Ali Ataie – Interfaith Q&A Does The Quran Address The Death Of Jesus Christ – Pbuh
AI: Summary ©
The death of Christ is not related to the Bible and the church uses the word "Generation bus" instead of "ukran" in the Bible. There is confusion surrounding the names of the Jews in Judea, and a minority opinion may have been that Jesus was killed among Muslim worshipers. The confusion surrounding the names of the Jews in Judea is discussed, and the speaker suggests that there may have been cultural reasons for it.
AI: Summary ©
Does the Qur'an address the death of
Christ?
Ah, good question.
Yes, that was on my mind here.
Yeah, so the Qur'an, according to the
dominant opinion, categorically rejects the crucifixion of Jesus.
So the Qur'an says, وَمَا تَطَلُّهُ وَمَا
سَلَبُهُ So the children of Israel did not
kill him nor crucify him.
The dominant opinion is that Christ wasn't crucified
and somehow God saved him.
Now the Qur'an does not go into
details as to what happened and neither does
the Prophet.
So later Muslim scholars, they have these sort
of theories as to what actually happened.
So the most dominant theory, again this is
not the definitive answer, there is no definitive
answer as to what actually happened.
But the most dominant theory is that a
disciple was transfigured to look like Christ and
he was the one crucified.
Now if you look at Christian history, we
know that there was a group in the
first century called the Thessalonians who actually believed
that Simon of Cyrene was crucified instead of
Christ.
This is obviously a pre-Islamic belief prevalent
in the Christian community, end of the first
century, early second century.
Who's Simon of Cyrene?
Well if you read the three gospels, the
Synoptic Gospels, it says that when they were
going to crucify Jesus, for some reason the
Romans pulled a man out of the crowd.
And Christian tradition teaches that Jesus was just
so exhausted he couldn't carry the cross.
It doesn't mention that in the New Testament,
so it's quite enigmatic.
But for some reason they pulled this man
out of the crowd, Simon of Cyrene, and
they compelled him to bear the cross.
There was a group of Christians in the
first century who said Simon was in fact
crucified because they saw the death of the
Messiah as sort of an oxymoron.
How can the Messiah die?
This was the main reason why most Jewish
elements did not believe in Christ.
Because according to their understanding, at least in
the Old Testament, the Messiah cannot be killed.
You won't dash his foot against a stone,
as it says in Psalm 91.
And interestingly, none of the passages in the
Old Testament that Christians will use prove texts
of the death of the Messiah.
The most famous of which is Isaiah 53,
the suffering servant.
The word Messiah does not appear in any
of those texts.
So the interpretation is somewhat open.
But in Psalm 20, verse 6, very interestingly,
David writes, in Hebrew he says, I
know that God will save his Messiah.
He shall hear him from his holy heaven
and save him with the saving power of
his right hand.
All right.
So this is, so I would say that
the Muslim belief about the Messiah is in
line with sort of pre-Christian Jewish expectations
of the Messiah.
So that's a dominant opinion, that he wasn't
crucified or killed.
There's other opinions that it might have been
Barabbas.
So if you look at early Alexandrian manuscripts
of the Gospel of Matthew, we're actually given
the first name of Barabbas.
You know.
So this whole incident of, you know, Pontius
Pilate releasing a Jewish prisoner, this seems to
be sort of unhistorical.
You know, you have two sort of, you
know, on yon kippur, you have two lambs.
You kill one, you set one free.
It's sort of something going on like that.
But if we just entertain the story for
now, apparently the Romans had this custom where
they would release a Jewish prisoner as an
act of goodwill before Passover.
So they bring out two prisoners.
One is named Barabbas, one is named Jesus
of Nazareth, right?
So according to the popular story in Matthew,
you know, who shall I release to you?
The crowd cheers and they release Barabbas and
they crucify Jesus, right?
And what's interesting is the word Barabbas is
not his name, it's a title.
Barabbas in Aramaic is Bar Abba.
Bar Abba means the son of the father.
So Barabbas is not some ordinary brigand.
He is a Messianic claimant.
He was from Galilee, and the Galileans were
known for two things.
Fishing and zealotry.
Or as the Romans would say, fishing and
terrorism, right?
Because they would organize these insurrections against the
Roman occupiers.
Jesus is from Galilee.
You know, the Galileans also had this sort
of accent that was very noticeable.
Noticeable, you know, sort of like if someone,
you know, speaks, you know, if someone is
from the south or something, and they start
speaking to all these guys, it was very
noticeable.
And the rest of the Jews, at least
the Jews in Judea, would sort of characterize
them as sort of peasants.
You know, they just, they don't know anything
and they're all violent and, you know.
So that's why it says in the Gospel
of Matthew that when Peter spoke in Judea,
Jerusalem, from his accent, they said, are you,
are you Galilean?
So that's why they said, no, you're his
disciple then.
Just in the way he spoke.
But anyway, so Barabbas is a Messianic claimant.
Now early, as I said, early manuscripts of
Matthew actually give us Barabbas' first name.
Does anyone know what his first name was?
Also Jesus.
So why did later scribes remove Barabbas' first
name in the Gospel of Matthew?
Because there might have been some confusion, maybe.
Who was actually crucified?
As you can imagine, what is Pilate actually
saying now?
Who shall I release to you?
Yeshua Barabbas, Jesus the son of the father.
Or Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus who is called Christ.
It's the same name, the same title.
You know, release Jesus and kill Jesus.
What?
So many scholars believe that the first name
of Barabbas was removed for reverential reasons.
But it could be that there was confusion
amongst the people in Jerusalem at the time
as to who was actually crucified.
However, there is a minority opinion that Jesus
was in fact killed amongst Muslim scholars.
A minority opinion.
There's a good book on this by Todd
Lawson.
He's a good scholar, Todd Lawson.
It's called Crucifixion in the Quran.
And his contention is, the first exegete ever
to say that Jesus was replaced on the
cross, which is called literal docetism, by the
way, the first exegete ever to say that
was a Christian exegete, not a Muslim exegete.
It was a man named John Demasin, who
was an 8th century Christian scholar who lived
in Damascus.
He was the first one to write a
systematic refutation of the Psalms.
So his interpretation of that text is that
someone was replaced and then it seems like
Muslim scholars sort of followed suit after him.
But there is a minority opinion that the
meaning of the verse, they did not kill
him or crucify him, it was made to
appear so unto them, is that Jesus might
have been put on the cross, but he
didn't die from his injuries, that God seized
his soul while he was on the cross
and then returned it to him, possibly three
days later.
This might explain why Pilate, in the Gospel
of Mark, was so surprised that Christ had
died already.
You know, in the Gospel, it's only mentioned
by Mark.
They come back to Pilate and say, he's
dead.
He says, already?
And he marveled, it says.
Because he was a...
His whole business is crucifying Jews, right?
And Josephus says that at one point, they
actually ran out of lumber in Jerusalem because
they're crucifying so many Jews.
So he knew what it took to crucify
someone and what it took to kill them,
yet he marveled.
And this might explain, Father, into your hands
I commend my spirit.
It seems like he's sort of willingly giving
up the ghost, or knows it's going to
be taken from him and then returned to
him.
So there is an opinion like that.
Because there's other places in the Qur'an
where Jesus, where God says to Jesus, for
example, inni mutawwafika.
And you can very easily translate that as,
oh, Jesus, I'm going to take your soul
from you.
You don't have to twist the text.
I mean, that's a primary definition of that
active participle.
You know, you don't have to perform what
I call, what do I call it, hermeneutical
lard loading.
If you choke the text enough, it'll say
whatever you want.
So I would say there is a genuine
difference of opinion as to what the Qur
'an is saying about the crucifixion.
The dominant opinion seems to be, is, not
seems to be.
The dominant opinion is that Christ was not
crucified.
What happened?
Nobody knows.
There's a minority opinion that he might have
been killed, but his soul was returned to
him by God.
And his resurrection is proof that he indeed
was on the side.
And that he commissioned his disciples to go
and spread the gospel.
Both positions are correct, according to the Qur
'an, in my opinion.
I mean, I think there would be some
Muslims that would disagree with me on that.