The True Message Of Jesus

 THE TRUE MESSAGE OF JESUS

 BY

DR. BILAL
PHILIPS

(St.
David’s College,
University of Wales,U.K.)

 

 
INTRODUCTION

 Jesus
Christ represents the common link between the two religions having the
most followers on the earth today, Christianity and Islam. The
following study of Jesus’ message and his person is based on this link.  It is hoped that through this study, both
Muslims and Christians will better understand the significance of Jesus
and the importance of his message.

           
However, for us to accurately identify the true message of
Jesus Christ, an objective point of view must be maintained throughout
the course of our research. We should not allow our emotions to cloud
our vision and thereby blind us from the truth.  We
must look at all of the issues rationally and separate the truth from
falsehood—with the help of the Almighty.

           
When we look at the variety of false religions and deviant
beliefs around the world and the zeal with which their followers uphold
these beliefs, it becomes quite evident that these people are not able
to find the truth because of their blind commitment to their beliefs.  Their tenacious adherence is usually not based
on an intellectual understanding of the teachings, but on powerful
cultural and emotional influences. Because they were brought up in a
particular family or society, they firmly cling to the beliefs of that
society, believing that they are upholding the truth.

           
The only way that we may find the truth about anything is
to approach it systematically and logically.  First,
we weigh the evidence and then we judge it by the intelligence which
God has given us.  In the material world,
it is fundamentally intelligence that distinguishes humans from
animals, which act purely on instinct.  After
determining what the objective truth is, we must then commit ourselves
to it emotionally. Yes, there is a place for emotional commitment, but
emotional commitment must come after a reasoned comprehension of the
issues. Emotional commitment is essential, because it is evidence of a
true understanding. When one fully and properly understands the reality
of the issue, one is then mentally and spiritually prepared to
vigorously uphold that reality.

           
It is from this intellectual and spiritual point of view
that the subject of Jesus’ message and his relevance to those who
desire to follow God will be analyzed in the following pages.

 

Dr. Bilal Philips

Saudi
Arabia, 1989

 

 CHAPTER
ONE:
 

THE SCRIPTURES

 

The topic ‘The True Message of Jesus Christ’
is comprised of two basic parts: 1.The Message and 2.The
Person of Jesus Christ.  Each one is
inseparable from the other.  In order to
understand Jesus’ message, we must know who he was. 
However, for us to understand who he was, it is also
necessary to identify and comprehend his message.

           
There are two possible avenues which may be taken to look
into the identity of Jesus Christ and the content of his message.  One is based on the historical record compiled
by modern historians from the writings and relics of that period and
the other is based on the reports contained in the revealed Scriptures. 

           
In reality, there is very little historical evidence
available to inform us about who Jesus Christ was or to determine what
his message was.  The official historical
documents of that time contain virtually no record of Jesus. A biblical
scholar, R.T. France, writes, “No 1st century inscription mentions him
and no object or building has survived which has a specific link to
him.”[1] 
This fact has
even led some Western historians to mistakenly claim that Jesus Christ
never actually existed.  Therefore,
research has to be primarily based on the scriptures which address the
person and the mission of Jesus Christ.  The
scriptures in question are those officially recognized by both
Christianity and Islam.  However, to
accurately analyze the information contained in these religious texts,
it is essential to first determine their validity. 
Are they reliable sources of documentary evidence, or
humanly concocted tales and myths, or a mixture of both? Are the
Bible’s Old and New Testaments divinely revealed scriptures?  Is the Qur’aan (Koran) authentic?

           
For the Bible and the Qur’aan to be the divine word of
God, they must be free from inexplicable contradictions, and there
should be no doubt about their content nor about their authors. If this
is the case, the material contained in the Old and New Testaments and
the Qur’aan can then be considered reliable sources of information
concerning the message and the person of Jesus Christ.

 

Authentic Manuscripts

           
It has been documented by many scholars from various
branches and sects of Christianity that much of the material in the
Bible is of doubtful authenticity. 

           
In the preface of The Myth of God Incarnate, the
editor wrote the following: “In the nineteenth century, Western
Christianity made two major new adjustments in response to important
enlargements of human knowledge: it accepted that man is a part of
nature and has emerged within the evolution of the forms of life on
this earth; and it accepted that the books of the Bible were
written by a variety of human beings in a variety of circumstances, and
cannot be accorded a verbal divine authority.”[2]

           
In the international news magazine, Newsweek[3], which
carried an article entitled ‘O
Lord, Who Wrote Thy Prayer?’, a group of  theologians
from the major Protestant sects, along with noted Roman Catholic
Biblical scholars in the United States, after a detailed examination of
the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, concluded that the only
words of the “Lord’s prayer”[4]
that can be accurately attributed to Jesus
Christ is “father”.  That is, according to
these learned church scholars, all the words that came after the
beginning phrase, “Our father”, of the most fundamental Christian
prayer, were added centuries later by church scribes who copied the
early manuscripts of the Gospels[5].
U.S. News & World Report, further
quotes the team of scholars as saying that over 80 percent of the
words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels may be apocryphal[6]. That includes Jesus’ Eucharistic[7] speech at the
Last Supper (“Take, eat. This is  my body
...”) and every word he is said to
have uttered from the cross.[8]

           
Dr. J.K. Elliott, of the Department of Theology and
Religious Studies at Leeds University, wrote an article published in The
Times, London  (10th Sept., 1987)
entitled “Checking the Bible’s Roots”. In it, he stated that: “More
than 5,000 manuscripts contain all or part of the New Testament in its
original language.  These range in date
from the second century up to the invention of printing. It has been
estimated that no two agree in all particulars. Inevitably, all
handwritten documents are liable to contain accidental errors in
copying. However, in living theological works it is not surprising that
deliberate changes were introduced to avoid or alter statements that
the copyist found unsound. There was also a tendency for copyists to
add explanatory glosses[9].  Deliberate
changes are more likely to have been introduced at an early stage
before the canonical status of the New Testament was established.”

           
The author went on to explain that “no one manuscript
contains the original, unaltered text in its entirety,” and that, “one
cannot select any one of these manuscripts and rely exclusively on its
text as if it contained the monopoly the original words of the original
authors.” 

           
He further said: “If one further argues that the original
text has survived somewhere among the thousands of extant[10] manuscripts,
then one is forced to read all
these manuscripts, to assemble the differences between them in a
systematic way, and then to assess, variant by variant, which
manuscripts have the original [text] and which the secondary text. Such
a prospect has daunted[11]
many biblical scholars who have been content
to rely on the printed texts of earlier ages, in which the evidence of
only a few favored manuscripts were used. Even many recent printed
editions of the Greek New Testament, and modern translations based on
these, usually follow this practice of building their text on a narrow
base that is unlikely to be entirely original.”

 

Versions
of the English Bible

           
In the preface of the most widely used version of the
Bible, the Revised Standard Version, the authors wrote the
following:

           
“The Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an
authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published
in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version,
published in 1611... 

           
“The King James Version had to compete with the Geneva
Bible (1560) in popular use; but in the end it prevailed, and for
more than two and a half centuries no other authorized translation of
the Bible into English was made.  The
King James Version became the “Authorized Version” of the
English-speaking peoples...Yet the King James Version has
grave defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the
development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts
more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was
based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so
serious as to call for revision of the English translation.  The task was undertaken, by authority of the
Church of England, in 1870.  The English
Revised Version of the Bible was published in 1881-1885; and the American
Standard Version, its variant embodying the preferences of the
American scholars associated in the work, was published in 1901.”[12]

           
“The King James Version of the New Testament was
based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the
accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying.  It was essentially the Greek text of the New
Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published
by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts.  The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts
which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he
made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly
received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value,
dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little
use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus.”[13]

           
“...The American Standard Version was
copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes.  In 1928 this copyright was acquired by the
International Council of Religious Education, and thus passed into the
ownership of the churches of the United States and Canada which were
associated in this Council through their boards of education and
publication. The Council appointed a committee of scholars to have
charge of the text of the American Standard Version and to
undertake inquiry as to whether further revision was necessary...  [After two years] the decision was reached
that there is need for a thorough revision of the version of 1901,
which will stay as close to the Tyndale-King James tradition as
it can...In 1937 the revision was authorized by vote of the Council.”[14]

           
“Thirty-two scholars have served as members of the
Committee charged with making the revision, and they have secured the
review and counsel of an Advisory Board of fifty representatives of the
co-operating denominations...The Revised Standard Version of
the New Testament was published in 1946.”[15]  “The Revised
Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New
Testaments, was published on September 30, 1952, and has met with wide
acceptance.”[16]

           
In the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, a
number of key verses from the King James Version of the Old
and the New Testaments, which Biblical scholars concluded were added in
later centuries, were removed from the text and placed in the
footnotes. For example, the famous passage in the Gospel of
John 8.7 about an adulteress who was about to be stoned. 
Jesus was supposed to have said: “Let him who is
without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The
footnotes of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1952)
state “The most ancient authorities omit 7.53-8.11”.[17] Since the Vatican manuscript no. 1209 and the
Sinaitic manuscript codex from the 4th century do not contain these
twelve verses, Biblical scholars have concluded that these words cannot
be attributed to Jesus.  Another example is
the passage attributed to Jesus and used as evidence of reference to
the Trinity in the Scriptures. In 1 John 5.7, Jesus was supposed to
have said: “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”[18] The well-known
Biblical scholar, Benjamin
Wilson, writes that this text concerning the “heavenly witness” is not
contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the
15th century! Consequently, in the Revised Standard Version, this
verse was deleted from the text without even so much as a footnote.
However, in order to keep the total number of verses in the Revised
Standard Version the same as that of the King James Version, the
revisers split verse 6 into two verses.

           
The Second Edition of the translation of the New Testament
(1971) profited from textual and linguistic studies published since the
Revised Standard Version New Testament was first issued
in 1946.[19] Consequently,
some previously deleted
passages were reinstated, and some accepted passages were deleted. “Two
passages, the longer ending of Mark (16.9-20) and the account of the
woman caught in adultery (John 7.53-8.11), were restored to the text,
separated from it by a blank space and accompanied by informative
notes...With new manuscript support, two passages, Luke 22.19b-20 and
24.51b, were restored to the text, and one passage, Luke 22.43-44, was
placed in the footnotes, as was a phrase in Luke 12.39.”[20]

 

Authorship

           
According to Biblical scholars, even the authorship of the
Old Testament books and the Gospels themselves is in doubt.

Torah

           
The first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch)[21] are
traditionally attributed to Prophet Moses,[22] however, there are many verses within these
books which indicate that Prophet Moses could not possibly have written
everything in them.  For example,
Deuteronomy 34.5-8 states: “5 So Moses the servant of the
Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the
Lord, 6 and he buried him in the valley of the
land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows the place of his
burial to this day.  7 Moses
was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not
dim, nor his natural force abated.  8
And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of
Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses ended.”  It is quite obvious that someone else wrote
these verses about Prophet Moses’ death.

Some Christian scholars have explained these
discrepancies by suggesting that Moses had written his books, but that
later prophets, as well as inspired scribes, had made the additions
previously mentioned. Consequently, according to them, the text, in its
entirety, remained an inspired scripture of God. However, this
explanation did not stand up to scrutiny, because the style and
literary characteristics of the
interpolated verses are the same as the remainder of the text.

           
In the 19th century, Christian Bible scholars began to
debate the meaning of “doublets” that appeared in the Torah. These are
stories which appear twice, each time with different details. Among
these are the two versions of the creation of the world, of the
covenant between God and Abraham, of God changing Jacob’s name to
Israel and of Moses getting water from a rock.[23] 

           
Defenders of Moses’ authorship said that the doublets were
not contradictory, but instructive. Their intent was to teach us about
the deeper, subtler meanings of the Torah. However, this claim was soon
brushed aside by open-minded scholars who noted that, not only were
some accounts clearly contradictory, but also that when the doublets
were separated into two separate accounts, each account consistently
used a different name for God.  One would
always refer to God as Yahweh / Jehovah, This document was
called “J”.  The other always referred to
God as Elohim, and was called “E”.[24]  There were
various other literary characteristics found to be common to one
document or the other.  Modern linguistic
analyses, according to Professor Richard Friedman,[25] indicate that the five books of Moses are a
mixture of Hebrew from the ninth, eighth, seventh and sixth centuries
B.C. Therefore, Moses, who was alive in the 13th century B.C., was
further away from the Hebrew of the Bible than Shakespeare was from the
English of today.

           
Further study of the Pentateuch led to the discovery that
it was not made up of two major sources but of four. 
It was discovered that some stories were not only doublets
but triplets. Additional literary characteristics were identified for
these documents.  The third source was
called “P” (for priestly), and the fourth called “D” (for Deuteronomy).[26]

           
The extent to which less obvious additions were made to
the original text is very difficult to determine.  Consequently,
a great shadow of doubt has been cast on the authorship of the books as
a whole.

           
In the appendix of the Revised Standard Version
entitled “Books of the Bible,” the following is written concerning the
authorship of over one third of the remaining books of the Old
Testament:

 

Books	Authors
Judges	Possibly Samuel
Ruth	Perhaps Samuel
First Samuel	Unknown
Second Samuel	Unknown
First Kings	Unknown
Second Kings	Unknown
First Chronicles	Unknown
Esther	Unknown
Job	Unknown
Ecclesiastes	Doubtful
Jonah	Unknown
Malachi	Nothing known

Apocrypha

           
More than half of the world’s Christians are Roman
Catholics. Their version of the Bible was published in 1582 from
Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, and reproduced at Douay in 1609. 
The Old Testament of the RCV (Roman Catholic Version)
contains seven more books than the King James Version recognized
by the Protestant world.  The extra books
are referred to as the apocrypha (i.e., of doubtful authority)
and were removed from the Bible in 1611 by Protestant Bible scholars.

 

The Gospels

           
Aramaic was the spoken language of the Jews of Palestine.  Consequently, it is believed that Jesus and
his disciples spoke and taught in Aramaic.[27]  “The earliest
oral tradition of Jesus’ deeds and sayings undoubtedly circulated in
Aramaic.  However, the four Gospels were
written in an entirely different speech, common Greek, the spoken
language of the civilized Mediterranean world, to serve the majority of
the Church, which was becoming Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) instead of
Palestinian.  Traces of Aramaic survive in
the Greek Gospels.  For example, in Mark
5:41, “Taking her by the hand he said to her, ‘Tal’itha cu’mi’;
which means ’Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ ” and Mark 15:34, “And
at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘E’lo-i, E’lo-i,
la’ma sabachtha’ni?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?’ ”[28]

           
The New Testament Gospel of Mark, though considered by
Church scholars to be the oldest of the Gospels, was not written by a
disciple of Jesus.  Biblical scholars
concluded, based on the evidence contained in the Gospel, that Mark
himself was not a disciple of Jesus.  Furthermore,
according to them, it is not even certain who Mark really was. The
ancient Christian author, Eusebius (325 C.E.), reported that another
ancient author, Papias (130 C.E.), was the first to attribute the
Gospel to John Mark, a companion of Paul.[29] Others suggested that he may have been the
scribe of Peter and yet others hold that he was probably someone else. 

           
The same is the case with the other Gospels. 
Although Matthew, Luke and John are the names of disciples
of Jesus, the authors of the Gospels bearing their names were not those
famous disciples, but other individuals who used the disciples’ names
to give their accounts credibility. In fact, all the Gospels originally circulated anonymously.
Authoritative names were later assigned to them by unknown figures in
the early church.[30]

 

Books	Authors
Gospel of Matthew	Unknown[31]
Gospel of Mark	Unknown[32]
Gospel of Luke	Unknown[33]
Gospel of John	Unknown[34]
Acts	The author of Luke[35]
I, II, III John	The author of John[36]

J.B. Phillips, a prebendary[37] of the Chichester Cathedral, the Anglican
Church of England, wrote the following preface for his translation of
the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Early tradition ascribed this
Gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject
this view.  The author, whom we can
conveniently call Matthew, has plainly drawn on the mysterious “Q”,[38] which may have
been a collection of oral
traditions. He has used Mark’s Gospel freely, though he has rearranged
the order of events and has in several instances used different words
for what is plainly the same story.”[39]  The Fourth
Gospel (John) was opposed as heretical in the early church, and it
knows none of the stories associated with John, son of Zebedee.[40] In the judgement
of many scholars, it was
produced by a “school” of disciples, probably in Syria in the last
decade of the first century.[41]

 

Contradictions

 
Evidence for the unreliability of much of the material in
the Bible can also be found in the many contradictions in the texts of
the Old and New Testaments.  The following
are only a few examples:

 

The Old
Testament

1. The authors of Samuel and Chronicles
relate the same story about Prophet David taking a census of the Jews.  However, in 2nd Samuel, it states that Prophet
David acted on God’s instructions, while in 1st Chronicles, he
acted on Satan’s instructions.

 

II SAMUEL 24 The Numbering And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”

I CHRONICLES 21 The Numbering And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

 

2. In describing the length of a plague
prophesied by Gad[42], the author of
2nd Samuel listed it as seven
years, while the author of 1st Chronicles listed it as three
years.

 

II SAMUEL 24:13 The Plague So Gad came to David and told him, and said unto him, “Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee?”

I CHRONICLES 21:11 The Plague 11 So Gad came to David, and said unto him, “Thus saith the Lord, ‘Choose thee 12 Either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee;’ “

3. In 2nd Chronicles, Jehoiachin was
described as being eight years old when he began to reign,
while in 2nd Kings he is described as being eighteen years old.

 

II CHRONICLES 36:9 The Age Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.

II KINGS 24:8 The Age Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

 

4. The author of 2nd Samuel described the
number of Syrians who died during a battle with Prophet David as being seven
hundred, while the author of 1st Chronicles gave their number as seven
thousand.

 

II SAMUEL 10:18 The Dead And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there.

I CHRONICLES 19:18 The Dead But the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of the Syrians seven thousand men which fought in chariots, and forty thousand footmen, and killed Shophach the captain of the host.

Although some may say that the adding or
dropping of a ‘1’ or a zero is not significant, as it is only a copying
mistake, here that is not the case because the Jews spelled out their
numbers in words and did not use numerals.

           
Such descrepancies cannot be accepted as part of a
divinely revealed text.  Moreover, they
prove the fallability of the human authors and further prove that the
texts of the Old Testament were not divinely preserved.  

 

The
New Testament

In the New Testament many similar
contradictions may also be found.  The
following are but a few:

 

1.The Gospel accounts vary regarding who
carried the cross on which Jesus was supposed to have been crucified.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, it was Simon of
Cyrene, and in John, it was Jesus.

 

LUKE, 23:26[43] The Cross As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it...

JOHN, 19:16 The Cross Then he (Pilate) handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross himself, he went to what is called the Place of the Skull, ...

 

2. After Jesus’ “crucifixion”, the Gospel
accounts differ as to who visited his tomb, when the visit took place,
as well as the state of the tomb when it was visited. 
The Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John state that the visit
took place before sunrise, while the Gospel of Mark states that
it was after sunrise.  In another
three Gospels (Mark, Luke and John) the women found the stone door of
the tomb rolled away, but in one (Matthew) the tomb was closed until an
angel descended before them and rolled it away.

 

MARK, 16:1-2 The Visit And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen

JOHN, 20:1[44] The Visit Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

MATTHEW, 28:1-2 The Visit Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre. 2And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.

 

3. The New Testament accounts vary regarding
the fate of Judas Iscariot and the money he received for betraying
Jesus. In Matthew, he hung himself, while in Acts, he fell in a field
and died there.

 

 

MATTHEW, 27:3-6 The Fate of Judas When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, ...And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.

ACTS, 1:18 The Fate of Judas Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.

 

4. When the genealogy of Jesus from David in
Matthew 1:6-16, is compared to that of Luke 3:23-31, there are major
discrepancies.  Firstly, Jesus in Matthew
has 26 parents between himself and David, but in Luke he has 41.  Secondly, the names in both lists vary
radically after David, and only two names are the same: Joseph, and
Zorobabel. Both lists start off with Joseph, strangely enough, as
the father of Jesus, but in Matthew, the author records Jesus’
paternal grandfather as being Jacob, while in Luke he is Heli.  If one were to accept the suggestion of some
that one of the lists is actually the genealogy of Mary, it could not
possibly account for any differences after their common ancestor David.  Both lists meet again at Abraham and between
David and Abraham most of the names are the same. However, in Matthew’s
list, Hezron’s son’s name is Ram, the father of Ammin’adab,
while in Luke’s list, Hezron’s son’s name is Arni, whose son’s
name is Admin, the father of Ammin’adab.[45]  Consequently,
between David and Abraham there are 12 forefathers in Matthew’s list
and 13 in Luke’s list. 

           
These discrepancies and many others like them in the
Gospels are clearly errors that cast a shadow of doubt on their
authenticity as divinely revealed texts.  Consequently,
most Christian scholars today look at the Old and New Testament books
as human accounts which they believe were inspired by God. However,
even the claim that they were inspired by God is questionable as it
implies that God inspired the authors to write mistakes and
contradictions in His scriptures.

           
Having established that the authenticity of both the New
and the Old Testament is questionable, it can then be said with
certainty that the Bible cannot be used by itself as an authentic
reference source for establishing who Jesus was, nor the content of his
message.

 

The
Qur’aan

           
On the other hand, the Qur‘aan—believed by Muslims to be
the word of God revealed to Prophet Muhammad(e)—was written down and memorized, from
beginning to end, during the lifetime of the Prophet himself.

           
Within a year after his death, the first standard written
text was produced.[46] 
And within 14
years after his death, authorized copies (the ‘Uthmanic Text) made from
the standard codex[47] were sent to the
capitals of the Muslim
state, and unauthorized copies were destroyed.[48] 

Since the Prophet’s death in 632 CE, an
increasing number of people in each successive generation have
memorized the complete text of the Qur’aan from beginning to end. Today
there exist tens of thousands of people around the world who recite the
whole text, from memory, during the month of Ramadaan every
year, as well as on other occasions.

           
One of the leading orientalists, Kenneth Cragg, said the
following regarding the memorization and preservation of the Qur’aanic
text, “This phenomenon of Qur’anic recital means that the text has
traversed the centuries in an unbroken living sequence of devotion. It
cannot, therefore, be handled as an antiquarian thing, nor as a
historical document out of a distant past.”[49]  Another
orientalist scholar, William Graham, wrote: “For countless millions of
Muslims over more than fourteen centuries of Islamic history,
‘scripture’, al-kitab has been a book learned, read and passed
on by vocal repetition and memorization. The written Qur’an may ‘fix’
visibly the authoritative text of the Divine Word in a way unknown in
history, but the authoritativeness of the Qur’anic book is only
realized in its fullness and perfection when it is correctly recited.”[50] Yet another,
John Burton, stated: “The method
of transmitting the Qur’an from one generation to the next by having
the young memorize the oral tradition of their elders had mitigated
somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on
written records...”[51] At the end of a
voluminous work on the
Qur’aan’s collection, Burton stated that the text of the Qur’aan
available today is “the text which has come down to us in the form in
which it was organised and approved by the Prophet...What we have today
in our hands is the mushaf[52]
of Muhammad.”[53]

 

Scriptural
Criticism      

           
The same principles of analysis which were applied to
Bible manuscripts by Bible scholars and which exposed the flaws and
changes, have been applied to Qur’aanic manuscripts gathered from
around the world. Ancient manuscripts found in the Library of Congress
in Washington, the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin, Ireland, the London
Museum, as well as Museums in Tashkent, Turkey and Egypt, from all
periods of Islamic history, have been compared. The result of all such
studies confirm that there has not been any change in the text from its
original writing. For example, the “Institute fur Koranforschung”
of the University of Munich, Germany, collected and collated over
42,000 complete or incomplete copies of the Qur’aan. After some fifty
years of study, they reported that in terms of differences between the
various copies, there were no variants, except occasional mistakes of
copyists, which could easily be ascertained.  The
institute was destroyed by American bombs during the Second World War.[54]

 

Contradictions
in the Qur’aan

           
The Qur’aan remains in itoriginal language, Arabic, and
the Qur’aan challenges its readers in Chapter an-Nisaa, (4):82, to find
any errors in it, if they do not believe it is really from God.

 

} أَفَلاَ يَتَدَبَّرُونَ الْقُرْآنَ وَلَوْ كَانَ مِنْ
عِنْدِ غَيْرِ اللَّهِ

لَوَجَدُوا
فِيهِ اخْتِلاَفًا كَثِيرًا {

“Will
they not consider the
Qur’aan carefully?  Had it been from other
than Allaah, they would have found many contradictions in it.”

 

The few
“apparent contradictions” commonly mentioned by those who attempt to
reduce the Qur’aan to the level of the Bible are easily explained.  For example, the “first believer” in the
following two verses:

 

Chapter al An‘aam (6):14   “Say (O Muhammad): ‘Shall I adopt as my lord someone other than Allaah, Creator of the heavens and earth, though it is He who feeds but is not fed?’  Say: ‘Indeed I am commanded to be the first of those who submit themselves (to Allaah), and not to be among the idolators.’ ”

Chapter al-A‘raaf (7):143   “...But when his Lord appeared to the mountain, it crumbled to dust, and Moses fell down unconscious.  When he regained consciousness, he said, ‘Glory be to You, I turn to you in repentance and I am the first of the believers.’ ”

 

The earlier verse refers to Prophet Muhammad,
who was told to inform the pagans of his time that he could never
accept their idolatry and would be the first of those in his time to
submit to Allaah. In the second verse, Prophet Moses declares himself
among the first in his time to submit to Allaah upon realizing that it
was impossible to see Allaah.  Each prophet
was the first in his own era to submit to Allaah.

           
Similarly, the “day with God” mentioned in the following
two verses:

 

Chapter as-Sajdah (32):5   “He arranges (every) affair from the heavens to the earth, then it goes up to Him, in a day equivalent to a thousand years according to your reckoning.”

Chapter al-Mi‘raaj (70):4   “The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day equivalent to fifty thousand years.”

 

The two verses refer to two completely
different events. The first refers to the destiny that is sent down and
reported back in a day governing a thousand years of human life.[55] The second
refers to the ascent of the angels
from the world to the highest of the heavens, which for them takes a
day equivalent to 50,000 human years.[56]
Allaah is not governed by time. He created
time and made it relative to the creatures it governs. 
Consequently, according to the calculation of modern
scientists, one year on Mars is equivalent to 687 earth days, while one
year on Uranus is equal to 84 earth years.[57]

           
The Qur’aanic text is remarkably consistent in its thought
and presentation. In the preface of one of the best orientalist
translations of the Qur’aan, the translator, Arthur John Arberry,
writes: “There is a repertory of familiar themes running through the
whole Koran; each Sura[58]
elaborates or adumbrates[59]
one or more—often many—of these. 
Using the language of music, each Sura is a rhapsody
composed of whole or fragmentary leitmotivs;[60] the analogy is reinforced by the subtly
varied rhythmical flow of the discourse.”[61]

           
Scientific references in the Qur’aanic text have proven to
be consistently and inexplicibly accurate.  In
a lecture given at the French Academy of Medicine, in 1976, entitled
“Physiological and Embryological Data in the Qur’an”, Dr. Maurice
Bucaille said, “There is no human work in existence that contains
statements as far beyond the level of knowledge of its time as the
Qur’an.  Scientific opinions comparable to
those in the Qur’an are the result of modern knowledge.”[62]

           
Speaking about the authority of the Qur’aan, Professor
Reynold A. Nicholson said, “We have [in the Koran] materials of unique
and incontestable authority for tracing the origin and early
development of Islam, such materials as do not exist in the case of
Buddhism or Christianity or any other ancient religion.”[63]

           
Consequently, it is only the Qur’aan that represents an
accurate means of determining who Jesus was and what his message was.
Moreover, the Qur’aan can also be used to determine to what degree some
of the revealed word of God exists within the Bible.

           
In the Qur’aan, God commands the believers to accept, as a
part of their faith, the divine word revealed to Prophet Moses, known
as the Torah; to Prophet David in the original Psalms; and to Jesus in
the original Gospel. All Muslims are obliged to believe in all of the
revealed scriptures.  However, as stated in
the Qur’aan, all scriptures revealed before the Qur’aan have not
remained as they were revealed. People changed parts of them to suit
their own desires.

 

}
فَوَيْلٌ لِّلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ الْكِتَابَ بِأَيْدِيهِمْ ثُمَّ
يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ عِنْدِ اللهِ لِيَشْتَرُوا بِهِ ثَمَنًا قَلِيلاّ
فَوَيْلٌ لَّهُمْ مِّمَّا كَتَبَتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَوَيْلٌ لَّهُمْ مَّمَّا
يَكْسِبُونَ {

“Woe to
those who write the scripture with their own hands and then say: ‘This
is from Allaah,’ to purchase with it [worldly gain] at a cheap price.  Woe to them for what their hands have written
and woe to them for what they earned by doing it.”   
Qur’aan,
(2):79

 

Furthermore, in the Old Testament, God is
quoted in Jeremiah 8:8 as saying, “How can you say, ‘We are wise,
and the law is with us’?  But,
behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.”[64]

 

CHAPTER TWO:

  JESUS, THE PERSON

 

As has been
shown in the previous chapter, the Biblical scriptures, both New and
Old Testaments, are unreliable sources and cannot, therefore, be used
as an authentic means of knowing the truth about the man called Jesus
Christ or about his mission and message.  However,
a close examination of these scriptures in the light of Qur’aanic
verses will reveal some of the truths about Jesus that have survived in
the Bible.

 

A
Messenger

           
Throughout the Qur‘aan, Jesus is identified fundamentally
as a Messenger of God. In Chapter as-Saff (61):6, God
quotes Jesus as follows:

 

}
وَإِذْ قَالَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ يَابِنِي إِسْرآئِيلَ إِنِّي رَسُولُ
اللهِ إِلَيْكُمْ مُصَدِّقًا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيَّ مِنَ التَّوْراةِ {

“And
[remember] when Jesus,
son of Mary, said: ‘O Children of Israel, I am the messenger of Allaah
sent to you, confirming the Torah [which came] before me.”

 

There are many
verses in the New Testament supporting the messengership / prophethood
of Jesus. The following are only a few: In Matthew 21:11, the people of
his time are recorded as referring to Jesus as a prophet: “And the
crowds said, ‘This is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth of
Galilee.’ ”  In Mark, 6:4, it is
stated that Jesus referred to himself as a prophet: “And Jesus said
to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour, except in his own
country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.’ ”  In the following verses, Jesus is referred to
as having been sent as a messenger is sent. In Matthew 10:40, Jesus was
purported to have said: “He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he
that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.” 
In John 17:3, Jesus is also quoted as saying: “And this
is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent.” [65]

 

A
Man

               
The Qur’aanic revelation not only affirms Jesus’
prophethood, but it also clearly denies Jesus’ divinity. 
In Chapter al-Maa’idah, (5): 75, God points out that Jesus
ate food, which is a human act, obviously not befitting to God.

 

}
مَا الْمَسِيحُ ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ إِلاَّ رَسُولٌ قَدْ خَلَتْ مِنْ قَبْلِهِ
الرُّسُلُ وَأُمُّهُ صِدِّيقَةٌ كَانَا يَأْكُلاَنِ الطَّعَامَ انْظُرْ
كَيْفَ نُبَيِّنُ لَهُمُ اْلآيَاتِ تُمَّ انْظُرْ أَنَّى يُؤْفَكُونَ {

“The
Messiah, Son of Mary, was
no more than a messenger and many messengers passed away before him.  His mother was exceedingly truthful, and they
both ate food.  See how I have made the
signs clear for them, yet see how they are deluded.”

 

There are numerous accounts in the New
Testament which also deny Jesus’ divinity.

           
For example, in Matthew 19:17, Jesus responded to one who
addressed him as “O good master”, saying: “Why callest thou me good?  There is none good but one, that is God.”  If he rejected being called “good”,[66] and stated that
only God is truly good, he
clearly implies that he is not God.

           
In John 14:28, Jesus was saying: “The Father is greater
than I.” By stating that the “Father” is greater than himself,
Jesus distinguishes himself from God.  Also
in John 20:17, Jesus told Mary Magdalene to tell his followers: “I
ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God.”  Jesus’ reference to God as “my Father and your
Father” further emphasizes the distinction between himself and God.
Furthermore, by referring to God as “his God”, he left no room for
anyone to intelligently claim that he was God. 

           
Even in some of the writings of Paul, which the Church has
taken to be sacred, Jesus is referred to as a “man”, distinct and
different from God. In 1st Timothy, 2:5, Paul writes: “For there is
one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

           
There are also verses in the Qur‘aan which confirm Prophet
Muhammad’s humanity, in order to prevent his followers from
elevating him to a divine or semi-divine status, as was done to Prophet
Jesus.  For example, in Chapter al-Kahf
(18):110, Allaah instructs the Prophet Muhammad (e) to inform all who hear his message:

 

}
قُلْ إِنَّمَا أَنَاْ بَشَرٌ مِثْلُكُمْ يُوحَى إِلَىَّ أَنَّمَا
إلَـهُكُمْ إِلهٌ وَاحِدٌ {

“Say:
‘Indeed, I am only a man
like you to whom it has been revealed that your God is only one God.’ ”

 

In Chapter al-A‘raaf (7):187, Allaah also
directed Prophet Muhammad (e) to acknowledge that the time of the
Judgement is known only to God.

 

}
يَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ السَّاعَةِ أَيَّانَ مُرْسَاهَا قُلْ إِنَّمَا
عِلْمُهَا عِنْدَ رَبَّي لاَ يُجَلِّيهَا لِوَقْتِهَآ إِلاَّ هُوَ {

“They
ask you about the Final
Hour: 'When will its apointed time be?’ Say: ‘Knowledge of it is with
my Lord.  None can reveal its time besides
Him.’ ”

 

In the Gospel according to Mark 13:31-32,
Jesus is also reported to have denied having knowledge of when the
final hour of this world would be, saying: “Heaven and the earth
shall pass away but my word shall not pass away, but of that day or
hour no man knoweth, neither the angels in the heaven nor the Son but
the Father.” One of the attributes of God is omniscience,
knowledge of all things.  Therefore, his
denial of knowledge of the Day of Judgement is also a denial of
divinity, for one who does not know the time of the final hour cannot
possibly be God.[67]

 

An
Immaculate Conception

           
The Qur‘aan confirms the Biblical story of Jesus’ virgin
birth. However, in the Qur‘aanic account of Jesus’ birth, Mary was an
unmarried maiden whose life was dedicated to the worship of God by her
mother.  While she was worshipping in a
place of religious seclusion,  angels came
and informed her of her impending pregnancy.

 

} إِذْ قَالَتِ الْملآئِكَةُ يَا مَرْيَمُ إِنَّ اللهَ
يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَةٍ مِنْهُ اسْمُهُ الْمَسِيْحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ
وَجِيهًا فِي الدُّنْيا وَ اْلآخِرَةِ وَمِنَ الْمُقَرَّبينَ{

“When
the angels said: ‘O
Mary, indeed Allaah gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him, whose
name will be the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary.  He
will be honored in this world and the next and will be of those close
to Allaah.’ ” Qur’aan, (3):45

 

 

 

}
قَالَتْ رَبِّ أَنَّى يَكُونُ لِي وَلَدٌ وَلَمْ يَمْسَسْنِي بَشَرٌ قَالَ
كَذَلِكِ اللهُ يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَآءُ إِذَا قَضَى أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا
يَقُولُ لَهُ كُنْ فَيَكُونُ {

“She
said: ‘O my Lord, how can
I have a son when no man has touched me?’ He said: ‘Even so—Allaah
creates what He wishes. When He decrees something, He only has to say
to it: “Be!”  and it is.’ ” Qur’aan, (3):47

 

However, the
Qur’aan clarifies that Jesus’ virgin birth did not change the state of
his humanity.  His creation was like the
creation of Aadam, who had neither father nor mother.

 

}
إِنَّ مَثَلَ عِيسَى عِنْدَ اللهِ كَمَثَلِ آدَمَ خَلَقَهُ مِنْ تُرَابٍ
ثُمَّ قَالَ لَهُ كُنْ فَيَكُونُ {

“Surely,
the example of Jesus,
in Allaah’s sight, is like that of Aadam.  He
created him from dust and said: ‘Be!’ and he was.” Qur’aan, (3):59

 

The
Miracles

The Qur‘aanic account of Jesus’ ministry
confirms most[68] of his miracles
mentioned in the Bible and
identifies some not mentioned in the Bible. For example, the Qur‘aan
informs that Jesus was a messenger of God from his birth, and
his first miracle was speaking as a child in the cradle. 
After Mary had given birth to Jesus, people accused her of
fornication. Instead of responding to their accusations, she pointed to
her newly born child:

 

}
فَأَشَارَتْ إِلَيْهِ قَالُوا كَيْفَ نُكَلِّمُ مِنْ كَانَ فِي الْمَهْدِ
صَبِيًّا قَالَ إِنِّي عَبْدُ اللهِ آتَانِيَ الْكِتَابَ وَجَعَلَنِي
نَبِيًّا {

“[When] she pointed to him, they asked, ‘How
can we talk to a child in the cradle?’ He [Jesus] said: ‘Indeed, I am a
servant of Allaah. He gave me the scripture and made me a prophet.’ ”

Qur’aan, (19):29-30

 

Among his other
miracles of bringing the dead back to life, healing lepers, and making
the blind see, the Qur‘aan records another miracle not mentioned in the
Bible.  Prophet Jesus fashioned birds out
of clay, blew on them and they flew away, living birds. But the point
which is emphasized throughout the Qur‘aan is that whenever Jesus
performed a miracle, he informed the people that it was by God’s
permission. He made it clear to his followers that he was not doing the
miracles by himself, in the same way that the earlier Prophets made it
clear to those around them.

           
Unfortunately, those who claim divinity for Jesus, usually
hold up his miracles as evidence.  However,
other prophets were recorded to have done the same or similar miracles
in the Old Testament.

 

Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fishes.	Elisha fed 100 people with twenty barley loaves and a few ears of corn (II Kings 4:44)
Jesus healed lepers.	Elisha cured Naaman the leper (II Kings 5:14).
Jesus caused the blind to see.	Elisha caused the blind to see (II Kings 6:17&20).
Jesus raised the dead.	Elijah did the same (I Kings 17:22).  So did Elisha (II Kings 4:34).  Even Elisha’s bones could restore the dead (II Kings 13:21).
Jesus walked on water.	Moses and his people crossed the dead sea (Exodus 14:22).

 

           
There are also texts in the New Testament which confirm
that Jesus did not act on his own.  Jesus
is quoted in John 5:30, as saying: “I can of mine own self do
nothing...” and in Luke 11:20, as saying, “But if I with the
finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon
you.”  In Acts 2:22, Paul writes: “Men
of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you
by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did
through him in your midst, as you yourselves know...”

&nnbsp;

“Evidence” for
Jesus’ Divinity

           
There are a number of verses which have been interpreted
by the Catholic and Protestant Churches as evidence for the Divinity of
Jesus Christ. However, on close examination of these verses, it becomes
evident that, either their wordings are ambiguous, leaving them open to
a number of different interpretations, or they are additions not found
in the early manuscripts of the Bible.  The
following are some of the most commonly quoted arguments.

 

1. The
Alpha and Omega

           
In the Book of Revelation 1, verse 8, it is implied that
Jesus said the following about himself: “I am Alpha and
Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and
which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” These are the
attributes of God. Consequently, Jesus, according to early Christians,
is here claiming divinity. However, the above-mentioned wording is
according to the King James Version.  In
the Revised Standard Version, biblical scholars corrected the
translation and wrote: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the
Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”  A correction was also made in the New
American Bible produced by Catholics. The translation of that verse
has been amended to put it in its correct context as follows: “The
Lord God says: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the one
who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’ ” With
these corrections, it becomes evident that this was a statement of God
and not a statement of Prophet Jesus.

 

2. The
Pre-existence of Christ

           
Another verse commonly used to support the divinity of
Jesus is John 8:58: “Jesus said unto them, ‘Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.’ ” 
This verse is taken to imply that Jesus existed prior to
his appearance on earth. The conclusion drawn from it is that Jesus
must be God, since his existence predates his birth on earth. However,
the concept of the pre-existence of the prophets, and of man in
general, exists in both the Old Testament, as well as in the Qur‘aan.
Jeremiah described himself in The Book of Jeremiah 1:4-5 as follows: “
⁵Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ^{5 ‘}Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet
to the nations.’ ”

           
Prophet Solomon is reported in Proverbs 8:23-27, to have
said, “²³Ages ago I was set up at the first, before
the beginning of the earth. ²⁴When there were no depths I was brought
forth, when there were no springs abounding with water, ²⁵Before the mountains had been shaped, before
the hills, I was brought forth; ²⁶before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world ²⁷When he established the heavens, I was there.” 

           
According to Job 38:4 and 21, God addresses Prophet Job as
follows: “⁴Where were you when I laid the foundation of
the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding... ²¹You Know, for you were born then, and the
number of your days is great!”

           
In the Qur‘aan, Chapter
al-A‘raaf, (7):172, God informed that man existed in the spiritual form
before the creation of the physical world.

 

}
وَإِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِنْ بَنِي آدَمَ مِنْ ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ
وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَى أَنْفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ قَالُوا بَلَى
شَهِدْنَا أَنْ تَقُولُواْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَذَا
غَافِلِينَ {

“When
your Lord gathered all
of Aadam’s descendants [before creation] and made them bear witness for
themselves, saying: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They all replied: Yes indeed,
we bear witness. [That was] so you could not say on the Day of
Judgement: ‘We were unaware of this.’ ”

 

Consequently, Prophet Jesus’ statement, “Before
Abraham was, I am,” cannot be used as evidence of his divinity.  Within the context of John 8:54-58, Jesus is
purported to have spoken about God’s knowledge of His prophets, which
predates the creation of this world.

 

3. The Son
of God

Another of the evidences used for Jesus’
divinity is the application of the title “Son of God” to Jesus.  However, there are numerous places in the Old
Testament where this title has been given to others.

God called Israel (Prophet Jacob) His “son”
when He instructed Prophet
Moses to go to Pharaoh in Exodus 4:22-23, “²² And you shall say
to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is my first-born son, ²³and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may
serve me.’ ” [69]

           
In 2nd Samuel 8:13-14, God calls Prophet Solomon His son, “¹³
He [Solomon] shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the
throne of his kingdom for ever. ¹⁴I will be his father, and he shall be my
son.”

           
God promised to make Prophet David His son in Psalms
89:26-27: “26 He shall cry unto me, ‘Thou art my father, my
God, and the rock of my salvation,’ ²⁷Also I will make him my first-born,
higher than the kings of the earth.”[70]

           
Angels are referred to as “sons of God” in The Book of Job
1:6, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to
present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.”[71]

           
In the New Testament, there are many references to “sons
of God” other than Jesus.  For example,
when the author of the Gospel according to Luke listed Jesus’ ancestors
back to Adam, he wrote: “The son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son
of Adam, the son of God.”[72]

           
Some claim that what is unique in the case of Jesus, is
that he is the only begotten[73]
Son of God, while the others
are merely “sons of God”. However, God is recorded as saying to Prophet
David, in Psalms 2:7, “I will tell the decree of the Lord: He said
to me, ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you.’ ”

           
It should also be noted that nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus
actually call himself “Son of God”.[74]  Instead, he is
recorded to have repeatedly called himself “Son of man” (e.g. Luke
9:22) innumerable times. And in Luke 4:41, he actually rejected being
called “Son of God”: “And demons also came out of many, crying, ‘You
are the Son of God!’   But he rebuked
them, and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was
the Christ.”

           
Since the Hebrews
believed that God is One, and had neither wife nor children in any
literal sense, it is obvious that the expression “son of God” merely
meant to them “Servant of God”; one who, because of his faithful
service, was close and dear to God, as a son is to a father. Christians
who came from a Greek or Roman background, later misused this term. In
their heritage, “son of God” signified an incarnation of a god or
someone born of a physical union between male and female gods.[75] When the Church
cast aside its Hebrew
foundations, it adopted the pagan concept of “son of God”, which was
entirely different from the Hebrew usage.[76]          

           
Consequently, the use of the term “son of God” should only
be understood from the Semitic symbolic sense of a “servant of God”,
and not in the pagan sense of a literal offspring of God. In the four
Gospels, Jesus is recorded as saying: “Blessed are the peace-makers;
they will be called sons of God.”[77]

           
Likewise, Jesus’ use of the term abba, “dear
father”, should be understood similarly. There is a dispute among New
Testament scholars as to precisely what abba meant in Jesus’
time and also as to how widely it was in use by other Jewish sects of
that era. 

           
James Barr has recently argued forcefully that it did not
have the specially intimate sense that has so often been attributed to
it, but that it simply meant “father”.[78]
To think of God as “our heavenly Father” was
by no means new, for in the Lord’s prayer he is reported to have taught
his disciples to address God in this same familiar way.

 

4. One with God 

Those who claim that Jesus was God, hold that
he was not a separate god, but one and the same God incarnate.  They draw support for this belief from verse
30 of the Gospel according to John, chapter 10, in which Jesus is
reported to have said, “I and the Father are one.” 
Out of context, this verse does imply Jesus’ divinity.  However, when the Jews accused him of claiming
divinity, based on that statement, “Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not
written in your law, “I said, Ye are gods?”[79]^-[80]
He clarified for them, with a
scriptural example well known to them, that he was using the
metaphorical language of the prophets which should not be interpreted
as ascribing divinity to himself or to other human beings.

           
Further evidence is drawn from verses ten and eleven of
the Gospel according to John, chapter 14, where people asked Jesus to
show them the Father, and he was supposed to have said: “Do you not
believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on
my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and
the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works
themselves.”  

           
These phrases would
imply Jesus’ divinity, if the remainder of the same Gospel is ignored.
However, nine verses later, in John 14:20, Jesus is also recorded as
saying to his disciples, “In that day you will know that I am in my
Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Thus, if Jesus’
statement “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” means
that he is God, then so were his disciples.  This
symbolic statement means oneness of purpose and not oneness of essence.
The symbolic interpretation is further emphasized in John 17:20-21,
wherein Jesus said, “20 I do not pray for these only, but
also for those who believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one; even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has
sent me.”[81]

 

5. “He Accepted Worship”

It is argued that since Jesus is reported to
have accepted the worship of some of his followers, he must have been
God. However, a closer examination of the texts indicates both a case
of dubious translation, as well as misinterpretation. The term
“worship” can be found in the King James Version and The
Revised Standard Version accounts of the three wise men who came
from the east.  They were reported in
Matthew 2:2, to have said, “Where is the baby born to be the king of
the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have
come to worship him.”[82]
However, in The New American Bible (Catholic
Press, 1970), the text reads: “Where is the newborn king of the
Jews? We observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him
homage.”      

           
In The Revised Standard Version, John 9:37-38,: “37
Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you.’
³⁸He said, ‘Lord, I believe’; and he
worshipped him.”[83] 
However, in The
American Bible, the scholarly translators added a footnote which
read:

9:38           
This verse, omitted in important MSS [manuscripts], may be
an addition for a baptismal liturgy.

This verse is not found in important ancient
manuscripts containing this Gospel. It is probably a later addition
made by Church scribes for use in baptismal services.

           
Furthermore, as a renowned authority on the Bible and its
original language, George M. Lamsa, explained, “The Aramaic word sagad,
worship, also means to bend or to kneel down.  Easterners
in greeting each other generally bowed the head
or bent down.[84] ...‘He
worshipped him’ does not imply
that he worshipped Jesus as one worshipped God. Such an act would have
been regarded as sacrilegious and a breach of the First Commandment in
the eyes of the Jews, and the man might have been stoned. But he knelt
before him in token of homage and gratitude.”[85] 

           
The final scripture, the Qur’aan, clarifies the issue of
worshipping or not worshipping Jesus, by quoting a conversation which
will take place between Jesus and God on the Day of Judgement.  Allaah states in Chapter al-Maa’idah,
(5):116-7:

 

}
وَإِذْ قَالَ اللهُ يَا عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ ءَأَنْتَ قُلْتَ لِلنَّاسِ
اتَّخِذُونِي وَأُمِّيَ إِلَهَيْنِ مِنْ دُونِ اللهِ ... مَا قُلْتُ
لَهُمْ إِلاَّ مَآ أَمَرْتَنِي بِهِ أَنِ اعْبُدُواْ 
اللهَ ربّي وَرَبَّكُمْ ... {

“When
Allaah will say: ‘O
Jesus, son of Mary, did you tell people: “Worship me and my mother as
two gods instead of Allaah?” ’...[Jesus will say]: ‘I only told them
what You commanded me to say: “Worship Allaah, my Lord and your Lord
...” ”

 

6. “In the beginning was
the Word”

Perhaps the most commonly quoted ‘evidence’
for Jesus’ divinity is John 1:1&14, “1 In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth...”  However, these statements were not made by
Jesus Christ, nor were they attributed to him by the author of the
Gospel according to John. Consequently, these verses do not constitute
evidence for Jesus’ divinity, especially considering the doubts held by
Christian scholars about the Fourth Gospel. The Bible scholars who
authored The Five Gospels said: “The two pictures painted by
John and the synoptic gospels (i.e., the Gospels of Matthew, Mark &
Luke) cannot both be historically accurate.[86]...The words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth
Gospel are the creation of the evangelist for the most part, and
reflect the developed language of John’s Christian community.”[87]

           
The Greek term used by the anonymous author of the Fourth
Gospel for “word” is logos.[88]  In doing
so, the author identifies Jesus with the pagan logos of Greek
philosophy, who was the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering
it and giving it form and meaning.[89]

           
The idea of the logos in Greek thought may be
traced back at least to the 6th-century-BC philosopher, Heracleitus,
who proposed that there was a logos in the cosmic process
analogous to the reasoning power in man.  Later,
the Stoics[90] defined the logos
as an active,
rational and spiritual principle that permeated all reality.[91] 
The
Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher, Judaeus Philo of Alexandria (15 BC -
45 CE), taught that the logos was the intermediary between God
and the cosmos, being both the agent between God and the cosmos, being
both the agent of creation and the agent through which the human mind
can comprehend God.[92] 
The writings of
Philo were preserved and cherished by the Church, and provided the
inspiration for a sophisticated Christian philosophical theology. He
departed from Platonic thought regarding the logos (Word) and
called it “the first-begotten Son of God”.[93]

           
The identification of Jesus with the logos, was
further developed in the early Church as a result of attempts made by
early Christian theologians and apologists to express the Christian
faith in terms that would be intelligible to the Hellenistic world.  Moreover, it was to impress their hearers with
the view that Christianity was superior to, or heir to, all that was
best in pagan philosophy.  Thus, in their
apologies and polemical works, the early Christian Fathers stated that
Christ was the preexistent logos.[94]

           
The Greek word for ‘God’ used in the phrase “and the
Word was with God,” is the definite form hotheos, meaning
‘The God’.  However, in the second phrase “and
the Word was God”, the Greek word used for ‘God’ is the indefinite
form tontheos, which means ‘a god’.[95] Consequently, John 1:1, should more
accurately be translated, “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” Therefore, if the Word
was a ‘god’ in the literal sense, it would mean that there were two
Gods and not one. However, in Biblical language, the term ‘god’ is used
metaphorically to indicate power.  For
example, Paul referred to the devil as “god” in 2nd Corinthians 4:4, “In
their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.” Moses is also
referred to as “god” in Exodus 7:1, “And the Lord said unto Moses,
‘See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother
shall be thy prophet.”[96]

 

Ancient Thoughts

           
There was serious conflict between the Pauline and the
Jerusalem interpretations of Jesus and his message. This conflict,
after simmering for years, finally led to a complete break, by which
the Pauline Christian Church was founded, comprising, in effect, a new
religion, separated from Judaism. On the other hand, the Jerusalem
Nazarenes did not sever their links with Judaism, but regarded
themselves essentially as practicing Jews, loyal to the Torah, who also
believed in Jesus, a human Messiah figure.[97]

           
When the Jewish insurrection was crushed by the Romans and
their Temple destroyed in 70 CE, the Jewish Christians were scattered,
and their power and influence as the Mother Church and center of the
Jesus movement was ended.[98]
The Pauline Christian movement, which up
until 66 CE had been struggling to survive against the strong
disapproval of Jerusalem, now began to make headway. 

           
The Jerusalem Church, under the leadership of James,
originally known as Nazarenes, later came to be known by the derogatory
nickname Ebionites (Hebrew evyonium, “poor men”), which some
Nazarenes adopted with pride as a reminder of Jesus’ saying, “Blessed
are the poor.” After the ascendency of Graeco-Roman Church, the
Nazarenes became despised as heretics, due to their rejection of the
doctrines of Paul.[99]

           
According to the ancient Church historian, Irenaeus (c.
185 CE), the Ebionites believed in one God, the Creator, taught that
Jesus was the Messiah, used only the Gospel According to Matthew, and
rejected Paul as an apostate from the Jewish Law.[100]

           
Ebionites were known to still exist in the 4th century.
Some had left Palestine and settled in Transjordan and Syria and were
later known to be in Asia Minor, Egypt and Rome.[101]

           
Monarchianism,[102]
a Gentile Christian movement which developed
during the 2nd and 3rd centuries continued to represent the “extreme”
monotheistic view of the Ebionites. It held that Christ was a man,
miraculously conceived, but was only ‘Son of God’ due to being filled
with divine wisdom and power. This view was taught at Rome about the
end of the 2nd century by Theodotus, who was excommunicated by Pope
Victor, and taught somewhat later by Artemon, who was excommunicated by
Pope Zephyrinus. About 260 CE it was again taught by Paul of Samosata,[103] the bishop of
Antioch in Syria, who openly
preached that Jesus was a man through whom God spoke his Word (Logos),
and he vigorously affirmed the absolute unity of God. 

           
Between 263 and 268 at least three church councils were
held at Antioch to debate Paul’s orthodoxy. The third condemned his
doctrine and deposed him. However, Paul enjoyed the patronage of
Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, to whom Antioch was then subject, and it was
not until 272 when the emperor Aurelian defeated Zenobia that the
actual deposition was carried out.[104]

           
In the late third and early fourth centuries, Arius (b. c. 250,
Libya - d. 336 CE), a presbyter of Alexandria, Egypt,
also taught the finite nature of Christ and the absolute oneness of
God, which attracted a large following, until he was declared a heretic
by the council of Nicaea in May 325 CE. During the council, he refused
to sign the formula of faith stating that Christ was of the same divine
nature as God. However, influential support from colleagues in Asia
Minor and from Constantia, the emperor Constantine’s daughter,
succeeded in effecting Arius’ return from exile and his readmission
into the church.[105] The movement
which he was supposed to have
begun, but which was in fact an extension of Jerusalem Nazarene/Jewish
Christian belief, came to be known as Arianism and constituted the
greatest internal threat to the Pauline Christian orthodoxy’s belief in
Jesus’ divinity.

           
From 337 to 350 CE, the emperor in the West, Constans, was
sympathetic to the orthodox Christians, and Constantius II, sympathetic
to the Arians, was Emperor in the East. Arian influence was so great
that at a church council held in Antioch (341 CE), an affirmation of
faith was issued which omitted the clause that Jesus had the “same
divine nature as God”. In 350 CE Constantius II became sole ruler of
the empire, and under his leadership the Nicene party (orthodox
Christians) was largely crushed. After Constantius the Second’s death
in 361 CE, the orthodox Christian majority in the West consolidated its
position. However, the defense of absolute monotheism and the
suppression of orthodox Christian trinitarian beliefs continued in the
East under the Arian emperor Valens (364-383 CE).  It
was not until Emperor Theodosius I (379-395 CE) took up the defense of
orthodoxy that Arianism was finally crushed. The unitarian beliefs of
Arius, however, continued among some of the Germanic tribes up until
the end of the 7th century.[106]

 

Modern Thoughts

           
Today, there are many modern scholars in Christianity who
hold that Jesus Christ was not God. In 1977, a group of seven biblical
scholars, including leading Anglican theologians and other New
Testament scholars, published a book called The Myth of God
Incarnate, which  caused a great uproar
in the General Synod of the Church of England.  In
the preface, the editor, John Hick, wrote the following: “The
writers of this book are convinced that another major theological
development is called for in this last part of the twentieth century.
The need arises from growing knowledge of Christian origins, and
involves a recognition that Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2.21)
‘a man approved by God’ for a special role within the divine purpose,
and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or
poetic way of expressing his significance for us.”[107]

           
There is a broad agreement among New Testament scholars
that the historical Jesus did not make the claim to deity that later
Christian thought was to make for him; he did not understand himself to
be God, or God the Son, incarnate [in the flesh].[108]  The late
Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who was himself a New Testament scholar,
wrote that “Jesus did not claim deity for himself.”[109]  His
contemporary, the New Testament scholar C.F.D. Moule, said that, “Any
case for a ‘high’ Christology that depended on the authenticity of the
alleged claims of Jesus about himself, especially in the Fourth Gospel,
would indeed be precarious.”[110] 

           
In a major study of the origins of the doctrine of the
incarnation, James Dunn, who affirms orthodox Christology, concludes
that “there was no real evidence in the earliest Jesus tradition of
what could fairly be called a consciousness of divinity.”[111] Again, Brian
Hebblethwaite, a staunch
upholder of the traditional Nicene-Calcedonian Christology,
acknowledges that “it is no longer possible to defend the divinity of
Jesus by reference to the claims of Jesus.”[112]  Hebblethwaite
and Dunn, and other scholars like them who still believe in Jesus’
divinity, argue instead that Jesus did not know he was God incarnate.
This only became known after his resurrection.

           
Most famous among the Church of England bishops, who doubt
Jesus’ divinity, is the outspoken Reverend Professor David Jenkins, the
Bishop of Durham in England, who openly states that Jesus was not God. [113]

           
The following article, which appeared in The Daily
News some years ago, clearly indicates the degree to which there
are doubts among the clergy regarding Jesus’ divinity.

  

 

Shock survey Of Anglican bishops
LONDON: More than half of England’s Anglican bishops say Christians are not obliged to believe that Jesus Christ was God, according to a survey published today.  The poll of 31 of England’s 39 bishops shows that many of them think that Christ’s miracles, the virgin birth and the resurrection might not have happened exactly as described in the Bible.	Only 11 of the bishops insisted that Christians must regard Christ as both God and man, while 19 said it was sufficient to regard Jesus as “God’s supreme agent”. One declined to give a definite opinion.   The poll was carried out by London Weekend Television’s weekly religion show, Credo.   “DAILY NEWS” 25/6/84

 

 CHAPTER
THREE:

THE MESSAGE

 

The second issue, ‘The Message of Jesus’,
is perhaps the most important point to consider.  For,
if Jesus was not God incarnate, but a prophet of God, the message which
he brought from God is the essence of his mission.

 

Submission 

           
The foundation of Jesus’
message was submission to the will of God, because that is the
foundation of the religion which God prescribed for man since the
beginning of time. God says in Chapter Aal ‘Imraan, the third chapter
of the Qur‘aan, verse 19:

 

} إِنَّ
الدِّينَ عِنْدَ اللهِ اْلإِسْلاَمُ
{

“Truly,
the religion in the
sight of Allaah is Islaam [submission].”

 

In Arabic, submission to God’s will is
expressed by the word ‘Islaam’. In the Gospel according to
Matthew 7:22, Jesus is quoted as saying: “Not everyone who
says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who
does the will of my Father in heaven.” In this statement,
Jesus places emphasis on “the will of the Father”, 
submission of the human will to the will of God. 
In John 5:30, it is narrated that Jesus also
said: “I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and
my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of
him who sent me.”

 

 

The
Law

           
The “will of God” is contained in the divinely revealed
laws which the prophets taught their followers. Consequently, obedience
to divine law is the foundation of worship. The Qur’aan affirms the  need for obedience to the divinely revealed
laws  in chapter al-Maa’idah, verse 44.

 

}
إِنَّا أَنْزَلْنَا التَّوْرَاةَ فِيهَا هُدًى وَنُورٌ يَحْكُمُ بِهَا
النَّبِيُّونَ الَّذِينَ أَسْلَمُوا ... وَمَنْ لَمْ يَحْكُمْ بِمَا
أَنْزَلَ اللهُ فَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْكَافِرُونَ {

“Indeed,
I did reveal the
Torah in which was guidance and light, by which the prophets, who
submitted to God’s will, judged (the Jews) ... and whoever does not
judge by what Allaah has revealed is a disbeliever,”

 

Jesus was also reported in the Gospel
according to Matthew 19:16-17, to have made obedience to the divine
laws the key to paradise: “16 Now behold, one came and said
to him,“Good teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have
eternal life?” ¹⁷So he said to him, “Why do
you call me good?  No one is good but One,
that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the
commandments.”[114]
Also in Matthew 5:19, Jesus Christ was reported to have insisted on
strict obedience to the commandments saying, “Whoever therefore
breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so,
shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does
and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Divine law represents guidance for humankind
in all walks of life. It defines right and wrong for them and offers
human beings a complete system governing all of their affairs. The
Creator alone knows best what is beneficial for His creation and what
is not. Thus, the divine laws command and prohibit various acts and
substances to protect the human spirit, the human body, and human
society from harm. In order for human beings to fulfil their potential
by living righteous lives, they need to worship God through obedience
to His commandments.[115]

           
This was the religion conveyed in the message of Jesus;
submission to the will of the one true God by obedience to His
commandments.  Jesus stressed to his
followers that his mission did not cancel the laws received by Prophet
Moses. As the prophets who came after Moses maintained the law, so did
Jesus. Chapter al-Maa’idah, verse 46 of the Qur’aan indicates that
Jesus confirmed the Laws of the Torah in his message.

 

}
وَقَفَّيْنَا عَلَى آثَارِهِمْ بِعِيسَى ابْنِ مَرْيَمَ مُصَدِّقًا لِمَا
بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ التَّوْرَاةِ وَآتَيْنَاهُ اْلإِنْجِيلَ فِيهِ هُدًى
وَنُورٌ وَمُصَدِّقًا لِمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ التَّوْرَةِ {

“And
in their footsteps, I
sent Jesus, son of Mary, confirming the Torah that had come before him,
and I gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and
confirmation of the Torah that had come before it,”

In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus stated: “17 Think
not that I have come to abolish the law and the [way of] the prophets;
I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. ¹⁸For,
I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot,
will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” However, Paul,
who claimed to be a disciple of Jesus, systematically cancelled the
laws.  In his letter to the Romans, chapter
7:6, he stated, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead
to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old
written code but in the new life of the Spirit.”

 

Unitarianism

           
Jesus came as a prophet calling people to worship God
alone, as the prophets before him did. God says in chapter an-Nahl
(16):36, of the Qur‘aan:

 

}وَلَقَدْ
بَعَثْنَا فِي كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَسُولاً أَنِ اعْبُدُواْ اللهَ
وَاجْتَنِبُواْ الطَّاغُوتَ{

“Surely, I[116]
have sent to every nation a messenger
(saying): ‘Worship Allaah and avoid false gods.”

 

           
In Luke 3:8, the Devil asks Jesus to worship him,
promising him the authority and glory of all of the kingdoms of this
world, “And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, You shall worship
the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ ”  Thus, the essence of the message of Jesus was
that only God deserves to be worshipped and that the worship of anyone
or anything besides God or along with God is false. Jesus not only
called people to this message but he also practically demonstrated it
for them by bowing down in prayer and worshipping God himself. In Mark
14:32, it states: “And they went to a place which was called
Gethsemane; and he [Jesus] said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I
pray.’ ” And in Luke 5:16, “But he withdrew to the wilderness
and prayed.” 

           
Jesus called them to worship the one true God who is
unique in His qualities.  God does not have
the attributes of His creation, nor does any creature share any of His
attributes.  In Matthew 19:16-17, when the
man called Prophet Jesus ‘good’, saying, “Good teacher, what good
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” Prophet Jesus
replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is 
good  but  One,
that is, God.” He denied the attribution
of ‘infinite goodness’ or ‘perfect goodness’ to himself, and affirmed
that this attribute belongs to Allaah alone.

           
The vast majority of Christians today pray to Jesus,
claiming that he is God. The Philosophers among them claim that they
are not worshipping Jesus the man, but God who was manifest in Jesus
the man. This is also the rationale of pagans who bow down in worship
to idols.  When a pagan philosopher is
asked why he worships an idol which was made by human hands, he replies
that he is not really worshipping the idol. Furthermore, he may claim
that the idol is only a focal point for the presence of God, and
thereby claim to be worshipping God who is manifest in the idol, and
not the physical idol itself. There is little or no difference between
that explanation and the answer given by Christians for worshipping
Jesus. The origin of this deviation lies in the false belief that God
is present in His creation. Such a belief justifies the worship of
God’s creation. 

Jesus’ message, which urged mankind to
worship one God alone, became distorted after his departure. Later
followers, beginning with Paul, turned that pure and simple message
into a complicated trinitarian philosophy which justified the worship
of Jesus, and then the worship of Jesus’ mother, Mary,[117] the angels[118] and the saints.  Catholics
have a long list of saints to whom they turn in times of need. If
something is lost, Saint Anthony of Thebes is prayed to in order to
help find it.[119] St. Jude
Thaddaeus is the patron saint of
the impossible and is prayed to for intercession in incurable
illnesses, unlikely marriages or the like. [120]
The patron saint of travelers was Saint Christopher, to whom travelers
used to pray for protection up until 1969, when he was officially
struck off the list of saints by papal decree, after it was confirmed
that he was fictitious. [121]
Although he was officially crossed off the list of saints, there are
many Catholics around the world today who are still praying to St.
Christopher. 

           
Worshipping ‘saints’ contradicts and corrupts the worship
of One God; and it is in vain, because neither the living nor the dead
can answer the prayers of mankind. The worship of God should not be
shared with His creation in any way, shape or form. 
In this regard, Allaah said the following in Chapter al-A
‘raaf (7):194:

 

}
إِنَّ الَّذِينَ تَدْعُونَ مِنْ دُونِ اللهِ عِبَادٌ أَمْثَالُكُمْ {

“Surely,
those whom you call
on in prayer besides Allaah are slaves like yourselves.”

 

This was the message of Jesus Christ and all
the prophets before him.  It was also the
message of the last prophet, Muhammad—may peace and blessings be
upon all of them.  Thus, if a Muslim or a
person who calls himself a Muslim prays to a saint, he has stepped out
of the bounds of Islaam. Islaam is not merely a belief, wherein one is
only required to state that he or she believes that there is no God
worthy of worship but Allaah and that Muhammad was the last of
the messengers, in order to attain paradise.  This
declaration of faith allows one who declares it to enter the doors of
Islaam, but there are many acts which may contradict this declaration
and expel the doer from Islaam as quickly as he or she came in. The
most serious of those acts is praying to other than God.

Muslim not “Mohammedan” 

Since Jesus’ religion, and that of all of the
earlier prophets, was the religion of submission to God, known in
Arabic as Islaam, his true followers should be called
submitters to God, known in Arabic as Muslims. In Islaam,
prayer is considered an act of worship. Prophet Muhammad (e) was reported to have said, “Supplication
is an act of worship.”[122]
Consequently, Muslims do not accept being
called Mohammedans, as followers of Christ are called Christians and
followers of Buddha are called Buddhists. Christians worship Christ and
Buddhists worship Buddha. The term Mohammedans implies that Muslims
worship Muhammad, which is not the case at all. In the Qur‘aan,
God chose the name Muslim for all who truly follow the
prophets. The name Muslim in Arabic means “one who submits to
the will of God.”

 

} هُوَ سَمَّاكُمُ الْمُسْلِمِينَ مِنْ قَبْلُ وَفِي هَذَا {

“...It is He who named you Muslims both
before and in this [scripture, the Qur’aan].” Qur’aan, (22):78

 

           
Consequently, the essence of Jesus’ message was that man
should worship God alone.  He should not be
worshipped through his creation in any way.  Consequently,
His image cannot be painted, carved or drawn.  He
is beyond human comprehension.

 

Images   

           
Jesus did not condone the pagan practice of making images
of God. He upheld the prohibition mentioned in the Torah, Exodus 20
verse 4: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Consequently,
the use of religious images, called icons,[123] was firmly opposed by the early generation
of Christian scholars. However, in time, the Greek and Roman tradition
of image-making and portraying God in human form eventually won out.
The prohibition is to prevent the eventual deterioration of worship of
God into the worship of His creation. Once a human being makes a
picture in his or her mind of God, the person is, in fact, trying to
make God like His creation, because the human mind can only picture the
things which it has seen, and God can not be seen in this life.

           
Christians with a tradition of worshipping through images
often question how God can be worshipped without visualizing Him. God
should be worshipped based on the knowledge of His attributes which He
revealed in authentic scripture. For example, Allaah describes Himself
in the Qur’aan as being All-Merciful, so His worshippers should reflect
on God’s many mercies and give thanks to God for them. They should also
contemplate on the nature of His mercy to them and show mercy to other
human beings. Likewise, Allaah refers to Himself as being
Oft-Forgiving, so His worshippers should turn to Him in repentance and
not give up hope when they commit sins. They should also appreciate
God’s forgiveness by being forgiving to other human beings.

 

Prophesy

           
Part of Prophet Jesus’ message was to inform his followers
of the prophet who would come after him. As John the Baptist heralded
the coming of Jesus Christ, Jesus in turn heralded the coming of the
last of the prophets of God, Muhammad. In the Qur’aan, Chapter as-Saff
(61):6, God quotes Jesus’ prophesy about Muhammad (e).

 

}
وَإِذْ قَالَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ يَا بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ إِنِي رَسُولُ
اللهِ إِلَيْكُمْ مُصَدِّقًا لِمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيَّ مِنَ التَّوْراةِ
وَمُبَشِّرًا بِرَسُولٍ يَأْتِي مِنْ بَعْدِي اسْمُهُ أَحْمَدُ .. {

“(Remember) when Jesus, son of Mary, said, ‘O
Children of Israel, I am the Messenger of Allaah sent to you,
confirming the Torah before me, and giving glad tidings of a Messenger
coming after me, whose name will be Ahmad.[124]”

 

There are also some references in the Gospels
which seem to refer to the coming of Prophet Muhammad—may God’s
peace and blessings be on all the prophets. In the Gospel according to
John 14:16, Jesus is quoted as saying, “And I will pray the Father,
and he will give you another Counselor,[125] to be with you for ever.”

Christian laymen usually interpret the
“Counselor” mentioned in John 14:16 as the Holy Spirit.[126] However, the
phrase “another Counselor”
implies that it will be someone else like Jesus and not the Holy Spirit,[127] especially
considering John 16:7, in which
Jesus is reported to have said, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth:
it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away,
the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to
you.”  The term “Counselor” could not
be referring to the Holy Spirit here, because—according to the
Gospels—the Holy Spirit was already present in the world prior to
Jesus’ birth,[128] as well as
during his ministry.[129]
This verse implies that the “Counselor” had
not already come.

           
Jesus’ declaration that the prophet-counselor “will be
with you forever,” could be interpreted to mean that there would be
no need for additional prophets to succeed this Counselor. He would be
the last of the Prophets of God, whose message would be preserved until
the end of the world.[130]

           
Jesus’ foretelling the coming of Muhammad— may
God’s peace be upon both of them—confirmed the prophesies about Prophet
Muhammad (e) in the Torah. In Deuteronomy 18:18
& 19, it is written that the Lord said to Moses, “I will raise
up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren[131]; and I will
put my words in his mouth[132],
and he shall speak to them all that I
command him. ¹⁹And whoever will not give heed to my words
which he shall speak in my name[133], I myself will require it of him.” In Isaiah 42, Isaiah prophesies about a
chosen “Servant of the Lord” whose prophetic mission would be to all
mankind, unlike the Hebrew prophets whose missions were limited to
Israel. “1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in
whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring
forth justice to the nations... ⁴He will not fail or be discouraged till he
has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law...¹¹Let the desert and its cities lift up their
voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits.” This particular servant of the Lord is the
only one identified with Kedar, [134]
the Arabs.[135]

 

 

 

 CHAPTER
FOUR:
 

THE WAY

 

The other aspect of Prophet Jesus’ message
was his invitation of people to follow his ‘way’. Prophets brought
divine laws or confirmed those brought by previous prophets, and
invited people to worship God by obeying the divinely revealed laws.  They also practically demonstrated for their
followers how one should live by the law. Consequently, they also
invited those who believed in them to follow their way as the correct
way to come close to God.  This principle
is enshrined in the Gospel according to John 14:6: “Jesus said to
him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the
Father, but by me.” Although those who worship Jesus commonly quote
this verse as part of the evidence for his divinity, Jesus did not
invite people to worship himself instead of God, or as God.  If these words were actually spoken by Jesus,
what they mean is that one cannot worship God except in the  way defined by the prophets of God. Jesus
emphasized to his disciples that they could only worship God by the way
which he had taught them. In the Qur’aan, Chapter  Aal
‘Imraan  (3):31, God instructs Prophet Muhammad
(e) to instruct mankind to follow him if they
truly love God:

 

}
قُلْ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللهَ فَاتَّبِعُونِي يُحْبِبْكُمُ اللهُ
وَيَغْفِرْلَكُمْ  ذُنُوبَكُمْ وَاللهُ
غَفُورٌ رَحِيمٌ {

“Tell [the people]: If you really love
Allaah, then follow me and Allaah will love you and forgive your sins,
for Allaah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

 

The way of the prophets is the only way to
God, because it was prescribed by God Himself and the purpose of the
prophets was to convey Allaah’s instructions to mankind. 
Without prophets, people would not know how to worship
Allaah. Consequently, all prophets informed their followers of how to
worship God.  Conversely, adding anything
to the religion brought by the prophets is incorrect. 

           
Any changes made to the religion after the time of the
prophets represents deviation inspired by Satan. In this regard,
Prophet Muhammad (e) was reported to have said, “Whoever adds
anything new to the religion of Islam, will have it rejected [by God].”[136] Furthermore,
anyone who worshipped Allaah
contrary to Jesus’ instructions, would have worshipped in vain.

 

Jesus’ Way

           
First and foremost, it must be realized that Jesus Christ,
the son of Mary, was the last in the line of Jewish prophets. He lived
according to the Torah, the law of Moses, and taught his
followers to do likewise. In Matthew  5:17-18,
Jesus stated: “17 Think not that I have come to abolish the
law and the [way of] the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but
to fulfil them. ¹⁸For, I say to you, till
heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the
law until all is accomplished.” Unfortunately, about five years
after the end of Jesus’ ministry, a young rabbi by the name of Saul of
Tarsus, who claimed to have seen Jesus in a vision, began to change
Jesus’ way. Paul (his Roman name) had considerable respect for Roman
philosophy and he spoke proudly of his own Roman citizenship. His
conviction was that non-Jews who became Christians should not be
burdened with the Torah in any respect. The author of Acts
13:39 quotes Paul as saying, “And by him every one that believes is
freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of
Moses.” It was primarily through the efforts of Paul that the
Church began to take on its non-Jewish character. Paul[137] wrote most of the New Testament letters
(epistles), which the Church accepts as the official doctrine and
inspired Scripture.  These letters do not
preserve the Gospel of Jesus or even represent it;[138] instead, Paul transformed the teachings of
Christ into a Hellenic (Graeco-Roman) philosophy.

           
The following are some examples of teachings which Prophet
Jesus followed and taught, but which were later abandoned by the
Church. However, most of these teachings were revived in the final
message of Islaam brought by Prophet Muhammad (e) and remain a fundamental part of Muslim
religious practices until today.

 

Circumcision

Jesus was circumcised. According to the Old
Testament, this tradition began with Prophet Abraham, who was
himself neither a Jew nor a Christian. In Genesis 17:10, it is written,
“⁹And God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you shall
keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their
generations. ¹⁰This is my covenant, which you
shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every
male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹You
shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a
sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹²He
that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male
throughout your generations, whether born in your house, or bought with
your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, ¹³both
he that is born in your house and he that is bought with your money,
shall be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an
everlasting covenant.”

           
In the Gospel according to Luke 2:21: “And at the end
of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name
given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”  Consequently, to be circumcised was a part of
Jesus’ way. However, today most Christians are not circumcised, because
of a rationale introduced by Paul.  He
claimed that circumcision was the circumcision of the heart.  In his letter to the Romans 2:29, he wrote: “He
is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of
the heart, spiritual and not literal.” In his letter to the
Galatians 5:2, he wrote: “Now I, Paul, say to you that if you
receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.”[139] This was Paul’s
false interpretation. On the
other hand, Jesus was not circumcised in the heart nor did he say
anything about circumcision of the heart; he kept the “everlasting
covenant” and was circumcised in the flesh. Thus, an important part of
following the way of Jesus is circumcision. 

           
Prophet Muhammad (e) was quoted as saying, “There are five
practices which constitute the prophetic way:[140] circumcision, shaving pubic hair and
underarm hair, clipping fingernails and toenails; and trimming the
moustache.”[141]

 

Pork

           
Jesus did not eat pork. He followed the laws of Moses and
he did not eat pork. In Leviticus 11:7-8, “7 And the swine,
because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the
cud, is unclean to you. ⁸Of their flesh you
shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch; they are
unclean to you.”[142]
Jesus’ only dealing with pigs was his
permission to the unclean spirits which were possessing a man to enter
them.  When they entered the herd of pigs,
they ran into the water and drowned.  However,
most people who call themselves Christians today not only eat pork,
they love it so much that they have made pigs the subject of nursery
rhymes [e.g. This little piggy went to market...] and children’s
stories [e.g. The Three Little Pigs]. Porky Pig is a very popular
cartoon character and recently a full-length feature movie was made
about a pig called “Babe”. Thus, it may be said that those who call
themselves followers of Christ are not in fact following the way of
Christ. 

           
In Islamic law, the prohibition of pork and its products
has been strictly maintained from the time of Prophet Muhammad (e) until today. In the Qur’aan, Chapter
al-Baqarah (2):173, God says:

 

}إِنَّمَا
حَرَّمَ عَلَيْكُمُ الْمَيْتَةَ وَالدَّمَ وَلَحْمَ الْخِنْزِيرِ وَمَا
أُهِلَّ بِهِ لِغَيْرِ اللهِ فَمَنِ اضْطُرَّ غَيْرَ بَاغٍ وَلاَ عَادٍ
فَلاَ إِثْمَ عَلَيْهِ إِنَّ اللهَ غَفُورٌ رَحِيمٌ {

 

“He has only forbidden you animals which die
of themselves, blood, swine and animals sacrificed for others besides
Allaah. But if one is forced by necessity and not wilful disobedience
nor transgression, then there is no sin on him.  Truly,
Allaah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”[143]

 

Blood

Jesus also did not eat anything containing
blood, nor did he eat blood.  God is
recorded as having instructed Prophet Moses in the Torah, Deuteronomy
12:16, “Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it upon the
earth like water,” and in Leviticus 19:26, “You shall not eat
any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not practice augury or
witchcraft.” This prohibition has been preserved in the final
revelation in Chapter al-An‘aam (6):145 until today:

 

}
قُلْ لاَّ أَجِدُ فِي مَا أُحِيَ إِلَىَّ مُحَرَّمًا عَلَى طَاعِمٍ
يَطْعَمُهُ إِلاَّ أَنْ يَكُونَ مَيْتَةً أَوْ دَمًا مَسْفُوحًا أَوْ
لَحْمَ خِنْزِيرٍ فَإِنَّهُ رِجْسٌ {

“Say (O Muhammad): I do not find in
what has been revealed to me anything forbidden to be eaten by one who
wishes to eat, except for animals which die of themselves, flowing
blood and swine flesh, for they are indeed impure.”

 

Consequently, particular rites of slaughter
were prescribed by God for all the nations to whom prophets were sent,
in order to ensure that most of the blood was effectively removed from
the slaughtered animals and to remind human beings of God’s bounties.
The Qur’aan refers to these instructions in chapter al-Hajj (22):34 as
follows:

 

}
وَ لِكُلِّ أُمَّةٍ جَعَلْنَا مَنْسَكًا لِيَذْكُرُواْ اسْمَ اللهِ عَلَى
مَا رَزَقَهُمْ مِنْ بَهِيمَةِ اْلأَنْعَامِ {

“For every nation I have appointed rites of
slaughter in order that they may mention Allaah’s name over the cattle
He has provided them.”

 

Jesus and his early followers observed the
proper method of slaughter by mentioning God’s name and cutting the
jugular veins of the animals while they were living to allow the heart
to pump out the blood.  However, Christians
today do not attach much importance to proper slaughter methods, as
prescribed by God.

 

Alcohol

Jesus consecrated himself to God and
therefore abstained from alcoholic drinks according to the instructions
recorded in Numbers 6:1-4: “And the Lord said to Moses, ²‘Say
to the people of Israel, When either a man or a woman makes a special
vow, the vow of the Nazirite,[144]
to separate himself to the Lord, ³he
shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; he shall drink
no vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and shall not drink any
juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. ⁴All
the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the
grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.” 

           
In the Qur’aan, Chapter al-Maa’idah (5):90, Allaah
prohibits intoxicants irrevocably.

 

}
يَأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ إِنَّمَا الْخَمْرُ وَالْمَيْسِرُ
وَاْلأَنْصَابُ وَاْلأَزْلاَمُ رِجْسٌ مِنْ عَمَلِ الشَّيْطَانِ
فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ {

“O
you who believe,
intoxicants, gambling, sacrificial altars, and divination are an
abomination of Satan’s handiwork, so avoid them in order to be
successful.”

 

           
As to the ‘miracle of turning water into wine’,[145] it is found only in the Gospel of John,
which consistently contradicts the other three gospels. As mentioned
earlier, the Gospel of John was opposed as heretical in the early
Church,[146] while the other
three Gospels were referred
to as the Synoptic Gospels because the texts contained a similar
treatment of Jesus’ life.[147]
Consequently, New Testament scholars have
expressed doubt about the authenticity of this incident.

 

Ablution before Prayer

Prior to making formal prayer, Jesus used to
wash his limbs according to the teachings of the Torah. 
Moses and Aaron are recorded as doing the same in Exodus
40:30-1, “30 And he set the laver between the tent of
meeting and the altar, and put water in it for washing, ³¹with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed
their hands and their feet.... as the Lord commanded Moses.” 

           
In the Qur’aan, Chapter al-Maa’idah, (5):6, ablution for
prayer is prescribed as follows:

 

}
يَأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ إِذَا قُمْتُمْ إِلَى الصَّلاَةِ
فَاغْسِلُواْ

وُجُوهَكُمْ
وَأَيْدِيَكُمْ إِلَى الْمَرَافِقِ وَامْسَحُواْ بِرُءُوسِكُمْ
وَأَرْجُلَكُمْ إِلَى الْكَعْبَينِ ... {

“O
you who believe, when you
intend to pray, wash your faces and fore-arms up to the elbows, wipe
your heads and wash your feet up to the ankles ...”

 

Prostration in Prayer

Jesus is described in the Gospels as
prostrating during prayer. In Matthew 26:39, the author describes an
incident which took place when Jesus went with his disciples to
Gethsemane: “And going a little farther he fell on his face and
prayed, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;
nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

           
Christians today kneel down, clasping their hands, in a
posture which cannot be ascribed to Jesus.  The
method of prostration in prayer followed by Jesus was not of his own
making.  It was the mode of prayer of the
prophets before him. In the Old Testament, Genesis 17:3, Prophet
Abraham is recorded to have fallen on his face in prayer; in Numbers
16:22 & 20:6, both Moses and Aaron are recorded to have fallen on
their faces in worship; in Joshua 5:14 & 7:6, Joshua fell on his
face to the earth and worshipped; in I Kings 18:42, Elijah bowed down
on the ground and put his face between his knees. This was the way of
the prophets through whom God chose to convey His word to the world;
and it is only by this way that those who claim to follow Jesus will
gain the salvation which he preached in his Gospel.

           
Chapter al-Insaan (76):25-6, is only one of many Qur’aanic
examples of God’s instructions to the believers to bow down in worship
to Him.

}
وَاذْكُرِ اسْمَ رَبِّكَ بُكْرَةً وَأَصِيلاً وَمِنَ الَّيْلِ فَاسْجُدْ
لَهُ وَسَبِّحْهُ لَيْلاً طَوِيلاً {

“Remember
the Name of your
Lord in the morning and evening, and prostrate to Him and glorify Him
for a long time nightly.”

 

Veiling

The women around Jesus veiled themselves
according to the practice of the women around the earlier prophets.
Their garments were loose and covered their bodies completely, and they
wore scarves which covered their hair.  In
Genesis 24:64-5: “And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw
Isaac, she alighted from the camel, ⁶⁵and said to the servant, ‘Who is the man
yonder, walking in the field to meet us?’ The servant said, ‘It is my
master.’ So she took her veil and covered herself.” Paul wrote in his first letter to the
Corinthians, “5 But any woman who prays or prophesies with
her head unveiled dishonours her head—it is the same as if her head
were shaven. ⁶For if a woman will not veil herself, then
she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be
shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil.”  Some may argue
that it was the general custom of those times to be completely veiled.  However, that is not the case. 
In both Rome and Greece, whose cultures dominated the
region, the popular dress was quite short and revealed the arms, legs
and chest.  Only religious women in
Palestine, following Jewish tradition, covered themselves modestly.

           
According to Rabbi Dr. Menachem M. Brayer (Professor of
Biblical Literature at Yeshiva University), it was customary that
Jewish women went out in public with a head-covering which, sometimes,
even covered the whole face, leaving only one eye free.[148] He further
stated that “during the Tannaitic
period, the Jewish woman’s failure to cover her head was considered an
affront to her modesty. When her head was uncovered she might be fined
four hundred zuzim for this offence.”[149]

           
The famous early Christian theologian, St. Tertullian (d.
220 CE), in his famous treatise, ‘On The Veiling of Virgins’ wrote,
“Young women, you wear your veils out on the streets, so you should
wear them in the church; you wear them when you are among strangers,
then wear them among your brothers...” Among the Canon laws of the
Catholic church until today, there is a law that requires women to
cover their heads in church.[150]
Christian denominations, such as the Amish
and the Menonites for example, keep their women veiled to the present
day.

           
In the Qur’aan, Chapter an-Noor (24):31, the believing
women are instructed to cover their charms and wear veils on their
heads and chests.

 

} وَقُلْ لِلْمُؤْمِنَاتِ يَغْضُضْنَ مِنْ أَبْصَارِهِنَّ
وَيَحْفَظْنَ فُرُوجَهُنَّ وَلاَ يُبْدِينَ زِينَتَهُنَّ إِلاَّ مَا
ظَهَرَ مِنْهَا وَلْيَضْرِبْنَ بِخُمُرِهِنَّ عَلَى جُيُوبِهِنَّ... {

“Tell
the believing women to
lower their gaze and protect their private parts and not to expose
their adornment, except only what normally shows, and to draw their
head-scarves over their bosoms...”

 

In Chapter al-Ahzaab (33): 59, the
reason for veiling is given. Allaah states that it makes the believing
women known in the society and provides protection for them from
possible social harm.

 

Greetings

Jesus greeted his followers by saying “Peace
be upon you”. In chapter 20:19, the anonymous author of the Gospel
according to John wrote the following about Jesus after his supposed
crucifixion: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ ” 
This greeting was according to that of the prophets, as
mentioned in the books of the Old Testament. For example, in 1st Samuel
25:6, Prophet David instructed emissaries whom he sent to Nabal: “And
thus you shall salute him: ‘Peace be to you, and peace be to
your house, and peace be to all that you have.’ ” The Qur’aan
instructs all who enter homes to give greetings of peace;[151] and those
entering paradise will be greeted
similarly by the angels.[152]  In Chapter
al-An‘aam (6):54, God instructs the believers to greet each other with
peace:

 

}
وَإِذَا جَآءَكَ الَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِآيَاتِنَا فَقُلْ سَلاَمٌ
عَلَيْكُمْ {

“When
those who believe in my
signs come to you, greet them: Peace be upon you.”

 

Whenever Muslims meet each other, they use
this greeting.

Jesus confirmed the institution of compulsory
charity, known as “the tithe (tenth)”, which was required from the
annual harvest to be given back to God in celebration. In Deuteronomy
14:22: “You shall tithe all the yield of your seed, which comes
forth from the field year by year.” 

In the 6th chapter, al-An‘aam, verse 141, God
reminds the believers to pay the charity at the time of harvest:

 

}
وَهُوَ الَّذِي أَنْشَأَ جَنَّاتٍ مَعْرُوشَاتٍ وَغَيْرَ مَعْرُوشَاتٍ
وَالنَّخْلَ وَالزَّرْعَ مُخْتَلِفًا أُكُلُهُ وَالزَّيْتُونَ
وَالرُّمَّانَ مُتَشَابِهًا وَغَيْرَ مُتَشَابِهٍ كُلُواْ مِنْ ثَمَرِهِ
إِذآ أَثْمَرَ وَآتُواْ حَقَّهُ يَوْمَ حَصَادِهِ وَلاَ تُسْرِفُواْ
إِنَّهُ لاَ يُحِبُّ الْمُسْرِفِينَ {

“It is He who produces trellised and
un-trellised gardens, date palms and crops of different shapes and
tastes, and olives and pomegranates, similar yet different. Eat of
their fruit when they bear, but pay the due[153] at the time of harvest without being
extravagant, for, surely He does not like those who are extravagant.”

 

The system of compulsory charity (in Arabic, zakaah)
is well organized, with different rates for cash and precious metals
than that for agricultural products and cattle. Also, those who are
eligible to receive are clearly defined in the Qur’aan, Chapter
at-Tawbah (9):60. It is mainly distributed among various categories of
the poor and is not used to provide a comfortable living for priests.

 

Fasting

According to the Gospels, Jesus fasted for
forty days.  Matthew 4:2: “And he fasted
forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry.”[154] 
This was in
accordance with the practice of the earlier prophets. 
Moses is also recorded in Exodus 34:28, to have fasted: “And
he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate
bread nor drank water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the
covenant, the ten commandments.” 

           
In the Qur’aan, Chapter al-Baqarah (2):183, the believers
are instructed to observe regular fasting.

 

} يَأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ
الصِّيَامُ  كَمَا كُتِبَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ
مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ {

“O
you who believe, fasting is
prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, in order
that you may become pious.”

 

The  purpose of
fasting is clearly defined as being for the development of
God-consciousness. Only God knows who is actually fasting and who is
not. Consequently, one who is fasting refrains from eating and drinking
based on an awareness of God. Regular fasting heightens that awareness,
which subsequently leads to a greater inclination towards righteousness.

The believers are required to fast from dawn
until dusk for the whole month of Ramadaan (the ninth month of the
lunar calendar).  Prophet Muhammad (e) also said, “The best fast [outside of
Ramadaan] is that of my brother [Prophet] David who used to fast every
other day.”[155]

 

Interest

By upholding the Law, Prophet Jesus also
opposed the giving or taking of interest because the texts of the Torah
expressly forbade interest.  It
is recorded in Deuteronomy 23:19 that, “You shall not lend upon
interest to your brother, interest on money, interest upon victuals,[156] interest on
anything that is lent for
interest.”[157] Interest is
also strictly forbidden in
Chapter al-Baqarah (2):278 of the Qur’aan:

 

}يَأَيُّهَا
الَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ اتَّقُواْ اللهَ وَذَرُواْ مَا بَقِيَ مِنَ الرِّبَآ
إِنْ كُنْتُمْ مُؤْمِنِينَ{

“O
you who believe, fear
Allaah and give up what interest remains due to you, if you really are
believers.”

 

In order to fulfill this divine requirement,
Muslims developed an alternative system of banking, commonly known as
‘Islamic Banking’, which is interest-free.

 

Polygamy

There is no record of Prophet Jesus opposing
polygamy. If he did so, it would have meant that the condemned the
practice of the prophets before him. nbsp; There
are a number of examples of polygamous marriages among the prophets
recorded in the Torah. Prophet Abraham had two wives, according
to Genesis 16:13: “So after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of
Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and
gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.”  So
Prophet David, according to the first book of Samuel 27:3, “And
David dwelt with Achish at Gat, he and his men, every man with his
household, and David with his two wives, Ahin’o-am of Jezreel, and
Abigail of Carmel, Nabal’s widow.” In 1st Kings 11:3, Solomon
is said to have “...had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three
hundred concubines.”  Solomon’s son,
Rehobo’am, also had a number of wives, according to 2nd Chronicles
11:21, “Rehobo’am loved Ma’acah the daughter of Absalom above all
his wives and concubines (he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines,
and had twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters).” In fact, the Torah
even specified laws regarding the division of inheritance in
polygamous circumstances. In Deuteronomy 21:15-16, the law states: “15
If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other
disliked, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the
disliked, and if the first-born son is hers that is disliked, ¹⁶then
on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his
sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the first-born in
preference to the son of the disliked, who is the first-born.” The
only restriction on polygamy was the ban on taking a wife’s sister as a
rival wife in Leviticus 18:18, “And you shall not take a woman as a
rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is
yet alive.” The Talmud advises a maximum of four wives as was the
practice of Prophet Jacob.[158]

According to Father Eugene Hillman, “Nowhere
in the New Testament is there any explicit commandment that marriage
should be monogamous or any explicit commandment forbidding polygamy.”[159] He further
stressed the fact that the Church
in Rome banned polygamy in order to conform to Graeco-Roman culture
which prescribed only one legal wife while tolerating concubinage and
prostitution.[160]

Islaam limited polygamy to a maximum of four
wives at one time and stipulated the maintenance of justice as a basic
condition for polygamy. In Chapter an-Nisaa (4):3, God states:

 

}
فَانْكِحُواْ مَا طَابَ لَكُمْ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ مَثْنَى وَثُلاَثَ
وَرُبَاعَ فَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلاَّ تَعْدِلُواْ فَوَاحِدَةً ... {

“Marry
of the women that
please you two, three or

four.
But if you fear that you
will not be able to deal justly, then [marry only] one ...”

 

CONCLUSION

There is only One God who created one race of
human beings, and communicated to them one message: submission to the
will of God—known in Arabic as Islaam. That message was
conveyed to the first human beings on this earth, and reaffirmed by all
of the prophets of God who came after them, down through the ages.  The essence of the message of Islaam was that
humans should worship only One God by obeying His commandments, and
should avoid worshipping God’s creation in any way, shape or form.

Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary,
performed miracles and invited the Israelites to the same message of
submission (Islaam), as did all of the prophets who preceded him. He
was not God, nor was he the ‘Son of God’, but was the Messiah, an
illustrious prophet of God.  Jesus did not
invite people to worship himself; rather, he called them to worship
God, and he himself worshipped God.  He
confirmed the laws of the Torah which Prophet Moses taught; he
lived by them, and instructed his disciples to follow them to the
finest detail. Before his departure, he informed his followers of the
last prophet, Muhammad of Arabia (e), who would come after him, and instructed
them to observe his teachings.

In the generations after Jesus’ departure
from this world, his teachings were distorted and he was elevated to
the status of God.  Six centuries later,
with the coming of Prophet Muhammad (e), the truth about Jesus Christ was finally
retold and preserved eternally in the last book of divine revelation,
the Qur’aan.  Furthermore, the laws of
Moses, which Jesus followed, were revived in their pure and
unadulterated form, and implemented in the divinely prescribed way of
life known as Islaam.

Consequently, the reality of the prophets,
their uniform message, and the way of life which they followed, can
only be found preserved in the religion of Islaam, the only religion
prescribed by God for man.  Furthermore,
only Muslims today actually follow Jesus and his true teachings. Their
way of life is much more in tune with the way of life of Jesus than any
of the modern day “Christians”.  Love and
respect of Jesus Christ is an article of faith in Islaam. Allaah
stressed the importance of belief in Jesus in numerous places in the
Qur’aan.  For example, in Chapter an-Nisaa
(4):159, He said:

 

}
وَ إِنْ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ إِلاَّ لَيُؤْمِنَنَّ بِهِ قَبْلَ
مَوْتِهِ وَيَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ يَكُونُ عَلَيْهِمْ شَهِيدًا {

“And
all of the people of the
scripture must believe in him [Jesus] before his death, and on the Day
of Resurrection, he will be a witness against them,”

 

Jesus’ Return

Even the expected return of Jesus, which
Christians are awaiting, is a part of the Islamic faith. 
However, he will not return to judge the world as modern
Christians believe, because judgement only belongs to God. The Qur’aan
teaches that Jesus was not killed by the Jews, but was instead raised
up alive by God into the heavens.

 

}
وَ قَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا الْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولَ
اللهِ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ

وَمَا
صَلَبُوهُ وَلَكِنْ شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ وَإِنَّ الَّذِينَ اخْتَلَفُوا فِيهِ
لَفِي شَكٍّ مِنْهُ وَمَا لَهُمْ بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلاَّ اتِّبَاعَ
الظَّنِّ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًا بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللهُ إِلَيْهِ وَكَانَ
اللهُ عَزِيزًا حَكِيمًا {

“And their
(the Jews) saying: ‘We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary,’ but they
did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, rather it was made to seem
that way to them. And those who differ about it are full of doubts.  They have no knowledge about it, and follow
instead conjecture. They certainly did not kill him, [for], Allaah
raised him up to Himself.  And Allaah is
All-Powerful, All-Wise.”

 

Among the things which Prophet Muhammad (e) was recorded to have said regarding Prophet
Jesus’ return is the following, “There will be no prophet between me
and Jesus, and he will return.  When he
does, you will know him. He will be a well-built man of ruddy
complexion and he will descend wearing a two-piece garment.  His hair will look wet, though no water
touched it.  He will fight people to
establish Islaam  and he will break the
cross, kill the pig and cancel the jizyah.[161] During his time, Allaah will destroy all
religions except Islaam and the False-Christ will be killed. Jesus will
remain on earth for forty years, and when he dies, Muslims will pray
the funeral prayer for him.”[162]

           
Jesus’ return will be one of the signs of the coming of
the Day of Judgement

 

Bibliography

 

Arberry, Arthur J., The Koran
Interpreted, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980.

Barr, James, “Abba Isn’t ‘Daddy’,” in Journal
of Theological Studies, vol. 39, 1988.

------------, “Abba, Father”, in Theology,
vol. 91, no. 741, 1988.

Brayer, Menachem M., The Jewish Woman in
Rabbinic Literature: A Psychosocial Perspective, Hoboken, N.J:
Ktav Publishing House, 1986.

Burton, John, An Introduction to the
Hadith, UK: Edingurgh University Press, 1994.

------------, The Collection of the
Qur’an, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Cragg, Kenneth, The Mind of the Qur’an, London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1973.

Deedat, Ahmed, Christ in Islam, Durban,
South Africa: The Islamic Propagation Centre, n.d.

Dunn, James, Christology in the Making, London:
SCM Press, and Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980.

Friedman, Richard, Who Wrote the Bible?, U.S.A.:
Summit Books, 1987.

Funk, Robert W., Roy W.  Hoover
and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, New York: Polebridge
Press, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993.

Graham, William, Beyond the Written Word,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Hamidullah, Mohammed, Muhammad
Rasullullah, Lahore, Pakistan: Idara-e-islamiat, n.d.

Hasan, Ahmad, Sunan Abu Dawud,
(English Trans.), Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf Publishers, 1st ed., 1987.

Hastings, J., Dictionary of the Bible, New
York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, revised ed., 1963.

Hebblethwai, Brian, The
Incarnation, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Hick John, ed.,  The
Myth of God Incarnate, London: SCM Press Ltd, 1977.

------------, The Metaphor of God
Incarnate, London: SCM Press Ltd, 1993.

Hillman, Eugene, Polygamy Reconsidered:
African Plural Marriage and the Christian Churches, New York:
Orbis Books, 1975.

Hornby, A.S., The Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary, England: Oxford University Press, 4th ed.,
1989.

Khan, Muhammad Muhsin, Sahih Al-Bukhari,
(Arabic-English), Lahore: Kazi Publications, 6th ed., 1986.

Gibb, H.A.R. and J.H. Kramers, Shorter
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1953.

Maccoby, Hyam, The Myth-maker: Paul and
the Invention of Christianity, New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

Mayfield, Joseph H., Beacon Bible
Commentary, Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1965.

Moule, C.F.D., The Origin of Christology,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Mufassir, Sulayman Shahid, Biblical
Studies from a Muslim Perspective, Washington: The Islamic Center,
1973.

------------, Jesus, A Prophet of Islam, Indianapolis:
American Trust Publications, 1980.

Nicholson, Reynold A., Literary History
of the Arabs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Philips, Abu Ameenah Bilal, The Purpose
of Creation, Sharjah, U.A.E.: Dar Al Fatah, 1995.

Ramsey, Michael, Jesus and the Living
Past, UK: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Ruether, Rosemary R., ed., Religion and
Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

Spray, Lisa, Jesus, Tucson, AZ:
Renaissance Productions, 1987.

Siddiqi, Abdul Hamid, Sahih Muslim,
(English Trans.) Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf Publishers, 1987.

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 15th
Edition, 1991.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1987.

 

 

p.31

and unauthorized copies were destroyed.48

 p.34

to the level of the Bible are easily
explained.  For ex-

 p.38

authority  for  tracing  the  origin and  early
develop-

 p.46

The
Biblical story of Jesus turning water into wine (John 2:1-10) is con-

 

p.50

“When your Lord gathered all of Aadam’s
descendants [before creation] and made them bear witness  
for   themselves, 
saying :  ‘Am  
I  not  your

Lord?’  They  all  replied: Yes  indeed, we  bear
wit-

p.53

of
these speeches is that they accurately reflect the original belief and
termi-

 

p. 74

“Surely, I116
have sent to every nation a messen-

 

p.77

was officially struck off the list of saints
by papal de-

 

p. 80

portraying God in human form eventually won
out.

 

p.91

nor did he eat blood.  God
is recorded as having in-

 

p.92

eaten by one who wishes to eat, except for
ani-

Consequently, particular rites of slaughter
were pre-

 

p.95

little farther he fell on his face and
prayed, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;
never-

 

p96

The women around Jesus veiled themselves
accord-

 

p.98

Clara M.
Henning, “Canon Law and the Battle of  the
Sexes,” in Relig-

 

p.99

sent me, even so I send you.’ ”  This greeting
was ac-

 

p.103

interest remains due to you, if you  really are be-

However, in the
verse following this one, the Jews made lending on in-

 

p.105

cus 18:18, “And you shall not take a woman
as a ri-

 

p.109

“And their (the Jews) saying: ‘We killed the
Mes-