when these things start to come out
over time, these discoveries, it only proves the
Quran more and only disproves the Quran the
the bible more as well at the same
time.
Well, in terms of what actually happened there,
he's right. The Quran doesn't give any details.
But as I mentioned, when you when you
talk about Simon of Cyrene and the sign
of Jonah, they they contradict each other. And
what I'm saying here is his views of
what they're
what happened contradict one another.
And he said that,
they believe these statements until true until proven
false. Well, I have proven them false. I've
shown that the that god is not the
author of the Quran. It flunks its own
test. Again, he mentions the Nag Hammadi library,
and, that we didn't know about any of
these gospels before then. Well, sure we did.
The early church fathers speak of these, of
most of these gospels. It mentions the gospel
of Judas, the gospel of Thomas,
gospel of the Hebrews. All of these had
been mentioned long before. I mean, over a
1000 years before the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. It's
just now we could read these gospels in
their entirety.
Would you like to, one minute to respond?
Again, these views,
that are postulated by Muslim scholars,
these predate Islam. These what these are what
Christian denominations
believed. These These are what Christian denominations believed.
Islam did not make this up. The reason
why these other gospels were not admitted into
the canon is because there's no passion narrative.
Again, this is very essential. There's no passion
narrative. That's the reason why they were rejected
because this is what the church wanted the
masses to believe, that Jesus died because
the gospel of Paul and the Hellenizers, this
is the gospel that dominated the landscape at
the time. So Thomas actually says what does
he say? He says,
that it's he doesn't even mention those crucifixion.
He says that the that sacred gnosis, that
gnosis
of Jesus' teaching, this will grant you salvation.
And the gospel of Mark, it says that
secretly Jesus explained everything to his disciples. What
did he explain secretly? It's not mentioned in
the canonical gospels. Why? Because it compromises Paul's
message. Why? Because it compromises Paul's message.
Thank you, mister Atai. The next question is
addressed to mister Lacona.
Why do you consider this debate between 2
monotheistic religious individuals about issues concerning salvation
untheological
when the term theological
means logic of divinity?
Well, theological means the study of God.
It comes from 2 Greek words, theos, from
for God and logos, which, has several meanings,
but it's generally used as the study of
it's like psychology to study the mind, soul,
and things like that.
Geology, the study of the earth and rocks.
And and I do think it's it's important
in order to look at the history first,
because if you allow your theology to guide
your history, you're gonna come up
you're you're you're gonna come up with skewed
and biased,
results here. You've got to look at where
the historical evidence leads. You go where the
history leads and and adapt your theology.
And that's why I that's why I love
being a Christian, because it's supported by the
facts.
Everything I've given tonight, I've based it upon
sound methods of historiography.
You can't do that with Islam. They've got
nothing. In fact, when it comes to the
rescue theory, instead of presenting facts, it's more
like,
well, if it,
if it looks like a duck, walks like
a duck, quacks like a duck, it must
be a camel in disguise.
That's the only thing that you can say
with that. I mean, look at what Ollie's
quoting here. He's gotta appeal to the secret
gospel of Mark, which within the last 2
years, was exposed as a forgery of total
fraud
by Morton Smith, who discovered it. They analyzed
his handwriting, and they traced it to his
hand,
and he wrote it in the year 1962.
That's long after the, other gospels here. So
you need to stay current on this literature.
The reason no passion narrative in queue is
because it's Sainz literature. It's only talking about
Jesus' teachings, and of course, he wasn't teaching
after his death.
Again, it's very, very clear that the that
the resurrection, belief in the resurrection
is a theological statement. It's a theological statement,
and I believe that Christians actually took this
belief from pre existing elements that were around,
Palestine at the time. Greco Roman elements, like
there was a legend from a man named,
Apollonius of Tyanna who was a who was
a contemporary of Jesus Christ. In his biography
it states, now Mike is probably gonna say,
well his biography was written much later. Well,
there was oral traditions at the time that
stated that he was resurrected and appeared to
his disciples and one of them was a
doubter, you see. So the prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, is the most historical prophet.
I can go to Jerusalem right now and
ask different Christians, where's the garden tomb? Well,
some of us believe it's here, Other others
believe it's over there and some believe it's
over here. It's all conjecture. Where do you
think Jesus was crucified? Well, the dominant opinion
is here. You can go to Mecca. This
is where the prophet made his ablutions. This
is where he's buried, this is where his
house was, he's the most historical prophet. You
see the the Quran is the most historical
scripture. And there's no two versions of the
Quran.
Well, he says that,
it's clear that belief in the resurrection is
a theological statement. I don't think that's clear.
Now in terms of the full theological
impact
of everything that goes with the resurrection, I
would agree that there is a theological
leap in part of that. But you can
show that Jesus died, and you can show
after that he was raised, that they saw
him again alive after his death. And what's
interesting is all their their what we have
in the early reports is that,
it was the type of body that they
viewed as being resurrection, something that was completely
powerful.
Preexisting Greco Roman accounts, Apollonius of Diana, Apollonius
was a first late 1st century figure. His
his,
biography was written 225
years later. It wasn't a resurrection.
The disciple he's talking about saw Apollonius in
a dream. In fact, the Greek word, is
used later on by, Philostratus, the biographer at
the end, which means a disembodied type spirit
there. And in fact, Apollonius himself taught that,
people would become disembodied.
Thank you, mister Locona. The next question is
for mister Atay.
There may be Muslims here tonight who are
convinced regarding the evidence for the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus. With that in mind, do
you agree with the law of apostasy as
it is commonly practiced in the Muslim world
where anyone who leaves Islam must be killed?
I really don't see the relevance of the
question
and I don't know why you you would
even choose that question.
But as far as far as apostasy goes,
you see,
the bible says the very same thing. Now
let me clarify.
In the book of 2nd Chronicles or maybe
it's 1st Chronicles, it says, whoever doesn't worship
the God of Israel must be murdered, man,
woman, child,
whatever. Why? Because they made a covenant with
God and they rescinded their covenant by worshiping
idols. Now, as far as killing the apostate,
this is an anomaly. How many times has
it happened, really? And and and and how
many times has the Muslim government really,
executed an apostate?
All of Islamic law must be instituted before
the Hudud or these these Hud punishments, these
capital offenses can be,
practiced. So, you know, it's it's really easy
to isolate one part of, you know, Islamic
law and say, well, you know, this,
doesn't it's not doesn't make sense to me,
and it's it's barbaric and this and that.
I can do the very same thing with
the bible. Jesus says, you know, think not
that I've come to bring peace on earth.
I have not come to bring peace, but
a sword. If I take that out of
context and say, well, look, you know, Jesus
is advocating violence. Is that really fair to
do that? No Muslim country, so called Muslim
country in the world right now is implementing
the Islamic law, you see. And there is
a difference of opinion as to what to
do with an apostate. I'm not a, an
expert on Islamic law and again, I don't
know why that question was, we're talking about
the resurrection and theology, whether it's history or
theology and then you pick this question about,
is sacred Islamic law? I'm not, an expert
on Islamic law, you see.
Well, Afghanistan, they are employing this this, law
of apostasy right now, and that's why one
Christian last year, a guy who com converted
from Islam to Christianity,
had to be declared insane so that he
wouldn't be executed.
I would just say, I I personally know
someone who goes over into Iran and Afghanistan
frequently,
and talks to the underground churches there and
finds that there is severe persecution of Christians
in those countries, and I would challenge Ali
to just name a single Muslim country, just
one,
just one, where there is religious freedom, where
a Christian could go to church there without
fear of persecution,
or losing their job, or telling others, or
having a debate like we're having right here.
I would be killed in a Muslim country
for saying the things I'm saying here tonight.
God bless the United States of America for
offering this type of freedom, so that we
can have these kind of discussions, because you
certainly can't do it in a Muslim country.
Again, as I said in my book, when
a Christian is cornered, he turns to politics.
Egypt, Cairo,
Cairo.
There were there were there's Out of respect
for the speakers. There's Coptic
Christians in Cairo
for 2000 years in or whatever, 100 of
years. They're still there. Coptic Christians in Egypt.
There's there's a there's a country.
Look at Muslim Spain, When the Muslims ruled
Spain, it's the golden age of Judaism.
Spain was a Muslim country for 800 years.
Then what happened? The Christians came, slaughtered everyone
indiscriminately.
Is that religious freedom? Afghanistan
is not a Muslim country. Do they have,
a Muslim government? Do they have
Muslim Khalifa, or someone who's implementing
this Islamic
law?
No. Who's doing these things? Rogue, little, tiny
factions of people who claim to be doing
things in the name of Islam. They don't
have any legalized state authority. You see, what's
going on in Iraq right now,
somebody said, this is a crusade.
I heard that. This is a crew What's
a crusade? Campus crusade for Christ. Don't you
think I take offense to that? What if
I called the MSA campus jihad for Allah?
What would you do? You'd crucify me up
down upside down naked.
I'd like to remind the audience that you
show disrespect for the other people when you
have outbursts, And so I'd ask both sides
to please refrain. Thank you.
Mister Lacono,
this next question is for you.
How do you respond to the many quotes
from the bible that Ali uses that assert
that Jesus was saved by God? You accuse
Ali of selective evidence, but you yourself have
disregarded the many statements in the gospel that
contradict Jesus' resurrection and support his rescue.
Well, there aren't many questions,
or there aren't many texts that do this.
You've got the sign of Jonah, and the
way I would explain that is you've got
to I mean, look at this. There's 2
issues here. One is the 3 days, 3
nights, issue.
And if you look at,
first Samuel 20 as well as Ezra 4,
you'll find that the term 3 days 3
nights is a figure of speech to mean
a short period of time. In fact, we
find this all throughout the New Testament. You
look at Matthew 20,
8 or 27 when they bury Jesus. They
go the Jews, Jewish leadership go to
pilot and they said, hey, you know, this
fellow said he was gonna raise 3 days
and 3 nights,
afterwards. So how about we place a guard
until the 3rd
day, so that they don't come and steal
his body? Well, that would mean they'd be
pulling the guard away at the very time
that this guy was, playing on,
they were playing on stealing stealing the body
and giving them time to do that. So
that wouldn't make sense. The 3 day theme
is just something like we'd say, hey, wait
a minute. Just give me a second here.
Or when Jesus says, my hour has come.
Things like that. So figure of speech. The
other has to do with,
it didn't say he died. But you've got
to use a
solid a sound hermeneutical method here, which interprets
not the multiple clear passages
and and and reinterpret them, or discard them,
or do this criterion of convenience based on
an ambiguous meaning right here. You've got to
to to interpret the ambiguous according to the
multiple clear. Otherwise, I could quote 3 passages
in the Quran that seem to imply that
Jesus was killed, that he died already.
And say, well, based on that, I'll use
my criteria of convenience. After all, he does
it, I can do it too. We can
both eat at the same cafeteria.
And, by doing that, I could say, well,
we'll just throw out SURF 4 157 because,
it just must have put in layer, because
it doesn't suit my needs right there. So
that's how I would do that. And regarding
the crucifixion, we don't crucify people in this
country.
I was referring to a a spiritual crucifixion.
Mister Konas quoted a verse from the the
gospels. Jesus says, how is it written of
the son of man, the apocalyptic son of
man, the Barnasha, that he will be rejected
by the chief priest, they will kill him
and he will rise again? How is it
written? Where is it written? Of the son
of man? The son of man? The apocalyptic
son of man will be killed and resurrected?
It's written nowhere. Or when Matthew says, you
know, the gospels are full of embellishments. This
is just another example of embellishments. The passion
narratives are full of are full of embellishments.
And misapplication is very common in the New
Testament, especially in Matthew who overzealously tries to
convince his Jewish audience that every single prophecy
of the Old Testament is fulfilled by Jesus
Christ and no one else. According to the
Jesus Seminar he's gonna disagree. Oh, those are
those are idiots. The Jesus Seminar,
Christian scholars, 82% of what Jesus says in
the gospels, false. 16%,
doubtful. 2% accurate. 2%, Christian scholars, the Jesus
seminar. Most of the Jesus Seminar Scholars would
not claim to be Christians. And in fact,
Marcus Borg, who's one of the leading members
in there,
wrote in,
the,
the words of or the 5 gospels, or
the acts of Jesus, that the reason that
they came to such a consensus like that,
on the 82%, that they rejected was,
of his words, is because they reject the
miraculous.
They all embrace a metaphysical naturalism. So, of
course, if there's no such thing as miracles,
if you can't do that, well, then you've
got to reject any type of predictive prophecies
that Jesus gave,
a resurrection, any miracles he did. But that's
because they they're metaphysical naturalists.
They reject the possibility of miracles, and then,
of course,
they a priori do that, and then, of
course, your answer your conclusions are gonna reflect
that and reject miracles.
Thank you, mister Locona. The next question is
for mister Atay.
Mister Atay, you said God sent Mohammed to
restore what had been corrupted, yet Mormonism, along
with many other religion, make the same claim.
How is Islam any from Mormonism, and why
should I believe Mohammed and not Joseph Smith?
Why should I believe the message Mohammed received
was actually from God?
Well according to Justin Martyr,
one of the best ways to prove the
authenticity of a of a of a prophet
or the the way he tried to prove
the authenticity of Jesus was appealing to old
testament prophecy. So I've asked my my Mormon
Mormon brethren all the time, can you show
me prophecies of Joseph Smith in the old
testament?
It's it's a 100% failure. Now I tell
him to look at Song of Solomon chapter
5 verse 16. Song of Solomon. Look at
the Song of Solomon. Starts at verse chapter
5 verses 10 through 16. A perfect description
of the holy prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him. A perfect description.
It begins verse 10. My beloved is white
and ruddy, meaning red, chief among 10,000. His
head is like gold, his locks are wavy
and black as a raven. It continues to
describe him, His eyes, his hands, his countenance,
the the fragrance of musk that exuded from
his body. Verse 16 is a culmination of
the pass of the passage. It says in
English, his his
his mouth is most sweet, he is altogether
lovely. Such is my beloved and he is
my friend, oh you daughters of Jerusalem. In
the original Hebrew, it sounds like this.
His mouth is most sweet, he is Muhammad.
A prophecy by name. Where is the name
Jesus in the old testament? I believe he's
the Messiah, but can you show me a
prophecy by name? Does it say the name
of the Messiah will be Yeshua or Jeshua
or
Esau or Esau, whatever, you know, the name
was at the time? There's no prophecy by
name, you see. This is this is what
I would start with the Mormon. And there's
many other things like the the prophet peace
be upon him is,
his biography is the most is the most
comprehensive
of any human being to ever live.
The most comprehensive biography, Karen Armstrong says, that
we know more about the life of the
prophet Muhammad than about any other person in
history,
any other religious figure. The Encyclopedia Britannica, again,
11th edition, again, used to be gospel truth
before the internet, you know. It says, Muhammad
was the most successful of all religious personalities.
You see? His his biography has been specially
guarded by God and there's a reason for
that. You should check it out. There's more
than meets the eye to this young to
this man. Don't, you know, I'm sorry. I'm
I'm out of time.
Well, I would reject both Islam and Mormonism,
and I would do it because of the
historical criterion. If I look at Mormonism,
I look at it and I say, okay,
what evidence is there for it? When I
check it out against the claims of the
Book of Mormon that there was a civilization
of millions of people over here, and that
100 of 1000 died at the Hill Cumorah
around the year 400 AD, all we have
to do is go to the Hill Cumorah
and look. And I've talked to archaeologists who
work in that area, and they say we
should still have a lot of skeletal remains,
but they haven't even found a button
on, Hilkomar. Not as much as a button
there. And so the historical evidence, I think,
militates against it. When you look at the
book of Abraham thing, I think that's the
death knell of Mormonism. It's the most easily
refuted religion in the world.
The next one, I think, is Islam on
that list, and the reason being is because
when you look at the test given by
the Quran, it fails its own test, and
I've shown how that happens. Just go ahead
and compare on your own, Psalm,
19 with Surah 1. And for those of
you who read Arabic here, go ahead and
check out the true fakan.
As far as the comparison between the Quran
and the book of Psalms, I guess he
he quoted 1 of 1 scholar,
that said, you know, the book of Psalms
is this and that, and it's better than
the Quran. I mean, this is a standing
challenge to Arab Christians. Right? The Quran is
a 114 chapters long. The the smallest the
shortest chapter in the Quran is 3 verses.
The Quran says produce 1 surah like unto
this. One chapter like unto this Quran.
One chapter. And people have failed for 1400
years. This is the standard. They failed and
this is an unlettered man. The prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, cannot read or write.
He's an unlettered man, yet he can produce
a 114 chapters like this.
I mean, think about that for a second.
He is the unlettered prophet of Isaiah chapter
2912.
Read the,
biography of the prophet of how he became
a prophet the night in the in the
in the cave, when Gabriel came to him,
he said, he said,
read. I cannot read. Isaiah 2912. And the
book shall be given to one who knoweth
no letters and it shall be said to
him, read in the Hebrew,
initial answer
I cannot read.
Thank you, mister Atai. The next question is
addressed to mister Lacona.
The historical evidence that you provided could support
the alternate
hypothesis that it was only made to appear
that Jesus was raised. How do you respond
to this? Would would you repeat that question?
The historical evidence that you provided could support
the alternate hypothesis
that it was only made to appear that
Jesus was raised. How do you respond to
this?
Again, the question is well, let me see
if I can repeat it fine. The historical
evidence I gave could be made to support
the hypothesis that God only made it appear
that way?
Is that what the question is? And how
would I explain that? I
let me, try to rephrase this. Is it
your question? It's not my question. No.
It's his question.
Whose question is this?
Alright. I'll try to explain this a little
bit better.
The historical evidence that you provided could support
another hypothesis.
One that would say that it was only
made to appear that Jesus rose from the
dead. And how do you respond to that?
Well, I don't know how I could support
it. Certainly, the evidence I gave for his
death could be used that way, and you
could say, well, Allah was that just shows
that Allah was successful
in in making it appear that way. But
then I like I showed, there are a
number of problems with that. You've got the
Islamic catch 22, the fact that we can
prove that Jesus predicted his imminent and violent
death, historically.
Six arguments I gave for that. So if
he didn't,
die that imminent and violent death, he's a
false prophet, the Quran is wrong. If he
did die that imminent and violent death, then
the Quran is wrong, because it says he
would. So either way, the Quran is wrong.
So I think that militates against it, and
also, as I mentioned, it makes God out
to be a deceiver.
Actually, I didn't mention this before, but it
does. Not only did he deceive the enemies,
which we would expect him to do something
like that, no problem with that,
but the the Quran refers to the early
followers of Jesus as Muslims, and that means
that he deceived them as well, because we
can establish historically. Even Ehrman, the agnostic,
says that it's indisputable that these earliest followers
of Jesus, the disciples,
actually believed that he died and rose from
the dead. So what that means is, if
not only did God deceive the original,
enemies of Jesus, he deceived the original Muslims
in the 1st century. And if he deceived
them now, how do you know he's not
deceiving you as well?
In fact, I just think that this is
a real problem within Islam. There's no way
for you to prove that God is not
deceiving you now. And in fact, according to
early reports,
Abu Bakr,
at on his deathbed,
he was just afraid. I mean, here's Abu
Bakr, and he was afraid that he wasn't
going to have eternal life, in heaven, because,
God had deceived him. So if the earliest,
closest companion of of Mohammed thought this, what
hope do you guys have?
So I think there's some serious problems with
this, and and I think it all militates.
All the evidence and the logical arguments militate
against the Islamic interpretation
that Jesus survived death by crucifixion?
Well, there's a difference between being deceived by
God and allowing yourself to be deceived by
God.
In the gospels, I see a very apparent
evolution of Christology. In the gospel of Mark,
Jesus is presented as a suffering prophet. In
Matthew, he's suddenly the open messiah. Luke calls
him soter, which means savior. In the gospel
of John, he's finally the logos, the divine
word that initiates creation. So in a span
of less than 50 years, you go from
Jesus being a prophet to God in the
flesh, you see? So these 4 gospels were
written after the fact. So these people have
theological agendas. Matthew has a theological agenda. They
believe Jesus was crucified. So he went back
and said that Jesus said this, he put
the words into the mouth of the master.
It's called, Vaticidi ex Adventu, prophecy after the
event. And this is what they believed, do
you see?
Now,
that's it.
Okay. Well, again, he's appealing to the Quran,
which I think is just simply demonstrably false.
But what the the evolution of Christology, what
does that have to do with tonight's debate?
He doesn't like the question about Islam and
the apostasy laws. What does Christology have to
do with the historicity of the of of
what happened with the fate of Jesus in
the 1st century? It's irrelevant, but he's also
wrong about the Christology question.
If all you have to do is read
about this apocalyptic son of man that he's
mentioned,
it's all throughout Mark, it's all throughout the
synoptics, Matthew, Mark, Luke, it's even mentioned in
John in 2 places, In this apocalyptic son
of man, you do a little study and
you find Daniel 7, it says that all
nations will serve him, and that word serve,
Latruo,
you look all throughout the Old Testament, Septuagint,
and the New Testament, you'll find that with
only one exception, where it says that Israel
will serve her enemies.
Every other occurrence of more than a 130
times is something that refers to a deity,
and that's why when Jesus claimed that he
would return on the clouds of heaven,
and sit at the right hand of power,
they ripped their clothes and said blasphemy.
And the reason being because he was claiming
to be, equal with god.
Thank you, mister Locona. The next question is
addressed to mister Atay.
Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and had to
die to complete the sac sacrificial cycle of
the Jews. If Jesus did not die, then
why did the temple veil rip at the
time Jesus died, and why do Jews no
longer sacrifice to atone for their sins?
Let me read a quote from Ahmad Didad,
the the sheikh who passed away, Rahimullah.
He says in his book, a thunderstorm, an
eclipse of the sun, an earthquake, rocks being
rent, the veil of the temple of the
veil of the temple being torn from top
to bottom,
graves being opened and sleeping corpses marching through
the streets of Jerusalem as narrated by the
Christian witnesses.
What a scenario for a $1,000,000,000
record breaking film production. He wrote this 10
years before the movie The Passion of the
Christ came out. This is entertainment. These are
embellishments.
It's very apparent that these are embellishments. What
was the first part of the question? I'm
sorry.
If Jesus did not die, then why did
the temple veil rip at the time Jesus
died, and why do Jews no longer sacrifice
to atone for their sins?
Well, I believe that Jesus came to abolish
all sacrifices.
That's what he says. And to say that
he was a sacrifice,
I believe is a, is a belief that
infiltrated the Hellenistic church, which is a which
came from Greco Roman elements. This this idea
of human beings being sacrificed, I don't find
evidence of this in the old testament
at all.
Okay. In terms of why the Jews no
longer sacrifice, I I I'm no expert on,
the Jewish faith today, but my understanding is,
of course, they don't have a temple any
longer. And the reason they don't so they've
reinterpreted things, and they've, in terms of the
sacrifices, good deeds. But I'll defer to,
any
Jewish friend here this evening.
In terms of these phenomena that he refers
to at DDOT,
I'm totally open to the possibility that these
are literary devices that are put in here.
We find this in a number like Virgil.
He mentions many of the same things, but
the reason that they would do it with
these literary devices is because,
they're emphasizing what's going on. Like,
Cicero, and many of these mentioned the similar,
devices with Julius Caesar, but it's emphasizing the
death
of a great king, and that's why they
put him in the text. But there are
some historical evidence for several of these, like
the eclipse and for the, earthquake,
and even some of the Quadratas mentions how
some of the dead who had come at
that time and went into Jerusalem were still
alive in his day.
Just to follow-up on the embellishments of the
passion narratives. Like exactly the sleeping corpses coming
up, Now, what happened to them? Did they
die again? If they died twice,
then there's a contradiction in the New Testament.
Because Paul says according to Hebrews, although most
people don't believe Paul wrote Hebrews, appointed into
every man is to die once and then
judgment. What happened to these corpses? Did they
ascend with Jesus as well? Well, we look
at like the the passion narrative here. For
example, just really quick in the gospel of
Mark, we are told that when they came
to seize Jesus, there was a man there
who was in a linen cloth and he
ran away naked from the scene. I don't
remember seeing this in the movie, The Passion
of the Christ. The reason
is because if this was shown in the
movie,
this would have exploded the audience in laughter.
You know, could you imagine a tense scene,
slow motion, you know, dramatic music, and then
you see this guy streaking across the screen.
Why don't you stay true to the gospel
tradition and present it as it was said
in the gospels? This young man ran away
naked. Why are you picking and choosing? What
is this, a buffet line?
Thank you, mister Atay.
Next question is addressed to mister Lacono.
You say that mister Atay's evidence was biased
based on the Quran. However, was your wasn't
your historical evidence,
biased based on biased historians who believed in
the Bible?
That's a great question. I thank you for
asking it. I'm doing my dissertation on the,
historiography and the resurrection of Jesus, and this
is a serious problem that I realize that
I have, but so does everybody else in
terms of bias. We can't get away from
our own bias. When I'm talking about scholars,
you know, he said the majority of scholars
don't believe the resurrection. Well, he hasn't read
the literature. I've I have read the literature.
I've tried to read, and familiarize myself with
everything written on the resurrection since 1985
in a number of different languages,
and,
and in doing that, I can see where
scholars stand on this, and I can tell
you that the majority of scholars, these are
what we would call historical bedrock, these facts
that I've presented this evening. Now many scholars
may not agree with the conclusion that Jesus
rose from the dead, but they agree on
these facts. And a lot of times when
you but and many of these other scholars,
they don't apply solid,
methodology, and you look at them and you
go through these, and this is something which
even professional historians admit is a serious problem
within the community of professional historians,
that they don't have any,
criteria that they lay out and and say,
this is what I'm gonna follow. They talk
about it, but a lot of times, they
just go off and they just wing it
on these things, and they allow their biases
to to, guide them. In fact, the deist
historical Jesus scholar,
who named Dale Allison, says that this is
a serious problem. And in fact, Michael Grant,
who is a professional historian, says, it's impossible
for anyone to be objective. But here's the
thing. I in my dissertation, I lay out
6 different,
speed bumps that a historian has to go
over, slow down in order to keep him
from going unchecked in his bi or her
bias,
and I laid those out. And one of
the things is you gotta account for the
minimal facts, and other things you try your
best as possible to detach yourself for bias.
So, I I have in my investigation,
I have looked at these things and done
my best to minimize my bias and laid
out specific criteria for doing that. So I
would like to know from Ali what he
has done to minimize his bias.
I have 5 versions of the bible at
home, and I immerse myself in reading Christian
literature. That's how I try to unbiased myself.
Know, many scholars say this and
many I mean, anyone can say, many scholars
say this and that. That's the that's the
trick of Fox News. That's what they say.
Oh, many people believe this. Who who believes
that? Many people believe that. Just don't worry
about it. Many scholars say this. Right? And
we've both done that, and that's it really
it's my the word of my scholar against
the word of his scholar. Now, what's what's
the claim here? The the Christian claim is
that the core of the story is the
same. There was an empty tomb. Okay. Never
mind for now the conflicting genealogies of Jesus.
Never mind never mind for now only the
I am statements found in John. Never mind
for now the cleansing of the temple. Was
it done 1 or twice? Never mind for
now whether Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem
or Nazareth. You would at least expect the
details of the empty tomb discovery to agree.
Alas, they don't. The greatest miracle of Christendom,
and there's 4 versions of it. What's more,
all 4 are believed to be the word
of God, but all 4 cannot be true.
If these stories were, was were authenticated and
scrutinized with the same,
standards by the of the hadith, they would
all be rejected. They don't have a sunnah.
There's no isna. There's no sound chain of
anyone. I got cut off.
I'm sorry, I didn't see it. Reading 5
translations, I mean I mean, I'm I read
the Quran too. I don't read it in
5 translations, but I have, I have it
in 3 translations at home. So I mean,
I do those kind of things too, but
that's not what you do to minimize your
bias. And my guess is that when you're
reading the the Bible, you're just looking for
arguments to use against Christians.
In terms of most biblical scholars,
that they're just supporting my view or they're
Christian, that is not the case. If you
read the literature, you'd find that the majority
of biblical scholars are skeptics.
They reject the possibility of miracles.
Now, but what they do acknowledge are these
facts, and,
irrespective of how you may account for the
empty tomb, I think the empty tomb could
be accounted for a rescue. Say Jesus was
crucified, God made it appear he was dead,
took him, put him,
resuscitated him or healed him in the tomb.
But the problem is is the early we
can establish historically that the earliest disciples of
Jesus, those who he walked with him,
sincerely believed that he had died and risen
from the dead, and this is the death
knell that any kind of theory like that.
Nothing destroys an interesting theory that supports your
religious views like the facts.
Thank you.
Next question, we'll address mister Atay.
Having a little trouble reading this,
but, it says, if q source was lost,
how can you claim that there was no
passion story included in it?
Because according to most scholars, again,
Matthew and Luke have nothing new to tell
us about the passion narrative
that they didn't take from Mark. There's nothing
new, you see. The q source document, according
to most scholars, is,
material that Matthew and Luke took that is
not in Mark, you see. So that's how
we can tell that it's not in the
q source document. There's nothing,
in Matthew and Luke,
that is not in Mark. According to most
scholars, there's no passion narrative in the q
source document and that's why it's not anywhere
to be found. You know, where is it?
Some people said, well, the gospel of Thomas
could be. Well, it is not a good
candidate because it doesn't the the, there's not
enough word for word agreements. Where is the
q source document? Where is this hypothetical source
document? Where is it buried? Are we gonna
find it one day? Maybe some Muslim Bedouin
like, you know, how he found the dead
sea scrolls, he was kicking back with his
flock, he's throwing some stones into a into
a cave and then he hears his jar
break and next thing you know, this poor
God knows what happened to this poor Bedouin.
Next thing you know, the Israeli government and,
the Roman Catholic church, they're the only ones
that can see the Dead Sea Scrolls and
it was like that for 40 years. For
40 what did they find? Who knows? God
knows.
In terms of the q source, for those
of you who aren't familiar with q,
it's a hypothetical source that scholars assign where
Matthew and Luke agree with each other almost
word for word, but Mark doesn't report it.
That's what q is. And so it seems
like Matthew and Luke have a common source
there, but that's that's okay, because Luke even
says he got his information from the eyewitnesses.
And in that day, there was something called
autopsy, a little bit different than what a
pathologist might regard as autopsy.
But it it's looking for eyewitness testimonies.
And, so and they would look for that
even in written sources. Q was thought maybe
even to be an oral source, so it
wouldn't be in writing.
In terms of a passion narrative against the
teachings of Jesus, but some scholars have gone
and saying, you got all these redacted levels
of of Q. And that's why n t
Wright, I think, is right when he says
these scholars are just building castles on the
air, so we need not feel obligated to
rent a room.
You know, he mentioned, it was funny, the
gospel of Luke. He actually he mentioned this,
that Luke actually gives his reason why he
wrote his gospel. He admits he's not an
eyewitness, that he's going off tradition, and he
says, it seemed good to me also. It
seems like a good idea for me to
do this.
Is this is this constitute divine inspiration? Is
this a divine revelation? It seems good because,
you know, this is what people are saying.
And I can do things better than a
bunch of fishermen and tax collectors, so I'm
gonna go ahead and read write an orderly
account unto thee, oh excellency Theophilus. He's writing
a letter to Theophilus and this constitutes holy
scripture.
Right? So what was the gospel of the
Galatians at the time? Paul opposed the Galatians.
He said they believe in another gospel, in
another Christ. Where's their gospel? Is it the
Q source document? No one knows. He says
there was another gospel in Corinth. Where's that
gospel? No one knows. It was only the
after the proto orthodox won, you know, with
the conversion of Constantine, and all these groups
were marginalized.
Again, there are no Jewish Christian writings on
Earth that are extant. Where are they? They're
lost. They're completely lost. They're buried. Maybe one
day we'll find them, and they'll tell a
different story.
Sorry.
This will be the last question of the
evening to mister Lacono.
You quote John and other biblical sources in
your discussion of the Quran. You didn't mention
that historically the Bible has been changed, but
historically the Quran has remained unchanged.
Well,
I I don't think the Bible has been
changed over time. I mean, sure, there's discrepancies
in manuscripts just like there is in the
Quran,
but the the Jewish,
in in terms of the changes within their
and, let's say, the resurrection narratives that he
was mentioning,
Richard Birch has showed showed very cogently in
his book,
what are the gospels, that the gospels are
Greco Roman biographies, and then so you have
to judge them according to the genre in
which they're written. You wouldn't say a parable
is wrong because,
if you found out that the Good Samaritan
wasn't a historical person.
Because the parables are meant to be word
pictures and lessons, narrative stories in that way.
Now, the gospels
contain or Jesus taught in parables, the gospels
and Greco Roman biographies trying to report an
an actual biography of what happened with Jesus
here.
And and so when you look at this
and you say, okay, well, why might they
why might there be discrepancies here? Because of
the same conventions we do in everyday conversations,
and that's why you apply historical methodology.
Luke, as you go there, you see, like,
in the, the trial scene,
the,
in Matthew and Mark, the written to Jews,
says, are you the Messiah, the son of
God? And And he answers, he says, well,
yes, I am. And you will see the
Son of Man coming on the clouds of
him, blah blah blah. And they say, blasphemy,
tear his clothes. This guy's worthy of death.
That's probably what it was like. Luke, a
little bit different. He's writing to a gentile
audience, probably in Rome. They don't understand the
Son of Man imagery. They don't understand what
blasphemy is. So, after going through all of
that, are you the Messiah, the Son of
God? Jesus says, I certainly am. You'll see
the Son of Man, blah blah blah blah.
And he says, well then the high priest
says, well, then are you the son of
God? I am. Oh, well, we don't need
witnesses anymore to pilot you go. So he
may be adding this in, so in order
to clarify
to his,
gentile audience
of what son of man meant, because they
understand it in the same terms as son
of God. This isn't a contradiction. This is
just simply communicating in the same way that
we do every day with one another, the
kind of messages. We don't call these errors.
You just have to understand the genre of
the gospels, and they are very historical.
You cannot graft your theology upon the Hebrew
scriptures. The Jews do not believe in the
trinity. They don't believe that the Messiah was
to be a divine incarnation. So why would
the high priest ask Jesus,
are you the Christ, the Son of the
living God? Did he really meant that? Did
he mean that to be you were the
second person of the Trinity? No. Son of
God is a messianic title. They didn't believe
that Jesus was a divine incarnation. They didn't
that was not their conception
of the of the Messiah. This is a
Jewish concept. The Jews have
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1, an absolute unity. You cannot
graft your theology upon the Hebrew Scriptures. They
don't believe in the trinity. The the apocalyptic
son of man is not believed by Jews
to be a divine figure. That's blasphemy according
according to them.
Them. God is not a man, you see.
How much time do I have? 10 seconds?
Thank you very
much. I agree. The Jews didn't believe that
Christ,
of the messiah, the son of God here,
that that was a claim to divinity. So,
I would agree with Ollie there that the
high priest wouldn't have interpreted that as being
divine.
It's Jesus' following statement to say, and you
will see the son of man coming on
the clouds of heaven seated at the right
hand of power. Again, you go back to
Daniel 7, and it's very clear. He is
rethinking of himself as being divine because all
nations will serve him. And Jesus said, and
when he's tempted in the wilderness,
tell Satan you shall worship the Lord your
God and serve him only. Same Greek word
is used there. So in essence, what we
have with Jesus saying that is, hey. Yes,
I'm the messiah, I'm the son of God.
And you know what? You guys sitting in
these seats right here judging me, well, guess
what? You're gonna see my father and I
coming on the clouds of heaven, descending, and
we're gonna judge you. Don't get used to
those seats. We're gonna cast you off those
seats, and you're gonna be made footstool for
my feet, and you will serve me with
the same honor and respects that are due
only to God, because my father and I,
we're made of the same stuff.
And they understood that it's blasphemy, and that's
why they,
put him to death.
Thank you. And that concludes the question and
answer time. I wanna thank you for coming,
and let's give them a round of applause.