Ali Ataie – Professor discusses the Crucifixion and the Qur’an, and Tahrif
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Good evening, everyone. And, this is a very
special,
edition of Blogging Theology, and I'm very honored
and privileged to welcome doctor Ali Atay,
to the program.
Hello, sir, and you're most welcome.
And
and thank you. And, I just for those
1 or 2 people who've been living on
Mars or in a cave for the last
20 years who don't know who this gentleman
is.
He is,
I'll just
briefly, mention a few items on his official,
Zaytuna
College website. I won't read anymore, but, he
is certified Ali is certified in Arabic, Hebrew,
and biblical Greek, and is fluent in Farsi.
He holds a PhD in Islamic Biblical Hermeneutics
from the Graduate Theological Union and is a
professor of Arabic,
Quran, and comparative theologies at Zaytuna
College,
the first accredited
Muslim college in North America.
That's an impressive CV. So, have a look
at the website. There's the tune if you
wanna read the rest of his,
very extensive CV, but just read the relevant
bits perhaps for this evenings or this morning.
So it's morning in California
where Ali is, and it's evening here in
London in the old world.
Morning in the new world. It's a kind
of sim symbol symbology there.
So we're gonna discuss 2 subjects, but 2
biggies.
I'm going to just introduce the first subject
which, is pretty much focused around the title
of this book, The Crucifixion
and the Quran.
And this book by Todd Lawson is a
study in the history of Muslim thought. This
is a unique book. I think it was
or still is the only book of its
kind ever written just on this one verse
in the Quran,
which talks about the crucifixion and Jesus.
And just to set the scene, I'm gonna
read a few comments from here just to
introduce by way of introduction.
And the it's with the person in the
Quran here, it says, they did not kill
him. This is referring to Jesus. They did
not crucify him. Rather,
it only appeared so to them.
So it's the Koran, the 4th Surah, verse
157.
I won't read it in Arabic. I'm sure
Adi will, but
and the the author of the book, Todd
here, who's a professor,
at, in the University of Toronto,
in in Canada, obviously,
He writes, this is the only verse in
the Quran that mentions the crucifixion of Jesus.
It has largely been understood both by Muslims
and in some ways, more interestingly, by Christians
as a denial of the historical,
fact of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Obviously, such a doctrinal position serves as a
great obstacle
separating Muslims and Christians on the grounds of
belief,
But, more importantly,
such belief frankly serves to diminish Islam in
the eyes of Christians and so called Westerners
whose cultural identity is bound up whether they
are believers or not
with the axiomatic and unquestionable
myth, inverted commas, of the death and resurrection
of Jesus.
This book, he writes, demonstrates that Muslim teaching,
just like Christian teaching on the life and
ministry of Jesus,
is by no means consistent or monolithic.
When it comes to the topic at hand,
understanding the Islamic verse that mentions the crucifixion,
it will be demonstrated
there are numerous forces at work
at various levels of the Islamic tradition
that impinge upon the hermeneutic
culture out of which doctrine may be thought
to have arisen
and endured.
And we'll explain a bit more in a
second what that means. But I just want
to unpack here the context of this verse
in the Quran because
Todd, says it's very important we understand the
few verses before
rather than just
isolate these few words and just jump in,
and there's actually a context according to the
Quran. The Quran, he says, in the verses
leading up to the crucifixion verse,
says that an example of faithlessness
may be found in the history of the
Jews
when they, 1,
killed their prophets without justification.
2, slandered Mary, the mother of Jesus, defaming
her virtue.
3,
boasted that they had killed the messiah.
And note that their deeds are being singled
out here as examples of kufa
for boasting that they could controvert the will
of God.
They are not being castigated for having killed
him.
The verse runs as follows in the translation
of Muhammad Asad. Now this is the context,
the full context,
which I think is actually quite important to
really understanding the significance of the verse.
And,
it goes like this.
And so we punish them for breaking
their pledge and their refusal to acknowledge God's
messenger
oh, sorry. God's messages
and their slaying of prophets against all rights
and their boast, our hearts are already full
of knowledge.
Nay, but God has sealed their hearts in
result of their denial of the truth,
and now they believe in but few things.
And for their refusal to acknowledge the truth
and the awesome
calumny which they utter against Mary and their
boast, behold, we have slain Christ Jesus, son
of Mary, who claimed to be an apostle
of God. However, they did not slay him
and neither did they crucify him, but it
only seemed to them as if it had
been so.
And verily, those who hold conflicting views thereon
are indeed confused,
having no real knowledge
and following mere conjecture.
For, of a certainty, they did not slay
him. Nay, God exalted him unto himself, and
God is indeed
almighty
wise, end quote. And then Todd said, thus
the Quran speaks of the crucifixion
one time, and even in this single instance,
it is in the nature of parenthesis.
It is not a central topic of the
Quran. It is, however,
a topic central to Muslim Christian relations
over the centuries.
So there we go. So
a contextual,
introduction to the subject, but I don't want
to set the agenda for you, Ali. But
please go ahead and what are your thoughts
about this for how are we to understand?
What is it saying? What's it not saying?
What's going on here, do you think? Yeah.
Very good question.
So I I think the,
I think it's important to to read the
Quran
with,
with an awareness or cognizance
that it's
engaging in a type of sort of,
dialogical,
relationship with these
with these other texts that are prevalent in
the late antique.
So it's interesting the wording in this ayah.
I call I call it ayatul sala, the
verse of the crucifixion.
They did not kill him
nor did they crucify him. So
in the Babylonian,
Gomorrah,
in the Talmud
Mhmm. It states that,
that the Jews
stoned,
Jesus. They killed him. In essence, they stoned
him to death and then they crucified
his body postmortem.
So it seems like here and then also
before that or slightly after that in the
same section in in in the Gamara, Sanhedrin
40 3 a and something before or after.
It refers to Mary,
in a very derogatory way.
Of course, the Talmud refers to Jesus as
Ben Stata,
Ben Pandara, which are supposed to be sort
of his matronymic and patronymic,
the son of Astata, which is sort of,
is related to the word sota, which which
sort of means like a prostitute,
and then pandera, which is supposed to be
the biological father of Jesus,
who apparently was this Roman centurion or something
like that.
So we have this we have this slander,
this calumny against
against Mary, and then we have the rabbis
writing
that that they stoned Jesus and then crucified
him postmortem,
which is how they would punish the worst
of of of criminals.
So it seems to me here that the
Quran is responding to this Jewish narrative.
Right? They did not kill him through stoning
nor did they crucify him postmortem.
What is made to appear so unto them?
Okay. So that's one way of looking at
it.
Another way of looking at it is that
the first statement is in fact
denying that Jesus was killed in some
unspecified
way, possibly stoning. So a a refutation,
a repudiation, if you will, of the standard
Jewish narrative that they stoned him.
And
they did not,
nor did they crucify him, which is a
repudiation now of the Christian narrative.
Okay? They did not kill him on the
cross.
Okay. They did not cause his death,
on the cross.
But it was made
to appear so unto them. So this is
the sort of operative phrase here, was made
to appear so unto them.
So so different scholars have different interpretations of
what exactly that that is. Of course, the
most popular theory is the substitution theory. By
the way, if you go into the New
Testament
and look at the genuine Pauline corpus,
for example, Galatians chapter 3, it's very interesting.
So the standard sort of exegesis of Galatians
is that, you know, Paul goes there and
evangelizes, and then a group of Jamesonian apostles
from Jerusalem, they go and they sort of
correct Paul's deviant teachings.
And then Paul sort of, you know, hears
about this and then he writes this very,
very fiery correspondence back to them, which is
called the book of Galatians, where Paul really
sort of tells them what he really means.
And one of the things that Paul says
in the book of Galatians chapter 3, he
says, oh, stupid Galatians or oh, foolish Galatians,
who has bewitched you? Yes. Who has bewitched
you? Did I not portray Jesus before your
very eyes as crucified?
Right? So what exactly does that mean? Well,
so some exegetes believe that
this this the the meaning of this is
that the Galatians were sort of given a
different interpretation,
a different meaning of the cross,
something that did not jive with
what Paul had taught them. But the wording
is very interesting. Did I not portray to
you Jesus Christ as crucified?
Is it possible that that the Galatians were
actually,
told that the cross never happened, Jesus was
never crucified? I mean, it's certainly a possibility.
And, of course, this is a genuine Pauline
letter, which is written in the fifties, so
one of the earliest books of the New
Testament.
At first Corinthians, which is also
a genuine genuinely written by Paul, 1st Corinthians
chapter 1, it's very, very clear that the
major issue in Corinth are these different sort
of Christian factions.
The main the main issue of of Eris,
Paul says, Eris is a Greek word he
uses which is sort of also the goddess
of strife.
The main the main point that's causing this
contention is the crucifixion.
You know?
It seems like there are people in Corinth
who are being taught different things about
what's what happened to Jesus. And, of course,
in 2nd Corinthians,
we learn that,
you know, that sort of Jewish Christians, they're
coming into Corinth
sent by James apparently,
and they're sort of re evangelizing
the people of Corinth.
And Paul doesn't like this. They're teaching something
that is fundamentally opposed
to what Paul is saying.
So what exactly happened to Jesus? There's no
definitive,
answer to this.
The substitution theory is at least something that
is
very popular.
What's interesting is that there was a group
of early Christians called the Basilidians,
and this is mentioned by Saint Irenaeus,
but they were quite active in in,
in north Northern Africa.
And Basilides,
and Clement actually says that Bacileides learned from
glauchia, who learned from Peter. So he sort
of gives this sort of,
chain of transmission
that goes back to actually Peter.
But according to Irenaeus,
Bacileges was teaching,
in North Africa, a very early Christian teacher,
that that
Simon of Cyrene
was transfigured to look like Jesus and vice
versa.
And that Simon was crucified. So this type
of docitism, this kind of a literal docitism.
Yeah.
So
what's interesting is that by the time we
get to the gospel of John,
right, John,
because he has the gift of hindsight,
he makes some really interesting,
unique contributions when he's writing his gospel. So
the synoptic gospels say that for no apparent
reason, the Romans just they pull a man
out of the crowd, and they compel him
to bear the cross.
And, of course, in sort of
popular Christian depictions and iconography and movies and
things like that of the Passion play, it's
because Jesus is so, you know, he's he's
so beaten and so, you know, he scourged
down to his
bowels as Joshua McDowell used to say, and
his, you know, his muscles are falling out.
He's just too weak to carry the cross.
But the gospels don't actually say that. In
fact, Luke doesn't even mention that Jesus was
scourged at all. In Luke, no Roman actually
lays a hand on Jesus,
which is quite interesting.
But
but they say that the gospel the synoptic
gospel say that they pull this man out
of the crowd, Simon of Cyrene, to compel
him to bear the cross. Now John is
probably writing
around 90, 95, a 100 even even after
that probably.
There's, that's sort of the general consensus.
And he completely eliminates this entire,
tradition of Simon of Cyrene that's mentioned in
3 synoptic gospels.
So scholars, they see something like that and
they wonder why did John do that? Why
make this sort of edit? Well, maybe
by the time John wrote his gospel, this
belief was quite prevalent
that Jesus was not crucified, that someone else
was crucified, that
Simon of Cyrene was crucified.
So John wants to set the record straight,
right, and say no. He he bore his
own cross, to
Golgotha,
and John does that quite often.
So
in the gospel of Mark,
we're told that Jesus, you know, he died
after 6 hours on the cross, and Pilate
marveled.
Right? He was surprised. This
man this man is dead already. And Pontius
Pilate, the Roman governor, he made a career
out of crucifying Jews.
He knew how to crucify. And he he,
you know, he he saw what had happened
apparently to Jesus with the scourging, the beatings,
but he marveled.
Athamas then, says the Greek. He was completely
surprised. How can this man be dead already?
Right?
So
so so in the gospel of John, right,
Jesus is impaled on the cross
to let the reader know he didn't survive
this ordeal whatsoever because that seems to be
I mean, one can sort of maybe Mark
is Mark himself is responding to this sort
of pre Markan tradition that maybe Jesus was
put on the cross, but he didn't actually
die. So in other words, the swoon theory,
which is another
possibility from from a Muslim perspective that he
sort of survived the crucifixion.
Because wama salabuhu, they did not cause him
to die on the cross. He might have
been put on the cross,
but they did not cause him to die
or he didn't die on the cross.
Another possibility that I I would like to
entertain,
is called divine rapture.
So in the Quran, very interestingly,
we are told,
that God says to Jesus.
Right? And we don't know the exact context
of when
Jesus when God actually said that to Jesus,
peace be upon him. But
so this is, an active participle of the
5th form of Tawafah,
which
is used in the Quran a few times,
something like 24 times, the verb tawafah.
And the primary definition of tawafah
means to die.
It literally means biological death. There are a
couple times in the Quran where it means,
in other words, to die like the die
of the death of sleep. Like like not
necessarily a total biological death, but to actually
be,
be caused to sleep as it were. Yeah.
But most of the time when this verb
is used in the Quran,
it signifies actual death.
Right?
Imam Ibn Kathir in his famous tafsir, he
does mention a few early authorities,
who who interpret the the word like that
as well. He says the meaning of this
is,
like, I will cause you to literally die.
So this does not, you know so so
the so the possibility here or the theory
here of the divine rapture is that Jesus
was placed on the cross,
but before he
before he died from his injuries as it
were or before the cross killed him, before
they killed him with the cross,
God intervened
directly
and caused him to die,
and and I will cause and I will
raise you unto myself.
Alright?
So one can make the argument here that
the Quran does not say that Jesus was
not crucified. It simply says that they, in
the context of the Jews, they did not
crucify him,
that God could have directly intervened and saved
him and then possibly returned his because Jesus
is ruhala. He is a spirit owned by
God.
Right? And God does what he wants with
his with his spirits
and with his servants,
it's possible that 2, 3 days later, whatever,
a few days later, that God returned his
soul, the soul of Jesus, back to his
body,
resurrected him,
and then Jesus showed himself to his disciples.
Now that story that that that option,
tracks very closely with the gospel narratives, doesn't
it, in Luke and Yeah. Yes. So, and
the Christian way. Yeah.
Yeah. Is is there a desire
about some people to
to minimize
the,
the discomfort of having a narrative that is
out of sync with the Christian narrative, desire
to bring it close
to the as possible to try and minimize
any,
awkwardness in the difference.
But but on the other hand,
the Quran
is is only one tiny little verse in
the Quran, and the Quran has no
it mentioned Jesus many, many times, and never
is his death or resurrection ever mentioned. It's
always about his teaching and his role as
a manager and so on. So this soteriologically
in terms of what,
makes people successful in this life and their
life to come. His death is never a
factor. It's it's never the focus of the
Quran. It's always No.
God's mercy and and so on. Yeah. So
is there a desire to to bring it
close to the Christianity? Yeah. I mean I
mean, the Quran says
in the context of
the Ahlul Kitab, which is
early on was sort of translated as people
of the bible because bible, Biblion, means Kitab.
It means book to people of the bible.
Come to a common word between us and
you. Right. Right? So let's let's try to
agree on a few things
and come together on a few things.
So but we have to remember not to
sort of breach the
theological the normative sort of theological param. People
don't postmodernists don't like the word normative at
all anymore, but Islam has a normative tradition.
There's no there's no doubt about that. Yeah.
As long as you stay within these, you
know, theological parameters,
all of these meanings
are possible. And even like in the Quran,
Jesus is quoted as saying, peace be upon
me the day I die, the day that
I was born, the day that I die,
and and the day that I am resurrected.
So most exegetes will say that Jesus here
is is that the Quran here is referring
to sort of the general resurrection
Yeah. At the end of time.
But why is Jesus sort of being singled
out here? Why is his resurrection being singled
out here? Maybe it's a
a a reference to the resurrection of Jesus
that happened,
in in at the end of his earthly
ministry. All of these all of these,
possibilities
are are in play,
but you're right as far as the significance
of of the crucifixion.
So so we can say definitively Jesus was
not killed by them on the cross. He
might have been resurrected by God.
Okay? This is a possibility. But he certainly
did not die for anybody's
sins. This is something that And that's a
crucial point, isn't it? It it because we're
arguing over whether or not a a certain
event happened or not, but, of course, the
significance of it for Christians is
totally central to their religion.
But for all. And it's totally not not
not not central.
Exactly
offstage. It doesn't matter because it's God saves
directly. It doesn't need a sacrifice across Jesus.
We don't believe in vicarious atonement. It could
be a a form of redemptive suffering.
So in other words, redemptive suffering is, there's
there's 2 ways to go about it. Direct
example, in other words, Jesus is teaching us
how to be principled,
how to be willing to give our lives
for our religion, for our faith.
So that's, you know, he's he's he's giving
us this sort of
as the Catholics would say. He's giving us
sort of a
a a beautiful example of conduct that we
should be willing to give our lives as
he did,
and also,
this idea of direct intercession
that that his, you know,
what happened to him, his his suffering,
should provoke or galvanize within us a state
of repentance because if this is happening to
a prophet of God,
right, then what about our states?
Right? This is natural. When we see people
suffering, this should actually make us thankful for
for our own,
well-being
and provoke a type of toba or teshuvah,
a type of repentance. But that's very that's
not too dissimilar from the Lucan,
understanding of Jesus' death and and in in
Acts as well. It's not it's not portrayed
as a have any saving significance in itself,
but it's meant to elicit repentance on behalf
of the Yeah. The Jews.
And, also, the you know, there's a sense
in the Synoptics that, the righteous will suffer,
that they're they're going to have this,
you know, they're going to be beaten and
thrown out of synagogues, and they're going to
suffer, maybe even die. And and so Jesus
parodigymatic for that. He is an example of
the ultimate martyr for God's cause.
And and you're saying actually there is a
a Muslim also can have,
a sense of that as well from Jesus'
life and death. Yes. Definitely. There's there's there's
redemptive value to to to his life in
that in that way.
But,
yeah, the Luke and Jesus, I mean, it's
it's I mean, what the parable of the,
the prodigal son, I mean, what is that
all about? I mean, if if if you
if you just, you know, presented that parable
to just an average person and say, what
do you think the point of this parable
is?
I doubt very seriously that anyone will say
vicarious atonement through blood through blood magic or
something like that. And they're gonna say that
this is about toba. This is about repentance,
and that's exactly what Jesus is teaching here
in in in during his sort of travel
narrative
in,
in the gospel of Luke.
So,
Jesus is that paragon of virtue that we
are,
that we are commanded to emulate someone who's
willing to give his life as the
ultimate,
make the ultimate sacrifice, not in the sense
that he dies for your sins. This is
something that is completely foreign. I mean, I
think Paul took this probably from this kind
of recycled
mythos of this, you know, dying and rising
savior man god motif, which was quite popular
in in that area of the world.
He sort of gave it a
he sort of dressed it up with with
Jewish trappings, if you will.
But this idea has nothing to do with
Judaism.
But this I agree it's not in the
Jewish bible, of course, although Christians some reason,
think that it is. But there's no no
text anywhere in the Jewish Bible that says
the messiah would suffer
and die or or let alone the people's
sins. I mean, the the the messiah there
is supposed to be, victorious and on a
white charger. You know, he he's supposed to,
you know, and not not suffer. But there
is 4 Maccabees,
however.
Now this when that was written maybe just
before Jesus' lifetime, it's in the
some Orthodox churches canon of scripture, certainly not
in the Catholic church. I think there's 1
and 2 Maccabees. And that does talk about
the,
the suffering of the the righteous martyrs having
some kind of redemptive,
effect on on Israel, for the sins of
Israel. So there's kind of,
echoes of it there, and that's a Jewish
Yeah. I mean, Isaiah 53 also, if you
look at standard exegesis, Jewish exegesis of Isaiah
50 3, nobody believes this is the Messiah.
Nobody believes that someone is vicariously
atoning for your sins.
The meaning here is that's that that and
and sort of the the general,
I was what I should say is that
the the dominant opinion is that the suffering
servant is a sort of personification of Israel
itself, but they're all rabbis.
For example,
Rabbi Saadia Gaion, who's like first Jewish systematic
theologian in the history of Judaism in the
10th century, he said that this could be
a reference to Jeremiah. The suffering servant is
Jeremiah, and there's actually intertextual correspondences.
I was as a lamb led to the
slaughter. I was cut off out of the
land of the living.
You know,
those texts are in common if you look
at Jeremiah and Isaiah 53. But they say
that the meaning of this is that the
death of or the sufferings of Jeremiah, because
they didn't actually kill him at the end.
He actually fled to Egypt.
But he was, you know, he was
bruised and he was, you know, smitten and
afflicted, a man of sorrows. He's called the
weeping prophet.
That
his sufferings is supposed to provoke within us
a deep sense of Tawbah
or Teshuvah,
and that's the redemptive value of his suffering.
Not that anyone's dying for your sins here.
Again, this is a completely foreign concept.
The the passage says nothing about the messiah.
The messiah is mentioned in Psalm 20 verse
6. David writes in the Hebrew, he says,
I know that God saves his messiah
with the saving power of his right hand.
He shall hear him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his of his
right hand. In fact, in the Old Testament,
what's interesting, a lot of people aren't aware
of this, is that three types of people
are called Meshichim,
messiahs.
There are kings, there are priests, and there
are prophets.
Okay?
So there are king messiahs, there are prophet
messiahs,
and there are priest messiahs. Now the book
of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is all
three of these things.
Yep. But, you know, the Jews primarily will
focus on the king messiah,
which I'm very skeptical of. I mean, the
book of second Samuel says
that that there's always going to be someone
sitting on David's throne.
And it says,
forever.
And this simply did not happen when Zedekiah
was deposed
prior to the Babylonian or during the Babylonian
invasion,
the davidic line ceased to exist.
So so that so called verse in the
Bible, this sort of guarantee that's in the
book of second Samuel, has been historically falsified.
Right? And then if you look at all
of these descriptions of the messianic age in
the book of Isaiah and Jeremiah and,
and so on and so forth, All of
these things were fulfilled before the 5th century,
during the exilic or post exilic periods,
primarily by either Hezekiah,
who I believe,
is being prophesized in Isaiah chapter 11, Isaiah
chapter 6, Isaiah Isaiah chapter 7, Isaiah chapter
9. Yep. I mean, all of these things,
came to pass or found fruition with them.
So I'm very skeptical of this idea of
this eschatological
Davidic King Messiah who's going to come towards
the end of time.
It seems to me that
that,
this idea
is sort of a
radical reinterpretation of these texts in the Old
Testament that have
been basically historically falsified. There's there's no more
after Zedekiah, there are no more Davidic kings.
So, basically, the Jewish
Scholastic community went back to that verse and
said, well, God must have been talking about
the future,
somehow.
Sure.
Yeah. So and then, you know, there are
priest messiahs. You know? So, like, the And
it's the Dead Sea Dead Sea Scrolls, of
course, mentions possible 2 messiahs, a
a priestly and a prophetic one. And even
even a non Jewish messiah is mentioned Osiris
famously in Isaiah. Osiris,
the king of Persia. I think, you know,
he was obviously
not
Jewish,
and yet he was the messiah. It's the
same word that's used of Yeah. Other messiahs.
So it it
a non Jewish gentile
messiah. Yeah.
So I I think I think Jesus was
a prophet messiah. I don't think he was
a king messiah.
I don't know how we could establish or
how do I don't know how Christians established
that he was a descendant of David if
they wanna maintain belief in the virgin birth
because tribal distinction comes from the father's side.
Jewishness is established matrilineally, so his mother was
a Jewess. He's a Jew. But in order
for him to be from house David, he
had his father has to be from David.
So they have this interesting way of sort
of working their way around that and saying
that, you know, he inherited the Davidic line
from his legal father, which is a very
strange thing,
in Judaism. It does it seems kind of
ad hoc.
But, from our perspective,
my understanding of the Quran is that Isa
alaihi salam is a prophet messiah.
Indeed, I am a servant of God. He
has given me revelation and has appointed me,
as a prophet.
So
so so the Jews traditionally
will really emphasize
the Messiah as being a king. The Christians
emphasize probably more than any other thing that
he's a priest. Right? The priest gives a
sacrifice. He gave his own life.
Whereas, I would say that the Quran is
emphasizing or correcting these two ideas or correcting
their as it were and emphasizing that he
was a prophet messiah because 3 groups of
people are called messiah in the Old Testament,
not just kings, priests, and prophets.
So that that's a that's I think that's
an important point to make. And the the
idea of a of a human sacrifice is
unauthorized
and, in fact, condemned by God. In the
temple, the sacrifices were
pigeons or goats, but never a human being.
But that's precisely what we're asked to believe
is fulfillment of the Old Testament,
cycle. And the one thing that
would prohibit
by God. Deuteronomy says every man shall be
put to death for his own sin.
It says that, you know, you shall not
drink blood. It's an everlasting statute. It even
says whoever's hanged on the tree is accursed
by God. It could be clear. The hints
are all there.
Yeah. It says it says,
like, Hosea says this. There's a verse in
Exodus. Indeed, I am God and not a
man.
Right? God is not a man that he
should lie. Of course, Christians will look at
that verse as numbers 23/19,
and they'll say that, oh, the meaning of
this is
that God can still be a man,
right, but he won't tell any lies.
But that's not actually what the Hebrew says.
So rabbi
Abahu of Caesarea, who was a third century
sort of anti Christian polemicist,
he said, no. The meaning of this verse
is whoever says I am God
is a liar.
No
no no no one truthful, no true prophet
would ever claim,
divinity,
and this is you know,
the Quran confirms this. The Quran says that
that no one who's given the prophetic office
would ever
become my worshipers
other than other than, God Allah
Rather, he would say
be sort of lordly, like mirror the divine
attributes in this sort of,
you know, mystical sense,
but never worship a human being. This is
this is complete. This is kufor. This is
complete blasphemy.
So so it doesn't make sense to me
then, the Christian argument here. So God says
in in the Hebrew Bible, God is not
a man. Don't drink blood.
Right? Every man is put to death for
his own sin. And then God himself decides,
well, I'm going to incarnate into a man
and kill myself,
for the sins of humanity,
and then how is this commemorated? You're gonna
drink my blood. Right? And and not in
America not not in a metaphorical way. The
teaching of the Catholic church and the Orthodox
church is is that one is literally ingesting
the blood and, the flesh body of Christ,
at the Eucharist. And this is not no
mere metaphor. He's for protestants, but not for
the, the historic Christian churches.
But that's the one thing that is prohibited
even in the accounts of Jerusalem in Acts
15. He says the Gentiles are not to
eat blood, and yet that's the one thing
apparently
that Christ ordered people to do according to.
I mean, the whole Last Supper scene is
so historically and it's so historically
impossible.
I mean, you have a Jewish rabbi who's
claiming to be the messiah,
and he's passing around wine and saying, drink
this. This is my blood.
And then, you know, Judas gets up and
leaves. So I don't blame Judas
for getting up and leaving because that is
absolutely revolting from from a Jewish perspective.
Right? Well, the thing is we we have
possibly another very early account called the the
Didache,
allegedly written by the the apostles, but it
can be dated to the 1st century, some
scholars. And you have the Eucharist or Eucharistic
meal in there,
paralleling the Synoptic Gospels, and it doesn't have
precisely those, offensive
elements that you It doesn't have it. Yeah.
It's just a Thanksgiving meal.
And then even some of the early church
fathers, they noticed that, you know, these sort
of mystery
the
I think it's called. Like, the like, the
eating,
of of a deity.
And he said, well, the, you know, the
devil is sort of he sort of put
those institutions into those pagan religions to trip
up the Christians and things like that.
But this is something, again, that's completely foreign
to Judaism.
A lot of these things came into Christianity
through through through Jewish Christians, but they were
highly Hellenized.
Even this whole idea of like a logos,
right, this is the idea that goes back
to Heraclitus.
I think the gospel of John is highly
influenced by Middle Platonism. You have this idea
of the influenced by, you know, Middle Platonism.
You have the idea of the one who
emanates from his own being, the second level
of being, who's also a deity, but not
as great as the main deity who is
the one who emanates from his own being,
the second level of being,
who's also a deity but not as great
as the main deity who is the one.
I mean, you find this in, you know,
the the prologue of John's gospel. No one
has at any time seen God,
right, because he's the one.
He's the transcendent perfect level of being. But
the only begotten God, and that's the more
authentic reading, by the way, not only begotten
son. The only begotten God
who is in the bosom of the father,
that one makes him known.
You know? You have Justin Marter in the
2nd century, the famous church father then talking
about,
the the there being 2 gods, Jesus being
the lesser god. There's god and lesser god.
Exactly. Openly openly prolific
to try and he he he was a
great philosopher, of course, himself, but before he
became a Christian. So, you know, he's openly
using this language, a quality language.
Yeah. This whole idea of, you know,
reading trinitarian
trinitarianism into the 4 gospels is totally anachronistic,
you know, saying that, oh, here he's talking
about perichoraces. Over here he's talking about.
You know? No. These these terms are not
biblical. They're completely anachronistic.
The early church fathers, they're, like you said,
they're highly influenced by middle platonism.
Justin Martyr, as you said, refers to the
sun as Allostheos,
another god.
Right?
Origin of Alexandria refers to the sun as
deuterostheos,
a second god. Yeah. Right?
And and this is very clear. And this
I think so with my my,
and we can talk probably about this in
in another section or in the next section
or something, but but I have sort of
a a a unique sort of take on
the Christology or the theology of the 4
gospels, especially John.
I don't agree that John was a Unitarian.
I don't believe that he was a Trinitarian.
I believe that he was a heno
theistic,
tritheistic,
believer. So in other words
or or at least there are 2 god.
I believe that he believes that the father
is the one, the most high God Yeah.
And that Jesus is
you know, he calls him the logos. Again,
this this is a pre Christian term
that that is is what the the the
middle plateness,
middle platonic philosophers, even Philo,
refer to the second level of being where
god emanates from his own essence, this lesser
deity. And that's exactly what John calls Jesus.
And Jesus says in the gospel of John,
I ascend unto my father and your father,
my God and your God. Jesus has a
God. John 17 famously, you know, this is
eternal life that they may, you know, know
you, the only true God, and Jesus,
whom you sent. So a separation because the
the the the understanding of divinity or deity
in the ancient world for everyone, holistic Jews
and, pagans, was much more elastic and more,
and more, liberally thrown around. So you could
use divine language of human beings or angels
or or lesser deities,
but still believe in the one high God.
So to use this
divine language of of a prophet,
would not be,
would not be surprising really to many people.
I mean, Plato was called a a god
or divine being. The the emperor was a
god.
There were gods aplenty and demigods and semi
gods and
and so on. So, yeah, that that makes
sense what you're saying. It wouldn't it wouldn't
be that surprising if John did have that
kind of complexity to it. It would fit
him with that culture and that's that theology.
Yeah.
Okay. Well, shall we, perhaps draw a conclusion
to that? Thank you. And and move to
the,
the second part,
which
is the the what I call the vexed
question of, the Quran, how we understand the
Quran
to be speaking of the scriptures of the
people of the book.
Now
just say a little bit about that. To
my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, the
the,
the Quran never speaks of the Bible,
as we would use the word, but it
does talk about the Torah. It talks about
the Injil,
the Arabic word Injil and the singular.
It talks about the the the Psalms and
the the the scriptures of Abraham and so
on. But what we're really focusing on, I
think, are the Christians and Jews
and their books.
And are they
are the extant books, the books we have
today,
you know, this Bible here,
which contains gospels and Paul's letters and so
on and the the Old Testament, which contains
the Pentateuch
and the the writings and the Psalms and
the lesser prophets and other.
Is that what,
the con is referring to? Or is it
referring to the original revelation given to the
prophets? And
a lot of Christian
apologists and missionaries are making a great deal
of this. They say,
The,
the Quran endorses the Bible. And, of course,
the Bible talks about the crucifixion and resurrection
of Jesus. It talks about Jesus being God.
It's all these things which,
we rebound back on Muslim belief is not
not acceptable. So kind of undermines, subverts
Islam in a way. I think that's the
whole point of this pandemic.
So,
without going into this, but this is a
book I I personally found very helpful for
a discussion of this, the Bible in Arabic
by Sydney h Griffiths, who's a an American
professor, scholar of the field.
He has, some ranging things to say.
Also, this book, The Cambridge Companion to the
Hebrew Bible Old Testament, has a an essay
by a professor,
from Canada called Waled Saleh, the Hebrew Bible
in Islam, and he has some very interesting
comments with a very academic nature to
make on what is the Quran actually talking
about. Is it alleging corruption, textual corruption, or
just verbal corruption?
Mispronounced in some
mispronounced
in some way. So it's a quite a
thick subject, lots of different,
aspects to it. How would you be able
to navigate us through this to what's really
going on, do you think? Yeah. So
the dominant opinion by far, and it's probably
a near consensus,
is that,
is that there's tahris. Tahris means corruption,
at both levels. So,
at the level of,
the text, the nos, but also at the
level of the Ma'ani. So you can say
sort of the Judeo Christian exegetical,
tradition.
That's the dominant opinion. The minority opinion by
far and I can only think of one
scholar who definitively held this opinion Are you
talking about Muslim scholars here or western scholars?
Scholars. Yeah. Muslim
because there's just 2 camps here, if you
like. There's a western scholarly camp, and there's
a Muslim camp. So talking about Muslim scholars
here, the dominant consensus is there is action
both at the textual and at the interpretive
tradition.
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. There there there's one sort
of, traditional Sunni scholar that I can think
of that affirmed the text,
of the bible,
Imam, Ibrahim ibn Umar al Biaqai.
So he was
a, an Egyptian
exegete of the Quran. I think he died
14 80 of the common era.
So he used the biblical text
extensively in his, exegesis,
of the Quran. It's called Nadh Mat Durar.
And then he also actually also did a
Diatessaron.
He he did a gospel harmony of the
4 gospels
where he tried to put them into a
single,
narrative. But he was vehemently opposed by many
of his contemporaries,
in Egypt, for that. So that's very much
in the in the minority. There there are
some there are some opinions about,
you know, Imam al Ghazali, Imam al Razi,
but it doesn't seem like that's that's their
that's their final position if you look at
this sort of
totality of their of their writings.
So the vast, vast majority of scholars
based on their understanding
of what the Quran is saying,
come to the conclusion that that tahariif or
corruption,
of the Bible is both in its text
and in its exegesis.
Now there there's a verse in the Quran,
we can get into this verse now, that,
that is quoted a lot
by, you know, Christian missionaries or Christian apologists,
and it's in Surah al Mahidaa'a number 47,
so chapter 5 verse 47,
where the Quran says,
so let the people of the gospel
rule or judge by what God revealed therein.
Yes. Okay. So
we can infer from this verse
that they have the gospel.
Okay? So they,
the Christians,
must have,
according to this verse, some text that is
being referenced here. Right.
So the Quran calls them.
Why would why would the Quran refer to
them as people of the gospel if they
don't have the gospel?
The Quran is commanding them essentially that,
that, you know, let them take rulings or
judge by what God revealed therein. How is
this even possible if there's no text? So
it seems to me that the Quran has
a text in mind,
probably.
Okay. So according to Sydney Griffith, the scholar
you just quoted or you just referenced,
the the the,
the gospels in Arabic,
the Teotessaron
was the most popular
form of the New Testament gospels
in the Arabian Peninsula during the Quran's milieu.
Okay. So
so so it's a so it's not the
original gospel given to
Jesus, peace be upon him. So I would
say,
that it seems to me that the Quran
speaks of the Injeel in sort of a
twofold
sense,
that there's the pristine revelation given to the
prophet
the prophet Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.
And then you have some sort of text
that the Christians have that the Quran also
refers to the gospel, but it's a corrupted
form of the gospel.
Right. But it still contains,
many true and authentic
teachings of Jesus. So it is for all
intents and purposes
the gospel.
It's just not in its original form.
Right. So the hadith also says we find
a hadith in Bukhari
that,
the cousin of Khadija,
it says,
that he used to read
the gospel
in Arabic,
and that he used to write the gospel,
in Syria, probably.
So it seems like you know, what is
he actually reading and writing? Some, you know,
now lost or buried gospel archetype that he
only that only he had access to? It
doesn't seem like that to me. It seems
like he's he has a text that is
that,
that, the Christians
are in possession of, obviously, and I think
it's probably the the the Diotessaron.
Now what what what language sorry. What language
would that be in?
Probably in Syriac that he's translating into Yeah.
Because it one of the points that Nicolas
makes is that he doesn't believe the bible
was in Arabic until after
the time of the prophets. Yeah. I mean,
not not officially, but but there were there
were certainly individuals who are translating
portions
of, of the bible into Arabic.
This is what our hadith,
corpus indicates as well. Okay.
Yeah. So, like, in in another example of
this in the Quran, the Quran says in
Surah 7 verse 157,
So those who follow the messenger,
the unletered prophet or you can say the
gentile prophet,
whom they find mentioned
in the Torah and gospel that is with
them.
Yes. Okay? So it's referring it says Torah
and gospel,
that is with them. So here the text,
the Quran
is not is not referring to the original
pristine
uncorrupted revelations,
but the Torah and the gospel that are
with the Jews and the Christians
at the prophet's time because there is still
truth in those in those texts.
However, they're not in their pristine form.
So
so Imam al Razi, who is one of
our champion exegetes,
Fakhruddin al Razi, he looks at this verse,
547.
Right? Let the people of the gospel rule
or judge by what God has revealed therein.
And he asked an interesting question. He says,
how is it permissible
for them to be ordered to rule, to
take injunctions,
legal or ethical,
according to what is in the gospel after
the revelation
of the Quran?
Yep. Right. It's a very good question. So
the answer he says has different aspects.
He says, firstly,
they should examine the gospel
vis a vis the evidences of the prophet
Muhammad's prophecy.
Right? The Dalail and Nabuah.
So, you know, how does the prophet's,
teaching clarify the many ambiguities
and outright inconsistencies,
in the gospel
that the Christians have?
You know, we we talked about this earlier.
You know, how do you reconcile,
you know, the Luke and Jesus',
you know,
parable of the prodigal son with,
the Johannine Christology,
that
behold the lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. How do you
reconcile, you know, Mark 10 18? Why are
you calling me good? There is no one
good but one that is God. You know,
Dale Martin, who whom we interviewed, he said
this is the most historical verse in the
entire New Testament.
Right?
Why me? And the Greek is very emphatic.
Why me are you calling good? No one
is good but one that is how do
you reconcile that with John 10:30, the father
and I are 1, John 8 58, before
Abraham was, I am. These I am statements
that are only found in John, not found
in the Synoptics.
How do you reconcile Mark 1229 where Jesus
is quoting the Shema, hear, O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is 1, with
John 1:1.
In the beginning was the word, the word
was with God, the word was God.
Right? So Imam al Razi, he says, firstly,
we should examine the gospel vis a vis
the evidences of the prophet Muhammad's prophecy. How
does the teaching of the prophet clarify these
ambiguities?
Secondly,
the Christians should take rulings from the gospel
that have not been, he says, abrogated,
by the Quran,
because the Quran is the ultimate standard of
judgment.
The Quran is. The Quran is a final
revelation, is a promise that the Quran will
be will be guarded by by God. So
those particular rulings are true,
and valid.
For example, Jesus says, you know, you've heard
it say, don't commit adultery, but verily I
say unto you, if a man looks at
a woman with lust, he has already committed
adultery in his heart.
Yes. That's a true statement. The Quran says
tell the believing men and women to lower
their gaze, right, to be modest.
Now so it seems to me here that
the Quran is putting
the Christians on a path to guidance.
Right? And this path is mujarab.
I mean, it's it's it's tried and tested.
So I personally know many people who studied
the gospel, right, the New Testament gospels, the
gospel as it is today
through the lens of the Quran's teaching.
And the Quran is called Kitab Mubin. It's
a book that literally
makes things clear. And suddenly, everything makes sense
to them. Questions they've had for decades
will be clear to them.
Right? Now he also says something interesting, Imam
al Razi, about this ayah. He has a
long section about this ayah. He says, let
them judge or let them, you know, take
verdicts or take rulings,
should be understood as let them establish.
This idea of, you know, taqrir,
let them establish. Let the Christians, the people
of the gospel,
establish
what God truly
revealed in the gospel.
Okay? So god so here, the Quran is
commanding the Christians
to adopt a critical method, if you will,
an academic method
through which they might be more discerning when
it comes to their scriptures.
Try to establish what Jesus, peace be upon
him,
really said
through a critical method. And, as you know,
it's very interesting. When you actually do that,
you learn that
the the earliest source material of the 4
gospels is something called
the sayings gospel or the q source material.
And the q source the q source material,
you'd be hard pressed to find anything in
q
that is theologically offensive to Islam epistology. You'd
be very hard There's no there's no passion
narrative. There's no death. There's no passion narrative.
Exactly. And here's the other thing about that.
Once once we start talking like this, you'll
notice that Christians will say,
you know, it's kind of a thought stopper.
They'll say, well, how dare you get into
these types of things? You know? What would
Bart Ehrman say about the Quran?
What would, you know, w w b e
s
a t q. What would Bart Ehrman say
about the Quran? And, of course, Bart Ehrman
doesn't talk much about the Quran, but I
would like to actually read something that Ehrman
did say about the Quran.
Oh, yeah. Maybe you came across this,
and I just like to to it's it'll
take a couple of minutes to read, but
but Bart Ehrman did,
comment
on the Birmingham manuscript.
I've heard of this. It's certainly worth, quoting.
Yes. Yeah. So this was on Do you
have do you have it there? Yeah. This
was on his blog.
July 25, 2015. He says the significance of
an astounding new discovery.
Right? So people wanna know what would Bart
Ehrman here's what Bart Ehrman says. Okay. So
I hope the Christian apologists are listening. So
he begins by saying, let me say that
carbon 14 dating is indeed a science, but
it's not exactly an exact science. It dates
organic material,
so on and so forth. So he's talking
about the Birmingham manuscript. It turns out that
there's a 95%
chance that these pages were produced between 568
and 645.
How good is that? The prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, he didn't say that, but
I'm saying peace be upon him, who in
the traditional Islamic teaching was responsible for producing
the Quran was engaged in his active ministry
between 610632.
These pages may have been produced during his
lifetime or in a decade or so later.
Is any he says, in case anyone is
missing the significance of that, here is a
comparison.
The first time we have any 2 page
manuscript fragment of the New Testament
is from around 200 CE. That's a 170
years after Jesus' death in 30 CE.
He says, imagine if we found 2 pages
of a text that contained portions,
say, of the Sermon on the Mount in
exactly
in almost exactly the same form as we
have them in what is now our gospel
of Matthew, and suppose that these pages received
a carbon 14 dating of 30 BCE
to 40 CE,
would we be ecstatic
or what
Since I am a since I am a
scholar of early Christianity rather than Islam, the
discovery of Birmingham raises all sorts of questions
for me that it would not raise for
any other any of my Muslim friends or
neighbors. 1 is a historical question, and one
is a question for the modern Christian attempts
to prove the truth claims of Christianity. He
continues,
my historical question is this, if these pages
of the Quran do indeed show that the
text of the Quran is virtually the same,
say in, say, in 630 to 640
as it is in 1630
to 1640 as it is in 2015,
that would suggest that Muslims are indeed correct,
that at least in some circles, it would
obviously be impossible
to prove,
that it was true in all circles, that
scribes of the Quran simply didn't change it,
that it would suggest let me say it
again. Suggest that Muslims are indeed correct that
that at least in some circles, scribes of
the Quran simply did not change it. They
made sure that they copied it the same
every time, word for word.
Now it may be that these newly dated
fragments have significant textual variance from the rest
of the manuscript tradition in the Quran, and
if they do, that will be immensely interesting.
But my sense is that they must not
be much, if at all different. Otherwise, that
is the story that would be all over
the news. I remember the the scholar,
Alba Fidelli. This this is now me talking.
I remember that Alba Fidelli who who actually
discovered this manuscript,
who actually discovered it and it was able
to identify it because it was 1572
a something Mingana.
Right?
And, she she came to UC Berkeley, and
she gave a lecture. So I took my
class over there. We actually heard her speak,
and there were other professors there that were
sitting and they're kind of just sitting and
they were like sort
of chomping at the bit,
ready to ask questions and she said, let
me get through my presentation.
And then finally a professor said, so what's
the big deal with this manuscript? How many
variants are there, and how different is it?
And and she just said, you know, it's
the
it's it's exactly the same as
what what Muslim tradition says. Yeah. There are
no differences
whatsoever. All you know, it's on vowel text,
right,
for the most part, but there there are
no there are no changes
skeleton. Muslims know exactly how to recite it.
There are 10
There are 10,
multiply transmitted ways of of reading the continental
skeleton, and they all fit in perfectly with
this with this manuscript. So then an airman
says here I'll just finish with this. He
says,
back to my question. If Muslim scholars of
the centuries from the beginning made dead
sure that when they copied their sacred texts,
they didn't change anything,
why didn't Christian scribes do the same? Christian
scribes did not do the same thing.
Okay. And he goes on.
You can go on his blog and you
can read it.
But,
you know, I would say that it is
impossible
to fabricate the Quran, and that is it
it has always been impossible.
Just as it is impossible today, it was
impossible at any point in the past. It's
because it's so massively
It's a mass transmitted
living tradition that's recited, heard, memorized every day
since its inception. Hadith were fabricated because many
of the hadith are not mass mass transmitted.
It's it's not a mass transmitted living tradition.
The sunnah of the prophet is. That's why
the sunnah also is preserved. Right? It's it's
it's something I I've learned, Ali, if I
may I may just say say another reason,
perhaps in retrospect, we can say this. Why
wasn't the Quran changed? Well, how is the
Quran viewed by Muslims? It was reviewed, obviously,
as the actual speech of God himself.
So it it didn't have a higher status.
It really is impossible to have a higher
status than that. They're not going to yeah.
Muslims are not going to change the Quran
given its sacred nature. It would be the
ultimate ultimate blasphemy.
Compare that and and and a reminder discussion
I had with professor John Baldwin, who's professor
of the interpretation of holy scripture at the
University of Oxford is on my on my,
channel
where we talked about what he he called
it the the orthodox corruption of scripture. He
we were referring to,
the way Matthew's gospel, Matthew, right, the author
Matthew changed the words
of Mark, and he said dishonestly.
In fact, it's a very passage you mentioned
in Mark. Jesus denies he's God. In Matthew,
according to John Barton,
Matthew
waters down the words of Jesus to remove
this embarrassment because the end of the 1st
century, Christians had a much much higher understanding
of Jesus' divinity than they did earlier on.
Now how come Matthew changed the words of
Mark?
Well, because
Mark was not seen as sacred scripture at
that time. You could change it because it
was the words of just Mark,
but and so the parallel is you have
the revered words and speech of God himself
for Muslims and no Muslims are gonna change
on pain of eternal punishment in hellfire
versus
Christians who could happily change earlier text which
were not the word of God. We're not
seen as inspired by God. We're not part
of sacred scripture at that early date. So,
of course, you could change it with impunity
and you could say Matthew now, as John
Baldwin was saying, is now the the proper
text we should use if you like. Not
the earlier, you know, it didn't have a
birth narrative. It didn't even have resurrection appearances
in Mark. And, hey, there was very rough
grammar. We we we polished up a bit.
This is now Matthew. That's the one we
should use, I mean, same for Luke. That's
one we should use, not the earlier mark,
which is clearly deficient in the beginning and
the end and other and other areas of
Christology as well. So is it is a
very different thing going on with the early
Christian texts
compared
to
the Muslim texts. So that this facile comparison
of Bible Quran, but it is is misleading
because it ignores the tradition history and the
different estimation of the texts in the different
religions.
The Quran from the beginning, I would suggest,
as revelation for the believers was always
the speech of God from the from day
1, from the from Mohammed to his wife
to Ali, always the real God. But the
the the the gospels were not we know
they weren't because Christians
changed them. And as as John Barton says,
he called it the orthodox corruption of scripture,
and he actually says in Matthew's case, it
dishonesty changed Mark's words in John in Mark
10,
for his own reasons.
So I think from my point of view,
that's that's a comparison, a comparative religious perspective.
It makes sense of the different
kinds of
issues we're dealing with here. They're not that
they're not the same.
They're not the same at all. You're right.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Yeah. That's that's
the title of Ehrman's book as well. It's
more accurate than the book. And then he
sort of, you know, made a more
user friendly version of it called Misquoting Jesus,
which is an excellent book.
So but that that but that's that's what
they want me to do. They want they,
you know, what would Ehrman say? Well, I
just I just quoted to you, you know,
Ehrman what he says about the Quran.
But you're absolutely right. I mean,
you know, just to take one example, the
longer ending of Mark, you know, now scholars
are almost,
completely agreed that the gospel of Mark ends
at 168.
Right? That the women, they exited the sepulcher,
and they were afraid, and they said nothing
to no one. And that's the end of
true Mark. No one sees a resurrected Jesus.
What happened to Jesus?
Did he actually die on the cross? Did
he get up and leave? Why is he
going back to Galilee? Did he why did
he get out of dodge as it were?
Was he still alive and he was afraid
of authorities finding him and killing him again?
So somebody found that very disturbing. So they
tacked on this longer ending because they wanted
to bring the gospel probably into
into cohesion with with Pauline doctrine or the
other gospels that were written after Mark, and
so this so this scribe is adding the
ending of Mark even after maybe Matthew and
Luke.
So we find many, many examples like this,
not just within the gospels, but,
the other books of the New Testament as
well.
And, of course,
another point to make is and, you know,
we we probably should have brought this up
during the
discussion on the crucifixion. The the first the
first person in recorded history to ever say
that Jesus was indeed crucified is Paul of
Tarsus.
You know, he's writing in the fifties.
And certainly, you know,
there are people who believed in Jesus before
Paul.
Where are their writings?
You know, you know, Peter has Paul has
a lot to say about Peter in Galatians,
and and many of the things he says
is not not very kind.
You know? But where's Peter's correspondences,
you know, to to, you know, the churches
and what whatnot that he's that he's evangelizing.
And where where are the letters of James?
You know, just just to mention, of course,
that the the New Testament does allegedly have
letters of Peter, but Yeah. According to, for
example, second Peter, the second letter of Peter
in the Bible, virtually all scholars in the
world
believe it is a second century forgery.
Of course.
Yeah. And and and that's, a main the
mainstream view you'll hear at your everywhere because
the evidence is so clear. This is not
by the apostle. No. So we don't actually
we don't have this first person eyewitness testimony
from someone who actually knew Jesus in in
in history. We don't have it. We don't
have. 1st and second Peter, universally, like you
said, 1st first, 2nd, and third John, the
even the the epistle of James, all of
these are forgeries. They
they
they're written much, much later after the gospels.
The earliest books of the gospels are the
letters of Paul. Where are the letters of
of, where are the letters of the actual
disciples of Jesus? It's it's a very good
question. Nobody has them.
So, yeah, it it's
in the Quran, the way that I understand
the Quran is that the Quran invites itself
invites upon itself a deep analysis.
There's a verse in the Quran chapter 4
verse 82,
Quran. Do they not ponder deeply, reflect deeply?
Do they not, you know, analyze in a
very, very substantive way this Quran?
Right?
And this is something that is,
you know, traditionally for Muslims, culturally for Muslims
is very, very important that that that we
want to study our text, the language of
our text, the context of our text.
We want to study anything that has to
do,
with the Quran because we this is the
word of God. We it's it's a means
by which we draw near to God.
There's no, you know, type of,
you know, hesitation or fear
of doing that.
But when we look at the biblical tradition,
we look at the New Testament manuscript
tradition, you know, it's it's,
you know, people lose their faith. I mean,
Ehrman himself. I mean, this guy was a,
you know, a bible thumper as it were
going to the Moody Bible Institute or whatever
in Chicago,
and he started to engage deeply with the
New Testament, and he lost his faith.
I don't think it's he he said it
wasn't because of that. It was because of
his he used to do his suffering in
theodicy. It wasn't because of his because he
he was a liberal Christian for quite some
time or some years as a
started the ball rolling. Right? Yeah. Well, yeah.
Obviously, it was a yeah. Yeah. Can we
just finally come back to the Quran? You
mentioned, 547.
But the very next verse,
and I'm just reading,
from this, translation,
for no particular reason. But we have sent
down to you, Mohammed, the book, meaning the
Quran in truth, confirming the scripture that came
before it, and Muhammed,
and his here in explanatory brackets,
trustworthy in highness and a witness over it.
So judge among them by what Allah has
revealed and follow not their vain desires.
At the bottom is a footnote,
by the translators,
concerning the word Muhammed. It says, that which
testifies the truth that is therein and falsifies
the falsehood that is added therein,
meaning,
the the old scriptures,
I guess.
I'm not an Arabic speaker, and, obviously, you
you you you do understand the language. This
word, Muhammed, whenever I kind of grasp it,
it seems to,
become very,
elusive. It seems to have many different shades
of meaning,
in the lexicon, anyway.
What does it mean, do you think, in
this context? What what was the Quran trying
to say? When it talk about the the
Quran being a Muhammed
over it, the old scriptures. What what what's
Yeah. Muhammed means something like protector. I mean,
I'd have to look at the the exegesis
more closely.
But as I understand it, the Quran protects
the truth
or confirms the truth as it were,
in these previous scriptures. That these that these
scriptures have an element of truth within them,
that the Quran is confirming. But the Quran
is the Furkan. Right? At the very beginning
of the
Surat Ali Imran, Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, God
says that,
that,
that he revealed the Torah and the gospel
in the past, and then he revealed the
furkan. Right? This is sort of the standard
of judgment that is used.
So
so the Quran is confirming these sort of
essential
theological and ethical
teachings of those of those texts. It's protecting
those and confirming those as I understand it.
Okay. So when it says so judge among
them by what Allah has revealed. So so
Muslims are to use
the Quran to judge among them by what
Allah has revealed. What does that mean to
judge among them? It sounds that the Quran
has this kind of role of
deciding what is righteous and and what is
to be believed.
Right. Yeah. The Quran
the Quran is the final revelation of God.
It is the. It is sort of the
intellectus. It is the sort of
standard of judgment that we use to,
to,
to analyze, you know, Christian claims, Jewish claims.
So
so there are like I said, there are
truth there are truth elements in in these
texts,
that
we we can confirm,
but the Quran is the final revelation of
god. And so and so we have a
a normative understanding of our tradition, and it's
and it's clear guidance. So what what is
what is our Christology? The the Bible says
one thing. The the New Testament says something
about Jesus. You find different different things that
the gospel say about him. What does the
Quran say? Because this the Quran is a
standard of judgment.
And when it comes to So when when
we come to when the Quran comes to,
the Bible, which gives a visual metaphor, whatever's
in the Bible is
acceptable. It passes and can pass and can
travel through and be acceptable to Muslims, but
whatever
contradicts the Quran is blocked,
and is not is rejected, basically, as far
as if Yeah. And and again, I would
say I would say if the Christians
engage with the Bible through a critical lens,
an academic lens,
they will come to see that that the,
that the that what the Quran says about
it is is true.
Right? That So he's not gonna be the
prophet. So, but my understanding is the vast
majority of New Testament scholars would understand the
historical Jesus to be a prophet of God
Mhmm. Which is exactly what the Quran Exactly.
And and and that's what I was called
to do not think the historical Jesus thought
or proclaimed himself to be God, and that,
by the way, is exactly what the Quran,
presented Jesus as saying as well. So I'll
just give an example of that. Exactly. Exactly.
Mhmm.
Fantastic.
Okay. Well,
that's a a fascinating
and exhausting,
romp around the the subject. Thank you so
much. Is there anything you want us to
conclude by saying about, this whole discussion? I
don't want to cut you off.
I'm just saying further.
I would just say, you know, to to
the to listeners to keep studying, to keep
an open mind,
you know,
to,
keep seeking knowledge. You know, there's there's there's
a command in the Quran,
oh my lord, increase me in knowledge.
For the rest of your life, you're gonna
be on a journey. Keep trying to learn.
Keep trying to better yourself. Keep trying to
understand with an open mind. That's all I
wanted to say. That's fantastic advice. I certainly
agree with that. Did you are you writing,
any books? Are you writing at the moment?
Anything you might Yeah. I'm actually I'm working
on a monograph on the Christology of the
Quran.
I'm trying to sort of put it in
context and explain what what is our Christology
in light of Jewish and Christian beliefs and
what is our sort of response to
to,
to Christianity and and Judaism with respect to
their claims about the Messiah.
So, you know, inshallah, God willing,
we'll probably have that done by the end
of the year inshallah.
And will that come out as a book
form or an article?
Hopefully, a a short book. Short book. Yeah.
Excellent. Well, I I'm certainly looking forward to
doing that. So well, thank you very much,
Ali, for your, your time. And I know,
there are many people who will be watching
this and appreciating and,
listening very carefully to what you've said.
And maybe even some Christian apologists as well
might
learn a few things and,
draw closer to the truth of the matter.
So, thank you once again, and, have a
good morning in California.
Thank you so much, Paul. It's been a
pleasure. Thank you.