Jesus Christ; “Neither Killed Nor Crucified”, Not
Even Touched. (Part 2)
In the name of Allah most gracious and most merciful.
“Proclaim (or Read) in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created--
Created man out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood. Proclaim! And thy Lord is
most bountiful-- He who taught (the use of) the pen--Taught man that which he
knew not” (Holy Quran 96; 1-5).
These are the
first few verses of Holy Quran, revealed to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) from God
Almighty when he was given the responsibility of delivering the last and final
message of God to the world. Note that from the very beginning, the Islamic
call stressed the need to read and understand the divine message on the basis
of God’s given reasoning and intellect. This is precisely the reason that the
Muslim community from its earliest days produced such scholarship that not only
the Holy Quran was preserved but also the sayings and traditions of Prophet
Mohammad (hadiths) in separate books. Thousands of
the prophet’s companions made it possible that God’s call and the teachings of
the prophet are delivered to as many people as possible. Within the first two
hundred years of the prophet’s demise Muslims developed the sciences of
critical evaluation of the scriptures which was never heard of in any religion
of the world. The typical Muslim mentality which grew out of Quranic teachings
and the prophet’s preaching is to search the authenticity and then to analyze
on rational grounds any claim made to them before accepting it’s authority.
Unfortunately
the situation is very different for Judeo-Christian literature specially
Christology which is the topic of discussion. It is only in the last two
hundred years of our era that critical biblical scholarship has emerged and
revealed the shocking reality that during the first 4th to 5th century the
Christian Church was too busy formulating the concept of Trinity and it seems
that no one had time or interest to search for the true ‘Gospel of Jesus’ which
he himself taught when confronting and preaching the Jews of his time.
The oldest
manuscripts of New Testament famously known as Codex Sinaiticus,
Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus
all date around 4th-5th century, containing the letters of Paul (? 50-60 A.D),
Gospels of Mark (? 75 A.D), Matthew (? 85-90 A.D), Luke/Acts (? 85-90 A.D) and
John (? 95-125 A.D) all “supposed” to have written between 50-150 A.D, telling
and retelling an old song known to the pagans that ‘a divine savior has been crucified, died and resurrected for the
sins of the world’. None of the writers of this alleged ‘passion- resurrection
narrative’, are eye witnesses to the event and the oldest writer Paul never
saw, met or touched Jesus while he walked on this earth.
There is a
massive scholarly consensus that Mark might have originated independently where
as Luke and Matthew copied whole sale from Mark (synoptic gospels); as for John
he is independent of the synoptics for the miracles
and sayings of Jesus but not for the passion and resurrection stories. These
scholars tell us that Matthew and Luke also consulted another major work (Q
Gospel,?50 A.D) along with Mark to finalize their
account of gospels yet there is not a single hint about any
passion-resurrection story from “Q Gospel”. Similarly the recently discovered
“Gospel of Thomas” unearthed in 1945 near Nag Hammadi
in
Here again you
find Jesus and his disciples reflecting the knowledge of his future ascension
and his disciples are concerned about the future leadership of the true
Christian community knowing that he is not going to come back in the near
future, otherwise the logical answer from Jesus would have been that ‘ why do
you worry! We have lots of time. I am not leaving till I am crucified and
raised to the life again and dwelt among you for another forty days from that
event’, rather you find Jesus expressing his will in favour of James (his
brother) in anticipation of his imminent ascension which was about to happen at
any moment.
In conclusion
the Christian communities of ‘Q Gospel’ and ‘Gospel of Thomas’ had no knowledge
of trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection myth and it naturally follows
that their ‘faith’ did not rest on these details at all. The myth of
crucifixion was created by Paul, who is the most Jew friendly among the New
Testament writers and the first to affirm the Jewish claim (Talmud) that Jesus
Christ has been crucified, when the fact of the matter is that despite all the
evil intension the Jews (of Christ’s time) had they were not able to touch this
mighty messenger of God.
The Holy
Quran depicts a scene from the Day of Reckoning when God will have a discourse
with Jesus and tells how God saved him; it says, “Than will Allah say: “O Jesus
the son of Mary! Recount My favour to thee and to thy
mother. Behold! I strengthened thee with the holy sprit (Angel Gabriel), so
that thou didst speak to the people in infancy and in maturity. Behold! I
taught thee the Book of Wisdom, The Law and the
Gospel. And behold! Thou didst make out of clay the figure of a bird, By My
leave, and thou didst breathe into it, and it becometh
a bird by My leave, and thou didst heal those born blind, and the lepers, by My
leave. And behold! I DID RESTRAIN THE CHILDREN OF
When all is said and explained the Christian argument shifts towards historians
like Pliny, Suetonius, Josephus and Tacitus. Among these four the first two
tell us about Christians but not about Christ Jesus. Only Josephus (Antiquities
18.63-64; 90-95 A.D) and Tacitus (Annals 15.44; 115 A.D) tell us about Jesus or
Christ and the continuation from him to Christianity. Even if we assume that
their books are transmitted to us without being altered by Christian
interpolations the fact remains that these writers were only quoting the
Pauline version of Christology, which was by that time growing rapidly as the
dominant sect of Christianity.
