Jesus Christ: “Neither Killed Nor
Crucified”, Not Even Touched.
By Dr. Mohiuddin
Waseem
In The Name Of Allah, Most Gracious and Most Merciful.
The religion of the world can be broadly divided into Philosophical and
Prophetic types. The Philosophical religions in principle are based on
scientific observations of the nature and the universe which ultimately lead
humanity to worship from male and female generative organs to astral deities to
Geometric numbers and figures. In contrast to this the Prophetic religions
taught a belief in a sole Creator of the cosmos variously known as Allah, Elli,
Alu and Eloah in different
Semitic languages of Middle East, the home
From the
very face value of this comparison it is evident that the Prophetic religions
stressed that their source of information is through the revelation of God
Almighty and left no room for Philosophers to creep into their territory with
their various opinions and wild imaginations. This is precisely the reason why we
find these Prophets at war with the Philosophical religions of their times.
Several examples of this eternal conflict can be found in the pages of the Holy
Quran and the Bible. Another intermediate group, which is neither fish nor
fowl, are the mystics of ancient pagan world who in their quest for the
knowledge of the God, relied heavily on spiritual hallucinations brought on by
such methods as prolonged fasting, drugs and physical torments to name a few.
This group passed its legacy to mystics of Christianity, Cabbalists of Judaism
and Sufis of Islam.
With this
background in mind scholars have approached Paul to understand his personality
and message. Knowing this person has a paramount importance in Christian
learning as more or less half of the New Testament books are attributed to him.
The majority of current Biblical scholars hold the opinion that he was a Jewish
Christian comparing to the charges of Gnostic (mystic) and Philosopher which he
has been labeled with for some times.
But in my
opinion he was a genius Jew with Political ambition, and that was to present
his Jewish religion in such terms that it becomes acceptable and palatable to
the non-Jewish nations surrounding his people in the
His
ideology of “salvation related to a belief in death and resurrection of a
divine savior” was in itself the dominating religious dogma known to the
heathen nations of his times, as Paul himself admits that even well before he
became a minister, “the gospel which you heard, which has been preached to
every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul became a minister”
(Colossians 1; 23).
More than a
dozen such saviors, are known to current biblical scholars, such as Krishna of
India (1200 B.C), Thammuz of Syria (1160 B.C), Quexalcote of Mexico (587 B.C), Atys
of Phyrygia (1170 B.C), Mithra
of Persia and Budha of India (600 B.C) to name a few
(The world’s sixteen crucified saviors; Kersey Graves; p 102- 133).
We know
from Luke that Paul was born in
It was in
this religious and cultural context that Jesus Christ was born miraculously as a
sign from God Almighty revealing to these heathen nations in general and Jews
in particular that a miraculous birth in itself does not qualify a divine
status rather it is just like any other ordinary birth, with dependency on a
mother to rear the baby before birth and breast feed and change the diapers
afterwards, something which the God Almighty does not require.
The Holy
Quran testifies to these facts in the these simple terms as follows:
“The similitude of Jesus before God is as that of Adam; He created him from
dust, then said: “Be” and he was. The truth comes from thy Lord alone; so be
not of those who doubt” (3: 59- 60).
“Christ, the son of Mary was no more than a messenger: many were the messengers
that passed away before him, his mother was a woman of truth. They had both to
eat their (daily) food. See how God doth make His signs clear to them; yet see
in what ways they are deluded away from the truth! (5: 75).
It is clear from
the historic accounts that at some point during the ministry of Jesus the Jews
unbelievers of his time, threatened by his call of religious reformation and afraid
of loosing their own positions in the community, planned to harm him and God
made Jesus aware of his future ascension well in advance, as the Holy Quran
tells us, “And (the unbelievers) plotted and planned, and God too planned,
and the best of planners is God. Behold! God said: O Jesus! I will take thee
and raise thee to myself and clear thee (of the falsehood) of those who
blaspheme; I will make those who follow thee superior to those who reject
faith, to the day of resurrection: then shall ye all return unto me, and I will
judge between you of the matters wherein ye dispute” (3; 54-55).
About the
Jewish understanding of the event, “ Little is said about Jesus in the Talmud
(the book containing Jewish traditions), except that he was a scholar of Joshua
Ben Perachiah (who lived a century before the time
assigned by the Christians for the birth of Jesus), accompanied him into Egypt,
there learned magic, and was a seducer of the people, and finally put to death
by being stoned and then hung as a blasphemer”, says T.W. Doane
in his book “Bible Myths And Their Parallels In Other Religions, 1882”. Please
note that Jews were also not clear about the manner of ‘alleged death’ of Jesus
if it was secondary to stoning or hanging (or? crucifixion), they also failed
to show the dead body or even the grave of Christ, which could have settled the
case in their favor.
Paul’s
imagination (?50-60 A.D) worked well in favor of crucifixion because of obvious
reasons as I discussed earlier, the only thing he had to do was to add the
vision of risen Christ, which he did with success but failed again to mention
the most crucial evidences and those are a series of questions, “What happened to
the dead body of Christ?, If he was ever buried in a grave?, If there were any
other witnesses to the event of crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ?”. These questions must be a nuisance to the followers of Paul who in
subsequent decades, from 80- 125 A.D wrote their respective gospels primarily
addressing these questions.
T. W. Doane rightly remarks that, “In the first two centuries the
professors of Christianity were divided into many sects, but these might all be
resolved into two divisions- one consisting of Nazarenes, Ebionites
and Orthodox; the others Gnostics”. Gnostics idealized the personality of Jesus
to such extremes that his humanity was reduced to a Phantom without reality.
They generally agreed in saying that Christ was an Aeon
(in Greek Aion which means immeasurable long period
of time), though they admitted the Crucifixion, considered it to have been
happened in some mystical way, but denied that Christ did really die, in the
literal acceptation of the term, on the cross.
Among the
former group belonged Paul and his associates who propagated and accepted the
story on literal terms as I have discussed earlier, others totally rejected the
event of Crucifixion either in reality or metaphorically and are described by Irenaeus (198 A.D), who tells us about them on the
authority of Polycarp, who had it from St. John himself and from the old people
of Asia, that Jesus was not crucified at the time stated in the gospels but
lived to be nearly fifty years old. Irenaeus also
states, “They could not conceive of “the first begotten Son of God” being put
to death on a cross, and suffering like an ordinary being, so they thought
Simon of Cyrene must have been substituted for him, as the ram was substituted
in place of Isaac” (Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions; T. W. Doane; p508-530).
Among all
four different options about Christ’s last hours on this earth (one Jewish and
three Christians), the substitution theory impressed some of our Muslim
scholars too, years after the demise of our last prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
For me the
matter is concluded in these following verses of Holy Quran which says,
“That they (Jews of Talmud) said (in boast), “we killed Christ Jesus the son of
Mary, the messenger of Allah”- But they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the
matter was made dubious to them, and those who differ therein are full of
doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of
surety they killed him not. Nay, Allah raised him up unto himself; and Allah is
exalted in power, wise” (Holy Quran 4: 157- 158).
