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What do today's Muslims need and what does Islam have to offer? A brief introduction: This is an acclaimed Eid-ul-fitr khutba (edited) given by Dr. Sherif Abdel Azeem Mohammad in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in early 1997. The article is oratorical as it was intended for a general audience in a mosque. It tells us one of the major reasons why Muslims are suffering today. Dr. Sherif Mohammad's articles (include published books) have intellectual depths and are focused yet they have great literary flows that make the reading pleasant and refreshing. He is a noted Islamic thinker-writer and historian. He is an academic who teaches engineering. Assalam'Alaikum brothers and sisters, Today, we are in fact celebrating our Islam, our being members of the greatest faith ever revealed to mankind, our being believers in the most beautiful and the most comprehensive scripture that ever descended from heaven to earth, our being followers of the greatest man that ever walked on the face of the earth, our being believers in Allah, the One and Only. Had we not been Muslims, we would have not been here today.We would have not known Ramadan, not experienced the sweetness of the fast, not tasted the beauty of the prayers, we would have not known that today is Eid. Today we are celebrating, first and foremost, that we are Muslims. We are celebrating the greatest blessing of our lives: our Islam. Islam is the faith that defines us, defines who we are, defines our identity. Islam is the religion that Allah has chosen for us, has perfected for us, and has granted us as the Quran has eloquently expressed "This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed my favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion." (5:3) Islam is a favor, Islam is a privilege, Islam is a bounty from Allah. Islam does not need us. We need Islam. All we have to do is to be grateful for such a great blessing and say, "Praise be to Allah who has guided us to this: never could we have found guidance, had it not been for the guidance of Allah" (7:43) But why is it that we believe that Islam is such a tremendous bounty from Allah? Because there is nothing like Islam on earth: It is Islam that has taught human beings that the Lord their God is One and Only. That He has no partners, no wife, and no son, and that there can be no compromise on the unity of God. It is Islam that has taught human beings that they are all equal and that no Arab is superior to non-Arab, nor a non-Arab is superior to an Arab and that the best of all of us is the one who is most righteous. It is Islam that has taught human beings that they are all brothers and sisters created from a single pair of a male and a female. Therefore, Islam, unlike Hinduism, neither recognizes nor condones the idea of a caste system. Islam is at war on caste systems, on aristocracies, and hereditary social groups of all kinds. It is Islam that has taught humanity the value of the intellect, the importance of reflection, and the role of the mind in attaining faith. Christians teach that one can never become a believer except when the Holy Spirit mysteriously occupies one's heart. Islam teaches that faith is the fruit of reason and it is through continuous reflection on the wonders of creation that faith can be obtained, maintained, and nurtured. It is Islam that has taught humanity that people of all races, all colours, all ethnicities are perfectly capable of attaining faith in the One and Only God. Hindus believe that Hinduism is just for those privileged to be born in the faith and therefore they do not invite the "less privileged" to embrace their faith. Jews believe that they are the chosen race and even when they accept others to embrace Judaism, those converts are always lower in rank than those born as Jews. Islam rejects all that and calls upon all people of all backgrounds to submit themselves to their Creator. Once they do, they automatically become members of the community of Islam with the same rights and duties as any other Muslim. Islam is not, and can never be, the monopoly of one race or a certain linguistic group.
It is Islam that has taught humanity that God is absolutely Just and Merciful and that He will never punish one person for the sins of others. Christianity teaches that Adam and Eve had bequeathed their sin to all their descendants and thus all humans are born in this "Original Sin" and therefore Jesus Christ had to be sacrificed on the cross to redeem humanity of its 'original sin.' Islam says, NO. Humans are not born in sin. No person will be held accountable for another's mistakes. Every soul will pay for its own deeds, only. Divine justice is absolute. It is Islam that has taught humanity that righteous deeds are necessary for salvation. Faith is indispensable, but not sufficient. Humans will be admitted to Paradise by their faith and their righteous acts. They have to go together, hand in hand. Many Christian denominations teach that faith in Jesus is enough for salvations. If you accept Jesus sacrifice on the cross, then you are saved regardless of what you may do afterwards because Jesus has already paid for all your sins. Islam totally disagrees. No one can pay for your sins. Faith, doing righteousness, avoiding evil, and continuous repentance are the only ways for salvation. Islam does not accept, nor condone the corrupting influence on the individual as well as the society that can be caused by the idea of a "guaranteed" salvation. It is Islam that has taught humanity how to balance the needs of this life and the next. Islam does not accept the idea that renunciation of this world is the best means to get salvation in the next. Catholicism and Buddhism teach that by living a reclusive life, one can attain higher spirituality. Buddhism even taught the recluse must make his living by begging. Islam rejects the whole notion of the alleged goodness of renouncing the world. Islam teaches that best means for advancement in the next life is by getting involved in the affairs of this world by commanding good and forbidding evil; by helping one another in righteousness and piety; by doing Jihad, by struggling against all forms of evil, injustice, tyranny, intolerance...Islam does not teach rejection of the world, it teaches involvement, struggle, and change. It is Islam that has taught humanity that kindness to parents, to kin, to neighbours, and to fellow humans is an essential part of faith and righteousness. Christianity claims that Jesus has taught that one cannot come closer to God unless one hates one's father, mother, wife, children,...(Luke 14:26) Islam teaches the opposite. One cannot come closer to God unless one acts so kindly towards one's mother, father, family, neighbuors, etc. It is Islam that has taught humanity that God is very close to them and that He is with them wherever they are and that He hears their prayers and responds to them. Islam teaches that God is so close that He needs no intermediaries to mediate between Him and His servants. Islam does not accept the concept of priesthood and clergy acting as mediators between God and humans. Islam teaches that one does not have to confess one's sins to a priest in order to get forgiveness. One can simply confess one's sins to God without any human intervention, seek forgiveness, and God will grant it. Many Jews today still believe that prayers cannot reach God and get a response from Him unless the prayer is made at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Some even fax their prayers or send it via the Internet to Jerusalem so that someone there would take it and put it on the Wailing Wall to reach God. Islam teaches that wherever one maybe, one can pray to God, confess to God, seek God's help and forgiveness, and God will certainly respond. No human intervention is needed, no special place or time is necessary. God is always very close. It is Islam that has taught humans to accept and respect their human nature. Islam recognizes the strengths, the weaknesses, and the needs of humans. Islam never requires humans to behave as angels or to ignore their physical and emotional needs. Christianity does not allow divorce. Islam recognizes it as a human reality. Catholicism considers celibacy an ideal. Islam does not. The Anglican Church frowns upon second marriages. Prince Charles in order to become King of England has to behave as a practicing Anglican. Therefore, he can commit adultery openly with his famous mistress but he cannot marry her or else he will lose the throne for violating the rules of the Church of England. Islam never engages in such irrationality and moral contradictions. There is nothing like Islam on earth. There is no faith, no religion, no ideology, no system of belief that can rival Islam in its clarity and simplicity; in its submission to God, the One and Only; in its rationality and intellectual depth; in its egalitarianism and equality; in its spirituality; in its code of ethics; in its unparalleled balance between the needs of this life and the demands of the hereafter. Islam has elevated the human soul, body, and mind to heights that have never been reached by any other faith or tradition. Islam is the only religion that has truly enabled human beings to fulfill their humanity. Islam is like a perfect piece of art at which the human eye can keep looking and scrutinizing for days, weeks, years on end and still can find no flaws, no defects, and no contradictions. All the human eye can do is to keep wondering at the amazing beauty and coherence of this faith of ours: Islam. Leopold Wiess, the Austrian Jew who embraced Islam in 1926 and became one of the greatest Muslim intellects of the twentieth century has expressed the same level of astonishment at the overwhelming beauty and coherence of Islam, "I was asked, time and again: 'Why did you embrace Islam? What was it that attracted you particularly?' -- and I must confess: I don't know of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular teaching that attracted me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent structure of moral teaching and practical life programme. I could not say, even now, which aspect of it appeals to me more than any other. Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other: nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is 'in its proper place,' has created the strongest impression on me." In a nutshell, Islam is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is important to note that Islam is not just a set of ideals, it is a tremendous force capable of transforming and regenerating individuals as well as societies and whole nations. The influence of Islam upon the first society that embraced it, the Arabian peninsula, was nothing short of a revolution. Islam has revolutionized Arabia in all aspects of life: politically, economically, socially, and above all morally: It was Islam that transformed the fiercely independent-minded Arabs who knew no government, obeyed no authority, recognized no state into a nation with a government, a capital, and a respected authority. It was Islam that taught the anarchic Arabs how to elect a head of state from among themselves and how to run their government upon principles of mutual consultation. It was Islam that taught the Arabs who never agreed on any form of law to build a nation based on the rule of one sacred, just, and merciful law. Islam also taught them that they were all equals before the law and no one even the daughter of the Prophet was above the law. It was Islam that transformed the intensely militant Arabs from a group of tribes massacring each other all the time -- to the extent that they had to agree on four months of peace every year to prevent their whole race from extinction due to the incessant wars -- into one nation with united tribal armies able to confront and defeat the armies of the surrounding superpowers: the Byzantines and the Sassanids. It was Islam that abolished usury from Arabia and taught the Arabs how to make business transactions justly and fairly without exploitation or abuse. It was Islam that abolished the gruesome habit of female infanticide from Arabia. It was Islam that taught the Arabs that women were full human beings, not mere chattel, and that they were their sisters in humanity and in faith. It was Islam that guaranteed for Arabian women their rights to: inheritance, property, divorce, and independent legal personality. It was Islam that eradicated alcohol, with all its evils, from Arabia. It was Islam that ended all forms of prostitution, gambling, and intoxicants from the Arabian society. And it was Islam that opened all doors for freeing slaves. It was Islam that uprooted racism from the Arab mind completely to the extent that the deeply racist and arrogant Arabs would accept to be soldiers in armies whose leaders were black Africans. And above all, it was Islam that transformed the idolatrous and superstitious Arabs into believers in the One and Only God. It was Islam that transformed them from idol worshippers into a people who stand together in one line in prayer and prostrate their heads to the Almighty. Arabia before Islam was a society bound by tradition and precedent. Whatever was customary was right and proper. Whatever the forefathers had done deserved to be imitated. Islam rejected this blind faith in tradition. Islam challenged all the customs of the society. Islam questioned all the mores and manners of the Arabs. Islam introduced to them the standards of morality and the fundamentals of right and wrong. Islam taught them how to think critically of everything around them and how to reject the bad habits and keep the good ones. Islam showed them the proper way for peace and happiness in this life and felicity in the next. This was the essence of the revolution that Islam was. The question that irresistibly comes to the mind is this: that was the past, what about now? Can Islam revolutionize the world today as it did to seventh century Arabia? Is Islam relevant today? Does Islam have anything to offer today's world? Yes, a great deal. For us, Muslims living in the West, it would be reasonable to focus on what Islam has to offer to our Western society at the dawn of a new millennium. The West, as the seventh century Arabia and as any other society for that matter, has its own virtues as well as vices. Islam can improve and enhance all the virtues while eliminating -- or, at least, minimizing -- the vices. In a society where alcohol is the number one cause of criminal death and injury; where alcohol costs billions of dollars each year in medical expenses and property damage; where alcohol consumption causes the death of hundreds of thousands of people annually; where alcohol is a major cause of rape and domestic violence -- Is there any faith more able than Islam to prevent all the ills of alcohol? In a society still tormented by racial strife; where "black" churches are continuously fire-bombed by bigots of all kinds; where one rarely sees a black person in a "white" church or a white person in a "black" church -- Islam has so much to offer because Islam does not tolerate the very idea of a "black" mosque or a "white" mosque; Islam obliges believers to stand together in one line, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, and prostrate their foreheads to God so that they learn they are all humble servants of the Almighty. In a society where violence against women has risen to alarming proportions, where it is not safe for women to walk alone in the dark, where even institutions of higher learning have to provide 'walk home service' to protect women on campus at night - Islam has much more to contribute than escort services or karate lessons. Islam does implant modesty and sense of propriety in the minds of the believers, Islam eradicates vulgarity, Islam eliminates any possibility that men view women as sex objects. In a society as violent as the United States where some 25000 lives are taken every year by handguns alone; where 5% of the world population consume 50% of the world's illegal drugs despite the arrest of some 700,000 drug dealers every year; where a car is stolen every few seconds; where a woman is raped every few minutes - Islam has a lot more to offer than merely putting more cops in the streets. Islam teaches that prevention is better than cure and that crime can best be reduced by taking care of the family, the community, and the neighbourhood. Islam attaches great esteem and honour to the role of the mother because when she takes proper care of her children, the whole society benefits. Islam reminds the fathers of their duties, encourages the neighbours to take care of each other's needs, strengthen community bonds, advocates commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong instead of apathy and individualism. Islam always eliminates problems from their roots. In a society afflicted with intense individualism, excessive materialism, fierce consumerism, and unabashed sensualism; Islam has the intellectual and the spiritual power required to rectify all the excesses of the society because Islam preaches moderation and balance in all worldly and other-worldly affairs. The influence of Islam is not limited to the social and moral domains, it extends to the political, economic, legal, cultural, and educational realms as well. Two examples should suffice. In the realm of politics: the egalitarian nature of Islam requires major reforms in the way democracy is practiced in the society today. As it stands, the existing democracy is elitist and lopsided in favour of the wealthy, the powerful, and the special interests. The average person almost has no meaningful say in how things are run by the elite. This state of affairs falls far short of the ideal of mutual consultation in all affairs advocated by Islam. In the realm of economics: capitalism left unregulated has a tendency to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In a period of ten years only (1978-1987) the poorest fifth of the American population got 8% poorer while the richest fifth got 13% richer. This is the nature of capitalism; wealth breeds more wealth, sometimes even without any effort or creativity. Islam obliges all rich people to pay part of their wealth annually to the poor so that the wealth gets redistributed in the society in order to protect the poor from perpetual poverty and give them a fair chance to compete in a world dominated by the tyranny of capital. There is so much in Islam that can truly make the West, and indeed the whole world, a safer, better, and more decent place to live in. Islam is a formidable force with potential great enough to revolutionize the world and radically change the course of history as it once did some 1400 years ago. The problem is we have got the theory, but we don't have the practitioners. We have the revolution but we do not have the revolutionaries. And as there can be no democracy without democrats, no socialism without socialists, there also can be no Islam without Muslims. Islam is a message that is in constant need for messengers to deliver it to the world. Yes, the Book of God is there, the guidance of the Prophet is there, the testimony of history is there, but where are the Muslims? Where are the messengers? Where are the revolutionaries? They effectively do not exist. What does exist in the world today is some sort of "de-Islamized" Muslims. People who call themselves Muslims but the Islam they practice is a vague shadow of the Islam described in the magnificent words of the Quran. Muslims of today practice an Islam without spirit, an Islam without a message to humanity, an Islam without a mission, an Islam without ambition... An Islam without identity. Islam will never revolutionize the world, as it once did, unless there are true Muslims, as they once existed-- Muslims from the inside-out, Muslims in thought and in action, Muslims in theory and in practice, Muslims in private and in public, Muslims in spirit, in intellect, and in emotions. The road to produce such Muslims is long and hard. It is perhaps more realistic to focus on just one good first step. This first step, I believe, would be to raise a generation of Muslim youth who take great pride in their great faith. A generation of young Muslims whose identity is purely Islamic, a generation of Muslims for whom Islam comes first and everything else - national, ethnic, racial, linguistic identity - comes, at best, a distant second-- a generation that totally believes in what the great khalifa Omar once said, " It is only because of Islam that we gained 'izzah' (honour, dignity, and pride), and if we seek 'izzah' outside of Islam, Allah will humiliate us." I once had a conversation with a brother who embraced Islam several years ago. I asked him about the things he liked or disliked the most about Islam and Muslims. His answer was, " Everything about Islam is beautiful, but there is one thing I dislike in Muslims...They do not have a great sense of pride in Islam..." The brother's point is precisely what we need to ingrain in the minds of our new generation: the sense of pride in belonging to Islam - A pride strong enough to make them declare to the whole world openly and loudly, "We are Muslims, and we are extremely proud of it."
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You who love to quote form the Qur'an don't even know your own Bible. Matthew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. Try not to bawl "context" because we see 'sword' here as opposite to 'peace'.
Not only that, but Jesus (PBUH) tell his disciples to go and BUY some swords!! So they used to sell "spiritual" swords in the market in those days? Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough. "Words mean what I want them to mean," Alice (Noel) in Wonderland. As for numbers: 3 days and 3 nights means something else.
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Originally Posted By: Tman
You who love to quote form the Qur'an don't even know your own Bible. Matthew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. Try not to bawl "context" because we see 'sword' here as opposite to 'peace'.
Not only that, but Jesus (PBUH) tell his disciples to go and BUY some swords!! So they used to sell "spiritual" swords in the market in those days? Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough. "Words mean what I want them to mean," Alice (Noel) in Wonderland. As for numbers: 3 days and 3 nights means something else.
Ok Tman, anybody can quote scriptures even satan, so instead of quoting, why don't you Expound the scriptures?
Tell us what Jesus is saying from those statements and don't make the mistake and take them litteral because they're not.
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"Tman, there is no where in scripture where Jesus said he came with a sword, try again." This is what you stated and when I quote the verse you start to back track and want me to "expound". He either said it or he didn'. I leave you to do the "expounding" as you try to slip out of it just like you tried to on the 3 days and 3 nights. In the meantime I will go to the market to try and buy some spiritual swords, or are "two swords" enough? Sorry , I forgot you don't do maths. New name for Noel is "Alice," words mean what I want them to mean.
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This is just a part of it but it agrees with many of my views. Tell me what you think, especially the part that says Paul was gay, as you seem to know a lot about their numbers in Ja.
The Bible And Christianity - The Historical Origins A rational, secular, historical perspective on the history of Christianity and its scripture An essay by Scott Bidstrup
"If the truth is that ugly -- which it is -- then we do have to be careful about the way that we tell the truth. But to somehow say that telling the truth should be avoided because people may respond badly to the truth seems bizarre to me." --Chuck Skoro, Deacon, St. Paul's Catholic Church
The Bible is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to Christians, especially, it is a source of inspiration and a guide to daily living.
To others, the Bible is a historical document and a source of controversy.
To others still, the Bible is a self-contradictory mish-mash of arcane rules and proscriptions, mostly relevant to long-dead cultures in far away places.
What is the truth in all of this?
The reality is that it is all true to an extent, and equally nonsensical at the same time. The Bible has meaning to all its readers, but it is important to consider that the meaning it has is informed by the prejudices the reader brings to it.
To really understand the Bible and what it intends to say to present generations, it is necessary to understand who wrote it and why, and the cultural context in which it was written. The story is an interesting one, in no small part because the story is so much messier than most of its advocates would have you to believe. And its very messiness is why it is a story rarely told in any completeness to Christian audiences.
The article then goes on to trace the Bible from the earliest days and continues…
The Christian Era and the Last Great Revision of Judaism 30 C.E. to appx. 73 C.E The conflict between the Hellenism and the traditions of ethnic Judaism was nowhere more obvious than in the northern part of Palestine, which had been so often subject to conquest and which, being on the major trade route between Asia Minor and the Transjordan, was constantly subjected to foreign influence. This northern region apparently didn't even consider itself to be Jewish, but rather a separate nation that had been annexed, apparently involuntarily, by the Maccabean kings of Israel. So here you have Hellenized Semitics under the influence and control of Jewish kings, looking elsewhere for philosophical guidance. It was a volatile mix.
Into this little region, called Galilee, was born a stubborn iconoclast. He resented the Roman occupation but accepted its rule. He was an intellect who understood at least the rudiments of the Cynic school of Greek philosophy and the complex theology of the Semitic Jews around him. But he would have none of it. He felt that there had to be a better way to live. He grew up a suburb of the capital of Galilee, in a place called Nazareth. His name was Jesus.
At least, that's the mythology that has grown up around this figure. For all his influence on the world, there's better evidence that he never even existed than that he did. We have absolutely no reliable evidence, from secular sources, that Jesus ever lived, or that any of the events surrounding his life as described in the four Gospels ever happened.
Indeed, when scholars apply the Negative Evidence Principle, it begins to look like the Jesus we know from the New Testament is the result of late first-century mythmaking.
The Negative Evidence Principle is, of course, not foolproof. It is not a proof in itself, but is rather a guideline, a good rule of thumb. How useful and reliable it is, of course, is subject to debate among logicians. Here's how the N.E.P. works - it states that you have good reason for not believing in a proposition if the following three principles are satisfied: First, all of the evidence supporting the proposition has been shown to be unreliable. Second, there is no evidence supporting the proposition when the evidence should be there if the proposition is true. And third, a thorough and exhaustive search has been made for supporting evidence where it should be found.
As for the first point, the only somewhat reliable, secular evidence we have for the life of Jesus comes from two very brief passages in the works of Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian. And Josephus was a prolific writer - he frequently wrote several pages on the trial and execution of individual common thieves, but on Jesus, he is silent except for two paragraphs, one of which is a known interpolation, and the other is highly suspect. Other references to Jesus in secular writings are ambiguous at best, or known to be later interpolations, or both. The earliest references to Jesus in the rabbinical literature come from the second century, even though known historical figures such as John the Baptist merit considerable discussion, even though his impact on Judaism was minimal. There are no references to Jesus in any of the Roman histories during his presumed lifetime. That he should be so thoroughly ignored is unlikely given the impact the gospel writers said he had on the events and politics of the Jewish kingdom.
So we have to turn to Christian literature for help.
At this point, caution is called for in examining first century Christian literature. This caution is made necessary by the fact that during this era, it was not considered wrong to write your own material and ascribe it to someone else, someone you consider your philosophical mentor, in whose name and style you are writing. Indeed, not only was this a common practice, but it was actually a skill taught in the schools of the day. This practice has made modern scholarship enormously difficult in dealing with who actually wrote the New Testament books and when. The problem, though difficult, is not insoluble, and modern scholarship has developed techniques which have been applied to early Christian writings, to find out who is saying what, when and why. When these techniques are applied to these early Christian writings, the results have been quite surprising.
The writings of Paul accepted as genuinely his (Galatians I and II and Thessalonians I and II, Corinthians, Romans, Philemon, Phillipians, and possibly Colossians) are by far the most pristine of any early Christian literature we have. They were probably written beginning in the fifth decade of the first century - well after the events of Jesus' life. When the letters are examined in isolation, it becomes apparent that Paul was ignorant of the doctrine of the virgin birth, that he never spoke in terms of having lived in Jesus' time, nor does he mention that any of his mentors were contemporaries of Jesus, nor that Jesus worked any miracles and he appparently did not associate the death of Jesus with the trial before Pilate. Only in Galatians 1:19 does he make reference to a contemporary Jesus, and then only in terms of James being the "Lord's brother." The use of the term "Lord's" even makes that single reference somewhat questionable to scholars, as the word "Lord's" did not have currency until the late 2nd. century. So the Pauline letters, at least the reliably Pauline letters, aren't good witnesses for a Jesus of the first half of the first century. What makes this particularly interesting, is that other non-Canonical early Christian pre-Gospel literature make the very same omissions.
Later Christian writings were written well after the events they describe, none earlier than at least the seventh decade at the earliest. And none of them are known to have been written by the authors to which they are ascribed. Most are second or third-hand accounts. There was plenty of time for mythmaking by the time they were written, so they're clearly not reliable witnesses.
The next stricture of the Negative Evidence Principle is that there isn't any sound evidence where there should be, and here again this stricture is met. First, there are no records whatever of Jesus' life in the Roman records of the era. That's surprising, since he stirred up so much unrest, at least by Biblical accounts. There at least ought to be a record of his arrest and trial, or some of the political notoriety the gospel writers describe. Yet the Roman histories are silent, even though they are quite thorough (Flavius Josephus alone wrote dozens of volumes, many of which survive, and he is far from the only historian of Palestine in this period whose writings have survived in some form). Second, as mentioned, there is no reliable account in Josephus.
Josephus was a historian who was so very thorough he would write a three page history of the trial and execution of a common thief, and wrote extensively about John the Baptist, but on Jesus, his two small references are seriously doubted by scholars as being genuine. Unfortunately, the writings of Josephus have come down to us only through Christian sources, none earlier than the fourth century, and are known to have been revised by the Christians. There are a number of reasons why the two references in Josephus are doubted: As summarized by Louis Feldman, a promient Josephus scholar, they are, first, use of the Christian reference to Jesus being the Messiah is unlikely to have come from a Jewish historian, especially from one who treated other Messianic aspirants rather harshly; second, commentators writing about Josephus earlier than Eusebius (4th Cent. C.E.) do not cite the passage; third, Origen mentions that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the messiah. There is a full account available on the Internet that describes the whole long list of problems with the "Testimonium Flavium" as scholars call it.
The earliest secular literary evidence for a religion based on the man we call Jesus comes from many decades after Jesus' supposed death (from about 70 C.E.). Why, if he had as much influence, and caused as much a stir as the Bible says he did, do we not know of him at all from reliable, contemporary testimony?
The third stricture of the N.E.P. holds that we must have conducted a thorough and exhaustive sweep for evidence where there should be evidence. Indeed, thousands of scholars, religionists, crusaders, apologists and skeptics alike have searched for such evidence since the earliest days of the Christian era. That they haven't found any reliable evidence that should have been there says that the third stricture has been clearly satisfied.
So based on the Negative Evidence Principle, we have good reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus and that lack of reliable evidence suggests no good reason to accept it.
How is it, then, that the movement began? Why did it grow as it did?
As discussed above, there was considerable intellectual ferment in Palestine at the time of the beginning of the Jesus movements. Many secular scholars and scholars from non-Judeo-Christian traditions have proposed, and I tend to agree, that it is likely that the Jesus myth began as a social movement to 'reJudify' Judaism. Remember that at this point, the temple was thoroughly corrupt, the high priest was a Roman political appointee, and many Jews felt that their culture and religion were under threat.
An excellent survey of current scholarship on the Teacher of Righteousness theory of the origins of the Jesus myth, this slim book offers a lot of evidence for this theory, and is also an easy read!
Get it here! The Messiah Before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Israel Knoll, published 2000. This book is considered seminal in its discussion of the Jesus Movements. Its detailed description of the development of the movement and its transformation into a church is scholarly without being opaque. Highly recommended!
Get it here! The Jesus Movement by Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, published 2001. The most prominent of the many movements to 'reJudaify' Judaism was the Essene Movement. Founded in the second century B.C.E., the Essenes were either founded by or greatly influenced by a "Teacher of Righteousness," to which the Dead Sea Scrolls make constant reference without ever naming. One individual who fits the scanty evidence is a Yeishu ha Notzri, Jesus or Jesua, or Yeshua or Joshua ben Pantera or Pentera or Pandera or Pandira, who apparently had some influence with this movement, but may have been much more than that; we simply don't know. Indeed, there are even several first-century Christian references to this supposed miracle worker.
If he was the Teacher of Righteousness referred to by the Dead Sea Scrolls, as some have suggested, his impact on the movement towards Jewish reform was considerable. And if he was the Teacher of Righteousness, it would answer a lot of interesting questions, such as the scattered first century Christian and Talmudic references to a miracle worker named Yeishu ha Notzri, known to first-century Christians as Jesus or Jesua ben Pantera. Among them are a quote from Origen, saying that his arch-rival Celsus had heard from a Jew in Jerusalem that "Jesus Ben Pantera" was born of Mary as the result of a rape by a Roman soldier named Pantera, and had borne the baby in secret (most scholars now regard this claim to be a first-century legend resulting from misinterpretation of the facts).
That the first century Christians may have feared there was some truth to this rumor is evidenced by the fact of Mark's obvious embarrassment regarding the origins of Jesus; Mark, the first writer of a canonic gospel, never mentions Joseph as the actual husband of Mary. Note also that it was both the Roman custom and the custom of the Jews to include a patrilineal surname as part of a person's full name; yet nowhere in the New Testament does the surname of Jesus, (or Joseph, for that matter) appear. There is at least one Talmudic reference to Jeshu as being the illegitimate son of an adultress named Mary Magdala. There are several interesting references to a Yeishu ha Notzri (note the resemblance of the name to "Jesus of Nazareth"), who traveled around and practiced magic during the reign of Alexander Janneus, who ruled Palestine from 104 to 78 BCE. As these references are Talmudic (from the Baraitas and the Gemara), and therefore presumed by Christian scholars to be anti-Christian; Christian apologeticists have simply dismissed them as referring to someone else or being fabricated propaganda. But if they are genuine, and they really do refer to the Jesus of whom the Christians speak, they add evidence to the claim that the Jesus of Nazareth story is really based on the life of Yieshu ha Notzri, possibly the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness." Evidence points to him being the founder of the Notzri as the sects were known in first century Palestine, and as the Jesus Movements to modern scholars.
It must be noted here is that the version of the Talmud still used by most modern Christian scholars, is normally the version known to have been heavily edited by Christians by the 16th century - presumably to remove the dangerous references to Yeishu ha Notzri and his followers, the Notzrim, the account of which is absent from this version. But the pristine version, still used by Jewish scholars, gives us some rich detail. Yeishu ha Notzri was considered by the temple authorities of the time to be a troublemaking heretic, and when they had finally had enough of him, they put him on trial. He was convicted of heresy, sentenced to wander the city for 40 days, with a crier going before him, shouting that if anyone had reason why he should not be executed, they should come forward. When no did, he was stoned to death, and his body hung from a tree on the eve of passover, in 88 B.C.E. Note the death on the eve of passover. Note also the hanging of the body from a tree - at the time, a sign of despicability, with its resemblance to the crucifixion myth.
The Essene movement was one based on a very strict asceticism. Followers were expected to live in monastic isolation, eating a rough diet of hard, primitive foods and living in very simple, rough accomodations, in the harsh climate and isolation of the Judean desert. Since not a lot of people had a taste for that kind of harsh, strict living, it was not exactly a wildly popular movement, yet its social ideals had a great deal of popular appeal. The result was that many people began to adopt the social ideals if not the religious asceticism, and began to associate with each other, much like the modern Hippie movement borrowed heavily from Eastern mysticism and spawned a social movement in our own times. Many organized themselves into small groups for social sharing and discussion. By the first century, these movements, known to the Jews of the time as the Notzri, and its follwers the Notzrim, had become widespread, and were found throughout the Eastern Meditteranean region. It is of considerable importance to note here that it is also known from Talmudic sources and elsewhere that the first century Christians also referred to themselves as Notzrim - lending strong support to the Yeishu ha Notzri theory as the source of the Jesus myth.
The Notzrim, or Jesus Movements, as modern scholars refer to these groups, appeared as isolated groups in widely separated towns and villages throughout the region. What they had in common was that they were a social reform movement, and often refered to a 'Jesus' or 'Jeshua' or 'Yeishu' or 'Yeshua' as their inspiration, but we know from contemporary descriptions that they were clearly not a religion, even though they incorporated many religious values.
Each of these Jesus Movement groups had its own ideas, often networking with others of a like mind, often disputing with others of conflicting ideas. While we have no writings from them directly, we have many references to them by contemporary historians, so we have some awareness of what they believed and practiced, if filtered by others. By the time of Paul, the Jesus Movements had become extraordinarily diverse and widespread. Some were bands of iternant preachers, others were guilds of settled craftspeople. Some were simple study groups, others were formal schools of scholastic research. As mentioned, there was philosophical ferment in first century Palestine, and the Jesus movements were not immune. Rather, they were very much a part of it. While none of what they wrote has survived intact, scholars are reasonably certain of a "Sayings Gospel Q" (subsequently revised at least three times), which is lost to us except where Mark quoted from it much later in "his" gospel, and one of the gospels of "Thomas," which has survived to the modern era in at least two versions, contain if not the pristine writings of Jesus Movements, at least quotations from them.
What is interesting about the Jesus Movements as the source of Christianity and the Jesus myth, is that they were the source of Gnosticism, which for many decades, was considered by scholars to be a Christian heresy which arose in the second century. Scholars had presumed this mostly as a result of the comments made in the screeds of Iraeneus, who railed against this widespread and threatening "heresy" endlessly. But it is now widely accepted that Gnosticism was widespread by the time Jesus is supposed to have lived, and now, having the Nag Hammadi library as a treasure trove of new information, we now know that its mythology was Jewish, not Christian, its metaphysics was Neo-Platonic and Neo-Stoic, and it shared ideas from Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and "Hermetic" mystery religions, and was an outgrowth of the Jesus Movements. Yet, when one reads the Nag Hammadi gospels we have today, we also read constant references to Jesus, including such stories as the Last Supper and the Crucifixion - evidence that the Gnostic gospels themselves borrowed from later Christian sources. But the Jesus myth's widespread popularity among the Gnostics by the first third of the first century leads to the suggestion that, unless a wholesale and dramatic conversion took place (for which there is no evidence whatever), the Jesus myth was already widespread among the Gnostics by the time Jesus was supposed to have lived and died, and he died a long time ago. He wasn't a contemporary divine Messiah-figure. At least not yet.
The destruction of the Second Temple which occurred during the Roman-Jewish war of 66-73 C.E. and the diaspora that followed also greatly impacted Judaism. The destruction of the Temple-based priesthood made central authority for doctrine and ritual impossible, along with the ability to perform temple-based ritual. So now every local rabbi was on his own. Each had his own response to the rise of Christianity and the contemporaneous diaspora into which Judaism was forced. In certain places at certain times, various rabbinates established local schools and influenced local movements, but as a whole, Judaism split into local factions, each struggling to maintain the tradition as best it could. In the main, the maintenance of a Jewish identity and the basic cultural traditions was possible, but the rigid adherence to a single doctrinal viewpoint was not, since there was no central authority against which to measure local ideas against a common doctrinal standard. So it's not surprising that nearly as many schools of thought arose in the Judaism of the diaspora as occurred in Protestantism, a millenium and a half later.
The impact of the destruction of the temple on the Jesus Movements was to galvanize them into activism, trying to reform Judaism in order to save it from forced Romanization and the enveloping diaspora. For most of the Jesus Movements, there was no effort to reform the religion as much as the culture, but as we will see, for one Jesus Movement, things were to be quite different. Gnosticism, an outgrowth of the Jesus Movements, was by now and remained an inward-focused quasi-religion, based as much on personal reform as the basis of the social reform of the Jesus Movements from which it sprang, but which intended to contribute to the salvation of Jewish tradition by making Jewish religion more personal and inward-focused, and not dependent on outside authority.
The Road To Damascus And The Origins of Christianity Appx. 50 C.E. to 140 C.E. In about 50 C.E., a remarkable event occurred, which ultimately changed the course of human history. In Antioch, the local Jesus Movement suddenly and quickly transformed itself from a social and political reform movement into a full-blown religion. As this occurred, a remarkable conversion happened - or maybe the transformation occurred because Saul of Tarsus was "converted" to a new religious vision of his own and evangelized the group as Paul the Apostle. Whichever way it happened, we will probably never know. But secular scholars are pretty much agreed that this group included the first true Christians and that Paul, a Gnostic, was one of the first if not the first convert. And the Antioch Jesus Movement became the first of what modern scholars now refer to as the Christ Cults, the variety of Pauline-inspired cults prior to their consolidation under a single authority centuries later into the Catholic church.
That Paul was greatly influenced by Gnosticism, there is little doubt, in that many writers quote Gnostic sources as writing favorably of Paul and considering Paul to be their ally. There is also little doubt that Paul, among his contemporary Christian writers (Clement of Rome, Barnabas, and the author of Hebrews), and among the Gnostics and members of the Jesus Movements, all considered Jesus to be a long dead figure, their highly revered founder. None of these writers directly quote people who claimed to have seen Jesus in mortal flesh. Instead, what had changed was that with the advent of Paul, Jesus had now become available for visionary appearances, and, having been shown on the right-hand of God in Paul's visions, was clearly a divine being, not just a great teacher and prophet, as the Gnostics had heretofore held.
By accepting Paul's vision and taking the relatively small step of transforming Jesus from a great teacher of righteousness and great prophet into an actual divine being, Gnosticism became a form of Christianity, albeit one with a very different theology from the catholicised Christianity of later centuries. The form of divinity they eventually accepted, however, was that Jesus was a wholly spiritual being who only "seemingly" appeared to his followers as a man, and exposed himself to persecution and death on the cross. This lack of mortality became known to the catholic Christians as the "docetic" heresy of the Gnostics. It would survive into the sixth century, in spite of repeated attempts by the church and the Empire to stamp it out.
Paul's writings are among the earliest Christian writings that have survived intact, and quite probably because they were the first Christian writings in the sense that we know Christianity. They date to within two decades of the presumed date of the crucifixion. Of the books in the New Testament that are attributed to Paul, there are only a few that are generally agreed by scholars to be the product of his pen. Among these are Galatians I and II and Thessalonians I and II, Corinthians, Romans, Philemon, Phillipians, and possibly Collosians. The rest of the New Testament books attributed to him were written by later authors seeking to ride on his credibility and authority.
What's remarkable about these writings is that when considered apart from the rest of the New Testament, they paint an interesting and very different picture of Paul himself and of very early Christianity than that accepted by most Christians. Among the possibilities that have been presented to account for this are that Paul was ignorant of many of the important details of the life of Jesus or, more likely, those details are simply myths that were incorporated into Christianity after Paul wrote his letters.
The foremost proponent of the Paul-as-repressed-homosexual theory is none other than a Christian bishop himself! Spong's controversial theory is widely reviled by conservative Christians - but it certainly fits the evidence!
Get it here! Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism by Bishop John Shelby Spong, published 1991.
The reasons for Paul's conversion is a question that deserves discussion here. Saul, the pre-conversion Roman Jew, was a man with an intense self loathing. He doesn't tell us why, but time and again, he describes himself as a sinner who was far beyond any possible redemption. A man who stood condemned in the eyes of God. A man clearly destined for hell, and there's nothing he himself could do about it, especially since his body's 'member' would not cooperate. It's not his persecution of the Christians that creates the self loathing; rather it is the other way around. Something was eating at Saul. It clearly related to behavior, because he describes himself as being a sinner. Over the centuries, many suggestions have been made as to what might have been the source of that self loathing. Few of them are really convincing, they all seem to have serious problems - except for one: the suggestion that Paul was a repressed homosexual. Homosexuality was not widely condemned in this region at the time, yet it could possibly have been a personal interpretation of Levitical proscriptions that drove him to consider himself a sinner for being a homosexual. Yet when he experiences his conversion, he realizes that by the grace of God, his homosexuality no longer matters, for God loves him, the same as all men. I say this after having read the references in the New Testament in which Paul speaks of his shame and his self loathing: his words have a startlingly deep resonance with every gay man who was ever brought up in a Christian environment. This theory alone to the exclusion of all others I've seen explains all the strange aspects of Paul's attitudes towards sexuality - the proclivity to a monastic degree of chastity, the extreme mysogony, the fact that he remained single and urged others in his situation, whatever that was, to do likewise, and the frequent discussions of how the 'members' of his body do not cooperate with his spiritual goals, and his despair over his inability to effect the changes he would like. All of these evidences are consonant with the repressed-gay theory; no other theory I know of account for them all.
I hasten to add here, that there is no factual evidence to indicate that Paul was gay. The evidence is purely circumstantial, as is much of the evidence widely accepted in Biblical scholasticism. It has been charged that I included this theory only because "it irks Christians" or because I am myself gay. This is simply not true. I have included it, because it fits the evidence better than any other theory I have seen - the evidence fits remarkably well. On a personal note, I don't happen to care a whit whether Paul was gay or not - I have no investment in the theory as I am not a Christian; I'm only trying to arrive at a theory that fits the evidence better than any other, and so far, I have yet to find another that fits it better. If the reader can offer one, I'd be delighted to entertain it, and I hasten to point out that I have analyzed dozens of theories. The search for truth is a search for the best evidential fit, not the search for comfort, so whether Christians find the theory irksome, troublesome or disturbing, or whether the author of this essay is gay, is really quite irrelevant to reality. But I digress from the story...
If this theory is true, it may well be that the whole of the Christian edifice of sexual doctrine, and even of Christianity itself, is built on the foundation of the self-loathing of a repressed gay man, unable to change himself or find salvation within himself, but finding salvation only in the grace of God. Again, if this theory is true, try to imagine how world history might have been different had Saul not been born gay and suffered the self-loathing that resulted from that circumstance of his birth.
Paul speaks, then, from the perspective of a self loathing, pre-mythologized Christian. He utters the doctrines that pretty much will shape Christianity in the centuries ahead, but does not relate any of the 'faith promoting' miracle stories or details of Jesus' life that one would expect of an evangelist seeking converts in a first-century world hungry for the evidence of spirituality offered by miracles and magic. This, of course, is because the miracle stories didn't yet exist. Those stories would come from the gospel writers.
The Gospels: Mythmaking Begins in Ernest 65 C.E. to appx. 120 C.E. This book is by a 2nd century critic of Christianity; one who provides damning evidence of how the gospel writers ripped off the religions around them for the myths, doctrines and rituals that became incorporated in the gospels. A fascinating story by a first-hand witness!
Get it here! CELSUS On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against The Christians Translation and commentary by Joseph Hoffman, published 1987. The Jesus Mysteries is a serious scholarly investigation of the source of the gospel myths. The dust cover has a photo of an ancient artifact showing a god dying on the cross - but it isn't Jesus!
Get it here! The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, published 1999. The Jesus Puzzle has become a classic in the study of the historical Jesus in the short time it has been out. Scholarly, but highly readable, it is the best survey of the problems of the Jesus myth.
Get it here! The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin With A Mythical Christ? By Earl Doherty, published 1999. This book is a classic in the study of the creation of the New Testament. Mack has become one of the most respected of New Testament scholars due in large part to this book.
Get it here! Who Wrote The New Testament? Making of the Christian Myth By Burton Mack, published 1989. Richmond Lattimore is considered to be the greatest living translator of classical Greek. This translation of the New Testament is widely considered his magnum opus. Without a doubt, the most reliable New Testament translation out there.
Get it here! The New Testament Translation by Richard Lattimore, published 1996. The gospel writers were converts to the new Christ cults. Whether any were directly converted by Paul, we don't know, but it has been 20 years since Paul's conversion, and the new religion has been spreading like wildfire among the Jesus Movements of the Eastern Mediteranean. We also know that none were writing from Palestine, but were all in the Diaspora, and none had, so far as we know, even traveled to Palestine. Mark wrote with the letters of Ignatius in hand, and each of the succeeding writers wrote with the previously written gospels, and probably Ignatius as well, in hand.
We do know that Paul traveled to Jerusalem to discuss with Peter the doctrines of his new church, and how they should be applied to gentiles as well as Jews. We can only speculate as to the details of what was discussed during this meeting, but one thing is clear: Peter and Paul had a heated discussion as to just who this new gospel should be preached to, whether gentiles should be included with Jews. Paul returned to Antioch apparently satisfied that he had convinced Peter and James of his point of view.
It is also quite clear that this meeting was one of several (there was at least one other, where Peter was known to have been publicly humiliated by Paul) that must surely have occurred among the early luminaries which took up the general outlines of how proselytizing should be done, how the church should be structured and what doctrines should be promulgated in order to appeal to as many people as possible, and whether they should include gentiles as well as Jews. The reason why was that there was a serious problem: Judaism was under direct threat from Roman persecution of the priestly class (seen as a political threat resulting from the uprising against Roman rule) and a new version of Judaism had to be concocted that would be so appealing that people would want to belong to it, and so captivating that people would not want to abandon it, even in the face of persecution, and be politically inoffensive so as to hopefully escape the attentions of the Roman persecutors. It had to abandon the temple worship since there was no temple anymore, and it had to be able to survive the onslaught of foreign ideas which were widely available, from Roman, Hellene, pagan and oriental sources, not to mention the many attractive mystery religions of the Roman Empire. The result is that the new religion had the features of what in our day is called a meme - an idea that actually behaves like a virus - it infects, reproduces and spreads itself, and most importantly, has the ability to evolve to adapt to fluid circumstances. As a response to Roman persecutions following the failed uprising against Rome, Paul and the other founders of Christianity seem to have set out to create a religion that was flexible enough that it could evolve in this way, so as preserve at least some form of Judaism from the Roman persecutions and do so in the absence of a highly organized priesthood. They succeeded, of course, beyond their wildest hopes, creating a cult that not only survived the Roman persecutions and the diaspora, but would survive, evolve and grow to become one of the world's major religions.
The ideas of Paul, with the contributions of Peter, James, and other early conversants and early bishops, including among others, Ignatius, Barnabas, the author of Hebrews, Clement of Rome and others, apparently communicated back to the local Jesus movements many of which had been converted to the members of the new Christ cult, either as Gnostics or as followers of Ignatius. These local Christ cult converts included the gospel writers, many of whom were inspired to write, at least following in the lead of Ignatias, to take up the cause against the "docetic" heresy of the Gnostics, claiming as it did, that Jesus was a purely spiritual being who never had a physical body, and only "seemed" to be in mortal flesh. Leading the charge against the Gnostics was the first-century bishop Ignatius of Antioch, highly regarded by the church membership and persecuted by the Romans, which of course, only increased the esteem with which he was held. It was his letters, seven of which are widely considered genuine and all of which were written before the canonic gospels, that contain the first references to "the Gospel," to Mary the Virgin, to the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, to Jesus being the seed of David, and God being his father. It is clear that the rapidly spreading popularity of the Isis cult, with it's virgin mother of God story, was the inspiration for including a virgin birth for Jesus. Ignatius is the first to mention the role of Pilate, giving us our first reference date for Ignatius' physical Jesus to have lived in the first century. It is apparent from a careful reading of Ignatius' letters, in comparison to the canonic gospels and the first-century texts that preceeded them, that the myth of a first-century historical Jesus is quite likely to have originated with Ignatius.
Building upon the myth created by Ignatius, and to make a flesh-and-blood, historical Jesus real to believers and thereby make the docetic heresy untenable, additional myths surrounding the life of Jesus had to be and were liberally borrowed by the gospel writers from the pagan religions that surrounded them, probably because of the appeal these myths clearly had had for the followers of the pagan religions. Everywhere were to be found religions that had as major features one or more of the myths that eventually came to be associated with Jesus. Virtually every story surrounding Jesus, whether it be the virgin birth (borrowed from the myth of the birth of Tammuz, a pagan god from northern Israel who was supposed to have been born of the virgin Myrrha), the miracle stories found in the Bacchus and Isis cults, the betrayal and crucifixion, were part of one or more of the pagan religions of the time. The liberal plagiarizing of these stories from the mystery religions was one of the many embarrassing facts pointed out by Celsus.
Some of the myths were even the result of simple misinterpretations by gospel writers who writing from the Diaspora and who had never even been to Palestine - Nazareth, for example, was not a place name, but simply a corruption of the name "Notzri," with the name not meaning "of the town of Nazareth," but "of the Notzrim," the social reform groups known by scholars today as the Jesus Movements. Nazareth, as a place name, did not even come into existence until Emperor Constantine's mother, searching for the holy sites in Palestine in the fourth century on which to build preservatory basilicas, simply invented the name for a pre-existing village for which only very flimsy evidence tied it to the site of the youth of Jesus. Among the religions of the day incorporating a crucifixion myth, for example, were the mystery religions of Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and several others. Dionisus, for example, was depicted as being given a crown of ivy, dressed in a purple robe, and was given gall to drink before his crucifixion. The depiction on a Greek vase from the 5th century B.C.E. even shows a communion being prepared. The fact that these stories are today almost exclusively associated with the myth of Jesus of Nazareth, show how both myth and history is often outright expropriated - and even rewritten - by the victors, in their own way.
There were literally dozens of gospels, most of which have been lost to us, but significant numbers survive, not just those included in the canon. Most of the non-canonical gospels are polemics and are easily dismissed, though some (particularly those from the Nag Hammadi library) including especially the Gospel of Thomas, are interesting mostly for what they help us learn of the early church. But because the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are so important to the development of Christianity, we'll examine each of them and the effect they have had on the Christian church. Of particular importance is the Gospel of Thomas, having been written before any of the canonic gospels, and therefore lacking in detail regarding the life of Jesus, but giving us a good overview of some of the more important Gnostic doctrines. By the late second century, the vast library of gospels, most of which contradicted each other to various degrees, led bishop Iraneus to angrily rail against most of them, and argue forcefully that there were only four legitimate gospels, the ones we know today as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. His reasoning might seem a bit obscure to us today - he argued that as there were four elements (earth, water, wind and fire) and there were four cardinal points of the compass (north, south, east and west), so there should be considered only four gospels. Yeah, you know the ones. The Gospel of John was included on his list even though it was clearly a Gnostic gospel, but he included it because it argued against the docetic heresy of the Gnostics, asserting the physicality of Jesus at every possible opportunity. Doing so was a very ecumenical move on Iraneus' part, offering a way into the fold for the Gnostics, if they would just give up their heresy. His successors argued that John should be dropped from the list because it was Gnostic, but they ultimately lost the debate.
The first of the canonic gospels to be written was that of Mark. We don't know much about the author of the Gospel According to Mark, but we do know that the author was a simple man, not highly literate in Greek (for whom it may have been a second language), and not particularly well educated, but a man who was thoroughly steeped in Jewish mythology and religion. Not being particularly well educated, his was a world of superstition, demons, of possession, of miracles and gods of the Roman world, and all these had an effect on how he wrote his gospel. It is also clear that his gospel was greatly influenced by the stories circulating in the Christian community as to just who this Jesus was.
If Jesus existed as depicted in the New Testament, Mark never knew him, but claimed to have been a follower of Peter instead - so much so that his gospel was known for a time as the Petrine gospel. Mark wrote his gospel in Syria for an audience of Roman Christians. Many scholars like to claim that the date of his gospel is about 70 C.E., but there are plenty of reasons to doubt this, mostly the fact that he is quoting many sayings that first appear in the letters of Ignatius, who began writing a bit later - and for that reason, I suspect a date early in the second century is more likely.
The Christians were suffering intense persecution at the time at the hands of Nero who was scapegoating them for the Roman fire and other problems, and so Mark wrote what he hoped would be a gospel to strengthen the Christian community and give it hope in times of trial. In so doing, he wrote a gospel that was long on the suffering of Jesus and those who follow him, and short on temporal salvation. Jesus was mythologized not as a carpenter, but rather as a carpenter's son - a blatant attempt to confer social status, by not relegating him to the status of a simple craftsman, but as someone who rose far above his circumstance, as the Christians were being asked by their leaders to do. Joseph is not mentioned in the story of Jesus' birth, but Jesus is rather referred to as "the son of Mary," a description (being the "son of" a woman) was normally reserved for the illegitimate - so it is clear that Mark is intent on telling what he regards as the truth, even if he has to tell half-truths to achieve his goal. Mark never explains the circumstances of Jesus' birth, but merely says that Jesus came from Nazareth - a misunderstanding of the term "Notzri" - the name by which the Jesus Movements had called themselves until the first half of the first century. Making this mistake was easy, because Mark had doubtless heard that Jesus had been a Notzri, but had apparently not understood what it meant, and assumed it to be a geographical reference. There is nothing in Mark about virgins or wise men or being born in a manger with angels talking to shepherds. This is because as Mark writes, the myths surrounding Jesus' birth had yet to be incorporated into Christian mythology, and Mark has not done so. But other myths of the Christian community, including several of the miracle stories, were included by Mark in his gospel. This is because Mark was a simple man and tended to accept these traditions at face value, and included them because they elevated Jesus in the minds of his readers, an important goal if his audience were to consider the hero of the story to be worth dying for.
The next of the canonized gospels to be written was Matthew. The author of Matthew was a well-educated conservative Jew, trained in the nuances of the Levitic tradition, and was intent on showing the Hebraic world just what Jesus had to offer them. Scholarship has traditionally held that he wrote a decade or so after the Second Temple was destroyed in the abortive Jewish uprising, but he quotes Mark, whose gospel was unlikely to have been written before the beginning of the second century. Matthew was determined to explain to the Jewish world just who Jesus was and to show Judaism that there was an alternative to the Rabbinic tradition that was then developing in the aftermath of the destruction of the second temple; i.e., that salvation through Jesus was possible. It was Matthew's conservatism that was the source of the hellfire and damnation in Fundamentalist Christian conservatism. Indeed, without Matthew in the canon, there would be few other biblical references to it. Matthew had a fire and a passion about him that well outran his qualifications as a scholar of Jewish law. Even though he was well versed in it, the attempt to prove his case by quoting Jewish law proved to be, well, disastrously badly done.
Matthew used as his primary source the gospel of Mark. In doing so, he incorporated many of Mark's myths and added a few of his own, changing bits of the story line here and there to better make the points for his Jewish audience that he was trying to make. For example, to make his case that Jesus was the promised Messiah, he heightened the miraculous and altered the detail, to the point of obvious error. A case in point is the geneology with which he begins his narrative: he deliberately left out detail in order to have seven generations each from Abraham to David and David to the Exile, and the Exile to Jesus. This has left some to suggest that Matthew couldn't count very well, as his geneology conflicts with other genealogies in the Old Testament. If he was aware of these discrepancies, his attempt to deify Jesus for a Jewish audience certainly overruled them.
What Matthew was to the Jews, Luke was to the gentiles. Luke, unlike Matthew, was the consummate scholar. Fluent in Greek, almost certainly a gentile himself, Luke saw the need to write a gospel to explain the new religion to the gentile community, and so he wrote one. Like Matthew before him, he had a copy of Mark and used it liberally, quoting long sections and adding twists of his own to suit his needs.
Above all else, Luke was an evangelist. His mission was to make this Jewish sect a relevant religion for the gentiles who had nowhere else to turn in the search for a strict moral code by which to live. Judaism required circumcision, an obvious disadvantage, and besides, it was a tribal religion whose members tended to view gentile converts with skepticism, if not outright racial discrimination, so all that got short shrift in Luke's gospel.
With the ascent of Domitian to the Roman throne in 81 c.e., the fires of persecution began to be stoked once again, and Luke saw the need to address Roman political concerns by showing that Christianity was simply a natural and harmless outgrowth of the respected Jewish tradition. Hence his address of the document to "The most excellent Theophilus."
Because Luke was writing for an official Roman audience as much as for an audience of prospective gentile converts, he was careful to portray Rome in as good a light as possible. For example, Luke has Herod's soldiers scourging Jesus, not Rome's soldiers as does Mark. The Kingdom of Christ being described by Jesus is proclaimed as being "not of this world," an obvious attempt to assuage Roman suspicions of a conspiracy at work within the bowels of this new cult. There are many other examples, which, like the above, bring this gospel into conflict with the others in Luke's attempt to dress up the story for an official Roman audience.
The last of the four gospels is, of course, the Gospel of John. Though a favorite of the literalists, this anti-authoritarian Gnostic gospel ironically takes great delight in poking fun at literalist authority. Chapters 3, 4, 6 and 8 all have stories in which those who have taken the word literally have been made fun of. John's gospel is skillfully crafted, the work of a true scholar and a deeply religious man, who well understood that myth and meaning are the substance of scripture, not the literality of the words themselves. Who "John" was we are not sure, but some scholars suggest he could have been a disciple of the two Johns of Ephesus, one of which was the John Zebedee spoken of by Mark, or John Zebedee's son. John wrote his gospel in the early to middle years of the second century, fully four to six generations after the events he recorded allegedly had transpired.
John, a Gnostic convert to the ecclesiastical non-docetic point of view, wrote his gospel with an eye to the growing rift between Judaism and Christianity, and sought to heal it by trying to bring the two together. He tried to do so by fashioning a mythology that would be acceptable to both: quoting liberally from respected and appreciated Jewish literature and by incorporating a mythology of Jesus that sought to fulfil Jewish law and prophesy - a gospel that also sought to heal the rift between the Jewish Essene gnosticism, and the ecclesiastical viewpoint. In so doing, John created a gospel that broke so completely with the gospels that proceeded it, that it is directly appealing to the Jews who found themselves uncomfortable with the tightening screws of Jewish orthodoxy that was one of the results of the destruction of the Second Temple. The apocalypic vision of the narrative was meant to appeal to the Jewish sense of destiny as well as Essene apocalypticism while being true to the Christian ideal. Here we have a prophetic Jewish vision in a Christian setting, completing the foundations of later fundamentalist Christian doctrine. The result, along with the book of Acts, believed to have been written by the author of the gospel of Luke, writing this time for a Christian audience, gave us the complete set of myths that are so central to the beliefs of many Christians, particularly fundamentalist Protestants. Unlike Mark, whose mission of Jesus as the Messiah is revealed only at the end of Mark's narrative, here is a Jesus whose very being seems to shout, "I am the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets made flesh." Both the audience and the resulting mythology couldn't have been more different, and of course many factual and contextual conflicts were the result. It made his gospel controversial from the start.
These four gospels, as well as Luke's Acts, were the theological "best sellers" of their day, and with Iraneus' endorsement, had pretty much assured their canonic status by the end of the second century, in spite of the protests of many bishops about the gnosticism of the Gospel of John.
One question remains: if the Essenes are really so widespread and influential as we now know they were, why do we see no references to them in the Gospels and other New Testament works? Good question, and one that is often asked, seldom with satisfactory answers from the apologists. But the answer is simple - there are references to them, lots of references. We know them from the canonic gospels as the Nazarenes - a corruption of the word "Nozrim," by which the Jesus Movements, which sprang from the Essene movement, knew themselves early in the first century. Not citizens of a place (Mark's mistake), but members of a movement. By the time the gospel writers composed their gospels early in the second century, the word was no longer current, hence the mistake was an easy one for an uncultured non-scholar like Mark to make during his mythologizing. Mark, fairly ignorant of history as he was, failed to understand it as a movement, because by the time he was writing, that movement had largely disappeared - through being subsumed into the church. Subseqent Christian writers, knowing no better, never corrected the mistake, but compounded it by entrenching it in their own mythmaking. Once that is understood, it all makes sense.
The Great Heresies of Gnosticism and the Revisionism of Marcion 140 C.E. to 312 C.E. Right from Paul's time, the Christ cults grew disputatious, with new ideas and heresies spreading among them like wildfire as each local bishop had his own ideas and sought to see them accepted. The cult became cults as the new "heresies" spread.
By the end of the first century, Romans hungry for a workable moral code began to look to the transforming Jesus movements and Christ cults for a spiritual home. Judaism still had appeal, but required circumcision, an obvious disadvantage. The Christ cults made no such demands. Indeed, membership in the Christ cult was a pleasurable affair, not requiring much in the way of embarrassing ritual and offering much interesting discussion and amiable camaraderie amidst the ritual of the table fellowship, a weekly ritual of the time, involving the community gathering together for a meal and discussion and ritual worship in private among friends.
Soon Christ Cult congregations were spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. They offered, with careful calculation, a way out for the Jews of the Diaspora, who could not accept such as the unabashed gnosticism of Philo of Alexandria, or were too distant from Jerusalem to engage in rabbinical study, or were misinclined to accept local rabbinical authority. And this new series of cults were as open to the gentiles as Judaism was suspicious. Here was a religion all could be a part of, without regard to ethnic origins or circumstances of social status, accidents of birth or location.
But which cult to join? Each local group, under the influence of local bishops had generated its own local traditions and doctrinal ideas, and even local groups splintered as doctrinal disputations arose. Christianity had by now become a significant social force in spite of Roman efforts to stop it; in Asia Minor especially, it had become so common that disputations between the followers of various Christ cults was as common a local pastime as discussion of football is today.
By the end of the first century, the smug confidence of the local bishops in their own ideas was about to be shattered by the very success of the Christ Cults. The doctrinal gulf between various groups calling themselves Christian had grown too great to be ignored, especially between the Gnostic Christians and those respecting the ecclesiastical and doctrinal authority of the bishops. So when intellectuals among these movements began to appear, it became obvious that something needed to be worked out. Finally, Valentinus of Alexandria, Justin of Samaria, Irenaeus (from Asia Minor, but writing from Lyons and a thoroughly loyal Roman), the Gnostic bishop Marcion of Sinope (a small town in Asia Minor), Clement of Alexandria, and a few others all converged on Rome in 140 C.E. with ideas of what Christianity was, that could hardly have been at greater odds. One of the most charismatic of these was Marcion, whose heretical views were supported by many other Gnostics in attendance. Indeed, this charismatic heretic was nearly elected to the papacy.
But the doctrinal gulf was huge, the controversies enormous, and the debate uncompromising. The church was never to be the same again. The firebrand intellectuals brushed aside the watered down ideas of the local bishops and looked at the foundations of the church, to discover that the stones of that foundation, based as they were on the old Jesus Movements, were not sound. So they set about revamping the entire doctrinal basis of the church.
One of the problems as Marcion saw it was that Christians were expected to be loyal to the Jewish god, even though they did not have to keep his law. Marcion's vision of God was as it was taught by Paul, his major influence, where grace was everything for salvation, and a personal relationship with God was the doctrinal authority. God was a god of mercy and compassion, a god for all mankind, not proprietary to a "chosen people."
The Jewish god, according to Marcion, was not worthy of worship. He was to be replaced by Christ, who had revealed the law that Christians should follow, as understood and interpreted by Paul. He was a god of justice and salvation, very unlike the Jewish concept of the angry, fiery, vengeful Jahweh.
By now, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well as the many others had appeared, written by followers of the new Christ cults, and Marcion brought with him an abbreviated version of Luke, together with ten letters of Paul, to form the first canon of the New Testament. It was the first Christian scripture.
The other intellectuals rejected Marcion's ideas, primarily because they were Gnostic and docetic, and therefore rejected the Apostolic myths of the deeply respected Ignatius outright, and because he pointed out many other unresolved problems left them by the first-century bishops. But even more radical was his flat-out rejection of early "apostolic" writings where it was obvious that the writer did not share the current vision of the physical mission of Jesus as the savior of mankind. One of the intellectuals, Polycarp, called Marcion "the first-born of Satan" and others, especially Tertullian and Justin wrote extensively against his views.
But that opposition did not stop Marcion. He went on a preaching tour that was spectacularly successful, especially in the Eastern half of the empire. Congregations of Gnostic Marcionite Christians were organized in Ephesus, Rome and Pontus in Asia Minor. Even whole villages soon became converts. And the Marcionite church proved to be as durable as it was popular - it survived into the fifth century, in spite of official and papal persecution.
The Marcionite appeal lay in the fact that the doctrine was simple and understandable, but more than that, doable. Even though it had its own share of internal contradictions, it was clearly resonating with the masses, and the other bishops could see that and grew concerned.
By the dawn of the fourth century, the local bishops could no longer rely on their watered-down doctrines for support and authority, and feeling the threat from Gnosticism especially in the form of Marcionism, began to contend with each other regarding doctrine. The bishops of the principal congregations headquartered in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Caesaria, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Carthage proceeded to squabble with each other incessantly. The attempt by the Rome conference to deal with the problem a century and a half earlier, had been a complete failure. Worse, it had spawned the development of the Marcionite church, a movement, regarded as heretical by the bishops, but with broad appeal.
There was such fierce, intractable doctrinal turmoil within the church, it appeared the church was doomed. And with continuing Roman persecution, how could the church survive?
An Unlikely Savior Saves The Church -- And Spawns The Greatest Revision Yet 313 C.E. to appx. 430 C.E. In 313, Emperor Constantine and his co-emperor Lucinius sent a series of rather flowery letters to their governors, in which they said it was "salutory and most proper" that "complete toleration" be given to anyone who has "given up his mind to the cult of the Christians" or any other cult which "he personally feels best for himself." The Edict of Milan, as this series of letters came to be known, had the effect of legalizing Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. The question history has never adequately answered is why the Edict of Milan was issued in the first place, but it was probably due to the growing political power of the Christians of various stripes. Constantine's own wife was a convert (if not born into the church, we don't know for sure), and this was likely a contributing factor.
Emperor Constantine was a deeply superstitious man, but also a consumate politician. He was a practitioner of several religions, trying to keep his religious bases covered, even after his 'conversion.' He was also spectacularly arbitrary and capricious. He sent prisoners of war to the lions, committed wholesale acts of genocide in his campaigns in North Africa, and was known for his overbearing, egotistical, ruthless and self-righteous behavior. His nephew Julian said that his appearance was strange, with stiff effeminate garments of Eastern fashion, jewelry on his arms and it was all set off by a tiara perched on a dyed wig. Constantine apparently viewed Christianity as just one of the many cults of his realm, and he seemed to practice them all, apparently with roughly the same depth of commitment. He wasn't actually baptized until he was on his death bed.
Emperor Constantine, for all his strangeness, was nothing if not a good politician. He understood well the fact that the Christians were becoming so numerous as to represent a considerable political threat should they get their act together and become organized. In 312, a year before the Edict of Milan, he fought the battle of Milvan Bridge, against a rival claimant to the emperor's throne. Among his soldiers were many, if not a majority of Christians and they were already carrying on their swords and shields the Christian Chi-Rho sign. Well, to hear the stories, the heavens opened up, and the Emperor himself had a great vision, including the famous quote from God himself, "In this sign you shall conquer." And he was granted victory in his battle, which proved pivotal in his struggle to consolidate the empire. Rather than a grand vision, it's more likely that he simply looked out on all his soldiers with the power they represented, with so many of them bearing the Chi-Rho symbol on their shields, and he saw the light.
Unfortunately, we don't know what exactly happened at Milvan Bridge, because the dear Emperor kept changing his story and telling different versions of the events to different people. At least six different, contradictory versions have survived from different people who all claimed to have heard it first-hand from the good emperor himself. As he kept telling these conflicting stories, he still apparently remained personally converted to the Mithraic sun-cult common in the Empire at the time. Besides the somewhat dismissive wording of the letters in the Edict of Milan (see above), there is the small matter of the Milvan Arch. As a monument to his victory at Milvan Bridge, some years later, he raised a triumphal arch, which survives to this day. It still bears on it a dedication to the "Unconquered Sun" (a reference to Mithra) and referred to Jesus Christ "driving his [the sun's] chariot across the sky." He commanded the Christians to hold their services on Sun-day, and to commemorate the birth of their savior on December 25 - the birthday of Mithra.
Constantine became the sole Roman emperor in 324, amidst a period of intense squabbling by the various local bishops (not to mention pamphl
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And look what I found:
Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible
Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament
* Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine. In use in Ebla was the name "Canaan," a name critics once said was not used at that time and was used incorrectly in the early chapters of the Bible. The tablets refer to all five "cities of the plain" mentioned in Genesis 14, previously assumed to have been mere legends. * Greater proportion of Egyptian words in the Pentateuch (first five books) than in rest of the Old Testament. Accurate Egyptian names: Potiphar (Gen.39), Zaphenath-Paneah (Joseph's Egyptian name, Gen. 41:45), Asenath (Gen.41:45), On (Gen. 41:45), Rameses (Gen. 47:11), Oithom (Exodus 1:11). * Finds in Egypt are consistent with the time, place, and other details of biblical accounts of the Israelites in Egypt. These include housing and tombs that could have been of the Israelites, as well as a villa and tomb that could have been Joseph's. * Confounding earlier skeptics, but confirming the Bible, an important discovery was made in Egypt in 1896. A tablet—the Merneptah Stela—was found that mentions Israel. (Merneptah was the pharaoh that ruled Egypt in 1212-1202 B.C.) The context of the stela indicates that Israel was a significant entity in the late 13th century B.C. * The Hittites were once thought to be a biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered in Turkey. * Crucial find in Nuzi (northeastern Iraq), an entire cache of Hittite legal documents from 1400 B.C. Confirms many details of Genesis, Deuteronomy, such as: (a) siring of legitimate children through handmaidens, (b) oral deathbed will as binding, (c) the power to sell one's birthright for relatively trivial property (Jacob & Esau), (d) need for family idols, such as Rachel stole from Laban, to secure inheritance, (e) form of the covenant in Deuteronomy exactly matches the form of suzerainty treaties between Hittite emperors and vassal kings. * Walls of Jericho—discovery in 1930s by John Garstang. The walls fell suddenly, and outwardly (unique), so Israelites could clamber over the ruins into the city (Joshua 6:20). * In 1986, scholars identified an ancient seal belonging to Baruch, son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jer. 45:11). * In 1990, Harvard researchers unearthed a silver-plated bronze calf figurine reminiscent of the huge golden calf mentioned in the book of Exodus. * In 1993, archaeologists uncovered a 9th century B.C. inscription at Tel Dan. The words carved into a chunk of basalt refer to the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." And the Bible's version of Israelite history after the reign of David's son, Solomon, is believed to be based on historical fact because it is corroborated by independent account of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. * It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon's palace was discovered in Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded in the palace walls! Even more, fragments of a stela (a poetic eulogy) memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself. * Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablet was found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus' son. * The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have been discovered southeast of the Dead Sea. Evidence at the site seems consistent with the biblical account: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens." The destruction debris was about 3 feet thick and buildings were burned from fires that started on the rooftops. Geologist Frederick Clapp theorizes that that pressure from an earthquake could have spewed out sulfur-laden bitumen (similar to asphalt) known to be in the area through the fault line upon which the cities rest. The dense smoke reported by Abraham is consistent with a fire from such material, which could have ignited by a spark or ground fire.
Archaeology and the New Testament
* The New Testament mentions specific individuals, places, and various official titles of local authorities, confirmed by recent archeology. Luke sites exact titles of officials. (Titles varied from city to city so they are easily checked for accuracy.) Lysanias the Tetrarch in Abilene (Luke 3:1)—verified by inscription dated 14-29 A.D. Erastus, city treasurer of Corinth (Romans 16:23)—verified by pavement inscription. Gallio—proconsul of Achaia (Greece) in A.D. 51 (Acts 18:12). Politarchs ("city ruler") in Thessalonica (Acts 17:6). Chief Man of the Island on Malta (Acts 28:7). Stone Pavement at Pilate's headquarters (John 19:13)—discovered recently. Pool at Bethesda— discovered in 1888. Many examples of silver shrines to Artemis found (Acts 19:28). Inscription confirms the title of the city as "Temple Warden of Artemis". Account of Paul's sea voyage in Acts is "one of the most instructive documents for the knowledge of ancient seamanship." * Census of Luke 1. Census began under Augustus approximately every 14 years: 23-22 B.C., 9-8 B.C., 6 A.D. There is evidence of enrollment in 11-8 B.C. in Egyptian papyri. o Problem: Historian Josephus puts Quirinius as governor in Syria at 6 A.D. Solution: Recent inscription confirms that Quirinius served as governor in 7 B. C. (in extraordinary, military capacity). o Problem: Herod's kingdom was not part of the Roman Empire at the time, so there would not have been a census. Solution: it was a client kingdom. Augustus treated Herod as subject (Josephus). Parallel—a census took place in the client kingdom of Antiochus in eastern Asia Minor under Tiberius. o Enrollment in hometown? Confirmed by edict of Vibius Maximus, Roman prefect of Egypt, in 104 A.D. "...it is necessary for all who are for any cause whatsoever way from their administrative divisions to return home to comply with the customary ordinance of enrollment." * Opinion of Sir William Ramsay, one of the outstanding Near Eastern archeologists: "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length...In short, this author should be placed among the very greatest of historians." * Diggers recently uncovered an ossuary (repository for bones) with the inscription "Joseph Son of Caiaphas." This marked the first archaeological evidence that the high priest Caiaphas was a real person. According to the gospels, Caiaphas presided at the Sanhedrin's trial of Jesus.
External References to Jesus and the Christian Church.
* Josephus. Born to priestly family in A.D. 37. Commanded Jewish troops in Galilee during rebellion. Surrendered, and earned favor of Emperor Vespasian. Wrote 20 books of Antiquities of the Jews. Refers to John the Baptist (killed by Herod) and to James, the brother of Jesus (condemned to death by stoning by the Sanhedrin). He referred to Jesus in his Antiquities 18:63. The standard text of Josephus reads as follows:
"About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day." (Josephus—The Essential Works, P. L. Maier ed./trans.).
Although this passage is so worded in the Josephus manuscripts as early as the third-century church historian Eusebius, scholars have long suspected a Christian interpolation, since Josephus could hardly have believed Jesus to be the Messiah or in his resurrection and have remained, as he did, a non-Christian Jew. In 1972, however, Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced his discovery of a different manuscript tradition of Josephus’s writings in the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius, which reads as follows:
"At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day."
Here, clearly, is language that a Jew could have written without conversion to Christianity. (Schlomo Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971.])
According to Dr. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history, "Scholars fall into three basic camps regarding Antiquities 18:63: 1) The original passage is entirely authentic—a minority position; 2) it is entirely a Christian forgery—a much smaller minority position; and 3) it contains Christian interpolations in what was Josephus’s original, authentic material about Jesus—the large majority position today, particularly in view of the Agapian text (immediately above) which shows no signs of interpolation. Josephus must have mentioned Jesus in authentic core material at 18:63 since this passage is present in all Greek manuscripts of Josephus, and the Agapian version accords well with his grammar and vocabulary elsewhere. Moreover, Jesus is portrayed as a 'wise man' [sophos aner], a phrase not used by Christians but employed by Josephus for such personalities as David and Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, his claim that Jesus won over “many of the Greeks” is not substantiated in the New Testament, and thus hardly a Christian interpolation but rather something that Josephus would have noted in his own day. Finally, the fact that the second reference to Jesus at Antiquities 20:200, which follows, merely calls him the Christos [Messiah] without further explanation suggests that a previous, fuller identification had already taken place. Had Jesus appeared for the first time at the later point in Josephus’s record, he would most probably have introduced a phrase like “…brother of a certain Jesus, who was called the Christ.”
* Early Gentile writers, referred to by Christian apologists in 2nd century. o Thallus—wrote a history of Greece and Asia Minor in A.D. 52. Julius Africanus (221 AD), commenting on Thallus, said: "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness [during the crucifixion] as an eclipse of the sun—unreasonably, as it seems to me [since the Passover took place during a full moon.]" o Official Roman records of the census, and Pontius Pilate's official report to the Emperor. Justin Martyr wrote his "Defense of Christianity" to Emperor Antonius Pius, referred him to Pilate's report, preserved in the archives. Tertullian, writing to Roman officials, writes with confidence that records of the Luke 1 census can still be found. * Roman historians o Tacitus—Greatest Roman historian, born 52 A.D., wrote a history of the reign of Nero in 110 A.D. "...Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberias was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time only to break out afresh, not only in Judea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, .. " (Annals 15:44) o Suetonius—AD. 120. In his Life of Claudius: "As the Jews were making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." o Pliny the Younger—Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote the emperor in A.D. 112 about the sect of Christians, who were in "the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day, before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God.
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You seem to have a difficulty understanding English. Muslims don't deny that the Bible "CONTAINS" the word of God, but that it contains many other writings too that don't originate form God. eg: Paul the "Greek". And most of the "ORIGINAL" manuscripts have been lost and what we have now are mistranslations and errors in the text. Just a few examples: WHAT DID THE LORD DECREE 3 YEARS FAMINE OR 7 YEARS FAMINE?
II SAMUEL 24:13
13.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
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;
If God is the Author of every single word, comma and full-stop in the Bible, as the Christians claim, then is He the Author of the above arithmetical discrepancy as well?
THREE OR SEVEN?
Note the reproduction of above. Compare both the quotations. 2 Samuel 24:13 tells us — "So Gad came to David, AND TOLD HIM, and said unto him . . ." These words are repeated word for word in 1 Chronicles 21:11, except the redundant "AND TOLD HIM" is removed! But while trimming the useless phrase, the author also pruned the time factor from "SEVEN" years to "THREE" years. What did God say to Gad — Three or Seven years plague — "on both your houses?"
EIGHT OR EIGHTEEN? Compare the two quotations. 2 Chronicles 36:9 tells us that JEHOIACHIN was "eight" years old when he began to reign, while 2 Kings 24:8 says that he was "eighteen" when he began to reign. The "unknown" author of KINGS must have reasoned that what possible "evil" could a child of eight do to deserve his abdication, so he generously added ten years to make JEHOIACHIN mature enough to become liable to God's wrath. However, he had to balance his tampering, so he cut short his reign by 10 days! Add TEN years to age and deduct TEN days from rule? Could God Almighty say two widely differing things on the same subject?
HOW OLD WAS JEHOIACHIN? 8 OR 18?
Between Eight and Eighteen years, there is a gap or difference at a full 10 years. Can we say (God forbid!) that the all-knowing Almighty could not count, and thus did not know the difference between 8 and 18? If we are to believe in the Bible as the Word of God, then the Dignity and Status of the Lord Almighty will hit an all-time low!
II CHRONICLES 36
9. 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. Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mothers name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.
CAVALRY OR INFANTRY?
How many chariot riders did David slay? Seven hundred or seven thousand? And further, did he slay 40000 "HORSEMEN" or 40000 "FOOTMEN?" The implication in the conflicting records between 2 Samuel 10:18 and 1 Chronicles 19:18 is not only that God could not discern the difference between hundreds and thousands, but that He could not even distinguish "CAVALRY" from "INFANTRY!" It is obvious that blasphemy masquerades in the Christian dictionary as "inspiration!"
There are no errors in the Qur'an and we have the ORIGINAL manuscript still, that is why we trust it and because ALLAH (SWT) on more than one occasion says He will protect it. Our doctrine was not decided by a Roman committee at Nicea (see above), but was a Divine Revelation to our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) from ALLAH (SWT) through the Angel Gabraiel. And you can't find any mistakes in it.
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[quote=Tman]You seem to have a difficulty understanding English. Muslims don't deny that the Bible "CONTAINS" the word of God, but that it contains many other writings too that don't originate form God. eg: Paul the "Greek". And most of the "ORIGINAL" manuscripts have been lost and what we have now are mistranslations and errors in the text.
Well Tman, Paul has more credibility than your demon posessed prophet. Next to Jesus, Paul may be the most influential person in the history of the Christian faith. His dramatic conversion from a zealous enemy of Christians to a tireless advocate of the gospel ranks as one of the most dramatic stories in Scripture. His years of ministry took him to countless towns and cities throughout Asia Minor and Europe. He also wrote thirteen letters that are included in the New Testament. Tman, I am not here to defend Paul, his works and is life that he lived testfied of him, the same for you and I. The work we do and the life we live is what people will use to judge us and remember us by.
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You can't defend the most prolific author of your book and one of the most influential persons in history, so what qualifies you to cast aspersions on the religion and Book that you don't even follow or know properly? You should be an expert in your Book and its author and you cant defend his lies, yet you barely scrape the skin of Islam and you think yourself qualified to make assumptions. What arrogance! I challenge you, find one error or mistake in the Qur'an, or shut your trap, you barrel of noise. Learn to count: 3 days, and 3 nights. Answer to all the errors above, Alice the Greek. And how do the people before the cross get saved? Cast out the stone in your eye before removing the mote in someone elses.
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Originally Posted By: Tman
You can't defend the most prolific author of your book and one of the most influential persons in history, so what qualifies you to cast aspersions on the religion and Book that you don't even follow or know properly? You should be an expert in your Book and its author and you cant defend his lies, yet you barely scrape the skin of Islam and you think yourself qualified to make assumptions. What arrogance! I challenge you, find one error or mistake in the Qur'an, or shut your trap, you barrel of noise. Learn to count: 3 days, and 3 nights. Answer to all the errors above, Alice the Greek. And how do the people before the cross get saved? Cast out the stone in your eye before removing the mote in someone elses.
Tman, I don't need to try to find any error in the quran, because the quran itself is error, it's like asking me to go into the dump in Riverton city and see if I can find any garbage there.
The Bible is your book too Tman, you acknowledged numerous times that it's from God and I assume that you worship God and we both agree that there is only one God, so the Bible is for you too, quran comes from a jinn according to Muhammud who later changed his mind and said the Angel Gabriel.
And nice try with the insults, but you should know by now that they don't phase me one bit. Marklon tried, Dread tried, Trini tried, now Tman hop up on the wagon, but I say to all of you:
Touch not the Lord's Anointed and do his prophet no harm. He that keepeth Israel does not sleep nor slumber. No weapon form against me shall prosper and every tounge that rise up against me in judgement shall be condem, saith the Lord of host.
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"Tman, I don't need to try to find any error in the quran, because the quran itself is error, it's like asking me to go into the dump in Riverton city and see if I can find any garbage there" weak, very weak. All you have to do is provide ONE mistake in the Qur'an and you cant, yet I provide NUMEROUS errors in the Bible which you claim the entire thing is the word of God. Your slip is showing, Alice.
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Originally Posted By: Tman
"Tman, I don't need to try to find any error in the quran, because the quran itself is error, it's like asking me to go into the dump in Riverton city and see if I can find any garbage there" weak, very weak. All you have to do is provide ONE mistake in the Qur'an and you cant, yet I provide NUMEROUS errors in the Bible which you claim the entire thing is the word of God. Your slip is showing, Alice.
The one mistake in the quran is muhammad, he was a false prophet. Muhammad performed no miracles, spoke no prophecies, and died like all mortal men.
Islam claims the Prophet Muhammad was foretold in the Torah and Bible:
The coming of Prophet Muhammad had been foretold in the Torah. God had said to Moses: "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put My words in his mouth; and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him." --Deuteronomy 18:18
There are more than 100 verses in the Qur'an advocating the use of violence to spread Islam. There are exactly 123 verses in the Qur'an about killing and fighting.
Qur'an 9:5, known as "the verse of the sword," declares, "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem."
The Moslems consider the Qur’an as uncorrupted. Yet it's historical and scientific blunders are numerous.
Islam teaches that Hagar was Abraham's first wife..the Torah says Hagar was Sarah's handmaiden, or bondwoman.....Hagar was never Abraham's wife..she was a maid...a servant...who had a child for Abraham because Sarah was barren and couldn't conceive. Eventually Sarah did conceive and Hagar was cast into the desert with Ishmael her son.
The Muslims misquote the Bible claiming the "freewoman" wife of Abraham was Hagar when it was Sarah. Hagar was the bondwoman, servant of Sarah. In other words, Sarah was Abraham's wife, Hagar was his mistress. When Isaac was born, Ishmael and Hagar were cast away from Abraham and sent into the desert away from him and Sarah.
Ishmael was promised to be a great nation, and today he is, but the blessings of Abraham and Yahweh's covenant went through Isaac and his seedline. Biblically speaking, the land of Israel rightfully belongs to the Jews because God promised and gave the land to Abraham, the Father of the Jews, and renewed this promise or covenant to Abraham's son Isaac and to Isaac's son Jacob (later renamed Israel by God) who begat twelve sons from whom the twelve tribes of Israel was established as a nation as described in Genesis 12:1-3; 17:7,8 and 17:19-21.
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Your own Bible says :
2.Genesis 16:3 (Whole Chapter) And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. KJV. So you dont know your own Bible. Stop quoting from the Qur'an and go back to Bible class. e.g."Qur'an 9:5, known as "the verse of the sword," declares, "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem." As you like to say "context". This was for a specific time or we would be slaying pagans every day from this was revealed, today, until the end of time, which is clearly not the case. How were people before the time of Christ saved as our salvation depends on him dying on the cross, according to you?
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Originally Posted By: Tman
Your own Bible says :
2.Genesis 16:3 (Whole Chapter) And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. KJV. So you dont know your own Bible. Stop quoting from the Qur'an and go back to Bible class. e.g."Qur'an 9:5, known as "the verse of the sword," declares, "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem." As you like to say "context". This was for a specific time or we would be slaying pagans every day from this was revealed, today, until the end of time, which is clearly not the case.
Really? so explain all the suicide bombings, blowing up airplanes, flying planes into buildings, burning churches, killing muslims who converted to Christianity and it is done all in the name of Allah, please explain that for me Tman.
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When you explain how people before Jesus (PBUH) will be saved as you say salvation depends on the cross, then I will answer your pita-patta question. I will give you a clue: are 1.5 billion Muslims doing what you say?
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Originally Posted By: Tman
When you explain how people before Jesus (PBUH) will be saved as you say salvation depends on the cross, then I will answer your pita-patta question. I will give you a clue: are 1.5 billion Muslims doing what you say?
Tman, here we go again for the third time, please read and pay attention to what you're reading.
Since the fall of man, the basis of salvation has always been the death of Christ. No one, either prior to the cross or since the cross, would ever be saved without that one pivotal event in the history of the world. Christ's death paid the penalty for past sins of Old Testament saints and future sins of New Testament saints.
The requirement for salvation has always been faith. The object of one's faith for salvation has always been God. The psalmist wrote, “Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:12). Genesis 15:6 tells us that Abraham believed God and that was enough for God to credit it to him for righteousness (see also Romans 4:3-8). The Old Testament sacrificial system did not take away sin, as Hebrews 10:1-10 clearly teaches. It did, however, point to the day when the Son of God would shed His blood for the sinful human race.
What has changed through the ages is the content of a believer's faith. God's requirement of what must be believed is based on the amount of revelation He has given mankind up to that time. This is called progressive revelation. Adam believed the promise God gave in Genesis 3:15 that the Seed of the woman would conquer Satan. Adam believed Him, demonstrated by the name he gave Eve (v. 20) and the Lord indicated His acceptance immediately by covering them with coats of skin (v. 21). At that point that is all Adam knew, but he believed it.
Abraham believed God according to the promises and new revelation God gave him in Genesis 12 and 15. Prior to Moses, no Scripture was written, but mankind was responsible for what God had revealed. Throughout the Old Testament, believers came to salvation because they believed that God would someday take care of their sin problem. Today, we look back, believing that He has already taken care of our sins on the cross (John 3:16; Hebrews 9:28).
What about believers in Christ's day, prior to the cross and resurrection? What did they believe? Did they understand the full picture of Christ dying on a cross for their sins? Late in His ministry, “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Matthew 16:21-22). What was the reaction of His disciples to this message? “Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’” Peter and the other disciples did not know the full truth, yet they were saved because they believed that God would take care of their sin problem. They didn't exactly know how He would accomplish that, any more than Adam, Abraham, Moses, or David knew how, but they believed God.
Today, we have more revelation than the people living before the resurrection of Christ; we know the full picture. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Our salvation is still based on the death of Christ, our faith is still the requirement for salvation, and the object of our faith is still God. Today, for us, the content of our faith is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He rose the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
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You answered my question " The requirement for salvation has always been faith. The object of one's faith for salvation has always been God." Note "GOD" not faith in Jesus (PBUH) dying on the cross. So ALL will be saved if they have faith in GOD. Amen. Or we can continue sinning because Jesus (PBUH) died for us and it requires no other action on our part but just to believe that.
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Originally Posted By: Tman
You answered my question " The requirement for salvation has always been faith. The object of one's faith for salvation has always been God." Note "GOD" not faith in Jesus (PBUH) dying on the cross. So ALL will be saved if they have faith in GOD. Amen. Or we can continue sinning because Jesus (PBUH) died for us and it requires no other action on our part but just to believe that.
Tuff head, you missed it again.
Our salvation is still based on the death of Christ, our faith is still the requirement for salvation, and the object of our faith is still God. Today, for us, the content of our faith is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He rose the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
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So all those BC and those who never heard of him will be saved retroactively? And we can continue sinning because Jesus (PBUH) died for us and it requires no other action on our part but just to believe that?
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