Ali Ataie – Talking With Teachers Podcast
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AI: Transcript ©
And welcome to talking with teachers.
This is the podcast
of the Lampas Education Initiative.
And
today, we're gonna have a very special guest.
We're gonna be speaking to doctor Ali Adai,
who is the
associate,
dean or is the dean of undergraduate studies,
at Daytona College in Berkeley, California, a good
friend of mine. Excuse me.
Very good friend of mine,
and,
a great scholar. And,
I wanted to begin,
by talking just a little bit about
doctor Ade Atayi.
Now doctor Ade Atayi,
he
has a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union
and Cultural and Historical Studies and religion,
having completed his, degree in 2016
and, and also an MA from the Pacific
School of Religion,
and biblical studies, which he finished in 2011.
But also prior to that, he, completed an
accounting degree at Cal Poly State University in
2000.
He's a scholar of biblical hermeneutics
with field specialties and sacred languages,
comparative theology,
and comparative literature. As a college, doctor Ali
has saw Arabic, credosiology,
comparative theology,
sciences of the Quran, introduction to the Quran,
and seminal ancient texts.
He receives his BS in accounting from, as
I mentioned, Cal Poly State University 2000,
and, of course, eventually will go on and
complete his MA and his PhD.
His PhD thesis was is entitled
Authenticating
the Johanin Injil,
Muslim
polymeric
interpretive approaches to the gospel of the of
John.
This is a face based hermeneutic of the
gospel of of John in which the entire
text is authenticated as being the true gospel
of Jesus Christ mentioned in the Quran. So
during the this conversation, we hope to speak
a bit about this.
With doctor Adi, he speaks, of course, not
only English, but Urgent, Arabic,
Hebrew, and Greek.
He definitely is a very,
a formidable scholar,
theologian, and so we're gonna bring him in.
And so welcome to
our show, doctor Ali Abay.
How are you doing, Shaykh? Thank you for
having me. Yeah. Mila, thank you for being
a a guest on this show.
This podcast, InshaAllah, we intend to, have many,
many other episodes, and, hopefully, this won't be,
the the last of them with you.
And, you know, I imagine that, you know,
we will be a a a normal guest
of ours,
especially considering that, you may become a bit
more in demand. We see, of course, that
others find you to be
an important contributor to,
the dialogue on Islam, in society today.
You know? So I wanted to I wanted
to begin by
talking a little bit about you more than
just your academic credentials. You know what I
mean? What would you say? Oh, it's Alia
thought. Why don't you give us something about
your background?
Okay.
So who is Adi? It's just a meager
servant of God
trying to get the Jannah Insha'Allah.
But no, I've actually,
was born in Iran,
which is,
interesting because usually when I'm out somewhere giving
a talk or something and somebody says, hey,
where are you from?
And, I give them 5 guesses,
and they usually can't get it by the
5th guess.
It just doesn't occur to them.
But, yeah, we came my my parents came
to America in the late seventies during the
Iranian revolution. I was a year old at
the time.
So we came to the San Francisco Bay
Area,
and I've been here pretty much,
ever since.
And so
I I guess as as far back as
I can remember, I've always been interested in
in religion.
San Ramon at the time was basically, like,
I don't know,
99%
white.
And all of the all the kids in
my elementary school, they were very religious Christian.
There were a few Jews here and there,
right?
But most of the students were were Christian.
They'd all go to church on Sunday.
And then
on Monday, they talk about what they learn
in church and things like that. So they'd
ask me, what teacher is
Around what time are we talking about? Around
what year? This is Oh, these are this
is like, mid the mid eighties.
Yeah. Early to mid eighties. Yeah. I just
I just really dated myself.
You know. But,
but, yeah, they they'd ask me, what church
do you go to? And so I I
don't go to church. And so, oh, what
what religion are you?
And, you know, at the time, you know,
19 eighties, kind of a rough time, you
know, for the Iranians
because of Fulmini and, you know, the hostage
crisis and
all over
North, you know, things like
that. So, and to be honest with you,
I wasn't we weren't like a religious family
to begin with anyway.
Right? I would say maybe like maybe most,
I don't know, most Iranians that came over
during that time,
were not very religious,
very secular,
you know, wanted to sort of assimilate into
the American lifestyle.
So, you know, I just you know, I
don't I just believe in God, you know,
and that
every so often, like, during, I guess, the
holidays,
because at that time, we we had one
TV in the house. Right? It was a
it was a 12 inch color TV.
You actually had to walk up to the
TV and change the channels.
Yeah. Yeah. Nowadays.
Dinosaur nowadays.
But during the holiday season, all of these,
religious movies
would come on TV. Right? So,
you know, the 10 Commandments and,
Ben Hur,
Jesus of Nazareth, which was, like, it's a
long it's, like, basically, like a 10 hour
movie or something like that. And every every
night, they would show, like, a portion of
it. So I watched that whole thing. I
was probably,
I don't know,
probably 8 or 9 years old or something
like that. I just every night, I sit
there and with my parents who do and
we'd watch that.
And I just thought it was, really interesting.
And
and so I would start to engage with
my Christian peers
a lot more, about Christianity,
and, they try to basically convert me to
Christianity.
But this whole idea of and maybe we
can talk about this later, but this whole
idea of Jesus being God,
you know, that even at that age, it
just
it didn't it didn't make sense to me
at all. I thought it was
very, very,
just kind of disturbing
that this this man is god.
You know, I was watching Yeah.
You said you were yeah. You you said
that your family wouldn't characterize your family as
being religious, and so it sounds like,
you really didn't have much of an Islamic
education,
in your youth growing up, and I I
guess Islam would have been more like culture
for you.
But then it seemed that,
your fundamental,
you
know, interest in religions seems to have started
with Christianity or rather
because of your exposure to Christianity on a
western television. And that's somewhat similar to myself,
you know, coming up in that,
I I would say that I had very
much of a cultural Islamic,
upbringing.
My family came to the nation, and and
then all of a sudden you know, we
grew up with all these Christmas shows and,
of course, same thing, take commandments and all
these these type of programs. Right? So yeah.
So so would you say that
that that itself will be, like, your first,
the first time you actually developed some type
of interest in religion? How much of Islam
did you really know prior to that? Nothing.
I mean, we had a my my parents
identified as Muslim.
Right? Right. And I remember we had a
Quran, and it was on the top shelf,
and it was wrapped in a in a
cloth. And Right. I remember,
I I tried to take it down one
time,
and I was, confronted,
with hostility.
And And then so I waited. I remember,
again, I was in elementary school. My my
parents went out somewhere. Me and my sister
were in the house and actually took it
down. I opened it and I looked at
it and I said, wow. What is this?
What language is this?
But,
Yeah. It was it was, I remember, like,
you know, after I don't know. It was,
like, 5th grade or something like that. And
after the holiday break, all of the students,
they they share what they got for Christmas.
Right. And so I was like, well, what
about what about me?
So we my sister and I, we went
home and we demanded Christmas.
So, you know, we got the tree and
everything and,
so we got the presents and but, yeah,
I think that was that was it basically
is,
it was,
was sort of
being in a Christian, I guess, culture.
Right. That turned me towards the Bible initially.
Mhmm. So I read the Bible and I
understood
portions of the Bible
much earlier than anything in the Quran. I
didn't actually read the Quran in English
until high school, and then I didn't read
the entire Quran seriously
in English until I was about 18 or
19.
So but before that time, I had sort
of,
I I really liked the New Testament Jesus.
Right? His teachings. I thought it was I
thought they were beautiful. I never identified as
a Christian. And after some point,
I actually started attending
a Mormon Sunday school.
So I had many of my friends at
elementary school were Mormons.
Right?
And they're very nice people, you know. You
know, they are very family oriented, very nice,
and so they invited me. They said, why
don't you come to our school?
And so I went there because they're they're
my friends in school. So I went there,
and
it was, they were very welcoming
and, but then he started talking about, you
know, Joseph Smith and
who's this Joseph Smith guy? And
then the theology really started to sort of
not mesh with me well at all.
Because because initially, when when Mormons introduced themselves,
they they introduced themselves as, you know, a
a sect of Christianity.
But when you probe a little bit deeper,
do some research, you're actually a polytheistic religion.
And and that did not sit well with
me at all, you know. And, this idea
again of Jesus being a God,
you know, he's not the God in Mormonism.
He's the son of God, but he's still
a divine being.
Right. That again, it didn't sit well with
me. I don't know. Yeah. So I was
essentially looking for a religion where
where basically
Jesus, peace be upon him, is
is important,
but certainly can't be god. That doesn't make
sense to me. How can god
eat and sleep? How can God die
in a
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about, Sheikh
Ahmed Didded.
Yeah.
And I remember reading I actually read a
lot of his books when I was younger
in my teenage years, especially when I, again,
committed to a slot too. So the Bible
was, you know,
very attractive. Right? Even even in my so
I remember having my I said my bible,
like, marked up, and, you know, I would
read about his book. I would watch his
videos, and I was waiting for the Jehovah's
Witnesses to come to the door. I because
everybody you know, always ready to to debate
with Christians about the Bible. And so I
remember a story that he told about, like,
what actually was a catalyst for him,
wanting to come out and defend Islam and
actually also
expose some of the problems with the bible
was that, you know, he didn't know much
about Islam when he was younger. And then
started to come and batter him about Islam
and challenge his understanding, so he decided it
was so it sound sounded as if, like,
it was a a reactionary
it was a reaction to that. He wanted
to sort of be,
visual somewhere to the extent. You know? But,
I mean, of course, a lot of us,
you know, we enjoyed it. You know? I'm
gonna do that. The theater watching him, so
pretty much decimate the the Christian arguments or
something different levels. I mean, did you have
an experience like that? Because clearly, you you
had a lot of experience in debate as
well. You know? People can search the Internet
and, you know, type in YouTube and look
at type in the debates, and so you
can come to see that much more
fiery, than those. I mean, that's so fiery,
you know, but back then, of course, it
was a lot more passionate,
and particularly with respect to debating the Bible.
Yeah. So, yeah, I had, when I was
in high school,
there was there were,
you know, there were Christians at the high
school. It's a fair a fairly sizable Christian
student body,
and many of them were a bit aggressive.
Some of them were polemical.
So,
they would try to, you know,
work their, you know, their stuff on me,
and,
and I just I kinda got tired of
it. I knew a little bit about Christianity
again because I was reading the Bible
on my own and things like that. Like
I said, I attended Sunday Sunday school for
a while.
But, yeah. I got to the point where
I thought, well, I I need to be
able to engage,
with these Christians a little bit.
And during that time as well, I had
something of,
an Islamic awakening,
because for and I and I mentioned this
many times in in previous sort of podcast
with other people about sort of my
biography that my my dad, for no apparent
reason,
he he well, he said to me,
let's go watch this movie Malcolm X. Right?
And I remember that the exact day was
November 18th. It was a Wednesday, 1992.
So I said, okay. So we went there,
and I I had to this day, I
have no idea why you wanted to watch
this movie.
So we go there. We sit there. It's
3 and a half hours. I'm I'm bored
for most of the movie,
But there's something about the
when he went to Hajj. Right? Mhmm. There's
something about that those scenes that really affected
me.
And then the the actor Denzel, you know,
he recites the Fatihah, and I think it
was actually Denzel. Right. Right. Yeah. It was.
Yeah. So I was like, oh, I was
like, I said, what? And and I thought
to myself, I remember sitting there. I'm almost
15 years old. I'm 4 days shy of
my 15th birthday,
and I and I think to myself, I
don't even know the Fatiha. I don't know
anything. Well, it's a problem. I don't know
either from Baha. I don't I don't why
don't I know anything? You know? So I
it was kind of like this deep kind
of shame, I guess,
and then this followed by this really strong
motivation.
Right? So that motivation coupled with
my desire to engage with the Christians ended
up in me sort of
becoming a bit of a anti Christian polemicist,
myself. So I would engage with Christians. I
would preempt them many times,
and this carried into college. It got to
a point where when I was in college,
I would get calls from random,
Imams of Masajid,
saying things like,
hello, brother.
I heard you're the best in the business.
What do you mean? We have some very
aggressive Christian outside this,
and they're handing out this literature.
So, okay, we need you to come down
here quickly. Code red.
So I start go to drive down to
this masjid, and I literally just debate them
on the street like that.
And I I I did this for a
long time. Even at Cal Poly during when
I was an undergrad,
they had this, Thursday night thing called Farmers
Market. We'd we'd go out
and, you know, Cal Poly is kind of
the San Luis Obispo is sometimes described as
the California Bible Belt. Right?
And so there's like dozens and dozens, maybe
even hundreds of Christians out and go out
and debate it. This was before, you know,
YouTube and,
you know, so, and that's good that's good
for me because Yeah.
No doubt. Right? If some of that stuff
was was recorded and posted, I'd probably
be be embarrassed,
because very aggressive and things like that. It'll,
you know, hardcore debating.
So I would do that. I mean, that
was basically what I would do almost every
day.
It was kind of strange. I was kind
of obsessed with it even just walking around
campus
because, you know, there's Christian booths everywhere, and,
you know, there there's there's always an active
presence on campus. They just walk up and
start debating people.
And then,
I remember this one time, and I've and
I've told the story as well that
I was debating just
3 or 4 Christians,
on a Thursday night at Farmer's Market.
They were students, and I was debating them,
and they were looking through their Bibles and
this and that. I remember there was this
older gentleman who was standing next to them,
and I'd never seen him before. And after
he was just kinda listening.
Mhmm. And then after about 20 minutes or
something, he kinda looks at me really closely,
and he says, you don't care about us
like that. No. He's not. You don't really
care about us. Right. And I said, what
do you mean? And he said, he you
don't you're not interested in our salvation
or something like this. You're not interested in
guiding us or something. You just wanna win
a debate.
And, of course, I said, no. You can't
you can't you can't answer my claims and
this and that. And
and so I went back to my dorm
room, and I actually had a bit of
a existential
crisis.
Mhmm. I thought to myself, wow. I mean,
just to be honest with myself, yeah, he's
he's right. This is enough.
So
as I said to myself, look. If I'm
gonna continue to do this, I have to
do this
the right way. Right? Yeah. So I wanted
to Yeah. It's really interesting because I was
yeah. Michelle, I was gonna say because I
was planning to ask you, like, you know,
why
we don't see you, like, debating anymore. Because
right now, they're this new
friend, it seems, you know, along the lot
of, like, well, I'm Muslim,
you know, influencers that, you know, they sort
of, debate
debate team or debate club or a bunch
of, you know, Muslims that we are, you
know, taking a lot of time to,
to debate the bible in particular in Christianity.
Every once in a while, they they mentioned
Judaism, but,
you know, it's become,
somewhat of a norm. Is it, this is,
what they consider to be,
you know, is to to go out and
debate Christians about the bible.
And and,
you know, so what you say here, I
think, is very revealing and very important,
with respect to intention, with respect to
even how effective,
that type of approach may be to actually
winning people over. You know, how often, you
know, have you experienced,
you know, people,
you know, converting
or, you know, they put people may acquiesce
to say, well, yeah, you want. Right? You
want the debate. You know? But the question
of, you know,
I'm convinced now that your religion to insurance
and mine is false. You know? I'm I'm
not I'm not sure how often that that
happens that often as often as some people
may imagine. You know? But, anyway, you're not
knocking debaters, you know, but, yeah, I think
that was one of the things that with
me too is I talked to fam when
I the more I got into the bible,
the more that I realized,
you know, how much about Islam I did
not know. Right? You know? So I needed
to augment my Islamic knowledge a bit more.
You know? I'm not saying that those or
debating don't have much knowledge about Islam, but
but I think that that's the danger of,
like, you know, Muslims who don't know any
better, who are you know, who admire,
you know, the the baders and say, oh,
I I need to study the bible too.
But they don't even know the Quran. Like,
Like, you mentioned, Yoda.
Well, I thought you had 15, you know,
so it's really interesting. Yeah. No. I mean,
we should I mean, there always should be
a group of,
you know, Muslims that are either very advanced
students or scholars that engage in Jidad with
Ahlid Keita. For me, I just it it
got
I just got frustrated with it, and it's
kinda one of those things where
if you're not in the sort of mentality
of debate, it's kinda like being
an MMA fighter. Right? If you retire for,
like, 5 years,
it's hard to jump back in the ring.
It's more difficult. You have to sort of
put yourself in that in that in that
mind frame.
And,
I guess I could get back in that
mind frame, but for me, it's like,
you know, I'm tired of just hearing these
really terrible Christian arguments,
you know, just rehashed. And I remember I
had to read a lot of literature by
anti Christian polemicists, and it just it put
me in a bad mood and
not I'm just
I don't wanna deal with that stuff. So
I mean, I'll I'll do like, I've done
interfaith dialogues and things like that, but you
know, these these hardcore polemical debates,
against, you know, anti Muslim people, and,
it it's just it's just for me, I
don't think I have the temperament for that.
You know, certainly I'm not condemning it. I'm
I'm in no position to condemn debate. I
mean, we have to debate, but just for
me personally,
I don't think it's the right thing for
me personally to do anymore,
because I want to sort of focus on
other things.
I get calls and emails from people who
do debate all the time, and I gladly
will share anything I can with them, you
know, because if they have that zeal, they
have that energy, they have the patience, and
they have the temperate to the the temperate,
the temperance to do that,
the temperament to do that,
then that's, you know, that's good. More power
to them.
But for me to for me to get
back into the ring like that,
it's it's not like a switch. You could
turn it on and off.
Hey. You retired.
Yeah. It's kind of retired. Yeah. Exactly. I
make it out of retirement. You never know
what. Yeah. I do that. Thank you. Right.
It Alright. Well, I'm
right. Right. I'll do this. Okay.
I wanted to to want you to begin
1st and foremost by explaining to,
the audience, like, you know, what does the
title of your dissertation
actually mean? Mhmm. So authenticating
the Jovanin Injil,
Muslim, alimheretic,
interpretive approaches to the gospel of John.
Of course, Yohannin, I think people can guess
what that is a reference to. Most of
us will know what the injil is, you
know, the gospel of Jesus.
So the course, the gospel of John sort
of sounds like that's what you mean by
it. You know? But the other things about
polyamorynic,
if I'm pronouncing it correctly,
interprets and reproaches, what does that really mean?
You know? And a few questions just give
us sort of an overview of exactly what
your overall thesis was. Inshallah. Yeah.
I don't I'm not sure what it means
anymore.
I kind of coined that term actually. So
it's a it's a combination of polemical and
heretical. So in other words, polemical means to
really attack a text.
Right? Kind of deconstruct it and show its
falsity.
But marenic means to be,
basically, like, Irani means peace in Greek.
Right? To sort of try to harmonize,
things.
So this is a combination of that. So
this is
basically, this is taking the position that and
this is not my personal position. This is
something I did for the the dissertation.
Right?
So it's kind of an academic
exercise.
I did sort
of consider this position for a while, but
ultimately, I didn't find it to be very
persuasive. And,
you can, you know, just watch anything I've
done over the last 5 years, and it's
very clear that my position is is not
what I argue in the dissertation. But for
the the sake of the dissertation,
so this idea that the text of the
Christian gospels is sound. The text itself is
sound.
But the tahrif is of the Ma'ani. Right?
So the
the scriptural corruption the the corruption of the
text is not of the physical text itself
or the the words, but actual the actual
meanings of the text or the the exegetical
tradition of the text.
Right? So what I did was I took
the the first half of John's gospel, which
is the prologue in the book of signs,
which is
the part of the New Testament, the part
of the 4 Gospels where Christians insist
that the deity of Jesus is the most
pronounced. Right? In the first 12,
chapters of the gospel of John. And I
thought, can I actually read these chapters through
a Islamic an Islamic lens of Tawhid?
Right?
So that's the project of the dissertation,
That even if we take the text as
it is,
okay,
can we read it through an Islamic lens?
And I think that we can. And people
forget this as well is that there were
Unitarian Christians that believed in the gospel of
John. Right.
Do I believe
Unitarian gospel? I don't believe that. I think
the underlying metaphysic of the gospel of John's
author is is basically a type of,
Middle Platonism
where you have God the father at the
top of all being and then you have
the son below him.
So it's teaching this type of,
he no theism, but there's really 2 gods.
There's God the father and then his divine
son. I think that is that's the theological
orientation
of of the author, the Johannine gospel.
But,
there's difference of opinion.
So Unitarians,
they would say that,
for example, Arius of Alexandria,
who was defeated at the Council of Nicaea,
you know, his position was that basically
these mystical
verses in John's gospel
have to be grounded in the plain and
obvious meanings of scripture.
In other words, you can't give precedence.
You can't give,
a an ambiguous first precedence over something that's
clear.
Yeah.
And we find this principle in Islamic exegesis
and Jewish
exegesis as well. This is a big problem,
I think, for for Christians
even in the old testament,
you know, like Isaiah 53, they they read
this. It's Hebrew poetry.
Right? And,
you know, the suffering servant of Isaiah
In Christians, they say, oh, this is talking
about God becoming a man and dying for
our sins.
Well,
it's it's hard to it's hard to take
that position in light of clear verses in
the Old Testament, like God is not a
man that he should lie, and every man
is but to death, rose sin. What do
you do with these very clear verses?
They're taking poetry, which is ambiguous and and
symbolical,
and they're saying this is the meaning. Right?
Violating
the clear and obvious
unambiguous,
meanings of the text.
So what Arius would do is look. Look.
The father and I are 1, John 10:30.
And, of course, Trinitarians, they take that to
mean an ontological
oneness.
Right. But Aries would say, well, he can't
mean that.
Right? Because God is not a man.
Right? He also says the father is greater
than I. So how do you reconcile these
things? So this is what I attempted to
do. So for example, the beginning of John's
gospel,
it says in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
And if you read that in English,
the word God, the beginning was a word,
the word was within God, and the word
was God. Both occurrences of the word God
are capital g.
Oh, yeah. But if you actually look at
the Greek,
which is the original language of John's prologue,
there's something very interesting happening. So n r
k n halagas,
k ahn halagas,
nimprostanpheon.
So in the beginning was the word, and
the word was with the God. There's a
definite article.
And
a God was the word.
And
so phaos does not have the the second
occurrence of the word god does not have
a definite article.
And so Jesus,
peace be upon him, in the gospel in
in any gospel
is never called hatheos with a definite article
in an unqualified
sense.
Right? People who Thomas,
in in John 2028, he says, my lord
and my god. So that's that's there there's
a way of interpreting even that statement.
Would that be somewhat similar to the difference
between Allah and the Rav,
right, with Rav sometimes is utilized? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, the the the could refer
to a man.
Right. In Greek, this happens. In in Greek,
theos
could refer to,
God or a man.
And Paul,
he refers to he calls Satan,
Patheos,
to cosmo. He calls him the god of
this world.
So
theos in Greek means some entity that has
some sort of,
supernatural
ability, not necessarily a divine
entity, but something that are out of the
ordinary. It's called the theos.
Right? Okay.
So there's certainly a way of reading these
texts,
But I think one would have to sort
of understand also what I call the Islamic
theomistical tradition.
Mhmm. So this idea of
of,
a prophet or a saint mirroring the attributes
of God.
You know? So in order to put some
of these statements of the Johann and Jesus
Jesus, peace be upon him, into context, like
the father and I are 1, what does
he mean by that? The context tells you
what he means,
but it can't mean that he's ontologically
the same being as God because that's idolatry.
Right. So that doesn't make any sense. So
for example, the I mean, Christian theology with
all due respect is a bit,
paradoxical.
So the Christian claims that the Old Testament
is revealed by God,
God is Jesus.
Right? Jesus told Moses God is not a
man in Numbers 23/19.
You know, so, you know, Jesus told the
prophet Hosea, Ki Anuhi El Virojish, indeed, I
am God and not a man.
Right? So this is stated many times in
the Old Testament. And then, at least according
to Christian theology,
God decided to become a man.
And and then when he claimed to be
God,
in the gospel of John, apparently, the Jews
pick up stones to stone him rightfully because
that is blasphemy.
Mhmm. Right? And Christians admit, yeah, they they
they wanted to stone him for blasphemy.
Well, then why would anyone believe Jesus' claims?
Right? Why does he, in John chapter 8,
he condemns them and says, you're children of
Satan.
Right?
Because they tried to they tried to kill
him, they tried to stone him for blasphemy,
but it was Jesus himself apparently who revealed
to the prophets in the Old Testament
to kill blasphemers.
So they're just doing what Jesus told them
to do, and now he's saying you're children
of Satan for not accepting my blasphemy.
It doesn't make any sense, and I don't
know any way in which a Christian can
really explain this other than saying it's a
different God. And that's what some Christians actually
did. There was a Christian who was a
Gnostic in the in the 2nd century. His
name was Marcion of Sinope.
He was very popular.
You know, one of these sort of Christian
groups that are
sent down the rabbit hole and nobody ever
hears about him anymore. But but he was,
he was very popular in Rome.
You know, basically,
he said that the God of the Old
Testament must be a different God because he
could not reconcile the Old Testament descriptions of
God with the New Testament.
So he's a bi theist. Right?
Which interestingly enough. So he was a type
of henotheist as well.
Yeah. It was really interesting that, you know,
actually, I was watching and saw a short
video yesterday that someone was sharing.
There was a is there
somewhere in the United States who
pretty much was racist. Right? Pretty much raised
the guy and was pretty much, telling the
congregation that he wasn't for
interracial marriage.
And he
talked about it being
contrary to human nature and to the biblical
teachings.
And I said the rest of the when
I heard that, I said, well,
what isn't the
the Coptic church and the church of of
the, the Abyssinian or the Ethiopian church actually
older than the church of Rome? Or I
don't know. I mean, you you can clarify
that, you know, for me. You know? But
it just seemed to me that, you know,
to think about, okay, well, if
if interracial or sort of black and white
marriage, you know, was a problem,
then it would seem that
that's a very Eurocentric sort of focus. Right?
You know? Of course, not taking off track.
You know? But it would just it would
just something,
it did what you said, this may reflect
upon the fact that they're just different,
iterations of of of the Christian theology, I
guess you would say, or sort of Christology
is different from one place and another one
one sort of historical period and another. Yeah.
That
one could see that okay. Well, yeah. Why
can't you reconcile
these things with
Islam, at least one particular interpretation of the
Bible, right, you know, which may actually have
some roots in Christian tradition.
And and my understanding too, correct me too,
is that,
you were
attempting to build upon some assumptions made by
certain Muslim scholars too. I think it was,
like, a bit perhaps, you know, or, you
know,
that wanted to take the bible itself
and face value, you know, and accept these
claims at face value, but then offer a
proper interpretation. Is that sort of the correct
way to understand
some of the things that you were trying
to do? Yeah. I was yeah. So,
Yeah. He would he would cite the Bible
as a primary
text in his in his tafsir
to sort of fill in the,
the sort of narrative gaps, if you will,
of the of the Qur'anic text,
especially with stories in the Old Testament.
And then he also did a Bible,
he did a New Testament, the Deoteseron. He
tried to harmonize all 4 gospels,
which is quite interesting.
So he was so yeah. Sort of my
inspiration for this for this project.
Now the interesting thing also is that the
gospel of John,
is
was probably written around 90, if I'm being
generous.
Some say as late as 110.
So that's, you know, a bit late. I
mean, that's
Mhmm. You know, if
church history ascribes the gospel to John, the
son of Zebedee, who was a disciple of
of Esai, alaihis salaam, at least, of course,
to the New Testament.
But it doesn't make a lot of historical
sense that John would actually write this. You
know, he would basically, if this was true,
then he waited,
until he was, I don't know, 90 years
old,
a 100 years old, and then he decided
to write his gospel. And then he wrote
it in Greek. He didn't write it in
in Aramaic or Syriac.
And then, you know, apparently, during that time,
he was studying
Greek metaphysics and and Greek language and Greek
philosophy. And so it doesn't it doesn't seem
like a disciple of Jesus actually actually wrote
this,
but,
it's hard to tell what the original Christians
actually believed.
You know? I mean, certainly, I think most
historians would agree with me that the teachings
of the current Roman Catholic church were probably
not the original teachings,
at least theologically,
the original teachings of of the historical Jesus
of Nazareth.
You know? Did a rabbi really go around
claiming to be God? You know?
If he did, why would other Jews believe
him?
It doesn't it doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
Well, that definitely brings up an important
question that I was planning to ask anyway,
which is, in your view, I mean, what
would you
you characterize
your understanding of the stroke of Jesus
based upon
the biblical script scriptures themselves. Whereas, naturally, we
have Muslims today, well, at least people claiming
to be Muslims today, who even question
the very existence of isad the matter, you
know, that he actually exists, you know, which
we know is itself,
black you know, so black women, or at
least it's something that's a heretical belief.
You know, I mean, how would you characterize
the historical Jesus based upon your reading?
Yeah. The reason why I think a lot
of this is motivated by just being provocative.
Right?
People denying the existence of of Jesus, peace
be upon him.
One of the main reasons why though, some
some some bonafide historians have taken this position
like Bruno Bauer, GA Wells,
There's some,
modern historians,
that take this position as well.
Doctor Richard Carrier, his book is called On
the History
of Jesus.
David Fitzgerald,
there's another one, Robert Price.
So they all have their own sort of
take on what actually happened,
but they do deny the historical Jesus. Part
of the reason why is there's no there's
no mention of Esai, alaihis salam,
in any Roman source
from the 1st century.
Okay?
There's no mention of Isa,
from any Jewish source
that's authentic in the 1st century. So there's
a passage in the antiquities of Josephus, you
know, section 18,
that does mention him, but there's difference of
opinion about that.
I would say that most likely the entire
section is a fabrication because nobody quotes it.
No Christian actually quotes it until the 4th
century.
So you would think that the early church
fathers in their debates with all of these
pagans,
they would have quoted,
antiquities 18, but nobody does that until Eusebius
of Caesarea.
So he's not mentioned. Again, that's not evidence
that he never existed.
The only the only,
sources that mention him
that are 1st century are Christian sources.
So you have the 4 gospels. You have
the letters of Paul,
as well,
and Paul mentions that Jesus has a brother
named James.
So,
so it's it's very likely that he did
exist just historically, so the vast majority of
historians.
Well, how about his disciples and and their
The disciples said, yeah. Exactly.
So
another thing that's sort of motivating,
this type of mythicism it's called. Right? Jesus
mythicism
is the fact that the gospel seemed to
be permeated with myth,
right, or legend. And I think this is
actually true,
especially when you get to the passion narratives.
Right? And, of course, I don't believe that
Jesus was crucified, so that makes sense to
me.
Right. But the dominant opinion is that basically
that,
there was a Jesus of Nazareth, peace be
upon him,
and that, he
probably claimed to be a prophet.
He probably claimed to be a messiah of
some sort, not necessarily a king messiah,
not necessarily a Davidic messiah, but some sort
of messiah, maybe a prophet messiah, because there's
different types of messiahs.
He probably claimed to have performed certain miracles
and healings,
but it's very, very unlikely that he claimed
to be God or the literal son of
God or that
he claimed to have died for anyone's sins.
Right? All of these things are
just completely antithetical to his historical context.
Right? And what's interesting also is you have
other historians like
Robert Eisenman and James Taber and Hans Kung
who,
will take Robert Eisenman for example who's an
atheist. Right?
But he needs to explain
how the Quran,
got the Christology
right.
And this is something he admits. He says
the Christology of the Quran
is basically the same as
Jamesonian
Christology.
The Jamesonian Nazarenes.
So James was the successor of Jesus, and
he was a successor for 30 years until
the year 60
2. Yet we don't have anything from James
that's authentic in the New Testament, which is
very strange. We have all these letters of
Paul,
who's not a disciple,
who never knew the historical Jesus, but the
actual successor of Jesus and the and the
brother of Jesus, whatever that means,
who was leading the church for 30 years.
We have nothing authentic
from him, but Isaac says that
somehow the teachings of James
end up in the Quran. Right? So so
he has to account for that. He can't
say it was supernatural. This was wahi, and
it was revealed to the prophet and
they're restoring the gospel and things like that.
No. His he says there must have been
some
Nazarenes or some Ebionites.
Right? So the the Nazarenes in 2nd century
called the Ebionites. It's kind of a pejorative
term that was coined, by the early proto
orthodox. Which one was the, pejorative? Is it
the Ebionites?
Ebionites. Yeah. It means the poor ones, like
the Mesite.
So, like, they're like they're spiritually
impoverished.
Their their Christology is not they're not worshiping
Jesus, so they they have an impoverished Christology,
basically.
That's the way they meant it. So there
must have been some Ebionites living in caves
in the Arabian Peninsula,
and the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
used to go
these caves and listen to their gospel and
come back and write
or have
someone write, what he had heard from these,
these, Ebionites.
So
he's in admission that the Quran's Christology,
the Quran Jesus, peace be upon him,
is much more historically
plausible that even what Paul was writing in
the fifties.
Right? I mean, for Paul,
Jesus was a,
I don't think that Paul believed Jesus was
the God. I think he was a henotheist.
He was a Greek philosopher. He was highly
highly influenced by Greek metaphysics,
and Platonism, and and, stoicism,
Epicureanism.
So I believed that I believe that Paul
believed that Jesus was,
kind of a a inferior deity as a
secondary god, a divine son of God who
died for your sins.
Right. Divine savior. Right? Right.
So,
I think that that's highly
highly,
historically implausible
that this is the teachings of Jesus himself.
Right. You know? So so going back to
the passion narrative, for example,
I mean, the last supper to me is
just
I mean, is this so you have a
rabbi who's claiming to be the Messiah
Mhmm. On on Passover, on Pesach,
and he has his disciples and he's passing
around wine, and he's saying, drink this. This
is my blood.
I mean, that is just revolting to hear.
If you're a Jew in that room,
you have to leave. Right? As Judas
gets up and leaves
because
that's you can't do that. You can't drink
blood even if you even if you need
it in a symbolic way. And the Catholics
don't think it's symbolic. They think it's, you
know, it's literal. I mean, it's trans substantiated
into the into the
blood. So did did a did a rabbi
actually say this? Is this actual
is this history that we're because this seems
like it's, because this idea of theophagy, right,
eating god.
Right? This this this is not a Jewish
idea. This is a Greco Roman idea.
When you eat your God, right, you take
in something of the nature of your God,
it's it's a form of sort of divinization,
ready to sort of,
something of the power of that God is
imparted to you.
Right. This is the Christian mass. So I
don't think this has anything to do with
do with, Judaism. Even this whole character of
Judas, Iscariot,
I don't think he actually existed.
Right?
I mean, maybe he did. I don't know,
but, you know,
Judas, Yehuda,
the Jew,
Ishkareyush,
right? The Jew from the cities.
Right? So who betrayed Jesus?
You know, this this this, you know, this
Jew from the cities, the city slicking Jew,
betrayed all of these country bumpkins, you know,
from from the Galilee,
and he used to say he used to
steal money from the treasury and things like
that. I think this is an anti semitic
trope,
you know. I mean, if you read Dante's
Inferno, which, you know,
I don't recommend it, but
if you read down if you read it,
you know, the 9th circle of *, that's
where Satan is. Right? And he's he's he's
stuck in ice, and it's up to his
chest. It's ice. It's not fire.
And in his mouth
is Judas Iscariot, and he's just chewing on
Judas Iscariot for all of eternity.
That's where Judas is. He's in the mouth
of Satan.
Right. The Jew.
Right?
So
I highly doubt that this person is even
historical. It seems like these things were written
much later, and they were written decades later
when there was clear hostilities
between Christianity
and Jewish Christianity.
Mhmm. You know?
Yeah. Fascinating.
Yeah. There's a lot of examples like this,
especially. So, I mean, the mythicist, they do
have a point here
that there is myth and there is legend
in the New Testament gospels, gospels, especially in
the passion narrative. I think the whole passion
narrative itself is just so highly implausible.
It just seems like a movie.
You know? It's like, is it did this
really happen? If you just kind of read
these narratives next to each other,
just intuitively you're thinking,
this doesn't seem like it actually happened.
You know, but there definitely,
the vast majority of historians, they agreed that
there was a Jesus of Nazareth. He was
probably some sort of apocalyptic prophet,
but never claimed to be God, never claimed
to be,
a divine person. It just doesn't make sense
historically that he would do that and expect
Jews to believe in his message.
Yeah. Well, I
really appreciate that. I mean, that's that's very,
you know, fascinating
and enlightening.
Now, of course, you know, it's we we
we we have to believe
it's a prophet of Allah.
You know, it was not, you know, he
was the Messiah. He was, you know, we
believe in the virgin birth.
And,
this particular show, which, we call
Talking with Teachers,
you know, one of the
primary goals is to to speak about important
figures from the
past and the present.
Important figures that we believe that people should
know something about and they should really take
seriously. You know? So
naturally,
you chose, a sublimabria,
not only because
this is an area of major
focus for you. But also I think it's
because you believe that he's still relevant, not
only for Christians, but for Muslims today.
In what ways would you say that Isa
ibrahim
is relevant for Muslim
today? Yeah. That's a good question. So,
you know, the prophet Muhammad
he spoke of the antichrist,
right? He spoke of the Maseef at Dajjal,
like literally, like the imposter messiah,
Right?
And, yeah, it's interesting. He said that, you
know, when the when the,
the preachers
stop mentioning him
on the pulpits,
right, which is happening now,
that's when the antichrist will,
emerge. So it's important for us to to
remember,
the advice of the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam.
So the antichrist, you know, he's myopic. He
has one eye, and there's different interpretations of
what that means as it's physical. He's he's
awar.
He's one eye, but also this idea that,
you know, we just kind
of views existence through matter that it's just
materialistic.
Right?
It's mechanistic.
Salvation is through
stuff, through dunya.
This is all there is. Right?
This idea,
so this is,
from what we can tell the exact opposite
teaching of Esai
and there's remnants of this in the New
Testament as well. Of course, this idea of
Jesus dying for your sins is
almost completely superseded
the actual teachings of Jesus. I mean, the
teaching the the idea of the teachings of,
vicarious effluent and deity, that's all from Paul
that was superimposed upon before gospels. All four
gospels, people don't know this, but if you
read the New Testament, for example, you'll come
to the 4 gospels, then the letters of
Paul. But chronologically, the letters of Paul were
all written before the 4 gospels.
And the authors of the 4 gospels are
all Pauline Christians, which means they're highly influenced
by Pauline Christology.
So they put words into the mouth of
Jesus,
you know, that the son of man will
be killed and so on and so forth.
But
some of the teachings, the historical teachings, I
believe, of Jesus are are there in the
text.
This idea of
of of of of giving your possessions to
the poor, you know,
of of not loving the world,
of of loving God with all of your
heart, soul, and strength.
Right? This kind of idea of asceticism.
I mean, that's that's really the heart of
his teaching.
You know, it's it's it's, easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter
paradise.
You know? He probably meant this in a
hyperbolic sense,
but,
the message is is clear
that love of this world
is that which distracts us from God,
and so we have to put our priorities
straight.
So this idea is very relevant, and Imam
Al Ghazali oftentimes would quote
from,
Hadith of Elisa, alayhis salam, in our tradition,
because there there is Hadith as you know.
You're you're the specialist.
You're you're you're the teacher here.
But Muhammad Ghazali, he would quote Hadith in
our tradition of Isa alaihis salam because, he
was dealing with this kind of formalism
even in his day.
Right? So the teaching of Isa it
it strikes a balance within us. So if
we're
becoming highly materialistic,
his teaching is highly otherworldly.
Right? It's about death, mote, and akhirah, these
types of things, and zuhud.
So
so the the hope here is to strike
a balance in the human being.
Right? I mean, the Sadducees the Sadducees at
the time of Jesus, peace be upon him,
these are the high priests of the temple,
the kohanim.
They didn't even believe in an afterlife. I
mean, they had fallen into almost complete materialism.
They denied an afterlife. These are descendants of
Harun, alayhis salaam. So these are the passive
people that he's dealing with. You have Sadducees,
then you have a then you have a
Pharisees
who are constantly butting heads with him because
they tend to be very formalistic as well.
But there was different types of Pharisees. Many
Pharisees actually believed in him and followed him.
But this trend towards formalism,
focus on only the outward, not living in
inward, focus on materialism,
right, and that spirituality.
This is really the essence of of the
Injil. And the Injil, I I allahu Adam,
was meant to be
the the true mysticism of Judaism,
not the kamala.
Right? It was meant to be the gospel.
Right?
But what happened was,
you know, you have these, you know, like
the Quran says that when Isa alaihi salam
came,
Right? So you have one
who believed and the other that disbelieved. And
the word
can mean one man. So it seems like
to be here, the Quran is telling us
it's it's informing of this of this Paul
versus James paradigm.
Right. Yeah. You have James over here who
believed, and you have Paul who disbelieved.
Right? So what happened is
when the the teachings of Paul, because he
went into the Mediterranean,
world,
and he preached his gospel,
and his gospel basically won the day, especially
when Constantine
became a Pauline Christian. I mean, he's the
Roman emperor. After that, it's game over. Right?
So his gospel superseded
the teachings of James and the original,
disciples.
But,
so so his version became the dominant,
and then and then and then it was
restored
by the teachings of the Prophet
and I think that's the way to interpret
that verse.
Right?
Not that, you know, Pauline Christianity became dominant
because of the Roman Empire, but that's Trinitarian
Christianity. But the fact that
Jamesonian
Christianity,
became
vindicated
by the revelation
of the Quran.
Yeah.
So what happened was, yeah, when the when
this Pauline gospel traveled into these lands,
you know, that became the dominant version of
the gospel,
And,
and
these ideas
that are that are found in in the
teachings of the historical Jesus became basically,
they were superseded, they were they were forgotten,
they were replaced with these other these other
concepts.
That that was pretty amazing for his grand.
Really,
poignant reflection
on the those verses and and the the
ideas. But,
is there anything that you would like to
add before we conclude today? Anything that's a
good message you have for the audience, for
the community,
that you think,
will be of,
of benefit?
Yeah. I would,
I would just say that,
you know, it's it's important to,
you know, try to in implement
the sunnah in our lives first and foremost.
You know, it's
to control, you know, the nuffs and to
purify the nuffs and
make good intentions with people. Right?
And so,
there's there's a way of making da'wah.
Right? The Quran tells us
Right?
So call people to the way of your
Lord,
with wisdom. And
I can't remember the he says wisdom here
means
you have to have your proofs,
historical proofs, philosophical proofs, theological proofs, linguistic proofs.
Mhmm. In other words, we have to we
have to have done our homework.
With good character
or with beautiful preaching, he says the meaning
of that is with with good character, with
good comportment.
So both of these things have to be
working.
And so this is a prophetic way of
making dawah and the prophet's dawah. There's no
greater dawah
than the dawah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
sunnam.
So just, you know, to implement,
the sunnah,
to know the times that we're living in,
you know. Right now a lot of non
Muslims are becoming Muslim because just the the
Amratu Sa'a,
this they're all coming true, right,
and they should you can't deny it, you
know, even if
even if, you know, 50%
of them,
are are
are are being noticed by them. That's they're
saying, well,
this this is obvious that he there's something
to this. Yeah.
And and as you mentioned as well, you
mentioned that that many of these hadith have
some weakness in them, but they tend to
come true.
Right? Yeah. Which is very interesting.
So Yeah. So that's that's a major sign
for people, and I think people are starting
to realize that. So be a good example.
Right?
Implement these these sort of
internal sunnahs,
you know, smiling at people, being, you know,
jovial with the people. The prophet, say, he
was he always was good natured,
right,
when he was among among the people and
very contemplative when he was by himself.
So
strive towards this type of prophetic comportment
and keep learning. You know? Learning is a,
you know, there's a hadith. There's, you know,
it's probably a weak hadith,
you know,
might even be a fabricated hadith,
but it meaning is a true hadith. Right?
To seek knowledge from the cradles of the
grave. This is a lifelong endeavor,
so never be complacent with your state. Always
try to,
try to improve yourself, try to learn,
and and pray for people. You know, Dawah,
one of my teachers, I I was in
Yemen for,
you know, a little bit, and
when I got there I learned that there's
a whole adab of making dawah.
And one of the first lessons my teacher
told me was he said half of dua
is dua.
Right? So woah.
He said to me, how how often
have you prayed for your for your opponents
in these debates?
You know, are you are you praying to
humiliate your opponent? Are you praying to expose
him? Or are you praying for his guidance?
Right?
And and I've debated some pretty,
you know, pretty
nasty characters in my day.
It's hard to have a good opinion, but,
I mean, we want people's guidance over anything.
So that's and that's difficult to do because,
again, the knuffs want something. The knuffs. Yeah.
The knuffs. Yeah. It's hard to control.
So make do offer people. You know, it's
it's it's hard. A lot can change hearts
in an instant.
I'm with that. Well well, I'll say it's
up here. That's Adi.
Shit Adi. I don't know if only shave
because of the white hair. Yes. But You're
you're worthy of it.
Really do appreciate you coming on. Thank you
for having this endeavor.
Hope to have you again.
And, as for, you know, the audience,
please do, support the Lappos Education Initiative
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