Ali Ataie – Historical and Theological Critique of the Christian Passion Narrative
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses various theories about Jesus's physical appearance and behavior, highlighting the importance of historical and credible sources. It also discusses three types of appetite for resurrecting, including a Lazarus resurrection, a doomsday resurrection, and a Jonas resurrection. The third type is a-wise, not a doomsday resurrection, and listeners are encouraged to pray for Maghrib. A book called The point of God by Dale Martin is mentioned as well.
AI: Summary ©
Tonight,
I'm going to talk about
the,
historical
and theological critique
of the Christian passion narrative
of Said Na'i Isa alaihi salaam.
The,
Quran is a
excuse me.
The Quran is a a bold text.
It makes bold claims.
I think one of the boldest of claims
in the Quran
is when
Allah says about
That they did not kill him nor did
they crucify him, but it was made to
appear so unto them.
For a surety, they killed him not. Of
course, this is in Surat An
Nisa, ayah number 157.
So here's the essence of the Christian thesis,
as
expounded by Christian apologists and polemicists
and Christian academics
is that it's a historical fact
historical fact
that Jesus was crucified
and that he rose from the dead. Therefore,
the Quran is
egregiously
wrong
when it says they did not kill him
nor did they crucify him.
So why believe a text that came 500
years later
written in Arabic
that says otherwise when you have these 4
gospels
written by
independent eyewitnesses
according to them,
multiply attested,
in Greek
that say that he was crucified.
So you Muslims are denying history. You deny
history, you deny history.
So let's talk about history. So this is
the essence of the Christian claim
that according to modern historiography,
it's a fact that Jesus was crucified and
he was resurrected.
Okay. According to modern historiographical
methodology,
Modern historians,
they try to establish what probably happened.
Right? What probably happened? That's what determines all
of modern history. It's levels of probability.
So did Obama win the election in 2012?
Yeah. I think you can say with a
very high degree of probability that he won
the election.
Right?
There's no global conspiracy in that regard. It's
very high that he won the election. Okay.
Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone nut, the
lone assassin? Well, in the mid sixties, that
was the historical position. That was the dominant
position.
And then, you know, you had the Jim
Garrison investigation.
You had this recruiter video coming out in
1975
and 1979.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations
determined definitively, yes. In fact, it was a
conspiracy, and that's the latest,
from the government on the JFK assassination.
Did Constantine
convert to Christianity before the Council of Nicaea
in 325 of the Common Era? Again, very
hazy.
Further back in time you go, the more
hazy it becomes.
Were Muslims in America first or Christians?
Well, depends on whose history you're going to
read.
Certainly, European history tells us that in 1492,
Columbus saw the ocean blue, and they killed
the Muslims and the Jews.
Whatever. I don't know the end of the
rhyme.
But according to,
Muslim
historians Al Masoudi
Al Idrisi,
right,
There was a Muslim presence,
voyages sent from Andalusia into the Americas
as early as 889
of the common era. So 600 years,
before Columbus was discovered.
So
the past doesn't change.
Right?
Only our perception
of the past changed, and that's modern history.
That's how history is done
in modern times.
What is history? Our perception of the past.
So modern historians cannot establish miracles
as the most probable occurrence
because miracles by definition
are the least probable occurrence.
In Arabic, they're called
or breaks a natural law.
Right? If you and we believe in them.
But if you saw a man standing on
the top of a building and I told
you he got there 1 of 3 ways,
either he flew up there like Superman or
he took the elevators
or he took the staircase,
which one would you conclude
is probably what happened?
You'd probably say that he took because people
don't don't they don't take stairs anymore. Right?
People are lazy now. So you'd say and
you say, well,
maybe he flew. We believe in, you know,
Karamat, you know, Karismata,
you know, the miracles of the Auria, but
that's such a rare occurrence.
He probably went up there with an elevator.
Right? And that's how history is done. So
a miracle,
right, a miracle is the least probable occurrence
by definition.
Therefore, the least probable historically.
So historians cannot presuppose
modern historians
do not presuppose
god's existence
or nonexistence.
They have no access to god. So something
like the virgin birth of Isa alaihis salam.
That's something we believe
as Muslims. So there's a difference between sacred
history and secular history.
Secular history
or non confessional history
is based on probability.
Right? So that's history with a lowercase h,
a small h.
Sacred history or confessional history
is based on revelation.
Right? So the Quran gives us sacred history,
and we believe that's true history, a capital
h.
But you cannot repeat past events
through experimentation.
So you can't prove anything through the modern
scientific method that happened in the past. So
to say that we can prove that Isa
alaihis salaam
was crucified and resurrected, we can prove it
through the modern scientific method is false. The
only way to do that is either go
back in time,
right, and witness the event yourself, which is
impossible,
or reproduce the event now, which is also
impossible.
Alright?
So
if you make if your thesis is that,
you know, certain types of mice prefer cheddar
cheese over Monterey Jack, you can produce that
experiment and do it a few times and
then have your conclusion, which you cannot prove
through the scientific method that something happened in
the past.
Maybe it happened, but you can't prove it
historically.
It is a faith conviction.
The resurrection
of Jesus, the so called resurrection of Jesus,
is a theological
claim.
It's a theological claim. It's a faith claim.
Now does it have theological consistency? We're gonna
talk about that later
So this is my historical critique of the
Christian narrative, then we'll get to the theological
critique.
The big question is, are the 4 gospels
in the New Testament reliable
as historical sources?
According to classical
historians like Schweitzer
and FC Bauer, Walter Bauer,
Rudolf Waltman, h Ramirez, and others, they are
not reliable historical sources.
According to contemporary
historians like Dale Martin, who himself is a
Trinitarian Catholic at Yale University,
also Bart Ehrman. They also say, no. They're
not reliable historical sources, but rather theological sources.
Why are they not reliable historical sources according
to these,
historians?
They say there's six reasons. They say they're
too late.
They're written between 40
70 years
after the events that they purport to describe.
They say that they're anonymous.
The 4 evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
do not identify themselves.
They were later pseudonymously
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who
are 2 disciples of Isa alaihi salaam. 1
is a disciple of Peter and 1 is
a disciple of Paul.
So they're not written by eyewitnesses.
That's the third reason. Number 4, they're not
disinterested.
We'll come back to this one.
Number 5, they're written in the wrong language.
They're written in Greek whereas Isa alaihis salam
and his disciples spoke Syriac,
a Semitic language.
And number 6, they have certain
or numerous inconsistencies
that cannot be
reconciled or harmonized.
Let's go back to number 4, that the
4 gospels are not disinterested.
So this is to say that the 4
gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
reflect what's known as Pauline Christology.
Paul's Christology,
who many would argue is the actual founder
of Christianity.
Paul says in 2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse
8, he says, remember Jesus Christ,
in the Greek,
literally from the sperm of David, from the
seed of David.
Interestingly, Paul doesn't know about the virgin birth
at all. He never mentions it. He believes
that Jesus is literally a descendant of David.
He said, remember Jesus of the seed of
David
was raised from the from the dead,
in the Greek,
according to my gospel.
That's my gospel.
So if he's just scratched under the surface
here, it seems like Paul is saying that
there are other gospels. And indeed, in Galatians,
he does say that explicitly, and we're gonna
get to that in a minute
In 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verse 17,
Paul says, if Christ is not raised,
if there's no resurrection,
our faith is null and void.
Our faith is in vain.
Paul is saying everything, every Christian faith hinges
completely
on this
event, the so called death and resurrection
of.
So you have these 4 gospels that are
basically they have theological
agendas. They're polemical tractates.
Right? The primary goal of the evangelists,
the authors of these
books, is to convince you with respect to
a theological
position
not to describe accurate history.
History is written through the lens of their
theology.
John admits this at the end of his
gospel, the gospel of John chapter 20 verse
31. He says, these things have been written
in order
in order that you might know that Jesus
is the Christ,
the son of God.
This is the whole point of writing these
gospels,
is to impart theology,
not history, not accurate history.
So the big question here is then, if
the evangelist and subsequent scribes
can change and embellish and manipulate
traditions or stories in the gospels
due to apologetic
or polemical or Christological
considerations.
How do we know that what they said
was true?
I'll give you an example. In Luke chapter
23,
Luke says that when Jesus was hanging on
the cross,
he cries out
in the original Greek, which means father forgive
them for they know not what they do.
Now if you go into the most ancient
and best manuscripts,
the gospel of Luke in Greek, this verse
is nowhere to be found.
Scholars have concluded that it's basically a polemical
response
to a Christological
heresy
in the late 1st century called Marcionism.
So there's this Christian guy named Marcion,
very influential,
who was by theists. He said the God
of the old testament is a different God
than Jesus, the God of the New Testament,
and he was vehemently anti Jewish.
And he called the Jews,
God killers. They're guilty of deicide,
killing
God. Right? So sometime in the 2nd century,
a scribe
put these words upon the lips of Jesus,
fabricated the gospel of Luke. Now you have
Jesus forgiving the Jews from the cross.
Okay.
So and there are other examples.
So what Bart Ehrman,
he his advice is when you read the
4 gospels, you should read them horizontally rather
than vertically.
So vertical reading of the gospels is what
we do naturally. We start with Matthew. We
read it all the way through, then we
go to Mark, then we go to Luke,
then we go to John. But he says
that's not the right way to to read
the gospels.
Horizontal reading of the gospels
is when you read it
according to a synopsis.
So Kurt Allen and Barbara Allen did this
really beautiful
job, synopsis of the New Testament gospels. I
think it's called synopsis of the 4 gospels
that they study in seminary. So how do
you do that? Basically,
you read a pericope or a passage in
1 gospel and then go to that same
event described in another gospel and notice the
differences.
With horizontal reading, you'll notice these differences,
the subtle changes made by scribes.
So for example, you read Matthew's gospel, read
about the baptism of Jesus in Matthew's gospel.
Then you go to Mark and read about
the baptism of Jesus. You'll notice some differences.
Go to Luke and read his description of
the baptism. Then go to John, there's no
baptism.
Right? Go to Matthew, read about the Sermon
on the Mount.
What does Jesus say on the Sermon on
the Mount?
Go to Luke,
slightly different. The Lord's Prayer, slightly different. A
little bit different here and there, Sermon on
the Mount. Mark, no Sermon on the Mount.
John, no Sermon on the Mount.
So this is a horizontal reading. Now let's
look at the passion narratives in Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John.
Did Jesus defend himself at his trial
according to the New Testament gospels?
What's the answer?
To borrow a phrase from Ehrman,
it depends on which gospel you read.
In some gospels, he defends himself. In other
ones, he does not. Was he flogged
before he was crucified
according to the bible?
Well, it depends on which gospel you read.
Was he crucified on the eve of Passover
or the night before?
It depends on which gospel you read.
Did he bear his own cross to Golgotha,
the place where he was supposedly crucified? Did
he carry his own cross or did someone
else carry it for him? It depends on
which gospel you read. Was he impaled on
the cross? Was he speared to death on
the cross? It depends on which gospel you
read. Did the crossmates,
the men who are crucified with him, did
they make fun of him? Did they mock
him and revile him? Or did one of
them actually praise him? It depends on which
gospel you read.
Was there an earthquake, an eclipse, a storm?
Did saints come out of their graves and
walk around Jerusalem?
It depends on which gospel you read.
Who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday?
It depends on which gospel you read.
How many how many people went there? It
depends on which gospel you read.
Why did they go to the tomb? What
was the reason? It depends on which gospel
you read.
What did they see when they got there?
It depends on which gospel you read.
What did they do next?
It depends on which gospel you read.
Did Jesus appear to his disciples in Galilee
or in Jerusalem and its suburbs or to
nobody.
It depends on which gospels you read.
So
is there any way to harmonize
these 4 books? I would say that harmonization
of these 4 passion narratives
is impossible. What time was he crucified?
9 AM or at noon? When did he
die? It depends on which gospel you read.
So if you want to harmonize these 4
gospels
and put them into a single account, like
Tatian actually did, a student of Justin Martyr,
he called it the Diatessaron,
the gospel through 4,
then essentially what you're doing is you're writing
your own gospel,
like the gospel according to Mel Gibson, also
known as the Passion According the Passion of
the Christ.
Right? Where he integrates elements of all 4
gospels.
And sometimes, he takes elements that are found
in no gospel.
Satan at the Garden of Gethsemane
during,
during Jesus's prayer and agony, that's not mentioned
in any gospel. There's no Satan there.
Why is he mentioning that? Because there was
a an Augustinian
nun named
Anne Emmerich who was astigmatic. She would bleed
from her hands and she would have these
visions of Christ and she wrote these things
down in her diary. So a lot of
what she wrote down was was taken into
the movie, was incorporated
into that movie by Mel Gibson being a
devout Catholic.
So
scholars believe that what's known as mark in
priority.
Mark wrote first.
Matthew and Luke used Mark's skeletal,
chronology
and wrote their own gospels based on Mark.
If this is true, which is a dominant
opinion in academia,
why would Matthew
using Mark's gospel, why would Matthew
rework,
reword, and redact
Mark in passages If he believed Mark was
inspired by God?
What does this tell you about how Matthew
felt about Mark's gospel?
If he felt it was inspired by God
as the vast majority of Christians believe the
gospel of Mark to be, why is Matthew,
who's also supposed to be inspired by God,
changing Mark's gospel at times, cleaning up the
grammar? Mark's grammar is not very good in
the Greek. It repeats a lot of words
over and over again.
It doesn't sound very good. Right? So Matthew
has to clean it up.
Now,
William,
William Lane, Craig, and Mike Lacona, these are
prominent,
Christian apologists.
They admit
they admit
that
Matthew
made embellishments.
Right?
For example, the saints coming out of their
graves when Jesus was resurrected,
walking around Jerusalem.
They say, yeah, that sounds a lot like
Plutarch's, you know, account of the death of
Romulus,
one of the founders of Rome.
So if they admit that Matthew and Luke
and John
made embellishments,
what else did they embellish?
What does it say about these books being
the word of God?
Interestingly, there are only four references to Jesus
in pagan and Jewish sources.
By pagan, I mean Roman
Roman and Jewish sources
in the first 100 years of the Christian
era. From the year 33 to 133,
there are only four references to Jesus
in Roman and Jewish sources. In other words,
outside Christian sources.
One of them is by the Roman historian
Tacitus
in his Annals around 116
of the Common Era,
and he simply repeated what some of the
Christians at that place were saying about Jesus.
The other one is by Pliny the Younger,
a Roman official around 110 of the common
era,
writing to the emperor Trajan as to how
to deal with Christians
in his province.
Then you have 2 passages from Josephus,
the Jewish philosopher,
around 95 of the common era in his
antiquities.
One is a very, very quick reference to
Christ where he's actually
describing James, the brother of Jesus. He says,
James, whose brother
was called Christ.
The other reference by Josephus
is called the Testimonium
Flavinium,
the testimony of Josephus,
which describes Jesus as the Christ and how
he died and then was resurrected.
This is a total fabrication
to the antiquities by admission of almost
all Christian scholars.
So in reality,
none of these sources,
none of these non Christian sources
say that Jesus was resurrected.
So by default,
historians use the New Testament gospels.
This is all we have from the 1st
century.
In other words, the only sources
that say Jesus was crucified,
from the 1st century
are the New Testament gospels, and they are
not reliable
as historical sources, but rather
theological sources.
Let me give you an example.
Luke,
he takes a
mark in pericope.
So Mark chapter 6. This is called the
rejection
at Nazareth.
This is sort of Jesus' final sort of
speech
in Galilee before he goes into Jerusalem.
It's in Mark chapter 6. Luke takes that
speech and moves it to the beginning of
his gospel
and makes it Jesus' inaugural
address.
Now Luke knows
that 100 of years from now, people are
going to know that he deliberately manipulated the
chronology of events here. He doesn't care
because for the 4 evangelists,
the most important thing is imparting theology.
Right? Not history. They're not interested.
There's a historical element, no doubt, to the
4 gospels, but much more important and trumping
history completely, taking a total backseat is history
to theology.
They're trying to in incorporate,
and
impart
theology, their theological stances.
They're writing their theology.
They're writing their history, I should say, through
the lens of their theology.
And only theology in the Pauline
or Hellenistic
or what we call the proto Trinitarian
schools of thought, And the gospels have very
little to do with the Jamesonian
or Semitic
or proto Unitarian
schools of thought. So Paul versus James,
you know, this dichotomy
is a big topic.
To sum it up very quickly for you,
in the 1st century, it's very, very clear
that there are 2 distinct interpretations
of the gospel of Jesus.
Right? There's Paul's interpretation.
Paul,
a self proclaimed apostle of Christ, never met
the historical Christ,
is basing his apostleship on a vision he
had on the way to Damascus.
And then there's Jamesonian
Christianity
based on,
James,
who is the brother of Jesus and the
successor of Christ, the leader of the Jerusalem
episcopate
after the ascension of Riis alaihis salam, they
have 2 vastly different
interpretations of the gospel. In fact, many scholars
like the 2 Bowers I mentioned, FC Bauer,
Walter Bauer, even Kierkegaard,
even Thomas Jefferson
believe that Paul is the corruptor
of the gospel.
In Galatians
and keep in mind that Paul,
he authored more than half of the New
Testament. All of his letters and epistles were
written before the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John.
In Galatians, written around 55 of the common
era, Paul admits that he has enemies.
And he says that these enemies believe in,
in his own words,
gospel.
His enemies believe in another gospel. So Paul
is not he he has other enemies, like
the Jews were his enemies, pagans are his
enemies, but he's not talking about them here.
He's talking about other Christians
that he considers to be his enemies.
F. C. Bauer is sort of the traditional
authority on the book of Galatians,
and this is what he says happened. He
says Paul, a freelance apostle, goes into Galatia
in modern day Turkey and evangelizes the populace.
James in Jerusalem,
the successor of Christ, he hears about Paul's
deviant teachings.
So he sends his own apostles into Galatia
with letters of recommendation.
This is what Paul is telling us. They
have letters of recommendation. What are these letters?
These are ijazat. These are teaching licenses
that are given to them by James, the
brother of Jesus. Because senate, like,
knowledge is very important to the early Christian
movement. Paul does not have. He's not an
apostle. He doesn't have permission to teach the
gospel. This is what FC Bauer says based
on Paul's writings in Galatians. So these apostles
go into Galatia to correct Paul's deviant teachings.
And Paul names his enemies in Galatia. You
know, you read like something like the book
of Romans. Paul wrote Romans.
And, you know, that's Paul's sort of Christology,
his soteriology.
But the the scholars say that Galatians is
really what Paul was thinking.
This is really what he's thinking. Right?
So he names his enemies.
He says, you know, these apostles
in Jerusalem, he calls them so called pillars.
He calls them hypocrites.
He calls them, sarcastically,
super apostles.
Right? Who are these apostles he's talking about?
He name drops.
He says their names are Yaakov
and Keifa
and Yohanan.
James,
Peter,
and John.
These are direct students of Isa, a s
olam, that Paul is accusing of hypocrisy.
There's fundamental difference of opinion between the Jamesonian
school with respect to what the gospel is
and the Pauline school.
In the gospel of Thomas,
statement number 12, which is not in the
New Testament, obviously,
but some consider to be a 5th gospel.
Some even consider the gospel of Thomas to
be more early than the synoptic gospels, Matthew,
Mark, and Luke. Jesus says in statement number
12 in the gospel of Thomas, when I
am gone,
you must go to James the just
for whose sake heaven and earth came into
being.
Jesus here is,
giving the the apostles
his haditha as it were, endorsing James as
his successor.
James the just, Ya'akov
Had Sadiq.
Interestingly enough, the Khalifa of Isa alaihi salam,
his lakab, his nickname,
hassadiq,
is the same lakab of the Khalifa of
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as
siddiq.
Right? Has siddiq Ya'aqov
in Hebrew, and Abu Bakr as siddiq in
Arabic. That's in the gospel
of Thomas.
In Philippians,
Paul calls his enemies,
these other apostles,
these other Christians who believe in another gospel,
he calls them dogs,
enemies of the cross,
enemies
of the cross. Raymond Brown, a great authority,
a sage exeget of the New Testament.
He says this is probably because these apostles
denied the crucifixion
of Isa alaihis salam.
So the New Testament is by and large
representative
of Pauline Christianity
and the cross is central. Remember what Paul
said? If Christ is not raised, our faith
is vain, is null and void.
14
of the 27 books of the New Testament
are either written by Paul or someone pretending
to be Paul.
One book of the New Testament is written
by James, the successor of the Isa alaihis
salam.
So how did this happen?
Well, in a nutshell,
Constantine,
the first Christian emperor,
when he converted to Christianity or when he
embraced
or endorsed
Pauline Christianity,
he called for the Council of Nicaea in
325, the first ecumenical council.
And many of the bishops that were there,
318 bishops,
they took a vote. Many of them, historians
believe, like Henry Chadwick, were intimidated by Constantine
to vote that Jesus is in fact
He is of the same essence
as the
father. So therefore, Jesus becomes
God officially.
And, of course, in 3/81, the Council of
Constantinople,
Theodosius,
the next emperor or
a later emperor, they voted again and indeed,
the Holy Spirit was also found to be
God by vote. Very democratic
process apparently.
All other forms of Christianity
were marginalized,
declared illegal by imperial mandate.
So where are all the Jewish Christian writings?
Where are their books and their polemics and
their apologies?
They're gone because they redeemed heresy.
We know that there was a book called
the gospel of the Evunim,
the gospel of the Ebionites.
We know there was a book called the
gospel of the Nutsrim
of the Nazarenes.
We know there was a gospel called the
gospel of the Hebrews.
The, communities that authored these books did not
believe that Jesus was God
nor that he died for their sins.
They believed they were practicing Jews who worship
in the temple. They followed the kashrut and
the mitzvot. They followed all the laws and
commandments.
The only difference was that they believed to
be
to be the Messiah.
The gospel of the Ebionites, the gospel of
the Nazarenes,
the gospel of the Hebrews, these books are
lost.
The only reason why we know about them
is because proto orthodox,
Christian apologists
like Tertullian and Irenaeus,
Origen and Jerome,
they would quote these books in their refutations
of these books.
So in other words, we only have one
side of the story.
So the 4 gospels are not reliable historically,
and they only represent one side of the
conflict,
one side of the conflict.
In fact, there have been seasoned historians,
Bruno Bauer,
GA Wells,
Tom Harper,
that completely denied Jesus even ever existed,
let alone
that he was crucified and resurrected.
Modern day
atheist and historian Richard Carrier,
He calls this the Jesus myth movement and
he wants this to have peer review.
He wants scholars, PhDs to sit down and
actually discuss this issue, but it's so sensitive.
Of course, I wouldn't go that far, and
we can't go that far because we know
Isa alaihi salaam existed because as Sadiq al
Amin, Saydah Muhammad
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said that Isa Alaihi
Salam
existed
in And
if the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said it,
then it's true.
Right? But I would argue this idea that
it's historical fact that Christ was crucified,
I would say that needs to be reviewed
by peers,
by
academics.
Okay.
And it's interesting. There was a there was
a preacher called Apollodius of Tyanna.
He's a contemporary with Jesus. He lived in
a different country, though.
He died around 100 he he was like
from 15 to 100 the common era,
and he performed miracles and things like that.
And he was also seen by his disciples
after his death.
You know, my question is, you know, why
don't Christians believe that Apollonius of Tyanna
was seen by his disciples in visions? Mike
Lacona answered because I debated Mike Lacona. You
can actually find this on YouTube if you
want.
We debated, like, 2006 or something. He said,
you know those accounts about Apollonius of Tyanna?
He said they're late,
they're not eyewitness accounts, and they're all biased.
So that's exactly what historians
say about the New Testament gospels. They're late,
they're not based on eyewitness accounts,
and they're very biased.
Lacono will say,
however, everyone agrees that the Titanic sank.
Right? There's only differences in the peripherals. In
other words, everyone believes Jesus was killed and
resurrected. Here's a little bit difference of opinion
on sort of, you know, side issues.
But the sinking of the Titanic is probable
because there's physical evidence
of it. There's forensic evidence. There's eyewitness testimony.
But the resurrection of a man god
is highly improbable.
In fact, miraculous.
And by definition,
a miracle is the least probable occurrence.
The historian cannot say Jesus rose from the
dead, but only that he was claimed to
have been seen after his death. Bart Ehrman
says, you know, visual experiences of Jesus
documented thousands of times are much more probable
than the miracle of the resurrection.
This is theological.
It's a faith conviction.
Also, we have no evidence as to how
the disciples died.
Christians want to say to disciples,
they died defending the truth that Jesus was
resurrected.
We have no idea how the disciples died.
There were 3rd century sort of romantic legends
about them. You know, Thomas going into India,
Thadeus going into Iraq,
Mark founding the church in Egypt,
even Andrew going as far as England,
but nobody takes these stories very seriously.
So I wanna give you
Bart Ehrman's historical hypothesis,
and he's got many of them.
So he's he he's trying to,
he wants to present
a narrative, a passion narrative of Christ
that is more probable and therefore, more historical
than the Christian passion narrative because it's devoid
of miracles.
This is what Ehrman says. He says, Jesus
was crucified. He was killed. He has no
reason to question,
this this event.
He was killed. He was put into a
common grave, he says.
And he points out that most times, the
Romans will not allow families
to claim,
the bodies of crucified victims. It was almost
unheard of. It would be thrown into common
graves.
Jesus was then seen in visions by certain
people, his disciples, because they loved and longed
for him. And he said it was very
common.
And then the myth of the empty tomb
began later.
Interestingly, Paul does not mention an empty tomb
anywhere in his writings.
And this idea of a,
a dying and rising savior man god, a
soter man god,
was very common or attractive to Hellenistic Christians
at that time. We'll get to Paul's pneumatology
a little bit later.
So this is what Ehrman says probably happened,
because this is more probable, this is more
historical
than the Christian passion narrative of Jesus being
crucified
and then being resurrected.
In fact, according to Dale Martin,
it was Helen, the mother of Constantine,
in the 4th century
who first chose the place of the tomb
of
Christ and the building of the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre. It was not known with
any certainty before this time.
Now what I'm going to offer now
are 4 more probable, hence more plausible,
naturalistic,
hence more historical,
hypotheses
as to what happened to Rizalai Salam
that is simultaneously
more consistent
theologically
with pre Christian Jewish messianic
expectations
than the,
Christian passion and resurrection
narrative.
In other words, 4 more historical
4 more historical hypotheses
that happen to agree
with Islam.
Right? Why are they more historical?
Because I don't have to resort to miracles.
Right? Now, obviously, we believe in miracles. But
the point here is to repudiate this idea
that the Christian position
of Jesus being killed and resurrected
is historical,
and the Muslims are denying history.
So I won't resort to miracles.
The first one is called the twin hypothesis.
The twin hypothesis.
Did you know that 2nd century Syrian Christians
believed Jesus had a twin brother?
His name was Jude, also known as
Judas Thomas. In fact, the name Thomas Thoma
in Aramaic
means twin.
Now, not literally a twin brother,
but someone who looked a lot like Jesus.
So Jesus affectionately calls him Thoma.
He's like my twin. He looks just like
me. Right? In fact, in the Acts of
Thomas,
a book that is not in the New
Testament,
Jesus and Thomas are always being confused
for one another because they look very similar.
In fact, Ja'far,
Ibnu Abi Talib,
was a companion that the prophet
said something similar. He says, you know, from
a distance, he looks exactly like me, and
he's similar to me, not only in his
haluk, in his physical appearance, but in his
haluk,
in his character.
So here's the twin hypothesis.
Jesus is on the Mount of Olives.
He knows that a group of temple guards
are coming to arrest him and to kill
him.
Thomas,
his twin,
volunteers to die for him because he loved
him.
Thomas is taken and crucified,
buried at a common grave.
Several days later, people claim to have seen
Jesus alive. In fact, he was alive.
Some claim that he was resurrected.
He explains the truth to his disciples,
but rumors continue to grow and grow.
Eventually, legends of an empty tomb
begin amongst Hellenistic Christians
who are already attracted to this idea of
a dying and rising savior man god. Christians
like Mark, who writes in 70 of the
Common Era, 40 years later,
Matthew and Luke follow suit.
So this is a hypothesis
which is more historical
than the Christian passion narrative because I didn't
have to resort to a miracle.
Again, the claim here is that Christians are
saying that Jesus dying and being resurrected
is historical bedrock
and Muslims are denying history.
But to say that Jesus was resurrected
resurrected himself
is not historical. That's not how history is
done.
That's a faith conviction.
And now in light of new archaeological
discoveries, we'll get to those later, this whole
idea of Jesus being crucified
as being historical fact, that has to be
reassessed
as well.
2nd theory is called the Barabas
hypothesis.
So for this one, you can see Bruce
Metzger's textual analysis of the new testament. He
goes into it a little bit, but I'll,
sort of give you
the the the quick version of it.
So we are told that,
it was Roman custom,
for the Roman governor of Judea, whose name
was Pontius Pilate, that once a year before
Passover, he would simply release a Jewish prisoner
that he had in custody,
right, as a show of goodwill. Now there's
no,
historical evidence of this ever happening in Roman
records.
Right? So this could be another example of
Matthew,
writing history through the lens of his theology.
If you think about it, on Yom Kippur,
a lamb is slaughtered and one is released.
Right? Seems like Matthew has this in mind.
So 2 men are gonna be presented. 1's
going to be released. 1's going to be
slaughtered. So this could
be something non historical, but Matthew's trying to
make a theological point.
But let's just say it is historical. Let's
say it did happen even though it's not
attested in Roman sources.
Say Pilate did have this custom.
So this is what it says in Matthew
27.
It says Pilate brought out 2 prisoners.
1 was named
Barabbas.
The other was named,
Jesus
Christ.
Right?
And he says, which shall I release to
you? The crowd screams.
Apparently, they say, release Barabbas and crucify
Jesus.
So then according to Matthew,
Pilate releases Barabbas and crucifies Jesus.
Now what's interesting is
that early versions of Matthew's gospel
give us the first name of Barabbas.
It's an interesting first name.
Does anyone know what his first name is?
Jesus. Jesus
is also Jesus. And in fact, Barabbas is
not a name. It's a title.
It's a patronym.
In Aramaic,
Barabbah.
Barabbah means the son of the father.
Barabbas is no ordinary brigand or thief.
He is a messianic claimant. He's claiming to
be the messiah. He's probably a Galilean like
Jesus. You can tell them from their accents.
Right? They have a strange accent. And
the Galileans were known for two things. They
were good fishermen and they were zealots. They're
known for insurrections
against the Roman occupiers.
So you have these 2 would be messiahs
that are brought out. So think about it
now. Early versions of Matthew tell us that
Barabbas' first name is also Jesus. So think
about what Pilate is asking the crowd. He's
saying, who do I release to you? Yeshu
Abar Abba,
Jesus Christ, or Yeshuah
Meshiach,
Jesus Christ.
Who do I release? Jesus Christ or Jesus
Christ?
And they say, Jesus Christ.
And who do I crucify?
Jesus Christ.
So you see how there's confusion.
Right? Who was crucified?
So subsequent scribes of Matthew's gospel,
they went into the gospel and they erased
Barabbas'
first name.
Right? So most of the English translations that
you have with the bible, look at Matthew
17, you won't find Barabbas' first name. I
think only the NIV,
the new international version, goes back to more
ancient Greek manuscripts where you actually get that
first name of Barabbas. Why was the name
removed? Probably because there was confusion
in the early church as to who was
actually crucified,
which Jesus was actually crucified.
So here's the Barabbas hypothesis, is that
Pilate releases
Isa alaihi salam
and crucifies Barabbas.
Many in the crowd are confused and don't
know who is who. The Pharisees complained, but
it's too late. It was the will of
the crowd, and Pilate let them judge.
Take it up with the crowd, he says,
and then he washes his hands of it.
Barabbas is crucified and buried in a a
common grave.
Several days later, people claim to have seen
Jesus alive, and in fact, he was alive.
Some claim he was resurrected. He explains the
truth to his disciples, but the rumors grow
and grow.
Eventually, legends of an empty tomb begin
amongst Hellenistic Christians who are attracted to this
idea of dying and rising savior,
man
gods, like Mark who wrote in 70, and
then 40 years later, Matthew and Luke follow
suit.
3rd
hypothesis
is called the Simon hypothesis.
Simon.
Okay. The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke
tell us this is what it says in
the New Testament. When they're going to crucify
Jesus, the Romans, for no
reason, inexplicably,
they take the cross of Jesus and they
give it to a random guy standing in
the crowd.
Now Christians
conjecture that that's because Jesus was just so
beat down
and he just he couldn't carry the cross.
Right? Although that's not mentioned in argument from
absence.
Right? Doesn't mention that in the New Testament.
We'll get to the extent of the injuries
of Jesus in a minute, what the gospels
actually say.
But for no good reason, they pull this
man out of the crowd named Simon of
Cyrene, his only appearance in the entire New
Testament.
And they compel him to bear the cross.
And as the narrative goes in the New
Testament, Simon takes the cross all the way
up to Golgotha and then they crucify Jesus
on the cross.
Here's the Simon hypothesis.
The Romans compel Simon to bear the cross.
Jesus follows behind
but becomes immersed in the crowd.
A couple of disciples grab hold of him
and pull him quickly into a neighboring apartment.
At Golgotha, the Pharisees complained to the Roman
Centurions,
this is not Jesus.
But the Romans fearing execution
for their incompetence,
fasten
Simon to the cross.
Simon goes willingly because he loved Jesus. He
was a secret disciple and desires martyrdom.
Simon is crucified
and buried in a common grave.
Several days later, people see Jesus who's actually
alive, so on and so forth, rumors of
an empty tomb.
Did you know that there was a Christian
scholar named Basileides
Basileides,
a teacher in Egypt around 125 of the
common era, He wrote the first ever comprehensive
tafsir,
exegesis on the New Testament called the Exegetica,
25 volumes
now completely lost.
He denied the crucifixion of Jesus.
His followers championed a text called the second
treatise of the great Seth, which was discovered
in 1945
at Nag Hammadi, Egypt.
What does it say? It says, Simon was
crucified
instead of Jesus.
So it's historical precedent for this hypothesis.
The final theory
that I'll give you in my historical critique,
and then we're gonna get to a theological
critique in Sholem Aletta'ala. I'll probably have to
go,
a little bit after Maghreb as well.
This is called the swoon theory.
And this one is a little
controversial
because the essence of the swoon theory is
that Jesus was put on the cross,
but he did not die on the cross.
He survived the crucifixion.
And, of course, this theory is made popular
by Muslim apologists like Ahmadidad, for example. The
Ahmadiyya,
a pseudo Islamic sect, they actually believe this
is what really happened to Isa alaihi salaam.
But again, as far as Ahlus Sunnah wal
Jama'a and as far as the Shia, there
is no definitive answer as to what happened
to Isa alaihis salaam. These are hypotheses.
The swoon theory is very interesting though. So
I'll say for the sake of argument.
So in Luke 11
and Matthew 12,
the Pharisees come to Jesus. So anytime
Luke and Matthew I won't get too technical
here. Anytime Luke and Matthew have material in
common that is missing from Mark, the dominant
opinion from Western academics
is that Matthew and Luke had access to
another source called q. They call it q,
the sayings gospel.
The sayings gospel represents the most accurate teachings
of Christ
written concurrently with
Paul's letters. So they haven't been touched or
tainted by Pauline
Christology.
So what Jesus says right now is is
considered by Western scholars of higher biblical criticism
to be extremely accurate
as far as,
representing the actual teachings
of the Isa, alaihis salam. Luke 11, Matthew
12. The Pharisees come to Jesus and they
say to him, give us a sign. Do
something. Do a miracle. Pull a rabbit out
of your hat.
Jesus says to him to them, no sign.
An evil and adulterous generation
seeketh after signs.
No sign shall be given unto you except
the sign of the prophet Jonah.
For as Jonah was 3 days 3 nights
in the belly of the whale,
so shall the son of man, referring to
himself Ben Adam or Bar enash,
so shall the son of man be in
the heart of the earth 3 days 3
nights.
The sign of Jonah. We'll get back to
Jonah in a minute.
Now
Mark says Jesus was put on the cross
at 9 AM.
John says it was noon.
Mark says he died at the 9th hour,
which is 3 PM.
If we take John's start date and
Mark's
end date, he was on the cross for
3 hours.
In Mark 1544,
when Pilate was told that Jesus was dead,
Mark says, Pilate
marveled.
He was amazed. He said, what?
He's dead already?
And this is someone who was witness to
the so called beat down and the flogging
and so on and so forth,
Yet, he marveled. Why did he marvel? This
was the govern Roman governor. His career was
crucifying Jews.
He knew it was impossible for a man
to expire after only 3 hours. It took
days
to die on the cross. Interestingly,
Matthew and Luke, they leave out that little
tidbit that Pilate marveled.
We're also told that in Mark that
Jesus was scorched. He was flogged.
No details are given of the flogging.
So in popular sort of depiction of Christ
in movies,
you have Jesus being whipped within an inch
of his life. His bowels are falling out
of his back according to Joshua McDowell, a
Christian apologist.
But there are no such details given in
the gospels. That's an example of what I
call hermeneutical waterboarding.
Right? That you torture a text long enough
and the text will say what you wanted
to say.
Yeah. He was flogged. He was a *
mess. His flesh was cut to ribbons.
That's not historically accurate even. The Romans did
not do that.
In fact, Luke says that Pilate only threatened
to flog him and never actually flogged him.
Pilate says, I'll chastise him and release him,
which means that flogging was meant as a
sort of minor punishment
because I'm going to release him after that,
not leave him as a * mess to
bleed out and die.
But he never actually does it.
Only one gospel says he was nailed to
the cross.
Only one out of 4,
and it's implicit, and that's the gospel of
John. Doesn't directly say it, but you can
infer from John that he was nailed to
the cross.
In fact, there's almost zero forensic evidence
that Jews were nailed to crosses. There's one
piece of a heel bone that was found
that they found a a nail driven through
it. But according to
Josephus,
Titus
general Titus, he, crucified so many Jews in
Jerusalem that they ran out of lumber.
So
tens of thousands of Jews being nailed to
crosses, almost zero
forensic evidence of being nailed to a cross.
Most likely, he was tied
to the cross.
Another thing. So this idea, you know, of
him being beaten beyond recognition, he's bleeding to
death is untenable.
Right? Why do the Christians overemphasize the pain
of Jesus in popular iconography?
It's because his pain is our gain.
The more he takes a beat down and
dies and it's painful, the more we are
forgiven
for our sins.
Right? His pain
is our gain.
Now when he's on the cross in
John, we're told that
there's a an eclipse, a solar eclipse. And
the Jews say, oh, look. Sabbath is approaching,
and it's a defilement to our land
that people are hung on crosses.
Get him down from the cross.
So the Romans,
apparently at the beck and call of these
Jewish leaders,
they start breaking the legs of his crossmates.
Because if you break someone's legs, they immediately
suffocate on the cross. If you're hanging from
the cross, you're kind of stuck in,
an inhale position. In order to get breath
out, you have to push up with your
legs.
Right? And you keep doing this for days
until fatigue sets in and then you die.
Right?
So if you break a man's legs, he
can't push up for oxygen.
He dies immediately, suffocates.
And it says in John that when they
came to Jesus, the Roman soldier looked at
him and said, he's already dead.
And then he spears him, but the spear
is only mentioned in John.
Right?
So no pulse was taken.
Could have been comatose.
You know,
in in pre modern times, you know the
the term graveyard shift?
You guys worked a graveyard shift
to your security guard or something? So where
does that term come from?
There used to be a guy that used
to sit in graveyards,
It's quite often what would happen is a
man would die and they would bury him.
The doctor at that time would say, yeah,
he's dead. But he was actually in a
coma.
So they put this pedal at the end
of the coffin
that was attached to a rope that would
come up through the earth attached to a
little bell.
So it's quite often that someone would wake
up in their grave and start kicking their
feet and then
and then this guy who's working the graveyard
shift, he would go down and start taking
this guy out of his grave.
That was medicine back then. You know, you
can't read brainwaves. He's doesn't seem to be
breathing. He's dead.
So no pulse was taken from Jesus on
the cross. Now interestingly, we're told in the
gospels, gospel of John,
Jesus had secret disciples from the Pharisees.
One of them was named Joseph of Arimathea,
who came and took Jesus's body very quickly
and took it to his own grave,
Joseph of Arimathea,
his own grave, and then he rolled a
stone in front of the grave.
So according to the swoon theory,
Joseph did in fact take the body of
Jesus.
He took it to a safe location,
and then he rolled the stone in front
of his tomb,
his own tomb, his empty tomb.
Jesus recovered over the next few days.
Jesus was seen alive.
Some claimed a resurrection.
So they went to the tomb.
They removed the stone and lo and behold,
it's empty
because he was never there.
Now interestingly,
the more you read the gospels, the more
you have this evolution
of not only Christology
in this sort of heightened
stature of Christ, but the more the evangelist
try to convince the readers that Jesus was
killed.
The end of Mark's gospel is very enigmatic.
Mark's gospel is the end of Mark's gospel
is chapter 16 verse 8. That's the true
end of Mark's gospel.
There were some verses added later,
but this is the end of Mark's gospel.
Jesus is crucified.
He's put into a tomb.
A a few women go there on Sunday
morning.
They find that the tomb is already open.
There's an angel there.
And the angel says, you're looking for Christ
who was crucified.
He's alive
and he's in Galilee.
You're looking for Christ who was crucified.
He's alive
and he's in Galilee.
And it says then Mark says, and the
women ran away
and they said nothing to no one for
they were afraid.
Period. That's the end of Mark's gospel.
What happened?
Was he resurrected?
Is it the wrong tomb?
Was it a vision they had? Did he
survive the crucifixion? What what's going on here?
Why is he in Galilee?
Right? So it's a cliffhanger.
So it's very confusing. This is the earliest
of the 4 gospels, mark around 70 of
the common era.
And the ending,
it it it,
it was so bothersome to so many Christians
that later on, a scribe went back and
added 11 more verses to the end of
the gospel of Mark Mark 16:9
through 20, which said Jesus came and he
made these post mortem appearances
and then he told the disciples
that,
go into the all of the nations and
baptize them.
And if you drink poison,
believing in me, it will not harm you.
You know, I was debating this Christian guy,
Mike, David Wood one time, and I said
to him you might have seen this. And
I said to him, you don't have a
vial of white out. And, you know, you
can probably drink white out and be okay,
but it's it'll probably
make you sick. So I said, you know,
Jesus says that a true Christian can drink
poison and nothing will happen to him. I
said, I want you to drink this whole
bottle of white out right now.
And then you're looking at it, he's thinking
about it.
And suddenly, he becomes a biblical scholar and
says, oh, you're talking about the longer ending
of Mark? That's a fabrication to the text.
And there was a
collective gasp in the audience.
What?
Fabric what? You said the f word. Fabrication?
He dropped the f bomb on us.
Right?
So it's it's interesting, you know, how how
quickly they become biblical scholars of higher textual
criticism,
when you actually present to them the words
of Christ in their own books. Anyway,
that's the end of Mark. Now interestingly,
What does John say? The last of the
gospels around 100,
1
What does John
say? The last of the gospels around 10110
of the common era. John says that Jesus
bore his own cross,
contradicting Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why?
Because John knows that there are Christians
at his
during his time
that believe Simon was crucified. And in fact,
there were Christians at that time who denied
Jesus' crucifixion.
John also says Jesus was impaled on the
cross, not found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Why does John say that? To ensure non
survival. He's dead.
John also says that his body was already
anointed on the night of his crucifixion.
Right? Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that
on Sunday morning, the women came to anoint
Jesus' body, which is very strange.
There's a group of women that are apparently
not related to him who are somehow going
to gain access into his tomb
and start rubbing oil on his body.
Is that a Jewish custom? Why are they
coming to the tomb? To anoint his body?
If that was already done according to John
on the night of the crucifixion, why are
they coming to the tomb on Sunday? For
what?
Nobody
knows.
We're a total
when Jesus appears to his disciples in the
gospel of John, it says the doors were
locked out of fear of the Jews. It
says the doors were locked out of fear
of the Jews.
Very strange. Out of fear of the Jews,
I thought everyone was Jewish.
So this is an example of an anachronism.
Obviously, the gospel of John was written much
later at a time when there was a
clear distinction between Jews and Christians, and this
didn't happen until the 2nd century.
So that definitely did not happen. Now interestingly,
Paul says
let's talk a little bit about Pauline Pneumatology.
Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15 that Jesus,
when he was resurrected,
he became a life giving spirit,
penoma. He uses the Greek word, penoma.
He became spiritualized.
He also says that Jesus was the first
fruits of the resurrection.
He became a pneumatic body.
He's the first one to be resurrected into
the body that we're all going to be
resurrected on the day of judgment.
Okay. So there's something called the somatic body
and something called a pneumatic body.
We are all in somatic bodies right now,
physically oriented bodies. There's a ruh in our
body and it's material
according to the Ashari. It's a material ruh.
Right?
But it's not of this world. It's from
the Malakut.
Right? But we do have a panoma. We
have a soul. It's called a ruur. But
our bodies are physical. We have somatic bodies.
When we're resurrected on the day of judgment,
our, the dominant attribute of our bodies is
pneumatic
with a somatic element. So the body is
physically resurrected
and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala resurrects down to
the fingertip as he says. Everything is brought
back, reconstructed
from the ajab, from the end of the
tailbone, which is the seed of the human
being.
But the body is now
pneumatically oriented.
It's more spirit than flesh now. Right? So
you don't need to eat. You don't need
to eat or drink. You never die. You're
given baqa, perpetuity.
And matter is not an obstruction,
like walls and stones and bricks, they're not
an obstruction to you anymore.
Right? So this is what Paul is saying.
So listen very carefully. Paul is saying when
Jesus was resurrected, he was resurrected into this
pneumatic body
pneumatic body. You don't eat. You don't drink.
You never die. Matter is not an obstruction.
Okay?
If this is true, then why did the
stone need to be rolled away
for Jesus to exit the tomb?
If he's a nomadic body,
he doesn't need to wait for a stone
to be moved. He can just
what what's that? What's the, phrase from Star
Trek?
He can just beam in and out of
places.
Right? Because he's a nomadic body. We're told
that Jesus's legs were not broken on the
cross. So I wanna ask a Christian. When
when Jesus was resurrected,
was he limping around?
Because if his legs were broken let's just
say his legs were broken.
Would he be limping around? He said, no.
No. No. He would be healed. Then how
come his his nail marks weren't healed? He
showed Thomas, behold my hands and my feet,
thrust your hand into my side where he
was speared. Why weren't those healed?
Is there a selective healing process to resurrected
bodies?
So it's very mysterious. It doesn't make any
sense.
Jesus is in disguise
after he's resurrected.
You know, in the gospel of John, it
says, Mary went to the tomb, and he's
not there. He hears a voice behind him.
She turns around thinking he's a gardener.
Do resurrected bodies look like gardeners?
Why does she think this guy's a gardener?
Because he's disguised as a gardener.
That's why. Why is he in disguise?
Why? Because he survived the crucifixion,
and
if Jewish leaders see him,
they'll make sure that they put an end
to him.
And then he says, touch me not.
So what does Mary do? Mary actually hugs
him. So this is his wife. It's obvious
Mary Magdalene is his wife. No doubt about
it.
She hugs him, and he says, touch me
not. And he uses the present imperative in
Greek, which means stop doing what you're already
doing. So she's already hugging him. Touch me.
Why not why don't touch me? Because he's
in pain.
He's just been crucified.
He's in pain. He's in disguise. Does this
sound like a resurrected
pneumatic body?
Furthermore, in the gospel of Luke,
he walks down the street. 2 disciples meet
him. He's still in disguise. They don't recognize
him. They walk all the way to a
mouse, like, 3 or 4 miles.
He's in disguise. And he's like, what happened?
Oh, there was a prophet named Jesus on
and so forth. They go to have a
meal. He breaks the bread. By the way
he breaks the bread, they say, oh, this
is the master. By the way, he breaks
bread, and they recognize him and then he
slips out of there. Why is he in
disguise?
And then he comes back in the gospel
of Luke to the upper room.
And it says that the disciples saw him
and were afraid because they thought they had
seen a spirit.
They thought they had they had seen a
spirit. They thought they had seen what? A
resurrected body.
Go back to the sign of Jonah. What
happened to Jonah? Very short book in the
Old Testament.
Jonah
was,
an Israelite. He was sent to Nineveh,
for dawah,
and he was there making dawah. And then
he thought to himself, these people are not
going to believe. So he leaves the city
without asking Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So he
goes and tries to catch a boat to
this other city called Joppa. While he's in
the ocean with pagan men, there's a tempest,
and he knows exactly why it's happening.
So the men start to draw straws
as to, you know, who,
who who they're gonna throw over. Because they
they recognize also this is because of a
bad omen that someone has brought. And Jonah
says, don't worry about doing that. It's because
of me.
I'm going to jump in willingly into the
ocean.
They say, okay.
Jonah jumps into the ocean. The the waves
calm. The men row away from him. Imagine
you're one of those men on the boat
rowing away from Jonah. What is your logical
conclusion as to the state of Jonah? What's
gonna happen to him?
He's a prophet so he's strong, but he's
probably going to drown. He can't tread water
for very long. So you think, oh, that's
the end of Jonah. Then you look back
and a whale or a fish or some
kind of creature
swallows him.
Now you're like, he's dead.
There's no doubt about it.
Right? You're back on the on the shore.
You're one of those men in the in
the in the in that boat. You're back
on the shore 3 days later. You look
over Jonah walking towards you.
What are you thinking?
It's a ghost.
Right? This is exactly what the disciples thought
they had seen when they saw Jesus.
They became afraid because they thought they had
seen a spirit.
They thought.
Right?
For as Jonah was remember from the q
source? Mark 11, Matthew 12. For as Jonah
was, so shall the son of man be.
How was Jonah in the belly of the
whale? Alive.
How was the son of man in the
heart of the earth alive?
Not dead, not resurrected.
So what does Jesus do here?
He says, handle me and see. A spirit
has no flesh and bones
as you see that I have.
Again, Paul says, when Jesus was resurrected,
Michael Acona says, Paul taught the total transformation
of Jesus' body. Total transformation.
Resurrecting into a spiritual body.
The first fruits of the resurrection,
a life giving penoma
yet in disguise.
Eating food.
Handle me. I have flesh and bones. This
is not a resurrected body. This is the
same exact Jesus. And then he says, do
you have anything to eat? And they say,
yes. Here's a fish in a honeycomb, and
then he eats it to prove what? That
he's a resurrected body? That he's a spiritualized
body? No. To prove he's the same
exact Jesus.
So what do we get out of all
of this? And why is he in disguise?
And why in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he's
the angel says to the disciples, go to
Galilee. He's not here. Because he has to
get out of dodge.
Right? Because if they spot him, they're going
to kill him. He survived the crucifixion.
So we can conclude there's 3 types of
resurrections in the new testament.
Three types of resurrections.
There's a Lazarus resurrection.
Jesus resurrected a man named Lazarus.
Right? In in John chapter 11, and the
Quran confirms that he resurrected people. And
Imam Ghazali says his name was Lazarus and
the.
When Jesus resurrected Lazarus,
what into what type of body
was
Lazarus resurrected into? A somatic body or a
pneumatic body?
Well, it seems like a somatic body into
the same exact body. Right? So Christians will
say, yeah. That's Jesus. But that's not what
Paul says.
Paul
says, Jesus was resurrected into a spiritualized
body like the same type of body that
all of us are resurrected on the day
of judgment.
So there's a conflict here with who? With
Paul.
The conflict is with who? With Paul.
So a Lazarus resurrection. Then you have a
doomsday resurrection.
The doomsday resurrection, this is what Paul says
Jesus was resurrected into. A body reconstructed
physically, but made spiritual like all of us
will be on the Yom Kiyama.
Right? This is what Paul says happens to
Jesus.
But the gospel say, no. That's not the
same type of body because Jesus,
the stone had to be rolled away. He
has nail marks in his hands apparently.
He's in disguise. He eats food. He has
flesh and blood.
This is not a pneumatic body. It's a
somatic body.
This is not a doomsday resurrection. Again, Paul
is wrong.
And then the third type is the Jonas
resurrection.
The Jonas resurrection.
Not the Jonas brothers.
Jonas resurrection. Which means that you think someone's
dead,
so you see them,
but they were never dead in the 1st
place.
This is actually what happened. If you look
at these verses in the New Testament, one
could compellingly make that type of
argument. For more information about Paul's pneumatology,
there's a book called The Corinthian Body
by Dale Martin. There's another way of reading
Paul also.
Another way of reading Paul is through the
lens of sort of a Greek anthropology, and
Paul was heavenly
heavily Hellenized.
Right? That Paul believes
that Jesus's body was never reconstituted in the
first place. It stayed in his tomb, and
it's in his tomb until this day that
only this the
the
the the soul of Jesus was extracted from
him.
And some scholars believe that's what Paul is
actually saying, and that's why Paul never ever
mentions an empty tomb in any of his
letters,
because it's not important to him,
because he's operating through the framework of a
Hellenized
Greek anthropology, not a Jewish anthropology.
Okay.
I wanna start now. I know I've been
talking for a long time.
I think we're gonna when are we gonna
pray Maghrib?
A lot of time to pray Maghrib? Okay.
We're gonna pray Maghrib. I had just maybe
20 minutes, 25 more minutes because I wanna
get to the theological critique. So we're just
talking about the historical critique
of the Christian passion narrative, but I wanna
start getting to some theological points as well
and scriptural points that are important. So let's
pray Maghrib, and then we'll come back quickly,
inshallah, for maybe 20, 25 minutes. Jazaklachaira.