Ali Ataie – Who is Christ Rev. Andrew Lobban &
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu alaikum.
In, as we say in our church, may
the peace of the Lord be with you.
This is a compelling and fascinating topic we
are discussing tonight.
Who is the person of Jesus Christ,
and what role, does he play in our
faiths?
I also want to acknowledge that this is
a deeply emotional topic,
because of the importance and centrality that Jesus
occupies
in the Abrahamic faiths
and really in the Western world.
It touches deeply on our understanding of who
we are, of who we are in God,
and how we relate with others.
It being an emotional topic, we are also
well aware, as our our 2 speakers just
alluded to, that a great deal of destruction
and violence has happened,
both very recently but also historically
around this topic. So I want to acknowledge
all that, and I want to say
that it is my prayer that in this
dialogue,
we can find common ground where there is
common ground, and in the areas where we
find points of disagreement, and there certainly will
be such,
that we can hold those points with compassion
and curiosity. And it has certainly been my
experience in this environment, that that is exactly
what we do. So I'm very grateful for
that.
So launching right into Who is Christ, I
prepared several slides.
They are going to quote various parts of
scripture,
and I will be saying some things about
that. But I also want to say that
any and all verbal and intellectual rigor we
might have in this topic
in many of the Christian churches would actually
be treated as secondary and not primary.
It would be said that the mystical and
personal relationship
that one has with Christ is actually of
a higher degree of importance
than anything I'm about to show you up
on the screen. So I just wanted to
throw things in that context.
So we are going to jump right in.
There are
what I'm about to present is hardly an
exhaustive list, but I would say that these
are really the high points
of how, Christianity
and, of course, I speak from a tradition
that is sort of a hybrid between Western
Catholicism
and Western Protestantism.
There are many other forms of Christianity
that would agree to a lesser or greater
degree
with everything I'm about to tell you. But
these are the points that I think most
of the global Christian church would hold in
common.
So you'll notice on this first slide that
every one of the scriptures I quote
is actually from the Hebrew Bible.
It was decided in Christianity's earliest days that
the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures, so that
being the Torah, the books of the law,
and the haftarah,
the writings, and the prophetic literature, would all
be included
in the canon of sacred scripture.
So it has been translated and redacted many,
many times over the centuries, but it is
all still there, and these are the scriptures
that are shared
in common between Christianity and Judaism.
All three of these verses come from the
prophetic literature.
The major prophet Isaiah by far is the
one that Christians believe,
quoted the most prophecies
that applied to the coming of Christ. But
there's also a very key verse
in, the book of Micah, who is one
of the shorter or the minor prophets.
So we see in Isaiah 7, therefore, the
Lord himself will give you a sign.
Look, the young woman is with child and
shall bear a son and shall name him
Emmanuel.
Christians have, of course, interpreted that to be
a prophecy about,
the Virgin Mary
being this young woman.
And then from Isaiah 9, we have for
a child has been born to us, a
son given to us.
Authority rests upon his shoulders and he is
named wonderful counselor,
mighty God, everlasting
father,
prince of peace.
These are various names or titles that throughout
the course of Christianity have been
applied to Jesus. And then finally, coming from
the prophet Micah,
but you, oh Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who were
one of the little clans of Judah, from
you shall come forth from me one who
is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from old, from ancient days.
And so the connection
to Bethlehem historically being the birthplace of Jesus
is thought to be a fulfillment
of this prophecy.
All of these prophecies
are ones that would be called messianic prophecies.
So
these are promises
of
a person
whom God has appointed, whom God will send
to Israel
to be the redeemer, the one who frees,
the one who leads.
So Christians have understood Jesus to be the
fulfillment
of these messianic prophecies.
There's more, more continuity with the Hebrew scriptures.
Christians have also understood Jesus to be
the successor to Moses.
Toward the end of the 5 books of
the Torah, as we're beginning to
to get to sort of Moses' farewell acts
and farewell discourse,
before he sees the promised land from the
mountain peak that he will never be allowed
to enter,
we have these verses from Deuteronomy
18.
The lord your god will raise up for
you a prophet like me from among your
own people. You shall heed such a prophet.
This is what you requested to the Lord,
your God at Horeb, on the day of
the assembly when you said, if I hear
the voice of the Lord, my God, anymore,
or ever again see this great fire, I
will die.
Then the Lord replied to me, they are
right in what they have said.
I will raise up for them a prophet
like you from among their own people.
I will put my words in the mouth
of the prophet
who shall speak to them everything that I
command.
So this is
a promise by the one who is considered
the foremost
among the
early prophets of Israel, that another one will
rise in his place at some point in
history.
Christians have always understood Jesus to be
that second prophet of whom Moses spoke here.
There is yet more.
So from Moses, we have the line of
the prophets,
and from David, we have the line of
the Israelite royalty.
There are several things that could be said
from the writings about David.
I chose,
I hope you'll you'll bear with me as
I read some longer verses of scripture here,
but
I chose actually the opening verses
of the first book of the New Testament,
the gospel of Saint Matthew.
And this is,
in large part a genealogy, but it also
makes a case
for Jesus being the heir to the line
of King David,
not the first of the kings of Israel,
that was Saul, but the first who was
really considered
to be
God's appointed monarch and from whose line all
the future kings would come.
So we have an account of the genealogy
of Jesus,
Messiah, the son of David, the son of
Abraham.
So all the generations from Abraham to David
are 14 generations, and from David to the
deportation to Babylon,
14 generations,
and from the deportation to Babylon to the
Messiah, 14 generations.
Now the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, took
place in this way.
When his mother, Mary, had been engaged to
Joseph, but before they lived together,
she was found to be with child from
the Holy Spirit.
Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,
planned to dismiss her quietly.
But just when he had resolved to do
this, an angel of the Lord appeared to
him in a dream and said, Joseph, son
of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary as
your wife,
for the child conceived in hers from the
Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son and you are
to name him Jesus,
for he will save his people from their
sins.
All this took place to fulfill what had
been spoken by the Lord through the prophet.
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a
son and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means God is with us. So there
again, we have that
quotation of the prophecy from Isaiah.
The fascinating part about this is, of course,
if we believe
that,
the child in Mary was from the Holy
Spirit,
Joseph would have been his human guardian and
it would have been through Joseph
that he was part of David's lineage.
We don't have any reason to believe that
Mary
was descended from the house of David.
Christian theologians have often been a little bit,
mind boggled by how much the opening verses
of Matthew center on the figure of Joseph,
whereas the opening verses of Luke center on
the figure of Mary. This is why, of
course, the early church, chose to keep all
of the gospels so that we have those
witnesses.
Yet another,
piece of this puzzle.
This might seem like some rather obscure verses,
but there is one book in the New
Testament,
the letter to the Hebrews, that makes a
great deal
out of this understanding
of who Christ is,
a priest forever according to the order of
Melchizedek.
I'm actually gonna begin,
by reading the middle verse there, and it
comes from the Psalms number 110.
The Lord has sworn and will not change
his mind.
You are a priest forever,
according to the order of Melchizedek.
Now in the Psalms, it seems to come
out of nowhere. This is actually the only
other mention
of this strange figure Melchizedek
in the Hebrew scriptures
aside from this verse in Genesis.
So this is when Abraham is returning from
battle
and he is passing by,
the ancient progenitor to the modern day city
of Jerusalem.
And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread
and wine. He was priest of God Most
High.
He blessed him and said, blessed be Abram
by God most high, maker of heaven and
earth, and blessed be God most high who
has delivered your enemies into your hand.
And Abram gave him 1 tenth of everything.
It's that last verse that gives Melchizedek
his significance
because the author of Hebrews points out, there's
only one way that Abram would have been
the one to give Melchizedek one tenth of
everything rather than the other way around.
And that is if Melchizedek
was a great priest
and considered to be,
a priest of the most high God.
So finally, here we have, one of the
verse, passages from Hebrews. There are there are
more than this. Although he was a son,
he learned obedience to what he suffered,
and having been made perfect, he became the
source of eternal salvation
for all who obey him, having been designated
by God a high priest according to the
order of Melchizedek.
Now,
you might be wondering why is this particularly
important.
Well, there was one tribe in Israel that
was designated
in the scriptures to be the priests of
the nation.
Anybody know which tribe that was?
Starts with an l.
Levi. Yes.
Jesus, however, was descended
from the tribe of Judah.
And so in order to
create this understanding
of Jesus as the great high priest,
the New Testament authors had to make a
case that he actually
was descended from an older and even more
significant lineage of priests
that predated the Levites.
This is where Melchizedek would come in.
So another important matter. So far, everything that
I have said has been rooted in,
Jewish scripture,
Jewish thought, Jewish theology.
But Christianity is actually somewhat of a hybrid
religion.
There is a major
strand of Greco Roman philosophy
that also intertwined with all of that
in the formulation
of the New Testament
and of Christian theology from its early days
until now.
Of the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, one in particular stands
out as being significantly
more Greek in its tone
and in its philosophy and in its thought.
And that is John, the final one.
It also gives a very different narrative,
biographically
speaking,
of the life of Jesus.
So I'm going to read
first from Proverbs,
because this sort of give the gives the
Jewish roots of this notion of the wisdom
or the word or the logos in Greek
of
God. And then I'm gonna read, a short
passage from the,
prologue to John.
So this is from Proverbs. The Lord created
me at the beginning of his work, the
first of his acts long ago.
Ages ago, I was set up at the
first before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths, I was brought
forth and where there were no springs abounding
with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped, before the
hills, I was brought forth.
When he had not yet made earth and
fields or the world's first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there.
When he drew a circle on the face
of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established
the fountains of the deep, when he assigned
to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his
command.
When he marked out the foundations of the
earth, and I was beside him like a
master worker.
And I was daily his delight, rejoicing before
him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in
the human race.
Now these are the words of King Solomon
and the eye of whom he is speaking.
The subject of this is the wisdom
of God.
So now moving forward into John's gospel,
the the entire prologue is beautiful, but, 114
is really the the pivotal
verse.
And the word became flesh and lived among
us, and we have seen his glory, the
glory as of a father's only son,
full of grace and truth.
So this word logos that we translate to
word in English is a direct reference
back to this wisdom of whom Solomon was
writing,
in Proverbs and in other places in the
wisdom literature.
So moving on more into,
really
exclusively New Testament Theology.
Jesus is understood as being the atoning sacrifice,
for humanity's sin.
This is something that we see more in
the writings of Paul and the others who
exchanged epistles throughout
the ancient near east in the 1st centuries
of Christianity, many of which
ended up being in the canon of scripture.
So I'm gonna read a few different verses
that refer to this,
coming from Hebrews chapter 10. And it is
by God's will that we have been sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all.
And then from the opening verses of Paul's
letters of the Galatians,
Grace to you and peace from God our
father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for our sins to set
us free from the present evil age,
according to the will of God, our God
and father, to whom be the glory forever
and ever. Amen.
And then from the 3rd chapter of Paul's
letter to the Romans,
since all have sinned and fall fall short
of the glory of God,
They are now justified by his grace as
a gift
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward as a sacrifice of
atonement by his blood
effective through faith.
So this, of course, the atoning sacrifice on
the cross is a huge theme
in the new testament,
and in new testament theology.
Of course, the story did not end with
the crucifixion of Jesus. It, continued with the
resurrection.
So,
Christians understand Jesus to be the pioneer of
resurrection
and of everlasting life.
All of the gospels have a resurrection account.
The one I find most fascinating because it
ends on such a cliffhanger note
is the shortest gospel of that being Mark.
And so, these are some of the final
verses
in the gospel of Mark.
As the women entered the tomb, they saw
a young man dressed in a white robe
sitting on the right side, and they were
alarmed.
But he said to them, do not be
alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth
who was crucified.
He has been raised. He is not here.
Look. There is the place they laid him,
but go tell his disciples and Peter that
he is going ahead of you to Galilee.
There, you will see him just as he
told you.
And for those of you who know the
gospel, there's only one remaining verse, and that's
that the women fled and said nothing to
anybody because they were afraid.
It's a it's a fascinating ending.
Hebrews 12 gives us a little bit more
of a theological interpretation of this resurrection.
So therefore, since we are surrounded by so
great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight and
the sin that clings so closely,
And let us run with perseverance the race
that is set before us,
looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of
our faith,
who for the sake of the joy that
was set before him endured the cross,
disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat
at the right hand of the throne of
God.
So this is Jesus, the the pioneer,
after his resurrection.
Jesus is also seen as the head of
the church,
and this,
I somewhat deliberately put up the picture of
a crown there because
as early as the emperor Constantine and then
moving on through the days of the holy
Roman Empire
and then imperial England and several other European
powers.
This
is a notion that has been largely co
opted by human kings and queens.
So
in some ways, I'm poking a little bit
of fun at that with my image of
the crown. But,
the church,
when we are more rightly oriented, recognizes
that actually none of us can rightly claim
the title of king or queen
because we've already got a king, and,
that would be Christ.
So Colossians 1, gives us this image. He
is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the
dead, so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
And in the opening chapter of the letter
to the Ephesians,
and God has put all things under his
feet and has made him the head over
all things for the church,
which is his body, the fullness of him
who fills all and all. Should we do
it
again?
In addition to the head of the church,
Jesus is the peacemaker,
the reconciler,
the bridge builder,
between the estranged tribes of humanity.
We see this actually in the same two
letters. So once again, from
the opening chapters of Colossians, for in him,
all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell,
and through him, God was pleased to reconcile
to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making
peace through the blood of his cross.
And in the letter to the Ephesians, for
he is our peace.
In his flesh, he has made both groups
into 1 and has broken down the dividing
law, that is the hostility between us.
He has abolished the law with its commandments
and ordinances,
so that he might create in himself one
new humanity
in place of the 2,
thus making peace,
and might reconcile both groups to God in
1 body through the cross,
thus putting to death that hostility through it.
This, of course, historically refers to the division
between Jew and Gentile,
but, over the centuries, the theologians have thought
to broaden
it to apply to any
warring or,
factious moment, among human tribes.
Something
else. In spite of being so deeply rooted
in the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures,
Jesus has been thought of in Christian tradition
as very much the unexpected
Messiah.
And there are several New Testament passages
that speak to this.
One comes out of the book of Acts.
The book of Acts is the the sequel,
so to speak, to the gospel of Luke.
It picks up the story where Luke left
off and then begins to tell the story
of the early church
and how it behaved in the days immediately
following the resurrection.
So when they had come together, they asked
him, Lord, is this the time when you
will restore the kingdom to Israel?
He replied, it is not for you to
know the times or periods that the father
has set by his own authority,
but you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you. And you will
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea
and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.
Well, these words would have been utterly shocking
to those who were expecting a messiah who
would, in the earthly sense of this phrase,
restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus simply said,
yes, I am he was declaring I am
the Messiah, but not that Messiah.
So something quite unexpected.
Going back to some of the middle verses
in Matthew's gospel,
this unexpected Messiah comes out in some of
the dialogue
and tension between Jesus and John the Baptist.
We have this
passage. When John heard in prison what the
Messiah was doing,
he sent word by his disciples and said
to him, are you the one who is
to come,
or are we to wait for another?
Jesus answered them, go and tell John what
you hear and see.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear.
The dead are raised, and the poor have
good news brought to them.
And blessed is anyone who takes no offense
at me. So once again,
he is not directly answering the question with
a yes. He is rather saying,
here is what I am doing. Here is
a description of my character.
Come to your own conclusion.
Is this what the Messiah is?
Once again, something quite unexpected.
So the final thing I want to say,
and I think it's very important in this
interfaith,
audience to say a brief word,
about some stereotypes about Christian belief and to
make sure it's clear that this is actually
not the case.
So Christian understanding of the person of Christ
and of God as Trinity is confusing, to
put it mildly. It's confusing to people who've
spent their entire life in the church,
let alone,
trying to explain it from the ground up.
But in this understanding
of the dual nature of Christ, Christ is
fully God, fully human,
Christ is not a partner to God or
another god or a second god in some
sense.
It's a little bit difficult sometimes to look
at Christian theology and realize that this is
the case. It is absolutely,
a tricky spot, but Christianity, just like Judaism
and Islam, is a strictly monotheistic religion.
So even though we speak of God as
trinity, the father, the son, and the holy
spirit, they are not seen remotely as separate
beings, but as one undivided
whole,
expressed in these three persons or these three
ways.
The early Christian theologians,
excuse me, theologians,
especially
several named Gregory,
put a great deal of effort into expressing
how God is 1,
even though sometimes we do have these confusing
notions
of God as Trinity, and especially the person
of Christ,
having this dual nature being fully God and
fully human.
The final thing I want to say is
actually to give you what is known as
the collect prayer that we read in church,
this morning. We have one for every Sunday
of the year,
and the verbal formulation of this prayer, I
think, expresses everything I had on this slide,
best. So
it said, gracious Lord,
who caused all holy scriptures to be written
for our learning,
grant us so to read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest them, that we may ever hold
fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom with
you and the Holy Spirit
be
honoring glory, one God forever and ever.
Now this is when it's that last line,
which is in almost all of our collect
prayers where it gets rather confusing because Christians
are praying
through Jesus
to the father
in the power of the Holy Spirit,
understanding them to be 1 undivided whole, 1
God.
So that was a lot.
Yes. Thank you so much.
Can
I get a tech held there? Sorry.
Peace be upon all of you. Thank you,
reverend Andy, for that very thorough,
introduction
to, Jesus and the Christian tradition.
I'll I'll just get to it.
So who is
Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, Isa ibn
Maryam, peace be upon both of them? Of
course, here we have, the temple mount, the
masjid Qubas of Sakhra, They're done with the
rock, the western wall there.
So just begin by quoting some verses from
the Quran in translation.
This is from the 3rd chapter of the
Quran,
starting at verse 42.
And remember when the angel said, oh, Mary,
surely god has chosen you, purified you, chosen
you above the women of all nations.
Oh Mary, be devout to your lord and
prostrate yourself and bow down with those who
bow down.
This is the news of the unseen that
we reveal to you, o Muhammad,
sallallahu alaihi
sallam. You were not with them when they
cast lots to decide who would be, Mary's
guardian,
nor were you there when they argued about
it.
Remember, when the angels proclaimed, oh, Mary, God
gives you glad tidings, of a word from
him.
His name will be the messiah,
Jesus, son of Mary,
honored in this world and the hereafter.
And he will be one of those nearest
to God.
Continues,
and he will speak to people in the
cradle and in adulthood
and will be one of the righteous.
Mary wondered, my lord, how can I have
a child when no man has touched me?
The angel replied,
so will it be. God creates what he
wills.
When he decrees a matter,
he simply says to it be and it
is.
And God will teach him, I e Jesus,
peace be upon him,
revelation and wisdom,
the Torah and the gospel,
and make him a messenger
to the children of Israel to proclaim,
I have come to you with a sign
from your lord. I will make for you
a bird from clay. Breathe into it, and
it will become a real bird by God's
leave.
I will heal the blind and the leper
and raise the dead to life by God's
will
or God's will. And I will prophesize what
you eat and store in your houses. Surely,
and this is a sign for you, if
you truly believe.
He continues,
and I will confirm the Torah revealed before
me and legalize some of what had been
forbidden to you.
I have come to you with a sign
from your Lord, so be mindful of God
and obey me.
Surely God is my Lord and your Lord,
so worship him alone.
This is the straight path.
And now we jump to chapter 61
verse 6. And remember when Jesus, son of
Mary, said, oh, children of Israel,
I am truly God's messenger to you,
confirming the Torah which came before me,
and giving good news of a messenger after
me, whose name will be Ahmed,
the most praised, which is one of the
names of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him.
Yet when,
yet when he came to them with clear
proofs, they said,
this is pure sorcery.
Okay. So
according to the Quran,
Jesus, peace be upon him,
was a great prophet of God,
a great nebi or navi,
these languages are very close, Hebrew and Arabic,
a great messenger of God, a Rasul.
He's called the Messiah,
al Masih,
a Mashiach.
He was born from a virgin.
He was the worker of miracles, b'ivnila,
by the permission of God.
He is the great teacher
and reviser
of the Torah.
He is the predecessor
of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Jesus was a spiritual master,
bringer of the gospel, which is called an
Injeel
in Arabic,
and he's a human being in all respects.
He's not divine.
Interestingly, according to most historians,
the historical Jesus was, most plausibly,
a self proclaimed prophet. And I say self
proclaimed because secular historians, they don't entertain the
supernatural
in their method of historiography.
Right? It doesn't mean that they denied the
supernatural, but that's not how modern secular
history is done. So they're not they're not
going to say he was a prophet, but
what did he actually claim historically? Okay. So
he was a self proclaimed prophet. This is
probably what he claimed.
He claimed, probably, to be some sort of
messiah.
He claimed to be a teacher and reviser
of the law of Moses. In other words,
he was a rabbi.
He claimed to be some sort of healer.
He claimed to be a teacher of great
spirituality.
He claimed to be the announcer of someone
after him.
So in the synoptic tradition, the bar in
ash, the son of man,
who will come to earth and set up
his kingdom and defeat the 4th beast.
In the gospel of John, the Johannine gospel,
parakletas,
the Paraclete,
someone to come after him, will guide you
into all truth,
and someone who did not claim to be
divine.
This is what most historians will say
about the historical Jesus of Nazareth,
peace be upon him.
The Christology of the and interestingly, going back
to this, it's interesting the,
position of the historians
regarding the historical Jesus is very close
to Islamic Christology
as to what the Quran says Jesus claimed
to be.
The Christology of the Quran. So what's really
important is to establish what's known as the
central theological consistency.
Okay. So for example, in the Torah, it
says
in Hebrew.
God is not a man
that he should lie. And the meaning of
this, according to Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea,
is that whoever claims to be God, any
man who claims to be God, is a
liar.
Hosea 119. Indeed, I am God and not
a man.
Every man is put to death
for his own sin,
Deuteronomy 247.
Look at Ezekiel chapter 18, a long sustained
argument
for personal responsibility.
The sin of the father does not pass
to the son. The sin of the son
does not pass to the father. But if
the wicked should should turn from his wickedness
and do that which is lawful and right,
he shall surely live. He shall not die.
What does it mean to turn? Teshuva?
Taubah?
Right? To literally turn your body or to
reorient yourself
to God, to repent to God. This is
the way to become right with God, through
repentance.
Whoever is hanged on a tree
is accursed by God,
Deuteronomy 21 23.
Do not drink blood,
a hukaf
olam, an everlasting
statute among your generations.
Leviticus 3 17.
Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1.
1 means 1.
Here, O Israel, the Lord our God This
is called the Shema.
Right? And this is actually quoted by the
New Testament Jesus at one point. It's only
in one gospel.
And Matthew and Luke had access to Mark,
but they did not choose to include this
in their gospel, where Jesus quotes this verbatim.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1. And he continues,
He shall love the lord thy god with
all thy heart, soul, and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
These are the greatest commandments.
Rabbi Hillel, some say Akiva,
was asked what is the Torah in a
nutshell?
And he said Deuteronomy 64,
Deuteronomy 65, Leviticus 1918. God is 1. Love
God, love your neighbor, everything else is commentary.
Not that it's not important, he's a rabbi,
but this is the essence.
Human sacrifice
is evil, many places.
Blood is not necessary
for the forgiveness of sin.
Psalm 51, 2nd Chronicles chapter 7.
And the last one here, for I know
that God saves his messiah.
He shall hear him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.
David writes
Psalm 20 verse 6. God saves his Messiah.
I'll come back to this verse. So we
have to establish
this consistency
with the revelation given to Moses and the
Hebrew prophets
and what is given to the prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam to establish his bona fides
as it were, as a true prophet of
god.
The Christology of the Quran.
A restoration of Jamesonian
Nazareanism,
Anotsre
Ya'aqov Had Sadiq.
The Nazarenes under James the just,
which reflected the original teachings
of Jesus the Nazarene, Yeshu HaNotsri.
And his original followers who were called the
Nazarenes
Here's a verse from the Quran, O believers,
stand up for God, as Jesus, son of
Mary, asked the disciples,
who will stand up with me for God?
The disciples replied, we will stand up for
God.
Then a group of the children of Israel
believed,
while another disbelieved.
He then supported the believers against their enemies,
so they prevailed, 6114.
So this verse, according to our classical exigits,
indicates
that within the children of Israel,
there was a division.
And the word used in Arabic is ata'ifa.
And ata'ifa means a group, but it could
also mean one man.
So this verse seems to indicate this Paul
versus James paradigm.
Paul versus James. This is an early split
in the early 1st century of the common
era among Christians,
Jewish Christians,
early Nazarenes.
This is mentioned everywhere. FC Bauer mentions this.
Robert Eisenman, you can read him. James Taber,
Bart Ehrman,
many others.
This tension is seen in the new testament.
In Galatians chapter 2,
men from James
are Paul's opponents,
Men sent from James.
In 2nd Corinthians chapter 3,
the Corinthians demanded Paul to produce something called
the letter of authorization.
Where is your letter letter of authorization?
What does that mean?
Well, presumably, he needs a teaching license
from James.
Right? Because everyone answers to James, even in
the book of Acts.
Everyone answers to James. If you're not authorized
by James, this in Arabic is called an
ijazah,
if you don't have a teaching license, then
you're a freelance apostle
and you don't have any authority.
Okay? So the Corinthians are demanding from Paul
of Tarsus
to produce this letter of authorization.
Interesting in the gospel of Thomas,
which is sometimes labeled a gnostic gospel, which
gnostic does not have a good connotation in
Christianity. In in in Islam, it's a good
thing. An arif billah is a good ma'rifah
is beautiful.
Right?
But in Christianity, a Gnostic is a deviant.
Right?
But there's other studies on the gospel of
Thomas
that reveal it to be just as gnostic
as the gospel of John. This is eternal
life to know you. Is the verb in
Greek. To know you, the only true God.
That sounds very gnostic. That's John
17:3.
Right? So other scholars say, no. The gospel
of Thomas, which is very interesting, is a
sayings gospel, a 114 sayings of Jesus. There's
no narrative.
Right? Jesus said, Jesus said, Jesus said.
Logion number 12.
When I am gone, you must go to
James the just,
for whose sake heaven and earth came into
being.
And this is a way of saying that
James the just
is the one man on earth who has
the truth from me. He has the he
has the correct, yachiduth
tohid, he has the oneness of God, and
you must report to him.
A hyperbolic praise of James.
Who is James?
The brother of Jesus,
the head of the Nazarene Messianic Movement for
30 years.
A lot of people haven't even heard of
James.
James is not even mentioned in the Gospels
by most accounts. James the less is not
he's not a disciple.
The disciple mentioned in in the 4 gospels,
that's not James, the brother of Jesus.
It seems like he's been sort of systematically
written out of the gospels.
The head of the early messianic movement for
30 years.
Yet none of the writings of the New
Testament were authentically written by James, according to
the vast majority of critical scholars, including the
epistle of James.
This is considered to be pseudonymous
according to the vast majority of critical scholars.
James did not write this.
Who is the principal author of the New
Testament? Paul of Tarsus.
7 of the books of the 27 books,
almost by consensus of historians, was written by
the historical Paul of Tarsus. Another 6 are
written in his name, that is to say,
pseudonymous, that is to say, someone is pretending
to be Paul,
and the book of Hebrews
was attributed to him,
but is actually anonymous.
So Paul is the principal author of the
New Testament. Who wrote the 4 gospels? The
4 gospels were not called Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John until Irenaeus
in the year 180 of the common era,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So these books
are anonymous.
They're written by Pauline Christians,
Paul's Christology,
Paul's gospel, he says, and Paul calls it
my gospel,
Evangelio Mu, that's what he says. My gospel,
right, is all over the 4 gospels.
What is the q source document?
This is very interesting.
So according to the vast majority of New
Testament scholars,
when Matthew and Luke are sitting at their
desks,
they have 2 things in front of them,
at least 2. They have the gospel of
Mark because they had word for word, verbatim
agreement with Mark in many places. Sometimes they
edit Mark.
Right?
But they also have agreement among themselves, Luke
and Matthew,
that is not in Mark,
word for word, verbatim in many cases.
That means they have something else on their
desk.
And this is called Q.
So kuala in German,
the unknown. Sometimes this is called the sayings
gospel.
Doctor Dennis McDonald, he calls it the first
gospel,
the original gospel.
What does q say about the crucifixion?
Well, to quote John Dominic Crossan,
imminent new testament historian,
there is, as a direct quote, there's nothing,
nothing, nothing
in the gospel according to Q about the
crucifixion
of Jesus
or the resurrection of Jesus.
Thus, according to historians,
the earliest known source of the gospels what
do I mean early earliest known source? Q,
according to most gospels, predates Paul.
It's pre Pauline.
The 4 gospels, if you if you open
a New Testament, you'll see
gospel of Matthew. That's the canonical order. That's
not the chronological order.
Paul wrote all of his letters, and they
were well circulated
before Mark wrote his gospel, the first gospel.
Paul is writing in the late forties, early
fifties, late fifties, early sixties.
Mark is in 70 or so. This is
a dominant opinion.
But q, according to most scholars,
maybe it had various strata of of authorship,
but q in its original,
authorship
is pre Pauline.
Some even put it in the forties
and reflects an authentic Jamesonian
Christianity.
So that's what I say, according to historians,
the earliest known source of the gospels
says nothing, nothing, nothing
but the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
So I would say there's 3 stages of
Christological
conflict between proto Islam
or Islam.
And so we believe that the religion, the
actual
religion of Jesus and the disciples,
was Islam in the sense that they were
submitters unto God.
Right? Just as Moses was a submitter unto
God and Abraham was a submitter unto God,
a monotheist,
Islam does not mean necessarily
a Muslim does not mean necessarily,
strictly a follower of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi sallam.
We're not Mohammed Din.
Right? Islam, in its perfect and pristine and
latest form, came to us through the prophet
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. But all of
these prophets are Muslim prophets.
So that's why I'm saying here proto Islam
Islam
and Christianity.
Right? Whoever does the will of my father
You know that saying in the gospel of
Mark, say, Jesus, your mother and brother are
here. Who is my mother and brother? Whoever
does the will of my father,
that is my mother and my brother. Whoever
submits his will, that's called a Muslim.
So we have these three stages of conflict,
Christological conflict, early, post apostolic, and modern. The
early stage, the earliest stage,
Jamesonian
Nazarenes versus Pauline Nazarenes.
This is in the 1st century. This is
presented very vividly
in Galatians, in 1st and second Corinthians.
Right,
Paul has these enemies,
and he doesn't like them at all.
And these aren't like pagans.
Well, he doesn't like the pagans.
And these aren't just Jews. He doesn't like
them that don't believe in Jesus.
Right? But these are other Christians. These are
his primary opponents,
are other Christians.
This conflict is very downplayed in the book
of Acts, because Acts is trying to smooth
things over a little bit.
So when you read Acts and you listen
to a sermon of Peter and Paul, it's
almost like the same person.
And in fact, it is the same person.
It's Luke writing it. Luke is the actual
author of whoever wrote the gospel of Luke
wrote the acts of the apostles.
And the Quran alludes to it in that
verse I read
of 2, the James
the James Paul, Pauline paradigm. And then you
have the post apostolic stage. So this is
called Ebionism versus proto orthodoxy
or orthodoxy.
So who are the Ebionites?
So the 2nd century saw this emergence of
a group called the Ebbianites,
evyonim,
right, which means the poor people.
Now this is a derogatory term that was
invented for them by proto orthodox Christians,
right, like Origen of Alexandria and others, who
said these people, they have a very poor
Christology.
They don't even worship Jesus. They don't believe
he's divine.
These are Mesakim
theologically.
They're so poor.
They didn't call themselves Ebionites.
Right? These are Nazarenes.
These are Jamesonian
Nazarenes.
So you have these Ebionites
versus proto orthodox, so the 2nd century to
the 7th century.
So we see that tension in the polemical
writings of the patristic fathers.
Right?
Justin Martyr,
Irenaeus of Gaul,
Clement of Alexandria,
the
Panorion,
who was it?
Epiphanius of Salamis,
etcetera, etcetera.
And then you have the modern stage. Oh,
as well as the the so called pseudo
the, Clementine literature. So in the second, 3rd
century, you have this literature that comes out,
that's attributed
to the,
Jewish Christians who are anti Pauline.
This was written later, but it sort of
reflects
their positions. So they considered Paul, for example,
to be an apostate rather than an apostle,
idolater.
They believed Jesus was a human being, that
he was some sort of prophet messiah.
And then the modern stage, Islamic Unitarianism,
or what we might say, Quranic Christology versus
Christian Trinitarianism.
So 7th century to the present.
So
according to people like Robert Eisenman, who,
you know, James Taber, these are imminent new
testament scholars, there's a clear trajectory
of Christology
that starts with Jesus of Nazareth, peace be
upon him, and moves to his brother James
and goes from the Jamesonian Nazarenes to the
Ebionites
to Islam.
This is a clear trajectory. And, of course,
Robert Eiseman, who's an atheist,
right, he can't just say, well, the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, he restored the
gospel through revelation. He can't say that because
he's an atheist or he's trying to be
secular.
So he says, well, there must been some
Ebonites hiding in caves
in in Mecca, going to a cave and
here's an Ebonite. Hey, how are you doing?
And he's, you know, taking notes from this
Ebonite and, And so that's how he came
up with this. That's how he knew it.
So then there's a clear line of trajectory
then.
From Paul,
right, to the proto orthodox fathers,
to
the ecumenical church councils, Council of Nicaea,
where,
the Son of God officially becomes,
God the Son. And then in 381 at
Constantinople, the Holy Spirit is now the 3rd
person officially, of the trinity, etcetera, etcetera.
Ah,
messiah wasn't crucified. So this is the verse
I promised I'd come back to.
Psalm 20 verse 6,
What I
underlined
there
says,
God saves his Messiah.
Messiah.
This is in the Hebrew, mashiach.
The Quran says, and on account of their
some of the Jews' denial of their saying
against Mary, a great slander,
and their saying,
we have surely killed the messiah. And of
course, they're saying this in mockery, this so
called messiah,
Jesus, son of Mary, the so called messenger
of god,
and then god says, in fact, they did
not kill him
nor did they crucify him, but it appeared
to them as if they had. So this
is a major point of contention between
Christians, at least traditional Christianity,
and traditional Islam.
And indeed, those who differed over him, meaning
Jesus,
are in doubt about it. They have no
knowledge of it, just following conjecture.
And certainly, they did not kill him. So
I just reproduce here a page from the
Strong's concordance. You know, if you read it
in a bible in English, you read the
old testament, you'll come across the name, Jeshua.
Right? You heard this name before? Jeshua. Now
you get to the New Testament,
you see the name Jesus.
You know these two names are exactly the
same.
Jesus' name is Jeshua,
but for some reason, in the English Bibles,
he's called Jesus.
But the same name in Hebrew, Yeshua,
in the Old Testament is Jeshua.
So up here, on the top, it says
Yeshua, this is the name of Jesus.
It means like Josh.
Right? And if you look down at the
bottom, the meaning is
He is saved.
This is the meaning of the name Jesus.
He is saved. And the names of prophets
have significance.
Avraham,
right?
The father of nations.
The Ab,
Av, the father of all nations.
Right? Moshe.
Moshe is actually not Hebrew.
Moshe, according to most historians, is an Egyptian
name.
Mos,
like Ahmose,
an Egyptian name, one of the pharaohs named
Ahmose,
born of Ah, the moon god.
Thutmose,
Thutmoses,
born of Thoth, the god of magic.
Ramoses,
Ramesses,
born of Ra,
but just
Moses.
So when he was found in the Nile
by the family of pharaoh, they knew he
was an Israelite, they don't know the name
of his god. He's just born of someone.
We don't know He's abd something,
right, abd of someone.
We don't know the name of his God.
So that verse said,
just following conjecture about the crucifixion.
So the crucifixion
is not in the pre Pauline q gospel.
That's something very interesting.
You know why I said Matthew and Luke
have something have the q source on their
desk, along with Mark?
We can piece together the contents of q
even though it's not extant. How do we
do that?
Well, you look at Matthew and Luke and
whatever they have in common that is missing
from Mark and not unique to their own
gospel, they took that from q.
And if you look at all this q
material,
you will be hard pressed
to find anything that contradicts Islamic theology.
You'll be very hard pressed.
So q is pre Pauline. There's no passion
narrative.
There's no passion prediction
in Q.
There's no passion narrative. There's no passion prediction
in the gospel of Thomas. The gospel of
Thomas written around the time of the gospel
of John. John is a canonical gospel.
Right? Some say even earlier than John. Some
say Thomas has different strata.
It's just as gnostic as John's gospel. There
was a very strong opinion that John's gospel
was actually written by a gnostic,
and some of the early church fathers rejected
it.
The crucifixion has no extant witnesses,
no extant eyewitness reports,
according to a near consensus of historians.
So when this verse was revealed about Jesus
in the Quran in the year
625
or something of the common era,
they did not kill him nor did they
crucify Jesus.
Okay?
And that those who differ therein are following.
Means conjecture, like guesswork or hearsay.
At that time, I can imagine the Christians
and the Jews coming to the prophet Mohammed
and saying, what what do you what do
you mean? They have Matthew's gospel. Matthew is
a disciple,
and he's writing about the crucifixion.
John is a disciple,
and he wrote about the crucifixion.
Well,
as studies of the New Testament progressed
in the 18th century,
19th century,
today, there's almost a near consensus that these
books are anonymous,
that these books are attributed to these 4
men,
right, who did not write them.
These books are anonymous. They're not written by
disciples. They're not written by eyewitnesses. They're not
written by,
disciples of eyewitnesses.
So we have no extant eyewitness reports,
according to a near consensus of historians,
of anyone who saw the crucifixion, so called
crucifixion
of Jesus of Nazareth. The crucifixion was a
major cause of dissension.
Paul uses the word Eris. Eris is the
Greek god of strife
In Galatians chapter 1, Galatians is what Paul
is really thinking. Like in Romans, he's kind
of, you know, holding back a little bit
and he's being more philosophical.
When in Galatians,
you know, towards the end of Galatians he
said, now write this down in big bold
letters, he says that to his scribe.
This is what I really think.
So, Galatians 3:1, Oh stupid Galatians, who has
bewitched you? This is how he says it.
Who has bewitched you
that you now follow a different gospel?
There's
another gospel?
And then,
another Jesus?
Didn't I clearly portray him as crucified before
your eyes?
Didn't I clearly portray him as crucified?
You see the problem with Paul is we
only have one side of the phone conversation.
You ever hear, like, someone talking on the
phone?
You can hear what this guy's saying, but
what's that guy saying?
You don't know.
What do you think Paul is responding you
to here? It seems like he's responding to
Christians in Galatia who denied the crucifixion. Well,
how did they where did they get that
idea from? Well, according to FC Bauer,
the imminent new testament scholar, when Paul went
to Galatia and evangelized them with his gospel,
again, he calls it my gospel,
and he leaves, James sends men
into Galatia to correct Paul's gospel.
This is standard exegesis.
You can read this
F. C. Bauer.
And so it seems like the Galatians are
getting this idea that Jesus wasn't crucified from
James himself.
When I am gone, wherever you are, go
to James the just, You Apufat Sadiq, for
whose for whose sake heaven and earth came
into being. The
crucifixion was first mentioned by Paul
who claimed to have received his gospel via
direct revelation,
not from the disciples. He's very adamant about
this.
Right? So his so called creed in 1
Corinthians 15, he actually you have to read
that in this sort
of scheme of his entire corpus, where he
says in Galatians, I received this gospel from
no man.
It was it was taught directly to me
by revelation of Jesus Christ.
The crucifixion is something that we don't know
for certain what the actual disciples believed about.
They likely believed in, as Paul says, another
gospel, another Jesus
compared to Paul's gospel.
The crucifixion is mentioned in the gospels,
but many events in the gospel passion narratives
are highly implausible historically, either fictitious, symbolic, or
mimetic of Hellenistic literature. I can give you
many, many examples of this.
Many, many examples.
A midnight trial in the Sanhedrin.
Jesus being tried in the house of the
high priest.
This is completely against Jewish law.
You see, well, they made an exception. Okay.
But that's implausible.
That's not plausible.
Who betrayed Jesus?
Judas.
Right? What is who? Judas Iscariot.
Yehuda Ishkarioth.
Oh, how convenient. A Jew from the cities.
You know? You know, these
these country bumpkin disciples of his, who can't
read or write, these fishermen,
swindled
by a city slicking Jew.
This seems to be an anti Jewish trope.
Is this historical?
Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross of Jesus,
following Jesus.
Take you up your cross and follow me,
Simon.
Simon is Peter, he can do it, but
this Simon can do it.
Many examples of this.
The Pascal pardon.
The way that Pontius Pilate
is,
described in the gospels
clashes
severely with how Philo of Alexandria
describes him. Other historians, the way that this
is why Pontius Pilate
would not have a second of compunction
in swatting any Jewish rebel.
He was absolutely ruthless.
Yet you have him Bring out the 2
Jesuses. They're both Jesus by the way. Jesus
Bar Abba. Yeshuah Bar Abba.
Yeshuah Hanutzri.
Who shall I release unto you?
A Pascal pardon.
You know, trying to release him. This is
completely against
the
description of Pilate and other sources outside the
New Testament. Is highly implausible.
Maybe Jesus just had that effect on people
and he probably did. But, historically, this is
highly implausible.
And there's other examples.
Oh, useful.
The JFK assassination is a useful example. Because
the charge that Muslims get all the time
is, you guys are denying a historical fact.
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
It's a historical fact.
Interestingly,
you know,
the JFK assassination,
okay, happened 50 years ago
in broad daylight
with video cameras,
eyewitnesses.
And to this day, we still don't know
exactly what happened.
You told me 2000 years ago, we know
exactly what happened to someone? No eyewitnesses? No
technology? Nothing?
You know exactly what happened? No. You don't.
You know what
happened.
And if you read these sources,
if you look at these sources, the context
behind these sources, you'll see that there's massive
eris. Paul calls eris,
strife, major strife about the crucifixion.
Not just what it means, did he die
for our sins, or do we have to
follow the
halakah,
or Can we be ben
noach No, no, no, no. Did this thing
actually happen? Didn't I portray him as crucified?
Who portrayed him otherwise? That's the subtext.
And then in 1975,
you have the Zapruder video. Remember this thing?
Zapruder, Abraham Zapruder video. So everyone believed it
was Lee Harvey Oswald, right, until 1975.
And here comes this video
13 years 12 years later that shows Kennedy
sitting in his motorcade, and then as Jim
Garrison used to say, the bullet comes and
he goes back into the left. Oh, okay.
The bullet's coming from here. He's going this
way.
Now nothing is conclusive.
But like this Quranic ayah, this verse is
like that Zapruder video. The Quran is saying
they followed conjecture.
They go back and look at the sources.
These are not written by eyewitnesses.
We have to think about this. But historians
are dragging their feet on this issue.
They need to reassess the evidence here.
You know, they don't want to look at
some Muslim source. There's a little bit of
bias, I think,
especially with the orientalists and neo orientalists. Anyway.
So the Christological middle way. There's a verse
from the Quran.
Oh, people of the Bible,
People of the Revelation. Kitab, right, could mean
Bible.
The Bible means book. Kitab means book.
Do not in this and in this, sorry,
in this verse,
the Jews and Christians are being directly addressed
according to the context.
Do not go to extremes in your religion,
and do not say about God except the
truth.
The messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is indeed
nothing but God's messenger and his word that
he cast a Mary and a spirit from
him. So believe in God and his messengers
and do not say 3. Now, interesting here,
the Quran,
Just don't say 3. So any type of
3. The Quran is not saying, don't say
3 persons, don't say 3
beings, don't say father, son, holy spirit, don't
say father, son, mother. Just don't say 3.
For your God is 1. Highly exalted to
see they should have a son. And again,
son here. Okay, let me explain this.
Okay.
Imam al Ghazali, one of our great scholars,
he said,
during the time of Bani Israel Bani Israel.
Right? During the time of the children of
Israel when they had the prophecy.
Father and son, these terms were used
honorifically,
figuratively.
Right? So for example, Isaiah 6416,
ata Adonai Avinu, you are the Lord our
father.
Right?
In the Psalms,
you are,
you are my beloved kulakim,
you are all sons of god.
Right? In the Psalms.
So this is meant to be figurative.
But here the Quran is talking about this
idea that Jesus is the Son of God
in his metaphysical sense,
or even in a physical sense, because Mormons
believe
in this kind of physical
sense.
But this idea that god shares anything,
that the father shares anything with other persons,
This is called perico racis. This is a
trinitarian doctrine.
The father, son, holy spirit, 3 separate and
distinct persons for each
each one fully God, in and of itself,
in and of themselves.
They share in the actions and,
they share in their actions, and they're inseparable
in thought and consciousness. They're they're of one
mind.
To him belongs whatever is in the heavens
and the earth, and God
suffices as a trustee.
So the Jewish position regarding Jesus, this is
a traditional Jewish position if you read the
Talmud, for example. He was a false prophet
and a pseudo messiah.
You might get someone who will say, well,
he was just, you know, just a rabbi
who made a mistake.
You know, this guy, Ben Shapiro,
just recently said he was a criminal who
wanted to start an insurrection, and he was
killed by the Romans.
There's been many of them.
The other extreme
Christian position regarding Jesus, he's God incarnate,
a divine savior.
The Muslim position,
he's a great messenger and prophet messiah.
And this is the conclusion,
That
is Jesus, this is what our brother read
from the Quran.
That is Jesus, son of Mary,
and this is a word of truth about
which they dispute.
In other words, the aforementioned Christology that the
Quran is mentioning, this is the truth about
Jesus that all these people are disputing about.
So thank you
for listening.
I hope I didn't offend you. But I
wanted to be honest with you and give
you what I
believe to be
the traditional Muslim position and my position regarding
our Christology. Thank you so much.
Renee, do we have any questions?
Thank you. Yeah.
Yeah. Hello, Ravi, and,
conductor. What? I got a,
little bit question. I think my question is
a little bit comment than the question, actually.
You were
quoting from
the Torah and Old Testament
about the Emmanuel and, you know, the
prophet comes up there, another prophet, Deuteronomy,
then you came to
the gospels, you went
to letters.
So
you got a very good knowledge about the
bible.
I appreciate that. You do you know about
the Talmud
or no? Do you have a knowledge about
Talmud?
I'm talking to you, Raven. Yeah.
My question is to I'm sorry.
Extremely limited.
Okay. So you know what the And deficit
So you know
I I believe we have somebody back there
who would know far more than I would.
Okay. Let me ask the let me ask
the question, please.
Can I can I ask my question?
Ma'am, it's my turn. Can I ask my
question?
Thank you. So
I want you to if you know about
the Talmud,
okay,
what they say about Jesus and
Mary. Am I right?
So the thing you're saying about
old testament and Torah doesn't match with the
Talmud,
because the Jews don't believe in Jesus Christ,
you know that, and they know that too.
Now
also
in you were talking about Paul
in Thessalonians
1,
Paul says,
they said they killed
all the previous messenger
including
our Lord God Jesus Christ.
Okay? That's pulses.
And
they put us on a big pressure,
they are against the God and human being.
Pulses. Am I right?
Now I wanna ask you to what pulse
is that and meanwhile, I appreciate it, I'm
sorry I didn't interrupt you.
Sister actually was I'm glad you say something.
Sister was keep saying in Torah says about
the forehead forehead.
Repeatedly.
Also says
in Torah,
Amalak
repeatedly.
Repeatedly.
You have my zam'laq, you know? I do.
Okay. Thank you very much.
So I'm I'm sorry to interrupt you. I
just wanted to make clear that, in my
other life,
I'm actually a scholar of sociology of American
Judaism
and my background goes back through,
I did my masters
in the beginning period of
Hellenist
the separation of Judaism and Christianity,
and I've done extensive study throughout. So this
actually is an area
where in my other life, I can speak
to this. And what I would actually ask
is that we not speak
of what Jews say or don't say, but
that
because because it is it is not fair
when we are not part of the conversation.
So I can speak to what Tom had
said, but that's not what we're talking about
here.
And I appreciate what, you know, your your
your And I'm sorry, I
missed
it. Mind just went blank. But I appreciate
you're saying what Jews think, but actually,
when you go back to what the Talmud
says, that's not necessarily
what Jews today believe. I mean, like Jew
like, Muslims and Christians,
that theology has evolved.
And so
in my studies that go through Talmud and
through the current period of time, it's a
much more nuanced view of what Jesus is.
Although Jews do not believe that Jesus was
either a prophet or divine.
So that's all. I would appreciate,
I believe that you could probably get my
rabbi to come in and talk to you
at length about this,
but let's not have that as part of
the discussion.
It seemed it seemed like there were, could
you
I didn't follow entirely what your question was
about Paul. Let me let me get this
right.
Know that I'm old. You know what the
problem means? When you get old,
5 bad things happened to you.
First thing is you forget let me see.
I can't remember the other 4, so let
me go to your question.
Okay. Let's do this again. Thank you, Cecilio.
This is,
Hisses,
first
Thessalonians,
you know you know what what book I'm
talking about. Paul wrote it. It says that
they
Jews I'm sorry. I offended you. This this
is the way they're saying there.
James King is actually in there too in
English. The Jews killed
the previous
messenger of God.
Even they killed
Lord God Jesus Christ,
Paul says.
So they put us on big pressure.
They are enemy of God
and enemy of human being.
So what do
you think?
That is a tough question. And and there
is no question that,
there is
antisemitic
vitriol
that can be found in the pages of
the New Testament,
both the Pauline writings and some of the
gospel writers.
I while we may differ in how we
interpret this, and by the way, every time
I co panel with you, I wanna go
back to theological school for at least another
5 years. This is what happens when you
have an imminent theological scholar and a pastoral
minister up on up at the same table.
So,
I very much admire your,
your deep
level of knowledge there.
But but where I would really agree is
that to interpret the New Testament
scriptures,
without
understanding that context of them being born
out of this incredibly
contentious era
in and around 70 AD where the Roman
army laid siege and eventually invaded the city
of Jerusalem
and knocked the temple to the ground. And
this really was
the pivotal
splitting point
between rabbinic Judaism
and the early Jesus movement and all of
the anger
and the finger pointing and the blame that
was involved at that time,
is to really misinterpret those New Testament scriptures.
And so,
you know, you were hearing that emotion and
that vitriol
come out in the words of
Paul, one also needs to put that in
context,
of some of the later chapters of the
book of Romans where Paul clearly identifies
himself as a Jew,
as an Israelite,
and expresses a great deal of pathos
and
love and desire for,
the salvation or just the the inclusion of
his community.
So, I hope that's at least a somewhat
complete answer to your question.
Okay.
Welcome
to our masjid MCC.
Brother Ali Atay, I'd like to ask you
to, if you can, if you'd like to,
to to bring a closure to this meeting
by telling all of us about the coming
of Jesus, peace be upon him,
as we believe,
as Muslims believe. And
the the the signs that are showing all
around us, you know, and the coming of
the Mahdi
a little bit also. Just a little bit.
Just so that we we can
close
the the thing, you know, with a nice
feeling that you all will see,
what Quran says and also the Hadith, the
traditions of prophet Mohammed
speaks about the coming of Jesus. He didn't
say he'll come. He said Jesus will come,
you know, to come. Yes. I I don't
know if we can close it with that.
I think it's a bit early, but Go
ahead. I'll just say a few I'll just
say a few things. Yeah. There's something interesting
about our Christology, and I didn't mention I
didn't have time to mention it, but it
is very important is that Muslims believe, in
the second coming of Jesus,
actually,
peace be upon him.
So a very common sort of anti Muslim
polemic that comes from some Christian speakers, I've
heard this a lot, is Muslims
believe that the Mehdi is the Messiah. They're
a Messiah, and they use that word Messiah.
So who is the Mehdi? So the Mehdi
is,
according to
Islamic eschatology,
a leader who will come at the end
of time, who's from the family of the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who will
be
sort of in the army of Christ
when he comes. But he is not the
Messiah.
Okay. So let me make this clear. It's
very, very clear in the Quran. The Quran
is our primary proof text.
It is our primary
Huja, what's what's known as a proof text,
is that the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth,
peace be upon him. There's no doubt about
that. Right? So Muslims and Christians,
we have that in common. We believe Jesus
is the Messiah. Now, what does that mean
that there's a big difference?
Right? So if you look in the Tanakh,
the word Messiah is used for different people.
You
know, kings are called
mashikhim.
Right? The kohanim, the priests, they're anointed. They're
called messiahs, mashikhim.
But also the naveem, the prophets.
Right? There's a Psalm 105,
touch not mine anointed ones, and do do
no harm to my prophets.
So this is in the Psalms, the Psalms
has this like, this is very poetic.
It's called the synonymic by member segment in
Semitic rhetoric and jargon, which means that the
psalmist will say something and then say the
exact same thing with it within a different
way.
Right?
So the meaning of
touch not my anointed ones means do my
prophets no harm. So in this verse, in
the Psalms 10515,
I think it is,
the prophets are called
messiahs.
So we would conceive of Jesus as being
a prophet messiah,
Not a King Messiah.
Right?
Not a Davidic Messiah, because we believe in
the virgin birth as well.
So,
the tribe is taken from the father.
Right? The Jewishness is taken from the mother,
so he's a Jew.
Mariam alayhis salaam Mary was a Jew, But
he doesn't have a father.
Right? So he cannot be from David.
Right? So we don't we don't consider him
a king messiah, although he will assume this
kind of military role towards the end of
time.
Right? And it's you know, there's descriptions of
it in the Hadith. It's not nearly as,
what's the right
word, explicit as the book of Revelation.
Right? But, you know, there's he does come
back.
And nowhere is he a a priest messiah.
So, you know, the the author of Hebrews
that Reverend Andy was talking about, the author
who's attributed to Paul. Right? That Christ is
primarily so he's all three of these things.
He's a prophet. He's a king. Right? But
in Hebrews, he's really
portrayed as this priest messiah.
And a priest makes a sacrifice and he
sacrifices himself,
this idea. Right?
So Muslims will say, no, he's a he's
a prophet messiah, and he will come again
according to Islamic eschatology.
But he is the messiah. And when the
Quran says, e s I ibid Maryam,
Jesus, the son of Mary, that's the same
Jesus who lived 2 1000 years ago in
Galilee. Jesus of Nazareth, peace be upon him.
That's the Muslim messiah.
Yeah. So I have, two questions, in fact,
to pastor
Andy.
First question is that,
as you know, that Hebrew
for Torah is written, I don't know, in
in Hebrew. Right? And what on we know
it is in Arabic? My question to you,
what language it was,
spoken by our,
Jesus that we know?
At least what we know is, he spoke
in Aramaic.
The question that I have is that
multiple verse 1 that we have from James
or Mehta verse 1,
they are not even close to
the time of the Isall alayhi sallam, peace
be upon him.
Even though he spoke in Aramaic.
The earliest version that we know, it is
written in in in Greek. Right?
So the question is that how
would would we be able to
consider that that could be
the right message?
And the and the second question that I
have is that
you mentioned that,
Christianity believes in the in the 3 okay.
The Trinity. Right?
My question is that I'm really trying to
understand that the whole concept there. Right?
The question that I have
is,
if Jesus is considered as a god,
but he came
to this world
through
Mary, m a s a l m, Mary.
Right?
Then in that case, shouldn't we consider Mary
would be God? Or in that concept, shouldn't
we consider
Adam Elohim Salam, he should be God?
Why
a person with minimum knowledge, minimum understanding,
should be considering Jesus as a God? It
doesn't make any sense.
Could you please explain this?
Thank you.
Alright. I will I will try to address
your your first question first and then your
second one.
I certainly
agree with a great deal of what doctor
Atay said about the origins of some of
our earliest
New Testament scriptures.
Nearly all the Christian theologians certainly would agree
about the q source to which he referred,
being the secondary source that both Matthew and
Luke used. And I believe that that relates
to your question
because
no matter how early the extant sources that
we have are,
we can be almost certain that there are
even earlier extant sources of which we are
not in possession and of which we may
never be in possession.
And in the meanwhile,
there were translations
and redactions
that occurred. You are absolutely correct that the
earliest gospel texts we have were written in
Koine Greek, and they were written about a
man who spoke Aramaic as his native language.
That is somewhat problematic.
It is equally problematic that many of our
modern day English translations
of the Old Testament scriptures
are sort of a mishmash
of the the Hebrew Torah and then the
Greek Septuagint
that was translated
at a later date.
However,
the Christian understanding of the very nature of
scripture
helps a little bit with that dilemma.
And
when in the New Testament you have a
few verses that speak about what that nature
is, it says all scriptures were written for
our learning.
They were inspired by God,
but very,
specifically
not dictated by God.
The notion being that this actually creates a
great deal of difficulty,
but that the voice, the spirit of God
can enter in through the difficulty because we're
wrestling with texts
that we can never say were simply dictated
by the mouth of God to a human
being to put down on paper.
But rather a human being was inspired by
the spirit of God,
and therefore, the writing needs to be wrestled
with
on so many levels, including the level of
linguistic translations
between different languages and different eras of human
history.
That's probably not a very satisfying answer to
your question, but I think it's the one
that that is most faithful
to the Christian understanding of the scriptures and
that gap you're speaking of between the Koine
Greek
and the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken.
Now in terms of the Trinity,
it is the virgin birth, a point upon
which
doctor Atay has said Christianity and Islam can
agree.
That is really the linchpin
in the issue that you bring up.
So the notion that Jesus had no human
father,
is what has historically given Christians the belief
that therefore
he is truly in a very visceral sense
the combination between his humanity which he receives
from Mary
and his divinity which he receives from the
spirit that impregnates her.
I
I hope I give no offense to saying
that because I realize that this is a
troubling idea and and a major point of
division between,
the Abrahamic faiths. But but this is certainly
why Christianity would elevate
Jesus,
and understand him on a completely different plane
from Adam and Moses.
Yeah.
As far as the the notion I'm glad
that you brought this up,
I'm sorry,
sorry, mala or whatever,
the mala, sorry.
But yes, messiah means the anointed one which
in the old testament
meant like they anointed priests and kings
and prophets,
but it was it was there were, you
know, prophecies throughout the Old Testament
about the
Mashi, right? The Messiah, the Christ,
And so
Christ Jesus Christ, Esau Masih, met that,
because just like the angel Gabriel
told Mariam, and this is in Luke,
when he said that you're gonna have a
son, give him the name Yeshua,
which actually means
God saves.
So that name actually was chosen by God,
and he had the angel Jibreel tell her
name him Yeshua,
and that's when, the reverend
mentioned that actually the angel, another angel appeared
to his her fiance Joseph saying give him
the name Yeshua because he will save his
people
from their sins. His name means God saves.
Anyways,
but the Jibreel, angel Jibreel also told Mariam
that he I was gonna read this, this
is in Luke, that he will be,
like he's in the,
where is it? He will be great and
will be called the Son of the Most
High. The Lord God will give him the
throne of his father David, father meaning ancestor,
right? Because he was a descendant of Daoud,
Hasidat, you know, Sayyidna or whatever,
prophet Daoud who was shepherd who became a
king,
and God had given a promise
to David that he would give him,
you know, one of his descendants would be
king forever.
But And then the angel Jibreel went on
to say to Mariam, and he will reign
over Jacob's descendants forever.
His kingdom will never end. So that's that
prophecy
that God had given
Prophet
Daoud, you know, David when he was a
king about and this is coming true. So
that that part of about Masih being
a descendant of David
because he was both on Mary's side,
he was a son she was a descendant
of David and Nathan, his son Nathan. And
then from,
Joseph's side,
his so Joseph was Jesus' stepfather,
so legally he was a father,
I mean, and, you know, because he was
a stepfather.
So on that so both from his stepfather
and his father and his mother, a descendant
of David, so the king.
And so we believe he will come back
to be, but now he's our spiritual king,
but he will come back to be king.
But also
the prophet, but then more than a prophet,
but like God had told prophet Musa in
Deuteronomy as you quoted,
in the Torah,
one among your brothers.
So he was prophet, but then as for
more than a prophet for us too.
And then,
the so the king and then the prophet
and then the priest
because he was the high priest. And and
like in the when God gave the law
to Prophet Musa on the mountain, the Torah,
right, the shariat,
that God told Prophet Musa that they had
to present
sacrifices.
And it was the priest actually that would
be kind of the go between
between God
and man.
So they would,
do the they would teach, they would do
the prayers to intercede,
but also accept those sacrifices.
And then the high priest is the one
that went went into the most holier places
once a year,
this is in Leviticus 16,
to take the blood of a lamb, well,
as of a goat,
and to put over the mercy seat which
covered the Ark of the Covenant.
That represented
God's throne. That represented, right, obviously, and that
was behind the parda
behind the curtain
that the high priest went in. And so
Hebrews alludes to because we know that when
Jesus died and Jesus' death is actually in
Josephus,
who was a Jewish historian
and then Tacitus who was a Roman historian,
there's in their writings about Jesus' death.
So there is this in non Christian,
you know, history
that Jesus died.
But,
when Jesus died
according to the book of the gospel of
Matthew,
I think it was gospel of Matthew, anyways,
one of the gospels,
that
the
that thick curtain that went into the holy
of holies
tore from top to bottom.
To tear from top to bottom
had to be God. That that way was
opened up for us to come into God's
presence because of Jesus' death.
And then 3 days later,
as he had himself said,
Esa Masih said to his disciples,
they're gonna kill me but on the 3rd
day I'm gonna come back to life. That's
exactly what happened.
And it was prophesied in Isaiah
700 years before,
you know, Esau was on this earth. It
was prophesied that he was gonna die. This
is Isaiah 53,
that there was one that was gonna come
and that he, in fact I'll quote, he
was pierced for our transgressions.
The punishment that brought us peace was on
him. By his wounds we are healed. After
he has suffered he will see the light
of life because he poured out his life
unto death. He bore the sin of many
and made intercession
for the transgressors.
So we do see here about a death
for the sin of others,
But God was giving pictures of this
throughout the whole Old Testament and then the
law of how
animals had to die,
but that was all pointing to Jesus for
forgiveness of sins.
Thank you.
And,
Prophet Yahya, John the Baptist,
when he saw Isa Masih
he said, He is the lamb of God,
meaning the one that Allah sent from heaven
to be the Korbani
or Qurban
and the kafada and the sadaqa for us.
Thank you.
Thank you both for the discussion tonight and
for bringing us all together. I think it's
a really important time in the world for
that.
I'm confused
about why it's important,
in the different religions to prove if Jesus
died
physically
or spiritually
or
at all,
And
why it's important,
you know, to
like, language is deceptive. Anybody who's learned another
language knows that. Right? There's many interpretations.
Who knows? But
but what does seem to be true is
that Jesus
was here. He struggled.
He was betrayed.
He he
he had to go through many, many trials
in order to bring a message. And the
message that he brought to the world was
generally a positive one that that
ultimately changed the world
and opened up the world to be able
to hear from other prophets and other religions
that are truth. Right? And so I have
just really always been confused why it's important
to establish whether or not he died, You
know? And
and,
you know, whether or not literally Mary was,
you know, you know, impregnated
by God or
if Jesus came under very extraordinary circumstances that
in another day would have had Mary
ostracized and probably killed, and we would have
never known Jesus, and maybe that's the miracle.
I don't know. We weren't there. Nobody knows.
So I'm just I've always been confused why
it's important to establish that
rather than to establish
the importance of, you know, the message
that he brought and what he opened up
for for Mohammed and
the other religions to be able to tell
us.
And either for either one who might wanna
comment on that. And then and then I'd
like to hear hear your perspective.
Let me couch this by saying this perspective
is arguably more personal than me representing Christianity
or the church. But on a personal level,
I would say
it depends entirely what you mean by the
word important.
I did not come here to try to
win a court case against Doctor. Atay and
I don't I I don't think the reverse
holds true either. I don't believe it's important
to hold
the argument in that spirit. We are certainly,
I think there is plenty of room in
human and religious discourse
for attempts at argument and convincement, but to
try to obliterate one another,
we've had
millennia of that. It hasn't worked. It never
will. That's not the point.
It is, however, important
in that the fundamental
question of
how do we as human beings live according
to God's will
is as old as humanity
itself.
We have this unmistakable
sense that there is such a thing as
God's will,
and the best parts of ourselves
desire to live according to it.
Any attempt we make
to give oversimplified
answers to that questions, answers that say, well,
all our religions are basically the same and
let's boil it down to the simplest of
precepts that we can all agree on. You
know, we can all agree on love God,
love neighbor.
Right? Absolutely.
The trouble is what on earth do we
mean by that?
The moment we put that to the test,
we come up with as many different answers
as there are human beings to answer the
question.
We always have to go deeper. We always
have to lean into the pain. We have
to lean into the controversies. We have to
lean into the disagreements.
We may never fully resolve them, but we
can't absolve ourselves
of the responsibility
to do so.
That's what makes it important.
Thank you.
Thank you, Reverend. Very good.
Very beautifully said.
I would say that, yeah, I would agree
with you that this is,
my understanding of Islam is the focus
is on the message of Christ rather than
the significance of his death.
Right?
That
our contention as Muslims is that Jesus, in
a sense, was a Muslim. He was a
submitter unto God's will,
and that his teaching should be center stage.
Right?
So this is why Muslims disagree with the
Pauline
corpus, because Paul very rarely mentions anything about
the life of the historical Jesus. He rarely
quotes him, if ever. Maybe once or twice
he quotes him.
Everything is the passion the passion.
So the Quran is interesting. The Quran denies
the crucifixion. Now
if the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
is the author of the Quran, doesn't seem
like a very smart thing to do, because
Jews and Christians, everyone believes he was crucified.
So why would he say he's not crucified
and create the stumbling block for for conversion?
Well, the answer is Jesus simply wasn't crucified,
right, that the author of the Quran has,
direct access to history. And so it's telling
us the truth that he was not. So
the Quran wants us to think about this.
The Quran is telling us
that these things are based on conjecture.
So I encourage people to, you know, to,
engage in study. Look at look at the
history of the gospels. Look at the history
of the Pauline corpus. Look at what's going
on in the Greco Roman world at the
time,
and and,
and analyze this more sort of academically to
get to the truth. The Quran says one
of the great
prayers in the Quran that Muslims make is,
rabizidni alma. Oh my Lord, increase me in
knowledge.
Right? And always keep an open mind, open
heart.
Right? So if something is more correct to
me than Islam, I will adopt it.
Readily, I'll adopt it. You know, I'm I'm
an Iranian Sunni.
You know, I'm a rare breed. I can
read Hebrew.
I love chicken tikka masala.
If something is good, I'll take it.
You know, I'm open to it.
So
that's what I would say. Be in the
pursuit of truth.
Constantly seek the truth.
Right? So to to the sister in the
back, I appreciate your comment.
I disagree with a lot of what you
said,
but I just
want to, you know, give you the,
the motivation to keep searching for truth.
Right? I'll keep searching, you keep searching. And
maybe we can have a better exchange, at
some point, but we're out of time.
I'm getting the I'm getting the time out
here. Thank you so much, doctor Ali Atais,
Reverend Amdi. Thank you to everyone for joining.
Our Isha prayer time is about to start.
And I just wanna say, you know, the
interfaith events are a great opportunity for us
to learn from each other. So I want
us to you know, I wanna really thank
you for coming with open hearts and open
minds. This is not a place for us
to convince convince each other. It's a time
to learn about each other and grow from
that.
So thank you so much.