Ali Ataie – Introduction to the New Testament Gospels For Muslims Matthew, Mark, Luke & John
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AI: Transcript ©
This is a class on the New Testament
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, an introduction
for Muslims.
I will be your instructor, Insha'Allah,
Before we begin, the actual
first gospel which is going to be the
gospel according to Mark, just a few words
about the importance of having
interdisciplinary
knowledge.
This vastly improves
our outreach efforts, our our Dawah efforts to
the non Muslim community, especially the Judeo Christians,
in the west. It's important for us to
understand where they're coming from
and to be able to make those connections,
in in our religious faiths.
The discipline of comparative religion is really
a Muslim contribution to the world
and this is basically by consensus
of even Western scholars
that the first,
scholars to actually write objectively
about religion,
religions in general,
documenting them,
talking about their historical
development, their origins and founders were really Muslim
theologians.
And
some of the great ones are Shehrastani
and,
Abu Rehan al Biruni,
who's polymath, who's basically credited for inventing this
discipline known as comparative religion. So this something
that is an art form
or a science that is part of our
tradition as Muslims. This is something that we
gave to the world, and this is something
that we need to engage in. The Christians
at the time in the medieval times when
these scholars were writing,
most of their works were primarily polemical in
nature. They weren't trying to
objectively
or near objectively present other religions, especially Islam.
They're basically vilifying Muslims and Islam and attacking
them.
The first Christian to really write a,
sort of academic, if you will, refutation of
Islam was a man named John of Damascus
or John Demosene,
who lived in the 8th century,
in Damascus,
obviously, under Muslim rule. The majority
populace at the time, however, was Christian, and
he knew Arabic.
But the problem with John Danmussen is that
he actually believed
that Islam was a Christian heresy, not a
separate independent faith. So his understanding of the
religion was very weak, and he has a
book
concerning heresies, and the final chapter is called
concerning the Ishmaelite
heresy. He doesn't even call the Muslims Muslims.
He calls them Ishmaelites or Hagareans.
Then we have Peter the Venerable, so called
Venerable, he was the abbot of Cluny,
who wrote books about Islam as well,
and in order to
refute religious beliefs of the Muslims.
But here, again, primarily, we don't have objective
presentations of their religion.
What we have
is,
polemical sort of attacks,
victrolic sort of attacks
against the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, for example.
He actually claims Peter,
the Venerable. He actually claims that the prophet
was born or actually passed in the year
6 66. And, of course, if you know
anything about the date, 666,
this was
the number of the antichrist according to the
book of Revelation, which is a book that
we're going to be talking about briefly, although
this class is basically focused
more more focused on the 4 gospels, al
Ananiil, al Arba'a, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
in the New Testament tradition. We're gonna talk
about these other books as well,
as well to understand
these books a little more in detail.
Of course, you have Thomas Aquinas,
whose theology and philosophy is still the standard
in the Roman Catholic church even to this
day.
And, of course, he's known for the Sumo
Theologica,
which is
his his masterpiece, his magnum opus, where he
talks about,
it's really 3 sections,
the prima parsai,
which is talking about God, and the second
part talks about
virtue ethics, and then the third part talks
about Isa, alayhis salaam, who is Jesus in
the in the Christian tradition.
But he wrote another book as well, which
is not as well known, but it's called
the sumo cantalas,
which means basically the refutation of the the
infidels or the the the non Christians. And
this book is really geared towards Jews and
especially Muslims.
And a lot of scholars
actually believe that Thomas Aquinas here is specifically
rebutting some of the things that he's read
from Abu Hamad al Ghazali.
So this is a Christian tradition in the
medieval times.
We don't have anything
really objective. Again, more polemical in nature. Nothing
irenic, nothing really
scholarly or academic.
But in Muslim circles, you have this unbelievable
growth of knowledge
and, this birth of this discipline known as
comparative world religions. So it's important for Muslims
not only to be able to present the
religious beliefs of others objectively
or near objectively, because true objectivity is probably
a myth, but at least present the religion
in a sense,
that is fair and and try to be
balanced and at least, you know, represents the
majority of what those people actually believe regarding
their religion.
But also, there's a hermeneutical aspect to it.
In other words, there has to be an
aspect of the study where you can actually,
evaluate
the religious claims of others as well. So
this is very very important.
Of course, every science
has 10 mabadi as they're called. There's 10
foundations of every
fan or every every science
or art.
And we won't go through those,
but,
traditionally, this is called
al milalwan
nihal,
studies in
nations and creeds, in Kitab ul Milal 1
Nihal, for example,
by Ibn Hazm,
he talks about this this aspect,
analyzing other religions, but also giving an evaluative
sort of commentary on the truth or falsity
of these religions as well. And this is
obviously done
with
with academic rigor,
not to be disrespectful towards those religions. The
first thing we'll do
is sort of give you an introduction
to the Bible itself. What is the Bible?
The word Bible comes from a Greek word,
which means the
book. So, for example, many of the ulama
believe that when Allah
says in the Quran,
the people of the book, alkitab here, is
the Bible because the word Bible literally means
the book.
Now
more in detail,
more specifically,
the Bible is actually a collection of books.
It's actually a bibliography,
a collection
of books. You have the Old Testament, the
so called Old Testament. And, of course, this
is Christian terminology. When we say Old Testament,
for example,
a Jewish rabbi would actually be offended by
that terminology because he doesn't consider the Old
Testament to be old at all, that the
Old Testament is binding and that the the
laws and commandments are eternally binding upon every
person that believes in those scriptures. So this
is a Christian terminology.
If we wanna be more precise in our
language, we would call the Old Testament
the Tanakh.
Tanakh.
And this is really an acronym,
and it's it stands for Torah, Nevim, and
Ketuvim.
So we look at the Old Testament, we're
looking at 39 books, 39 books,
beginning with
the Torah.
This is the written Torah.
Right? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy,
this is called the written Torah. This is
the beginning of the Christian bible, the beginning
of the old testament.
Then after that, after these 5 books, you
have 34 other books. But concentrating on these
5 books so in these 5 books, you
have, like we said, Genesis. This is, you
know, in the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth. This is how it begins,
and you have the story of,
the creation of Adam alaihis salam. There's 2
different versions of it. You have the flood.
You have the,
you have the story of Ibrahim, alaihis salam.
The book of Genesis will actually end with
the death of Yusuf, alaihis salam, in Egypt.
Genesis, then you have Exodus, which is the
story of Musa alaihis salam, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy.
Leviticus and Numbers
is the 613
mitzvot or the commandments that were given,
to the prophet Musa alaihi salam according to
the religion of Judaism that are recorded in
these two books. And Deuteronomy means second law,
deuteros nomos, which is basically a summary of
what was already stated in the first four
books, and a few more prophecies and laws,
and whatnot. So this is called the Torah.
And we have to remember also that the
Jews believe
in in 2 Torahs, not just 1 Torah.
There's the written Torah,
which is the first five books that I
just explained, Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
But Jews also believe, and this is a
classical Jewish position,
and, you know, the religion of Judaism has
gone through a lot of turmoil. It was
effectively ended,
when the second temple was burnt in 70
of the common era. We'll talk more about
that when we talk about the gospel of
Mark.
But,
the principal formulators or articulators of the Jewish
religion are also from the Middle Ages. So
you have people like Maimonides,
and you have people like Joseph Albo, and
you have Bahia,
you have Rashi, these different rabbis and sages
in the Middle Ages, most of them working
in Arabic in Muslim countries,
articulating their religion,
and being systematic. These are systematic theologians,
and this is the first time in their
history that they really had the ability to
do this because under Christian Europe and Christendom,
a lot of these things were outlawed, and
the Jews were pretty much under microscope
during their entire existence
in Christian Europe. And oftentimes, they were exiled
from different countries. We'll talk about that as
well. That comes into play when we look
at the gospel of Mark and Matthew,
as
well. But the Jews believe, in addition to
these written books,
there's an oral Torah. Right? An oral Torah.
So this is called the core this is
called the Torah,
b tethuv in Hebrew, the written Torah. And
there's a Torah,
b peh, which is by mouth, an oral
Torah. And this oral Torah was also given
to Musa'id alaihi salam, and it was not
intended to be written down. And the purpose
of the oral Torah
was
to,
to safeguard
the true meanings of the written Torah.
So this would safeguard against somebody, for example,
going to the to the to the written
Torah
and extracting,
you know, legal rulings or,
exegeting the text by himself if he doesn't
have the requisite knowledge.
So he'd have to actually go to a
rabbi, and the rabbi he would sit with
the rabbi, and the rabbi would teach him
the written Torah in light of the oral
Torah.
Right? So oral tradition was very, very important.
And this is interesting in our tradition as
well. We have the tradition of the senate.
Right, the chain of transmission,
and it's really incredible because Islam did not
have these church synods and councils that we'll
talk about as well, where these bishops come
together, and they literally will vote on a
certain issue to make it Christian orthodoxy.
And the reason for that is because there's
such disunity in the religion,
and there's so much sectarianism, you know, firkah,
that these these ecumenical so called ecumenical councils
were something that was very much needed. If
you look at Islam,
Muslims you go to Mecca, for example, Muslims
are basically doing the same thing, whether they're
Maliki or Shafi'i or they're Shi'i or Ibadi,
whatever they are, Salafi,
basically, they're doing the same thing. So this
is a testament to the strong Sanad in
our tradition.
However, the early scholars of Islam, for example,
ibn Asher, when he wrote his al Murshid
al Murin,
you know, 300 some odd lines of poetry,
which is really,
a distillation, to use the words of Sheikh
Hamza Yusuf, a sort of a muqtasar, a
summary of a greater text, which was a
summary of a greater text, which was a
summary of a greater text, which was a
summary of a major text by Imam Malik
ibn Annas. The reason why these texts were
distilled,
or made more comprehensive
is because the salaf would write these books
and treatises
under the impression that the the student of
knowledge would sit with a scholar who would
then give that student the oral transmission of
that text. So the oral transmission is very,
very important. In the gospels, Esai, when he's
in Jerusalem, he's approached by Pharisees,
a group of Jewish
scholars, doctors, and lawyers of the law, and
they say, under whose authority are you doing
these things? They wanna know the senate of
Isa alay salam. It's very, very important. And,
of course, Isa alaihis salam is a messenger
of God, and that's what he said. I'm
a messenger of God. Of course, according to
the tradition in the New Testament, he actually
gives a different answer because he's
very confrontational at times with the Pharisees. But
obviously, the sonnet of Esai alaihi salam,
is that he's a messenger of God and
he receives revelation
from Allah
So that's important to understand as well. Now
the oral Torah,
eventually was written down,
and it was written down,
after
the Christian era.
And, again, the reason why that happened is
because when the second temple was destroyed
by the Romans
in 70 of the common era, in order
to preserve the ethos of the religion of
Judaism.
The Oral Torah was eventually written down, and
now you have the beginning of what's known
as rabbinical Judaism,
right, you know, post temple Judaism.
And the first part of the Talmud, which
is called the Mishnah, that's the actual oral
Torah that was eventually written down. We'll talk
more about what is the Talmud later, inshaAllah
ta'ala, because it's going to come up when
we talk about the gospel of Matthew, which
is the most Jewish, if you will, of
the 4 gospels
of the New Testament. So you have the
Torah, then you have the next 34 books
in the Old Testament,
which are split between what's known as the
prophets and the writings. So, basically,
if a book in the Old Testament is
named after a prophet, it's considered to be
from the prophets, which is called nabiem
in Hebrew. If it's not the name of
a prophet, like, for example, if it's 1st
Kings or 2nd Kings or or
1st or second Samuel,
or other books like that, 1st and second
Chronicles, then this is called kituvim, the writings.
So you have nabiim and Kitubim.
So then you have so, therefore, you have
the Torah, first five books, then you have
the nabiim
and Kitobim, which represent the latter 34 books
of the New Testament. So you take the
t,
or the tau from Torah, the Nun from
Nevim,
and the Kaf from Kitobim, you have t
n k, and you add a few vowels,
and you have the word Tanakh.
So this is what the Jews call the
old testament. It's an acronym. Torah, nadim, kitobim,
the Tanakh.
Christians call this the old testament. Jews call
this the Tanakh.
Okay? Now the Christians also believe
that all of the Akam,
all of the,
the legal rulings
of the Old Testament have been abrogated. And
this is a very
controversial issue in the news today
with different
most of them are either
fundamentalist Christian authors. Some of them are atheists,
that will bring up this issue with regards
to the Quran, that Muslims believe
that
the latest revelation will cancel
the one that came before that, and they
say, well, this is true in every case.
Therefore, all of the verses in the Quran
that talk about peace have been abrogated. Of
course, this is not true,
and it's it's not as simplistic as that,
and this requires a lot of scholarship.
But, basically, they'll say this idea of nazk,
right, this idea of cancellation,
abrogation of different verses in the Quran, they
find it kind of take this as being
a way of Muslims sort of covering up
these contradictions, so called contradictions in the Quran,
not realizing that this actually happens
in the Bible as well. Christians believe that
all of the aham of the Old Testament
are summarily
abrogated
by the New Testament. They've been completely abrogated.
They're mansuch
of the New Testament. So that's important to
understand. So,
pork. Right? They're allowed to get a divorce
now because in the Torah, apparently, it says
that you're not allowed to get a divorce.
Even within the New Testament itself, right, intra
New Testament,
you have abrogation. You have nesch. You can
see this very clearly, Matthew 15/24,
which we'll talk about obviously the gospel of
Matthew, when Jesus commissions His disciples initially,
He says, go into He says, enter ye
not into any gentile land. Don't go into
the lands of the gentiles,
into the Goyim. Only go to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. But at
the end of the gospel,
right, Matthew chapter 28, you have the great
commissioning, go into all nations.
Right? So isad at least what it says
in Matthew is abrogating
the, the previous command that had given to
the Hawariyun
or to the disciples, because now their training
has been
complete, as it were. So we have this
evolution of teaching. We have this in the
New Testament. We have it going from Old
Testament to New Testament. We have this in
the Quran as well, because this is how
Allah speaks to humanity.
Humanity needs progression. That's how we are. Right?
So,
that's the Tanakh. Now, what's interesting also
is that, the oldest complete version of the
Old Testament,
in the Hebrew language,
is dated to 1,008 of the Common Era.
1,008 of the Common Era, Miladi. So this
is after Islam. This is the oldest complete
version
of, the Old Testament in the Hebrew language.
So this is some,
23 100 years removed
from Musa, alaihis
salam. Right? So that's a big span of
time. Of course, you have the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls,
which, were discovered by a Muslim Bedouin in
Qobran in Palestine,
in 1947, but the Dead Sea Scrolls are
not complete.
There are missing books. The book of Esther
is completely missing. There's portions of the book
of Isaiah that are missing, there are no
teshqil, there are no diacritical
notations in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so it's
a big mystery as to how to actually
pronounce
many of the passages there. So, it's not
considered to be complete. The oldest complete version
of the Old Testament is dated 1,008
of the Common Era. This is called the
Masoretic Text.
The name of the scribes that produced the
text were called the Masoretes.
It's also called the Codex
Leningrad.
So that's important to understand.
Now, talking about the New Testament, coming to
the New Testament now. The New Testament, obviously,
again, is Christian terminology.
The Jews do not believe in the New
Testament in any way, shape, or form. Jews
do not believe in Isa
at all. There's no belief about him.
He is mentioned
in the Talmud,
at times.
You know, Christians will point to certain things
in the Old Testament as far as prophecies
of Isa
and Allahu Adam, some of them seem to
be,
pretty legit.
There are prophecies of the Prophet
in the in the Tanakh as well that
are very compelling.
But Jews, they don't believe in Isa, alayhis
salam, in any way, shape, or form. They
don't believe in the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
The Talmud mentions some few disparaging things about
Isa, alayhis salam,
that we won't go into,
but Allah
tells us basically,
when they said,
in the katal min Masihi Sad Namariyam RasulAllah,
that they said in post,
we killed Isa and then they have some
sort of
descriptions that they give on how they killed
him
and
cursing him and things like that that we
won't go into. And they also say a
few things about Maryam, alayhis salam. As you
can imagine, Allah
also addresses this, will be kufrihim maqawdihim aalam,
Mariam Abuhatanan Avima that they utter against Maryam
a calanous
grave
charge.
So that's mentioned in the Talmud, and this
was written by rabbis
after the Christian era.
This is also one of the reasons why,
many times in the Middle Ages, in Christian
countries,
the Talmud was ordered to be burned
by church authorities
because they came to learn of these things
that are written in Jewish
scriptures. We'll talk more about that Insha'Allah as
well. So when we look at the New
Testament, basically we have
4 gospels that begin the New Testament.
These are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This
is the focus of our study for this
course, looking at these 4 books
and looking at
their origins, their authorship, basically the who, what,
when, where, why of these 4 books,
looking at the evolution of Christology
of these 4 books. What is Christology?
This comes from a word Christos, which means,
Christ or Messiah
in Greek,
and logos or logia, which means the study.
So Christology is the study of Christ.
So how does Mark look at Jesus? How
does Matthew
envision Jesus from a theological standpoint? How does
Luke? How does John? Right? Are they the
same? Are they different? It's very, very important.
Who wrote these books? Were they written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Who are Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John? How do we know
that they wrote these books? What language did
they write these books in? Where were they
written? Why are they important? Why are there
only 4 of them?
All of these questions are very, very important,
And the vast majority of Christians that I've
come across in 15 years or so of
interfaith work, the vast majority of Christian laity,
you know, those who kind of just go
to church once a week and that's about
it, they have no idea the origins of
these books. They just kind of go to
church, they listen to the sermon, and that's
spiritually uplifting for them, obviously.
But if you want to actually get into
the studies a little more in-depth, we have
to sit with scholars of the New Testament
and listen to what they have to say
about the state of the book. And it's
very, very interesting for Muslims. And this could
really be a good starting point,
for very quality dawah, or invitation to to
the religion of Islam. Many of the issues
that they have with the New Testament, in
particular the gospels,
can be resolved
by studying Islamic tradition, the Quran, the hadith
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and the
work of the ulama of of Islam.
So you have the 4 gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This begins
the New Testament.
And then you have what's known as the
book of Acts,
which is called Amad Arusul,
the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic
version. So this is basically early
ecclesiastical history, or church history,
or apostolic history. What was happening,
to the sahaba, if you will, of Isa
after his ascension
into the heavens.
So here we have the book of Acts,
which documents the early church,
what was going on with James and Peter
and Paul in the early church.
And then you have
what's known as the apostolic letters and epistles,
And
this makes up the greater
or the greatest portion
of the New Testament.
And there's 11 of these
apostolic letters
and epistles. And these are written by Paul,
and Paul is an interesting person. He actually
authored 14 of the 27 books of the
New Testament. Paul of Tarsus,
he was a,
a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin who
initially persecuted the early Christian movement. And then
according to his own testimony that we read
in the book of Galatians, and also what
Luke says in the book of Acts a
few times, a couple of times at least,
On the way to Damascus, he has this
vision of the resurrected Christ, and he's immediately
converted.
And then, Isa according to Paul,
tells Paul to go and evangelize the gentile
nations around the Mediterranean.
So Paul goes to places like Ephesus and
Rome and Athens and Thessalonica and Corinth, and
he evangelizes them with his own understanding
of what he believes the gospel to be.
And that's fine, but the problem now is,
when we actually read the letters of Paul,
we see that he has major conflict, major
difference of opinion,
not with pagans and Jews, obviously that's a
given, but with other types of Christians,
fundamental difference of opinion that he has with
them. And if you read the commentaries, again,
if you read from Christian scholars, who are
Paul's opponents, like in the book of Galatians,
when he rails against these people and calls
them hypocrites and so called pillars, he calls
them dogs and so on and so forth.
Who is he talking about?
The vast majority of Christian commentators. F. C.
Bauer is the authority
on the book of Galatians.
He says Paul is actually talking about other
disciples of Jesus that were sent from Jerusalem
who studied with James, who's the brother of
Elisai So in other words, and we'll go
over this later when we talk about the
gospel of Matthew, insha'Allah,
in other words, Paul has major, major difference
of opinion, fundamental difference of opinion,
with other apostles that are from Jerusalem
that have studied with James. And who is
James? James is the brother of Isa
according to history and according to Christian history,
And he's also the Khalifa, if you will,
of Isa
James. And James in Hebrew is Ya'akov had
Sadiq. Ya'aqub or Ya'aqub, which is James in
English. And the reason why Ya'akov became James
is because early on,
many of the Christians, they try to distance
themselves from their Jewish roots because there was
a lot of animosity
between Christianity
and Judaism.
But James is Ya'akov, and his lakab that
was given, his sort of surname or nickname
that was given to him by Isa
according to Christian history, is hadsadeek,
which is the exact equivalent of a siddeok.
So his lakab is the same as the
lakab of the Khalifa of the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi salam, Abu Bakr as Siddeek. And this
is an interesting
coincidence. They have the same nickname.
So then you have the Catholic epistles. So
basically, the 4 Gospels, you have the book
of Acts, and then you have 21 total
epistles, letters,
or correspondences,
most of them written by Paul, some of
them written by,
Peter and John, one written by James, and
one written by Jude. But we have to
say at this point, the vast majority of
these books, all of the books in the
New Testament, the vast majority are actually anonymous.
Nobody knows who wrote them. And this is
not my opinion. This is not the opinion
of, you know, secular Western scholarship. This is
the opinion of Christian scholars in Christian seminaries,
because this is a fact of the issue.
When we say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
these books are anonymous.
Nobody knows who wrote these books. Why are
they called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? We'll
talk about that,
when we get to the gospel of Mark,
Insha'Allah.
So we have 4 gospels, the book of
Acts, 21 letters and epistles, and then finally
at the end
of the New Testament, you have the book
of Revelation,
which is an apocalypse,
which are, basically a dream that a man
named John F. Patmos had while he was,
on this island. He was exiled, and he
had these visions of the end of time,
what's going to happen, fiacharizaman.
And he wrote those visions down, and that's
the end of the Bible. So the Bible,
very linear book.
Right? So you have Genesis 1:1. Genesis
means beginning
because the first word of the Bible, Genesis
1:1, is beresheet.
Beresheet means in the beginning. Beresheet Bara Elohim
Et Hashemayim.
Et Haaretz. In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth. That's
how it begins. Right? Once upon a time.
And then you read through the entire Bible,
very linear.
Right? You go through the ancient patriarchs.
Then you go to the the time of
David and Solomon, the time of the judges
in the in the divide of the kingdom,
then you have the Babylonian, the Assyrian invasion,
Babylonian invasion,
then you have
the Persian period,
then you skip across
the Greek period into the Roman period and
the New Testament. And at the end of
the New Testament, you have the Book of
Revelation.
So again, very linear, once upon a time,
and then they lived happily ever after. And
this is how man will write, right? But
if you look at the Qur'an, the Qur'an
is not linear. The Qur'an is circular. So
initially, when the Western Orientalist,
who has a floor structure that is very
much Christian, because he is Christian, when he
reads the Qur'an, it seems like it's a
jumbled,
you know,
a chronological
mess. Why isn't this in order? And the
Quran actually addresses this issue. The Quran says,
they say to you, why don't you have
this in order? Right? Why don't you have
it in chronology? Because that's how man thinks.
But the Quran is not written linearly. It's
written circular, and there's a great wisdom as
to why Allah
will return to certain themes in the Quran
and will not present his book in a
linear fashion.
The oldest complete,
version of the New Testament. So remember we
talked about the Old Testament. The oldest complete
version of the Old Testament in Hebrew,
like we said, is dated to 1,008 of
the Common Era. This is after Islam. This
is a medieval text called the Masoretic Text.
When it comes to the New Testament,
the oldest complete version of the New Testament
in Greek is dated to 375
of the Common Era, so considerably earlier than
the Old Testament, which is very strange because
obviously the Old Testament was written first.
However, this text, which is called the Codex
Sinaiticus,
or is catalogued as Aliph 1, the entire
text is actually online. I think it's at
codexsynedicus.orgor.com
or something, if you can read Greek, although
it is translated there. The actual,
the actual manuscript,
was photographed under 2 different types of light,
and you can actually read it,
that website.
But this still dates to about
330
some odd years after the Ascension
of Isa So this is also
very, very late. And the thing about the
Codex Sinaiticus is is that, there's actually extra
books in the Codex Sinaiticus,
like the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of
Hermes. These are extra books that are not
found in the traditional 27,
canon
books of the New Testament as we have
them today, and there's reasons for that as
well. And we'll talk about those as well,
you know, why are there
27 books in the New Testament?
Why not 28? Why not 29? Why are
there 4 gospels? Why are there why is
there only one ecclesiastical history, the book of
Acts? What about these other letters and epistles
that were written? Why aren't those included in
the New Testament? So this is a very
interesting study when it get get to that,
insha Allahu Ta'ala. But just a word quickly
about our Christology as Muslims.
So this is very important. Some very interesting
things here
is that, again, Christology
is the study of Isa
The study of Isa is the study of
Christ.
And obviously our primary text
in this,
area of study, in this discipline, is the
Qur'an. The Qur'an is considered Dalil Qatari.
It is a definitive proof text. It's mutawater
in its transmission. It's multiply attested in its
transmission. We believe that the Quran is the
word of God, the speech of Allah
So we believe that Isa is a genuine
prophet, a prophet. The word prophet comes from
the Greek prophetes,
and this is actually a Greek word. We
say nebi
in Arabic, and the word in Hebrew is
navi.
And the word navi is found many, many
times in the Old Testament. There's actually a
prophecy that we'll talk about in the prophet
who is like Moses. And this is a
prophecy of someone to come in the future,
who was like Moses.
And this is a prophecy of someone to
come in the future that Musa, alayhis salam,
prophesies that will come in the future that
is similar
to him. And we'll talk about that very,
very interesting. We believe that Isa
was born of a virgin. We believe that
He could perform miracles, bi idhnillah.
So this is important. We believe in murjizaat,
in different types of miracles.
There's murjizaat, which are miracles that are performed
by prophets,
al Anbiya
wal mursaleen,
bi izna
So prophets, they have this ability by the
permission of Allah
to produce these physical sort of signs, you
know, kharqul adat, these breaks of natural law
in order to sort of support
their missions. Now these are not definitive proofs
because false prophets can also perform miracles. So
you have to look at
the sincerity of a prophet. You have to
look at the nature of his message. If
he's preaching Tawhid, if he's preaching,
selflessness, altruism, all of these types of things
have to be considered into taken into consideration.
His istakama in the sharia of the religion,
all of these things are very, very important
because there are different types of miracles. There
are things called Istidaraaj,
which are which sometimes
translated as divine beguilement
that a non Muslim can do, which seems
to be a break in natural
law, but in reality there's no tawfiq
in what that person is doing, and that
person does not have istakamah,
and that person is calling to his own
hawa. So it's very very important that when
we see these types of things, and these
things don't happen much anymore, it's because of
the state of the human,
the state of the human condition.
But in the pre modern world, these things
were very, very common, and the urlema had
certain,
stringent measures that they would look to when
these things would happen.
And of course, we have miracles, karamat,
these charismatic exploits or talents of al Awliya,
of saints. And these are well documented
as well, thousands of miracles. And it's part
of our aqeedah as Muslims, at least as
Ahlus Sunnawal Jama'ah, that we believe in
the Karamat Al Awliya,
the miracles
of the Awliya.
And there's many of them mentioned, like we
said in Imam Abu Jafarat, how he mentions
them. Imam Ibrahim Al Akhani in the Jawhara,
he mentions
that those who deny the miracles of the
awliyah, then you deny them. It's part of
our essential aqidah. So, Isa, he could perform
these miracles because he has a station of
Nabuwa. He is a prophet. We also believe
that Isa alaihis salam is a messenger of
God, an apostle of God. Apostle also comes
from a Greek word, apostolos,
which means someone who is sent out or
sent forth.
Isa he, or someone who receives some sort
of message. And Isa alaihis salam obviously receives
a revelation
from Allah
which is called al Injeel.
Injeel seems to be the Arabic
sort of way of saying or
evangelon,
right, which is also,
a Greek word.
According to the Quran, Isa
is also the Christ. He is Hamashiach. He
is Al Masih.
He is the Christ. In other words, he
is the 1, the anointed 1, that the
Bani Israel were waiting for,
to come
and unite them or to give them the
true essence of their religion.
According to
our conception of the Christ, one of his
primary functions
is to prepare the Bani Israel,
and by extension, prepare the world for the
coming of Ahmad
who is the final Messenger of God. And
this is based on a verse in the
Quran in which Allah
tells us that Isa said, O Children of
Israel, and the Messenger of God sent to
you, confirming the Torah which came before me.
And this is very important when we talk
about, does Isa confirm the Torah, or does
he cancel it, or is it somewhere in
the middle? This is a big controversy, a
big difference of opinion, at least amongst Christians,
as to the function of the Law, the
Torah, when it comes to
Isa And then he says, and to give
you glad tidings of a Messenger to come
after Me, whose name is Ahmad. And of
course we know the name. Ahmad is another
name for the name of the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. Some of the ulama have
mentioned that the name of the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam in the terrestrial
realm above the,
the mulk, in the malakut, in the Jabarut
is Ahmad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, or his
name on the yomul Qiyama will be
Ahmad.
Allahu Alem.
So unlike Judaism that does not believe that
Isa alaihi salam is the Christ, So even
though this is a Jewish concept, right, the
concept of the Messiah is a Jewish concept,
the Jews did not accept Isa
as the Messiah. And there have been many
would be messiahs
in their history.
A lot of messianic claimants,
Esai alayhi salam, to them is just another
one of those.
And then they had,
you know, in the year 6 of the
Common Era, Judas the Galilean, who claimed to
be the Messiah.
Barabbas, at the time of Isa might have
claimed to be the Messiah. Certainly, Barabbas, the
son of the father, is a messianic patronymic,
and it seems like his followers were touting
him to be the Messiah.
After Isa
you have a number of messianic claimants.
The most famous, of course, is Simon bar
Kochba,
who was executed by the Romans in 125
of the Common Era. This was a global
movement.
Basically
1000, 60,000
or so Jews were killed in Jerusalem,
by the Romans because of this uprising. And
you have other ones down the line.
In the Middle Ages,
you have
Shabbetai Svi,
who died in
1666,
or he actually
claimed to be the Messiah in the year
1666.
And he was a European Jew who went
to Jerusalem,
was endorsed by big rabbis in Jerusalem to
be the Messiah. He was captured by
the Ottoman Sultanate,
and because he was claiming to be the
Messiah, and, you know, just claiming to be
the Messiah is not like you're claiming to
be some spiritual mystic.
It carries with it
a very
clear political implication.
So anyone who claims to be the Messiah
is basically claiming to be the rightful king
of the planet Earth.
So the Ottomans,
they understood that about his claim. So this
is treason. This is clear khiyana.
So they gave him a choice, because khiyana,
even by today's standards, if you make khiyana
against, for example, an American citizen,
conspires against his own government, this is treason,
and it's punishable by death. And it's the
same in the pre modern world as well.
So the Ottoman Sultan, he said to Shabtai
Svi, he said, You have a choice: either
repent
of your claim and we'll let you go,
and you can be Muslim,
or you're going to be put to death.
And of course, Shabdai See, very famously, he
relinquished his claim
to messiahship,
and became a Muslim, and changed his name
to Mohammed something, and he lived,
the rest of his life as a normal
Muslim. So there have always been these messianic
claimants, the most famous of whom was Isa
Alaihi Salam.
At least from a Jewish perspective, he was
not the Messiah. Christians and Muslims, obviously,
accept him as the Messiah, and this is
a great,
topic of unity, that we can come together
as Muslims and Christians. Of course,
the significance of what it means
for him to be the Messiah at times
is radically different between Christianity
and Islam. But nonetheless, we both, both groups
believe that he was the Messiah. So again,
when I say the word, you know, the
Christ,
immediately we think of Christianity,
and that's just the way that we've been,
you know, sort of socialised.
It's an immediate signifier of Christianity.
But the Christ concept is a very Jewish
monotheistic
concept. Also, if I say, for example, if
I say the Holy Spirit, right, if I
say the Holy Spirit, immediately, most people at
least, will think of Christianity,
because the Christians have sort of monopolized
this term, the Holy Spirit. But Ruach Kadosh,
in Hebrew, Holy Spirit,
has its origins in Judaism, not in Christianity.
The Christians took from that concept, obviously,
and they changed it theologically,
but it is a Jewish concept, it is
a monotheistic
concept. Even if I say something like God
the Father,
right, that sounds like Christian confessional language.
Right? If, for example, if I quote to
you the Nicene Creed, this is basically
the the orthodox akida of Christianity.
It says in the Greek language,
We believe in 1 Father,
God, the creator of all. Right? God, the
Father.
It immediately
reminds you, or makes you think of Christianity.
But God the Father, I mean, God is
called Father in the Old Testament, in the
book of Isaiah
chapter 64, verse 16,
one of the du'a that are mentioned by
Isaiah, one of the supplications
is
You are the Lord our Father.
Right? And, of course, the Jews do not
mean this in a literal sense.
Right? So again, when the Jew says, God
is our father, He means Rab. He is
our sustainer. He is our cherisher. We have
that sort of,
it's a symbolical title.
Right? That we have that love of God,
as if
as if He is our Father. Of course,
this whole concept,
according to Islam,
was destroyed, this sort of metaphysical
aspect of God being our Father. And it
was made very much
literal,
by the Christian
bishops
and various ecumenical church councils, that
that God the Father is literally,
literally the father of Jesus who begot
Isa
So that's obviously something that's condemned in the
Qur'an,
also condemned in Jewish circles as well.
So that's important to to remember. How did
Esai, because if you read in the New
Testament Gospels,
you read Esai, referring to God as his
father.
How does he mean it? Does he mean
that God is his father who begot him
literally?
No. Jesus, peace be upon him, Isa
is in a very Jewish context, so the
way that he's using these terms
is in a very Jewish way. We cannot
ignore
the social and theological
context
of the Christ event, of the Jesus event,
because then,
we're reading into things anachronistically.
Isa
when he refers to God as his father,
he doesn't mean it in the Nicene
sense of the word. That's an anachronistic
reading outside of time. That's not being logical
in the way we approach the New Testament.
That's not how he meant it. He's simply
using the terminology
or the synagogue liturgy
that's available to Him. That's why, when we
read
the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6 and
Matthew chapter 11,
I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 6 and Luke chapter
11, something in that Matthew and Luke have
in common,
when He teaches His disciples how to pray,
he says in the in the Syriac language,
avun devashmaio,
our Father who art in heaven, not just
my Father, but all of us. Right? And
he means this obviously in the metaphorical sense,
not in the literal sense.
But Allah
in the Quran, he refrains from using
this attribute of ab or walad or ibn.
We don't use these, you know, abba na'ola.
We don't use these types of things anymore
because they've been corrupted over time,
by Christian orthodoxy.
So that's, important to understand as well. So
the Quran says that they say that Allah
has begotten children, bal idadu mukramoon.
No. These are servants raised to honor. These
are servants that have takreem.
Right? That they're simply saying these are sons
and daughters of God. They're not literal sons
and daughters of God. We don't say that
anyone we do not say that Allah
begets nor nor was he begotten. We that's
what we believe. Lam yalidwalaam yulat. That's what
we say. Lam yalidwalaam yulat, and that's what
we believe. God did not give birth, nor
was He given birth to. Right? So that's
very, very important.
Of course, when Christians say that Jesus is
begotten, not made,
right,
unless they're Mormon,
they're not saying that, you know, God had
physical relations with Maryam, alaihis salam, for example.
The Mormons will say that. Right? But the
vast majority of Christians that are Protestant, Orthodox,
and Eastern, and,
Catholic,
they don't believe that. When they say Jesus
is begotten, and this is important, when Jesus
is begotten, not made, they simply mean that
Isa
is uncreated.
He's not created by God. He's not from
the makhlukaat.
Right? This is what they mean, that the
sun has pre eternality,
right, which again is a paradox, because they
still believe, however, that he was caused by
God.
Right? He was caused by God, which means
what? That God is a monarch then, that
God has priority over the Son
because He is the cause of the Son,
who is the effect.
But Christian scholars would say, no, there is
no essential
or temporal
or ontological
priority of the Father over the Son, because
these things were done outside of time.
Right? Nonetheless,
Muslims would disagree and say, even so,
if something causes something else,
the effect of that cause is, by its
very nature,
inferior to the primal cause, whether it was
inside or outside of time. For example, I
have a ring on my hand,
right, and if I move my hand like
this, the ring moves.
Right? It's done at the same time. My
hand and my ring moves at the same
time.
But can my ring move without my hand?
No. My hand is still causing it to
move even though it's done at the same
time. Therefore, my hand is superior to the
ring, because my ring cannot do anything
by itself.
Right? So this is one of the logical
arguments we can use against this idea that
Isa Isa is uncreated yet caused by God.
This is an Orthodox
belief of the Christians,
and some of it is based on Neo
Platonic ideas. We won't get too much into
Christology
because this is supposed to be a basic
course, so we're going to look at the
4 Gospels, but maybe in the future, InshaAllah
Ta'ala, we'll talk more about
Christian theology, the origins of theology, what is
Christian,
theology or orthodox Christology, and we'll talk more
about that,
inshaAllah.
So even if you look at the old
testament,
you have titles like
Bene Elion. Right? Like in Psalm 826,
it says that you are all gods,
all sons of the Most High, b'nei Elion,
sons of the Most High. So this is
an honorific title
that God calls the Israelites, You are my
sons. This is not meant to
be, in the literal sense.
So this idea of triune gods,
right, a trinity,
divine incarnation,
right, that God comes down to earth in
the form
of a living creature, right, incarnation.
This is a Latin root,
incarnate, to be in flesh.
God does not come down and reside in
flesh. These are Christian ideas.
These are Christian dogmatic beliefs that Jews do
not believe in. They don't believe in these
things. The Jews will use this type of
language in a figurative sense. It's very important
for us to understand that. Jews will say,
Yes, God is our Father. We are sons
of God. There's a Holy Spirit. But none
of that is meant literally.
They believe very much as Muslims do
that Allah
is Wahid and Ahad. He's one of a
kind. There's nothing like unto him. Laysa kamitlihi
shay'un. This is what they believe, and this
is evident if we read
the Old Testament
as well.
So we would say, as Muslims then, that
Islam restores
the true Christology,
the true belief about Isa,
the the actual teaching of Isa because we
believe the Quran is a revelation of God.
Right? And we'll talk more about that later.
What's interesting here, we're looking at the Gospel
of Mark initially,
is Mark chapter 12 verse 29,
when a scribe comes to Jesus,
peace be upon him, according to Mark, and
he
says, What is the greatest commandment?
Right? And Jesus responds in the Greek language.
Of course, He spoke Syriac, and the New
Testament books are in Greek, which is an
immediate
disadvantage
for Christians. The reason why they're in Greek,
and we'll get more into this later, the
reason why they're in Greek, because Greek was
the language
of the
colonial power of that day. The Roman Empire
spoke Greek, so it's considered to be the
lingua franca
of that area in Palestine.
So Syriac was a language that the Jews
were speaking, mostly the peasants were speaking,
so Syriac really didn't have and Syriac is
a dialect of Aramaic. It's very similar to
Arabic, a Semitic language. It really didn't have
that ability to go into these
Gentile lands,
and,
to be used in other Christian congregations
that Paul eventually evangelised.
So Greek was sort of the language of
the elite, the language of
the coloniser,
so the language of the New Testament
became Greek and not Syriac. So immediately, we
don't have what's known as the ipsissima verba
of Esau
in the New Testament. Ipsissima
verba is a Latin phrase. It means the
very words of Esau
We don't have those. Right, because
Esal his response to this rabbi in Mark
chapter 12 verse 29 was in Syriac. We
have no idea what he said in Syriac,
or it might have been in Hebrew.
Right?
But what we do have are Greek translations
at best. So that's the difference between ipsissima
verba
and ipsissima vox.
Ipsissima verba are the very words of someone.
Like, we have hadith of the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. We believe that these are
the actual words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. Of course, we have hadith that have
variations and so on and so forth, but
it's still in his language.
Right? And if a hadith
is multiply transmitted
and it's a strong hadith and all of
the requisites of the strong hadith are there,
these represent
the very words of the Prophet
the very words He chose, the word order,
the syntax that He chose to express it,
and this is very very important because one
of the first levels of tafsir
is what's known as syntactical exegesis.
You can extract meanings by simply looking at
grammar.
Just by looking at the grammar, you can
extract meanings.
Right? For example, inna a'atayna kal kawthar,
a'atayna,
this is in the past tense. Why does
Allah
say, verily, we have given you kawthar in
the past tense? So now the grammar has
a theological dimension.
Right? But if you don't actually have those
actual words
of a prophet,
then you lose that dimension.
So this is the problem now with the
New Testament. We don't have the gospel of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in Syriac. We
have them in Greek. Nonetheless,
Israel,
he responds to this
rabbi. He says,
He says, Hear, O Israel,
when he's asked a question, What is the
greatest commandment? Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is 1.
Right? And here, he's actually quoting from the
Torah.
This is very, very important. Isa, alayhis salam,
is asked point blank what is the greatest
commandment? And what does he do? Does he
talk about the Trinity? Does he talk about
vicarious atonement? Does he talk about he's the
Son of God? Does he talk about transubstantiation
and all these other sacraments that these Catholics
believe in, or the Orthodox believe in? No.
What does he say? He appeals to the
Old Testament. He appear he appeals to the
concept of God in the Torah.
Right? Musaddiqalimabayna
yadayina mina Torah. He's quoted in the Quran
as saying, I confirm the Torah.
So he's quoting from Deuteronomy 6:4.
Deuteronomy 6:4 sounds like this in Hebrew.
Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God,
the Lord is 1.
Right? Ehad.
Isa alaihi salam, he uses this word ehad.
He's quoting from the Torah. Ihad and uhhad
are exact
cognates. Of course, the Quran says, call
And there is a difference
between wahid and ahad.
So students of Arabic, this is something that's
very interesting. And a nuance
is that when we say that Allah has
wahid, we're saying he's 1, but that doesn't
negate
the possible existence of other deities.
Right? Because by and large, the Arabs at
the time of the Prophet
they worshipped Allah
but they also believed in the existence
or the possibility
of other deities.
Right? So this is not tawhid.
This is not monotheism.
This is henotheism.
There's a difference. These are Greek terms that
are English now. Monotheism means you believe in
1 God
and you worship 1 God. There's only 1
God.
Henotheism
means that there's many gods, but you choose
to worship only 1.
Right?
So, for example, if I say
that I am one man, I say, ana
rajalun wahid in Arabic, I am one man,
that doesn't mean that there aren't other men
in the world.
Right? There's other men in the world, obviously.
Right? But I happen to be one of
them.
But if I say,
I am one man ahad,
Now what I'm saying is, I am the
only man
in existence.
There's no one else in all of existence
that has the qualities
of Rojul,
man, except for me.
So one of a kind. When we say
Allah is ahad, we mean He one of
a kind.
Right? So this is the word that's used
by Yisraeli
in Mark 12/29.
How do we know He used this word?
Because He's quoting from the Old Testament,
and the Old Testament is in Hebrew, and
it says Shemaisrael
Adonai
Elohaynu Adonai echad.
Very, very important
concept. And then He says, if you keep
reading this passage in Mark, he keeps quoting
the Torah. He quotes the Torah over and
over again. Why does he do that? Because,
Torah,
Isa alaihis salam,
he confirms the Torah. He says,
He says, and you shall love the Lord
thy God with all of thy heart,
all of
thy laiv, right, the qalb, all of your
heart, and all of your nafsh or nafs,
all of yourself, and with all of thy
strength.
Right? So loving
Allah
Believe God is 1 and love Allah
And then he says love your neighbor as
yourself.
Right? This is the essence
of the message of Isa alaihi salam, the
message of Musa alaihi salam, and the message
of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This
is the essence of the message.
Right? So it's very very important.
And then,
you know, this word Allah, very interesting word.
That, you know, Allah,
the dominant opinion is that, because we hear
a lot of things from different types of
people,
different, you know, Christian polemicists,
You have
Muslim haters,
profligates on TV who are making a lot
of money writing books about Islam and so
on and so forth, and they're saying, You
know, Muslims worship a different god. Allah is
not the Judeo Christian God.
Right? What's interesting is that Esal himself,
the word he used for God was Allah,
and this is evident if you study, or
if you've read, the Syriac translation
of the New Testament. So here we have
the New Testament in Greek
translated back into the language
of Isa, alaihis salam, which was done in
the 4th century of the Common Era. It's
called the Pesheetah. Or in Arabic, the Basita,
meaning it's very simple.
Basita means simple in Arabic, and that's what
it means in
in Syriac as well. Very simple to understand
Syriac,
and the word that Isa
uses
over and over again, for God is Allah,
Allah, Allah. This is the word that he
uses. So next time somebody comes to you
and says Muslims worship
Allah, who's a different god, or the moon
god, or the Muslim god, whatever they want
to say, you can tell them Isa
himself
uses the word Allah for God, as evident
in the Peshitta translation
of the New Testament.
The Old Testament also says, lo ta'ase
lecha fisil the kultamuna,
Ye shall not make unto thyself the image
or the likeness
of anything.
It's very, very important,
establishing tokid in the Old Testament. What does
that mean? That means Laysa kamitlihi shaywun. There's
nothing like God
whatsoever.
So the Christian will say, for example, yes,
God is 1, God is ahad, but Isa
alaihis salam is ahad. So then we say,
how can he be ahad
when he's a man?
A man, there's other men. That's not ahad.
Right? Also,
ahad entails that He's independent.
Allahu Samad, He's independent of everything,
meaning that He doesn't
depend
on food and water and gravity
and sun and all of these types of
things like we do. He is completely independent
of everything. This is the meaning of samat,
and the word samat in the Quran is
called hapaks
ladamanan, which means that it's the only occurrence
of this word in the entire Quran. What
does it mean? It means everything is dependent
on Allah.
Everything is dependent.
But Allah does not need anything.
This is the meaning of Samad. So when
we bring God down and incarnate Him and
put Him into flesh, this is called tajzim,
right, tajzasud.
When we do that,
what we're doing then is making
God dependent
on certain things. And this is the breach
of the Old Testament that says thou shalt
not make unto thyself an image of the
likeness
of anything.
Right? This is God's commandment to humanity. God
would not breach His own commandment,
theological commandment, and then become
a human being.
So
that's the end of our first session. Next
time, inshaAllah ta'ala, we're gonna continue,
talking about the concept of God
very briefly. Again, it's not a theology class,
the concept of God in the Christian tradition,
and then we're gonna get right into the
gospel of Mark, inshallah ta'ala.