 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi ijma'in. Subhanaka la ilmah lana illa ma alam tana inna ka antal adim wa l-haqeem. Wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi al-Ali al-Azim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. This is a class on the New Testament Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, an introduction for Muslims. I will be your instructor, insha'Allah ta'ala, Ali al-Athai. Before we begin the actual first gospel, which is going to be the gospel according to Mark, just a few words about the importance of having interdisciplinary knowledge. This vastly improves our outreach efforts, our da'wah efforts to the non-Muslim community, especially the Judeo-Christians in the West. It's important for us to understand where they're coming from and to be able to make those connections in our religious faiths. The discipline of comparative religion is really a Muslim contribution to the world. And this is basically by consensus of even Western scholars that the first scholars to actually write objectively about religion, religions in general, documenting them, talking about their historical development, their origins, and founders were really Muslim theologians. And some of the great ones are Shah Rastani and Abu Rayhan al-Birooni, who's polymath, who's basically credited for inventing this discipline known as comparative religion. So this is something that is an art form or a science that is part of our tradition as Muslims. This is something that we gave to the world and this is something that we need to engage in. The Christians at the time, in the medieval times when these scholars were writing, most of their works were primarily polemical in nature. They weren't trying to objectively or near objectively present other religions, especially Islam. They're basically vilifying Muslims and Islam and attacking them. The first Christian to really write a sort of academic, if you will, refutation of Islam was a man named John of Damascus or John Demesine, who lived in the 8th century in Damascus, obviously, under Muslim rule. The majority populace at the time, however, was Christian and he knew Arabic. But the problem with John Demesine is that he actually believed that Islam was a Christian heresy, not a separate independent faith. So his understanding of the religion was very weak and he has a book concerning heresies and the final chapter is called Concerning the Ishmaelite Heresy. He doesn't even call the Muslims Muslims. He calls them Ishmaelites or Hagerians. Then we have Peter the Venerable, so-called Venerable. He was the abbot of Clooney who wrote books about Islam as well and in order to refute religious beliefs of the Muslims. But here again, primarily, we don't have objective presentations of the religion. What we have is a polemical sort of attacks, vitrolic sort of attacks against the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. For example, he actually claims Peter the Venerable. He actually claims that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was born and were actually passed in the year 666. And of course, if you know anything about the date, 666, this was the number of the Antichrist according to the Book of Revelation, which is a book that we're going to be talking about briefly. Although this class is basically focused, more focused on the four gospels, Anagila, Arba'a, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament tradition. We're going to talk about these other books as well to understand these books a little more in detail. Of course you have Thomas Aquinas whose theology and philosophy is still the standard in the Roman Catholic Church even to this day. And of course he's known for the Sumo Theologica, which is his masterpiece, his magnum opus, where he talks about, it's really three sections. There are Pima Parse, which is talking about Dodd. And the second part talks about virtue, ethics. And then the third part talks about Isa'alayh salam, who is Jesus in the Christian tradition. But he wrote another book as well which is not as well known, but it's called the Sumo Contra Gentiles, which means basically the refutation of the infidels or the non-Christians. And this book is really geared towards Jews and especially Muslims. And a lot of scholars actually believe that Thomas Aquinas here is specifically rebutting some of the things that he's read from Abu Hamad al-Ghazali. So this is the Christian tradition in the medieval times. We don't have really anything really objective. Again, more polemical in nature, nothing ironic, nothing really scholarly or academic. But in Muslim circles, you have this unbelievable growth of knowledge and this birth of this discipline known as comparative world religion. So it's important for Muslims not only to be able to present the religious beliefs of others objectively or near objectively, because true objectivity is probably a myth, but at least present the religion in a sense that is fair and try to be balanced and at least represents the majority of what those people actually believe regarding the religion. But also there's a hermeneutical aspect to it. In other words, there has to be an aspect to the study where you can actually evaluate the religious claims of others as well. So this is very, very important. Of course, every science has 10 Mabadi as they're called. There's 10 foundations of every fan or every science or art and we won't go through those, but traditionally this is called Al-Milal Wa-Nihal studies in nations and creeds and Kitabun Milal Wa-Nihal, for example, but Ibn Hazm, he talks about this aspect, analyzing other religions, but also giving an evaluative sort of commentary on the truth or falsity of these religions as well, and this is obviously done with academic rigor not to be disrespectful towards those religions. The first thing we'll do, inshallah, is sort of give you an introduction to the Bible itself. What is the Bible? The word Bible comes from a Greek word, ta-tan biblian, which means the book. So for example, many of the Ulama believe that when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in the Quran, ahlil Kitab, the people of the book, al-Kitab here is the Bible, because the word Bible literally means the book. Now, more in detail, more specifically, the Bible is actually a collection of books. It's actually a bibliography, a collection of books. You have the Old Testament, the so-called Old Testament, and of course, this is Christian terminology. When we say Old Testament, ahdul qadeem, for example, a Jewish rabbi would actually be offended by that terminology because he doesn't consider the Old Testament to be old at all, that the Old Testament is binding and that the laws and commandments are eternally binding upon every person that believes in those scriptures. So this is a Christian terminology. If we want to be more precise in our language, we would call the Old Testament the tanakh, tanakh. And this is really an acronym, and it stands for Torah, Nibim and Kitabim. So we look at the Old Testament, we're looking at 39 books, 39 books, beginning with the Torah. This is the written Torah, right? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This is called the written Torah. This is the beginning of the Christian Bible, the beginning of the Old Testament. Then after that, after these five books, you have 34 other books, but concentrating on these five books. So in these five books you have, like we said, Genesis, this is, you know, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is how it begins. And you have the story of the creation of Adam, there's two different versions of it. You have the flood. You have the story of Ibrahim, the book of Genesis will actually end with the death of Yusuf, in Egypt, Genesis, then you have Exodus, which is the story of Musa, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Leviticus and Numbers is the 613 mitzvot, or the commandments that are given to the prophet Musa, alaihi salam, according to the religion of Judaism that are recorded in these two books. And Deuteronomy means second law, Deuteronomus, which is basically a summary of what was already stated in the first four books and a few more prophecies and laws and whatnot. So this is called the Torah. And we have to remember also that the Jews believe in two Torahs, not just one Torah. There's the written Torah, which is the first five books that I just explained, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But Jews also believe, and this is a classical Jewish position, and the religion of Judaism has gone through a lot of turmoil. It was effectively ended when the second temple was burnt in 70 of the common era. We'll talk more about that. We'll talk about the Gospel of Mark, inshallah ta'ala. But the principal formulators or articulators of the Jewish religion are also from the Middle Ages. So you have people like Maimonides, and you have people like Joseph Albo, and you have Bahia, you have Rashi, these different rabbis and sages in the Middle Ages, most of them working in Arabic in Muslim countries, articulating their religion and being systematic. These are systematic theologians. And this is the first time in their history that they really have the ability to do this because under Christian Europe and Christendom, a lot of these things were outlawed and the Jews were pretty much under microscope during their entire existence in Christian Europe. And oftentimes they were exiled from different countries. We'll talk about that as well. That comes into play when we look at the Gospel of Mark and Matthew as well. But the Jews believe, in addition to these written books, there's an oral Torah, right? An oral Torah. So this is called the Torah, the Ketuv in Hebrew, the written Torah. And there's a Torah, Bi Peh, which is by mouth, an oral Torah. And this oral Torah was also given to Musa A.S., and it was not intended to be written down. And the purpose of the oral Torah was to safeguard the true meanings of the written Torah. So this would safeguard against somebody, for example, going to the written Torah and extracting legal rulings or exegeting the text by himself if he doesn't have the requisite knowledge. So he'd have to actually go to a rabbi and the rabbi, he would sit with the rabbi and the rabbi would teach him the written Torah in light of the oral Torah, right? So oral tradition was very, very important. And this is interesting in our tradition as well. We have the tradition of the Senate, right? The chain of transmission. And it's really incredible because Islam did not have these church synods and councils that we'll talk about as well, where these bishops come together and they literally will vote on a certain issue to make it Christian orthodoxy. And the reason for that is because there's such disunity in the religion and there's so much sectarianism, you know, firqah that these ecumenical, so-called ecumenical councils were something that was very much needed. If you look at Islam, Muslims, you go to Mecca, for example, Muslims are basically doing the same thing, whether they're Maliki or Shafi'i or if they're Shi'i or Ibadi, whatever they are, Salafi, basically they're doing the same thing. So this is a testament to the strong sanat in our tradition. However, the early scholars of Islam, for example, Ibn Asher, when he wrote his al-Murshid al-Mu'een, you know, 300 some odd lines of poetry, which is really a distillation to use the words of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a sort of a muhtasar, a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a major text by Imam Malik Ibn Anas. The reason why these texts were distilled or made more comprehensive is because the Salaf would write these books and treatises under the impression that the student of knowledge would sit with a scholar who would then give that student the oral transmission of that text. So the oral transmission is very, very important. In the Gospels, Esa'alayhi salam wa alaykum, Jerusalem, he's approached by Pharisees, a group of Jewish scholars, doctors and lawyers of the law, and they say, under whose authority are you doing these things? They wanna know the Senate of Esa'alayhi salam is very, very important. And of course, Esa'alayhi salam is a messenger of God, and that's what he said, I'm a messenger of God. Of course, according to the tradition in the New Testament, he actually gives a different answer because he's very confrontational at times with the Pharisees. But obviously, the Senate of Esa'alayhi salam is that he's a messenger of God and he receives revelation from Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So that's important to understand as well. Now, the oral Torah eventually was written down and it was written down after the Christian era. And again, the reason why that happened is because when the second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 of the common era, in order to preserve the ethos of the religion of Judaism, the oral Torah was eventually written down and now you have the beginning of what's known as rabbinical Judaism, right? You know, post-temple Judaism. And the first part of the Talmud, which is called the Mishnah, that's the actual oral Torah that was eventually written down. We'll talk more about what is the Talmud later, inshallah ta'ala, because it's going to come up when we talk about the Gospel of Matthew, which is the most Jewish, if you will, of the four Gospels of the New Testament. So you have the Torah, then you have the next 34 books in the Old Testament, which are split between what's known as the prophets and the writings. So basically, if a book in the Old Testament is named after a prophet, it's considered to be from the prophets, which is called Nibbim in Hebrew. If it's not the name of a prophet, like for example, if it's First Kings or Second Kings or First and Second Samuel or other books like that, First and Second Chronicles, then this is called Kitubim, the writings. So you have Nibbim and Kitubim. So therefore you have the Torah, first five books. Then you have the Nibbim and Kitubim, which represent the latter 34 books of the New Testament. So you take the T, or the Tau from Torah, the Nun from Nibbim, and the Ka'af from Kitubim. You have T-N-K, and you add a few vowels and you have the word Tanakh. So this is what the Jews call the Old Testament. It's an acronym, Torah, Nibbim, Kitubim, the Tanakh. Christians call this the Old Testament. Jews call this the Tanakh, okay? Now the Christians also believe that all of the ahkam, all of the legal rulings of the Old Testament have been abrogated. And this is a very controversial issue in the news today with different, most of them are either fundamentalist Christian authors. Some of them are atheists that will bring up this issue with regards to the Quran. The Muslims believe that the latest revelation will cancel the one that came before that. And they say, well, this is true in every case. Therefore, all of the verses in the Quran that talk about peace have been abrogated. Of course, this is not true, and it's not as simplistic as that, and this requires a lot of scholarship. But basically they'll say this idea of nasch, right? This idea of cancellation, abrogation of different verses in the Quran, they kind of take this as being a way of Muslims sort of covering up these contradictions, so-called contradictions in the Quran, not realizing that this actually happens in the Bible as well. Christians believe that all of the ahkam of the Old Testament are summarily abrogated by the New Testament. They've been completely abrogated. They're a mansuch of the New Testament. So that's important to understand. So basically Christians now are under no obligation of the Torah that they don't have to circumcise their male children. They can eat pork, right? They're allowed to get a divorce now, because in the Torah apparently it says that you're not allowed to get a divorce. Even within the New Testament itself, right? Intranew Testament, you have abrogation. You have nasch. You can see this very clearly, Matthew 15, 24, which we'll talk about obviously the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus commissions his disciples initially, he says go into, he says enter ye not into any Gentile land. Don't go into the lands of the Gentiles, into the Goyim, only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But at the end of the Gospel, right? Matthew chapter 28, you have the great commissioning go into all nations, right? So Isa A.S., at least what it says in Matthew is abrogating the previous command that he had given to the Hawari'un or to the disciples because now their training has been complete as it were. So we have this evolution of teaching. We have this in the New Testament. We haven't going from Old Testament to New Testament. We have this in the Quran as well, because this is how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks to humanity. Humanity needs progression. That's how we are, right? So that's the Tanakh. Now what's interesting also is that the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language is dated to 1008 of the common era. 1008 of the common era, Miladi. So this is after Islam. This is the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language. So this is some 2,300 years removed from Musa A.S., right? So that's a big span of time. Of course you have the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered by a Muslim Bedouin in Qubran in Palestine in 1947, but the Dead Sea Scrolls are not complete. There are missing books. The Book of Esther is completely missing. There's portions of the Book of Isaiah that are missing. There are no tashkil, there are no diacritical notations in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So it's a big mystery as to how to actually pronounce many of the passages there. So it's not considered to be complete. The oldest complete version of the Old Testament is dated 1008 of the common era. This is called the Masoretic Text. The name of the scribes that produced the text were called the Mazarets. It's also called the Codex Leningrad. So that's important to understand. Now talking about the New Testament, coming to the New Testament now. The New Testament obviously again is Christian terminology. The Jews do not believe in the New Testament in any way, shape, or form. Jews do not believe in Isaii Salaam at all. There's no belief about him. He is mentioned in the Talmud at times. Christians will point to certain things in the Old Testament as far as prophecies of Isaii Salaam. And Allah knows some of them seem to be pretty legit. There are prophecies of the prophet in the Tanakh as well that are very compelling. But Jews, they don't believe in Isaii Salaam in any way, shape, or form. They don't believe in the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The Talmud mentioned some few disparaging things about Isaii Salaam that we won't go into. But Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells us basically when they said, Wa qawdihim, Inna qatalna al-Masih Isabna Maryam Rasulallah that they said in boast, we killed Isaii Salaam and then they have some sort of descriptions that they give on how they killed him and cursing him and things like that that we won't go into. And they also say a few things about Maryam Alaihi Salaam. As you can imagine, Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la also addresses this. Wa bi kufrihim ma qawlihim ala Maryam abuhtan al-Azimah that they utter against Maryam Alaihi Salaam a Kalanist grave charge. So that's mentioned in the Talmud and this was written by rabbis after the Christian era. This is also one of the reasons why many times in the Middle Ages, in Christian countries, the Talmud was ordered to be burned by church authorities because they came to learn of these things that are written in Jewish scriptures. We'll talk more about that, inshallah, as well. So when we look at the New Testament, basically we have four Gospels that begin the New Testament. These are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is a focus of our study for this course. Looking at these four books and looking at their origins, their authorship, basically the who, what, when, where, why of these four books. Looking at the evolution of Christology of these four books. What is Christology? This comes from a word Christos, which means Christ or Messiah in Greek and logos or logia, which means the study. So Christology is the study of Christ. So how does Mark look at Jesus? How does Matthew envision Jesus from a theological standpoint? How does Luke? How does John? Are they the same? Are they different? It's very, very important. Who wrote these books? Were they written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Who are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? How do we know that they wrote these books? What language did they write these books in? Where were they written? Why are they important? Why are there only four of them? All of these questions are very, very important. And the vast majority of Christians that I've come across in 15 years or so of interfaith work, the vast majority of Christian laity, those who kind of just go to church once a week and that's about it, they have no idea the origins of these books. They kind of go to church and listen to the sermon and that's spiritually uplifting for them, obviously. But if you want to actually get into the studies a little more in depth, we have to sit with scholars of the New Testament and listen to what they have to say about the state of the book. And it's very, very interesting for Muslims. And this could really be a good starting point for very quality Dawa or invitation to the religion of Islam. Many of the issues that they have with the New Testament in particular the Gospels can be resolved by studying Islamic tradition, the Quran, the Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the work of the Ulama of Islam. So you have the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This begins the New Testament. And then you have what's known as a book of Acts which is called A'mal al-Rusul, the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic version. So this is basically early ecclesiastical history or church history or apostolic history. What was happening to the Sahaba, if you will, of Issa al-Islam after his ascension into the heavens. So here we have the book of Acts which documents the early church, what was going on with James and Peter and Paul in the early church. And then you have what's known as the Apostolic Letters and Epistles. And this makes up the greater or the greatest portion of the New Testament. And there's 11 of these Apostolic Letters and Epistles. And these are written by Paul. And Paul is an interesting person. He actually authored 14 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Paul of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin who initially persecuted the early Christian movement. And then according to his own testimony that we read in the book of Galatians and also what Luke says in the book of Acts a few times, a couple of times at least. On the way to Damascus, he has this vision of the resurrected Christ and he's immediately converted. And then Issa al-Islam according to Paul tells Paul to go and evangelize the Gentile nations around the Mediterranean. So Paul goes to places like Ephesus and Roman Athens and Thessalonica and Corinth and he evangelizes them with his own understanding of what he believes the gospel to be. And that's fine, but the problem now is when we actually read the letters of Paul we see that he has major conflict, major difference of opinion, not with pagans and Jews obviously that's a given but with other types of Christians, fundamental difference of opinion that he has with them. And if you read the commentaries again if you read from Christian scholars who are Paul's opponents like in the book of Galatians when he rails against these people and calls them hypocrites and so-called pillars he calls them dogs and so on and so forth. Who is he talking about? The vast majority of Christian commentators FC Bauer is the authority on the book of Galatians. He says Paul is actually talking about other disciples of Jesus that were sent from Jerusalem who studied with James who's the brother of Esalaam. So in other words, and we'll go over this later when we talk about the gospel of Matthew inshallah in other words, Paul has major, major difference of opinion, fundamental difference of opinion with other apostles that are from Jerusalem that have studied with James and who is James? James is the brother of Esalaam according to history and according to Christian history and he's also the Khalifa if you will of Esalaam, James. And James in Hebrew is Ya'aqov had Sadiq Ya'aqov or Ya'aqob which is James in English and the reason why Ya'aqov became James is because early on many of the Christians they try to distance themselves from their Jewish roots because there was a lot of animosity between Christianity and Judaism. But James is Ya'aqov and his Laqab that was given his sort of surname or nickname that was given to him by Esalaam according to Christian history is had Sadiq which is the exact equivalent of Esadiq. So his Laqab is the same as the Laqab of the Khalifa of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Abu Bakr Esadiq and this is an interesting coincidence they have the same nickname. So then you have the Catholic epistles. So basically the four gospels, you have the book of Acts and then you have 21 total epistles, letters or correspondences, most of them written by Paul some of them written by Peter and John one written by James and one written by Jude but we have to say at this point the vast majority of these books all of the books of the New Testament the vast majority are actually anonymous nobody knows who wrote them and this is not my opinion this is not the opinion of secular Western scholarship this is the opinion of Christian scholars in Christian seminaries because this is a fact of the issue. When we say Matthew, Mark, Luke and John these books are anonymous nobody knows who wrote these books why are they called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? We'll talk about that when we get to the gospel of Mark inshallah to Allah. So you have four gospels, the book of Acts 21 letters and epistles and then finally at the end of the New Testament you have the book of Revelation which is an apocalypse which are basically a dream that a man named John of Patmos had while he was on this island he was exiled and he had these visions of the end of time what's going to happen in the end of time and he wrote those visions down and that's the end of the Bible so the Bible is a very linear book so you have Genesis 1.1, Genesis means beginning because the first word of the Bible, Genesis 1.1 is Bereshit Bereshit means in the beginning Bereshit Barah Elohim Et Ha Shemayim Et Ha Eretz in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that's how it begins once upon a time and then you read through the entire Bible it's very linear you go through the ancient patriarchs then you go to the time of David and Solomon the time of the judges and the divide of the kingdom then you have the Babylonian the Assyrian invasion, Babylonian invasion then you have the Persian period then you skip across the Greek period into the Roman period and the New Testament and at the end of the New Testament you have the book of Revelation so again, very linear once upon a time and then they lived happily ever after and this is how man will write but if you look at the Qur'an the Qur'an is not linear the Qur'an is circular so initially when the Western Orientalist who has a force structure that is very much Christian because he is Christian when he reads the Qur'an it seems like it's a jumbled a chronological mess why isn't this an order and the Qur'an actually addresses this issue the Qur'an says they say to you why don't you have this in order why don't you have it in chronology because that's how man thinks but the Qur'an is not written linearly it's written circularly and there's a great wisdom as to why Allah SWT will return to certain themes in the Qur'an it will not present his book in a linear fashion the oldest complete version of the New Testament so remember we talked about the Old Testament the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in Hebrew like we said is dated to 1008 of the common era this is after Islam this is a medieval text called the Masoretic text when it comes to the New Testament the oldest complete version of the New Testament in Greek is dated to 375 of the common era so considerably earlier than the Old Testament which is very strange because obviously the Old Testament was written first however this text which is called the Codex Cyanidekis or is cataloged as Aleph-01 the entire text is actually online I think it's a Codex Cyanidekis .org or .com or something if you can read Greek although it is translated there the actual manuscript was photographed under two different types of light and you can actually read it on that website but this still dates to about 330 some odd years after the ascension of Issa al-Islam so this is also very very late and the thing about the Codex Cyanidekis is is that there's actually extra books in the Codex Cyanidekis like the Epistle of Barnabas the Shepherd of Hermes these are extra books that are not found in the traditional 27 Canon books of the New Testament as we have them today and there's reasons for that as well and we'll talk about those as well you know why are there 27 books in the New Testament why not 28, why not 29 why are there four Gospels why is there only one ecclesiastical history the Book of Acts what about these other letters and epistles why aren't those included in the New Testament so this is a very interesting study when you get to that inshallah ta'ala but just a word quickly about our Christology as Muslims so there's very importance of very interesting things here is that again Christology is the study of Issa al-Islam the study of Issa al-Islam, the study of Christ and obviously our primary text in this area of study, in this discipline is the Quran the Quran is considered Dalil Qatee it is a definitive proof text it's mutawater in its transmission it's multiply attested in its transmission we believe that the Quran is the word of God the speech of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala so we believe that Issa al-Islam is a genuine prophet a prophet, the word prophet comes from the Greek prafaites and this is actually a Greek word we say nabi in Arabic and the word in Hebrew is navi and the word navi is found many many times in the Old Testament there's actually a prophecy that we'll talk about in the book of Deuteronomy which is called hannavi kamom moshay in Hebrew, the prophet who is like Moses and this is a prophecy of someone to come in the future that Musa al-Islam prophesied that will come in the future that is similar to him and we'll talk about that very very interesting we believe that Issa al-Islam was born of a virgin we believe that he could perform miracles so this is important we believe in Mu'ajizat different types of miracles there's Mu'ajizat which are miracles that are performed by prophets al-Anbiya wa al-Mursaleen bi-idnillahi ta'ala so prophets they have this ability by the permission of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to produce these physical sort of signs you know kharkul adat these breaks of natural law in order to sort of support their missions now these are not definitive proofs because false prophets can also perform miracles so you have to look at the sincerity of a prophet you have to look at the nature of his message if he's preaching tohid if he's preaching selflessness, altruism all of these types of things have to be considered into taken into consideration his istiqama in the shari'a of the religion all of these things are very very important because there are different types of miracles there are things called istidraj which are which sometimes translated as divine bagailment that a non-Muslim can do which seems to be a break in natural law but in reality there's no tofiq and what that person is doing and that person does not have istiqama and that person is calling to his own hawaa so it's very very important that when we see these types of things and these things don't happen much anymore it's because the state of the human the state of the human condition but in the pre-modern world these things were very very common and the Erlema has certain stringent measures that they would look to when these things would happen and of course we have miracles, karamat these charismatic exploits or talents of al-awliya of saints and these are well documented as well, thousands of miracles and it's part of our aqeeda as Muslims at least as Ahlus Sunnah and al-Jama'a that we believe in the the karamat al-awliya the miracles of the awliya and there's many of them mentioned like we said in Imam Abu Jafaratah how he mentions them Imam Ibrahim al-Laqani in the Johara he mentions that those who deny the miracles of the awliya then you deny them it's part of our essential aqeeda so Isa alayhi salam he could perform these miracles because he has a station of Nabua he is a prophet we also believe that Isa alayhi salam is a messenger of God an apostle of God apostle also comes from a Greek word apostolas which means someone who is sent out or sent forth Isa alayhi salam he or someone who receives some sort of message and Isa alayhi salam obviously receives a revelation from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala which is called al-injil injil seems to be the Arabic sort of way of saying iwan-gelion or evangelon right which is also a Greek word according to the Quran Isa alayhi salam is also the Christ he is Hamashiach he is al-Masih he is the Christ in other words he is the one the anointed one that the bani Israel were waiting for to come and unite them or to give them the true essence of their religion according to our conception of the Christ one of his primary functions is to prepare the bani Israel and by extension prepare the world for the coming of Ahmad sallallahu alayhi salam who's the final messenger of God and this is based on a verse in the Quran in which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that Isa alayhi salam said oh children of Israel I'm the messenger of God sent to you confirming the Torah which came before me and this is very important when we talk about does Isa alayhi salam confirm the Torah or does he cancel it or is it somewhere in the middle this is a big controversy a big difference of opinion at least amongst Christians as to the function of the law the Torah when it comes to Isa alayhi salam and then he says and to give you glad tidings of a messenger to come after me whose name is Ahmad and of course we know the name Ahmad is another name for the name of the prophet sallallahu alayhi salam some of the ulama have mentioned that the name of the prophet sallallahu alayhi salam in the terrestrial in the celestial realm above the the mulk in the Malakut and the Jabarut is Ahmad sallallahu alayhi salam or his name on the Yomul Qiyamah will be Ahmad Allahu Alam so unlike Judaism that does not believe that Isa alayhi salam is the Christ so even though this is a Jewish concept right the concept of the Messiah is a Jewish concept the Jews did not accept Isa alayhi salam as the Messiah and there have been many would be Messiahs in their history a lot of messianic claimants Isa alayhi salam to them is just another one of those and then they had you know in the year six of the common era Judas the Galilean who claimed to be the Messiah Barabbas at the time of Isa alayhi salam might have claimed to be the Messiah certainly Barabbas the son of the father is a messianic patronymic and it seems like his followers were touting him to be the Messiah after Isa alayhi salam you have a number of messianic claimants the most famous of course is Simon Barakokhba who was executed by the Romans in 125 of the common era this was a global movement basically thousand sixty thousand or so Jews were killed in Jerusalem by the Romans because of this uprising and you have other ones down the line in the Middle Ages you have Shabtai Svi who died in 1666 or he actually claimed to be the Messiah in the year 1666 and he was a European Jew who went to Jerusalem was endorsed by big rabbis in Jerusalem to be the Messiah he was captured by the the Ottoman Sultanate and because he was claiming to be the Messiah and you know just claiming to be the Messiah is not like you're claiming to be some spiritual mystic it carries with it a very clear political implication so anyone who claims to be the Messiah is basically claiming to be the rightful king of the planet earth so the Ottomans they understood that about his claim so this is treason this is clear Chayana so they gave him a choice because Chayana even by today's standards if you make Chayana against for example an American citizen conspires against his own government this is treason and it's punishable by death and it's the same in the pre-modern world as well so the Ottoman Sultan he said to Shabtai Svi he said you have a choice either repent of your claim and we'll let you go and you can be Muslim or you're going to be put to death and of course Shabtai Svi very famously he relinquished his claim to Messiahship and became a Muslim and changed his name to Muhammad something and he lived the rest of his life as a normal Muslim sort of always been these messianic claimants the most famous of whom was Isa A.S. at least from a Jewish perspective he was not the Messiah Christians and Muslims obviously accept him as the Messiah and this is a great topic of unity that we can come together as Muslims and Christians of course the significance of what it means for him to be the Messiah at times is radically different between Christianity and Islam but nonetheless we both both groups believe that he was the Messiah so again when I say the word you know the Christ immediately we think of Christianity and that's just the way that we've been you know sort of socialized it's an immediate signifier of Christianity but the Christ concept is a very Jewish monotheistic concept also if I say for example if I say the Holy Spirit right if I say the Holy Spirit immediately most people at least will think of Christianity because the Christians have sort of monopolized this term the Holy Spirit but Ruh Akkodosh in Hebrew Holy Spirit has its origins in Judaism not in Christianity the Christians took from that concept obviously and they changed it theologically but it is a Jewish concept it is a monotheistic concept even if I say something like God the Father right that sounds like Christian confessional language right if for example if I quote to you the Nicene Creed this is basically the the Orthodox Akkida of Christianity it says in the Greek language Pisteo Omen and Eis Hena Theon Patera Pantokratora we believe in one Father God the Creator of all right God the Father it immediately reminds you or makes you think of Christianity but God the Father I mean God has called Father in the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah chapter 64 verse 16 one of the Dua that are mentioned by Isaiah one of the supplications is Atta Adonai Avino you are the Lord our Father right and of course the Jews do not mean this in a literal sense right so again when the Jew says God is our Father he means Rabb he is our sustainer he is our cherisher we have that sort of uh... it's a symbolical title right that we have that love of God as if Ka'anna as if he is our Father of course this whole concept according to Islam um was destroyed this sort of metaphysical metaphysical aspect of God being our Father and it was made very much uh... literal uh... by the Christian uh... bishops and various ecumenical church councils that jee that that God the Father is literally literally the Father of Jesus who begot Isa alaihi salam so that's obviously something that's condemned in the Quran also condemned in Jewish circles as well uh... so that's important to to remember how did Isa alaihi salam because if you read in the New Testament Gospels you read Isa alaihi salam referring to God as his Father how does he mean it does he mean that God is his Father who begot him literally no Jesus peace be upon him Isa alaihi salam is in a very Jewish context so the way that he's using these terms is in a very Jewish way we cannot ignore the social and theological context of the Christ event of the Jesus event uh... because then we're reading into things anachronistically Isa alaihi salam when he refers to God as his Father he doesn't mean it in the nicene sense of the word that's an anachronistic reading outside of time that's not being logical in the way we approach the New Testament that's not how he meant it he's simply using the the terminology or the synagogue liturgy that's available to him that's why when we read the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter six and Matthew chapter eleven uh... i'm sorry Matthew chapter six and Luke chapter eleven something in that Matthew and Luke have in common uh... when he teaches his disciples how to pray he says in the in the syriac language Avunda Vashmayu our Father who art in heaven not just my Father but all of us and he means this obviously in a metaphorical sense not in the literal sense but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the Quran he refrains from using this attribute of ab or walad or ibn we don't use these you know abinah allah we don't use these types of things anymore because they've been corrupted over time by christian orthodoxy so that's uh... important to understand as well so the Quran says that they say that Allah has begun children bal ibadu mukramun no these are servants raised to honor these are servants that have takreem that they're simply saying these are sons and daughters of God they're not literal sons and daughters of God we don't say that anyone we do not say that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala begets nor was he begun we that's what we believe lam yalid walam yulat that's what we say lam yalid walam yulat and that's what we believe God did not give birth nor was he given birth to so that's very very important uh... of course when christians say that jesus is begun not made right uh... unless they're Mormon they're not saying that you know god had physical relations with madhyam alaihi salam for example the Mormons will say that but the vast majority of christians that are protestant orthodox in easter and and uh... catholic they don't believe that when they say jesus is begotten and this is important when jesus is begotten not made they simply mean that is alaihi salam is uncreated he's not created by god he's not from the makhuluqat right this is what they mean that the sun has pre-eternality which again is a paradox because they still believe however that he was caused by god he was caused by god which means what that god is a monarch then that god has priority over the sun because he is the the cause of the sun who is the effect but christian scholars would say no there is no essential or temporal or ontological priority of the father over the sun because these things were done outside of time nonetheless muslims would disagree and say even so if something causes something else the effect of that cause is by its very nature inferior to the primal cause whether it was inside or outside of time for example i have a ring on my hand and if i move my hand like this the ring moves it's done at the same time my hand in my ring moves at the same time but can my ring move without my hand no my hand is still causing it to move even though it's done at the same time therefore my hand is superior to the ring because my ring cannot do anything by itself so this is one of the logical arguments we can use against this idea that isa alaihi salam is uncreated yet caused by god this is an orthodox belief of the christians and some of it is based on neoplatonic ideas we won't get too much into christology because this is supposed to be a basic course so we're going to look at the four gospels but maybe in the future inshallah ta'ala we'll talk more about christian theology the origins of theology what is christian theology or orthodox christology and we'll talk more about that inshallah so even if you look at the old testament you have titles like b'nai-al-yon right like in psalm eighty two six it says that you are all gods all sons of the most high b'nai-al-yon sons of the most high so this is an honorific title that god calls the israelites you are my sons this is not meant to be uh... in the literal sense so this idea of triune gods right a trinity divine incarnation that god comes down to earth in the form of a living creature incarnation this is a a latin root incarnate to be in flesh god does not come down and reside in flesh these are christian ideas these are christian dogmatic beliefs that jews do not believe in they don't believe in these things the jews will use this type of language in a figurative sense very important for us to understand that jews will say yes god is our father we are sons of god there's a holy spirit but none of that is meant literally they believe very much as muslims do allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is wahid an ahad he's one of a kind there's nothing like unto him leisik amith lihi shaitan this is what they believe and this is evident if we read uh... the old testament as well so we would say as muslims then that islam restores the true christology the true belief about israeli salam uh... the the actual teaching of israeli salam because we believe the quran is a revelation of god and we'll talk more about that later what's interesting here we're looking at the gospel of mark initially is mark chapter twelve verse twenty nine when ascribe comes to jesus uh... peace be upon him according to mark and he says uh... what is the greatest commandment and jesus responds in the greek language of course he spoke syriac in the new testament books are in greek which is an immediate disadvantage for christians the reason why they're in greek we'll get more into this later the reason why they're in greek because greek was the language of the colonial power of that day the roman empire spoke greek so it's considered to be the lingua franca of that area in palestine so syriac was a language that the jews were speaking mostly the peasants were speaking uh... so syriac really didn't have and syriac is a is a dialect of aramaic very similar to arabic islamic language it really didn't have that ability to go into these gentile lands uh... and uh... to be used in other christian congregations that paul eventually evangelized greek was sort of the language of the elites the language of the the colonizer the language of the new testament became greek and not syriac so immediately we don't have what's known as the ipsissima verba of issa alaihi salam in the new testament ipsissima verba is a latin phrase it means the very words of issa alaihi salam we don't have those issa alaihi salam his response to this rabbi in mark chapter twelve verse twenty nine was in syriac we have no idea what he said in syriac or might have been in hebrew uh... but what we do have are greek translations at best so that's a difference between ipsissima verba and ipsissima vux ipsissima verba are the very words of someone like we have hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam we believe that these are the actual words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam of course we have hadith that have variations and so on and so forth but it's still in his language and if a hadith is multiply transmitted and it's a strong hadith and all of the requisites of the strong hadith are there these represent the very words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam the very words he chose the word order the syntax that he chose to express it and this is very very important because one of the first levels of tafsir is what's known as syntactical exegesis you can extract meanings by simply looking at grammar just by looking at the grammar you can extract meanings right for example ʿāʿṭaynā kal qawthar ʿāʿṭaynā this is in the past tense why does Allah swt say verily we have given you qawthar in the past tense so now the grammar has a theological dimension but if you don't actually have those actual words of a prophet then you lose that dimension so this is the problem now with the New Testament we don't have the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Syriac we have them in Greek nonetheless ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam he responds to this rabbi he says ʿakua ʿisrael ʿkuryas ʿathayas ʿaymu ʿan ʿkuryas ʿhais ʿistin he says here or Israel when he's asked a question what is the greatest commandment here or Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one right and here he's actually quoting from the Torah this is very very important ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam is asked point blank what is the greatest commandment and what does he do? does he talk about the trinity? does he talk about vicarious atonement? does he talk about he's the son of God? does he talk about transubstantiation and all these other sacraments that these Catholics believe in or the Orthodox believe in? no what does he say? he appeals to the Old Testament he appears he appeals to the concept of God in the Torah right ʿūsad ʿdī qalim ʿabayn ʿyadayyam ʿina ʿtawra he's quoted in the Quran is saying I confirm the Torah so he's quoting from Deuteronomy 6.4 Deuteronomy 6.4 sounds like this in Hebrew ʿshema ʿisrael ʿadunai ʿilohainu ʿadunai ʿikhād here or Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one right ʿikhād ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam he uses his word ʿikhād he's quoting from the Torah ʿikhād ʿahad are exact cognates of course the Quran says ʿqul ʿuallahu ʿahad and there's a difference between ʿwāḥid ʿahad so students of Arabic this is something that's very interesting and a nuance is that when we say that Allah is ʿwāḥid we're saying he's one but that doesn't negate the possible existence of other deities because by and large the Arabs at the time of the Prophet ʿsala ʿalayhi ʿsalaam uh... they worshiped Allah ʿsubḥāna wa ʿta'āla but they also believed in the existence or the possibility of other deities right so this is not to hate this is not monotheism this is henotheism there's a difference these are greek terms that are english now monotheism means you believe in one god and you worship one god there's only one god henotheism means that there's many gods but you choose to worship only one so for example if i say i am one man i say ʿana ʿrajulun ʿwāḥid in arabic i am one man that doesn't mean that there aren't other men in the world right there's other men in the world obviously right but i happen to be one of them but if i say ʿana ʿrajulun ʿahad i am one man ʿahad now what i'm saying is i am the only man in existence there's no one else in all of existence that has the qualities ʿrajul man except for me so one of a kind when we say ʿahad we mean he one of a kind right so this is the word that's used by ʿisa ʿalayhi s-salām in mark 1229 how do we know he used this word because he's quoting from the old testament and the old testament is in hebrew and it says ʿshamā ʿisray al-Adunay ʿilohainu ʿadunay ʿiqad very very important concept and then he says if you keep reading the passage in mark he keeps quoting the Torah he quotes the Torah over and over again why does he do that? because ʿmusad ʿdiqal ʿyemabayna ʿyadayya ʿmina ʿtaura ʿisa ʿalayhi s-salām he confirms the Torah he says ʿva ʿahafta ʿadunay ʿiloha ʿiqa ʿbkul ʿleva ʿvakha ʿva ʿkul ʿnafshaykha ʿva ʿkul ʿmaʿudekha he says ʿand you shall love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart all of thy lathe right the qalb all of your heart and all of your nafsh or nafs all of yourself and with all of thy strength right so loving Allah ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿta'āla believe God is one and love Allah ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿta'āla and then he says love your neighbor as yourself right this is the essence of the message of ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām the message of Musa ʿalayhi ʿsalām and the message of the Prophet ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿalayhi ʿalayhi ʿalayhi ʿsalām this is the essence of the message right so it's very very important and then you know this word Allah very interesting word that you know Allah the dominant opinion is that because we hear a lot of things from different types of people different you know Christian polemicists you have you know Muslim haters you know profligates on TV or making a lot of money writing books about Islam and so on and so forth and they're saying you know Muslims worship a different God Allah is not the Judeo-Christian God right what's interesting is that ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām himself the word he used for God was Allah and this is evident if you study or if you've read the Syriac translation of the New Testament so here we have the New Testament in Greek translated back into the language of ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām which was done in the 4th century of the common era is called the Pashitta on Arabic the Basitta meaning it's very simple Basitta means simple in Arabic and that's what it means in Syriac as well very simple to understand Syriac and the word that ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām uses over and over again for God is Allah Allah Allah this is the word that he uses so next time somebody comes to you and says Muslims worship Allah who's a different God or the moon God or the Muslim God whatever they want to say you can tell them ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām himself uses the word Allah for God as evident in the Pashitta translation of the New Testament the Old Testament also says لَوْ تَعْسَئِ لَخَفْسِلْ بَكُلْتَمُونَ you shall not make unto thyself the image or the likeness of anything so very very important establishing ʿtoʻʿi'd in the Old Testament what does that mean? that means لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْوَن there's nothing like God whatsoever so the Christian will say for example yes God is one God is ʿahad but ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām is ʿahad so then we say how can he be ʿahad when he's a man a man there's other men that's not ʿahad right also ʿahad entails that he's independent Allah who summoned he's independent of everything meaning that he doesn't depend on food and water and gravity and sun and all of these types of things like we do he is completely independent of everything this is the meaning of ʿsammat and the word ʿsammat in the Qur'an is called the Ḥaqqs ʿla gamanan which means that it's the only occurrence of this word in the entire Qur'an what does it mean? it means everything is dependent on Allah everything is dependent كل شيء يحتاج إلى الله but Allah does not need anything لا يحتاج إلى شيء this is the meaning of ʿsammat so when we bring God down and incarnate him and put him into flesh this is called ʿtejʃim right ʿtejʃud when we do that what we're doing then is making God dependent on certain things and this is the breach of the Old Testament that says now shall not make unto thyself an image or the likeness of anything right this is God's commandment to humanity God would not breach his own commandment theological commandment and then become a human being so that's the end of our first session next time inshallah ta'ala we're going to continue uh... talking about the concept of God very briefly again it's not a theology class the concept of God in the Christian tradition and then we're going to get right into the Gospel of Mark inshallah ta'ala ʿsallallahu ʿalayhi sallam wa ʿalayhi wa sallam wa ʿalhamdu lillahi rabbil ʿalameen ʿsallam ʿalaykum wa ʿrahmatullahi wa ʿalameen Bismillah ʿrahmam ʿalameen peace be upon you peace and blessings be upon you and also on the national national left welcome to our second session on the four gospels i mean testament uh... class for muslims introduction to the four gospels last time we talked about uh... some of the theological trends that we see uh... in the old and new testament We had mentioned a few things about Isa A.S. and how he confirms the theology of the Old Testament. This is something that's a recurring theme in the Qur'an. We find this in the Qur'an many times that Isa A.S. is quoted as saying, I have come to confirm the theology of the Torah and time and again in the New Testament, Isa A.S. he will quote from the Old Testament, he will quote from the Torah in order to teach the Bani Israel their theology, a reminder of their theology. So we talked about Exodus chapter 20, which is the beginning of the Ten Commandments. And there are two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Torah. There's one in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20. Exodus 20 appears to be the older text. If you're familiar with higher criticism of the Old Testament, Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis that there are four different sources basically of the Torah, we won't get into that much in detail again. This class is more focused on the Gospels, but basically to make a long story short, the text of Exodus seems to be older than the text of Deuteronomy. And it's very, very clear the first three Commandments are dealing explicitly with theology. They shall not make unto thyself the image or the likeness of anything in the heavens or in the earth or in the oceans. We see this theme again in the book of Deutero Isaiah, which is the middle portion of the book of Isaiah, this proto-Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah. Deutero Isaiah basically states that God is completely transcendent of His creation in any material or temporal or spatial sense. He transcends space-time and materiality. And this is true theology as we would see it as Muslims. So the definition of idolatry according to Deutero Isaiah and Exodus 20, this is Old Testament or Jewish theology, the very definition of idolatry is that is when we bring God down into His material creation, right, is when we say that this stick or this statue or this animal or this human being, whatever that thing is, if we believe that's God, then this is a very definition of idolatry, because Allah is by His very nature transcendent of space-time and materiality. That doesn't mean that He's not close to us in a relational sense. Of course He is. He is transcendent in a physical sense, but also close to us in a metaphysical sense, in a relational sense, in the sense that Allah SWT loves us and He cares for us and this is evident in the Qur'an. When my servants ask you concerning me, say, indeed I am close to them. So Allah SWT is a personal deity. Again if you listen to rhetoric or if you listen to Christian fundamentalists, polemicists, you'll hear a lot of things like the God that Muslims worship is not a personal deity. He's far removed. He's remote. He's unapproachable, things like that. That's not true at all. Inniqareeb, Allah is close to us. Waladina amrua asshadduhu harbalilla. Those who believe are overflowing in their love for Allah SWT. Al-Wadud, He is the All-Loving. This is a name, one of the great attributes of Allah SWT in the Qur'an. This whole idea of God having sons, we reject physically. But that doesn't mean that the meaning, the ma'na, isn't there. Right? And this is indicated in hadith. When the Prophet SAW, when he saw that woman running around looking for her son, that was lost and then she picked him up, picked up her son and she hugged him and squeezed him and kissed him and he said to the Sahaba, can you imagine this woman throwing her son into a fire? And they said, Allah, Wallahi. He said, Allah is more merciful to his servants than this woman is to her son. So he's using that filial, parental analogy when describing the love of God. Is it literally like that? No, it's not literally like that. Allah SWT, it's not our literal father, we're not his literal children. Right? We're not the Abna Allah. Right? As you know, when this verse, Ayatul Imtihan, according to the Mufassalin was revealed, Qul in kuntum tuhibbun Allah, fattabi'ooni yuhbibkum Allah. Say, if you love Allah, if you love Allah, you have to follow me. Then Allah will love you. Why was this verse revealed? According to some of the exegetes, like Ibn Abbas, he says because Bani Israel, the Jew said, Nahnu Abna Allah, we are the sons of God. And they didn't even mean that in a literal sense. They meant that in the sense that Allah loves us so much, we don't even have to believe in your message. Right? And that's the form of kufr. So even if you love Allah in the true sense, in the correct sense, if you reject his messengers, then this is not true love. This love will not be reciprocated from Allah SWT. If we want to be loved by Allah SWT, that's what the Orlema say. It's much more important for you to be loved by Allah than for you to love Allah. Right? Because that's what counts at the end of the day. Does Allah love you? And one of the ways that we can tell or indications that Allah loves us is when we meet the Orlema, when they look at us, how do they feel when they look at us? Do they have love for us? That's a good indication that Allah loves you as well. And the indication that you love Allah is, if when you look at the Orlema, what comes into your heart? Do you feel jealousy? Do you feel hatred? Do you are you disgusted by them? Or is there love? Do you want to adhere to what they're saying? If that's true, the latter is true, then it's an indication that you love Allah SWT. So this was a problem early on. Thomas Aquinas, because he's a Neoplatonist. Again, we talked about Thomas Aquinas last time. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica, one of the most comprehensive expositions of Orthodox Christianity, or at least Catholic orthodoxy, dealing with virtue, ethics, the nature of God, the nature of Islam, nature of Jesus Christ. And he's thoroughly Neoplatonist in his orientation. So Thomas Aquinas is known as being the great synthesizer of Orthodox Trinitarian Christianity and Neoplatonism, which is from the ancient Greeks, obviously. So he's trying to work with this idea of Aristotle. Aristotle, who said that it's impossible for God to love human beings and vice versa. Why did Aristotle say that? Aristotle said, because human beings and God are not the same genus, they're not the same species. So it's really impossible for God to love you and for you to love God. So Aristotle's God is a God that is totally transcendent, a God removed, the deistic God, like the God of the Founding Fathers of America, probably the first six presidents were deists. They're not Christian, right? Which means that they did not believe that Esalae Salaam is even a prophet. They didn't believe in the Bible at all. Thomas Jefferson, for example, did not believe that God has any interaction with humanity, that he simply created us and then he leaves us to our own devices. This is deism, right? And it's really from the post-enlightenment period that has its origins in Neoplatonism, which has its origins in these ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. So Aristotle very clearly says, it's impossible for God to love you. There's too big of a gap, you're not the same species. So he would also argue, for example, you don't truly love your pet, your cat or your dog because you're not the same genus. So what Aquinas does, and again Aquinas's theology and philosophy is still the standard in the Roman Catholic Church. He integrates the two. He tries to find a medium position or a solution for this dilemma. And he says, yes, that's true. God and man are not of the same genus. How do we bridge this gap? Is that God becomes a man, right? So he asks a question in his Summa Theologica. He says, Cur deus homo, why did God become a human being? Because he wants to demonstrate love to us, right? But the problem with this idea is that when we bring God physically into his creation, again, this is a very definition of idolatry as espoused by the Old Testament. So this is not a solution. This is unnecessary. God does not dwell within his creation because then he becomes dependent on things, right? And this is the Roman Catholic Church. They accuse the Jews of deicide, of killing God because Catholics believe, Christians in general believe that God came down to earth in the form of a man. It's very, very... So the answer, Islamically, Imam Razali, for example, who is one of the influences of Thomas Aquinas' virtue theory, not necessarily his theology, but his virtue theory, Imam Razali would say that God demonstrates his love to us by sending messengers, not becoming a messenger or becoming a human being, because Subhanahu, he is above such things. He transcends space-time and materiality. The greatest demonstration of God's love towards humanity is the sending of messengers. And the greatest messenger is the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is why he's called the Rahmatin Lila Alameen, right? This is truly how to bridge the gap. And this stays in line with the theology that was given to Musa, Alaihi Wasallam and given to Haroon, Alaihi Wasallam and Elias, Alaihi Wasallam and Yunus, and these great prophets of Bani Israel. This was their theology. Le-sik-e-mi-fil-hi-shey'un, the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, chapter 11, verse 19, says very clearly in the Hebrew language, ki anuhi eil ve lo-ish, verily I am God and not a man, right? It's very clear. And this is mentioned a few times in the book of Numbers also, right? Lo-ish eil, God is not a man. What does that mean? That God and man are mutually exclusive. That's what it means. God and man are mutually exclusive in Jewish theology and in what we would consider to be true original Christian, if you want to say Christian, or the theology of Isa, Alaihi Wasallam and the Hawar-e-Yun. This does not mean again that we can't have a personal relationship with God. We can't love God. No. We love Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Why do we love Him? Because we recognize His blessings, His ni'am and the greatest manifestation of the ni'am of Allah is the sending of al-Anbiyah and the greatest Anbiyah is the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is why he's rahmatil al-Alamin. So this verse 21.107, verse 21.107, surah al-Anbiyah, ayah 107. This is our equivalent of John 3.16. So I'm sure many Muslims when you watch like a football game, a basketball game, somebody in the crowd will pull out a poster and it says John 3.16. Or if you go to a restaurant, you know, in and out burger or forever 19, you look on the tags on the bottom of the cup sometimes. It says John 3.16. What is John 3.16? We'll talk about that when we get to the Gospel of John. Very interesting Gospel, by the way. By far my favorite Gospel, the Gospel of John. But John 3.16 is one verse in the New Testament which is sort of the summation of how Christians feel or what they believe about Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. If you were to take Christian theology and break it down to its essence, its core or in a nutshell, right? You would quote John 3.16. I would say surah al-Anbiyah, ayah number 107, that's our equivalent of John 3.16. That if you were to take the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and you had one statement, you can say that captures the essence most fully about who he was and what he sent to the world. This is the verse that all of us should have memorized. So talking about the Gospel of Mark, one more thing we'll mention here and this is also found in Mark and this is very, very important for Muslims to make a note of. Mark chapter 10 verse 18. And, you know, Western secularist historians like Dale Martin at Yale, they have certain methods of historiography that they use to analyze the New Testament. And one of these methods is called, one of these criterion is called dissimilarity. In other words, if something is in the New Testament that sort of cuts against the grain of what early Hellenistic Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus, then that's probably true because it's embarrassing for them, right? To give an example, in Mark 10, 18, a scribe comes to Jesus and he says, good master, right? Didas qalei aghafei, good master, what must I do to gain eternal life, right? Jesus responds by saying, according to the Greek, he says, ti me legis agathan, u des agathan e me heis hatheis. He says, why me are you calling good? No one is good but one, that is God, right? This is very embarrassing for Hellenistic, Trinitarian Christians. So Dale Martin, according to his historiography, he says that this verse is probably authentic then because it cuts against the grain of what early Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus, right? Very interesting. But an interesting sentence structure here in the Greek, you know, some translations say, it says, you know, why are you calling me good, right? But the Greek actually says ti me legis, so it brings the maf'ul, which is the direct object, forward and essentially is saying, why me do you call good, right? So it's almost as if Issa al-Islam is offended by the question, is offended by being called good, and this is from his tawador, this is from his humility. There's no one good but one, and that is God. He's teaching them, you know, this type of really rigid, strict tawhid, this monotheism, but still that relational aspect, that love of God, of course, is there as well. So Orthodox Trinitarian Christology, you know, as we know it today did not really start to take shape until after 381 of the common era. That's when Athanasius, you know, he was represented representing the Orthodox position, proto-Orthodox position at these, at Council of Nicaea, we'll talk more about these councils. After that was after the day Trinitate of Augustine of Hippo, the Cappadocian first church fathers as well, and so on and so forth. So we'll talk more about that. Now we're gonna get into the actual first gospel in the New Testament. Now you might say the first gospel, according to my New Testament, is the gospel of Matthew, right? That's the first book of the New Testament. However, by consensus, the first gospel out of these four to be written was not Matthew, it was Mark. Mark was the first one to be written out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So why is Matthew at the beginning of the New Testament? Scholars say it's because Matthew provides a more fluid transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, right? Because Matthew is the most, quote, Jewish gospel. Issa alaihi salam, in the gospel of Matthew, quotes most extensively from the Old Testament, Matthew alludes to the Old Testament over a hundred times in his gospel, the gospel according to Matthew. So it makes a more smoother transition, right? But if we're going to study chronologically, then we would study first the gospel of Mark. This was the first of the four gospels. Of course, there are many other gospels that did not make it into the New Testament, right? And we'll talk about that as well. There's a gospel according to Peter, right? There's a gospel according to Mary Magdalene. There's a gospel according to Philip. There's a gospel according to Judas. There's a gospel according to Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, right? Well, it's very interesting why these books were rejected by the bishops at certain church synods and councils. Why were these rejected? And these four books accepted, right? So, you know, the gospel of Mark, who is Mark, you know, Mark is called John Mark. He was a student of Peter according to Christian tradition, right? Mark was a student of Peter. But we have a gospel according to Peter. Why is this book not in the New Testament? Because Christian scholars say, oh, that book is spurious. It's apocryphal, right? It's heresy, right? But he's the teacher of Mark. So, there's an inconsistency here. You're taking the book of a tabi, a follower, but not the book of the Sahabi, Peter, right? So, the reality of the situation is this, that Mark did not in fact write Mark, nor did Peter write Peter. No real scholar believes that. You might get some really fundamentalist type Christians that'll believe that. The vast majority of Christian scholars do not believe that Matthew wrote Matthew, that Mark wrote Mark, Luke, Luke, John, John. No one really believes that. Again, these books are anonymous. So, when we look at the gospel of Mark, for example, Mark does not identify himself, right? He doesn't say, for example, this is the gospel of me, Mark. I'm a student of Peter. There's no such identification, self-identification. This book is totally anonymous. Then how did they come up with the word Mark? How did they come up with this title? You see, there was a Christian bishop who lived at the very beginning of the third century, the end of the second century. His name was Irenaeus of Lyon, Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers, the patristic leaders of the church. And he was the actual one that named these four books. He named them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? And why did he name them these four books? Why did he pick these four names? Because at that time, there were so many gospels floating around that were attributed to companions of Issa al-Islam, disciples of Issa al-Islam. And he liked these four books. So, in order to bolster their credibility, right, he ascribed them to two disciples of Issa al-Islam and two pupils of two disciples. In order to do what? In order to bolster their credibility. So these books are basically what's known as pseudonymous. Pseudonymous, so they're anonymous, which means they're not identifying themselves, but above and beyond that, they're pseudonymous, which means they were falsely ascribed to different people, to people that did not write them. This is called pseudonymity. This was quite common in the ancient world, but it was not an accepted practice. Some Christians will say, oh, that's just the way the world was and it was an accepted practice. It was not an accepted practice. It was seen as forgery. It was seen as deception, right? So these four books are really essentially forgeries. And if you want a really good book that talks more about this, I recommend Dr. Bart Ehrman, E-H-R-M-A-N, who is very famous. He wrote, you know, misquoting Jesus, the orthodox corruption of scripture, truth and fiction in the Da Vinci Code. He has another book called Forged, where he actually goes into these issues, implications of people writing in the name of God, not just in the name of an apostle or a prophet, but in the name of God. Where are the implications of that? So even though this was common in the Greco-Roman world, pseudonymity, it was always looked down upon because the main reason for doing something like that was to deceive people. Now, why do you want to deceive people? There's a number of reasons. Maybe you want to make a lot of money. This certainly is very plausible today. You have people that forge a lot of things and forge autographs, for example, take it to the pawn shop and say this is an autograph of whoever, the president or something like that, and try to make a lot of money. But back then, there's really no money to be made. Why would people forge things back then? It's because they wanted their own ideological positions to take the upper hand because there's always a political aspect to things. And politics is a very corrupting factor, as we know. So in the ancient world, for example, if somebody was a student of Aristotle and they were brilliant and they wanted their opinions to get out there to make a difference in the world, they might write something and say this is by Aristotle and sign Aristotle and that's a form of forgery. Now, in his mind, he might be totally justified and say, well, my intentions are good. I have good things to say to people, but still that's a form of forgery, right? And that's something that was condemned in the ancient world. What's really interesting is, if you read the book of 2 Thessalonians in the New Testament, this is a book that apparently was written by Paul, the person who wrote this epistle identifies himself as Paul. And in this epistle, the author, Paul, he condemns a letter or another letter that is being circulated around the churches that is a false letter, a forgery, right? So this was very common even in the first century. Someone in the first century is writing, pretending to be Paul. The irony of all of this is that most scholars actually believe the author of the book of 2 Thessalonians is not Paul, it's someone pretending to be Paul. So in other words, someone pretending to be Paul is condemning someone who's pretending to be Paul. And the reason that a person would do that is to sort of cover his own track, right? Condemning something that he's already doing. So this is very, very interesting. So Mark did not write the Gospel according to Mark. This is by consensus of New Testament scholarship. The only people that really believe that again are people that study it like Jerry Falwell's University, Liberty University, or the Moody Bible Institute. These people would be even a literal, fundamentalist type of interpretation of the Bible, the vast majority of Christian scholars do not believe. Irenaeus of Lyon, who died 202 of the common era, he was the one who attributed apostolic authorities to these four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the reason why he did that is to bolster their credibility amongst all in the face, or vis-a-vis all of these opposing writings that claim to have apostolic authorities as well. But traditionally, Christians do believe that Mark is a student of Peter. And who is Peter? The Catholic Christians, Roman Catholics, believe that Peter was the first pope, the first pontiff, right? And that he's buried in Rome, that he died in Rome. And the actual site of the Vatican is buried on his, is built upon his grave. And they use a verse that's found in the synoptic tradition, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for example, in Mark, chapter 16, verse 18, Jesus says to Peter, su apetras, you are Peter. So the word Peter is not his actual name. It comes from the Greek petras. And petras means a stone, like petra, right? A stone or a rock. This is the nickname that Esalaeslam gave to him according to the New Testament. His actual name was Shimon Boryona, Shimon Boryona, Simon, the son of Jonah. But he was surnamed Peter or Petras in Greek or Safa in Hebrew by Esalaeslam. Now there's also, with regards to the author of the Gospel of Mark, there's an incident, very interesting incident that happens at the end of the Gospel, or towards the end of the Gospel in Mark, chapter 14, when Esalaeslam is on the Mount of Olives and he's praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. And according to Mark, some of the temple guard from the temple in Jerusalem, they come to arrest him. And there's a youth, and the word in Greek is nianiskas, nianiskas, a young man is there and he is seized by the temple guard. But he manages to kind of slip out of his garments and he runs away gumnas. He runs away naked, right? There's a youth who's there, he runs away naked. According to many scholars, this is actually Mark, right? That is on the Mount of Olives with Esalaeslam and slips away from them. Many other scholars believe that this person is a fictional person that Mark invented for the purposes of getting a theological message across that we have to be as innocent as children. We have to follow Jesus as innocent as children and it may require us to strip off the clothes of the dunya. And if you notice at the end of the Gospel of Mark, when Mary Magdalene and the other women, they look inside the tomb, they see this young man sitting in the tomb and it's probably the same young man. Again, the message here is not that this was literally what happened, but that we need to consider ourselves to be people of the grave while we're still living. Wallahu alim. When was the Gospel written? By consensus, it was written around 67 to 70 of the common era, 67 to 70 of the common era. And this date is significant and we'll talk about it in a minute. Where was it written? It was written in Rome, that's the dominant opinion. So again, Rome is where Peter and Paul died and were buried traditionally. Historians in reality have no idea really where these men were buried or even if they lived, especially Peter, but traditionally it's in Rome and that's where the Gospel was written by the dominant opinion of New Testament scholars. For whom was the Gospel written? Hellenistic Christians living around the Mediterranean. Hellenistic Christians living around the, so basically the Christian congregations that were founded by Paul in his missionary activity. Paul and his adherents like Timothy and Titus and Barnabas and the rest of them. So these are churches that Paul founded in Ephesus and Rome and Athens in Corinth, in other places, Colossia, Thessalonica, right? So then the historical background here is very, very important to understand the Gospel of Mark. This is very much a wartime Gospel, okay? 67 to 70 of the Common Era was the time of the Jewish War. So there was a Jewish philosopher, an historian named Flavius Josephus who actually has a book called The Jewish War which he documents what happened during this time. Of course, this was the time when a group of zealot Jews were holed up in the temple precincts and the emperor Vespasian sent his son, General Titus, to crush the rebellion. These Jews refused to come out of the temple. They had sought sanctuary. Titus told them to leave. They did not. So he completely destroyed. He burned the temple to the ground. The only remaining part of the temple that stands to this day is called Hakutel or the Wailing Wall, the Western Wall where we've seen pictures where Jews go and they will pray standing in front of this wall. So this was happening at the time of the composition of Mark's Gospel, the Jewish War, which is obviously a time of turmoil happening in Palestine. The temple was destroyed for the second time. It was destroyed in 586 before the Common Era, the first time by the Babylonians with under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. And it happened on the 9th of Av. This is the Hebrew calendar. The 9th of Av, the 9th of the month of Av and 586 before the Common Era. The temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. And now in 70 of the Common Era, again on the 9th of Av, the temple is destroyed by the Romans under General Titus. So this 9th of Av is a day of fasting for Jews. There's four major fasting days for Jews. Of course, Yom Kippur and the 9th of Av is also included amongst the major fasting days. And this again is the beginning of what's known as rabbinical Judaism, right? The temple is destroyed, the rabbis, they start this council at Geminiah, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Hillel are the founders, Rabbi Judah Hanasi, Judah the Prince. What do we do now? So they decided we need to write down the oral law we talked about, the oral law needs to be written down. It became the first part of the Talmud and then rabbis would comment upon the first part of the Talmud, which is called the Mishnah. And the commentaries are called the Gamara. Together the Mishnah and the Gamara, these make up the Talmud, right? So this is the beginnings of rabbinical Judaism or post-second temple Judaism. Of course, also at this point, the Roman emperor, the fifth, it was the fifth Roman emperor was named Nero. And Nero did not like Christians at all. In fact, he persecuted Christians. His reign ended around 68 of the common era. Again, contemporary with the composition of the gospel of Mark. Nero actually, according to the Roman historians, Tacitus and Cetonius, he actually burnt down, set ablaze a great part of the city of Rome. The reason he did that is because he wanted to construct new architecture for himself. So he burnt down intentionally a major part of the city and then he blamed it on the Christians of the city of Rome. So this is known as a false flag operation, right? Where the government will do something and blame a minority within his country. So then it takes the focus off of him. And this happened, you know, the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin, for example, to get America into the war and other instances as well that we won't go into right now. But a very common type of thing to do, governments in power, false flag operation. So this is what Nero did. He set a major part of the city of Rome on fire and then he blamed the Christians. And Tacitus, Cetonius and Josephus, they mentioned some of the horrific ways in which Nero would torture and execute the Christians living in the city. Also during this time, you have natural disasters, earthquakes at Pompey, Naples, the Eastern Mediterranean and 79, you have Mount Vesuvius, right, exploding. So these were seen by early Christians as portents of the end of time, right? Christians believed at the time of the Gospel of Mark's composition that all of these things meant that the end of time, which is known as the eschaton, right, in Greek, the eschaton, was imminent. It was about to happen, right? Asa'alaihi salam had come, he was rejected. He was crucified according to Christians. He was resurrected. He promises to come again in the future, right? Then you have these natural disasters. You have Nero persecuting Christians. You have the temple being completely destroyed, right? So these were seen as major portents of the end of time. So we have to remember this. Mark is writing in this context. Mark believes, very much like Paul believed, that the end of time was in his lifetime. This is very, very apparent when you read the Pauline epistles. If you read the 14 epistles that are attributed to Paul, Paul actually only wrote seven of them genuinely. The other seven are forgeries in the name of Paul. But the central Pauline theme is that the end of time is going to happen very soon in his own lifetime. So Paul's advice on marriage, celibacy, divorce, slavery, all of that is predicated upon his belief in an immediate parosia, an immediate second coming of Esa'alaihi salam. That's what he believed and it didn't happen, right? Paul says, we're going to be transformed in the twinkling of an eye caught up in the clouds with the Lord, the very frame of the world is passing away. He tells people, don't even worry about getting married. You're not going to have enough time to enjoy yourselves. Don't even count on using your goods that you just bought in the marketplace, right? It's going to happen very, very quickly. Not in the sense of, yeah, relatively speaking, like the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, Anna was sa kahaateen, that I and the hour are like this, relatively speaking, right? Because human beings have been on the earth for tens of thousands of years, but that's not how Paul is speaking here. Paul is saying in his own lifetime, the end of time will happen, and this is verifiably false, right? Paul made a major error here so we can rule out Paul as being a true prophet even by the standards of the Old Testament. The Book of Deuteronomy says, if a would-be prophet says something will come to pass and it does not, then he is a false prophet. It's very simple. And it's very interesting, we talked about the Book of Second Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, which is not written by Paul, but written in the name of Paul, will actually try to delay the end of time to sort of save Paul some face. Very, very interesting, but that's outside the scope of this class. So anyway, the bottom line here is that the Mark in Jesus, right? The Jesus in the Gospel of Mark will call him the Mark in Jesus. He also believes that the end of time is going to happen during his lifetime. He says in Mark chapter nine, he says, for example, there's some standing here that will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in great power, right? So in immediate second coming, in immediate second coming, there's some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man referring to himself, the second coming. He says, the present generation will live to see it all. So these words were put into the mouth of the Mark in Jesus by Pauline elements. All four Gospels have been influenced by Paul. Paul was the first one to write anything down that was later to be considered scripture of the Christians, right? Paul is writing around 4550 of the common era. The Gospel of Mark is written 67 to 70 of the common era to those same congregations that were founded by Paul in those congregations around the Mediterranean. So that has to be made clear. Now there's two periods that Mark is talking about, right? You can divide the Gospel of Mark into two distinct periods. The Galilean period, right? Of Esa'u'llah. So the ministry of Esa'u'llah according to Mark is only about one year. So he starts when he's 30, by 31 he's already been ascended, right? According to the Gospel of Mark, the vast majority of his ministry, almost the entire year, he's in Galilee. Galilee is in Northern Palestine. The province of Galilee, he's in a city called Nazareth. This is called the Galilean ministry. So this is basically the first eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark. Chapters one through eight is Jesus's Galilean ministry. And the Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. There is no nativity narrative. There's no mohled mentioned of Esa'u'llah. There's no virgin birth mentioned by the Gospel of Mark. There's no virgin birth. It begins with the baptism of Esa'u'llah. There's no nativity narrative in the Gospel of Mark, okay? The nativity narrative comes later in the Gospel of Matthew and in Luke. Mark begins at the baptism. The second half of the Gospel of Mark is the Judean ministry, Judean ministry. This is Esa'u'llah when he goes to the province of Judea, the city of Jerusalem, and he's only there for about a week. So basically 51 weeks he's in Galilee and one week he's in Jerusalem according to the Gospel of Mark. He enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, right? He manages to seize the temple, right? Which again, this is something that is, it sort of cuts against the grain of what early Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus. The early Christians want to say about Jesus that he's God. He's a son of God, Hellenistic Christians, that is, and that he is a prince of peace. He turns the other cheek. But now you have this incident of Jesus seizing the temple, right? And this mentioned in all four Gospels, actually twice in the Gospel of John. How does someone seize the temple if not through military means? This is the week of Passover. There's tens of thousands of Jews in the temple precincts. The Roman centurions everywhere. How does Esalae Salaam seize the temple if people aren't armed? This is somewhat embarrassing for Christians to talk about because that's the only logical sort of explanation for what happened. The Gospels say that Esalae Salaam, he simply went and rode a donkey into Jerusalem. He took a small whip and started turning over tables, but that's not how you seize an entire temple. It must have been done through military means, at least according to Dale Martin, who's a Christian historian at Yale University. So this is kind of an embarrassing sort of thing for Christians, but if you think about it, that's probably what happened, Allahu Alam anyway. So he enters the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He seizes the temple. So for that entire week, he's teaching in the temple, right? At that time, they don't just let any rabbi into the temple. If he's teaching in the temple, that means he has authority. He has indeed seized the temple through militaristic means, Allahu Alam. However, by Good Friday, he's already dead, right? So he enters the city of Jerusalem on Sunday. He preaches throughout the week on Friday, which is called Good Friday, by 3 p.m. according to the Gospel of Mark. He dies on the cross, and then two days later on Easter Sunday, he's resurrected according to the Gospel of Mark, and then he ascends a short time later, although the ascension is not mentioned by Mark. The ending of Mark is very interesting, and we'll talk about that as well. So basically, again, these are the two periods of the Gospel of Mark. You have the Galilean ministry, then you have the Judean ministry. Now we have major themes, major themes of the Gospel of Mark. One of the major themes, as we mentioned earlier, is that Mark believes in an imminent eschaton, that the end of time is going to happen during his lifetime, during the lifetime of Isa A.S. This is a central theme in the Gospel of Mark, an imminent eschatology. Eschatology means the study of the last things. So like, Ahadith of Akhir Zaman. We have a very large literature in our tradition of end of time literature. We would say these are eschatological Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The central theme of the Gospel of Mark is an immediate end of time. That's why Mark uses the adverb, euthos, time and time again, dozens of times in the Gospel of Mark. Mark uses the Greek, euthos, which means immediately, suddenly, immediately, suddenly, because he wants to give you that impression that this thing is coming to an end. It's going to be over. The Isa A.S. is going to return any time now and it's going to be the end of the world. Also, another theme of the Gospel of Mark is that you have somewhat of this, in our tradition, we would say like a Nasibe, sort of this sort of hatred of the family of Isa A.S. Or at least this sort of sliding of the family of Isa A.S. And this is apparent in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 3, Verse 35, when a group of disciples come to Isa A.S. and they say, your mother and your brother are waiting outside. And he says, who are my mother and my brother? Whoever does the will of God are my mother, my brother and my sisters. And this is seen as sort of Isa A.S. according to Mark, sliding his family, which is very, very interesting because remember the Khalifa, if you will, of Isa A.S., after his ascension was his brother James, right? His brother James was the successor of Isa A.S. But James has no real role in any Gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, you don't come across James at all really. And it's very, very strange that you don't hear about him. And it's not until the Book of Acts where James has a very central role that he is the actual successor of Isa A.S. And don't forget as well, as we mentioned in the last class, that Paul's enemy, if you will, is in fact, James. There is this very clear Pauline, Jamesonian tension that happens in the New Testament that these two men are teaching fundamentally different things, right? And that's gonna be made more clear when we study the Pauline corpus of literature. You also have this sort of, I guess we would say in our tradition, kind of raw fiddly, it's kind of this hatred of the disciples of Isa A.S. in the Gospel of Mark as well. Not only of his family, but of the disciples in general. The disciples in the Gospel of Mark are truly inept people, right? They just don't understand anything. They're always making mistakes in judgment. Jesus is always lecturing them. I mean, it's a really sad situation that the disciples of Isa A.S. are really kind of just insulted, looked down upon, people who just simply don't get it. And this might be an indication of Mark's sort of anti-Jewish, anti-Jamesonian sort of orientation or stances taken favoring Paul's position on certain things as well. So the Gospel of Mark is somewhat anti-Jewish in that sense, is that the disciples, because they're Jews, they just don't get Isa A.S. at all. So this idea also of supersessionism that Judaism has effectively been replaced by Christianity, that Judaism really doesn't have any type of reality anymore. Early Christian fathers like Justin, Martyr, in origin of Alexandria, they actually believe that the temple, the destruction of the temple in 70 of the common era was a direct result of the Jews' disbelief in Isa A.S., very, very interesting. Another major theme, so you have eschatology, you have anti-Jewishness. Another theme is, it's very secretive, the Gospel of Mark, if you read the Gospel of Mark, you'll find when Isa A.S. is extracting demons, for example, he tells those demons, when they bow down to him and say, you are the son of the blessed, you are the son of David, and Jesus is always saying to them, be quiet, don't tell anyone, he commands them not to tell anybody. This is called the Messianic secret, and it's found only in the Gospel of Mark. Why is it such a secret? This phrase, Messianic secret, was coined by the German scholar, William Reed, and there's many theories as to why Jesus is keeping these things a secret while he's in Galilee. One prominent theory is that the Galileans, of course, the Jews in northern Palestine, they were known for two things, they were known for fishing, and they were known for zealotry, zealotry or insurrectionism against the Roman occupiers. So if Jesus comes out and says, for example, yes, I am the Messiah, again, that has political ramifications. It's not just him being a mystic, sort of itinerant teacher. If you say that you're the Messiah, what you're saying basically is you're the king of Israel, in fact, the king of the world, eventually. So this is something that would get him killed very quickly. So this is one of the theories of New Testament scholars as to why Esalaam is always commanding people not to divulge that he is the actual Messiah. Of course, when Jesus was young and living in Nazareth, he probably remembers what had happened to Judas the Galilean, one of the Messianic claimants who in sixth of the common era was crucified by the Romans and a bunch of his men as well for making Messianic claims and for general insurrectionism against the Roman Empire. Another reason scholars have surmised that explains the Messianic secret is because maybe there just wasn't a lot of Christians at the time of the Gospel of Mark. And so Mark kind of embarrassed as to why this movement is so fledgling and it's not growing. He has Jesus command people not to divulge his true identity, Allahu Adam. But this is definitely a major theme in the New Testament and specifically in the Gospel of Mark, exclusively in the Gospel of Mark. So you have eschatology, you have anti-Jewishness, you have the Messianic secret. Another theme is the cross, right? The death of Issa al-Islam, again, according to the Gospel of Mark. In fact, the entire Gospel of Mark is basically an extended passion narrative of Issa al-Islam. So this is the whole point of the Gospel of Mark is the death of Issa al-Islam that he has to die, right? It's an extended passion narrative. What does passion narrative mean? It means basically the final week or the final weekend or the final few days of the life of Issa al-Islam. So remember when we look at the Gospel of Mark, you have eight chapters about 51 or so weeks and then another eight chapters about one week. So this is the focus of the Gospel of Mark is that final week of the life of Issa al-Islam. So the cross or the death of Issa al-Islam, this is the seminal moment of all of history according to Mark. And again, this is influenced from Paul. So Paul's Gospel in Paul's interpretation of what happened to Issa al-Islam, the cross is very central. He says, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. In other words, if Jesus was not killed and resurrected, then there's no point to Christianity. Christianity hinges on this whole idea, this whole concept of a dead Messiah, right? Which Paul recognizes is a contradiction for Jews because the Jews did not believe that the Messiah was going to be killed and they still maintain that. And of course, Islam has a very interesting answer to reconcile this problem within Judeo-Christianity. And then we have another theme, which is the Parousia, the second coming. So the really, you know, five main themes of the Gospel of Mark. You have eschatology, right? And belief in the end of time, which is going to be imminent. You have this sort of anti-Jewishness, the sliding of Jesus' family and his disciples. You have the messianic secret. It's very secretive. Number four, you have the cross, which is central. And then you have the second coming, right? That Jesus is promising that he'll come again in the lifetime of the disciples. Of course, this did not happen. And we don't ascribe this false prophecy to the actual Esalaam. This is what the Mark in Jesus is saying. And again, the Mark in Jesus is influenced by Pauline elements because the Mark in Jesus community was founded by Paul and his adherents. And Paul was verifiably wrong about the second coming of Esalaam. And also something interesting here about the Gospel of Mark is that it's Christologically anemic. And what do I mean by that? So the concept of Christ in the Gospel of Mark, right, is basically that Jesus is a suffering prophet and that he's a hidden messiah, right? And, you know, Jesus is only called God, Son of God in the New Testament two times, right? And that's, you know, basically nothing compared to like the Gospel of John, which we'll get to and you'll see how much this Christology has evolved. The first time he's called the Son of God is in the very first verse of the Gospel of Mark, right? So if we turn to the Gospel of Mark and I have the United Bible Society's Greek edition here. So look at the original languages. It's important to look at the actual Greek when we read. So John, I'm sorry, Mark 1-1, right? Chapter one, verse one of Cata Markon. That's what it's called in Greek. It says, Arche to Iwangiliu, Iesu Christu, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Huyu Theu, the Son of God. And if you look at the English translation, that's what it says exactly. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But in the Greek, the phrase Son of God is in brackets. It's in brackets. And the reason why it's in brackets is because the scholars or the editors of this critical Greek edition, the United Bible Society, is telling us that this phrase was not in the original Gospel of Mark. It was added later, right? That's what they're telling us. Why do they retain it in brackets is because Christians traditionally, they like to hear that Jesus is the Son of God. So they'll retain it in the text, but they let the scholars know who read the text that the brackets mean that the scholars don't believe, Mark actually wrote that. So the actual first verse of the Gospel of Mark is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ period. It didn't say anything about the Son of God. Dr. Brutz Metzger, who used to be the head of the United Bible Society, he says this was a scribal expansion, right? A scribal expansion means that it's a forgery. Somebody later on, a scribe, proto-orthodox scribe, later on went back into a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark and added Son of God. Why? Because again, the Gospel of Mark is Christologically anemic. It's not, it's very weak in its Christology, right? It's very weak. So in order to bulk it up a little bit, right? This phrase, Son of God, was entered into the text. If you read again, the Gospel of John, it's very high Christology. Jesus is called the Son of God in many places. Jesus is called God in the prologue of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God, right? So it's very high Christology, but Mark is a very frail anemic Christology. So the proto-orthodox bishops and fathers and scholars, they didn't like that about the Gospel of Mark. So in order to bulk it up a little bit, make it more orthodox, right? They went back into the Gospel of Mark and they put in these two words, Hwayu Theu, the Son of God. To Mark chapter one, verse one. Last class we talked about the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest Greek version of the New Testament on earth, right, which was found at St. Catherine's Monastery. 320, it was written in 375 of the common era. It was found by a German scholar named Tischendorf in the 19th century. And if you read Mark one, one, indeed it does not say Son of God. It says, Arche to Ewangeliu Iesu Christu without the phrase Son of God. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, period. So the oldest and best manuscripts of the New Testament of the Gospel of Mark do not contain the phrase Son of God. Okay, so that's, we've established now that there has been scribal fabrications made to the New Testament. This is just one example. We'll come across many other examples as well, especially when we talk about the end of the Gospel of Mark. There are actually four endings to the Gospel of Mark. So again, the Gospel of Mark is, you know, Christologically anemic. If you look at the actual crucifixion of Esalae Salaam according to the Gospel of Mark, it's very, very kind of different than what we have in Matthew, Luke, and John. The crucifixion of Esalae Salaam according to the Gospel of Mark is kind of pathetic. He's interviewed at his trial. They ask him, are you the Messiah? He says, it is as you say. And then he doesn't say another word until the very end when he's on the cross and he cries out this, what's known as the cry of dereliction when he says, ilahi ilahi lama sabahdani, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaking me? And of course, Imam Ghazali and his Radh al-Jameel, who basically takes the text and says the text is fine. The tahrif, the corruption of the New Testament comes in the ma'ana. And he says here that this cannot be Esalae Salaam. Esalae Salaam would never say such a statement, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Right? So we compare now, when we get to Matthew, Luke, and John, we look at the passion narratives of all four Gospels. We'll notice that they're very different. They might initially seem basically the same because we're used to reading the Gospels of what's known as horizontally. In other words, we start with Mark and then Matthew, then Luke, then John. But the real way to read the Gospels, according to Bart Ehrman, is to read them vertically. In other words, read the passion narrative of Mark and then immediately read the passion narrative in Matthew and then in Luke and in John and then you can compare, right, how different they really are because they are different and there are market differences between them that are very significant. So next time, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to talk more about the Gospel of Mark. We're going to talk about Mark's source. Where is Mark getting his information from, right? So this is very, very important and we're going to talk about what's known as a synoptic problem because we're going to move from the Gospel of Mark towards the Gospel of Matthew and why is Matthew different than Mark? Why is Luke different than Mark? How did they use Mark if they used Mark at all? So that's next time, inshallah ta'ala. quota. Continuing with our class on the four Gospels in the New Testament, the last time we talked about the Gospel of Mark and we talked about how Mark is divided into two periods, the Galenian Ministry and the Judean Ministry. We also talked about something very important, major themes of the Gospel of Mark. We said some of the major themes are eschatology and expectation of the end of time to come immediately. And we said the reason for that is because of things that were happening around the world, major natural disasters. You have persecution of Christians in Rome by the emperor Nero. You have the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. You have a rejection of Issa alaihi salam by the vast majority of the Jews. So this immediate eschatology. We also said another major theme is the anti-Jewishness of the Gospel of Mark. And that's primarily because the Gospel of Mark is reflective of Pauline Christianity or Hellenistic Christianity as opposed to a more Semitic or Jewish Christianity that was found in Jerusalem at that time under the guidance of James or Yaqub had Sadiq who is the brother and successor of Issa alaihi salam. So very clearly we have two different distinct strands of Christianity. And from an early period you have Pauline Hellenistic Christianity which eventually became the Orthodox Christianity. And then you have the Jamesonian Semitic or Ebianite as sometimes is called Tohed Christianity which believed that Issa alaihi salam was simply the messiah and a prophet of God. And of course we have that reconfirmed in the Quran. Why did Pauline Christianity win? The primary reason is because when the Emperor, the Roman Emperor becomes Christian he becomes a Pauline Christian and that was Constantine in 318 of the Common Era. If Eusebius' ecclesiastical history is correct and there's a lot of question whether it is correct but according to Eusebius Constantine was fighting his enemies at the Milvian Bridge and suddenly he looked at the sun because he used to worship the sun. He worshiped the soul Invictus and he saw a cross in the sun. In fact it was actually not a cross, it was the Cairo, the first two letters of the name of Christ which happens also to be the symbol of Cronus, the father of Zeus. And when he saw that he took it as a sign because he heard a voice that said Inhokvincay or Inhokv-signowincay in this sign you will conquer. So he apparently converted to Christianity and some say he actually converted on his deathbed in 337 of the Common Era. The point is when Constantine, when the Roman Emperor endorses one brand of Christianity then everyone is mandated also to follow that version of Christianity. There's no individualism in the Roman Empire at this point. This is a Christianity that he chose to go with therefore everyone else has to sort of fall in line. So Jamesonian or Ebonite Christianity was basically marginalized completely and this Pauline Trinitarian Christianity became the dominant Christianity. Of course with the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam that original Christianity was once again revived and brought center stage with the revelation of the Qur'an. And the Qur'an really is a revelation that incorporates the essence of all of the previous Qutb, all of the previous books of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. So like in Surah Al Bayna Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala he describes the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam, Rasulul min Allahi yatalu suhufam mutahara fihak kutubun qayyima that he is reciting scrolls that are pure in it are books that are made straight. What does that mean? Scrolls and inside the scrolls there are books or Qutub that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam is reciting Qutub. What does that mean? According to the Ulama that means he's reciting the essence of the previous books, the correctness. Qutubun qayyima what is true essentially from the Torah and the Zabur and the Injil is also found in the Qur'an that the Qur'an it affirms the truth elements of those books but also renders them now obsolete because now the revelation is the Qur'an and now the Prophet is the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa ta'ala. So we have also we have this so immediate eschatology. We have this idea anti-Jewishness. It's very secretive. We talked about the messianic secret. We talked about the cross being a central motif of the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark again is essentially an extended passion narrative. Half of the Gospel of Mark talks about one week in the life of Esa alayhi sallam. So that's what really counts for Pauline Christianity. So what we would say is then Jamesonian Christianity if you look at the Ebonite Christianity as opposed to Paul the focus there is not on the death of Esa alayhi sallam or the apparent significance of the death of Esa alayhi sallam. That's what Paul is saying. The point of Jamesonian or Ebonite Christianity is what is the religion of Esa alayhi sallam. What is his actual teaching? That's what's important. Not a religion about him but the religion of him. That's the difference between Pauline Christianity and what we would say Islamic teaching about Esa alayhi sallam. The Muslim claim is that Islam is the religion of Esa alayhi sallam. Whereas Christianity is a religion about Esa alayhi sallam or they're worshiping Esa alayhi sallam. But we say no. Esa alayhi sallam was not a Christian. He didn't say I'm a Christian. He never even heard of this word. He was a Muslim in the sense that he's actively creating peace in the world. This is what the word Muslim means. So the Muslims before the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam were those who believed in the Prophet of their time and that was Esa alayhi sallam. So the word Muslim by itself does not technically mean a follower of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam. That's not what it technically means. Nowadays, that's what it means because now we are in the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam. The Quran has been revealed. He was sent as a messenger. But before the Prophet was sent, who are the Muslims, Bani Israel? But when they rejected the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, they are no longer in a state of al-Islam. They're no longer in a state of submission because some people were perennialists and this is people who actually masquerade as Muslims. They say things like Jews and Christians and Buddhists and everyone, all of these people are Muslims with a capital M. We would say no, they're Muslims in the sense that they submit and they must submit to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Everything is in submission to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. This is Islam with a lower case I or Islam with a tanween in definite article. Everything is in submission to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Whether they're Muslim or Kaffir, whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not, everything is in submission, everything. So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la wills everything and he can will evil. He can will evil but he doesn't call towards evil nor is he pleased with evil. So this is a very important distinction. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is part of his irada, his will to will shar evil but he doesn't call people to do that nor is he pleased with it. But al-Islam, al-iflam, Islam with a big eye, these are people who are following the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. These are people who simply want to please Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. They want to actively please him. They don't want to do evil. They don't want to disobey Allah. They want to please Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la by following the guidance which was brought by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So this is the difference here. So this perennialist philosophy that is so prevalent in Western Academy that all religions are basically the same, you know, and it doesn't matter which religion you follow. It doesn't matter if you believe in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. They're all the same. This is just patently false. And the reason why it's false is because of a logical fallacy, right? How can Christianity and Islam be both correct at the same time? How can they both be true? Either Isallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is God or he's not. He can't be both, right? So the Qur'an is very, very clear. The Qur'an has a clear polemic against Christian theology, right? Very clearly criticizes Christian theology. If all religions are the same and it doesn't matter, why do we have this very prevalent polemic in the Qur'an against Christian theology, right? So Laqad Kaffirah Lathina Qalu Inna Allaha Wa Al-Masih is very, very clear that whoever says that Allah is Isallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, they have disbelieved, right? Now we're not in a position to say, oh, this person's going to go to hell. No, we don't co-sign people to the fire. That's actually impermissible for Muslims to do that. We don't know how a person is going to die. We don't establish tukleaf for people. We don't know whether that person was exposed to a good prophetic summons or not. These are variables that are best left with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But what we can say is that this belief is upon kufr. Those who believe, Isallam is God. This belief is kufr. Whether that person is going to go to jahannam forever, Allahu Alam, we're not in a position to judge. If he dies upon that belief and tukleaf has been established, then indeed this person is in trouble. But that's not for us to judge. We don't know a person's state of death. We don't know our own state of death. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to give us khustin khatima, to give us a good ending. We should worry about ourselves and preach the message and make da'wah to people and ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for hidaya for them. People forget dua. One of my teachers said that 50% of da'wah is dua. That if we're not making dua for people, then we're missing half of da'wah. Half of da'wah is speaking and doing this and organizing lectures and your akhalaq is done. The other half is dua. So we have to make dua for people, inshallah to Allah. The final thing we said here regarding the major themes of the Gospel of Mark is the parousia, the second coming of Isa alayhi salam. Now, let's talk a little bit about Mark's source according to the vast majority of Christian scholars. So Mark's Gospel is reflective of Hellenistic oral tradition, right? Hellenistic kerugma. Kerugma is a Greek word, which means proclamation. So remember, when Isa alayhi salam preached his message around 30 to 33 of the common era, there was two distinct interpretations, at least two, but two major distinct interpretations of that message. There's sort of a Hellenistic understanding that Paul is bringing, which we would say is incorrect. And then there's a sort of Semitic or Jewish monotheistic way of interpreting the message that is exemplified by James and the other disciples. We would say that's correct. But Mark represents now is the oral traditions of Hellenistic Christianity, right? Of Pauline Christianity, the Pauline proclamation, the Pauline kerugma that is floating out there amongst these Pauline churches around the Mediterranean. And the reason why these things weren't written, it's probably oral tradition, is because the vast, vast majority of people at that time were illiterate and they simply can't read or write. So oral tradition was very, very strong. In fact, according to Bart Ehrman, at the height of Athens civilization in ancient Greece, the time of Plato and Socrates, 90% of the general populace did not know how to read and write, right? This was something that only a few people knew how to do. Also, according to Ehrman and the majority of scholars, probably all of the disciples of Issa A.S. were unlettered people, unlettered men. They had simple craft. They were carpenters, they were fishermen. They were this and that. They didn't know letters. So everything is by oral transmission. But when you have things by oral transmission, of course, it develops the memory. So like the Arabs at the time with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, also many of them were unlettered. But the concept of sened was so strong for the Arabs before Islam that they would not only memorize their own lineages back several generations, but they would also memorize the lineage of their horses all the way back several, several generations. And also poetry. They were masters of poetry in the Arabic language. And these two things, knowledge of sened, knowledge of poetry, helped them recognize that this revelation is in fact from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And also in the promulgation of the hadith literature, when you're masters of sened, then you already have that as part of your culture, as part of your expertise. It makes compiling the sunnah that much easier for that generation. So these are things that were done from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But here in the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Mark is reflective of that Hellenistic K-Rugma. And there's truth in there and there's falsehood in there because this is indicative of what Paul is teaching his churches, not what the Ebonites, the Semitic Christians are teaching. So basically what Mark had then is a bunch of pericapies. Pericapy is a Greek word, which means literary units. He had these stories of Issa alaihi salam, these sayings, these aphorisms, the Hikam literature, for example, parables, brief narrations that people were saying about Issa alaihi salam. So Mark has these things. He has these oral traditions. But now Mark is able to write them down, whoever Mark is. We're conveniently calling him Mark, but we don't know the actual. Again, these books are anonymous. The Gospel of Mark, we don't know who wrote it. But some educated Gentile Christian in Rome has all of these oral traditions. Now he's going to write them down. And instead of writing them down, like Jesus said, Jesus said, Jesus said, like Hadith, for example, or like the Gospel of Thomas, that's how the Gospel of Thomas is, Jesus said, Jesus said. Mark knows, because he's smart, that that's not going to fly with a Greco-Roman audience. That might fly, that might work with a Jewish audience. But the Greco-Romans are used to reading the Iliad, an Odyssey of Homer. They want a narrative. They don't want just a bunch of statements. So what Mark has to do now is take these pericapies, these literary units, right? These aphorisms, these sayings, these parables. He has to make it into a narrative, a chronological narrative. So he has to put these pericapies into context. So the vast majority of scholars say, Mark puts these pericapies in context that he simply invents. They're subjective and they're contrived contexts, you see. Because Mark doesn't know the context of these pericapies. But in order to placate his audience, which is a Greco-Roman audience, he has to have it into a narrative. For example, we read the Sira of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. We know that there was, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was taken to Jerusalem, al-Ladut al-Isra al-Mia'raj. We know that he went to Taif for Da'wah. We know that the Quresh put a Muqata'ah, they put a boycott on the Bani Hashem. We know these stories, we know these pericapies of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. But what is the chronological order of these, right? Somebody might say, who doesn't know the chronological order, perhaps the Isra was first. Perhaps the Isra was first. And then when he came back, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said, okay, now I'll go to the Bani Thaqif. He went there, he was rejected. When he came back to Mecca, and then the Quresh became angry because he went to the Bani Thaqif and now they implemented the Muqata'ah. And that makes sense, but that's not the correct chronological order. So even if something makes sense logically, as far as your justification of that order of events or that sequence, it doesn't mean that it's true. And this is the problem that Mark had. Mark has all of these stories of Isra al-Isra'am and he has to put them into a context in a narrative, right? So the narrative of Mark then is something that he invented. This is according to the vast, vast majority of scholars of the New Testament, okay? So we have a principle in usul and the Hanafis have something a little bit different, but if you have, for example, two hadith that are saying two different things, right? They contradict each other. You have to try to make a jama'a, you have to harmonize them. Try to make them work. For example, it says, one hadith says the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he had his chest split when he was a child. Another hadith says it happened on the night of the Isra'a. Which one is correct? The ulema say both of them are correct. It happened twice. This is called jama'a. Or if you can't make jama'a, you have to make what's known as tarjir. You have to pick a tradition based on the preponderance of evidence. For example, if Sierra literature says that a man named Labid put a spell on the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and he started to forget things, that's what Sierra says. But the Quran says, wa laahu ya'asimuqamin an-nas, that Allah protects you from humanity. Then Quran takes preponderance over Sierra, right? So you don't have to believe in that story from Sierra. Because the Quran says very clearly, we protect you from these things that people are doing to you, right? So can this be done with the New Testament? This was actually attempted to be done by a Christian scholar named Tashin. Tashin lived in the second century. He was a student of Justin Marder, who's one of the chief architects of the Logos Trinitarian theology. Tashin, he took all four Gospels because there's a lot of contradictions in the Gospels. And when we actually get to the Gospel of John, after we study Mark and Matthew and Luke, you'll see that there's so many discrepancies in these four books that it's virtually impossible to reconcile because you can't have, for example, something happen and not happen at the same time, right? So either Isa, he was either crucified on the eve of Passover or the night before Passover. It can't be either one, right? Matthew, Mark and Luke says he was crucified on the eve of Passover. John says it was the night before the eve of Passover. Both cannot be correct. Somebody is wrong. There is no way to make jama'ah of this. Somebody has to be wrong unless Christians believe that he was crucified twice, which of course is ridiculous, right? In fact, he wasn't crucified at all, according to the Islamic Orthodox position. We'll talk more about that, inshallah, when we get to the passion narrative. But Tashin, what he tried to do is he took Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and he tried to harmonize them. And his harmonization is called the Dea Tessaron, which means through four, right? Through four. In other words, he took all four Gospels and he made it into a single narrative. And apparently he was able to reconcile all of the contradictions and discrepancies in the New Testament. I'd like to see how he did that. I've only read some of it, but the one thing he couldn't reconcile are the genealogies that are given by Matthew and Luke. And we haven't talked about Matthew and Luke, but Matthew and Luke give a genealogy, right? A lineage of Isa, that are completely different, right? And he couldn't reconcile that aspect. So, Mark's source again. So to put things in perspective a little bit, you have the Gospel, the Evangelion in Greek, the Ingeel revealed to Isa, between the year 30, 31, 32, 33, right around there. So then you have what's known as oral logia, oral logia, in other words, oral sayings, pericapies, right? Kerugma, proclamation, erisala, that's oral tradition. And you have two interpretations of it very early. You have the Semitic Kerugma, right? You have the sort of Ebonite Jewish Christian traditions and interpretations. And then you have the Pauline or Hellenistic Kerugma, right? So you have two different camps, and this happens almost immediately. So then, and these sayings proliferate in Palestine and around the Mediterranean in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And of course, Paul is now writing in the 50s, right? So when Paul is starting these congregations and making converts to his sort of school of thought, right? So that school begins to really grow and make a lot of converts. Now, in 70 or so of the common era, a person decides to write down these oral traditions of Jesus in line with Pauline dogmatism. And this person was Mark, right? So the Gospel of Mark, again, represents the Hellenistic Pauline interpretation of these oral kerugma, these oral proclamations, pericapies of Issa alaihi salam. In 80 or so of the common era, then you have the Gospel of Matthew. We'll talk about this. So Matthew was written about 80, 85 of the common era. Matthew, according to church tradition, is a disciple of Issa alaihi salam. Matthew, of course, is not a Hebrew way of pronouncing his name. It was either Matai or Levi, right? His actual name. But again, during this time, there's sort of distancing of Judaism from Christianity, animosity between the two religions. So Matthew, the book of Matthew, which is our next Gospel, is also anonymous. And no one knows who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. So even when Matthew is talking about Matthew in his Gospel, he talks about him in the third person, right? So in other words, Matthew doesn't say, and then Jesus came up to me and he said, follow me and I'll make you a fisher among, he doesn't say that. He says, then Jesus came to Matthew in the third person, right? So again, it wasn't until Irenaeus' time that these four books were named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All four Gospels, again, are anonymous. And more technically, they're pseudonymous. They're ascribed later on to disciples of Esalaesala. So what does Matthew do here? Matthew, he uses Mark's Gospel as his sort of skeleton. So you know how we said that Mark took these loose traditions of Jesus and he put them into a narrative. So Matthew, he takes Mark's skeleton, he likes that chronological order, okay? But Matthew also has other material in his Gospel, right? He has material in his Gospel that is not found in any other Gospel. This is called M material, uppercase M or methion material. Matthew also has material in his Gospel that he has in common with Luke that is not found in Mark, okay? Matthew has material in his Gospel that is in common with Luke but not found in Mark. That means that Matthew and Luke had a source of some sort that Mark did not have access to. And scholars have called this source, this hypothetical source Q, the letter Q, which stands for the German Quella, meaning the unknown. Q is also called the Sayings Gospel, okay? So this actually worked a lot better if I made a diagram but let's explain it again, inshallah. If there's any questions, email me your questions and I can explain this a lot better. Maybe I can give you a chart. But basically you have Mark written in 70, the common era. Then you have Matthew around 80 and Luke around 90. Matthew and Luke, they both take the basic skeletal structure of the Gospel of Mark, right? So 80% of Mark is incorporated into Matthew and about 65% of Mark is incorporated into Luke, okay? And then Matthew and Luke also have material that they share that is not in Mark. That's called Q source material. So Matthew and Luke then they had access to some other source that Mark did not have access to. Matthew also has material that's only found in his Gospel. That's called M, Matthewan material. And Luke also has material only found in his Gospel. That's called L, special, Lukean material, okay? So this is really, really important. Now, Christian fundamentals will say that Matthew is a disciple of Esalae Salaam and a disciple wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The problem with that is if Matthew is a disciple of Esalae Salaam, why is he using the skeletal structure or the chronology of Mark who was not a disciple of Esalae Salaam? Mark is a student of Peter. Mark was not a disciple. Mark was 10 years old when Esalae Salaam walked the earth, right? He studied under Peter, but he's still not an eye and ear witness. Matthew is an eye and ear witness of the ministry of Jesus, yet 80% of Mark, Matthew will incorporate into his Gospel. So this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, one more thing that's interesting. We talk about the Q source document, right? Again, to make this really, really, this is very, very important that we understand Q. That Q is some sort of document. It was probably written. It's probably before Mark wrote his Gospel, right? That Mark did not have access to for some reason. Maybe Q represents the other oral proclamation, the Semitic Jamesonian school of Christianity, the true Christianity. Maybe Mark knew about Q and purposefully or intentionally did not use it in his Gospel because he thought this is from the other side of Christianity. These are the Jewish Christians that are saying these things, right? That could be a possibility, but the mystery of why Mark doesn't know about Q is a mystery that continues to baffle New Testament scholars today. Matthew and Luke definitely had access to Q because they have material that they have in common that is almost verbatim. They're quoting things almost verbatim from some other source that's not in Mark, right? So what is Q? Now this is called the two-source theory. The two-source theory says that Mark wrote first and then Matthew and Luke, they took from Mark's basic skeletal structure. That's called the two-source theory. It assumes Mark in priority, that Mark wrote first and then these two other Gospels. There's another theory, which is very much in the minority, almost an extinct opinion, which is called the two gospel theory or the former Gricebac theory. And according to this theory, Matthew and Luke wrote first and then Mark wrote after that. But the reason that this theory is not very, and this is the theory that Augustine of Hippo actually subscribed to, but the reason this is not very popular is that why would Mark, if he had access to Luke and Matthew, why wouldn't he record so much of this, so much of these beautiful teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, all these beautiful, the prodigal son, the Good Samaritan, he just ignores all of that. Why would Mark do that? It doesn't stand to reason what he would ignore some of the most celebrated teachings of Issa alaihi salam, if indeed he wrote after Luke and Matthew. The dominant opinion here is that Matthew, I'm sorry, Mark wrote first, there's Mark in priority, Mark wrote first and then Luke and Matthew, they used Mark's skeletal structure to formulate their own gospels and they have material in common. What is that material? It's called Q. What does Q contain? Parables of Issa alaihi salam, his hikm, his wisdom teaching, right? These are called aphorisms. What else? The ministry of John the Baptist, Yahya alaihi salam is contained in Q. What else? The Sermon on the Mount, right? This beautiful teaching that we found, we find in Matthew chapter six, Luke chapter 11, which includes the Lord's prayer and the Beatitudes, right? The series of blessings that Issa alaihi salam gives. Also interesting, there's no passion, there's no passion narrative in Q, right? In other words, there's nothing about the death of Issa alaihi salam in Q. There's nothing about even a passion prediction in Q, right? In other words, Matthew and Luke and the material that they have in common that is missing from Mark, nothing in their material that they have in common has anything to do with the death and resurrection of Issa alaihi salam. What does that mean? That means the author of Q, whoever it was, maybe Jewish Christian community from James, they didn't value the crucifixion and resurrection of Issa alaihi salam. Why? Maybe it wasn't important for them, or maybe they didn't even believe in it, which is a possibility, right? So this is very, very important. This is called a synoptic problem, right? Dealing with the interdependency of these three gospels, right? Why does Mark not use Q? Did he know about it? Did he not know about it? What does Q contain? We can sort of ascertain what Q contained because it's simply what Luke and Matthew have in common, right? Read what Q contains. None of it contradicts Islam. None of it contradicts Islam. So this Q, this saying's gospel, could actually be the injil of Issa alaihi salam, but we haven't actually found anything. Matthew and Luke probably had something, but it's been lost to time, right? Maybe they buried it somewhere. Quite often, Christian archeologists, they'll go on and dig. This happens all the time and they'll find something extraordinary, right? In 1887, they found this document called the didikei. Didikei is Greek for teaching, right? The didikei was written in the second century, some say first century, and it represents the teaching of the disciples to Gentile converts. It's very interesting. It's like a church manual, right? The teaching of the disciples, the actual disciples to Gentile converts. And one of something interesting it mentions in the didikei is that Christians will fast twice a week, right? So the concentration on the actual fasting and prayers and so on and so forth. This wasn't discovered until 1887 or so in a monastery, but scholars believe it was written in the second century. Now what's also interesting about Mark, we're gonna finish up with Mark, inshallah, is that there's actually four endings for the gospel of Mark. So remember we talked about the beginning of the gospel of Mark. That the beginning of the, the very beginning of the gospel contains a fabrication. It says, arcetu iwangeliu iesu Christu, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then it says, huyu theyu, the son of God. This phrase, son of God, is not in the oldest and best Greek manuscripts of the gospel of Mark, okay? It was added later. Bruce Metzger, the president of the United Bible Society, he called it a scribal expansion. It's not found in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So this was an example of how the gospel of Mark is Christologically anemic. It's very weak in its Christology. So a scribe went back and they had to sort of pad it a little bit and put that phrase in there. Now if you look at the end of the gospel of Mark, so the gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four gospels. It has only 16 chapters, right? And the true ending of the gospel of Mark is actually 16, eight, chapter 16, verse eight. So this is what happens. Basically, Jesus is apparently crucified and he's put into a tomb and then on Sunday, a group of women, they go to the tomb, they look inside and they see a young man sitting in the tomb and they say, and the young man says to them that basically he's not here, he's gone to Galilee. And then it says, Kai uden e uden e pan e fabunta gar. Then they said nothing to no one for they were afraid. And that's the end of the gospel. That's the true end of the gospel of Mark. What does that mean? That means basically we have no idea what happened to Jesus. All we know is apparently he was crucified. They go to the tomb. He's not there. There's an angel or maybe it says a young man sitting in the tomb and says he's not here. He's in Galilee, right? And that's the end of the gospel. What does that mean? That means that according to the earliest gospel in the New Testament, nobody sees a resurrected Jesus. Nobody sees a resurrected Jesus. In fact, it's quite questionable whether he was crucified at all. Because in the gospel of Mark, if you read chapter 15, it says that after a few hours, Jesus had apparently died on the cross. And when this news was brought to Pontius Pilate, the man who made a profession out of crucifying Jews, it said he marveled. He couldn't believe it. This man is already dead after a few hours? Three hours and he's dead? Because he knew from experience it took days to die on a cross. And now we're told that the women go on Sunday to the supposed tomb and somebody tells them, oh, he's not here. He's in Galilee. So what happened to Issa al-Asana? It's very, very interesting. So the end of this gospel is very ambiguous. And the Christian scholars of the second and third centuries and the fourth century, they didn't like this ambiguity because they wanted to tell you, they wanted to drive the point home that he indeed was killed and he rose from the dead, right? So they added an ending to this gospel, right? They added. So the true end is Mark 16, eight. That's called the true end. But then we have the longer ending of Mark, which is in later manuscripts of the gospel of Mark. And here now, what does it say? It says that Jesus came and appeared to Mary Magdalene and then he appeared to two disciples, right? Why two disciples? Because the true end of the gospel, it says that women went to the tomb, they saw it was empty. There's a young man and said, he's in Galilee. He's gone to Galilee, right? And that's the end of the gospel. A woman's testimony in Judaism in the first century is basically worthless, right? A woman's testimony is not taken into consideration in any court in Judaism in the first century, right? So what you need is male witnesses. So what happens here is that some clever scribe recognized the need for male witnesses. So he went back and added this longer ending where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, but also to two disciples, male disciples, right? And then he commissions them. The commissioning of the disciples would go into all nations. And then he says something interesting to his disciples. The coinage is a longer ending, which is actually a fabrication. He says to them that you'll speak in many tongues, you'll lay your hands on people and they'll be cured. You can drink poison and you'll live. You can handle poisonous snakes and it won't harm you. And then he ascends into heaven, right? This is a longer ending of Mark. What's interesting about this ending of Mark here is you have a group of Christians in America that are called Appalachian snake handlers. This is a sort of offshoot of what's known as Pentecostalism, these Christians who speak in tongues, right? The charismatic type movement. They're in the South in America. You have these Appalachian snake handlers who bring snakes into church and they handle snakes. And one of them recently, his name was Mark Wolford, he was bitten by a snake and he died. In fact, his father also died from doing the same thing, bitten by a snake. I feel like telling his son now that the scripture that says that you can handle snakes is actually a fabrication to the end of Mark's gospel. I debated a Christian one time. I don't know if this has been, maybe you can find this on YouTube. I debated a Christian one time. And this happened a couple of times where I used this. It's really an old Ahmadidat. Rahimullah Ta'ala, old trick from Ahmadidat. But it's very effective. And it's because I said, is the Bible the word of God? He says yes. I said, are you a two Christian? He says yes. I said, two Christians, according to Jesus, can drink poison and nothing can happen to them. So I took some white out, you know, liquid paper out of my bag, which is not really poisonous, but it'll make you pretty sick. And I put it on the table and I said, I want you to drink this white out. And if you drink it and you survive, then you're a two Christian. And then you know what he said? This Christian man I was debating in a university, the academic setting, he said, oh, you're talking about the longer ending of Mark. That's a fabrication to the Gospel of Mark. And there was this collective gasp from the audience. They couldn't believe that he had said that. So I said, if it's a fabrication, here's my Bible, rip it out of my Bible. It's a fabrication, take it out, throw it on the ground. He said, no, I refuse to do that. So why do you refuse to do that? If it's a fabrication, right? So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either fabrication or it's not. But scholars are unanimous that this longer ending of Mark is a later addition to the Gospel of Mark. So the earliest Gospel in the New Testament has a fabrication at the very beginning by calling Jesus the Son of God. And as a fabrication at the very end, because it ends very briefly, it's like a cliffhanger. And we don't really know what happened to Jesus. All we know that apparently he was killed on a cross and then suddenly there's an empty tomb. Was he resurrected? Was he actually dead? Is it the wrong tomb? What happened? We have no idea. So they went in and actually added this longer ending. There's actually two more endings of the Gospel of Mark. But the other two are not very important. But there's what's known as the shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark, which is in a few manuscripts. And then you have another ending of the Gospel of Mark, which is found in one manuscript called the Codex Washingtonius, where he says a bunch of things about Satan's power over the age. There's a bunch of hapoxlegominoi, these words that are not characteristic of Mark's writing style. And that's how you can tell that that's also a fabrication. So next time, inshallah, so we're done with the Gospel of Mark. Next time, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to go into the Gospel of Matthew. And the Gospel of Matthew is very, very interesting Gospel to say the very least. We're going to go through the basics, the who, what, when, where, and why of the Gospel of Matthew. We're going to look at the structure, the new characters of the Gospel of Matthew. We're going to look at the major themes of the Gospel, the sources, how did Mark, how did Matthew deal with the Gospel of Mark? Because he had Mark on his table when he wrote his Gospel. How did he deal with the Gospel of Mark? We're going to talk about that next time, inshallah. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim, Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa salam wa alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen, wa salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Bismillahir rahmanir rahim, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim, Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sahtuh. Subhanaka la ilman lana illa ma'al namtana ilna ka antil al-alim wa l-hakim wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa bil-lahi al-alil al-azim, wa salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. So last time we talked about the Gospel of Mark. We finished up talking about the Gospel of Mark. And we had said that Mark wrote around 70 of the common era, as Gospel represents the oral kerugma or proclamation of Hellenized or Pauline Christianity. Then we said Matthew, he wrote around 80 or 85 of the common era. Luke also around 85, possibly 90 of the common era. And we had said that Matthew used Mark's kind of skeletal structure, chronological order in his own Gospel. About 85% of Mark is incorporated into Matthew. And this establishes the interdependency of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? And these three Gospels are therefore called the Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic. Synoptic means literally the same-eyed Gospel, meaning that all three of these Gospels basically follow the same chronology of events, right? Because Mark wrote first, Matthew and Luke, they take from Mark's chronology. This is why there's an interdependency in these three Gospels, hence they're called the Synoptic Gospels. So let's now talk more, but we'll get back to this idea later when we talk about the sources of Matthew more in detail, inshallah. But let's talk now about the Gospel according to Matthew. This is called Ketah, Matheon in Greek, according to Matthew. So who was Matthew? Matthew is, according to tradition, the disciple, a disciple of Issa alaihissalaam. He's one of the 12 disciples of Issa alaihissalaam. Of course, scholars don't believe that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew, again, just like Mark is anonymous, nobody knows who wrote it. It was ascribed to Matthew by Irenaeus of Leon, around 180 or 190 of the common era. In order to bolster its credibility as an authentic Gospel by giving it apostolic attribution. So it was therefore pseudonymously ascribed to a disciple of Issa alaihissalaam. The Gospel of Matthew was the most popular Gospel in all of antiquity. It was the most popular. The least popular was the Gospel of Mark because it's the shortest Gospel and very Christologically anemic, as we said. Jesus is only called the Son of God twice in the Gospel of Mark, once at the beginning, which we have already established is a fabrication, and once in chapter 15, where a Roman centurion calls him the Son of God at the crucifixion. But when a Roman calls someone the Son of God, of course, that has a very different connotation than a Jew calling someone the Son of God. So there's a lot to be said about that as well. We had also said the end of the Gospel of Mark, there are four different endings to the Gospel of Mark. So Matthew was the most popular by far in antiquity. Where was it written? According to the dominant opinion, the Gospel of Matthew was written in Antioch in Syria. When was it written? Around 80, 85, possibly 90, maybe even as late as 95 of the common era. Now, keep in mind again, there's major turmoil happening right now in Palestine with Judaism all around the world during the time of the composition of all four of these Gospels. We had said in 70 of the common era, General Titus, under commission of his father, the emperor of Aspasian had destroyed the temple, the second temple, never to be rebuilt again, that happened in 70 of the common era. And then you have this persecution during the 80s, the 90s of Christians living in the Mediterranean, especially in Rome. 125 of the common era, you have a final defeat of the Jews in Palestine. And in fact, this was a time when this man named Simon claimed to be the Messiah. We talked about him briefly in past classes. Simon, he was endorsed by big rabbis to be the actual Messiah and he was given the name Bar Kokhba, Simon or Shimon Bar Kokhba, the son of the star, right? Which is the word Kokhub in Arabic, which means star or planet. The reason he was given this name is because in Numbers 2417 it says that a star shall rise out of Jacob, right? So this is seen as a messianic prophecy. So this man, Simon Bar Kokhba, he was eventually defeated by the Romans and the Emperor Hadrian exiled all of the Jews out of Jerusalem and he put a statue of Zeus on the temple site where the temple used to be on the temple mount and then he renamed Jerusalem Elia Capitolina and the Jews were expelled from that city for many, many centuries. So that was kind of the final solution for the Jews in Palestine that happened in 125 of the common era. So Matthew was written about 25, 35 years before that, 80 possibly as late as 95 of the common era. Who is the gospel of Matthew written for? It was written for Jews living in diaspora. Diaspora means the Jews living outside of Palestine. And this was sort of a propagation pamphlet for these Jews to read and to understand who in fact was Issa al-Islam. Also written for Christians and the Mediterranean to increase their certitude is really a polemical tractate against the Jews. Remember, the gospel of Matthew is the most Jewish gospel. Matthew will quote or elude to the Old Testament some 80 or 90 or maybe even 100 times because he wants to prove that every single prophecy in the Old Testament is a reference to Issa al-Islam, to Jesus Christ, to beat people on him and nobody else. This is very, very important. We're gonna come back to this idea in a minute inshallah, but let's look at the structure of the gospel. So when we looked at the gospel of Matthew, sorry, the gospel of Mark, we said basically there's two periods. There's a structure, a very basic structure. The gospel of Mark, chapters one through eight represents the Galilean ministry and chapters eight through 16 or nine through 16 represents the Judean ministry. When it comes to the gospel of Matthew, we have basically four parts to this structure. We have the first part, which is the genealogy and nativity narrative. So Matthew begins his gospel. Remember how Mark started his gospel. Mark started the gospel with the baptism of Issa al-Islam by John the Baptist, Yahya al-Islam. Matthew begins his gospel by giving you a genealogy of Issa al-Islam. What is a genealogy? He's giving you his ancestry that goes all the way back to Ibrahim al-Islam. Why is Matthew doing that? Because again, Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels. That's why it was placed first in the order of the New Testament, although it's the second gospel to be written because it makes a smooth transition from the Old Testament, which is full of genealogies. So Matthew, in order to sort of have that theme of genealogical information that the Jew is so used to, he includes also a genealogy of Issa al-Islam that goes from Abraham to Joseph the Carpenter. And then we have what's known as a nativity or infancy narrative, a molded narrative, if you will. And of course, there's two nativity narratives in the Quran, in Surah al-Aliyyam and in Surah Maryam in the Quran as well. These are called molded narratives. So in the gospel of Matthew, we have Maryam al-Islam. We have this person called Joseph the Carpenter and we have the virgin birth. We'll talk more about that. So that's the first part of the structure, is the genealogy and nativity narrative. The second part of the structure is the beginning of the ministry, the beginning of the ministry of Issa al-Islam. The third part of the structure is called the five major discourses, the five major discourses. And Matthew does this intentionally. He divides this section of his gospel into five distinct sections. The reason he's doing that, again, is to sort of mirror the Torah. There's five books in the Torah. It's called the Pentateuch in Greek. Pentateuch means the five scrolls, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. So Matthew in this middle section of his gospel, he's mimicking those five scrolls. So the first major discourse in Matthew is called the Sermon on the Mount, right? The Sermon on the Mount. The second major discourse are the instructions to his 12 disciples. The third major discourse are the parables of the kingdom of God. The fourth major discourse are the instructions to the church. And the fifth major discourse are warnings of the final judgment. So these five parallel, the five scrolls in the Old Testament. Again, Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels and he's trying to mirror what's happening in the Old Testament. And of course, we have a prophecy that Matthew believes is fulfilled in Issa alaihi salam. That we'll talk about later as well. And finally, the last part of the structure is the passion narrative of Matthew. So to recap, the structure of Matthew is genealogy. That's the first genealogy with nativity narrative, beginning of ministry number two, the five major discourses, number three, and then the passion narrative, number four. New characters in Matthew's gospel. What do I mean by new characters? I mean characters that are found in Matthew and not in Mark, right? Matthew introduces these characters. Who are they? Joseph the carpenter. There's no mention of Joseph the carpenter in the gospel of Mark, because there's no virgin birth. Who is Joseph the carpenter? Joseph the carpenter is the man who was engaged to marry Maryam or betrothed to marry Maryam alaihi salam, according to the gospel of Matthew. Now, depending on who you ask, but church tradition, Catholic as well as Eastern Orthodox, they both say that Joseph the carpenter was actually in his 90s when he was betrothed to Maryam alaihi salam. And Maryam was 11 or 12 years old. So this is obviously a cultural thing that we have to understand. We have to have a cultural consciousness. Sounds kind of strange for us nowadays, but this was quite common in the pre-modern world. Why does Matthew include this person called Joseph the carpenter? It's because of prophecy. Remember, Matthew is very concerned with proving that asa alaihi salam is the fulfillment of all of these Old Testament prophecies. So in the Old Testament, you have what are known as Christological typologies. What are these typologies? Four shadowings of Isa alaihi salam. So for example, when Musa alaihi salam, he comes out of Egypt, right? He leaves Egypt, makes an exilis out of Egypt. Isa alaihi salam in the gospel of Matthew also goes to Egypt and leaves Egypt. We'll talk about that in a minute here. But the point of Joseph the carpenter is to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. The Jews believed that the Messiah will come from the tribe of Judah. This is what it says, for example, in the book of Hosea and the book of Amos and the book of Jeremiah, although many scholars contend that those passages were actually later additions to the Old Testament books. Generally, the Jews believe that Hamashiach the Messiah will come from the tribe of Judah, which means what? He'll be a descendant of David, right? So Matthew knows this. He also knows that this is one of the reasons why the Jews at the time of Isa alaihi salam are not accepting Isa alaihi salam as the Messiah because his mother is not from the tribe of Judah. Maryam alaihi salam is a Levite. She's from Levi. She's from the tribe of Harun alaihi salam. That's why the Quran says, Ya Uhda Harun, right? Oh, sister of Aaron, which can mean basically the reminding her of her priestly lineage, not necessarily she's the sister literally of Harun alaihi salam. Harun lived much earlier than about 14 centuries before Maryam alaihi salam, but the reminding her of her kinship to the tribe of Levi, right? Just like in the New Testament, you have the demons referred to Isa alaihi salam as the son of David. Well, that doesn't mean the son of David literally. That means he's a descendant of David, right? So we have to understand that subtlety. So the Jews believe that the time of Isa alaihi salam, by and large, that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. And this is based also on a verse in the book of Micah, chapter five, verse two, that says, Oh Bethlehem, small as you are amongst the towns of Judah, from you there shall arise a king who shall shepherd my people Israel, right? And Isa alaihi salam, of course, is born in Bethlehem according to Matthew. But notice here in Micah chapter five, verse two, in that verse, it does not say that he'll be a descendant of David or of Judah. It says that simply he'll be born in Bethlehem where David was born. But for Matthew, this is very crucial. He has to sort of, he has to connect Isa alaihi salam with the tribe of Judah. So what does he do? Because he knows that Mary is not from the tribe of Judah. He invents this person called Joseph the carpenter, Yusuf and Najal, Joseph the carpenter. And Joseph is actually from the tribe of Judah. He's a descendant of David. But then the question is, well, so what? Isa alaihi salam was born from a virgin. That's not his father. Isa alaihi salam does not have a father. Yet the Christian will say, even so he somehow mystically inherited the Davidic line from Joseph the carpenter, his supposed father. This is how they reconcile the contradiction in the scripture that says that or the tradition amongst the Jews that's based on scripture that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. So Matthew, he says, there was this person called Joseph the carpenter who's from David, even though he's not the real father of Isa alaihi salam. So Joseph the carpenter. Another new character in the book of Matthew, Gospel of Matthew is Herod the Great. So Herod the Great was the puppet king of Judea. At the time, Isa alaihi salam was born between 40 and four before the common era. Herod the Great. He was a puppet king in the sense that he's one of the kings that the Roman colonial powers put into power because he would basically placate his Roman authorities. So he was considered to be a Jew by religion, but basically in the back pocket of the Roman Empire. Herod the Great. So what Herod the Great does, very interestingly according to Matthew, because again, you have to keep this in mind that Matthew is constantly trying to connect Jesus with the Old Testament. This is his Da'wah tactic in order to convert Jews to Christianity. He has to show that there's a consistency with the Old and New Testaments. So remember Pharaoh, when Musa alaihi salam was born, what did the Pharaoh do? What did Pharaoh do? That he instituted this slaughter of the innocents that the firstborn sons of the Israelites were going to be killed, thrown into the Nile River. So what does Herod the Great do? Herod the Great hears about these wise men who come from Persia, right? And tradition says there were three of them. The gospel doesn't actually say there's three, but they brought three gifts so they assumed that there was three of them. Wise men from Persia, they're probably Zoroastrian. Apparently they follow a star into Palestine, into Bethlehem, and Herod hears about them. So he interrogates them and he says, what are you doing here basically? They say we're here to worship the king of Judah, the king of Israel. We have seen a star in the east. So now Herod understands that the Messiah is going to be born. So what does Herod do? Much like Pharaoh, he institutes this slaughter of the innocents. So the firstborn sons of Bethlehem are killed, right? Why does this happen? Because for Matthew, Pharaoh is a typology of Herod the Great. You see, Matthew is again trying to connect the Old Testament with the New Testament with typologies. So what happens next? That Esalae Salaam is born according to Matthew and then Joseph has a dream that says go to Egypt. They go and they stay in Egypt until it's safe and then they leave Egypt, they make exodus out of Egypt and they settle in the north and Galilee and Esalae Salaam is raised in Nazareth. So again, Matthew's trying to connect Esalae Salaam with Musa Aalaih Salaam. Just as Musa Aalaih Salaam made the exodus out of Egypt so does Esalae Salaam make the exodus out of Egypt because Esalae Salaam is the prophet like Moses and we talked about this in past classes as well that one of the great prophecies of what I believe to be the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Sallam in the Torah is in Deuteronomy 1818 that says Navi Akim Nahim Mikalav Akhayhim Kamokha that I shall raise a prophet from their brethren who's going to be like you is gonna be like Moses. Although Matthew never quotes Deuteronomy 1818 in his gospel, it's sort of a given that he believes that Jesus Aalaih Salaam is the prophet like unto Moses but it seems still a little strange that he never used that as a proof text. But Esalae Salaam according to Muslim conception is not exactly like Musa Aalaih Salaam but rather the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Salaam is very similar in the sense that they were both given Sharia. They were given a system of law and codes and ethics that was not given to Esalae Salaam. Although Esalae Salaam according to the Muslim Christology did make certain amendments and addendums to the Torah but by and large he confirmed the Torah, right? Even though he is still a Rasul but the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Salaam basically was in a position of power over his people. He was the primary law giver just like Musa Aalaih Salaam and there's other points of comparison as well that we can look at. But again, Joseph the carpenter, Herod the Great, right? These people are introduced by Matthew in order to show some sort of typological foreshadowing of what's going to happen in the life of Esalae Salaam. So it's very, very important. These are connections to the Old Testament. Also the Magi, we talked about them. This is, these are people that Matthew invents or talks about in his gospel that are not mentioned in the gospel of Mark. And finally Satan. Satan now in the gospel of Matthew has a speaking role. Of course, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by Satan but he doesn't speak to, we don't hear his speech but now we have a lot more information about this tempting in the wilderness just before the gospel was revealed to Esalae Salaam. We have Satan tempting Esalae Salaam which is very, very strange. The book of James actually says that God cannot be tempted. So if Christians want to believe that Esalae Salaam is in fact a God, then how can they reconcile this with what James says in his epistle in the New Testament that God certainly cannot be tempted. So these are the new characters in James. Joseph the carpenter, Herod the Great, the Magi, the wise men from the East and Satan who now has a speaking role. It's a major themes now in the gospel of Matthew. That Jesus now is the open teacher, the true Messiah. Remember in the gospel of Mark, Jesus was the suffering prophet, right? He was the hidden Messiah, the messianic secret. Remember we talked about the messianic secret, one of the major themes of the gospel of Mark is that Jesus is constantly telling people and demons, rebuking them, don't tell anyone who I am, this is called the messianic secret. That was this term was coined by the German William Reed and we talked about the different reasons why there is this secret. But in Matthew, there is no secret whatsoever. Jesus is the open teacher. He's the true Messiah, right? That's the point again of the genealogy that goes from Abraham all the way to Joseph, the carpenter, he's the true interpreter of the mosaic law. That's Esalae Salaam. That's the Methian Jesus, as we would say. There's the Mark in Jesus, the Methian Jesus, the Luke in Jesus, and the Johannine Jesus that we'll talk about when we get to the gospel of John, inshallah ta'ala. So this is a major theme, Jesus is the open teacher. The second major theme are these Christological typologies that Matthew is constantly quoting from the Old Testament, right? Something happens in the life of Jesus. Matthew will say, this is because of what Isaiah said. This is because of what Jeremiah said, right? Constantly making that connection over a hundred times probably. But something we should keep in mind when Matthew quotes from the Old Testament, he's not quoting from Hebrew and then translating it, his own translation into Greek. He's actually quoting from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It's a very important translation. It's called the Septuagint, Septuagint. And in academic books, it's called the LXX, which is the Roman numeral for 70. Septuagint means 70. So this translation was done in 250 before the common era, before the common era in Alexandria, Egypt, right? So there's a big story about how this happened in a document called The Letter of Aristes, but many scholars believe this is a fabrication. But basically what we can tell from historical standpoint that's authentic is that a group of Jews, they translated the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible into Greek in 250 before the common era in Alexandria. Alexandria at the time was a center of learning of Judaism. So this kind of became the standard, the Greek translation in the sort of Mediterranean as well as in Palestine for learned Jews. So Matthew here is quoting verbatim not from a translation that he's doing with the Hebrew scriptures. He's quoting directly from the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible. So that's another major theme, Christological typology. Another theme, which is very interesting is that Matthew performs what's known as Midrashim in Hebrew. Midrashim comes from the root Darash, or Darasa in Arabic, which means to study. But Midrashim means exegesis. He's commentating upon the text of the Old Testament and putting these comments into the mouth of Isa, alayhi salam. And Matthew performs two types of Midrashim or exegesis, as we would say. He does what's known as Halakha, which is commenting upon verses in the Old Testament that deal with ahkam, legal rulings, right? Or the dhahir aspect of scripture. And then he also does what's known as Haggadah, which is commentating upon the esoteric or the botan aspect of scripture. For example, with respect to Halakha, with respect to the outward or legalistic aspect of scripture, he has Jesus say in Matthew chapter five verse 17, think not that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill, as for verily I tell you, as long as heaven and earth endure, not a jot or a tittle shall pass by the law until all is fulfilled, therefore, whoever sets aside one of the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And then he says to the disciples that unless your righteousness exceeds that of ascribable referesy, you shall know wise enter the kingdom of heaven. And then he says, you have heard it say that you shall not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery, right? So he's taking these verses that deal with ahkam, right? Thou shall not commit adultery. This is a legal ruling and he's commenting upon them. This is called midrashim. What type of midrashim? Midrashim that deals with halaqa, with sharia, with ahkam, right? Very common in the gospel of Matthew, but he also does hagadah. Hagadah means that he's giving esoteric interpretation of things that happen in the Old Testament. And this is with regards to Christological typology. For example, it says in Isaiah chapter seven, Isaiah is speaking to King Ahab and he says to him that a son is going to be born, right, whose name is going to be Emmanuel, right? That a young woman will give birth to a son and his name shall be Emmanuel. So it seems like a very mundane sort of detail that Isaiah gives to this king. And in chapter eight of Isaiah, this son is born named Emmanuel. But Matthew sees in that something much more, right? So in Matthew in chapter one of his gospel, he says Jesus is Emmanuel, right? So he takes this idea that has nothing to do with ahkam that's not related to halakah. It's just a narrative sort of detail and Matthew gives it a really kind of esoteric meaning or interpretation that foreshadows Christ. So Matthew says Emmanuel is Jesus because Emmanuel in Hebrew means God with us, right? So for Matthew, this is a typology of the coming of Esalaam. So this is what Matthew does. And this is true with the Quran, he says in the Mishkat al-Anwar, he says walail Qur'ani zahir al-mubatan, that with the Quran there is an esoteric element and there's an esoteric element as well. So that's in our tradition as well. And that's also in Jewish tradition, although, you know, Haghada is very difficult to do and one must have, you know, some sort of openings in order to perform this type of tafsir, tafsir bid-i-shara, as we would say if you take classes on usul-ud-din on usul-ul-Quran or ulum-ul-Quran. So that's another theme. So let's recap the themes. Jesus is the open teacher, there's no longer a messianic secret, there's a Christological typology's, right? Matthew alludes to the Old Testament. Number three, Matthew performs midrashim of Old Testament scripture, which also relates to Christological typology. Number four, Matthew's gospel is very anti-Jewish, probably the most anti-Jewish of any book in the New Testament. Even though he's writing really for a Jewish audience, he's really showing a lot of animosity towards the Jews. So this very strong, super-sessionist sentiment, this idea that Christianity completely replaces Judaism, is very strong motif in the Gospel of Matthew, that the Christian community is the new Israel, right? And this is seen very clearly in the seven woes of Matthew chapter 23. So this is when Jesus is in Jerusalem, he's in the temple precincts, and he gives the Jews the seven woes, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, how can you escape the punishment of hell? You have overlooked the weightier demands of the law, justice, mercy, and good faith. You strain at the gnat, and you swallow the camel. You're like whiteed sepulchres on the outside, you are clean, but on the inside, you're weak of death. Woe unto you hypocrites, brood, vipers. This is his invective against the Pharisees, the Bani Israel, according to the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew are constantly butting heads, they're debating, they just don't like each other whatsoever. And this culminates in Matthew chapter 27, verse 25. This is when Pilate, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, he interrogates Esalae Salaam according to Matthew, and he finds no fault with him whatsoever. So he says, I'm going to chastise him and release him, I'm going to release him, I don't find fault in him. And then the Jewish mob, they say, no, you have to crucify him, crucify him. And then they say to him, may his blood be upon us and on our descendants after us. And then Pilate takes a basin of water and he washes his hands and he says, I am free and clear of the blood of this innocent man. So this one verse here, this one statement mentioned in Matthew chapter 27, verse 25, this was sort of the cue for a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment in Christian Europe, that the Jews basically, according to this verse, curse themselves that if they don't believe in Esalae Salaam, that his blood, his death, the responsibility of killing a prophet is upon him, upon the Jews, the Caiaphas who said this, the high priest and all the Jews after him. So there was a movie made called The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson in 2004, it was a very controversial movie. It was seen as very anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish. And what's interesting about this movie, and I don't know if a lot of people caught this, but I caught this, is when this scene is played out in the movie, everything's translated, Pilate washing his hands, because the movie's an Aramaic, it's also in Latin. But when Caiaphas says, may his blood be upon us and on those after us, Mel Gibson decided not to translate that part. You just sort of hear it in the background for obvious reasons, it would have caused a great stir for him to reproduce this curse that Caiaphas pronounced upon all of the Jews. So you don't see it actually translated, but you can actually hear it. And if you understand Aramaic, you would understand what the actor actually said during that part of the movie. Of course, in 1974, the Roman Catholic Church officially apologized to the Jews and pardoned them for deicide, for the killing of God. And of course, time and again, we have Christians clashing with Jews in medieval Europe. We talked about this as well. We said that most of the great systematic theologians of Judaism came from Muslim Spain, Muslim countries. They wrote an Arabic Maimonides, the guide of the perplexed. His masterpiece was written in Arabic. Bahia ibn Pakouda, he wrote in Arabic, a great systematic theologian. Rashi, he's a European Jew. Many of these theologians, Sadia, who translated the Old Testament into Arabic, he wrote in Arabic, his masterpieces all are in Arabic. They didn't really enjoy that freedom of religion until Islamic Sharia was set into place and they were considered to be Ahl al-Kitab. But what we have with Jews living in Christian countries, especially in medieval Europe, is you have terrible things happening to them. Of course, we know in the 14th century, there was the Bubonic plague, which wiped out one third of the populace of Europe. And at the time, the Christians had no idea what was happening. Of course, it was rats and it was fleas and things like that. And they noticed that the Jews, they weren't being killed by this plague. And the reason is because the Jews have this idea, this concept of tahara. They make Russell, they make Wudu, these types of things, they keep clean. And the Christians at that time, they didn't have these types of things. Apparently, that's why there was so much disease, but the Jews, they weren't dying. So of course, then the Christians, they scapegoated the Jews and say, oh, that's because the Jews have cursed us. That's why we're dying. So in Strasburg, Germany, on Valentine's Day, it's called the Valentine's Day Massacre on July, February 14th, 1349, 1000 Jews, men, women and children were burned alive. They were told to convert or die. So eventually the Jews were scapegoated even for the black plague. Of course, on September 12th, 1553, Pope Julius III ordered all Talmudic literature to be burned. Many Talmuds at this time were also censored. The main reason for this is because of what the Talmud actually says about Isa, the Babylonian Gamara mentions very disparaging, there's disrespectful things about him and Maryam, alaihi salam. So they were censored. Many of them were burned. What's also very interesting about this is that 1952, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible came out in America, Revised Standard Version of the Bible. So this is a revision of the traditional King James Version. And the 1952 Revised Standard Version was based on much earlier manuscripts than the 1611 King James Version. But it was very controversial, primarily because the only verse in the entire New Testament that explicitly mentions the Trinity was taken out of the 1952 Revised Standard Version. And here's the King James Version. And you notice how it's red on the edges here and it's kind of faded. But in 1952, the Revised Standard Version had that redness to it as well. And of course, this started this whole conspiracy theory about this is a communist Bible and it was done by communists and it was a witch hunt for these communists in the streets of America. But nonetheless, this is the King James Version of the Bible. And if you read the First Epistle of John chapter five, verse seven in this King James Version, it says, there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. So this is very clearly a reference, an explicit reference to the Trinity that's found in the New Testament. But the 1952 Revised Standard Version removed these verses or changed them significantly. So what we have here now is the Critical Greek Edition. This is the actual New Testament, not what's going on in the English. This is what the scholars are putting out there and revising from time to time. There's 27 versions now of Nestle Allen's Critical Greek Edition. This is what the verse sounds like in this United Bible Society. It says, verse seven, it says, there are three that bear witness. And then it suddenly moves. The verse eight in the Greek says, ta penoma kaita hudur kaita haima kaihoi tres eis to hain eisen. There are three that bear witness. The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood. And these three are one. Very, very different than the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, right? Spirit, Water, and Blood. Meaning you have Spirit in your body, you have Water, and you have Blood. And these are all one in their submission to God. Very, very different than the Father, the Word, the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Why am I mentioning this? Is because when this 1952 Revised Standard Version of the Bible came out, Christians were buying them up and then burning them in the streets of America. All around America, especially in the Bible Belt, you go to bookstores, Christians are buying them up and then going out in the street and burning them all. Very, very interesting. In fact, the head of the committee of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in 1952, Dr. Bruce Metzger, he quite regularly would receive a package on his office door and he'd open it and it'd be a bowl of ashes, right? So the Christians are burning his Bible translation, then sending him the ashes, right, as a threat. And then he was asked by a reporter one time, what do you think about this? And he said, well, at least now they're burning translations and not translators. That was his comment. Because if you go back again into medieval Europe, even as late as 1525 of the common era, William Tyndale, the first man ever to translate the Bible from sacred languages into English, right? This is in England. Translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. He was tortured and burned at the stake for making a translation. That's all he did. He never apostated. He simply did a translation. But the church's grip was so intense that they didn't want any laity to read what the Bible had to say. They wanted to just give them portions of the Bible on Sunday to think about not read the entire Bible. So this was happening in America. Of course, you have the Jews being expelled from England in 1290. It happened twice in France in 1315 and 1394. Austria in 1421. Spain in 1492 with the inquisitors. Imam al-Qurtubi, just before that time, he writes in his diary. He says, these Christians are coming in. They're calling me Diablo, Diablo. I don't know what's going on here. What is Diablo? Of course Diablo means Satan. That's what they were calling Imam al-Qurtubi, ar-Rahimahullahu ta'ala. So that's another theme of the Gospel of Matthew. So these are the major themes. Jesus is the open teacher. There's Christological typologies. Matthew performs midrashim and the Gospel is very anti-Jewish as well. So the Christological aim then is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that he fulfills all of the Old Testament. Sometimes in Matthew's overzealousness to prove that Issa al-Islam is a fulfillment of all of the prophecies of the Old Testament, sometimes Matthew will make a mistake. For example, when Judas Iscariot, the man who supposedly betrayed Issa al-Islam and sold him out for 30 pieces of silver, Matthew says that this is what Jeremiah prophesized, Jeremiah. But Matthew is citing the wrong verse. This is not in Jeremiah. This is in Zechariah chapter 11 verses 12 through 13. So Matthew here makes a mistake. So then Matthew cannot be inspired by God here. So the Christians, again, most of them, they don't hold to this belief anymore that the Bible is the inerrant word for word, literal word of God. Only Christians that are very literalist, fundamental type of evangelical Christians will actually believe that about the Bible because it's been demonstrated to be false that the Bible is literal word for word, the word of God. It's not the Ipsissima verba of God because Matthew makes mistakes. If Matthew believed that the gospel of Mark was the word of God, certainly he wouldn't edit portions of Mark's gospel while he was writing his own gospel. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Also, Matthew in chapter 12 of the book of Matthew, he says that Esalaam is a fulfillment of the great prophet of Isaiah chapter 42, right? So Isaiah chapter 42 says, hen abdi eff maqbo bi khirirat sanafshi, behold my servant, the one in whom my soul delights. So, and then it goes on to say that this servant of Isaiah chapter 42, he will bring the message of God to the Keterites, right, to the tribes of Qaidar. And Qaidar is the descendant of Isma'il alaihi salam. These are Arabs, the Keterites are Arabs. So this is not applied to Esalaam, but Matthew in chapter 12, he says, indeed Isaiah chapter 42's servant of God and the light to the Gentiles is indeed Esalaam and he doesn't give a lot of reasons why he believes that. Finally, Matthew chapter two, verse 23, Matthew says that Jesus is from the city of Nazareth so that it was fulfilled what was written by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. So Matthew here is quoting something from the prophets from the Nabeem that says the Messiah shall be called a Nazarene, but this verse is nowhere to be found anywhere in the Old Testament whether inside or outside the canon of the Old Testament. Where does it say he shall be called a Nazarene? It seems like Matthew simply invented this verse to further solidify his belief that Esalaam is the Messiah and every single prophecy of the Old Testament is fulfilled by Esalaam. So next time inshallah ta'ala, we're going to look at new characters in the Gospel of Matthew. We're gonna talk about the source of the Gospel of Matthew and then from there we're gonna do a quick look into some of the Christological differences of opinion amongst the first four centuries of Christians with regard to who was Isa Aalaihis Wala allahu wa salam wa salatu wa salam As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. This class, insha'Allah, we're going to continue with looking at the Gospel according to Matthew. Last time we had said that some of the major themes of the Gospel of Matthew is that Esa Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, is the open teacher, he is the true Messiah, he is the supreme and true interpreter of the mosaic law. We had also said that Matthew uses Christological typology quite often in his Gospel. In other words, he'll interpret a story from the Old Testament to be a foreshadowing of the birth or the life or the death of Esa, from his perspective. So over 100 times from the Septuagint, from the Greek translation, the Old Testament Matthew will allude to it, although actually quote from it verbatim. We also said that Matthew performs what's known as Midrashim, which is he interprets the text of the Old Testament with respect to an exoteric as well as esoteric dimension. This is related to what's known as Halakha in Haggadah in Hebrew, respectively. We'd also said the Gospel of Matthew is vehemently anti-Jewish in the sense that the Christian community is the new Israel and there's a very strong super-sessionist sentiment in the Gospel of Matthew. So we talked about those things last time. We'd also said that the Christological aim of the Gospel of Matthew is to prove that Esa, peace be upon him, is the Messiah. He fulfills all of the Old Testament prophecies. Matthew will downplay the immediate eschaton that was such a major theme in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus says things like, those who are standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming, the present generation will live to see it all. And we had said as well that this idea of an immediate eschatology, an immediate end of time, this is something that the Gospel of Mark, the community that wrote the Markian Gospel, this is something that influenced them from the Pauline School of Thought because Paul very clearly in his letters, and of course again this class is not about Paul and the letters and epistles, but if we're going to talk about the Gospels, Paul is indispensable because he highly influenced these communities that authored these Gospels. And a central theme in the letters of Paul is an immediate second coming of Jesus Christ. Paul says that people shouldn't even worry about getting married because there's no time. We're going to be transformed in a twinkling of an eye caught up in the clouds of the Lord and with the Lord and so on and so forth. So the source now of the Gospel of Matthew. So we had said last time most scholars believe in what's known as a two-source theory. The two-source theory assumes Markian priority that Mark wrote first around 70 of the common era, and then Matthew and Luke they used Mark's Gospel as their skeleton. So if we look at Gospel of Matthew then he has three sources that he's using. Of course using Mark's Gospel. So we use the analogy of last time, imagine Matthew sitting at his desk. He has on his desk the Gospel of Mark. He also has on his desk the Q-source document. So remember Q, which represents the unknown Quella in German. This is a source that Matthew and Luke had that Mark did not. This explains what's known as the synoptic problem, which is the interdependency of the three Gospel authors, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Why does Luke and Matthew have material in common that is missing from Mark? So scholars have surmised there must have been another source that Matthew and Luke had that Mark did not or Mark rejected. Here the Gospel of Mark is basically the oral charigma or the oral proclamation, the oral tradition of the Hellenistic churches that were founded by Paul that Mark sort of strung together and made into a narrative. So then Matthew, he takes Mark's skeleton or his skeletal narrative and about 80% of Mark has been incorporated into the Gospel of Matthew. It is his narrative frame. We also have the Q-source document integrated into the Gospel of Matthew. And of course some of the material that's found in Q-source is the Ministry of John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, various parables, pericapies that are given by Issa, the interesting thing is none of the material in the Q-source document contradicts anything that the Qur'an or hadith say about the Prophet Issa a.s. So that could actually represent the true injil, and when we say injil with a capital I, al-injil, not these anajil, but what was the true Gospel given to Issa a.s. possibly the Q-source document. Of course nothing physical has ever been found. Again, this is a theory but it's a highly developed theory and it's a theory that's very popular amongst New Testament scholars that there was a Q-source document because this is the only thing that really explains why Matthew and Luke have so much material in common, almost verbatim, that Mark did not. They must have had access to another source. And again, we can sort of reconstruct what Q contained by looking at the similarities between Matthew and Luke. And another thing we mentioned last time as well is that most scholars will actually date the Q-source document to about 55 or earlier, some even say in the 40s. And if it's dated to the 40s that means that it's not been influenced, it was not influenced by Pauline dogmatism or Paul's interpretation of the Gospel of Issa a.s. So it's very, very primitive and very uncorrupted if this document could ever be found. It would be very, very interesting to analyze it, but so far nothing has been found. And of course, the Vatican has 55 miles of shelf space, so we have no idea what they have buried there in the Vatican vault. Maybe they have something similar to this, Allahu Anam. So Matthew then on his desk, he has the Gospel of Mark, he has a Q-source document, and he might have another document as well. Because remember, Matthew also has material in his Gospel that is not found in any other Gospel, right? No other Gospel contains this material which is called M, right? M material, special, methion material. For example, Matthew chapter 7, verse 21, when Jesus says, on that day many will come to me and say, master, master, did we not prophesize in your name and cast out demons? We mentioned this last time as well. That's only found in the Gospel of Matthew. So either Matthew has a third source, a physical manuscript of some sort, or this is oral tradition, right, that he has remembered from his community. So we don't know exactly. Now Matthew's edits and redactions, so this is very interesting because most Christians will say that the Gospel of Mark is the word of God. It's inspired by God. And again, we make a difference between inspiration and revelation, whereas we say as Muslims, the Quran is the revelation of God in the sense that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is simply repeating what he is hearing in the form of Arabic that he is not articulating the inspiration himself. We would call that hadith. The Quran are literally the word spoken by God, the ipsisma verba of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is simply a vessel by which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks to us through him. So every single sentence, every single kalima, every harf of the Quran was chosen by, especially by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is what we believe about the Quran. So then we said studying the syntax of the Quran is part of the process of commenting then upon the Quran. But what we have with the Gospel of Mark is basically like our interpretation of hadith is that Christians believe Mark was inspired by the Holy Spirit and then through his own mind and through his own heart he would try to articulate that inspiration. Now, if Matthew believed that, certainly he would faithfully represent or reproduce what Mark was inspired to write by the Holy Spirit. In fact, that's not the case. We find Matthew time and again, redacting, revising what he has as far as the Gospel of Mark. Just a few examples of this. In Mark chapter one, we are told that, Isa'alayh salam, he cleanses a leper, right? This man who had leprosy, obviously very, very dangerous and very contagious skin disease. It says in the Gospel of Mark that Isa'alayh salam, he was moved by orgystace. This is the Greek word that's used by Mark. Orgystace means that Jesus was moved by anger and wrath and he finally decided to clean the man or the cleanser to heal the man. Matthew changes this word completely and says he was moved by compassion. So Matthew reproduces this pericopee from Mark chapter one in Matthew chapter eight, but he removes this word that he found to be problematic. So this is an example of Matthew redacting Mark. If Matthew believed that Mark was inspired by God, certainly he wouldn't redact a text that was inspired by God. Of course, as we had said again, none of the four Gospel authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, explicitly mention that they're being inspired by anyone to write anything. Actually Luke at the beginning of his Gospel is called the Preamble and that's our next Gospel. We'll get to it in a few minutes. Insha'Allah, Luke actually gives his reasons why he writes his Gospel and has nothing to do with being inspired by the Holy Ghost or by God or anyone. We'll get to that, insha'Allah ta'ala. But another example of Matthew's edits and redactions of the Markian text. In Mark chapter three, this is the pericopee of the man with the withered hand. And Mark says that Jesus looked around with anger and grieved at the hardness of their hearts. So in Matthew chapter 12, Matthew completely removes this entire line from the narrative. Again, he found it very problematic that Jesus can become angry, that he is complaining about people. That's sort of against the Christology that Matthew wants to convey about Isa'Allah. Because Isa'Allah, his maqam, if you will, is growing and growing and growing amongst these Gospels. There's an evolution of Christology. In the Gospel of Mark, again, we have Jesus as the suffering prophet, the hidden messiah, right? His passion narrative is somewhat pathetic. It's a very anemic Christology in the Gospel of Mark. And then suddenly in Matthew, he's the open messiah. And Matthew begins to make these edits of the Markian narrative, reforming Isa'Allah's character, making him more like a demigod than a prophet. And then we get to Luke and then we get to John. And John obviously is the crescendo of Christology. And that's the book, the Gospel of John, that had the most profound influence on Orthodox Christianity, more than any other book in the New Testament, the Gospel of John. And that's the Gospel we're gonna be looking at in future classes. Inshallah to Allah. We're gonna spend several classes looking at the Gospel of John because of its extreme importance to understand Orthodox Christianity. Another example of a Matthewian edit of a Markian pericabee happens in Matthew chapter nine. So in Matthew chapter nine, Matthew is taking the story of Jerryus' daughter, whom Jesus raised from the dead. And Matthew basically cuts the entire narrative in half, right? Because he found Mark to be a little too wordy. Again, if Matthew believes that Mark's narrative is the word of God, certainly he wouldn't do something like that. And finally, in Matthew chapter 15, Matthew, he reproduces the healings that Mark describes in Mark chapter seven. And Mark describes these healings with 65 Greek words. So it's somewhat long, the process of the healings. How did Asa al-Islam, according to Mark, heal people? According to Mark, he would put his fingers in their ears. He would use his saliva, right? He would spit in their face and rub his saliva on their faces because the saliva of a prophet has healing properties, as mentioned in the hadith as well. He would touch their tongues if they were mute and they would speak again. So Matthew doesn't like any of these details. So he takes these 65 words and he makes it into three words. He says, Kai, Itharapeusan, autos. He simply says, and he healed them, right? So again, Matthew is trimming down, paring down these marked pericapies. He finds them too wordy. He finds them unnecessary. Let's get on to bigger and better things. Don't worry about the process of the healing. Let's just talk about what he actually did. He just healed them. So these details are not important for the gospel of Matthew. Now, what's interesting now, if we talk about textual criticism. So we talked about, there's different types of criticisms in the New Testament. This is called the HCM, the historical critical method. So this really began in the 19th century in Germany. You have redaction criticism, source criticism, form criticism, textual criticism, something we touched upon in previous classes, I believe. This is when you actually study the text itself and try to determine what is the original reading of the text if you have two different texts. You have a contradiction, for example. So we have this issue in the Hadith. For example, if there's Hadith that seemed to contradict one another, the Erlema will try to make Jama'a. They'll try to harmonize the account, right? So we mentioned last time, for example, one Hadith says a prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he had his chest split and his heart was washed. When he was a child, another tradition says that this happened when he was an adult, just before the Lady of Isra and Me'raj. So is this a contradiction? The Erlema say, well, it happened twice, right? Or if one is a stronger tradition, then you give that one tarjeeh, you give it preponderance, you give it priority. So with the gospel of Matthew, we have something interesting. Matthew chapter 24, verse 36. It's Jesus, Alaihi Wasallam, is reported to have said, he said, of that day, no with no man, not the angels, not even the son, but only the father, right? And remember again, we can't stress this enough that when Alaihi Wasallam talks about the father in heaven, he's not talking about his literal father who begot him. This comes much later in the church synods and ecumenical councils in the fourth century, this definition of God being the literal father of Jesus, who begot Jesus, he didn't create him. This was articulated much, much later. We're talking about first century Palestine. In that context, God was the father of Bani Israel in a metaphorical sense. Again, Isaiah chapter 64, verse 16, one of the prayers of the prophet Isaiah is, atah adonai avinu, you are the Lord, our Father. So no Jewish rabbi in the history of Judaism has ever said that God is our literal father or God is a literal father of the Messiah. This is a Christian idea that does not really come to fruition in its orthodox sense until about the fourth century of the common era. So don't let this kind of language for the New Testament sort of dilute you and say, oh, this is immediate kufur. How can we even read these types of things when Jesus of that day, no with no man, not the angels, not even the son? When he refers to himself as the son, this is simply a messianic title in the first century. First of all, any Jew who was a practicing Jew is called the son of God. In the book of Psalms, chapter 82, verse six, it says, kullakim, all of you are bani al-yon. You are all sons of the most high God. Again, this was not literal, right? Bal'ibadu mukramun, as the Quran says. They say God has sons. No, they're just servants raised to honor. That was the point of it in the Old Testament, but because this concept of filial love, father and son, mother and son, mother and daughter, this concept was corrupted over time. Therefore, the Quran refrains from using that analogy because the Christians started saying things like, Jesus is the literal begotten son of God. And this obviously is very clearly repudiated in the Quran, lam yelid wa lam yulad and many other places in the Quran as well. Anyway, so getting back to this verse 24, 36 of Matthew, he says of that day, the day of judgment, nobody knows, not the angels, uday hahuias, not even the son referring to himself. So this appears in very early manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, but later manuscripts actually have that part removed from the text. It's removed from the text because scribes of the proto-Orthodox persuasion, those who would come to articulate Trinitarian positions, they didn't like the fact that Isa'a alaihi salam doesn't know the day of judgment. So they had it removed. So textual criticism, what does it do? It looks at what's known as external evidence. That's the first kind of thing they look at, textual critics, what is external evidence? External evidence is, do other Gospels record the saying of Isa'a alaihi salam? If it does, then we could probably establish multiple attestation. So if Matthew has two different readings of the same verse, like one of them says, the son doesn't know, one of them doesn't say that at all. That part has been removed. What do we do? How do we know which one's the true one? Well, what does Mark say? Because Mark predates the Gospel of Matthew. And in Mark chapter 13 verse 32, that's exactly what it says that the son does not know the day of judgment. So from the standpoint of external evidence, it seems like the reading where it says, uday ha-hu-yas, not even the son, seems to be the more authentic reading. And then you look at something called internal evidence. So textual criticism, again, you look at external evidence, other manuscripts, other Gospels, how is the reading preserved? Is it a popular reading? What does Mark say about it? What does Luke say about it? What does John say about it, if anything? And then you look at internal evidence. And internal evidence has two categories. The first one is called intrinsic probabilities. Intrinsic probabilities means you have to look at Matthew himself, his vocabulary, his theology, right? Which reading seems to be more in line with how Matthew presents Jesus, right? So which one is it? Is it that the son does not know or that the son knows the day of judgment? Well, in Matthew chapter 21, it says that Jesus doesn't know when fig trees are in and out of season. So this idea that Jesus doesn't know a few things is already mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. So again, this gives support to the idea, to the theory that the original reading is the correct reading, that huday ha-hu-yas should be in that verse, that Jesus simply does not know the day of judgment. And then you look at something called transcriptional probabilities. Transcriptional probabilities means, okay, if the scribe added it or took it away, why did the scribe do that? And we touched upon that earlier. Why would the scribe, reading Matthew, take out that one clause that says, Jesus does not know the day of judgment? The reason why he would do that is, again, because at this point, probably in the late second century, the early third century, there's a strong trend to deify, Esalaam, to say he was a divine being. He's not just a prophet, he's not just the Messiah, that he's actually the Son of God. In fact, he's God. So they found that verse problematic. It explicitly says, huday ha-hu-yas, not even the Son, knows the day of judgment. So that was removed from the text. So this is called textual criticism. So that ends our look at the Gospel of Matthew. We're gonna move on now to the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke is called Katalu Khan, according to Luke. Luke actually wrote in two volumes. So there's a Gospel of Luke and then there's the book of Acts, A-C-T-S. This is called A'amal al-Rusul, the Acts of the Apostles. Rusul here meaning the disciples of Esalaam. So the book of Acts is sort of the early ecclesiastical or early church history, the history of the Sahaba, if you will, of Esalaam. It's the fifth book of the New Testament. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and then you have the book of Acts or Apostolic history. How did the movement go from Jerusalem, a small movement to Rome? So the book of Acts, it basically ends with Paul going into Rome and falls short of explaining how he actually had died. But now the message of Esalaam basically goes global. That's the book of Acts. Getting back to the Gospel of Luke, however, the Gospel of Luke, who is Luke? Luke is a pupil of Paul. This is the Christian claim that Luke studied with Paul and of course Paul is the messenger to the Gentiles, as also is the Christian claim. This is highly unlikely, however, because Luke never mentions any of Paul's letters in Luke or Acts, which is very strange that if someone studies under somebody, he doesn't mention any of his principal letters or correspondences that he had with the churches that he founded. Also, sometimes Luke's account of certain events is different than Paul's account of certain events. For example, Paul's conversion, the details of Paul's conversion in the desert on the way to Damascus, there's different versions of it. Luke and Paul seem to be in disagreement at some time. Therefore, just like Matthew and Luke and John as well, most scholars will say the Gospel of Luke is anonymous. No one knows who wrote the Gospel of Luke. It was anonymously ascribed to a student of Paul later on. And of course, Irenaeus, the early church father and bishop of Lyon in France, he was the first one to really name these four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Before that time, they were anonymous and then he thought that they need to have some apostolic credibility, so he named them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Where was the Gospel written? We don't know, it's unknown. Possibly in Antioch, possibly in Ephesus. There's difference of opinion about that. Of course, these are places where Pauline influence was heavy, but we'll see, however, that there's something that Luke believes about Jesus that Paul totally disagrees with. We'll get to that in a minute. Very, very interesting, inshallah, we'll get to that. When was the Gospel written? Most scholars say about 85 to 90 of the common era. So this is after the destruction of the second temple. So remember, the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by General Titus in 70 of the common era. The temple was never to be rebuilt again. That's around the time that Mark wrote his Gospel. Therefore, Mark is very apocalyptic, it's very eschatological. Mark believes the end of time is going to come any minute just based on what's going on around him, what happened in Jerusalem, the natural disaster, so on and so forth. Then Matthew wrote a few years later and finally Luke around 85 to 90 of the common era. So the Christian movement is in somewhat disarray during this time, but it is starting to grow and it's starting to enter into the Gentile lands and the congregations are beginning to grow. Who is the Gospel for? New Testament scholars will say that it's written for Gentile Christians dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. Now I want you to turn to the Gospel of Luke at the beginning because here's Luke's preamble and it's very, very revealing because no other Gospel author really gives his intention as to why he wrote his Gospel, maybe except for the Gospel of John at the end of the Gospel of John, he says these things were written because some people say all these things are history and they're trying to present accurate history. History is very much secondary to the Gospel authors. They're writing their history through the lens of theology. I mean, this is theological history. They're not trying to present historical facts and figures. There is some of that happening, but by and large they're trying to write theological history. So John he actually says the point of all of this is that so that you might know that Jesus is the Son of God, not that he was crucified in truth or that he lived in certain dates and that those things are secondary for the authors of the Gospels. So you really can't separate history from theology when studying these Gospels. These Gospels are thoroughly drenched in theology and that's the point of view from which they were written. Anyway, so the Gospel of Luke he says here in as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled amongst us. So what is he talking about here? Luke is saying many people have written about what I'm about to write about. What is he about to write about? He's about to do a Gospel of Jesus Christ of Esalaeiselam. And Luke uses the word many. The Greek here is poloë, like we get the word polytheism, many, right? So we have to ask ourselves, there are many Gospels at this time when Luke is writing, what is he talking about? Which Gospels? The only ones we know of, right? From an Orthodox Christian perspective is the Gospel of Mark. Yes, he had that. He had Q, which can be called the sayings Gospel, but he did not have Matthew. So that's only two Gospels. So what is Luke, so this is evidence here that at Luke's time, 85 to 90 of the common era, there were many Gospels that were floating around. This is very revealing. Where are all these Gospels? What did they contain? We know that there was a Gospel according to the Ebonites. We know there was a Gospel according to the Hebrews. These are from the Jewish Christian perspective, the perspective of Jamesonian Christianity, but these books are lost today. We know that they existed though, because proto-Orthodox church fathers would quote from them in their refutations of them and their polemical works. Is this what Luke is talking about? If so, these are very early Gospels then, right? We have no idea in reality what Luke is talking about when he says there are many Gospels, because from, again, an Orthodox perspective, it's only Mark and Q at this point. So that's interesting, keep that in mind. And then he says, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers to the word delivered amongst us, it seemed good to me also. He says in the Greek, which means literally, it seemed like a good idea to me to write this Gospel. So this is Luke's intention. Luke is saying, it just seems like a good idea. He's not saying, I'm being inspired by the Holy Ghost. God came to me in a dream or a vision or a awakened state and he said to me, oh, Luke, you have to write a Gospel of Jesus Christ. No, he's saying it seems like a good idea to me to write a Gospel of Jesus Christ. He says, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write to you in orderly account, most excellent Theophilus. So this is very, very interesting. Luke here is saying that this Gospel is actually a letter that he's writing to a man named Theophilus, right? So who is Theophilus? So different opinions about this. So one opinion, a strong opinion, a stronger opinion is that Theophilus is some sort of Roman official who wants to know about Issa alaihi salam. So he hires Luke, who's a physician, right? Luke is traditionally known as a physician and Luke obviously can do things more orderly, as he says, than a bunch of fishermen and a bunch of tax collectors like the previous Gospel authors. So he's more educated. So he pays Luke to write this Gospel. So Theophilus could be Luke's patron, right? And this is a letter that he wrote to Theophilus. Another opinion, which is an interesting opinion, is that this is a dedication to Theophilus, not as a literal person, but Theophilus in the sense that because the name Theophilus means a lover of God, right? So maybe Luke here is saying to his reader, if you're a lover of God, then this Gospel is for you. And that's a very interesting interpretation, but the first opinion is the strongest, that there's an actual man named Theophilus, a certain individual who probably patronized Luke and therefore Luke is writing his Gospel because he was hired by Theophilus to do so. Some new characters that are mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, we have Elizabeth and Zechariah mentioned. Elizabeth is the mother of Yahya A.S. She is the mother of John the Baptist, according to the Gospel of Luke, and Zechariah is the priest who is the father of John the Baptist, according to the Gospel of Luke. Both are aged and childless. So Isaac then become sort of this typology of John the Baptist. So remember the story of Isaac, it's mentioned in the book of Genesis. It's also mentioned a few times in the Quran like Surah Hud in which we are told that Sarah, alayhi salam, the mother of Isaac was very, very old at the time the angels came to her home and Ibrahim alayhi salam obviously was there and then they told her she was going to give birth. And she laughed. And interestingly enough, the name Yitzchak in Hebrew is actually Idhaq in Arabic. Idhaqa, yadhaqu, falaf, right? That's what his name actually means in Hebrew. His name means laughter. So because Fadahikat, she laughed, Sarah said, I'm an old woman, my husband is an old man. This is a wonderful strange thing, she said to the angels, right? So Isaac then is sort of this typology of John the Baptist. So Elizabeth and Zechariah also were aged, they were childless. So according to Luke then, John is like the link between Israel's past and future blessings in Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. So then Jacob then is, because Jacob is the son of Isaac, Jacob is then seen as sort of this typology of Isa alayhi salam foreshadowing of Isa alayhi salam. Jacob had 12 sons that represent the 12 tribes of Israel and of course Isa alayhi salam, according to the Gospels, has 12 disciples. Also new characters in the Gospel of Luke. We have in Matthew, in Matthew, we had the Holy Spirit coming to Mary, Maryam alayhi salam and telling her that the Holy Spirit shall come upon you or she was inspired that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall give birth to a son and shall name his name Jesus. It says that was the Holy Spirit. But in the Gospel of Luke, it says that an angel came to Mary. Her English, Gabriel, the angel Gabriel came to Maryam alayhi salam. So if we were to harmonize these two accounts because it seems again like there's a contradiction here. The Gospel of Matthew, it says that it was the Holy Spirit who announced to Maryam that she was going to have a son. In the Gospel of Luke, it says it was an angel named Gabriel. So how do we harmonize these two accounts? Is there a contradiction? No, it's very clear that the Ruh al-Qudus or Ruh al-Qadosh that's mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, this is Jubeel alayhi salam. It simply means that an angel came and announced to her it's it says in Surah al-Maran or in Surah Maryam that it says that an angel came to her in the form of a man and she was afraid, right? Who is this man coming near me? So she said, get away if you fear Allah SWT and he said, don't be afraid. I'm only here to give you glad tidings of a pure and holy son. So this is very interesting that the angel here or the Holy Spirit as it were is identified by Luke as being Gabriel. Also, another new character in Luke is Simeon. Simeon is mentioned early in the Gospel of Luke as a just man. He is a Pharisee. He foretells Jesus as a messiahship as a revelation to the Gentiles. So he's somewhat of a prophetic figure and keep this kind of theme in mind as well when we look at the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke, the author of Luke is trying to really universalize the message of Isa alayhi salam. So he had the Gospel of Mark, right, the messianic secret which sort of helps explain why the Gospel wasn't spread so much. It wasn't very popular. The Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, I was only sent into the Lot Sheep at the house of Israel. So his message is more tailored almost exclusively to Bani Israel, but in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is seen as sort of like this light to the Gentiles, more universal. And his message, we'll talk more about that later, inshallah, ta'ala. We also have the sisters, Mary and Martha that are introduced to us in the Gospel of Luke. This is not Mary, the mother of Isa alayhi salam. These are the sisters of Lazarus. Lazarus is apparently a friend of Isa alayhi salam that's mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of John, he's actually raised from the dead by Isa alayhi salam in John chapter 11. And finally we have Herod Antipas mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, mentioned during the passion narrative of Luke's Gospel. So in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, there's no mention that Isa alayhi salam was taken to Herod. He was simply taken to Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, right? So it's more localized. But here Herod Antipas, who is Herod Antipas? Herod Antipas is the Roman appointed kind of king of Judea, right? So he's a Roman puppet. So Luke here, he wants to aggrandize the Jesus event, the passion narrative, that this has global implications, right? That this is touching upon Rome as well, not just kind of a localized thing that happened in the temple with the high priest and a few people, and then there was a crucifixion. No, that Jesus was actually taken to Herod Antipas, the sort of Roman political leader, the Roman puppet, a Jew by religion, but in the back pocket of the Roman Empire. And Herod will interrogate Isa alayhi salam as well. Again, this sort of universalizes, or grandizes the message of the Gospel. And that's an important theme for Luke. And so major concepts that are found in the Gospel of Luke. We have an extension of Israel's blessings to the world, right? So John's successor, who is Jesus, is seen as like the pivot by which history is now turning. So Matthew had this very strong kind of anti-Jewish supercessionism, the Jews have been replaced and they're done, and member Caiaphas said, may his blood be upon us and upon our descendants after us, right? The Jews have sort of been replaced and sort of forsaken by God at this point and cursed by God according to Matthew's apparent understanding. But Luke sort of softens the image on the Jews and says, no, Israel's blessings are now extended to the rest of humanity. And Jesus is sort of that axis by which the world sort of pivoted. And this is interesting because theologians and scholars of religion, historians of religion, they talk about certain epics in history that are known as axial ages, right? An axial age, this term was first coined by a German philosopher named Jaspers, Carl Jaspers, he called it Ashenzeit, which means axis time. So for example, the time between 900 before the common era and 200 before the common era, that 700 year span there, that's known as the great axial age. That's also during the iron age. What happened during that time is you have a massive increase in violence in the world because of iron weaponry, right? And you have these massive, huge, coercive, tyrannical governments all over the world that are now declaring war on people and oppressing people and there's massive oppression and licentiousness and all of these types of things. So it's really interesting during this time you have these axial sages and prophets springing up all over the world really from five distinct geographical locations and those prophets and sages, their teachings still reverberate to this day. The vast majority of humanity today is still swayed by what happened during that axial age. For example, you have in India, you have the Dharmic faiths which stress orthopraxis, right? Doing the right thing. Dharm means orthopraxis, the right action to be compassionate, to be merciful. You have the emergence of the Buddha during this time whose name is Siddhartha Gautama who was a model of compassion who told people that you need to be people of mercy and compassion and that the first noble truth is that the world is in a state of suffering and the reason for that suffering is herbuddunya. He said it's tanha which means attachment or selfish craving. So he's kind of reacting to what's going on during this time in the axial age and then you have Mahavira, also the founder of Jainism who is a contemporary of the Buddha in India and then you have in Persia, you have the emergence of Zoroaster during this time and Zoroaster he stressed on good thoughts, good words and good deeds and then you have in China Confucius and Lao Tzu and Confucius' idea of gen, J-E-N which means goodness or love or beauty. You can even translate ihsan, that you should have beauty in everything that you do. And then you have in Greece, philosophical rationalism with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle during this time, during this axial age, they're about fifth century before the common era and finally you have in Canaan or in Palestine or in Israel, you have the great prophets of many Israel during this time, Elijah in Elias, you have Ezekiel, you have Daniel, you have Jeremiah, you have Amos, you have Hosea and many, many more during this time. So this is a time in which history pivoted, right? A turning point in history. So this is how Luke sees the Jesus event that Isa alaihi salam is the pivot by which history has now turned that the blessings of Israel are now extended to all of humanity. That's a major concept. Another major concept in the Gospel of Luke is Jerusalem as sort of a sacred stage, right? Jerusalem, the Gospel of Luke is focused on Jerusalem, not so much on Galilee, right? Because again, Galilee at the time, northern Palestine, especially Nazareth is sort of this backwater town that is not very well known. Some scholars actually denied, actually existed during that time and that it's sort of an anachronism to talk about Nazareth being in the first century. But nonetheless, Jerusalem is something that Luke concentrates on because again, he wants to aggrandize Isa alaihi salam. He wants to universalize, right? This was the center, this was the hub, this is where everything was happening. So Jerusalem is quite frequently the great setting of the Gospel of Luke. In fact, 10 chapters, Luke chapter nine to 19, that's called Luke's travel narrative, right? So basically, this is Jesus and his disciples making hijra, if you will, walking from Nazareth into Jerusalem and his teaching during this walk. During their traveling during this hijra from north to south, Luke devotes 10 chapters to just the travel narrative. And this material is not found in any other Gospel. This is special Luke in material, Luke chapter nine to 19. We'll talk about some of the celebrated teachings of the travel narrative a little bit later, inshallah ta'ala. Also, it is in Jerusalem where all of the post resurrection appearances happen as well as the ascension into heaven. So remember here, according to Matthew, the post resurrection appearances as well as the ascension happen in Galilee, not in Jerusalem. So this is a clear contradiction here between Luke and Matthew. Of course, in Mark, Mark the true ending of the Gospel of Mark, if you remember, was Mark chapter 16 verse eight. So no one actually sees a resurrected Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark. The women go to the tomb, it's empty, they run away and they're afraid. But the angel inside the tomb, or rather the young man, as he's called, inside the tomb, he tells the women that Jesus is not here. He's gone before you to Galilee. And that's where you can meet him. He's in Galilee. Jesus is no longer in Jerusalem according to Mark and Matthew. But for Luke, Galilee is not very important. It's Jerusalem, which is the center, the hub of Judaism. This is where it has to happen. So according to Luke, Jesus appears to his disciples several times in the city of Jerusalem, and this is actually where he ascends into heaven as well. So this is a clear contradiction between Luke and Matthew, or between Luke and Mark. The third major theme we have here with the Gospel of Luke is a sort of a modified Markan eschatology. That Luke modifies Markan expectation of an immediate end. To show that Jesus' work is continued by the believing community. In Luke chapter 19, the parable of the talents that demonstrates that there's still some work to be done here. So again, Luke as well as Matthew, they sort of downplay this idea that the end of time is imminent any day now because obviously it didn't happen, right? So again, Luke is writing around 85 to 90. Mark believed around 70 that yes, the destruction of the temple means that any day now it's going to be over. So he's taking that from Paul. That's Pauline influence. Whereas Luke as well as Matthew, they downplay this idea of an immediate end. Another major concept of the Gospel of Luke is this exoneration of Gentiles, that the Gentiles are not guilty for doing anything wrong and neither is Jesus for that matter. So if you look at Luke chapter 23, verse 17, this is the Roman centurion when he's at the site of the crucifixion. Of course, in the Gospel of Mark, the centurion says truly this man was the son of God and he uses that phrase son of God. Of course, a Roman pagan saying son of God is very different than a Jew at the time saying son of God because the Romans believed that Zeus has many sons and of course that's a complete pagan theology when compared to the theology of Bani Israel. But here in Luke 23, the Roman centurion says something different. He says in the Greek, he says antos, ha antropos, hutais, dikayosain. He says truly this man was innocent or this man was righteous, dikayos, means innocent, righteous, he was just, right? So what is he doing here? The Roman centurion is exonerating Esalaam saying he's not guilty of anything, right? What's the significance of that? We have to remember at this time, Christianity was seen by many Romans as a threat to the empire, that these Christians, they have these secret underground meanings where they're eating flesh. There was a lot of rumors about them that they were cannibals, that they would engage in immoral practices underground and things like that. So there's a lot of variables. There are a lot of unknowns about this small Christian group that's sort of infiltrating these Roman societies. So what does Luke do? Instead of having the centurion say, indeed this was a son of God and make it more focused on theology, Luke says, no, I'm going to have the centurion say, verily this man was innocent and kind of focus it more on the political scene at the time and sort of quelling sort of this sort of fear that the Romans had about the growing Christian movement. So that's very interesting that Luke actually chooses that wording. Also, there is an interesting verse when Isaias and Jesus apparently, according to the gospel of Luke is on the cross in Luke, he says, father forgive them, pater atheis autois for a father forgive them for the no, not what they're doing. Of course, that verse, and I think we've mentioned this in past classes. If not, we'll mention it now again because it's very important point that that verse of Jesus saying that is not part of Luke's original gospel. That verse was added much later by consensus of New Testament textual critics. So Isaias, according to Luke, he never actually said, father forgive them. What's the point of him saying that is because there was a Christian heretical movement known as Marcionism that was extremely vehemently anti-Jewish. They hated the Jews. They believe that the God of the Jews was actually a different God, right? A lesser God. So they were by theistic. They said there's two gods. There's a God of the Old Testament and then there's Jesus, the true God, and that the Jews are cursed and that the sons of Satan. So the proto-Orthodox scribes and scholars, they didn't like Marcion's position and Marcion was growing, his movement was growing in Rome, which was considered to be the capital of the world at the time. So somewhere down the line, probably in the second or third century, a scribe went back into the Gospel of Luke and put these words into the mouth of Jesus on the cross. Father forgive them, meaning the Jews, for they know not what they do, right? But according to New Testament scholars, Isaias never actually said such a thing. That's a latter, it's a later fabrication to the text of the Gospel of Luke. Again, according to external and internal evidence of textual criticism. Another major concept of Gospel of Luke is Christological revisions, right? Christological revisions in terms of vicarious atonement. So here we're talking about what's known as soteriology. Soteriology means the study of salvation. How does one go to heaven? What do they do? Is it strictly by good works, like in the religion of Jainism, right? Or is it vicarious atonement? Is someone else going to pay the price for you? Or is it works and a trust in God that he's going to have mercy on you? Or anything in between those positions? So this is very important to understand from Luke's perspective, because in Mark, it's very clear that Jesus dies, according to Mark 1045, as a ransom for many. And of course, again, Mark is highly influenced by Paul because they're very close as far as timeframe, right? Mark took this idea or theme of an immediate second coming directly from Paul. He also takes this Christological idea that Jesus dies for your sins from Paul as well. So that's found in the Gospel of Mark. And it seems like Matthew subscribes to that idea as well. But Luke says something very different. Instead, in Luke, Luke makes Jesus an example of someone, an example of service for his disciples. In other words, in Luke, Jesus does not die for your sins. There's no mystical atonement. Jesus sets an example of service and sacrifice, right? And in the book of Acts, Luke's second part, you see Paul and Peter and Stephen exemplifying that same type of service and sacrifice, willing to give their lives for the sake of the cause. Not that Jesus is the savior in the sense that he dies for your sins. No, but rather in the sense that he makes you conscious of sin and teaches you how to deal with it and is a living exemplar for how to conduct your lives. We'll talk more about this idea because it's very, very important in the next class of how Luke conceives of Jesus being the savior, right? And how it's different than how Paul interprets this role of savior. We'll do that next time, inshallah ta'ala. So last time we were talking about the Gospel of Luke. We had mentioned some of the major concepts that are found in Luke's Gospel. We talked about last class, at the end of class, that we're going to repeat and sort of drive home, because very, very important is this idea of a Christological revision of soteriology that happens in Luke. So the word soteriology, again, comes from the word soter and logia, the study of salvation. How does Luke conceive of Jesus with respect to his role in the salvific process? Is it like Matthew and Mark say that Jesus died for your sins because they're taking that directly from Paul lying in influence, or is there something else? So here's something interesting. In Luke, Jesus, again, does not die for your sins. He doesn't vicariously or mystically atone for your sins. He doesn't do that. He dies to set an example of service and sacrifice, just like the apostles did in the book of Acts, which, again, is Luke's second volume, his ecclesiastical history, the history of the early church. Paul, Peter, Stephen, and many other disciples willing to give their lives, emulating the beautiful example of Esalaesala. None of these Peter, Paul, Stephen, or Jesus, none of them died for your sins. What do they do? They're simply presenting themselves as examples on how to deal with sin in a sinful world. So that's very important. To be compassionate and forgiving, this is the chief component, or the chief attribute, of Esalaesala in the Gospel of Luke. So with respect to soteriology, the Gospel of Luke confirms what it says in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 20, it's very clear, the soul that sins shall die, die, meaning in the sense of a spiritual death. It says that the iniquity of the Father shall not be on the Son. The iniquity of the Son shall not be on the Father. And then it says, however, if the wicked would turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. What does turn mean here in Ezekiel chapter 18? Turn in Hebrew is called teshuvah. Like right now, during the recordings of these sessions, we're in something called the asaret yomim teshuvah, the ten days of Toba for the Jews. This begins in Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the year. Rosh Hashanah is Ratsosana, the head of the year, the new year. And it goes ten days until Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. So these ten days for the Jews are called the ten days of Teshuvah. What does it mean according to Judaism? So in Rosh Hashanah, Jews believe that the Taqdir Mu'allaq is written. So suspended Taqdir, suspended Qadr, preordainment, that the names of those who are going to go to heaven and the names of those who are going to go to hell, they're written in a book, but the book is not sealed yet. So these ten days, what are the Jews doing? They're making dua, they're supplicating, they're making Toba, so that their names might be moved to the book of life and then sealed. So this is a very important concept for Jews. This concept of Toba in Hebrew again is called teshuvah. It comes from the verb shuv yashuv, taba yatu bu toba. It's the same meaning, means to reorient oneself, to turn oneself towards Allah SWT. And this is the message of the Gospel. A major theme of the Gospel of Luke is personal responsibility that no one's going to die for your sins, that you are responsible for your own actions. So this is very, very important that in the Gospel of Luke again, Jesus does not die for anyone's sins. We'll return to this idea later, inshallah. Now also the Luke and Jesus is what's known as what Ehrman says, imperturbable. The Luke and Jesus is very calm, is very cool, he's very collected on the order of a stoic philosopher. He's in control, he has a lot of self-discipline. Luke eliminates Mark in descriptions of Jesus, that make him too humanly vulnerable. Luke doesn't like that. So for example, in the Gospel of Mark, we have what's known as the cry of dereliction. When he's, according to Mark, Matthew records this as well. When he's on the cross, he says, why hast thou forsaken me? So Luke doesn't like that. Luke says basically that Jesus would never say something like that. So he doesn't include that. When Jesus is on the cross, he doesn't say anything like that in the Gospel of Luke. And for people to say, well, you know, because in the Gospel of Luke, he says something different. He says, Father into your hands, I commend my spirit. And some people say, well, he said both. He said, Father into your hands, I commend my spirit. But before that, he said, you can believe that, but if you do that, you're really writing your own Gospel. Because Luke, remember, Luke is writing his Gospel, believing that what he is saying is the truth, a more orderly account for this person named Theophilus. He's not saying, well, this is a Gospel that supplements other Gospels. So if you want more information, go read Matthew or go read Mark. No, Luke is saying that my Gospel stands on its own. Therefore, what I'm saying is true. So Luke does not believe that Issa alaihi salam said, elahi ilahi lama sabachtani when he was on the cross. He does not believe Issa alaihi salam said that. And how do we know that? Because he had that text in front of him. He has Mark in front of him, where Jesus apparently said that. He did not include that in his Gospel. Of course, Imam Ghazali, when he read the Gospel in his Jameel, if he wrote it, some people say it's pseudonymous. But he says very clearly, obviously, this is not Issa alaihi salam saying this on the cross. A prophet would never say this. Of course, Issa alaihi salam was crucified to begin with. And of course, this actually supports this idea that this person on the cross might have actually said that. Some person who was made to appear like Jesus, possibly the trader, the man who betrayed him. He would say something like that. But certainly not a prophet of God, certainly not Issa alaihi salam. What's also interesting here is you have this scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Gospel of Luke, where it says that Jesus suddenly he falls down and he sweats, and the sweat becomes like blood. Now this is interesting because this goes back to what's known as textual criticism. Did this actually happen? Now there are some manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke that don't contain this incident. For example, the Aleph 01, the Codex Sinaiticus that we talked about, the oldest complete version of the New Testament in Greek, does not contain these verses of Jesus breaking down in the Garden and sweating like blood. It's also not contained in the manuscript known as B, which is the Codex Vaticanus, also a fourth century, very early, complete Greek version of the New Testament. And when we talk about intrinsic probabilities, we look at internal evidence, intrinsic probabilities, meaning that isn't even in the style of Luke to have Jesus break down in sweat blood, it isn't. Because again, the Luke in Jesus is imperturbable. He's cool, calm, and collected. For him to something break down like that is completely out of character, so it doesn't match the personality type of Isalae Salaam, at least the Luke in Isalae Salaam. And also in that section of blood and sweat, these words are Hapax legamanoi. They appear no other place in the Gospel of Luke nor in the Book of Acts. So this lends credence to the fact that this verse is inauthentic, that this actually did not happen. So the point of this is to tell you that the Gospel of Luke as well is not immune to scribal fabrications. So then the question then becomes what's known as transcriptional probabilities is why were these verses added to the Gospel of Luke? Why do you want to make Jesus break down and start sweating like blood? The reason is because again, this was a response to a Christological heresy known as Marcianism. This shows you how influential Marcianism was during this period. Again, Marcian was a Christian who said that there's two gods. There's a god of the Old Testament. There's a god of the New Testament. The Jews are the sons of Satan. He said that Jesus didn't actually have a physical body. He was a phantom. So Marcian is a dosetist from the Greek doceo, which means to seem. Jesus only seemed to have a body, but he was actually a pure spirit. And so Marcian loved the Gospel of Luke because Luke presents Jesus as sort of this really calm, cool and collected person who's not really affected by a lot of emotion. So he said that's because he's actually a spirit. So what happened is that the scribe understanding this proto-Orthodox scribes, they went back and they added this section, Luke chapter 22 versus 43 and 44 of Jesus suddenly breaking down out of character and sweating like blood because they want to prove that no, Jesus was a human being and he did have his moment, so to speak. But this verse is inauthentic. Again, the point of him mentioning this to you is that the scripture, even in the very early period, is in flux. It's changing. It's being affected by heterodox or heretical movements. So scribes are going in and making these changes. In origin of Alexandria, who lived in the third century, who wrote over a thousand books, the most prolific of the pre-Nicene early church fathers, he admits very clearly that, yes, scribes went into the New Testament and they added things and they deleted things and he actually condemns the scribes for doing that. He says you shouldn't do that. Why do you keep doing that? Right? This is admitted by origin of Alexandria, one of the champions of proto-Orthodox Christianity. So that's very, very interesting. Now, some Lukean themes. What are some of the themes of the Gospel of Luke? One of the major themes is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a major actor in the Gospel of Luke, as well as the book of Acts. So the Christian community in the Gospel of Luke is quite charismatic. And the word charismatic comes from Karama, that their spirit-led, their spirit-empowered, they can perform miracles. In Acts chapter two, for example, remember Acts also written by Luke, Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost, we are told that 120 disciples were in the upper room where Isaias had his last supper. And the day of Pentecost was 50 days after the supposed resurrection, I believe. And when they're in the upper room, the Holy Spirit will descend like fire and the disciples start speaking in tongues. So if you go to Pentecostal churches today in America, this is what happens in their church. You go to the church and people are speaking in tongues and it's really not any type of intelligent language, though. They actually take classes on how to say things. It's gibberish, not really saying anything. One time this lady, she thought I was possessed by a demon because I knew the Bible, I guess. So she said, oh Lord, give me a language that he'll understand. She started speaking in tongues, but it was complete gibberish. And she asked me, do you understand this language? And I said, no, that's not any type of language. So this is, most of these people are, you know, it's a demagoguery. They're charlatans. But according to the Gospel of Luke, and I'm sorry, the book of Acts, that's what happened according to Acts chapter two. The Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost and 120 disciples. They start speaking the tongues of all the world. And Arabic is actually mentioned as one of the tongues that they were speaking in Acts chapter two. So I asked this Christian lady, I said, look, the disciples can speak in Arabic. Can you please ask the Holy Spirit to give you Arabic so I can understand it? And of course, that didn't happen. So this is an important event because there's also 120 cardinals in the Vatican, right? So the number of cardinals is supposed to be the same as the number of disciples that were inspired by the Holy Spirit. So the logic here is that the cardinals really kind of represent that original first community of the Christians. So when the cardinals in the Vatican, they get together in conclave and elect a pope. The assumption is that the Holy Spirit also will guide them into picking the correct pope. So that's very interesting. The Holy Spirit is a major player in the book of Luke as well as the book of Acts. Also, a major theme in the Gospel of Luke is prayer, right? You see people praying all the time. Jesus prays a lot. The disciples pray a lot, right? Another major theme are crowds. Crowds in Greek is called okloi. That wherever Jesus goes, there's a lot of crowds everywhere. What does that have to do with anything? Remember, the Gospel of Mark is very localized, messianic secret. You know, nobody really knows Jesus as a small group of followers. Again, Luke is trying to aggrandize Jesus. He's trying to say that this was a very big deal. There's crowds wherever he goes, hundreds and thousands of people following him around. So this is very important for the author of the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus is universal in his appeal. Another major theme is concern for women. Women are essential to the divine plan according to the Gospel of Luke. So you have Elizabeth and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. I'm sorry, Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of John and Jesus respectively. You have Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, also disciples of Jesus. You have the women going to the tomb on Easter Sunday, which is also found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. And of course, when Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke, is going to his crucifixion, of course he's very stoic. He's imperturbable. The women are crying for him and he's saying, if you knew what I knew, you would cry for yourselves. So women are a constant theme in the Gospel of Luke. Again, Luke is trying to appeal to a wider audience. He's trying to universalize the message of Jesus. Now, getting back to this idea as Jesus as Savior, because this is very, very important. Because you ask Christians today, say, how do I get to heaven? Christians will tell you, you have to believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, right? Lord and Savior. This is Kurias Kai Sauter. This was the title of the Roman emperor, right? So Christians took this directly from the emperor cult. They called the Roman emperor Kurias Kai Sauter, Lord and Savior, or Master and Savior, right? So what does it mean for Jesus to be Savior? Because it's mentioned that Jesus is the Savior in chapter 2, verse 11. For Luke, Savior, not in the sense, again, that he died for your sins, not in that sense, but rather, as one who teaches you how to deal with sin and a means of salvation. So they revised the, I'm sorry, the New English Bible, right? It translates Sauter as Deliverer, and that's a better translation. One who delivers you from sin, just like Moses did to Bani Isra'il. Musa alaihi salam was a vehicle by which God delivered the Bani Isra'il. Not just delivered them physically from the Pharaoh, but delivered them from sin by means of the Torah, right? So in that sense, every prophet is then a Savior, never in the sense that a prophet dies for the sins of humanity. This has nothing to do with Judaism. Christians will try to say, this is something that's foretold in the Old Testament, right? That on Yom Kippur you sacrificed one lamb and you let one go into the wilderness and the sins of the community are scapegoated upon. Well, that's, that was an outward ritual of an inward reality, which was toba. The real forgiveness was an inward state called tshuva for the Jews. It was toba. It was not vicarious atonement. That goes against the very fabric of their religion. We quoted the book of Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 20. The sin of the father is not on the son and vice versa. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him. The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. As it says in Ezekiel, chapter 18, in the book of Deuteronomy, in the Torah, chapter 24, it says, every man shall be put to death according to his own sin. Very clearly, Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verse 17, every man is put to death for his own sin. No one is put to death for someone else's sins, right? No one can vicariously atone for your sins. Take your sins away like that. That doesn't mean that there isn't tshafa and things like that on the Yom al-Qiyamah. That's not what we're talking about here. That's different. That's not vicarious atonement, right? That's intercession with God, right? That person doesn't take your sin. That person appeals to God and asks God to forgive you. That's very, very different than someone physically taking on your sin and being killed because of that sin, and therefore you're set free and you can go to Jannah and you're home free. So it's a very, very different idea when you get down to the nuances. So this is important. His death, where Christians believe he died, his death for Luke makes people realize that they're guilt before God, so they turn to God in repentance and then he forgives their sin, right? So Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is not a sacrifice for sin. He is an example of compassion for all to emulate. He and his followers are completely innocent of any crime against Rome. Jesus is the martyr prophet. So this is a major theme of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is the martyr prophet. That's the meaning of Savior. Savior here does not mean one who, the Lamb of God like John says, who takes away the sins of the world. John gets back to this idea of Jesus as Savior, right? Because his community was highly influenced by Pauline dogmatism. And that's very interesting because Luke is supposed to be a disciple of Paul, but Luke completely disagrees with Paul in the sense that Jesus is not the Savior in the sense that he died for your sins, but rather as a martyr prophet, one who gives you an example on how to live your life and delivers you by means of his teaching, not by him taking the sins of you in some mysterious type of way. So let's look at, and there's parables that Esai Asalam gives according to Luke that demonstrate this very, very clearly. And maybe we'll get to that this class or maybe the next class, but let's look at the structure first of the Gospel of Luke. So the structure is really eight parts. You have the preface that we read, Luke's preamble or dedication to his patron, a theophilus. Then you have the infancy narratives of John the Baptist and Esai Asalam. Then you have the prelude to the ministry, which includes the baptism of Esai Asalam, the genealogy of Esai Asalam in his temptation in the wilderness by Satan. Now I want to talk about this genealogy for a second. Remember, Matthew also gave a genealogy of Esai Asalam in Matthew chapter one. Matthew says that, and Matthew traces Esai Asalam's ancestry all the way back to Abraham. Luke actually traces it all the way back to Adam. What's interesting is, if you look at these genealogies, if you start with Abraham, the first 13 names on both lists are the same. Basically, Abraham to David, they're the same. After that point, no two names are identical when you look at Matthew and Luke. In other words, here's a man, Jesus, who has two very different genealogies. So the question then becomes, which one of these is the correct genealogy? Is there a way to make jama to harmonize this clear contradiction? Christians have attempted to do it. Some of them say the genealogy in Matthew chapter one is Joseph the Carpenter's genealogy, because that's the final name on the list. Whereas in Luke chapter three, this is the genealogy of Maryam A.S. However, this does not work because if you look at the final name in Luke's genealogy, it is not Mary, it's Joseph the Carpenter. Mary has nothing to do with this genealogy. In fact, Mary is not a descendant of David at all, according to Luke. She's a descendant of Aaron. She's from the tribe of Levi, according to the Gospel of Luke. We'll talk about that verse. So that explanation, that attempt at harmonization does not work. So this is a clear contradiction in the New Testament, that he has two separate and distinct very different genealogies. So there was a second century Christian scholar named Tashin, T-A-T-I-A-N, Tashin, and he was a student of Justin Marder, one of the great proto-Orthodox scholars. Tashin did something called the Deotesseron. Maybe we mentioned this in the past class. Deotesseron means through four, through four. What does this mean, Deotesseron? What is it? It's his gospel harmony. So this is what Tashin did. He took Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he took them and he put them into a single narrative. So instead of four different narratives of Esa, he wanted to put them all and harmonize them, harmonize all of their contradictions, and make it into a single narrative. And the Deotesseron was really the standard in the Syriac-speaking churches until the fourth century, when the Paschita, or the Basita, took its place. And the Basita is not a harmony. It's actually four gospels like it is in the traditional New Testament. But what's interesting about Tashin is he said that he was able to harmonize every single contradiction in the New Testament except for the genealogies. He could not figure out what to do with these genealogies, so he doesn't even attempt to reconcile them. It was too difficult for him to do that. So going back again to the structure, you have the preface. You have the infancy narratives. Number three, you have the prelude to the ministry, which includes the baptism, the genealogy, the temptation. Number four, you have the Galilean ministry. Number five, you have Luke's travel narrative. This is very important. It's kind of the heart of the Gospel of Luke. Luke's travel narrative, right in the middle of the Gospel, chapters nine through nineteen. Again, the travel narrative is when Jesus and his disciples are walking from Galilee into Jerusalem. What is Jesus saying to his disciples during that long trip? It's represented by Luke chapter 19, verses nine through nineteen. It's called the travel narrative. So this is special Lukean material. Just like Matthew had, special Matthewan material represented by M. We also have now special Lukean material. We'll talk more about that when we talk about the sources of the Gospel of Luke, but just to finish the structure here. Number six then, you have the Jerusalem ministry, which lasts about a week. Then you have the final conflict and passion and then chapter, and then the eighth part is the epilogue, the resurrection appearances that happen again exclusively in Jerusalem, nothing in Galilee. Again, and that's also a clear contradiction between Luke and Matthew or Luke and Mark. Remember in Matthew and Mark, Jesus does not appear to his disciples in Jerusalem, but rather in Galilee. So now let's look at the sources of the Gospel of Luke. So remember what we said about Matthew. We said Matthew has three sources on his desk when he's writing his Gospel. He has Mark's Gospel there. He has the Q-source document there, probably in written form, and then he has special Matthewan material either in the form of a manuscript or it's just in his head in the form of oral transmission. That's what Matthew has. What does Luke have? Luke also, like Matthew, has the Gospel of Mark at his desk. He's working from Mark. Mark is his narrative skeleton, just like it's served for Matthew. So the basic chronology of the Gospel of Luke is the same as Mark. So this is called the synoptic tradition. Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow the basic same chronology of events. Luke also has the Q-source document at his desk, just like Matthew does. Mark doesn't have that. Luke then also has special L material called leucan material. This might have been in the form of a manuscript of some sort, some papyrus or something written on leaves or something, or it's simply in his head as oral tradition. So we have the Gospel of Luke, 65% of Mark integrated in the Gospel of Luke, then we have Q, then we have L. What did Matthew have? Mark, Q, and M. So let's look at some of this special leucan material. So in chapter 10 of Luke, we have this parable of the good Samaritan. You've probably heard this if, for example, you're going across the bay bridge and you pay for the person behind you, and you don't even know that person. You would say that that person who paid for you was a good Samaritan. He was a good citizen, he did something good, he was a selfless person, he helped the stranger. This is the point of the good Samaritan, is that Isa A. here is trying to, again, universalize the Gospel according to the Gospel of Luke. Samaritans at the time of Isa A. were known as sort of these pseudo-Jews. They weren't known as real Jews. The Samaritans were sort of a mixed race. So when the Jews, the Bani Israel, they returned from Babylon. They found this group of people claiming to be Jews that had intermixed with other ethnicities and they were known as the Samaritans. In fact, the Samaritans have their own version of the Torah. They have their own temple in the north. They have different ways in which they worship. So it is a different sect of Judaism. So they were very much reviled at the time of Isa A. So when we read this parable of a good Samaritan, we should keep this in mind that the word Samaritan for the Pharisees of his day was a hated word. They did not like the Samaritans. So Jesus' parable here is quite revolutionary in the sense that he's saying there's a good Samaritan and that a Levite and a priest, a Levite and a Pharisee, they did the wrong thing according to this parable. What is the parable? It says that a Samaritan, that a man, it says that a certain man, he was walking down the road and then a group of thieves came and robbed him and beat him and stripped him and left him to die on the side of the road. And then Isa A. says, according to the parable, the good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10, a priest walked by and he totally ignored him. And then he said a Levite walked by and totally ignored him. Then he saw a Samaritan. A Samaritan came and he gave him food and he gave him clothing and he took him and took care of him. So he's saying, this is the point. This is the point of the parable is the universality of the message of Isa A. That Isa A. is teaching universal compassion according to this parable. And then we have something interesting, Luke chapter 15. This is also in the travel narrative. This is what's known as the prodigal son. And this is also something we hear sometimes. Like if a son was, he left the house and he went to college or something and then he dropped out of school and he had a rough life and then he comes back home to his parents. You say, oh, the prodigal son returns. This type of thing. This comes from the Gospel of Luke chapter 15. A man had two sons. One of his sons stayed with him in the house and took care of his father. The other son went out to earn a living, but then he fell on hard times and then he began to waste his wealth and then he began to act in a very sinful manner. And then finally he comes back home to his father and he's quite contrite. And his father welcomes him with open arms. What is the point of this parable? The whole point is toba. That's the whole point of the terrible, the parable, by Isa A.S. Right? Isa A.S. is teaching toba that the father represents God, right? And that the son represents the servant who went astray, but then he's contrite. He has, you know, he feels bad. He has remorse and he has a resolve not to return to the sin. And his father welcomes him with open arms, right? And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he gives certain parables about toba. He says, imagine a man who's out in the desert, right? And it's in Sahih Bukhari. Imagine a man out in the desert and he loses his conveyance, right? With all of his supplies that were on his conveyance and his camel, his horse, whatever it was, his conveyance, it runs away. Now the man is thinking, I'm going to die. So he's walking through the desert. He's filled with pain. He's becoming thirsty. He knows he's going to die soon. He's very afraid. And then he suddenly sees his conveyance and he grabs its reins, right? And he's so happy that he's found his conveyance, you know, salvation, that he says, Ya Allah. Anta abdi wa ana Rabbuk. So he lost even control of his speech. He says, Oh Allah, you are my servant and I am your Lord. That's how happy the abd was, right? That now he has found his conveyance. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said Allah is more happy. Allah is more happy when a sinner, when someone, a Muslim who is sinning, when a sinner makes toba to him, Allah is more happy when one of his servants makes toba to him than that man was at that moment when he lost control of his speech, right? So this entire parable of the Good Samaritan, I'm sorry, the, the prodigal son, this is about toba. And Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he prefaces the parable by saying, how gladly, how gladly will a shepherd leave 99 of his flock to chase the one that went astray, right? 99 are in line and they're fine. They're in line. They're doing what they're supposed to. But one of them went astray. The shepherd will leave 99 to find the one that went astray. He says, how glad is he when he brings him back, right? All of these are parables, are metaphors for toba, not for vicarious atonement. This is not the teaching of the Gospel of Luke. And the Gospel of Luke, remember, Luke acts, represents over a quarter of the New Testament, right? So this should be the dominant soteriology in the Gospel of Luke, not vicarious atonement. It should be this idea of toba. This is very, very important for Luke's Gospel. Also, we have what's known as the parable of the Pharisee in the tax collector, which is in Luke chapter 18, also part of the travel narrative. Luke chapter 18. So we have, Aisa alaihi sallam says there was a Pharisee who went to the temple and next to him was a tax collector. And the Pharisee, when he is praying to God, he says to God, thank you, God, for not making me a tax collector like this person here. And he says it in an arrogant way, right? That I'm better than this tax collector. And then Aisa alaihi sallam says, but the tax collector, when he goes, he is so repentant, he can't even raise his eyes. And he stays back because he feels he's unworthy to approach the front of the temple. And he says, oh, God, have mercy on me. What sinner I am. And then Aisa alaihi sallam says to his disciples, he says the tax collector will be forgiven and not the Pharisee, right? The point of all that is not to be arrogant, right? Again, Aisa alaihi sallam here is teaching toba that they're both asking forgiveness from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But you don't just ask for forgiveness in an arrogant way. You do it in a way that has toadur. You do it in a way that has humility, right? So it's it's toba that has humility, right? So ibn Atail says in one of the hikm, he says sin that leads to brokenness before Allah is better than a good action that leads to kibir, that leads to arrogance, right? Sin that leads to brokenness because that's going to lead to toba. And Allah loves when people make toba, when people reorient themselves towards him, Allah loves that, right? In fact, there's a hadith that says if people did not sin, Allah would destroy them and create a people that did sin just so that they make toba to him. This is a hadith of our prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi sallam. Also interestingly, we find in the Gospel of Luke chapter 14, the parable of the great banquet, right? The great banquet. So this is a master who tells his servant. He says go invite a bunch of people to a banquet. So the servant does it. He does that. And then, but a lot of people, they don't show up to the banquet. So it's like half empty. So then the master says, go into the streets and force them to come to the banquet, right? So you can make of this parable what you want. But interestingly, Augustine of Hippo, who's the fourth century scholar, he wrote De Trinitate, probably the most influential book ever written on the trinity, he said that this parable allows for Christians to coerce people into becoming Christian, right? That you can force people to become Christian and you can actually torture people, right? So this is one of his, this is something he said about Luke chapter 14. And of course, he's talking about something specific here. There was a group in northern Africa called the Donatists, who were basically the equivalent of the Khawaraj in our history, a group that were, you know, far in brimstone type of theology. They believed that if you committed even a minor sin, you know, a venial sin that you had forfeited your faith as a Christian. So these are the types of people that Augustine was working with. So he used that verse. This is just something interesting for your information that Augustine actually will use that verse, that parable Luke chapter 14, the great banquet, to justify his position of torture, of ta'adib and ikrah, of torture and coercion. And of course, Christians abused his fatwa, if you will. And for example, in Muslim Spain and Andalusia during the Inquisition, of course, you have the Crusades and other, many other times as well throughout Europe and Christendom with the Jews and so on and so forth. And then you have in chapter 16 of Luke, also during the travel narrative, something very interesting, a parable of Lazarus and the rich man, right? So here we have, Islam says, there was a rich man who lived a very opulent lifestyle. And he says there was a beggar named Lazarus who used to come and sleep on his door step on the rich man's door step. And the rich man would never let him into the house. And Lazarus, he had all these sores around his body. And the dogs would come and lick his sores. And then both of these men died, right? And Issa, he says that Lazarus was taken to the bosom of Ibrahim, so Lazarus is now being held by Ibrahim, and the rich man is in Jahannam. He's in the fire. And the rich man says, oh Lazarus, remember me? I'm that rich man. Can you just give me a drop of water? And Lazarus says, no, you had your chance, you had your lifestyle, now it's a reversal of roles. So this is also a very common theme in the Gospel of Luke that there's going to be a reversal of fortunes, right? That you're going to see people in this world that were the subaltern, right? They were downtrodden, they were marginalized, they were oppressed, people took advantage of them. These people are going to be given status in Al-Akhira and the people who are oppressing them and were arrogant and were rich, right? And Issa alaihi salam's judgment on the rich is not very good according to the New Testament. It's easier for camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter paradise. These people are going to be brought down and debased in the Al-Akhira. So this is also a very common theme in the Gospel of Luke, this kind of reversal of fortunes. Something also interesting about Luke is that Luke juxtaposes Gabriel's visit with Mary during the Annunciation, with her visit to Elizabeth, right? And Elizabeth is called her cousin in Luke chapter 1 verse 36. Elizabeth, who is the mother of Yahya alaihi salam, is called the cousin of Mary. Why is that important? It's important because Elizabeth is married to Zakaria and Zakaria is a priest in the temple. He's a Kohane, he's a priest. And the Kohaneem, the priests, all of them are Levites. They're Levites. This is important because Christians believe that the Messiah will come from the tribe of Judah. And this is a belief they inherited from Bani Israel. But Issa alaihi salam clearly is not from the tribe of Judah because his mother is a Levite and he does not have a father. So Nassab is passed according to Bani Israel. The Nassab is taken from the mother in all of the tribes except for Levi. If you're in the tribe of Levi, the Nassab is taken from your father. So Issa alaihi salam, because his mother is a Levite, he is not a Levite. He is whatever his father is, but he doesn't have a father. What does that mean? That means that Issa alaihi salam does not have a tribal distinction. He's not from the Ummah of Bani Israel. He's from the Ummah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam. We'll take a break inshallah. As-salamu alaykum. Bismillahir rahmanir rahim. So we were saying that Issa alaihi salam, because his mother is a Levite, his Nassab will be taken from his father. But Issa alaihi salam does not have a father. What does that mean? That means he cannot be from Bani Israel. So he's not from that Ummah. He is in our Ummah. He is a Sahabi of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam. Imam Sayyuti says he's the greatest Sahabi. He's in the Ummah of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam. So this is an important point that in the Quran every prophet is quoted as saying, Ya Qaumi. Every prophet except Issa alaihi salam. Issa alaihi salam says Ya Bani Israel. Because in order for Issa alaihi salam to say Ya Qaumi, his father must have been from that Qaum. But he does not have a father. Muslims believe in the miraculous birth of Issa alaihi salam. So this is something very, very important. And Luke tells us very clearly again that Maryam and Elizabeth are cousins. Somebody might say okay they're cousins, but they're from different tribes. But here's the point of that. Here's the problem with that. That the tribe of Levi was not allowed to intermarry between the tribes. The Levites had to keep their tribe distinct. The Levites were distinct in many regards. They weren't allowed to drink any alcohol. They were exempt from military service because they had to tend to the temple. They're not allowed to intermarry. The Nessab is taken from the father. There are certain things that are exclusive about the Levite. Of course the Levites are descendants of Harun alaihi salam, who is the brother of Musa alaihi salam. And something analogous to this is like the Ahl al-Bait of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, the descendants of Imam Ali, who is the brother, the ah, so to speak, of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, his son in law. And there's certain things about Ahl al-Bait that are different than the other people. They don't take Sadaqah, for example. They don't take zakaah, things like that. And of course the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, he said about Imam Ali, he said, aren't you content that you are to me as Harun was to Musa alaihi salam? So there's similarity there as well, that the Ahl al-Bait of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, they're special. They have special status. Nobody can doubt it. And the Levite tribe of the Bani Israel, who are considered, if you want Ahl al-Bait of Musa alaihi salam or Harun alaihi salam, they have special status as well. So that has to be made very, very clear that the Gospel of Luke does not support this idea of a Davidic messiah. In the Gospel of Luke, Issa alaihi salam is not from the tribe of Judah. He's not from the tribe of David. That's not what he says. It says that Elizabeth and Maryam are cousins, therefore Issa alaihi salam really does not have a tribe. Something else that's interesting about the Gospel of Luke, and we'll finish with this point, is that the Gospel of Luke says that there was a decree or a dogma in the Greek, a decree of a census to be taken by Caesar Augustus. So Caesar Augustus decreed a census that, and it was a universal census of the whole world. And the word here is oikumenene, which really means the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire was seen as the empire that ruled the world. And what was this census? Every man in the world had to return to his place of birth in order to be counted. This was something that the Gospel of Luke says happened by decree of Caesar Augustus. What's the point of this? Matthew doesn't mention this. Remember, Matthew doesn't mention this at all. Matthew says there was a slaughter of the innocence. Remember, Matthew was trying to find Old Testament typologies. So in the Gospel of Matthew, Herod slaughtering the firstborn of Bethlehem was sort of foreshadowed by what happened with Pharaoh in Egypt. Luke doesn't mention that slaughter of the innocence. So most scholars conclude that it's myth. It didn't actually happen. There's zero historical evidence of it. There's zero historical evidence of this dogma as well. That Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, again Luke is trying to aggrandize, universalize the message of the Gospel. That Caesar Augustus, the ruler of the world as it were, is saying every man has to return to his place of birth. So in the Gospel of Luke then, there's no flight to Egypt like we had in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is still born in Bethlehem, but Matthew and Luke have their own creative ways of putting Jesus in Bethlehem. Because remember, Micah chapter 5 verse 2 says, Oh Bethlehem, small as you are amongst the towns of Judah, from you they shall arise a king who shall shepherd my people Israel. So the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. That's what it says in the Old Testament. But how does he get to Bethlehem? Matthew says, Joseph and Mary, they lived in Bethlehem, and then the wise men came and then Herod, Antipas, he interrogated them so he decreed the slaughter of the innocence. So then the Holy Family, they had to move to Egypt, and then they relocated north into Nazareth. Luke says something very different. Luke says, Joseph and Mary, they lived in Nazareth originally, and then this census was put out, this decree of a census by Caesar Augustus, not by Herod Antipas. Now it has universal implications. Caesar Augustus says, every man has to go to his place of birth. So Joseph and Mary, they travel down to Bethlehem because Joseph was born in Bethlehem, and then when they're counted, they don't go to Egypt, they simply relocate back into Nazareth. So again, here is a clear contradiction between Matthew and Luke, and both of them cannot be true. Did Jesus go to Egypt or not? Luke again believes his gospel stands on its own two feet. He does not mention the slaughter of the innocence, either because he doesn't agree that it happened, or that he summarily ignored it and doesn't feel that it's very important. Either way, we have a clear contradiction with the two gospels. So inshallah, we're going to stop at this point. We're going to continue with the rest of the Gospel of Luke next time, and then we're going to get into our final gospel, which is the Gospel of John, which is a very, very interesting, very, very important, probably the most important part of this class is the study of the Gospel of John, because it is, again, the most influential book of any book in the New Testament, as far as influence upon Orthodox Christian theology. Welcome to another class of the four gospels from a Muslim perspective. The last class, we started to talk about the Gospel. The last couple of classes, I believe, we had started to talk about the Gospel of Luke. We're going to conclude the Gospel of Luke in this class, inshallah, and begin probably the most important gospel of the New Testament tradition, which is called the Gospel of John. Looking back at Luke for a minute, though, we had said last time that there are certain things in the Gospel of Luke that are considered Lukean themes that we should be familiar with. Number one is that Jesus is called savior in the Gospel of Luke. However, this term, soter, which means savior, is very misleading. It's not savior in the Pauline sort of way where Jesus died for your sins. That's not how Luke means it. What he means it here is that Jesus is simply someone who informs you about sin and teaches you how to deal with it. He's a means of your salvation. He doesn't die for your sins. There's no vicarious atonement in the Gospel of Luke. This is very, very interesting because, again, this idea that Jesus died for your sins has origins in Paul's letters and the Pauline epistles, which are 14 of the 27 books of the New Testament. However, Luke, according to Christian tradition, is a student of Paul, yet Luke does not subscribe to this idea that Jesus is a sacrifice for sin. He is simply an example of compassion for all of humanity. Scholars have called Jesus in the Gospel of Luke the martyr prophet, that he and his followers are completely innocent of any crime against Rome, and that he is an example, a beautiful example, an uswatun hasana, if you will, to use the Quranic verbiage of how Christians should live their lives. So again, in Luke, Jesus does not die for your sins. He dies to set an example of service and sacrifice. So that's very, very important. The Gospel of Luke also stresses personal responsibility. We quoted this in our last, we talked about this in our last class as well. This idea that everyone is put to death for their own sins, and that's exactly what it says in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 17, as well as Ezekiel chapter 18, which is the famous verse we quoted last time, that the iniquity of the son shall not be upon the father, and the iniquity of the father shall not be upon the son, that the wickedness of the wicked is upon him, and the righteousness of the righteous is upon him. But if the wicked would turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live, and he shall not die, shall turn from his sin. What does that mean? To make toba. The word in Hebrew is teshuvah. And this is the teaching of Isa, or the Luke and Jesus, peace be upon him, the parable of the prodigal son. We mentioned this last time as well. This is just to refresh your memories that this son who was a prodigal son, a sinful son, a spendthrift, who came back and his father welcomed him with open arms, just as God will welcome his sinful servants with open arms, as it were, if one makes toba. There's a beautiful hadith of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, when he mentions this is in Bukhari, it's a sound tradition, which the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he gives an analogy, a parable or similitude. He says, imagine a man, he's in the desert, he's on his conveyance, and he dismounts for a moment, and then his conveyance runs away from him, and now he's in the desert walking around, he doesn't have his conveyance, he doesn't have his food, no provisions, anything like that, and he's on the brink of death, and suddenly he sees his conveyance, and he grabs its reins, and he looks to the heavens, and he says, I am your servant, and you are my servant, and I am your Lord. In fact, he was so happy that he lost control of his speech, and this hadith is actually used as a proof of what's known as or theopathic utterances. When one goes into a mystical state, he'll start saying things that one is not aware of, and that's a sort of type of intoxication in the love of God, but the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam uses this parable to say that Allah is more joyous than that man when one of his disbelieving servants makes toba and turns back to him. So this is, upon Allah, this is the major theme of the Gospel of Luke. Some other things we're going to mention about the Gospel of Luke is that Luke, he juxtaposes Gabriel's visit with Mary, with her visit to Elizabeth, so there's a kinship here between them. Elizabeth, of course, is the mother of John the Baptist according to the Gospel of Luke, so the Gospel of Luke says that Elizabeth is her cousin, so they are related. It also says that Elizabeth is a daughter of Aaron, I think we mentioned this last time as well, so this idea that the Messiah will be from the tribe of Judah, which is basically a normative Christian belief that they inherited from the Jews. If you look at the Gospel of Luke, it's basically an untenable belief to say that Jesus is from the tribe of Judah because Mary was a Levite and the Levites were the priests in the temple and that's a completely different tribe than the tribe of Judah, so that has to be made clear. We'd also said last time again that there was a decree in Greek, it's called a dogma, a decree of a census by Caesar Augustus, which was basically empire wide, that every man has to return to the city of his birth and this is why Joseph the carpenter, according to the Gospel of Luke, he comes out of Nazareth and goes down to Bethlehem. Of course, this is not mentioned by Matthew. If you remember when we talked about the Gospel of Matthew, we had said that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem and Herod Antipas because he was informed by the wise men that came from the east. He was informed that there was going to be a king, a Messiah that was going to be born at that time, so the Holy Family, Jesus and Mary and Joseph, they flee to Egypt, so this is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. In other words, there is a very clear contradiction here between Matthew and Luke and Luke, there's a slaughter of the innocence and they go to Egypt and then they relocate to Nazareth. In the Gospel of Luke, they already live in Nazareth and they come down into Bethlehem because of this supposed consensus that was decreed by Caesar Augustus and something else we had said also is Caesar Augustus, of course, is the Roman Emperor, so the Gospel of Luke is trying to put Jesus on the world stage, is trying to universalize the Gospel. There's no historical proof that either of these events happened. There's no historical proof that Herod Antipas decreed the slaughter of the innocence to kill the firstborn sons of Bethlehem. There's no historical proof of that and there's no historical proof of Caesar Augustus issuing this decree that every man has to go back to his place of birth at the time of Isa, or the time around his birth. Something also interesting is the Gospel of Luke gives a different version of the Lord's Prayer, so we had said that Matthew chapter 6 tells us about the Sermon on the Mount, and the Sermon on the Mount, one of the key aspects of the Sermon on the Mount is what's known as the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, so on and so forth. Luke gives a slightly different version of it and it seems that Christians prefer the Methian version, the version that's given in Matthew because in Luke chapter 11, something interesting, it says, forgive us not our debts but forgive us our sins, so they didn't like, Christians don't like this idea that Jesus is praying to the Father and asking the Father to forgive his sins because Jesus is supposed to be sinless, and of course, a prophet is sinless according to our prophetology, a prophet is protected from disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, consciously disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that does not mean that a prophet doesn't have human characteristics, a prophet can make an error in judgment, for example, but willfully disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is something that is impossible for prophets, so this could be the meaning of the Gospel of Luke and the word sin being used here, but Allah, but Christians prefer to use the Methian version of the Lord's Prayer. Something also interesting in the Gospel of Luke, Luke will take something from Mark for example, Mark chapter 6, which is, Jesus is basically his rejection in Nazareth, and Luke will bring it up to Luke chapter 4, so he'll take a story mentioned in Mark, and he'll manipulate the context of the story to make a theological point, because again, and we mentioned this several times in the past, that the point of these Gospels is not to present accurate history. I don't think Luke would be bothered by the fact that there's simply no proof of the census that was taken by Caesar Augustus, he's trying to make a theological point that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and so is Matthew by inventing the story of the slaughter of the innocents and connecting it to the story of Moses, like Pharaoh tried to kill the firstborn sons of Egypt, and he did succeed except killing Musa, so this is very, very interesting that Luke will take this story from Mark chapter 6, and he'll move it up to the beginning of his Gospel, and he'll call it the inaugural address, where this is when he first declares that he's the Messiah in the synagogue, he opens the scroll of Isaiah, and he says something to the effect of that the Spirit of God is upon me to preach the Gospel to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted, and this is very, very interesting, because this reveals that God has a preferential aspect, in other words, God is with the poor, he's with the oppressed, he's with the downtrodden, he's with the marginalized, what's known as a subaltern of society, so contemporary theologians like Cornel West, he'll say something like, you know, these types of Christians that are Constantinian, they're not in the Spirit, they're not in the true Spirit of Esa, Empire building Christians, Christians who believe it's their mission to conquer the world, they advocate imperialism, a great author that you should read, Chris Hedges, who is a Christian man, he writes these beautiful books, this one called American Fascism, where he indicts his own co-religionists, other Christians, who have bought into this idea that God is with those who exert a strong hand, and those who are dropping bombs on innocent populations, and he says that is not the case, that is not the true Gospel of Esa, that God has a preferential aspect, and that God is with those who are being marginalized and being oppressed, so this is very, very important, and this is basically the inaugural address of the Gospel of Luke in chapter 4, so Luke edits Mark at times for his own theological reasons, Luke also edits Mark to show an indefinite length between the city of Jerusalem's fall and the actual second coming of Jesus, like Luke chapter 19, the parable of the talents that the master will go away on a long journey, also Luke 21, 29, that Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until their day has run its course, so Luke found this idea in Mark very disturbing, that Mark believes in an immediate second coming of Esa, remember the second coming, in Greek it's called the parousia, and this is primarily taken from Paul again, Paul very clearly believes the second coming will be during his own lifetime, and this is a central Pauline theme, and the Gospel of Mark, it takes that theme from Paul and puts the words into the mouth of Esa, for example, there are some standing here that will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in great power, the present generation will live to see it all, this type of thing that there's going to be an immediate second coming, and Luke will downplay that, Luke will say no, Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until their day has run its course, so he delays the parousia, he'll delay the second coming, why does he do that, because again Luke is writing his Gospel around maybe 85 or 90 of the common era, and by this time it's very very clear that Esa, did not return during the generation of the disciples, so he's trying to sort of clean up what Paul had started, what Paul erroneously believed to be a fact, is that Christ will come back in the time of the disciples, it simply did not happen. What's also interesting about the Gospel of Luke is when we get into the later parts of the Gospel, like Luke chapter 22, we have this idea of Jesus at the Last Supper, and chapter 22 verse 20, we have Jesus sort of establishing the New Covenant, right, and this is chapter 22 verses 17 through 20, where basically they pass the cup around in the bread, this is my blood, this is my body, this is the blood of the New Testament, so on and so forth, there are many manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke that do not contain these verses, right, in other words, you know, the bread and blood or the wine and the bread are not mentioned in some versions of the Gospel of Luke, in other words, the Eucharist or the Mass, the Holy Communion, which is a central Christian sacrament in all three major Christian denominations, Eastern Orthodox, Catholicism, and Protestantism, that belief seems to be missing in many versions of the Gospel of Luke, because again, it doesn't jive well, it doesn't agree with one of the central Lukean themes that Jesus did not die for your sins, that Jesus is the Savior, again, in the sense that he gives you an example, he tells you how to deal with sin by setting a great example, that's why he's the martyr prophets, so many, many versions, many Greek manuscripts, early Greek manuscripts of Luke's Gospel do not contain those verses, chapter 22, 17 through 20, this is my blood, this is my body, this is the blood of the New Testament, so on and so forth, they don't contain those verses. What's also interesting, we might have mentioned this in the past as well, is that there was a document written in the 1st century called the Didikei, which is Greek for teaching, which many, many scholars believe represents the teaching of the original disciples of Isa, those Jews who simply believed that Isa was the Messiah, and they're called by different names, sometimes they're called the Evionim, which means the spiritual poppers or the Ebyonites, sometimes they're called the Nutsrim in Hebrew, which means the Nazarenes, which is the cognate of the Arabic Annasara, and that's taken from synagogue liturgy. We know that Jews in the very late 1st century, early 2nd century, as part of their synagogue liturgy were pronouncing maledictions, they were pronouncing curses upon a group known as the Nutsrim, and these are obviously the Christians, they believe the Christians were a, an accursed group because they simply believed in Isa, and that's how they refer to them as Nazarenes. So anyway, in that document, the Didikei, we don't have this establishment of the Eucharist, that Jesus is your Savior who died for your sins, and that his flesh is, is to be eaten, and that the wine is his blood to be, to be drunk, none of these things are mentioned. What's simply mentioned is that the disciples would gather on Sunday and they would, they would give thanks to God for sending Isa, they were sort of a Thanksgiving celebration, if you will, that they would have on Sunday. And again, many scholars believe that the Didikei, D-I-D-A-C-H-E represents the actual teachings of the historical disciples of Isa, so there's no Eucharist. What's interesting is, again, this is a central sacrament in Roman Catholicism, Catholics actually believe that at Mass on Sunday, when the priest will consecrate the bread and the wine, that a process happens known as transubstantiation in which the Holy Ghost will come and he will change the very essence of the bread into the flesh of Christ, and the very essence of the wine into the blood of Christ, and the people, the parishioners will partake of that. So it seems to be a very paganistic type of ritual, interestingly again, it's not mentioned in the Didikei, and there are many, many versions of the Gospel of Luke that do not mention that as well. Stephen L. Harris, a very imminent New Testament scholar, believes that definitely those verses are an interpolation, a fabrication to the Gospel of Luke. And Bart Ehrman, who's also very imminent, probably the most eminent, foremost scholar of textual criticism, he also says that there are good reasons for believing that the passage that seems to indicate the Eucharist were added later to the Gospel of Luke. Also something interesting is that, according to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is on the cross, he cries out and says, Father, forgive them, pater afeis autois, for they know not what they do. Most scholars believe that those verses were also added later by Christians to sort of soften Luke's image, because Luke was seen as somewhat anti-Jewish, and there was a group of Christians at the time in the first century called the Marcionites, who did not like the Jews, they hated the Jews, and they said that the Jews killed Jesus and the God of the Old Testament was a different God, so they put these words into the mouth of Christ on the cross, forgiving those who crucified him. But again, the vast, vast majority of imminent New Testament textual critics, including Ehrman and Brutes Metzger, they believe that these verses were added later. So we've established now that the author of the Gospel of Luke, he will go into the Gospel of Mark, and he will clearly edit Mark's Gospel. Again, if Luke believed that Mark's Gospel is the Word of God, he would never do that. What does that tell you? That tells you that Luke did not believe that Mark was being inspired by God, but he simply believed that Mark gave a good effort in trying to write about Jesus, but he believes that he has a better mind to do something like that. Remember the prologue of the Gospel of Luke, where he tells us very, very clearly his intention of writing his Gospel when he says, oh, Excellency Theophilus, it seems like a good idea for me to write unto you an orderly account. So the Gospel of Luke, again, was meant as a letter to probably a Roman official named Theophilus. He doesn't claim that it's a revelation of God or that he's inspired by God, or that the Holy Ghost is inspiring him. Nothing like that. They're simply writing an account of what they believe happened to Jesus based on their own theological perspectives. So that brings us to the end of the Gospel of Luke. Insha'Allah to Allah, we're going to start with the Gospel of John now. The Gospel of John is, as we stated, forms basically the foundation of all Christian theology. It is the most fundamentally sound from an Orthodox perspective of all the four Gospels. It clearly delineates Christian traditional, Trinitarian theology, and is the most significant of the four Gospels in the New Testament. So the Gospel of John, at first, was seen as a very alien type of Gospel. So this is very, very important, because if you notice, if you've read the Gospel of John in compared to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you'll immediately notice that this Gospel is very, very different. It doesn't follow the same type of chronology that Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow. It's very, very unique. It begins with something called the prologue, right, which is John chapter 1, verse 1 to verse 18, where you have this sort of hymn to the logos, as it's called. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And of course, this formula in the beginning, this was meant to kind of mirror what happens at the beginning of the book of Genesis, where it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So John is mimicking what's happening at the beginning of the book of Genesis. And if you read the Gospel of John again, it's very, very different in its chronology, in its content, in its themes than the Synoptic Gospel. So initially it was seen as a very alien, very strange Gospel, and very suspicious. And many early Christians believe that the Gospel of John was actually a Gnostic Gospel, which advocated that Esalae Salaam didn't actually have a physical body, that he was a pure spirit, a phantasm. So how did the Gospel of John become so popular? Well, it was basically three early church fathers who sort of saved the Gospel from the fires of heresy, if you will. So Irenaeus of Lyons, the Bishop of Lyons. His name was Irenaeus. He actually will quote from the Gospel of John 40 some odd times in his different commentaries on the New Testament. And he actually wrote a commentary on the prologue of the Gospel of John as well, and he's seen as a proto-Orthodox church father. So he gave credence to the Gospel and legitimized the Gospel of John. Also you have someone, an early church father named Clement of Alexandria, who was the Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, who also liked the Gospel of John, and he said that the Gospel of John, it talks about the spiritual things of Christ. He called it ta penumatika, opposed to the ta somatika, as opposed to the bodily things. So the Gospel of John talks about the spirit, the penuma of Isa, whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels really focuses more on the soma, the historical, the physical things of Isa. And of course the third church father was named Justin Marder. And Justin Marder, he really loved the Gospel of John, and he is seen as basically someone who formulated what's known as the Logos Christology. The Logos Christology meaning that Isa has a pre-existent nature, that he existed before his physical body. And this is now Orthodox Christianity. Now what does that mean that Jesus existed before his physical body? That means that he has some sort of metaphysical precedence over the rest of creation. And we'll talk about that later when we talk about Arianism, for example, and its influence upon the first ecumenical church council called the Council of Nicaea. So anyway, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is presented as the infinite wisdom of God personified, right? The infinite wisdom of God personified. In Greek this is called the Logos, Logos, L-O-G-O-S, right? So when you take classes in college, for example biology, right? Biology is the Logos of Beos, right? The study or the wisdom of life. So Logos means wisdom. In Hebrew it's called hukmah or hikmah. In Arabic hukmah is something in the Old Testament that is personified as being God's agent of creation. So Isa, according to the Gospel of John, is the human form of God's celestial word, the cosmic expression of divine wisdom by which God created the universe. So in Arabic translations of the Gospel of John, it'll say something like fil bidaya, kana al kalima. In the beginning was the kalima, kana al kalima. The kalima, kalimatullah is Isa, according to the Gospel of John. Now in the Quran Isa, is also called kalimatullah, wa kalimatuhu, right? It's mentioned in the Quran. So is there a similarity? Is there a difference? Of course, there's a difference. And this is very important to understand the difference that when Allah SWT in the Quran refers to Isa as kalimatullah, it's very different than when Christians, inspired by the Gospel of John, refer to Isa as kalimatullah. In the Quran Isa is God's created word, right? Allah SWT created Isa. Inna matala Isa, inna lahika matali Adam, khalaqahu min turam, thumma qalalahu kun fayakun. That the similarity of Isa with Allah is like that of Adam. He created him from dust and then he said to him, be, and there he was. So when Islam was growing very early on, Muslims would come into contact with Christian Hellenistic philosophers and they would engage in debate because these Christians would read the Quran and say, look, the Quran says that Jesus is the word of God, kalimatullah. And the Gospel of John says, nrkein halagas. In the beginning was the word. So this is the same thing. The Quran is confirming what the Gospel of John is saying. So Christian scholars were quick to point out that no, Isa asalam is created, he's bashar, he's from the makhuluqat, he's created by Allah SWT. So he's the word of God only in the sense that Allah SWT created him in a very unique way because Isa asalam did not have a father. Isa asalam was created by Allah SWT without any type of male intervention by saying be, and there he was. In that sense, he is the kalimatullah. So this is very, very important to understand. Now some Muslims will also draw an analogy between Isa asalam being the word of God and the Quran being the word of God. That Isa asalam, this is incarnation that God becoming flesh and the Quran in bibliation that the word becoming book. And this analogy is also erroneous and we have to be careful about that as well. Because if we say that, yes there are similarities to a point. Christians say that Isa asalam is pre-eternal and uncreated. And we also say about the kalam of Allah SWT as an attribute of Allah SWT that it is pre-eternal and uncreated. But that's where the similarities have to stop. They have to stop at that point because Christians will go on to say that Isa asalam is the word of God is in and of himself God. That he is a distinct person of God. But we cannot say that the kalam of Allah SWT is a God in and of itself. No, the sifat of Allah SWT, they are not the essence of Allah nor are they anything other than the essence. And distinct from the essence, they have no meaning. They give an additional meaning to the essence that they are not God. We cannot say kalam of Allah is Allah SWT or is a deity or divinity in any sense of the word. So we have to make that distinction very, very clear that the sifat of Allah SWT, a sifat of Allah SWT, although they're pre-eternal and uncreated, they are not in and of themselves divine beings. And that's what the Christians are saying about Isa asalam. So we have to be careful about that type of analogy. You know, what's also interesting is that Jewish mysticism based on the, what's known as the Kabbalah, there's a book of the Kabbalah called the Zohar, which was probably written in the 13th century. Although Orthodox Jews, at least if they're Hasidic or they're mystically inclined, they believe the teachings of the Zohar go back all the way to Musa asalam, even before him. But they have this myth, they have this idea of the primordial man. So mystically inclined Jews believe that God, whom they call Ain Sulf in Hebrew, which is the name of God's that, the name of his essence, Ain Sulf means without limit, that God, he did something called tzitzum in Hebrew. Tzitzum means that God withdrew from himself to himself, creating an empty void that was full of himself. This is all paradoxical, obviously. But in that void that he created, he casted a light, a primordial light. And this is the light of what they call Adam Qadmon, or the primordial man. So this light is personified as a human being. And then God, the Ain Sulf, he emanated his sifat, his attributes through the skull of this primordial man as lights. So they call these keter and khokma and khised, which are irada and khikma and mahabba. So will and wisdom and love, these are three attributes of the Ain Sulf that were emanated from the essence of Ain Sulf that were emanated through the skull of Adam Qadmon, and this light that emanated from Adam Qadmon created the universe. So this is also mentioned in Jewish mysticism. However, the Jews believe that this light of the primordial man is created. It was created by God, right? Christians, however, do not believe that the Son of God is created. They believe that Isa, alaihi salam, has pre-eternality, that he shares an essence with God. So again, this is very different than what we have in Jewish mysticism. There's something similar to this in Islamic mysticism, in the light of the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, that this is a belief that is, that is jah is, if you want to believe in it, you can, if not, you don't have to, that the initial creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was the light of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and from the light of the Prophet, all subsequent creation was created, but Muslims are very, very clear that the Prophet is created by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and anyone who says that the Prophet is uncreated obviously has fallen outside the pale of Islam. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he warned us about doing that in a, in a hadith that you'll find in many, many books, including Tirmidhi in Shama'il that don't do to me what the Christians did to Isa alaihi sallam. I am simply a servant of God, so refer to me as the servant and his messenger, right? So we have to be very, very careful about that as well. So there is a very distinct difference between what Muslims are saying about the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, what Jews are saying about Adam Qadmon, whoever that is, the primordial human being, and what Christians are saying about the Logos. What Christians say about the Logos is that that's Isa alaihi sallam and that he's uncreated and pre-eternal. Also something interesting of the Gospel of John is that in the Gospel of John there isn't a single exorcism performed by Isa alaihi sallam. If you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is always exercising demons, right, extracting demons from people who are possessed. None of this is found in the Gospel of John because John wants to make it very clear that Isa alaihi sallam is above dealing with demons. He's above these petty types of things. Also in the Gospel of John, 90% of John is exclusive to his account. There's no parallel, we mentioned this earlier, there's no parallel to anything in the synoptics. In other words, 90% of the Gospel of John is only found in the Gospel of John, right? This is why many scholars will say the Gospel of John seems to be sort of non-historical, even more so than the four synoptic Gospels, where there is some sort of attempt at accurate history. The Gospel of John seems to be a sort of profound theological meditation on Isa alaihi sallam. Instead of parables and instead of this sort of chronology that we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we have Isa alaihi sallam in the Gospel of John giving these very long theological monologues and debates that he's engaging with with the Pharisees. It's very, very different than a synoptic tradition. So this idea that the Gospel of John is very unique, again, according to modern historiography, suggests that much of what's written in the Gospel of John is not actually historical at all. It's simply a theological meditation on what Christians believe actually happened to Isa alaihi sallam. Historians, they look at these four criteria. One of the things they look at is the earlier the better. If something is closer to the source, it must be more accurate. This is a general criterion. So the Gospel of John is very, very late. The Gospel of John was written between 90 and 100, in some say even 110, of the common era. So it's very, very late. It's also not very contextually cohesive, right? Because you have Isa alaihi sallam, who's a Palestinian Northern Galilean preacher who's talking about things like that he, the father and I are one. And before Abraham was, I am, things like that, which don't seem to be theologically consistent with the beliefs of the Jews at that time, at least at a quick glance. So it doesn't seem to agree with the historical context of Isa alaihi sallam as well. Also something they look at in modern historiography is multiple attestation. Multiple attestation, we would call Tawatur and Arabic. In other words, if it's mentioned by different independent sources, then historians will say that's probably true then, right? If something's mentioned, for example, there's a Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam, which says that whoever sees me in a dream has seen me in reality. This Hadith is related to multiple chains of transmission. It's a mutawatur Hadith. It's undeniable that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam, he made this statement, right? But we have in the Gospel of John, you have all of these statements that Christians will say are divine claims of Isa alaihi sallam, but they're not found in any other Gospel. So this is very problematic. For example, the father and I are one, and we can deal with this verse and we can interpret it actually in a very monotheistic Islamic way. But Christians will say that this verse and this verse, Jesus is claiming to be God. The father and I are one. They say one essentially in their essence and their usias is the Greek word, right? However, this verse, which is John 1030, is not found in Matthew, Mark or Luke, which is very, very strange that if Isa alaihi sallam truly made this statement, you would think that Matthew, who is a disciple of Jesus apparently, and is sitting with Jesus and learning from him for three years of his ministry, or some say one year to three years of his ministry, is an eye and ear witness to the message of Christ. He never hears this statement, this very profound theological claim of Isa alaihi sallam. So historians will say the reason why Matthew, Mark and Luke did not record that statement is because Isa alaihi sallam probably did not make that statement. This is what John is trying to convince his audience that Jesus is God. Because again, for many of these Christian communities, truth and fact don't have to be the same thing, right? That Jesus may not have said that, but it's true that he is God. So that's the message you're trying to convey. Very, very kind of unorthodox type of way of doing theology, but this is how they believe it was done at the time. So this Gospel, again, probably written around 90, if we're generous, around 100, maybe as late as 110 of the common era. Christians believe the author of this Gospel was John, who is the son of Zebedee, a disciple of Isa alaihi sallam, right? Which again is very, very strange, because a disciple of Isa alaihi sallam, if he wrote this Gospel, if he wrote it in 90, we'll use the much earlier date. If he wrote it in 90, that makes him around 90 years old at the time that he finally decided he's going to write this Gospel, because the crucifixion or the ascension, according to Christians, was around the year 33. Isa alaihi sallam was 33, probably John, his disciple, was around 33. Let's just say he was 20 at the time. And by the year 90, he's 70 years old, right? So, or over 70 years old. So why is he waiting so long to write his Gospel, right? This is the whole point that most scholars will say the Gospel of John was not written by a disciple of Jesus, because it doesn't make sense logically that a disciple would wait so long, and then write the Gospel finally as a very old man in a foreign language. Because Isa alaihi sallam, he spoke Syriac, but the original of the Gospel of John is in Greek. So he waited, you know, years and years, 70 years later, he finally writes it down, right? And he writes it in a foreign language. So this doesn't stand to reason. So when was this Gospel written 90, 100, 110? What was happening at the time? The Christians were being expelled from the synagogues, right? The Christians were being expelled from the synagogues. So keep that in mind. Where was it written? People don't know. Maybe in Ephesus, but it's unknown. The audience is an audience who believes in Jesus' pre-human existence as cosmic wisdom, as logos, or a sort of protonostic group that didn't believe that Isa alaihi sallam even had a physical body. So this idea that, first of all, this idea that Isa alaihi sallam has a pre-human existence, this is also a Unitarian belief. This is not simply a Trinitarian belief. Now as Muslims, we believe that every human being predated their physical body, right? We believe that there was a covenant that we entered into with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It's mentioned in Surah al-A'raf ayah number 172, I believe, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asked us when we were arwah, when we were souls, I lestu bi rabbikum, and we said, dala, yes. Am I not your Lord? We said, yes, right? He didn't ask this of our physical bodies. This was in our pre-existent stage as souls, right? So Unitarians also believe that Isa alaihi sallam, he predates his physical body. There's two types of Unitarians. Their Unitarians are called Sokinian, S-O-C-I-N, I-A-N, Sokinian Unitarianism. They believe that Isa alaihi sallam, he does not, his essence, does not predate his physical body. In other words, when he was created, when his body was created 2,000 years ago, that's when his soul was also created, right? And it's interesting because Sokinian Unitarianism was the belief of Harvard University for many, many years, starting in 1805, when a man named Henry Ware became the Hollis Chair of the School of Divinity at Harvard University. He was a Sokinian Unitarian. And again, in 1963, when a man named George H Williams, I believe, became the Chair of Divinity from 1963 to 1980. So even Harvard Seminary was Unitarian, Sokinian Unitarianism. There's another type of Unitarianism called Arian Unitarianism, A-R-I-A-N, Arian named after Arius. Now these Unitarians did believe that Isa alaihi sallam had an aspect that predated his physical body. And they'll say that Isa alaihi sallam was called the Logos, just like the Gospel of John. And they believed in the Gospel of John. However, they'll say the Logos was created by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and that it was his first creation, that the Father in heaven, if you will, created the Logos. It was the initial creation. So they're still Unitarian, but they'll say that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was created by God. So there was a time when Jesus did not exist, right? That's called Arian Unitarianism. What do the Trinitarians believe? The Trinitarians believe that Isa alaihi sallam also, obviously, has a pre-human existence. And it's called the Logos. However, they're going to say that this Logos is actually of the same essence as God, as the Father. And there was never a time when the Son did not exist, right? So we'll talk more about that more when we talk about theology, insha'Allah. But the point here is to let you know that this idea that Jesus existed, that his soul existed before his human body, is also a Unitarian belief. However, the Unitarians will all maintain that Isa alaihi sallam, whether in body or in soul, at some point in time, was created. He's a created entity. They might call him Katismatileon, the best of creation. But they'll always maintain, as the Arians used to say, Hatayuk'ain. There was a time when he was not. Meaning Isa alaihi sallam was, at some point, created out of nothing, and that he does not share an essential essence with the Father or with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The Christians call him the Father. So continuing. So traditionally, this Gospel was believed to have been written in Ephesus. And again, that John the Son of Zebedee, a disciple of Jesus, actually wrote this Gospel. And then he also wrote three letters that are also in the New Testament, called the First Epistle of John, the Second Epistle of John, and the Third Epistle of John. This was the traditional opinion that John the Son of Zebedee, he wrote the Gospel of John, and then First, Second, and Third John, which you'll find at the end of the New Testament, just before the Book of Revelation. And he also wrote the Book of Revelation. So you have these five books in the New Testament, the Gospel of John, First John, Second John, Third John, and the Book of Revelation. All five of these books is collectively referred to as the Johanine Literature, the Johanine Literature, or the literature that was written by the community that authored the Gospel of John. Traditionally, these five books, in other words, traditionally, these five books were believed to have been written by the same author. Almost all modern critics of the New Testament disagree with that today. They have different authors. We'll talk about the authorship more in general, inshallah. So again, Clement of Alexandria, early church father, around 200 of the common era, he said that the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, wrote, quote, the facts of history. They were dealing with Isa, more on a historical basis, but we know that today, that that's not accurate, that the three synoptic authors, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were doing history, but they were doing it through the lens of their theology. That's why Luke will very commonly go to Mark and move things around. Luke knows that successive generations will look back at him and say, look, Luke moved something around. He's manipulating the chronology because, again, for Luke, it's not about presenting total accurate history. It's about making a theological statement. Clement goes on to say that John wrote a spiritual gospel. Now, some early scholars said that the author of the Gospel of John, and this is very interesting, they said that the author of the Gospel of John was a man named Carinthus, which is spelled C-E-R-I-N-T-H-U-S, Carinthus. And Carinthus was a Gnostic Christian. He was a Gnostic. What is a Gnostic Christian? Generally, a Gnostic Christian was an early Christian who did not believe that Isa had a physical body. So by today's standards, by today's Trinitarian standards, Gnosticism is seen as total blasphemy. They're seen as schismatics. But it's very interesting that many early scholars believe the Gospel of John to be from that school of thought, to be a Gnostic gospel. In other words, to be a totally blasphemous gospel. Or they say someone called John the Elder, John the Elder, a presbyter at the Church of Ephesus wrote the Gospel around the year 100 of the common era. The bottom line, however, is that the Gospel is anonymous. No one knows who wrote this Gospel. The author of the Gospel of John never identifies himself. Traditionally, again, the four Gospels were attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew and John are disciples of Isa, of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, while Mark is a student of Peter, a disciple of Jesus, and Luke is a disciple of Paul, who is a self-proclaimed apostle of Isa, but again, according to modern scholarship, these four books are totally anonymous. Nobody knows who wrote these books. Now the Gospel of John also talks about someone called the Beloved Disciple, the Beloved Disciple. And many Christians believe that this is the actual author of the Gospel of John, the Beloved Disciple. And in fact, John the Son of Zebedee might actually be that Beloved Disciple. If you read the Gospel of John, this Beloved Disciple is presented to be in competition with Peter. And Peter, according to Roman Catholicism, is the chief disciple of Isa and according to the synoptic tradition seems to be the greatest of the apostles of Isa. But he's presented in competition with Peter that the Beloved Disciple, he has special knowledge, more special knowledge about Isa than does Peter. So the author of the Gospel of John is saying that I have knowledge that even Peter doesn't have. This is a way of grander sizing his Gospel over and against what the churches that revered Peter were actually teaching about Isa. Interestingly, in the Gospel of John, while Peter denies Jesus three times, John the Son of Zebedee, who is presumably the Beloved Disciple, he goes to the cross and is actually a witness to the crucifixion of Isa. We also have this very interesting passage during the crucifixion where Jesus says to John, the Beloved Disciple who is at the foot of the cross, behold your mother and points to Mary. What does that mean? That means that this is the successor of Isa. So again, this helps bolster the credibility of the Gospel of John, that the Gospel of John was written by someone who is actually a witness to the crucifixion, which is a clear contradiction to what we have in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, very clearly we're told that when they come to arrest Isa, all of his disciples forsook him and fled. They all left him in the lurch. They all fled from him and none of them was an eyewitness to this so-called crucifixion. And this is very interesting because the Quran, as you know, categorically denies that Isa, peace be upon him, was crucified. And the Quran says that they follow then, they only follow conjecture. This is what people were saying, right? And interestingly, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, there isn't a single disciple who witnesses this crucifixion. So in the Gospel of John, what John does, the author of the Gospel of John, is he places a disciple at the site of the crucifixion. And he has Jesus say to this disciple that you are now my brother. And this could be a slight against James. Remember who is James? James is called Yaakov, had Sadiq in Hebrew. James, the Sadiq, the truthful one. This is a title, this is a laqab that was given to James according to Christians by Isa, peace be upon him himself. In other words, James is the true successor of Isa, peace be upon him. James, Sony, and Christianity is that true Christianity that was preached by Isa, peace be upon him. They were called the Evionim or the Nutserim. But what the Gospel of John is trying to do is trying to replace James as the head of the disciples of Isa, peace be upon him, replace him with this person called John, the beloved disciple. Also something interesting you have, you have this beloved disciple outrunning Peter to the empty tomb on Easter Sunday. And again, that's significant theologically that he's outrunning Peter. He knows more than Peter, right? He's better than Peter, that this beloved disciple he recognizes the risen Christ on the shore and then tells Peter what had happened, that Peter, he feeds the quote unquote sheep, but the beloved disciple will live until the master returns, which is one of the only references to the second coming of Isa, peace be upon him in the Gospel of John. The point here again is to rival the the Petrine or the Jamesonian churches in a more glorious Christology. The Gospel of John is trying to say that it contains knowledge, that the other disciples, the other churches that are founded upon the teaching of Peter and James don't have. So it's very sectarian Gospel. The author, the community that authored the Gospel of John is a very sectarian community. The Gospel is also rooted in Palestinian Judaism in the sense that it parallels the Essene community at Qomran. Remember the community at Qomran, they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're called the Essenes and the Gospel of John, the vocabulary of the Gospel of John, is somewhat similar in its usage of dualism. Although this dualism is also found in in Platonism as well, but we find that similarity. So the Gospel of John is also rooted in Palestinian Judaism. Those who walk in light and darkness, good and evil, spirit and flesh, children of God, children of Satan, all of these types of opposites, this type of really strict kind of dualism, this dichotomy, this bifurcation of the world into good and evil, this is all similar to the writings of the Essenes that were at Qomran. Why were the Essenes at Qomran? Because they believed that the entire priesthood of the Jews in Jerusalem was completely corrupt, so they separated from them. So this is very similar to their writings, which is known as the community rule of the Essenes, the community rule in which the universe is seen as a battleground of polar opposites. So John, the Gospel of John, is rigorously sectarian. It's very exclusivist. The Gospel of John, the author, the community that authored this book, is basically a firqah. They are a sect that believes that they only have the truth and everyone else is not a true believer. They are the only guardians of light and truth in a fatally benighted world. Also interesting in the Gospel of John, John chapter 9, we have this reference to believers being put out of synagogues. And this is an example of an anachronism in the Gospel of John, because this didn't actually happen until the year 90 or so. At the time of Esalaam, everyone was Jewish. Whether you believed in Esalaam or not, there were no distinct groups called Christians at that time. This didn't happen until much later. So we have an example of an anachronism. For example, if I say that a Muslim couple in January of 1998 were insulted because of what happened on 9-11, you would find that statement very, very problematic. Because you would say, wait a minute, January of 1998, that so many years before 9-11, that doesn't make any sense. And that's what's happening in the Gospel of John. You have John presenting Christians being kicked out of synagogues. This wasn't actually happening at the time of Esalaam. So we do have an example of a historical inaccuracy in the Gospel of John. This is called an anachronism. And this obviously is very problematic if Christians want to say that the Gospel of John is verbatim or an errant word of God. A decisive break between Christians, between the church and the synagogue, happened around 90 of the common era. So what John is doing, he's writing around this time, around 100 of the common era. And that's what's happening at the time of the composition of the Gospel of John. But what the author does, unfortunately for him, is that he will retroactively import this phenomenon at his time upon the time of Esalaam. And that simply was not happening. The Christian believers in Esalaam at the time of Esalaam were not being expelled from synagogues. So it's Gnostic also in the sense that Esalaam was God's eternal word that descended from the heavens to reveal divine knowledge and then re-ascended to his celestial place of origin and caused his followers to be born from above. So next time, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to talk more about this idea of Christian Gnosticism and what is the basic Christian Gnostic myth that the Gospel of John seems to buy into. And also we'll talk about this character in the Gospel of John, who's known as the paraclete, which is mentioned in John chapter 14 and John chapter 16, and how the author of the Gospel of John is utilizing this tradition of the paraclete, the comforter, the intercessor. So we're going to do that next time, inshallah ta'ala. So we've come to the end of this class. So continuing with our lessons in the Gospel's Muslim interpretation of the New Testament, we're looking at the Gospel of John. And initially what we want to do before we continue looking at the content and themes of the Gospels, I want to take you through sort of a chart of Christology interpretations of who was Esalaam in the first four centuries of the common era. So we have Esalaam, we have the historical Jesus. So historians will say this. Historians like Albert Schweitzer, Bart Ehrman, Dale Martin, they'll say that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, he was a prophet. He believed himself to be a prophet in some sort of king, but they don't say that he claimed to be the Messiah or God or Son of God. So historically he was, he viewed himself as being some sort of eschatological prophet, some prophet of the end of time possibly, and a kingdom in some sort of way. And then we have three different ways in which early Christians viewed Esalaam. So these are early Christian views, confessional views about Esalaam. This is what Christians believed. One view was that Esalaam was simply a human being. He was only human. And as we said before, there's different groups that confessed this type of belief. Probably the most famous are called the Evionim or the Ebianites. So this is a very interesting group. I highly encourage people to do further research on the Christology of the Ebianites. Ebianites means the spiritual poppers, right? This was a group of Jews who continue to follow the Sharia, the Mitzvot of Musa alaihi salam. They prayed in the temple. They believed in the oneness of God, the oneness of Adonai Ilukhainu, the oneness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The only difference between them and other Jews was that they believed that Esalaam was Hamashiach. He was the Messiah, that they had been promised. Another group of Christians that we mentioned also that we're going to elaborate, that also believed that Jesus was only human. They're called the Nutsrim. So we know of their name because when the Romans attacked the temple of Solomon in the year 70 of the common era under General Titus, there was a rabbi in the city whose name was Yochanan Ben Zekai. Ben Zekai, he went to the temple before they actually destroyed it and he took the scroll of the Torah and he snuck out of the city of Jerusalem and he went to a coastal city right on the coast of the Mediterranean called Yavne. In English it's called Jaminia. In Hebrew it's called Yavne and he began the rabbinical academy at Yavne. So this is actually where the modern day Judaism was born. Rabbinical Judaism is from that academy at Yavne and the oral law is called the Mishnah. That's where it was initially written down at that academy and a few things were instituted by the Jews during this time. The writing of the oral law obviously, they set the Old Testament canon. 39 books are going to be the authoritative canon of the Old Testament going from the book of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, all the way into the book of Malachi, 39 books. And also they had something called the Birkat Hamimim. The Birkat Hamimim in Hebrew means the cursing of the apostates or the cursing of the, not apostates, the heretics right. The Minim means heretics or the malediction upon the heretics. And included amongst the heretics are a group called the Notzrin. So it's really interesting as part of the synagogue liturgy is articulated by the academy at Yavne in the second century. Part of the synagogue liturgy became cursing of Notzrin, cursing of the Christians. So the Jews, rabbinical Jews, the Pharisees, they did not like these Christians. They called them Notzrin. Of course the word Notzrin comes from the word Nazareth, which is the city that according to the New Testament was raised. So this was a sect of Jews that were identified with Nazareth. And this is probably the cognate of the word Nasara in the Quran. When Allah first of the Christians he calls them Nasara. So what is their Christology of the Ev'unim and the Notzrin is that Isa' was only a human being. So another way of saying this is called Semitic adoptionism, adoptionist Christology. What does that mean adoptionist Christology? That means Isa' was quote unquote adopted to be God's son at his baptism. What does it mean to be adopted? So they mean this language to be figurative. This is Majaz, not that Jesus is the literal Son of God. No, they didn't believe that because again these are Christians, if you want to call them Christians, that believe in the oneness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, just as their Jewish brethren believed in the oneness. So when they use the term adopted to be the Son of God, they simply mean that Jesus was given the mission of the Messiah, that at the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, this is his bi'ath of sorts. This is when he was commissioned to be the Messiah. So that's what it means to be an adoptionist Christian, Semitic adoptionism. This Christology is also known as dynamic monarchism, dynamic monarchism. What that means is that the Father, meaning God, he is the monarch, he is the first principle, and everything else is subordinate to the Father, including Jesus. So it's very, very interesting. This type of Christology was the Christology of the Bishop of Antioch in the third century, whose name was Paul of Samosata. So you can look him up as well. I highly encourage people. When you hear some of these terms that I'm putting out there, obviously we don't have a live audience right now, but in future classes we're going to have a live audience. And also email me your questions. Write these names down, write these terms down, and we can elaborate on them. But very important name that you should make a note of is the Bishop of Antioch, who died in 275 of the Common Era. His name was Paul of Samosata. And Paul of Samosata was a Unitarian, a Unitarian Christian. He was actually a Sokinian. So a Sokinian Unitarian believes that there's no aspect of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, that predated his physical body, right? That he was purely a human being. He was a mere man, as he said. And this type of Christology is also referred to as pisilentropism, which means mere manism. That Isa al-Islam was a mere man. He has nothing special metaphysically. He's just like everybody else. His specialness, right? His khos or khususiyat comes later on in his life because he was so righteous that God chose him and adopted him as it were. Again, Majaz, this is figurative, to be his Messiah, right? But the first principles of Jesus are like everybody else. That God is the only monarch. This is called Semitic adoptionism. It's also known as dynamic monarchism or pisilentropism, mere manism, right? So Paul of Samosata, his student, was named Lucian of Antioch. And he also believed in this type of Christology. And of course, and he died in 312 of the Common Era. And Lucian's student was named Arius. And this is the famous Arius of Alexandria, who was a Presbyter at the church in Alexandria, Egypt, who caused so much trouble as it were for the proto-Orthodox that Constantine finally called the first ecumenical council, the first world council, the council of Nicaea, to decide once and for all, who is right? Is it Arius and those who are saying that Jesus Christ is a human being and that he's not God and that he's dissimilar to God? Or is it Athanasius and the proto-Orthodox Trinitarians that are saying, basically, that Esa, shares an essence with God? So what happened at Nicaea was the vote was taken and Jesus was declared to be Hamausias, which means of the same essence as God, right? This was done by vote. 318 bishops were invited to Nicaea, modern-day Turkey. So what the other position said, what the Nutsrim or the adoptionists were saying, what dynamic monarchism is teaching, is that Esa, is Heta Rausias, meaning that he is completely different in his nature, in his essence, than God. And this is also Islamic Christology. In Islamic Christology, no one and nothing shares an essence or the attributes or the actions of Allah, that there's nothing like the likes of Allah, nothing shares his essence, nothing has his attributes. Anyone who says that any human being has an attribute of Allah, for example, somebody who claims that they're omnipotent, they know everything, because that is a qualitative attribute of Allah, from the sifatul ma'ani, this is what qualifies Allah. So anyone who makes that claim is claiming to be God and that's rejected because no human being can ever be God, right? So the Quranic Christology, if you will, and Christology is a good term that you should become familiar with, Christology means the study of the nature and function of Isa, right? And it's not just what Christians believe, what everyone believes, Jewish Christology, Muslim Christology, atheist Christology, what do the atheists believe about Isa, right? Everyone has a Christology. So in the Quran, it's very clear that Isa's Christology is similar to this Ebyanite or Nutsrim Christology, and there's evidence actually also that the Evionim believed in the virgin birth of Isa, and of course the Quran confirms that because Isa is a prophet and there are certain miracles that are ascribed to him. So in the Quran, he's the messenger of God. This is very, very clear. Isa, is a Rasulullah and Muslims believe that and we have to believe that. Isa, in the Quran, is a Nabi. He's also a prophet. Of course the station of the Rasul is over a prophet. According to the Ash-Ali Aqidah, the difference is that a prophet confirms the prophetic dispensation of the Rasul that came before him, or he receives the prophetic dispensation, but is not ordered by Allah SWT to tell it to the people, there's no tabligh, there's no order of a dispensation or conveyance of the message, whereas a Rasul receives that dispensation and he is ordered by Allah SWT. So Muslims believe, according to the hadith, there's about 124,000 prophets. We don't know the exact number, but it's around, it's in that ballpark, 124,000 prophets. From these 124,000 prophets, 313 according to the hadith, these are the Rasul, these are the messengers. So this is the next tier above Al Anbiya. And then from the 313, there are five, the Rakud Ulul Azmi minal Rasul, the people of firm determination, the people of firm resolve, these are the five most exalted prophets, the five most exalted messengers of God. And of course these messengers in chronological order are Sayyidina Nuh and Sayyidina Ibrahim, Sayyidina Musa, Sayyidina Isa Ibn Maryam, and Sayyidina Muhammad, alayhimu s-salatu wa s-salam. May peace and blessings be upon all of the prophets. These are the five great ones, right? So, and we also believe that Isa alayhi s-salam is a slave of God. It's very, very interesting. It's very, very interesting when we read the Maulid or the birth narrative of Isa alayhi s-salam, which is given twice in the Qur'an, once in Surah Ali Imran and once in Surah Maryam, that the first words of Isa alayhi s-salam, as recorded in the Qur'an, his very first words to his people is, or was, إني عبد الله آتاني الكتابة وجعلني نبيا وجعلني مباركًا أينما كنتوا وأوساني بالسلاة والزكاتي ما دمتوا حيا, that his first words were defending his mother's honor and chastity. This is the first miracle of Isa alayhi s-salam, as recorded in the Qur'an. Of course, there's another narration that when Maryam alayhi s-salam gave birth according to the Qur'an, that she heard a voice, right, saying, don't fear and there's a spring of water underneath you and wash yourself and drink of it and be refreshed. There's an opinion that that was also the voice of Isa alayhi s-salam and some of the Ulama, some of the Mufassirin, they say that was Jubeel alayhi s-salam. But nonetheless, one of the first miracles, if not the first miracle of Isa alayhi s-salam, as recorded in the Qur'an, is what defending his mother's honor and chastity. Because when she brought the baby in the side of her family, they start insinuating things about her, right, because she's unmarried and she's holding a baby, so they automatically suspect her of committing adultery, but that's what they thought that she had done and the Jews to this day in the Talmud, they say things like that about Maryam alayhi s-salam, and the Qur'an tells us, but we kufrihim, qawrihim, ar-rammariyama, buhtanan, a'zima. So Isa alayhi s-salam, what can she say, fa'asharat ilayh, the Qur'an says, she pointed to Isa alayhi s-salam and they said, kafa nuqallimu man kana fi'l mahdi sabiya. How can we speak to one who is an infant, a child in the cradle, and then he said, indeed, in me, I am the slave or the servant of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. These are his initial words, alayhi s-salam, Isa alayhi s-salam, his first miracle as recorded in the Qur'an. It's interesting, the first miracle of Isa alayhi s-salam recorded in the New Testament actually comes in the Gospel of John, although John again was the last Gospel to be written, John is presenting something that happened in the life of Jesus that predates the miracles ascribed to him in Na'thi, Mark and Luke. So in John chapter two, this is his first miracle that Isa alayhi s-salam, according to the Gospel of John, is at a wedding in Cana and people are having a good time at this wedding and they're out of wine so they come to him and they say, can you give us some wine and then eventually he transforms water into wine so people can drink wine and have a great time. This is his first miracle in the Gospel of John. Look at the difference here between the miracle in the Qur'an where he's defending his mother's honor in chastity as an infant, the ibnillah, by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the first miracle in the Bible attributed to him is turning water into wine, right? So this is the difference here. Also he is the true Messiah in the Qur'an. The Qur'an calls him al-Masih. He is the Messiah and a lot of Christians, they don't know this and this is quite revelatory for them that Muslims actually believe because if you listen to people like Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, the German theologian and Augustinian monk who was one of the pioneers of the Protestant Reformation. He lived in the 16th century. Martin Luther writes a lot about Muslims and he calls Muslims anti-Christ, right? That's what he calls us. These are anti-Christ and Martin Luther obviously was very, very influential. There's maybe 900 million Protestants on earth right now and the largest sect of Protestantism is Lutheranism. So they take Luther very, very seriously and this is what Luther said about the Muslims, that they're anti-Christ. And a lot of these people have no idea that Muslims actually believe that Isa al-Salam is al-Masih. But what does it mean for him to be al-Masih? And they forget also sometimes that the whole concept of the Messiah is a Jewish concept. What did the Jews believe about the Messiah is that the Messiah will come and he will usher in an era of world peace, right? The Christians borrowed this concept and they said the way in which the Messiah will do this is that he'll die for your sins. He will vicariously atone for your sins. And of course this comes from Paul. This is Pauline Christianity. If you read the letters of Paul like Ephesians for example, Jesus is a sin offering, a sacrifice for the sins of humanity. The book of Romans, the book of 1st Corinthians goes into things like that. This is not the teaching of Isa al-Salam. This is not what Luke is saying. Remember the Gospel of Luke very, very clearly in the Gospel of Luke, Isa al-Salam does not die for your sins. He makes you conscious of your sin and teaches you how to make repentance for your sin. In that sense, he is the Savior. So what does it mean for Isa al-Salam to be the Messiah in Islamic Christology? Well, it means that he was specially chosen by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to bring a special message to the Bani Israel. At the time of Isa al-Salam, many of the Bani Israel, they had deviated from the teachings of Musa al-Salam. In fact, the Sadducees who were the high priests of the temple, they totally denied an afterlife. Right? They didn't believe in al-akhira, what's known as olam hava in Hebrew. The world to come, they didn't even believe in that. So Isa al-Salam is giving them spiritual teaching and also giving them bushra of the final messenger of God, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa sallam. And this is where the pericle will come into play of the Gospel of John that we've talked about. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. But just to conclude here with this idea of Jesus being only a human being, the Quranic Christology again says that Isa al-Salam is hetara usias, that he's wholly dissimilar in his essence from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now we have these concepts of mystical union, right? So many of the mystically inclined Sufi writers will say things that are things like, you know, mystical union with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that one's ego is annihilated in the love and contemplation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And yes, this is the state of all of the prophets, and this is the state of the Awliya and many of the Mu'mineen in that they've fallen in love with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and they've emptied themselves of every type of egotistical vice, and they've become Lord-like or godly, albeit in a non-absolute and contingent matter. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he says in the Quran. So this verse is Ali Imran, verse number 79. It's very, very interesting. According to Imam al-Suyuti, the sabb al-nuzl of this ayah, the occasion of its revelation came when a group of Christians came to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and they said, don't you know that Isa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam commanded us to worship him? So this verse was related that it's not befitting for any Bashar, for any human being, to whom Allah gave the book in wisdom and the office of prophecy to say, for him to say, worship me in derogation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, but rather he would say, be Lordly, have these divine attributes. In other words, Allah is merciful, His mercy, He's ar-Rahman, which is absolute and infinite, but we can also be people of mercy. We can model our behavior and our actions after Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, knowing that we're Allah's creation. This is called mystical union. So this is not itihad. This is not our essence mingling with Allah's essence. No, that's not what the mystics are saying. That's not what Imam al-Junaid is saying. That's not what Abu Hamad al-Ghazali is saying. They're not saying that at all. That's not what Ibn Arabi is saying. No, they're saying that one becomes annihilated to the self, and one's only thought, one's only object of love is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and when that happens, according to the Hadith Qutzi, Allah says, then I am the eye by which He sees, and the hand by which He grasps, and the foot by which He walks, and if He were to ask anything from me, I shall surely give it to Him, meaning that we become guided in our actions. We become sanctified. So this we would say about Isa alayhi salam. That Isa alayhi salam, He was someone who was annihilated in the love and contemplation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, but essentially He is completely dissimilar. Nothing is similar to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, nothing shares in His essence, His that, His sifat, or His afa'al. Nothing shares in His essence, nothing shares in His attributes, and nothing shares in His actions. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now we have another Christology. So that's the group of Christians who said that Jesus was only human. We have another group of Christians in the first four centuries who said that Jesus Christ, peace be upon Him, was only divine. He's only divine. He wasn't human at all. In other words, He's not even flesh. That's just how He appears to be, right? So because He's only God, and God is not flesh and blood. So when you saw Isa alayhi salam, that was something, that was a vision that God gave you in order to make sense of this phenomenon known as God, that God gave you something to understand, but in reality it was an illusion. It was a phantasm. He wasn't a real human being. He just seemed to be that way. So these are groups of Christians known as Gnostic Christians. And of course, Christian Gnosticism is extremely vast. You have many, many different groups, but generally the Gnostics believed that Isa alayhi salam was only a divine being. And He wasn't really human. He just appeared to be human. And if He walked on the sand, He wouldn't even leave footprints because He's not actually there. It's a phantasm. There's no flesh. There's no blood. There's no mass, right? There's no volume to Him. Nothing like that, right? So you have different groups of Gnostics. You have some Gnostic saying that Jesus is the only God. You have other Gnostic saying that Jesus is one of many Gods. You have other Gnostics who say like the Marcians, right? M-A-R-C-I-O-N. That's the founder, Marcion. We talked about Him in the past as well. He was a Bitheist. He said the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament. There's two Gods, He said. And this was a very, very influential movement, especially in Rome. And modern-day contemporary atheists like Christopher Hitchens, who passed away recently, he actually says Marcion was onto something because if you look at the descriptions of God in the Old Testament, going around and ordering armies to completely obliterate city-states and nations, 31 city-states were completely destroyed. Men, women, and children by the armies of God under Moses and Joshua, according to the Old Testament, they'll say, well, Marcion, he understood that that can't be the God of the New Testament. So he was a Bitheist. He believed in two Gods. So this whole idea, right, that Jesus is only divine and not flesh, this is called Dosatism. Dosatism, which comes from the Greek verb doceo, which means to seem, to appear. So Jesus only appeared to be human. He only appeared to eat and drink and walk and talk. He only appeared to die, right? So this was a very, very prevalent type of Christology. And then you have a third type of Christology, which is that Jesus is human and divine. He's both human and divine, right? Now the question becomes, well, when did he become divine? So you have a group of Christians who say he became divine when he was born. You have other Christians say he became divine at his baptism. You have other Christians who say he became divine at his resurrection, right? So here we have a difference of opinion. The early church father named Origen of Alexandria, the most prolific of any Christian writer in the history of Christianity was this man, Origen, O-R-I-G-E-N of Alexandria. He lived around 250 of the Common Era. He wrote over 1,000 books, right? 1,000 books. He believed that Jesus was a divine being. However, he said that Jesus was created by the Father and was subordinate to the Father. So what does it then mean for him to be divine? Does he mean that he's also God or a lesser God? It's unclear, but it seems as if he's saying he's divine in the sense that he's been, again, sanctified by God. He's not deity. He's a human being who's holy. That's what it seems to be that they're teaching. This is called Origenism or Subordinationism. So sometimes you'll hear this term subordinationist Christology. What does that mean? That means the Son of God is subordinate to the Father. They're not equal. The Son serves the Father, and there's a lot of biblical backing for this. In the New Testament, we hear Issa al-Islam reported to have said, The Father is greater than I. This is from John. The Father is greater than all. Again, from John. I can't have my own self do nothing. This is also from John. In all four Gospels, we have Jesus going and praying and worshiping God, falling down on his face. It says, Proscuneo in Greek, which means to prostrate oneself before God. So Jesus, it seems like in the New Testament, is subordinate to and worshiping the Father in heaven. So Origen here, he has a point. However, Origen was eventually anathematized, which means he was eventually declared a heretic. To anathematize someone means to pronounce takfir upon them. This person is a heretic, and this was eventually done in the year 553 of the Common Era at a church council called the Council of Constantinople II. In the year 553, Origen was declared a heretic. He was the most, again, the most prolific of the early church fathers, the most prolific Christian author of all time. So when we say that there were groups of Christians who believed Jesus was human and divine, that's also very ambiguous. What does that mean for him to be divine? Does it mean that he was the same as the Father, or was he a demigod of some sort, or was he half God? When was he made God? There's a lot of difference of opinion. There was another group who said Jesus was human and divine, and he was always divine. He was always divine. Right? And now the question becomes, what happened when he became human then? One group said that he became an additional person with an additional nature. So in other words, Jesus had two personalities. One person was Jesus of Nazareth. The other one was the Christ. So literally, he has multiple personalities. He also has two natures. This group of Christians are called separationist Christology, separationist. They actually believed that when Jesus was crucified, according to their belief, the person of Christ and his divine nature left Jesus. This is why he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? This is the meaning of this verse according to separationist Christians who believed, again, that Jesus was two persons and he had two natures. Obviously, this is total kufr. This is blasphemy for Orthodox Christians who believed that Jesus needs to die as God in order to redeem humanity. Right? So even though they believed that Jesus was human and divine and that he's always been divine, right, they were still declared heretics because they said that when he became incarnated, he was actually two persons now and that divine nature completely left him leaving just a human being on the cross. And of course, one human being that's totally human being cannot redeem the sins of all of humanity. So this was seen as total heresy. You had another group who said that Jesus, when he became human, became another mode of the Father. This is called modal monarchism. Modal monarchism. What does that mean? It means that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they're all referring to the same person. So Orthodox Christianity, Trinitarian Christianity, says that God has one essence, one usia in Greek, and three hypotheses, three persons, one essence and three persons. What the modal monarchists are saying is that it's only one person. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same person, that there's no hypostatic distinction between the three persons. It's actually one person. What that means is God was the Father and then he literally became the Son and died on the cross. So this belief is also called patripassianism, which means the Father suffers, that God literally died completely according to this Christology. And then when he was dead, he became the Holy Spirit, resurrected the Son, became the Son again, and then went back and became the Father. So God basically puts on three different masks. It's one God, one person, one essence. So obviously, this was also seen as heresy by Trinitarian Christians because Trinitarians believed that God was three persons, not one person. So even though this was actually a Unitarian Christology, it's seen as total heresy because Trinitarians again believe in three persons, not one. And then you have finally the belief that, yes, Jesus was human and divine, and he was always divine. And when he became human, he became human with an additional nature. So he's one person with two natures. And this is the Orthodox Christian position. This is the Christian position of the world today, whether you're Catholic or you're Eastern Orthodox or you're Protestant. This is also known as Johannine Christology. And this is taken directly from the Gospel of John. It's also known as Logos Christology, a reference to the prologue of the Gospel of John. So you can see how influential the Gospel of John was in determining normative Christian orthodoxy with respect to Issa, so what I've just named for you is at least what I've just described for you with this Christology chart I have in front of me. And inshallah, we can put this online so you can look at it when the classes actually begin. Is that I've described for you nine different Christologies that were very prevalent during the first three, three and a half centuries of the Christian era. And amongst these nine, you have several subdivisions, dozens and numerous, numerous subdivisions of these nine Christologies as well. So one of these Christologies became what we know today as Orthodox Christianity. That Jesus is human and divine, and that he's always been divine. And when he became human, he became one person with two natures, meaning divine nature and the human nature, so that when he was, when he died on the cross, he died with that divine nature within him, so to speak, although the divine nature survived the cross. And this again is very much paradoxical. Now returning to the Gospel of John. So the Gospel of John, as we said, was written by the Johannine community. That's how they are referred to in academic research, the Johannine community. And if you read the first Epistle of John, so remember we said this in our last class, we said traditionally Christians believed that five books were written by the author of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, the first Epistle of John, second Epistle of John, third Epistle of John, and the Book of Revelation. Today scholars will say this, the Book of Revelation was not written by the Johannine community, it was written by different community. And the author of the three Epistles, although that author is reflecting the same type of Christology as the Gospel of John, it is not the same author as the Gospel of John, although he's reflecting the same, again, type of Christology. It's very exclusivist type of Christology. So in the first Epistle of John, right, if you look towards the back of the New Testament before the Book of Revelation, you'll find something called the first Epistle of John. In the first Epistle of John chapter 2, verses 18 to 25, the author, whom we'll call John, describes a type of anti-Christian Christology. He says there are certain groups of people that are anti-Christ, right? And these are these are people who don't believe that Jesus is the Christ. So here he's talking about Jews, that Jews here are the anti-Christ. If you keep reading first John chapter 4 verse 1, you have another group that he calls anti-Christ. And these are people who believed that Jesus was not in the flesh. What does that mean? That means Christian Gnostics, Christians who said that Jesus was only divine and did not have a human body, right? So the first Epistle of John is condemning these two groups of people, is condemning the Jews because they didn't believe Jesus was Christ. He calls them anti-Christ. And also, those who said Jesus did not have a physical body, right? He says whoever does not believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh is accursed, right? So you have these two anti-Christ threats. Now most authors, no, most scholars actually believe that the Gospel of John has at least two authors. And this is very important. So they believe one of them they call the evangelist, whoever actually wrote this book, it's he's called the evangelist. And then you have someone called the redactor, someone who took the Gospel of John as it was originally written and made some additions to it, that kind of clean it up a little bit. Because remember this, we mentioned this the last class. Amongst many early Christians, the Gospel of John was initially seen as this alien sort of Gnostic Gospel that was very, very different than the Synoptic Gospels. In fact, many Christians believe that a Gnostic named Corinthus was the was the actual author of the Gospel of John. So a later redactor goes into the Gospel of John and and adds, according to this theory, chapter 21 of the Gospel, he adds what's known as the the epilogue of the Gospel of John, right? Why does he add the epilogue? Because in the epilogue, Jesus comes back after his resurrection, he goes to Galilee, and he eats breakfast with his disciples. And you think, what does that have to do with anything? Who cares if he ate breakfast? Well, this was added in order to refute this idea that Jesus was only God. He was also a human being who's eating food. That's why that was added at the end of the Gospel. Because the redactor wanted to show that Jesus was also a human being. So this last chapter of the Gospel of John was added to the end of it, because the original Gospel of John, according to most scholars, ended at John chapter 20. And now we have this epilogue that was added later. Also, chapter 6 of the Gospel of John is believed by many scholars to be a later addition to the Gospel of John. Chapter 6 actually describes the Mass, the Holy Communion, where Jesus says, and according to this chapter, whoever that you must eat my flesh and drink my blood if you want eternal life, things like that. The reason that was added is because the Last Supper in the Gospel of John does not have the institution of the Eucharist, of eating the bread and drinking the wine as being the transubstantiated flesh and blood of Christ. That Holy Communion is not mentioned during the Last Supper of the Gospel of John. So many scholars, including Rudolf Vultemann, who's eminent New Testament scholar, German scholar, he said chapter 6 was added later by someone called the Ecclesiastical Redactor. And we have also chapters 15 through 17 as being candidates for later additions to the Gospel of John. Even some scholars say the prologue itself, the hymn to the logos, was added later. Bart Ehrman will suggest this in his book. For example, a great book that you should get is called Misquoting Jesus. It's written for a lay audience about textual criticism of the New Testament and he'll go into the Gospel of John and he'll look at the prologue, the first 18 verses of John chapter 1, where Jesus is explicitly called God twice in the prologue. And Ehrman will argue that that prologue is a later addition to the Gospel of John. A later addition. This is quite significant because nowhere else in the Gospel of John is Jesus directly called God. Or does he make a claim directly to be God? Right? So the prologue, he says, was added later. And why does he say this? Is because you find it in a certain different style. Its vocabulary is different than the rest of the Gospel. Its style is very different than the rest of the Gospel, at least according to the textual analysis of Bart Ehrman. So that's very, very interesting. Now, what happened according to scholars was you have the Joe Hanai community. You have this community that authored the Gospel of John. Scholars believe that a significant segment of that community became a Gnostic in their Christology. In other words, they said Jesus did not have a physical body. So they took the Gospel with them and started their own community. So in response to that, the other half of the community, they made these additions to the Gospel of John to present more of the humanity of Jesus, but at the same time also present him as being God. That's why the prologue was added as well. So that's pretty much standard amongst New Testament scholars. So this successionist or separatist took the Gospel with them and became full-blown Gnostics. Remember, it is a historical fact that the Gospel was used by Gnostic circles. In fact, the first commentary on the Gospel of John, and this is a historical fact, the first commentary ever written on the Gospel of John was written by a man named Heraklion. Heraklion was a Valentinian Gnostic. He was a Gnostic. So it's very, very interesting that many scholars believe the Gospel of John was written by a Gnostic Corinthus, and it is a historical fact that the first commentary ever written on the Gospel of John was written by a Gnostic named Heraklion. That tells us that originally the Gospel of John was a Gnostic Gospel that would have been totally rejected by the vast, vast majority of Christians today, but it was eventually cleaned up by someone called the Redactor, and Jesus was presented as human and divine, and eventually it was accepted as a canonical text. What's also interesting about the Gospel of John is that there's no birth narrative of Esalaesana. So remember, the Gospel of Mark doesn't have a birth narrative. It begins with Jesus' baptism, but Luke and Matthew, taking from the Q Source document apparently, we talked about the Q Source document, they include a moled or a birth narrative of Esalaesana. In the Gospel of John, there is no birth narrative. What we have is the prologue of John's Gospel, because Jesus becoming flesh as man, that's the most important thing, right? That Christ has pre-eternality. So the author of the Gospel of John doesn't bother himself with the Virgin birth. The most important thing is that Jesus in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So who cares if it was a virgin birth? Jesus is God, according to the understanding of at least the prologue of the Gospel of John. There's also no baptism of Jesus. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three of them say that John the Baptist baptized Jesus. John doesn't mention that at all. The reason why he doesn't mention it is because, again, it sort of shows or demonstrates that Jesus is inferior to the Baptist, that Jesus is sort of taking the Baptist mantle, if you will. The Baptist is passing the baton to him. The Baptist is giving him permission now to teach and so on and so forth. So the Gospel of John didn't like that. Jesus is independent of and superior to the Baptist. So in the Gospel of John, the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of John the Baptist are actually concurrent, whereas in the synoptic tradition, Jesus Christ peace be upon him, his ministry comes after the Baptist was put in prison and beheaded by Herod Antipas. In fact, in the Gospel of John, we have this very bizarre statement. We have John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus for the first time, he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This message is vastly different than what we have in the synoptic traditions, where John the Baptist is saying, Repent and bear fruits of righteousness. Work hard and repent to God. And suddenly, in the Gospel of John, we have this statement, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Of course, this is in sharp contrast to the synoptic tradition. So the Gospel of John is trying to do, in other words, is trying to promote Jesus and give him this really high type of status, higher than John the Baptist, where even John the Baptist recognize that this is someone who's going to die for your sins. We don't find that interpretation in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We also have no temptation of Isa, you know, in the in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus goes to the wilderness and Satan will tempt him. We don't find that at all in the Gospel of John, because, you know, it's not befitting of Christ to be tempted by Satan. Again, we also have no exorcisms performed by Jesus. Jesus is above such petty types of tricks. Jesus is too powerful to be devalued and ignored. So there's really no clear rejection of Jesus at Nazareth. So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, very clearly, he's rejected by the people of Nazareth. The Gospel of John, he doesn't like, the author of the Gospel of John doesn't like that idea that Jesus is rejected by anyone, because for him, Jesus is again very, very exalted, a very high Christology. The teaching style in the Gospel of John is very different as well. In the Gospel of John, we don't have any of the parables that figure so prominent in the synoptic Gospels, no types of parables. Instead, you have these very long philosophical theological speeches of Jesus about his own nature, these very long monologues, right? None of Jesus's reinterpretations of the Law of Moses that are again very, very prevalent in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are found in the Gospel of John, right? We talked about the antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard, in other words, when Jesus says something like, you have heard them say this, but verily I say this unto you. He quotes the Law and he gives his own interpretation of it. There's none of that found in the Gospel of John. The only thing that Jesus commands in the Gospel of John is to love one another. That's it. There's no prediction of Jerusalem's fall in the Gospel of John, because it's not important. That was 30 years ago. It's not an important thing. There's no prophecy of the Second Coming of Jesus. There's no stress on future eschatology, because John believes very important theme in the Gospel of John is what's known as realized eschatology. That the Second Coming of Christ has already happened in the form of the paraclete, right? We'll talk about the paraclete in subsequent sessions, so we're going to spend quite a significant amount of time actually on the Gospel of John. Again, there's no institution of communion or Eucharist in the Gospel of John at the Last Supper scene. In the Last Supper, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus takes the bread and the wine. This is my body. This is my blood. This is the blood of the New Testament that's going to be shed for many. There's nothing like that in the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of John, the Last Supper is not even a Passover meal. It happens the night before Passover. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Last Supper is on Thursday night in the Gospel of John. It's on Wednesday night, and all Jesus does on Wednesday night at the Last Supper is wash the feet of his disciples. There's no institution of communion. So this is a clear contradiction in the New Testament. Both cannot be correct. There's no way to harmonize this. When did the Last Supper happen? Did it happen on Thursday night or Wednesday night? You cannot harmonize it. Somebody is right here and somebody is wrong, or both accounts are wrong. But they both cannot be right. Very clear contradiction. There's no agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you have Jesus going to the Garden and he collapses on the ground. Father, remove this cup away from me, not as I will, but as thou will, this type of trying to get out of his, trying to get out of death, trying to be saved by God. None of that is in the Gospel of John. Because again, John, the author of the Gospel of John, doesn't like this idea that Jesus has any type of weakness. It's a very high Christology. In fact, in the Gospel of John, very interestingly, it says that a cohort of soldiers came to the mountain as well. And this implies that there were Roman legionnaires that came to arrest him. And they ask, where is Jesus? And he says, he says, Annehu in Hebrew, which means, I am him. And when he says that, everyone falls down in prostration when he says that. Very, very strange type of thing that's mentioned in the Gospel of John that I've never seen any movie depict, because it would seem very, very strange for that to happen. But that's what the Gospel of John actually says. Now, next time, we're going to talk about a very important topic when it comes to the Gospel of John is not only the Pericles, but also the differences in the passion narrative of the Gospel of John. If you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, especially Mark's Gospel, you may conclude that maybe it wasn't Jesus who actually died, or maybe that Jesus was put on a cross, but he didn't actually die. What happened? It's a little ambiguous. So the Gospel of John is trying to make it clear for you that Jesus was crucified, and he was killed, he was buried, and he was resurrected. And I'm going to show you how John actually does that, because again, John, one of the advantages that John has, is retrospect. He can look at all these Gospels, he can look at what the Christians are believing in, and he can tailor his Gospel exactly to what he wants to teach. So we'll talk about that next time. Insha'Allah ta'ala. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome to another class. We're looking, continuing to look at the Gospel of John. We started this last time. A few things as reminders from last time. We had said that the Gospel of John initially was seen as sort of an alien Gospel next to the Synoptic Gospels. If you look at the Gospel of John and read it, carefully you'll notice that the chronology and content are very different than the Synoptic Gospels. We also said the Gospel of John was a foundational book of Orthodox Christology. 90% of John is exclusive to his account. There's no parallel in the Synoptics. So it was a few Church Fathers early on that sort of saved the Gospel of John, and eventually the Gospel of John was considered to be canonical Gospel. And these Church Fathers, as we discussed last time, were Irenaeus of the Lions and Clement of Alexandria, as well as Justin Martyr, who's called the father of Logos Christology. Something we had mentioned about the Gospel of John last time is that Jesus is called the Logos, the Word, the Word of God. And the Gospel of John begins with a hymn to the Logos. John 1 1 says, in the Greek language, In the beginning was the word, Kai halagos prastantheon, in the Greek. And the word was with God, Kai theos ain halagos. And the word was God. That's usually how it's translated in the vast majority of Christian Bibles. However, what's interesting here in the Greek, this is why it's very important to understand the original language, is that the second occurrence of the word Theos, or God, in that statement, in that verse, John 1 1, does not have the definite article. So in other words, we can translate into beginning was the word, and the word was with the God, and a God was the word. And what does that mean? That Jesus is somehow a diminutive God, or a second God, or a lesser God, or something like that. We have to remember the word God in Hebrew, as well as Greek, can be applied to man or to God. And this is quite strange in those languages for us as Muslims, or even in English, when we say God, we're talking about one God. We know who we're talking about. If we say Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, we're just talking about one entity, one person, we're not talking about anybody else. However, in Hebrew, the word Elohim, which is translated as God, in the Old Testament is applied to kings, to judges, to prophets, to Satan, even. So what does it mean? In the New Testament, 2 Corinthians, Satan is called the God of this world. So what does that mean for somebody to be called Elohim, or someone to be called Theos? It simply means that person has some ability that is unique, an ability that makes them extraordinary. So in the prologue, when Jesus is called Theos, which means God, how we can really understand that, is someone who has a unique type of ability, someone who has a divine aspect to them, not deity, but divine. Like we would say, someone who's divine is sanctified in Eastern Orthodoxy. The point of mysticism in Eastern Orthodoxy is what's known as Theosis. Theosis means mystical union, and there's a three-step process to get there. Just like we have in our tradition, our tradition of mysticism, that Imam Razali talks about this. The first step is tahliya, which means an emptying or a purging. In Latin, this is called a via purgativa, a purging of all vices from the heart. And the way that one does this is that they sit with the people of knowledge, and they take from their avkar, they take from their vicar. And in Eastern Orthodox tradition, this is called catharsis, which comes from the Greek verb kathairo, which means to cleanse or to purify something. The second step is called theoria in Greek, which literally means to see God. And what that means is one prays to God with a contemplative heart. One prays to God as if one sees God, as the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He says, when asked by Jubeel alaihi wa sallam, what is ihsan? He says, man, he says, an ta'bud Allah haka an naka tarah, is to worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as though you can see him. The third step and the final step is called Theosis, which is mystical union. This is not a merging of our essence with the essence of God. This is not what we believe. This is not what Jews or Christians believe. This is when the person becomes divine as it were, sanctified, or someone whose mind and limbs and movements become guarded or guided by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. For example, Abul Qasim al-Junaid al-Rahimahu la ta'ala, he takes this Hadith Qutzi, and he says this is an example of this type of Theosis or mystical union, that when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, my servant does not draw close on to me with anything more beloved than his fara'id. And then he continues to draw close to me. Wa la yasalu abdiya taqarrabu ilayya bin nawafil, with his nawafil, hatta uhibba, until I love him, then I am the eye by which he sees, the hand by which he grasps, and the foot by which he walks, and he were to ask anything from me, I shall surely give it to him. So in this sense, we become God-like in our character, in our actions, but not ontologically. No one essentially becomes God. So this is how we can understand the word logos in John 1.1, and this is how the Unitarians understood it. So one definite article in Greek makes a lot of difference. Now, we also said last time that some early scholars actually attributed the authorship of the Gospel of John to a Gnostic named Corinthus. Now remember, from our Christology that we went over maybe a couple of sessions ago, and we'll put a copy of the Christology chart online, inshallah ta'ala, so you can look at them. Gnosticism was very vast in early Christianity, and there's a lot of different groups of Gnostics. But one of the major groups of Gnostics, they said that Jesus, he had two natures as well as two persons, and this is considered to be a heretical position according to the Orthodox Christianity. So there's two persons and two natures, and when they crucified him, his divine nature as well as his divine person left his body separated from his body. Thus we have something called separationist Christology. And of course, again, this is considered heresy according to Trinitarian Christians. So what they crucified was simply a human body in all respects, and this is the meaning according to the separationist Gnostics of the cry of dereliction when Issa al-Islam apparently said, ilahi ilahi la ma sabachtani in Syriac, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? This is in Mark and Matthew. Of course, when Imam Ghazali read this verse, when he was doing his refutation of the Divinity of Christ from the Gospels themselves, in his rut du jamil, although some say it's pseudonymous, the author, whoever wrote this, maybe Ghazali or someone of that school of thought, said a prophet would never ever make such a statement. A prophet would never say and cry out to God, why hast thou forsaken me? Obviously this wasn't Issa al-Islam. So that was one Gnostic belief. Another Gnostic belief, which actually was more prevalent and seems to be the Christology that John is arguing against at times, although like we said, Corinthus was believed to actually have been the author of the original Gospel of John. Their Christology was that Jesus was only divine. He wasn't man at all. And he was flesh. He was not flesh and blood. He was only a spiritual being. So what people saw appeared to be flesh and blood, right? But it was really a phantasm. So this is another word for this. It's called dosetism or from the Greek doceo, to seem that Jesus only seemed to be flesh and blood. But in reality, he was a spiritual being. We'd also said that the Gospel is rooted in Palestinian Judaism and there are parallels between the Johannine community's Christology. And what do I mean when I say the Johannine community? I'm talking about the community that authored to the Gospel of John, the Johannine community. Where was the Gospel written? Last time we said probably an Ephesus, which is in modern day Turkey. So the Essene community then were a group of Jews in the first century, a monastic order, at Qomran, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. So we find this similar dualism in the Gospel of John. Those who walk in light, those who walk in darkness, good and evil, truth and untruth, spirit and flesh, the children of God, the children of Satan. John is also rigorously exclusivist, very sectarian, like the Essenes, that the only guardians of light and truth are the Johannine community, the adherents of the Johannine community. And if you remember, when we talked about the Gospel of Mark, I believe it is in Mark chapter 10, when the rich man comes to Esalaam and says, I want to be your follower. How do I go to paradise? And then Jesus tells him, follow the commandments. And the man says, I've already done that. Now Mark says here, when he said that to Jesus, I followed all the commandments. Mark says, Jesus looked at him and loved him and then said, there's something you're lacking. Go sell all that you own and follow me. And the man couldn't do it because he was a very wealthy man. The point I'm trying to make here is in the Gospel of Mark, a Jew who follows the commandments is loved by Jesus. He doesn't even believe in Jesus yet as the Messiah. He's simply a Torah abiding Jew. And Jesus loved him, as Mark says. When we get to the Gospel of John chapter nine, you're going to notice something very strange. In the Gospel of John, even Jews who believe in Jesus, it says. Jews who have pistis means faith. They believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus calls them the children of Satan. Why does he call them that? Because in the Gospel of John, the Christology has been very much rarefied. It's very exclusivist. It's very sectarian. In the Gospel of John, it's not even good enough to be a Christian. You have to be a Christian exactly as the Johannine community believes that you must be Christian. So it's very, very sectarian. Now, we also said last time that Jesus, according to the Gospel of John, was God's Word or his Lagos who descended from the heavens to reveal divine knowledge and then re-ascended to the celestial place of origin and caused his followers to be born from above. Again, this is kind of the basic Gnostic myth that this world that we live in was a cosmic catastrophe, that the true God, he is pure thought and his first emanation, according to Neoplatonism, his first emanation was involuntary, a spillage of light, if you will, and the ancient Greeks, they called this first emanation the noose, which means the mind or the rational faculty. Middle Platonists like Philo, they referred to this first emanation as Logos, right? Alexandrian Jews in the first century who were contemporaries of Issa al-Islam, like Philo, but obviously did not meet Issa al-Islam. So this is a Neoplatonic idea that found its way into the Gospel of John, very interestingly. John also talks, we'll talk more about the Logos in a minute or in later sessions, inshallah ta'ala. John also talks about someone called the Paraclete and a lot of Muslims will say the Paraclete here is actually a prophecy of the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. We'll talk about that as well. In the Gospel of John, the Paraclete seems to be Jesus's post-ascension presence, which illuminated the Johannine community's understanding of Jesus's divine nature. So really there's no stress on the second coming of Jesus in the Gospel of John. If you notice, if you remember, in the Gospel of Mark, in the Gospel of Matthew, especially in Mark, there is a central motif of an imminent eschaton, an imminent parousia, an immediate end and an immediate second coming of Christ. And of course, we said Mark was influenced by Paul, Paul's central motif in his genuine seven letters is that Jesus will come during the lifetime of the disciples. Of course, this didn't happen. This was a big disappointment. Mark is very early. He's writing around 67, 70 of the Common Era, and he borrows this central Pauline motif. By the time you get to Matthew's Gospel a few years later, about a dozen years or so after the Gospel of Mark, the second coming is also mentioned, but it's very much downplayed. Luke downplays it further. Finally you get to the Gospel of John written around 90, 95, maybe as late as 100 in its final form, and the second coming is virtually absent. What we have in the Gospel of John is what's known as realized eschatology. What does it mean? Realized eschatology. That means Jesus has already come back in some form. In what form? In the form of the paraclete. The coming of the paraclete, which is described apparently in Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost. This is Jesus's post-ascension presence, which helps the disciples understand the true theological significance of the coming of Christ. Now, what's interesting also, we mentioned last time, is that there's also an opinion that John's Gospel, actually this is a fact that John's Gospel, the first commentary written by John's Gospel, was by a Gnostic named Heraclion, the first commentary. So while it's a strong opinion that Corinthus, a Gnostic, wrote the Gospel, there is difference of opinion about that. However, it is a historical fact that the first commentary, at least the first commentary that is extant that has been found, was written by a Gnostic named Heraclion as well. We had also said last time that there's no birth narrative, there's no virginal birth or conception in the Gospel of John because the word became flesh as the man Jesus of Nazareth. So John is apparently talking about what many Christians would call the incarnation, the spiritual logos becomes physically human. So the virgin birth of Isa A.S. is just not that important. Christ has pre-eternality as it were, according to this understanding of the logos. Of course, there's different understandings of the Christology of John's Gospel and we're going to get to that. And I think when you look at the Bible as it is, with all of its problems, obviously we don't believe that the Bible is the Word of God, there may be elements of truth in the Bible, maybe elements of truth in a New Testament, I think there are. However, if we take the text at face value and say, okay, good, this is the New Testament, these 27 books, and then we compare arguments between Trinitarians and Unitarians, I think the Unitarian position is much, much stronger, much, much stronger than a Trinitarian position, even when we look at the Gospel of John. All right? So there's other ways to look at this concept of the logos, all of these verses in the New Testament in the Gospel of John, which Trinitarians claim are divine claims of Isa A.S. Is there another way of looking at them through a Unitarian lens? And I think there is. And Unitarians, since the beginning of the composition of the Gospel of John, they have their own interpretations of these verses. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Christians are Trinitarian. And Trinitarians believe that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. There are three persons in one essence. Of course, there are major problems with this, right? And if you ask Christians on the street, your average Christians, even your Christian scholars in the church, go ask a local pastor to explain the Trinity, you'll get a lot of different answers. A pastor one time told me, well, just as I have three parts, I have a brain, I have a mind, I have a spirit, and I have a body. God has three parts. Well, God doesn't have three parts according to Trinitarian dogma. It's actually heresy to say that Jesus is a part of God and that the Father is a part of God. They are in and of themselves fully God. So they don't understand this certain person who was a pastor of a church certainly didn't understand what he was talking about. Also, in the New Testament, we heard in past sessions that Jesus doesn't know the day of judgment, Matthew 24, 36, or if you want to say he's referring to a second coming, he doesn't know his second coming. He doesn't know if fig trees are out of season, which is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark, right? And Jesus apparently, according to the New Testament, dies. So a God who doesn't know something and a God who dies, what kind of God is that? How do you square this with your Trinitarian Christology? And there are a lot of linguistic gymnastics that Trinitarians will dive into. A lot of convoluted kind of explanations for these verses that are very clear, very clearly showing that Jesus, is a great human being. He's the Messiah, but he's not God. So I think we're going to get to some of these apologetics a little bit later, inshallah to Allah. But continuing now, also we had said there's no baptism in the Gospel of John. Jesus is independent and superior to the Baptist. Their ministries actually run concurrently in the Gospel of John. There's no temptation by Satan in the Gospel of John. It's not befitting of Christ to be tempted by Satan. As we have in the synoptic Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness. We also said that the teaching style of the Gospel of John is radically different than the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We don't have the type of parables that we have in the synoptic Gospels. Instead, we have these long philosophical speeches about his own nature, these monologues or dialogues in the Gospel of John. We had also mentioned, again, there's no clear prophecy of the Second Coming. There's no stress on future eschatological return. We had said that there's a realized eschatology. There's no institution of the Communion or the Eucharist at the last supper. Jesus simply washes the feet of his disciples. There's no agony in the garden. And there are passion differences. So this is where we left off last time. So if you look at the passion narrative, this is very important, the passion narrative of the Gospel of John. It seems as if John is trying to prove, he's taking great pains to prove that Esalaam was in fact crucified. Let me quote to you a New Testament scholar, eminent New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown, who says John's admissions and inclusions with regard to the passion narrative are determined almost exclusively by his special theological convictions. What are his special theological convictions? John tells you the purpose of writing his Gospel in chapter 20, verse 30 to 31, that you might believe Jesus is the Son of God, which means Christ. So we have to get that clear as well. When the New Testament talks about the Son of God, it's simply a messianic title. It wasn't until the Council of Nicea in 325 of the Common Era where a vote was taken and the Son of God became God the Son, right? So the Jews in the first century, they did not believe that the Messiah was going to be some divine person with a dual nature who's going to die for your sins. They did not believe that about the Messiah. The title Son of God simply meant in the Old Testament, it meant a righteous Jew. If you read the book of Psalms, chapter 84, verse 6, it says that God tells the Israelites, I said, you are gods, all of you, all of you are children of the Most High God. This was a metaphorical title. This is Majaz. This is figurative, just as the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah, one of the prayers of Isaiah is to God. He says, you are the Lord, our Father. God is not a literal Father. Again, this is Majaz. This is figurative, meaning God is like a Father figure. He watches over you like a Father. He provides for you. He loves you. He gives you shelter, so on and so forth. So we have to remember that. In the New Testament, we're talking about the phrase Son of God, which is thoroughly Jewish. It's Judaic. This is a Hebrewism that was basically taken by the Christians and colonized and given a different meaning. So it's like this movie I saw a while ago called Back to the Future, where this kid goes back in time 30 years and he goes to a restaurant and he orders a tab, right? In the bartender or the person working at the store, he says, you're not old enough to have a tab. Well, he didn't know how he was using that term. In 1985, a tab is a soft drink. It's like Pepsi or Coke. But in the 50s, a tab meant that you were a regular patron to a restaurant or something and you had a running tab. Like you say, put it on my tab. So words have different meanings at different times. Certainly in our times, if you say the Son of God, immediately it's a Christian signifier. Immediately you think of Christianity. Immediately you might think that the Son of God is a divine being. And the Son of God shares an essence with God the Father. And there's a trinity, but you have to remember when these terms are being used in the first century, even in the Gospel of John, the term Son of God, right? Which is the Son of God or the Son of the Lord. It simply means someone who is considered to be the Messiah. Remember in the Gospel of Matthew, we told the story in Matthew chapter 27 of Barabbas, this brigand as he's called, a leistace in Greek, which means a common criminal. He was probably a messianic claimant. How do we know that he was a messianic claimant? Because of the name Barabbas. His name wasn't Barabbas. This is a title. It's a patronym, Bar Abba. What does Bar Abba mean? The Son of the Father, right? The Son of the Father. So this is a title that his followers gave him because they hailed him as the Son of God, right? The Messiah. This is a messianic title, right? So when Jesus is called the unique Son of God, monogenes chuyas tutheu in the New Testament. Unique Son of God, that means simply he's the Messiah because there are other Sons of God. Paul says in the Book of Romans chapter 8, as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the Sons of God, right? If you have the Spirit of God, you're a Son of God. Even in the John 9 literature, if you're familiar with 1 John, very clearly it says, if you love God, you are born of God. You are the Sons of God. In the prologue of John's Gospel, very clearly, it says that Jesus gave them authority to be Sons of God. What does that mean? That means beloved of God, as if Sons of God, not in the literal sense. So when we talk about Jesus as the unique Son of God, what that simply means in Biblical language, it means that he is the Messiah. The Qur'an doesn't use such terms because by the time of the Qur'anic revelation, the term Son of God had a different meaning. That's why the Qur'an refrains from using that. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, that the Christians say, Jesus is the Son of God. This is what they're saying with their mouths, right? This is something that they're saying about him. But this is not the original meaning of the term. This is something they're ascribing to Isa A.S. and they're giving it a different meaning. But if you're familiar with Old Testament literature and even New Testament literature, God has many sons and daughters. These are not literal, right? The Qur'an says in another ayah that these people who ascribe children to God, not just to Christians, but you have the pagans of the Quraish at the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him, who are saying that Allah is the Son of God. These false idols are the daughters of God. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, no, these are servants raised to honor that at one time maybe there was someone called Al-Uzza or something like that who was a great human being, a great person. They made a statue out of him and eventually they started to worship that statue and eventually they made that statue a rival to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. We know that Isa A.S. was a great human being. He's a prophet of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. He is the Messiah. He's a messenger of God. He is from the Ulul-Azam, the five most exalted human beings to ever walk the planet earth. We know that about Isa A.S. but eventually they started making icons and images of him and eventually they made him into God that he shares an essence with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So the Qur'an doesn't use that title, Son of God, but we have to understand how it's being used in the New Testament. There's nothing in the New Testament that says Father, Son, Holy Ghost and these three are one. The only verse in which that was said was 1st John 5.7 which is internationally known by Ijma of Christian scholars as a fabrication to the Gospel, to the first epistle of John. 1st John 5.7 it says, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one. This verse was taken out of almost all Greek critical editions, all Greek critical editions I should say every single one of them and most translations of the Bible in English. The only English translation that I know of that retains that verse is the New King James Version because it was brought back by popular demand, but scholars do not believe that the author of 1st John actually wrote that. So there's nothing in the Gospel, there's nothing in the New Testament that says Father, Son, Holy Ghost and that they're of one nature, co-equal, co-eternal, co-substantial. There's nothing like that in the New Testament. Never in the New Testament does Isaii Salaam, does Jesus peace be upon him say I am God or worship me. There's nothing like that in the New Testament and if this is essential Christian truth, if this is the truth about God, that Jesus is God and there's a Trinity, why can't we find evidence for it in their scripture? This is very, very important. Again, this is why I say that when you look at the Bible as it is at face value and you look at Trinitarian proof text and Unitarian proof text, I think overwhelmingly you'll agree that the Unitarian position is much, much stronger. So what happens in the Passion narrative of John? If you recall in the Synoptic Gospels we are told that when they were going to crucify Isaii Salaam they gave his cross to a man who was simply standing there watching the proceedings. His name was Simon of Cyrene and they compelled him to bear the cross, right? Now interestingly the author of the Gospel of John, he completely eliminates this whole episode of Simon of Cyrene. We might have mentioned this before but this is very important to understand this again. We're going to reiterate the reason why the author of the Gospel of John intentionally says Jesus bore his own cross to Golgotha, right? And he eliminates the episode of Simon of Cyrene is very clear that according to most exegetes and historians there are many Christians at the end of the first century who denied that Isaii Salaam was crucified, right? Some of them actually said that Simon of Cyrene was crucified and not Jesus. This was a group called the Basilidians. John also says that when Jesus was on the cross he actually died not from asphyxiation which is the usual way of dying on the cross. Of course that took days, that's why in Gospel of Mark when Jesus was dead after a few hours apparently and this news was brought to Pontius Pilate he marveled because he knew from his experience it took days to die on the cross, right? So what does John do? John has him impaled with a spear on the cross to let you know that indeed he was dead. This is only found in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John also says that on the night of the crucifixion Jesus' body was anointed with 100 pounds of oils and aloes on the night of the crucifixion which makes it very problematic here because we are told that on Easter Sunday in Matthew, Mark and Luke that the women come to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. Now this is very very strange. Is this Jewish custom that after three days you would go inside of a tomb and anoint a body? How are they planning on getting access to this body if the tomb has been sealed? Is it even permissible for a woman to anoint the body of a strange man she's not related to? No. So this is very very and this is very convoluted. What's going on here? What's the real reason these women are coming to the tomb? And what further complicates things is if we take John's Gospel that says he was already anointed before he was placed in the tomb then why is Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb on Sunday? What is she doing at the tomb? So it doesn't make any sense. Obviously she's not coming to anoint the body. It's already been done. What is she coming to do? There's no answer from Christian exigence here. So there's a lot of discrepancies in the passion narratives. Now material that is only found in the Gospel of John as we said the doctrine of the logos that before coming to earth Jesus pre-existed in heaven as God's mediator in creating the universe. Now again there's different ways of understanding the logos. Did he pre-exist? There's different schools of Unitarianism that say he did pre-exist. So Arian Unitarianism A-R-I-A-N named after the Presbyter at Alexandria who lost the day at Nicaea who said Jesus pre-existed his physical body yet he was created by God. He is the initial creation of God that God created the logos who would become Jesus and the logos means wisdom that the first initial creation was wisdom and through this wisdom God created the rest of the cosmos and then this wisdom became flesh and became Jesus. So that's a Unitarian position a slightly higher Christology than the other Unitarian position which is called Sokinian Unitarianism which says that Jesus did not pre-exist his physical body but his spirit as well as his body was created when he was conceived 2,000 years ago like everybody else right? Both positions however are Unitarian positions because both say that Jesus is still created. It's kind of like the difference we have sometimes between Muslims. You have some Muslims saying that the initial creation of Allah was the light of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is called by different the archetypal Muhammad the reality of the Muhammad in nature Al Haqqikotu Muhammadiyah. There's different names that this is called that the initial creation was the light of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and then through that light the rest of Al-Alamin was created. So if you want to believe this belief it is jahiz you can believe in it it's it's permissible to believe and there are certain indications in hadith for example when did you become a prophet and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he says when Adam was between the spirit and the body so he predates Adam Alaihi Wasallam ontologically you can believe that as long as you believe that he's still created the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is created he's the best of God's creation he has ontological precedence over the whole of creation that's fine but he's still created he might have been the primal or the initial creation but he's still created the only thing or entity the only person that is uncreated is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and there are other Muslims who say no that belief is not correct there's no pre-existent light of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and if you want to choose to believe that then that's also jahiz that's fine no problem there's no taqfir on either side right so this is what we're dealing with with the logos in Unitarian Christianity did Jesus pre-existence you and body if he did he was logos he was wisdom that God created initially and through this wisdom through this wise decree if you will God created the heavens and then this wisdom became infleshed into a human being called the Jesus of Nazareth the Trinitarians will say the logos right that was Jesus pre-existent before his physical body but the logos never had a beginning the logos is pre-eternal in fact shares an essence with God and this is kufr this is infidelity this is heresy according to Islam because nothing nobody shares the that the afa'al or the sifat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and anyone who gives any type of divine attribute to any Prophet even the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam if anyone tells you that the Prophet is all hearing all knowing all seeing he's all powerful this is kufr the Prophet when he's in his grave he says I am alive in my grave not like we're alive but a type of life that he has in his grave and he says in a sound hadith that I can hear your benedictions upon me As-Sala alayya I can hear the as-Sala an-Nabi the benedictions upon the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and he said on Friday I can he says actually that in the hadith of ibn-u-Hibban that there's an angel that seated at my head and he conveys to me your salams right except on Friday I can hear your benedictions and I answer with my own tongue this does not mean that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has all hearing that he's all seeing that he knows everything of course not you look at the world all the human beings on planet earth we're just a speck compared to the rest of the cosmos so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is limited in everything but the unlimited absolute is only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala right so this is where the Christian has made grave errors and the way he looks at the logos when he calls Jesus the word of God the Quran correctly calls Jesus the word of God but in the sense that the word of God is a manifestation a manifestation of an attribute of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so you have Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala you have his irada you have his divine will and then you have Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala creating Isa aleyhi salam kun fayakun this is called ta'alluk to go from something uncreated and then you have some sort of process in which a attribute is used and then something is manifested so you have that irada you have Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the ability to create and then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala creating and then you have makhluk this is the manifestation so this is the kalimatullah this is Isa aleyhi salam Isa aleyhi salam is a manifestation of an attribute of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he is not the attribute of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala nor is he somehow identified with the essence or the uncreated nature of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so this much has to be made very very clear also material found in john we have this incident of the first miracle of Isa aleyhi salam according to the gospel of john we mentioned this before this happens in john chapter two at a wedding in cana and this is very interesting because we can compare here with the Quran so the first miracle of Isa aleyhi salam mentioned in the new testament right if we take this chronologically because this is right at the outset of his 30th year apparently is when he's at a wedding and there's no wine so he turns some jugs of water into wine so people could have a good time and drink some wine right and then in the Quran his first testament his first miracle is defending his mother's chastity and honor against those who are slandering her because remember mariam aleyhi salam is very very young maybe 11 12 13 years old he's holding a baby and she's saying you know I miraculously conceived the child and her family begins to insinuate things about her all she can do is point to the baby she knows that the baby is miraculous how can she possibly defend herself she can say wallahi wallahi wallahi I didn't do anything this is true the baby immediately miraculously or is anyone going to believe her no would anyone believe a girl today even if she was a saintly woman would they believe her probably not a few people might that have good faith in her and they believe her and so on and so forth but something needs to happen here and they say and they say we can't speak to a child in the cradle and then as we know as a special miracle he defends himself and ironically the first thing that comes out of his mouth is how ironic this person who is worshipped by a billion people two billion people many of them in so-called civilized first world countries around the world the first words of this human being was in me not Anna in me which has emphasis there's tokyid very early I am the servant of God at any al-kitaba well ja'alani nabiyah well ja'alani mubarakan any nama well so I encourage you to read those verses in surah mariam there's no book in the new testament called Mary this is in the Quran she is preferred in Allah wa ta-raki wa ta-raki she's preferred over the women of all nations this is in the Quran we have to share these things with our Christian friends so we have water and we also have this doctrine of spiritual rebirth in John chapter 3 when Jesus is speaking to this secret disciple named Nicodemus at night that you have to be born again and of course Nicodemus he says how can a man go back into his mother's womb and Jesus says no you have to be born of spirit and of water we'll talk about what that means and then you have these I am sayings of the gospel of John right so if you ask any Christian who knows the Bible most Christians don't know the Bible in fact 50% of Christians I read in an article called the greatest book never read 50% of Christians who go to church can't even name the four gospels they don't know Matthew, Mark, Luke and John right but Christians who know the Bible you can ask them where does Jesus claim to be God and they'll say well you have to look at the gospel of John in the gospel of John Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life I and the father are one before Abraham was I am right he said well so what what does that mean oh he means I am God and we'll deal with these verses in a minute but it's interesting that immediately we'll go to the gospel of John now our question is hypothetically let's say the gospel of John was never included into the New Testament canon because again it was Irenaeus and Clement and Justin who really pushed for this gospel to be included to be uh noteworthy uh and to be accepted by the churches right but if the gospel was originally Gnostic and was condemned then we don't have the gospel of John if we only had Matthew, Mark and Luke where does Jesus claim to be God and you'll be hard and the Christian will be hard pressed to find a single statement that is comparable to these I am statements in the gospel of John right so the gospel of John is very crucial for them and here's another thing the gospel of John again probably found its final form in the year 100 of the common era so Christians for 70 years did not have access to the gospel of John at least on paper so they did they believe that Jesus was God did they believe that Jesus said before Abraham was I am right what about those Christians what about those Christians who lived and died and never heard of the gospel of John did they believe that he was God so it brings up a lot of issues right if you're going to use the gospel of John to prove that Jesus is God we're going to look at these I am statements and we're going to interpret them according to their context and looking at the the gospel in its entirety we're not going to pick and choose certain verses like Trinitarian Christians do like for example when Jesus says the father and I are one in John 10 30 and they say haha did you see Jesus is one with father he shares an essence with God is that what he says that he shares an essence with God what is it saying the New Testament that Jesus shares an essence with God or that Jesus has two natures or that these three are one where is that in the New Testament it's nowhere they're reading into the text this is called hermeneutical waterboarding you know you waterboard someone is a form of torture right they'll admit to anything you waterboard someone and you say did you kill Jimmy Hoffa and they say yes I killed Jimmy Hoffa because people don't want to be tortured so if you strangle a text long enough the text will say what you want it to say right but you have to look at the context you have to give it a simple reading not some convoluted reading that really has no place in the in that original Christian community a reading that was an understanding of that text that was retroactively applied to that text by generations of Christians that came later who came to believe in the Trinity how did the original Johanine community understand the father and I are one that Jesus was God no they didn't and we'll talk about that verse later very important to understand those I am statements also you have in the Gospel of John something that's not in the other Gospels you have the raising of Lazarus so Lazarus according to the Gospel of Luke that's when we first meet Lazarus he was someone who apparently knew Esalaam in the Gospel of John he is a friend of Esalaam whom Jesus raises from the dead and it's very interesting how does Jesus according to the Gospel of John chapter 11 how does he raise Lazarus from the dead so he goes into Jerusalem he's told Lazarus is dead and Jesus wept this is the shortest verse in the entire Bible it's only two words long Jesus wept and then Jesus goes to the tomb and he says father thank you for hearing my prayer and I know that you always have heard me and then he stands up and he says Lazarus come out but did you see what he said before that it actually says Jesus raised his eyes towards the heavens and then he said father thank you for hearing my prayer right so the earlier must say that the Kaaba is the qibla of the Salah we face the Kaaba we don't believe that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is in the Kaaba hashalillah of course not this is Baytullah this is for Tashrif Idafatul Tashrif Rasulullah for example someone who's owned by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala this is called Tashrif the Baytullah the house of God the house owned by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala not something that encloses Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so that's our qibla the qibla of dua the heavens is the qibla of the dua so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wasallam he used to look to the heavens when he would make dua one time he looked to the heavens and he had a choke in his heart he had tashwiq he had a longing in his heart and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reveals in the Quran qad naraatu qal luba wajhika fis samaa indeed we see you turning your face towards the heavens indeed we will turn you to a qibla that will please you right the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wasallam he looked at the heavens aisa alaihi wasallam here in john chapter 11 it says he turned his eyes towards the heavens and he said father again when we say father don't think of the trinity this is not what he means this is the gospel of john we're not talking about the council of naysia don't retroactively uh import upon the text a later christian understanding father here simply means rab rabbi that's what it means in first century judaism father is something the jews to this day call god and they don't believe that god is a literal father okay so we can't get hung up on language we have to understand these terms in context so he says father thank you for hearing my prayer and i know that you always hear me and then he stands up and he says lazarei deru exo Lazarus come forth so how did he raise Lazarus from the dead he prayed to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala isa alaihi salam has no intrinsic power nothing and no one has any intrinsic power except by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala this is the meaning of this beautiful statement nothing has any strength nor power except by means of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Allah tells us in the Quran that isa alaihi salam said that he heals the lepers and he heals the blind that he raises the dead by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala everything is by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so no one and nothing has any intrinsic ability to do anything except by the power of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and this is what it mentions in the gospel of uh john and we find this consistently in the new testament christians will try to say jesus is god because he can forgive sins if you read the synoptic gospels for example jesus says to someone be of good cheer your sins are forgiven right and so the only god can forgive sins yes this is true only god can forgive sins but who is alaihi salam he is rasool Allah he is the agent of god he is a shaluak in hebrew meaning a messenger of god he is simply informing that person that god has informed me that your sins are forgiven one time a person prayed uh one time a person committed a great sin and he came and he prayed behind the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam after the prayer this man came up and he said ya rasool Allah i i have broken a command of the book of Allah so punish me according to the book of Allah and the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam said uh he said um he said uh he said have you did you just pray with us i don't remember the left of the hadith he said didn't you just pray with us and the man said yes he said yes and the prophet said it's already been forgiven you it's already been forgiven you right now is the is the prophet for giving this person's sin does the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam have the authority to forgive sin no what is how does he know that because Allah swt revealed to the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam that this person's sin is forgiven this is what we find in the new testament that isa alaihi salam he says in john in the gospel of john i can of my own self do nothing this is what he says i can of my own self do nothing in matthew he says all power is given unto me all authority is given unto me given it's not his he takes it from somewhere so this cannot be god Allah swt a god does not take authority from another power a higher power that's not god that's a messenger of god and this is a isa alaihi salam according to our uh understanding now characters that are given new emphasis in the gospel of john are jesus's unbelieving brothers right so this might be another jab at the uh brother of christ whose name was james who's the actual successor of isa alaihi salam according to the book of acts and according to history so in the gospel of john jesus's brothers are totally unbelieving people we also find this interesting uh scene uh during the crucifixion scene of the gospel of john of course matthew mark and luke all three of them say that there wasn't a single uh eye witness from the disciples to what happened to isa alaihi salam we are told all of his disciples for succ him and fled none of them was an eye witness to this supposed crucifixion of isa alaihi salam so what does john do remember john is trying to prove that isa alaihi salam was crucified so he puts john this disciple the beloved disciple at the foot of the cross and what does jesus say to him and john is standing next to mary the mother of jesus and jesus from the cross according to the gospel of john he says gunai ide ha huya su woman woman behold your son referring to john the apostle and then he says ide hey matri may tear su behold your mother so what is he doing here he's saying john the beloved disciple is now your son right he is my brother so this has this you might say well who cares about this what does this have to do with anything this is an endorsement for john to be the spiritual uh air of the true christology or teaching of jesus this is a significance of this statement because we know that james he's the brother of jesus james is the son of mary as isa alaihi salam is the son of mary james is the real caliph of isa alaihi salam but what is what is the gospel of john doing here it's replacing james it's uh it's usurping from james his position as the true successor of isa alaihi salam and given it to this beloved disciple this disciple who most christians believe to be john the son of zebedee so there are differences also in the chronology of the gospel of john in the gospel of john we have jesus moving back and forth between galilee and jerusalem we don't find this in the synoptic gospels in the synoptic gospels we have jesus basically spending the vast majority of his life in galilee in nazareth right nazareth is a city in the province of galilee and the north of palestine and then for one week he comes into jerusalem however in the gospel of john we have jesus going back and forth between galilee and judia also the assault on the temple in john happens at the beginning of his ministry in john chapter two if you remember in the synoptic gospels this happened towards the end of his ministry actually during that final week of his life where he assaults the temple so what do we make of this so christians they have this idea like muslims have in hadith authentication if there's two hadith that seem to contradict one another what you would do initially is try to make jama you try to harmonize the two accounts you try to make the text work together right but if you can't do that then you have to pick one based on a preponderance of evidence and this is called taraji for example it says in sira literature that there was a sorcerer a jewish magician who placed a spell on the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam his name was labid he took some of the hair of the prophet and he tied knots into it right and this began to play with the prophet's memory a little bit so that's what we read in sira literature however in the quran in the quran is dhalil qata'i the quran is a definitive proof we read a verse in the quran wallahu ya'asimuka minan nas that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is protecting you you are ma'asum allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protects you from the people so what do we do here so the majority of scholars will say in this situation i imagine many scholars in the situation would say we have to pick one of these and the quran obviously is going to take precedence over a story in sira literature so this is what we have with the new testament you have the synoptic gospel saying that isa alaihi salam he went to the temple towards the end of his life and he cleansed the temple in the gospel of john you have him doing this at the very outset of his ministry so how do christians make jama'a they say he did it twice he did it at the beginning and he did it at the end so sometimes this will work other times it won't work when will it not work well for example in the synoptic tradition we are told that the last supper was on the eve of Passover right that's when he had his last supper with his disciples in the gospel of john we are told that the last supper happened on the eve of the eve of Passover so not on thursday night but on wednesday night both cannot be correct now some clever christian might say something like this they'll say well maybe because uh there was a difference of moonsighting opinion right how do you establish the months in ancient israel you have to cite the moon so maybe there's no contradiction here maybe in the synoptic gospels they're taking one opinion that the moon was cited at a certain time and the gospel of john is taking another opinion that the moon was cited a day earlier or something well this is not true because if we study ancient israel we'll know that the whole city of israel they would begin their months together it was only one opinion how would they do it so basically what would happen is a group of men will go stand on the mount of olives on the night before yome shek right the night before the yome of shek the day of doubt which of course we know about in our books of fiqh they would try to cite the moon if they saw the moon they would go to the to the high priest of the sanhedrin which is the high religious court of a second temple judaism the priest he would look at the evidence and he would if he accepts the moonsighting then he would tell the men to go back to the mount of olives in light these special fires on the mountain that are visible from anywhere in the city and then the whole city would begin to begin that month if the moon was cited so there's no difference of opinion in jerusalem regarding the day of Passover my point here is john is either correct or or the synoptic gospels that that isa aley salam either had his last supper on the eve of Passover or the night before the eve of Passover but both cannot be correct they both can't be correct because he didn't have more than one last supper so somebody here is wrong this demonstrates that there's errors in the new testament some christians will say this they will say the new testament is inerrant it's infallible there's no mistakes in the new testament whatsoever this is more of an evangelical or literate understanding of the new testament which you might get like at the moody bible institute or at oral roberts university or that jerry fallwell what's it liberty university that the new testament is inerrant like basically what we say about the quran right that's why the quran says do they not have to double of the quran and then Allah says if this were from other than God you would have found many contradictions and discrepancies within the quran and they've tried hard to find contradictions in the quran but we can harmonize these apparent apparent contradictions but what do we do with something like this jesus had his last meal on the eve of Passover or the day before the eve of Passover both cannot be correct somebody here is wrong right so we also have the ministries as we said of john and jesus overlapping in the gospel of john we don't find this in a synoptic tradition in the synoptic tradition jesus's ministry is three years long i'm sorry one year long in the gospel of john it's three years long and interestingly most historians will actually agree with john here right that it was three years long which is quite interesting and then there's some gnostic ideas in the gospel of john now we're out of time for this session but next time inshallah we're going to continue looking at the gospel of john we're going to look at john's purpose and method what is his method when he's writing the gospel why is this gospel so different than the three other gospels right and doesn't john know that future generations are going to read his gospel and wonder why it's so different so john actually has an interesting uh uh implicit way of justifying the differences between his gospel and the synoptic gospels so we'll talk about that next time inshallah ta'ala was sallallahu alayhi was sallallahu alayhi was sallam love so welcome to another class we're continuing to look at the gospel of john uh which again is the foundational book of the New Testament with respect to Orthodox Christian theology, belief in the Trinity, belief in divine sonship, belief in vicarious atonement. It's a very important book. That's why we're spending a little more time on this gospel than the other gospels. So we said last time as a quick review, we said there's differences in the chronology of the gospel of John when compared to the synoptic gospels. Remember synoptic in Greek means through the same eye. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke basically follow the same narrative skeleton. However, the gospel of John we have a completely different narrative. We have Jesus going back and forth between Galilee and Nazareth. We have Jesus cleansing the temple at the outset to beginning of his ministry, not at the end. We have Jesus's ministry three years long in the gospel of John as compared to one year long apparently according to the synoptic gospels. There are also some Gnostic ideas that are found in the gospel of John. Remember again, we had said this is important. That's why we're repeating it, that many early scholars believed that the gospel of John was initially written by a Gnostic named Carinthus. Of course, Gnosticism by today's standards is considered to be a Christian heresy. The Gnostics believed that he did not have a physical body, that he was simply a divine being who appeared as a phantasm to people who encountered him, that he would not even leave footprints on the sand as they say. And it's a historical fact that the first commentary of the gospel of John was actually written by a Gnostic, a Valentinian Gnostic named Heraklion. So the gospel of John has these sort of Gnostic ideas. In John chapter six verse 63, he says, the spirit alone gives life, the flesh is of no avail. So this downplay of the flesh, this is very Gnostic in its idea and it's all about the spirit that we're trapped in these mud bodies and we have to escape this reality because again, the world is this cosmic catastrophe. That's how Gnostics looked at the world. It was created by a lesser God and that the true God comes as a Redeemer and blows on our sparks as it were, which are our souls and then through enlightened knowledge, we transcend our mud bodies. So this idea is also clearly presented in John chapter three with his doctrine of spiritual rebirth. Now let's talk about the Pericleat. Again, we said the Pericleat is Jesus's spirit according to the gospel of John that enables the brotherhood, as John calls the Johannine community, to interpret Jesus's life in its full theological significance. So when Jesus says, for example, in John chapter 14, that he will glorify me. In other words, Jesus, he's making Jesus's cosmic meaning known to the author's privileged group. So John is creating a portrait of Christ that duplicates what the Pericleat reveals. So what is John's purpose and method? John's purpose is to reveal the true Christ, the real Christ by allowing the Pericleat to inspire him. Again, who is the Pericleat? This kind of invisible surrogate that inspires the Johannine community. In other words, John believes that the Pericleat is telling him the narrative. This is why there's such big difference between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke. Somebody might say, well, the gospel of John is some theological afterthought. It's not meant to be historical. It's completely different than the synoptic gospels. And it just cannot be true. John realizes this, but he is saying implicitly that the reason why his gospel is so different is because it's actually presenting the real Jesus, the true Jesus. This is the true gospel. How? Because the Pericleat is inspiring the author and, by extension, the Johannine community. So this is very, very important. So these long, metaphysical, philosophical discourses, these monologues and dialogues that we find exclusively in the gospel of John about cosmic status, divine nature, are because John believes he's being inspired by the Pericleat. These are not the Ipsissima verba of Jesus because John is writing in Greek. These aren't the very words of Jesus, but they do represent what's known as the Ipsissima vox, the very speech of Jesus. And this accounts for John's alien chronology and content. So the reason why John's gospel is so different, vastly different again. I'm mentioning this again. The reason why John's gospel is vastly different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke is because the author himself believes that he's being inspired by the spirit of Christ who is called the Pericleat and the gospel of John, and the Pericleat is inspiring him to write the gospel and, by extension, guarding and preserving that Christology, the Christology of the Johannine community. In John, Jesus of the past and believers of the present perform the same kind of spirit-directed work. In John chapter 20, verse 23, very interesting. Jesus tells his disciples after his resurrection, so-called resurrection, he says, if you forgive sins, if you forgive the sins of men, they are forgiven. So again, most Christians will say Jesus is God because he can forgive sins. Some Christians will say Jesus is God because he can perform miracles. You see, what miracles? Jesus could heal people. According to the book of Acts, the shadow of Peter, when he walked by this lame man, his shadow fell upon this lame person and he was healed, just the shadow of Peter, and he didn't even intend to heal that person. So miracles are not a proof of someone's deity. They say, well, Jesus could raise the dead, right? Well, if you look at the Old Testament, if you look at the book of 1st and 2nd Kings, we find the first Kings, chapter 17, we find the prophet Eliyahu, Elijah, raising a boy from the dead, by the permission of Allah again, just because someone can perform a miracle does not make them God. An average person, according to our theology, can perform a miracle. False prophets can perform miracles. In fact, in the Synoptic Gospels, he says, a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after signs. People who always want miracles after miracles, that's a wicked and adulterous generation. He says, there shall arise many false prophets in Christ's who shall show you signs and wonders to deceive even the very elect. A false prophet, according to the New Testament, can perform a miracle. And of course, we know from our theology, there are several types of miracles. You have the Mu'ajiza, which is a true prophetic miracle. And there's two different types of divine miracles, of prophetic miracles. There's a miracle of Dunamis, which is a miracle of power, which is in a prophet does something that is physically impossible by the permission of Allah, like a prophet will split the moon, for example, or water will run from his fingers, which are stated in our sound traditions about the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. That's called a miracle of Dunamis. Dunamis means power in Greek. There are also miracles of episteme, miracles of knowledge, like clairvoyance. Like when the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told that man who's coming to Medina, why do you have the sword? And he said, oh, I just carry my sword. And the prophet said, no, you've come to kill me. And I heard about that conversation you had with your companion in Mecca. So Jibril Alaihi Wasallam told the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, this is impossible for a human being to know who doesn't have that ability or that recourse to an angel or to divine inspiration. So we believe in the Mu'ajiza. We also believe in Karamat. And Karamat probably comes from the Greek Charismata, right? And these are spiritual gifts. And Christians believe in these too, that saints can do. We also believe in Ma'unah. Ma'unah are miracles that are given to average believers that help them along the silatul mustaqim. And then we have something called istidraj, divine beguilement as it sometimes translated, in which a non-prophet, a non-saint will seemingly break natural law, right? So we have to be careful. And istidraj, the result of that, there's no tofiq in it, right? So it's an ability that someone can do. Maybe he learned some sort of ability, like you might have like Buddhist monks who will sit in ice, almost completely naked, and start sweating and melt the ice around them. They can stop the beating of their heart for a few moments. You might think, well, that's a miracle. Oh, they have some sort of ability. You only use 10% of your brain. But there's no tofiq. Who cares? If you can melt ice, who cares? What does that have to do with anything? There's no tofiq in anything like that. And then you have something like ihana, which are miracles that Allah allows a false prophet to do, right? Like Musaylim al-Kaddab. But the point of those miracles is to humiliate that false prophet. Like one time Musaylim al-Kaddab, he tried to heal the eye of a man, right? And there was Ramad. There was a disease in his eye. And Musaylim al-Kaddab, he took his saliva and put it on the man's eye. And suddenly the other eye, that was fine, it began to become diseased. So this is a miracle, but it's ihana. It's a miracle to humiliate this false prophet. So miracles are not a proof of biyati. They can be a proof of prophecy or wilaya of sainthood. But they can also, right, they can also be miracles that are done or so-called miracles done by false prophets. So you have to look at what? You have to look at someone's istiqama. This is the true miracle, according to the Ulama. Ahmad al-Rifa'i, he said, If you see a man flying through the air or walking on the water, don't believe in him unless you check his istiqama. What is istiqama? His adherence to the commandments of Allah SWT. This is how you can tell the karama from istidraj or the karama from ihana as you look at that person's istiqama, his adherence to Allah and his messenger. This is how you can tell, right? So this is very interesting in John 20-23. If you forgive people their sins, Jesus is telling the disciples and by extension the johanan community and by extension all of the Christian believers who believe in that theology that they can forgive people's sins, right? He also says in John 14-12 that Christians will do greater works than him. So you will do greater works than these. This is very interesting that Christians today should be able to raise the dead, heal lepers, heal the blind. Why don't we see these happening? Why do we find these people on TV? Most of them charlatans who are getting a lot of money driving around and they're flying around in their private jets, right? Performing these so-called miracles on TV. Jesus says to Christians, at least according to John, this is what he says, that true Christians will do greater miracles than the pre-ascension Christ. And Jesus, according to John 11, raised the dead. Why don't we see Christians raising the dead? Are they not true believers or is there something wrong with this text? It also says in 1 John 3-6, the first epistle of John, which was also from that johanan community, it says that Christians don't sin. Christians are not sinners because they have the Spirit of God and they're sanctified. Do Christians sin or not? I would say yes, they do sin. So we have a problem here. Now look at the organization of this gospel. It's very interesting. So basically the gospel is four parts. You have the prologue, right? The prologue is chapter 1 verses 1 through 18. This is called the hymn to the logos, right? So you read that, it's sort of a song, right? Very poetic. We quoted part of it in the last class. It begins. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was a divine being, right? Most translations say, and the word was God, right? And that's very misleading. And then it goes on to talk about the word. The word became flesh, so on and so forth, right? That's called the prologue. The second part of the gospel of John is called the book of signs, S-I-G-N-S, the book of signs. And this is basically John chapter 1, chapter 1 verse 19 to 1250, chapter 12 verse 50, where seven miracles are described in that section, seven miracles as ascribed to Isa, the third part is called the book of glory, which is basically chapter 13 verse 1 to chapter 20 verse 31. And this is the plot, the last supper, the passion, the resurrection. And then chapter 21 is called the epilogue, right? Jesus's post resurrection appearances in Galilee. So this is the organization of the gospel. You have the prologue, which begins at John 1-1 and ends at 1-18. Then you have the book of signs, which begins at John 1-19 until John 12-50. Then you have the book of glory, which begins John chapter 13 to John chapter 20 verse 31. Then you have the epilogue, which is chapter 21. So let's look more at this term logos, right? Because again, the term logos in the prologue of John's gospel is identified with God, right? It says in the beginning was a logos, the word, and the word was with God, and the logos was God, right? That's how sometimes it's translated. So in John's day, logos was a popular Stoic term. Who are the Stoics? They were a group of Greco-Roman philosophers that believed in God, but they were deist. They believed that God does not reveal himself to humanity. They were rationalists. They believed that reason was all you needed to understand the true nature of the universe. They were very unemotional. They considered emotion to be a sign of someone not being very intellectual. So the word logos was quite popular in Stoic philosophy, and it was viewed as synonymous with divine intelligence that created and sustained the world. So this is God's project, his decree, his plan, his blueprint that becomes manifest, right? This is the meaning of logos. So when we say in the beginning was the word, what that really means is in the beginning there was a plan, a divine plan. God decreed something. What was his decree? So here we're not talking about the Son. Some Christians will say logos means Son of God, and the logos is a person, right? No, that's not what it's saying. In the beginning was the word, not the Son. It doesn't say Son. The beginning was the word, and the word meaning that this decree, this plan, this irada, this decree that Allah SWT had if we were to use Arabic at this point in our translation. The beginning was the word, and this plan was with God. Of course, the decree of God is with God, right? And the plan was God, meaning that this plan is Godly, if you will. It's being used qualitatively here, right? So a noun in Greek that is anarthorous, which means that it's indefinite, quite often is used adjectively, meaning qualitatively. So we're not going to translate, and the word was God, we're going to say and godly, right? And godly was the word, right? In other words, this word, this divine decree, this plan is divine. It is godly. It is from God. It is of the things divine, right? It's an attribute of God. That's the meaning here, according to a unitarian understanding. We can't translate here logos as Son and God as Father. We can't say, for example, in the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was the Father. We can't say that. Why can't we say that? Because that's heresy, according to a Trinitarian doctrine. The Son and Father are not the same person. And a lot of Christians, they make that mistake because they can't explain the Trinity. Say, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Son, but all three are God. There's three who's and one what. That's how they describe the Trinity. Three who's, three persons, and one what, one God, right? This kind of convoluted type of explanation. But it's very easy. In the beginning was the word, God's plan, God's decree, and the word was with God, and God's decree and plan was with him, and God's, and the word was God, meaning that this decree was of the things godly, right? Because the second occurrence of the word Theos, again, does not have a definite article. So we can say that the word was qualitatively divine. And then the word became flesh in John chapter one, verse 14. So again, we have God's plan, his irada, which is uncreated. He has a plan. What is his plan? To create Issa alaihi salam. God's irada is to create everything. I was in that plan. You were in that plan. All of us were in God's irada, which is pre-eternal. We were in God's plan. You can use the term, if you like, mind of God. It's kind of platonic, neo, it's kind of platonic to use that term, that we were some sort of archetypal form in God's mind or something like that. I'd rather not use that type of language, but some philosophers will use that type of language, especially Christian philosophers. I prefer to say, we were in God's irada. So was Issa alaihi salam. He was in God's plan. There's irada, and then there's a ta'aluk. There's a manifestation of God's attribute. God has irada, and then he creates, and then we have a manifestation. So the word became flesh means that this decree became manifest in the person of Issa alaihi salam. This is how we understand the prologue of John's gospel. We don't understand the prologue in a sense that the word is the Son of God and that the Son is God himself. That doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? Because if we look at John 17.3, for example, I want everyone to look at John 17.3 very interestingly here, he says, this is eternal life, John 17.3. This is eternal life. So Jesus is talking to who? He says the Father. He says it, Father. He's praying to his Father, meaning God. Again, not Father in a literal sense. We have to get this notion out of our mind. That's not what it means in the New Testament. It means Rob. So he says, Father, this is eternal life to know you, the only true God, to know you. And the Greek says, the only true God is who? The Father. Right? And Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent, this is a beautiful Cretal statement. And it's very, very clear. It's very clear. The only true God is the Father. And Jesus is the one sent by God. Jesus is the agent of God. Well, Christians will say, well, it doesn't say that the Son isn't a true God either. Well, the New Testament doesn't say a lot of things. This is a weak argument. This is called an argument from absence. The New Testament also doesn't say that God will become a dog or a cat. So is that possible for God to do that? No. Let's not mystify the verse. Let's not take something that's clear and convoluted. Let's not have these convoluted verbal gymnastics to prove the trinity. And very clearly, this is eternal life to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. So we're going to take a short break. Inshallah, it's time to pray. We'll come back and finish the show. Inshallah. So continuing talking about the Gospel of John, we're talking about the Logos before we took a break. So we said in Stoic terminology, the term Logos was synonymous with divine intelligence that created and sustained the world, the project, or decree of God. And this is a way to understand the prologue of John's Gospel. In the beginning was the word, meaning God's decree to create. The word here is not a person. It's impersonal. It is a decree. And the word was with God. God's decree is with him. And the word was of things godly. Again, no definite article on the second occurrence of the word Theos in John 1.1. So we have خلق, which is an attribute of Allah SWT that's related to His irada and His qudra and His irlim, which is مطلق. So we have خلق and qudra. And then we have Allah SWT, who is Al-Khalik, who is actively creating. And then we have the manifestation of the attribute, which is مخلق. So we have Allah SWT, who had decreed to create Isa, and then we have Allah SWT, creating Isa, as Allah says in the Qur'an, the similitude of Isa, with Allah is like that of Adam. He created him from dust, and then he said to him, Be, and there he was. Now also in Judaism, this idea of khokma or khikma, which is wisdom, is very much prevalent, especially in the book of Proverbs, Chapter 8, which is depicted symbolically as God's companion when he created the universe, God's helper, if you will, in the creative process, but also God's channel of communication to humanity. So the celebrated first century Jewish theologian of Alexandria, his name was Philo. He's really the one who synthesized Hellenistic logic with the Hebrew Bible, the one who synthesized, in other words, Greek and Semitic thought. He referred to wisdom as logos, wisdom, khokma in the Old Testament, and he said it is the creative intermediary between the transcendent creator and the material creation. He didn't like to use the word Sophia because Sophia is feminine, so he used the word logos. So when God spoke, according to this understanding, he created the word or he created wisdom, he created the logos, then the cosmos is born, created through wisdom. So when God spoke, for example, in the Torah, he said Yahi, Yahi means let there be, Yahi Ur, let there be light. When he said Yahi, that's when he manifested the creation, and the first creation was khokma, according to this Jewish-Alexandrian understanding. When he said kun, when he said bi faya kun, there he was. So this wisdom is created. So if you read Proverbs chapter 8 verses 22 to 23, we read, the Lord created me, the Lord created me at the beginning of his work, and this verse was actually quoted by Arians. Remember, who were the Arians? Again, this is review. The Arians were the Christians at Nicaea who lost to the Proto-Trinitarian Christians by vote in 325 of the Common Era. The Arians were Unitarian, what that meant was they believed in the monarch, the first principle, in the Father as being the only true God. So the Arians believed that he did pre-exist his physical body as khokma, as wisdom, as logos. However, this logos is created, and in Proverbs chapter 8 verse 22, the Lord created me at the beginning of his work. Also in the book of Ecclesiasticus, which is not in the Old Testament, it's considered apocrypha, but we have this idea of the Hebrew Bible, in the Hebrew Bible of wisdom speaking as the first person, I am. Then defining her activities as God's agent, before time he created me, I am the Word which was spoken by the Most High. Also you find similar statements in the wisdom of Solomon. So these are the references for the I am statements of the Gospel of John. The Christians will try to say that when Isaiasalam, according to John chapter 8 verse 58, when he says in the Greek, pringenestai avraham egoemi, before Abraham was I am, they will try to say here that Jesus is claiming to have ontological precedence before Abraham. Now if you're an Arian, that's fine, because they do believe that Isaiasalam predates Abraham, but Jesus was still created. What they really mean to say here, the Trinitarians, is Jesus here is saying I am, and that's the name that God gave Moses at the burning bush. So if you go back to Exodus chapter 3 verse 14, we were told that when Moses is at the burning bush and he is speaking with God, he says, when I go to the Israelites, they're going to ask me your name, what shall I tell them? And then Hebrew God tells him, which means, I am who I am. So this is translated, I am whom I am. So Jesus in 858, he says before Abraham was, I am. So he's using the same name he's claiming to be God. Now what's interesting here is that Jesus simply says, egoemi. He says, I am, he doesn't say I am God. If you look at that verse in Exodus, this verse was translated in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament done in Alexandria in 250 before the Common Era. This was translated into Greek as egoemi. I am the one who is, I am the one who, who is the is the Mosul masculine singular, the relative pronoun, who on, on is where we get the word ontology from. I am the one who self exists. But Esalaam according to John 8 58, he doesn't say, print Abraham, genesty, egoemi, who on. He doesn't say that. If he said that, then indeed it's a divine claim. But what he simply says is before Abraham was, I am, meaning who I am he, who's he, the Messiah. This is his claim. This is a claim he's made, the one you're waiting for, the one you, you need, the one who is going to come, the promised one, the Messiah, the Messiah, the Christ, the Christ, this is who I am. Now why does he say before Abraham was I am? Because here he's trying to defend his legitimacy, that even Abraham knew about me, he prophesized of me, he spoke of me, or that possibly he is, he is preeminent, he has higher status than Abraham, and not some sort of ontological presidents over or before Abraham. So I am he, I am the Messiah. Now if you look at John chapter nine, verse nine, we are told that Esalaam, Jesus Christ, he heals a man born blind, and the Pharisees, they want to investigate this miracle. Now when the man has his sight restored to him, there's a discussion amongst the people, and there's a difference of opinion whether this is the actual blind man. So some say no, it's him, some say no, it looks like him. So then the blind man says, ego emmi, I am he. So he uses the same words that Jesus uses in 858. So what does the blind man mean here? Does he mean I am God? He said ego emmi, no. What does he mean? I am the blind man, I'm the same one, because that's the context of the situation. They want to know if he's the blind man or not. In the context of John chapter eight, they want to know if he's the Messiah, and he says ego emmi, I am. This has nothing to do with Exodus chapter three, verse 14. In the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is reported to have said, many will say that I am he, ego emmi, I am the Christ, I am the Christ. He said, don't believe them. Many will say ego emmi, again, I am he, meaning the Christ. The first occurrence of one of these I am statements in the Gospel of John comes in John chapter four, when Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well, right? And the woman says to Jesus, I know that the Messiah will come. Listen to the context. They're discussing the coming of the Messiah. I know that the Messiah will come. So Jesus says there, according to the Greek, it says, lege aute ha eesus. Jesus said to her, ego emmi ha lalun su. He says, I am he, the one you are speaking with. I am who? The Messiah. That's what he's talking about. This is the whole context of the situation of John eight, 58. When John, when Jesus uses ego emmi, according to John, he's claiming to be the Messiah. He doesn't say ego emmi hoan. He simply says ego emmi. So there is this echo of Exodus 314. However, it's very clear from the context that Jesus is simply claiming to be the Messiah. If you want to find some sort of source of the I am statements of the Gospel of John, the more apt source would be the I am statements of wisdom personified in the Old Testament of hukma, of the logos, phylo called hukma, wisdom or hikma, logos, but wisdom was created. It's the initial creation. It's not uncreated. It doesn't share an essence with God. So that's important. Now, if you look at John 1319, he says to the Jews, I tell you that you must believe that ego emmi, that I am he, ego emmi. Again, I am who? The Christ. This is what it's all about because John chapter 20 verse 31, he says that these things were written so that you might know that Jesus is the Christ, not that Jesus is God. He doesn't say that. Nowhere does Jesus, nowhere does the author of the Gospel of John directly and unambiguously refer to Jesus as the God, right? Nowhere in the Gospel of John does Jesus claim to be God or does he say worship me. When he says ego emmi in the Gospel of John, which is usually translated I am, he should really translate that I am he, who the Messiah. That's the context of the verses. Here's another one for you in the Gospel of Mark chapter 14 verses 61 to 62 when the high priests ask Jesus, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? Again, this title son of the blessed or son of God. Again, we shouldn't confuse this. We shouldn't be convoluted here that this is simply a messianic title. That's why the high priest is using it. Son of God means the Christ. Are you the Christ? Jesus responds, ego emmi. He says I am. I am who? I am God? No, I am the Christ. That's what it means. Again, our anchor verse in John chapter in the Gospel of John is John chapter 17 verse 3. He says this is eternal life to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. This is very, very clear. It's a beautiful creedal statement. The only true God is the Father. He's the only true God according to the Gospel of John, right? And Jesus is the one sent by God, the messenger of God, the agent of God, right? And again, Christians will try to say here, well, it doesn't say Jesus is not the one true God. Again, this is an argument from absence. It's a very weak argument. The Bible doesn't say a lot of things. Does it mean that they're true? What does the Bible actually say? That's what's important. And clearly here, the only true God is the Father. And St. Augustine, right? Found this verse very, very problematic. One of the architects of the Trinity. He wrote Dei Trinitate. And he actually, in his homilies, he rearranged the verse because the way it appears in the Gospel of John clearly denies that Jesus is God, limits or restricts the Godhead only to the Father. So what did Augustine do? He rearranged the verse and he said this is eternal life to know you, to know you, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent as the only true God. You see how he manipulates the verse to implicate Jesus as also being that one true God. But that's not how the verse goes, to know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. It's very, very clear. Another verse in the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 17, this is apparently after the so-called resurrection of Jesus. When Mary Magdalene was going to touch him, he says, touch me not. I have not yet ascended unto my Father. He says, go and tell my brethren, I ascend unto my Father and your Father. No problem so far, Christologically, from a Trinitarian perspective. And then he says, my God and your God. He says, my God. Seas moo, my God. So if Jesus has a God, how can he be God? Isn't this two Gods? Jesus can't have a God. Jesus according to the Trinitarian position has a Father and he is co-equal in his essence with the Father, yet he is subordinate to the Father in his person, if you want to say that. That's fine. However, if Jesus has a God, then we run into a serious problem. When we talk about God in heaven and then God on earth, the Father in heaven, the Son walking to earth, isn't that two Gods? It sounds like two to me. Jesus says in Mark chapter 29, chapter 12, verse 29, here, oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. God is one. And Christians will say, yeah, but it's one, but there's an allowance of plurality. So language has no meaning anymore. One is one. That's what it means. I don't say this is one pencil, yet it's three pencils. That's nonsense. That's gibberish, right? It's one pencil. God is one. That's it. God is one. And the Father is the only true God, according to John 17.3. And Jesus admits in John 2017 that he has a God. He says, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, my God and your God. If Jesus is God, how can he have a God? Are there two Gods? In there's a hierarchy of two Gods? Is this by theism, try theism? No. So Christians have a lot of work to do with these verses, and they'll take these verses and they'll interpret them in, again, very kind of convoluted ways in order for the trinity to work that nobody really understands. But I don't think that the original authors of these books had anything to do with the trinity. Of course, we know the trinity wasn't formally articulated until the fourth century of the common era. And this scripture is supposed to be from the end of the first century. Very clearly from this scripture, it is clear from the Gospel of John, it's clear that there is no such thing as a trinity in that, even according to the high Christology of the Gospel of John, is God's agent. He is a messenger of God. He is not God. He is the Christ. He is the Messiah. Now if you continue to look at the Gospel of John here, so we said the Gospel of John is organized with the prologue, right, the hymn to the Lagos, and that ends at John chapter 1 verse 18. And then you have what's known as the book of signs, right, for the next few chapters, I think until chapter 12 verse 50. The book of sign is basically seven miracles that appear in the Gospel of John, these seven miracles. The only miracle in the synoptics is the sign of Jonah, right, the prophets escape from death. So some say that this portion of the Gospel of John was actually written originally around 50 or 60 of the common era right around the time of the Q-source document. Of course we talked about the Q-source or the sayings Gospel when we talked about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that it was compiled by Jewish Christians, and it sort of served as John's narrative framework. And then the author, the autograph author of the Gospel of John, when he had this book of signs, he inserted these lengthy dialogues and speeches into the text in order to explicate his Christology or the Johannine Christology. So what are these seven miracles that are mentioned in the book of signs? Jesus turns water into wine, that's number one, John chapter two. Number two, you have the healing of the official's son, which is also John chapter two. You have number three, the healing of the crippled man, and John chapter five, you have the feeding of five thousand, and John chapter six, that's also found in the synoptics. Then you have walking on water, which is also found in the synoptic Gospels, that's John chapter six. We're storing sight to a blind man, that's John chapter nine, and then finally the seventh sign is raising Lazarus from the dead, which is John chapter 11. We've talked about that in our last class, that Jesus, he directed his vision towards the heavens and prayed to God, and God answered his prayer. And of course in the Gospel of John, the raising of Lazarus, this leads to Jesus's death, not the temple assault, which is what we find in the synoptic Gospels. Of course we have also this story in John chapter eight, verses one through twelve, which is called the pericope adulterai. This is an incident where a woman was caught in the act of adultery, and the Pharisees are chasing her to stone her, which is the penalty of adultery according to the Torah. And he sees what's happening, he stands in front of the Pharisees, he writes something in the sand, and then he stands up and he makes this famous statement that he who is without sin may cast the first stone. This is included in every Jesus movie, if you watch any Jesus movies, you'll see this in every Jesus movie, right? What's interesting about this pericope, this passage from the Gospel of John chapter eight, is that almost all scholars believe it was a later addition to the text that this story actually never happened, but it was later included into the Gospel of John. So you have scribes writing things later and interpolating these stories, bringing these stories into the text of the Gospel of John. This pericope adulterai sometimes actually shows up in versions of the Gospel of Luke. So anytime you have this kind of mobility of verses, shows that these verses are actually not original, but were added later. Now, there is some evidence, however, that the raising of Lazarus was also originally found in a synoptic tradition. In 1958, a Christian scholar named Morton Smith, he was in Marsaba Library in Palestine, and he found what appears to have been another version of Mark's Gospel called the Secret Gospel of Mark, which actually does include the raising of Lazarus as well. And then the third part of the Gospel of John is called the Book of Glory, which may be based on the passion narrative of the synoptic tradition. Or John, or it could be from an independent source, although most scholars believe that John simply reworked or reinterpreted the older synoptic tradition. So John insists on Jesus's unique relationship to God, that he and the Father are one. That's John, chapter 10, verse 30, but it's a unity of heart and purpose. So again, this is another one of those verses that Christians will point to and say, look, Jesus is claiming to be God, where he says, the Father and I are one, egokai, patermu, heisestin, or esmen, the Father and I are one. So one in what? And Trinitarian Christians will say, one in essence, hamausias, this Greek term, which is non-biblical, but was made Orthodox Christianity at the Council of Nicaea in 325 of the Common Era, hamausias means of the same essence. And this was their favorite verse, but if you read the context of that, what does it say? Jesus is talking about his disciples, and he says, he says, I watch over my disciples. No one can snatch them out of my hand. And then he says, my Father who is greater than all, very, very clear. The Father who is greater than all, he is watching over them, and no one can snatch them out of his hand. The Father and I are one. So isn't it clear that the context of this verse is that Jesus, alaihi salam, and God, are united in purpose? They are of one heart, one goal, one objective, united in action, united in character, not united essentially. No one can be united essentially with God. This is the context of the verse. It's very, very, very clear. However, Christians, again, they pick up these verses out of context. The Father and I are one, and they say, look, right here, oneness of essence, and we can make the same mistake with the Quran. If I say, for example, whoever obeys the messenger is obeying God. There's a verse in the Quran in Surah An-Nisa, whoever obeys the messenger is obeying God. Someone who doesn't know the context of the Quran, who doesn't know about Islamic Tawheed, he might conclude, oh, maybe that's because the messenger is God. Of course not. No Muslim exegete in the history of Islam has ever said that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is Allah s.w. essentially. What does this verse mean? You did not throw those pebbles, right? When you threw it, I threw it. Allah threw it. What does that mean? Allah s.w. somehow incarnated into the body of the Prophet s.w. And threw some pebbles? No. What does that mean? That means that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is guided in his actions. He is doing exactly what Allah s.w. wants him to do. He is sanctified, right? He is protected, he is ma'asum, wa allahu ya'asumika minan nas. Allah s.w. will protect you from the people. All of the Prophets are ma'asum. They are free of major sin. They're under the shelter of Allah s.w. so they cannot willfully disobey Allah s.w. Their doings, their words and their speeches are exactly according to the perfect will and irada of Allah s.w. This is the meaning of the verse. The Father and I are one. So this is very important for us to understand this concept. Now also in the Gospel of John, we talked about this already, John makes certain crucial amendments to the synoptic tradition with respect to the passion narrative. Remember in the synoptic Gospels, the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus is only apparently on the cross for a couple of hours, pilot marvels, then he's taken off the cross, right? And the Gospel of Mark ends quite ambiguously. The women go into the tomb. The stones already been rolled away. They see an angel who says Jesus is not here. He is risen. He is in Galilee. Go see him in Galilee. He's left the city of Jerusalem. And then the women run around, afraid. So nobody actually knows what happened. What happened? Was he resurrected? Did he swoon on the cross? Did he survive the crucifixion? What happened? Did he leave in secret because of fear of the Jews that are in the city? What happened here? So what John wants to do, he wants to make it very, very clear that Jesus was killed on the cross. No Simon of Cyrene incident. He's impaled on the cross. He's anointed on that very night. So next time, inshallah, we're out of time now. Next time, inshallah, we should conclude the Gospel of John. And then we're going to have our last two classes that are recorded. We're going to look at more Muslim apologetics, approving the Muslim position from the Christian scripture. We're going to look at some important verses in the Bible in which Muslims can use to show that there's a continuity between the Bible and the Qur'an and that the Qur'an is the true confirmer of the message of Islam, even as it appears in the Bible. Of course, the Bible, as we know it, is not the preserved Word of God. But again, there are elements of truth there. And we're going to sort of look at those verses from a Unitarian perspective and inshallah, learn how to deal with them. So when we call Christians to Allah and His messenger, we can use their own text and show them an alternative way that is free from Trinitarian confusion in which they can understand their own texts and hopefully introduce them also to the progressive aspect of our deen, so that if they accept the unity of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and they accept the messengership of Isa A.S., not his deity, the messengership, then maybe they can accept the messengership of the successor of Isa A.S., the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and come to believe in the Qur'an as the true confirmer of the Torah in the Gospel, inshallah Ta'ala. So we'll do that next time. So we're continuing to talk about the Gospel of John in this class. This is the second to last class. Inshallah, I plan on finishing our discussion about the Gospel of John, also known as the fourth Gospel in this class. So last time we had said that the Gospel of John is organized in four sections. There's the prologue, which is the very beginning of the Gospel. So it begins in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And last time we talked about the significance of that statement and how there's multiple ways of understanding that statement. So that's called the prologue, also known as the hymn to the Lagos, and that begins at chapter 1 verse 1, it ends chapter 1 verse 18. And then we said the next part of the Gospel of John is called the Book of Signs. And this consists of seven miracles that were performed by Isa A.S. according to the Gospel of John. And this begins at John chapter 1 verse 19 and ends John chapter 12 verse 50. The third part of the Gospel of John is called the Book of Glory. And this begins at John chapter 13 verse 1 and ends John chapter 20 verse 31, which is believed to be the actual real ending of the Gospel of John 2031. And the Book of Glory consists of the plot to assassinate Jesus, peace be upon him, as well as the Last Supper, then the Passion Narrative, then the Resurrection. And then you have the last part, which is called the epilogue, which again, most scholars of the New Testament believe was added later. The epilogue is basically chapter 21 of the Gospel of John. And these are post resurrection appearances of Isa A.S. in Galilee, in or around Galilee. So it said also last time that if you go to your average Christian on the street or at church or at school and you ask them, where does Isa A.S. claim to be God in the New Testament? So this belief that Isa A.S. is God, this is a foundational belief, supposedly a foundational belief of Christian orthodoxy. Let me ask this question to your Christian friend, if he knows his way around the Bible, he will invariably point to something in the Gospel of John, right? So that's very important to understand that they're going to quote probably one of the IM statements. If you look in the synoptic tradition, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it becomes very, very clear and we have to reason with people. Say, look, is Jesus God? They'll say yes. Is Jesus a man? They have to say yes. You say, well, the Old Testament says God is not a man. It's very, very clear. Hosea, the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, chapter 11, verse 9 says, I am God and not a man, because God and man are mutually exclusive, right? If you look in the Old Testament, I'm sorry, in the New Testament synoptic tradition as well, we have, according to Matthew 24, 36, not knowing the day of judgment or the day of his return. How can God not know something if Issa alaihi salam is supposed to be this omniscient deity? As Christians believe him to be, why doesn't he know the day of his second coming of the parousia or the day of judgment? Why doesn't he know that? So we've demonstrated that Issa alaihi salam doesn't know something. In passages like that, Matthew 24, 36, where he says, of that day, no with no man, not the angels, not even the Son, Udei ha-huias, not even the Son, but only the Father. Passages like this, this particular passage actually greatly stumped many church fathers. The church fathers have these really interesting and convoluted ways of dealing with passages like this, very disturbing to them that Issa alaihi salam doesn't know something. So let's say, well, as a man he didn't know, but as God he does know. So if he would just think a little bit harder, the answer would come to him. It's like asking someone, are you blind? Who's blind in one eye? And he says, yes, I'm blind, but he can still see out of one of his eyes, so he's not really blind. So these kind of linguistic gymnastics or theological convoluted sort of responses from the early church fathers. And keep in mind as well, the early church fathers are no way, shape, or form Jewish theologians. If you look at the post-apostolic church, a lot of these church, most of the church fathers, in fact, probably all of the church fathers, these what are known as the patristic figures, the pre-Nicene proto-Orthodox scholars and bishops and so on and so forth, theologians, they're actually from pagan backgrounds, like Justin, Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons in origin of Alexandria. So they're borrowing these kind of pagan ideas, Neoplatonism and so on and so forth, Greek influence, and they're basically rewriting the Gospels through the lens of their former paganism. So Aesai, the Asylum eventually becomes the second person of a triune God. But if, again, you look at the synoptic tradition, a good passage to point out to your Christian friends and neighbors is Mark Chapter 12, verse 29, that whole exchange with this Jewish scribe, right, the Jewish scribe who's a theologian comes to Aesai, the Jesus, and he says to him, which is the greatest commandment? And if Jesus was going to teach Trinitarian doctrine, right, as Athanasius says, you know, we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity and Unity, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but they are not three gods but one God. And then he says, the Father is a person, the Son is a person, the Holy Spirit is a person, but they're not three persons but one person. I mean, language doesn't have meaning anymore, apparently, right? Listen to what Jesus says in a very clear, unambiguous, concise statement. What does he say when this Jewish theologian is asking him the question, what is the foremost of all of the commandments? He says the first, the foremost commandment is here or Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He is one. He quotes Deuteronomy 6-4. The Quran says, Musad di Qalima bayna yadayah min at-Tawrah. Ta'is alaihi salam, he confirms the theology of the Old Testament. God is Ahad, God is Ikhad in Hebrew. And Ikhad means one, right? And one, he's one entity, he's one person, he's one essence, and that's all he is. There's no plurality, there's no multiplicity in him, subhanahu wa ta'ala. You know, when we say one, we mean one, right? When I say I'm one person, I don't mean to say I'm also three persons. No, I'm one person, right? So we have to stop mystifying language, right? This is my message to some of our Christian brethren who may be watching this class is that when Jesus has God as one, that's the creed of Jesus. He's confirming the theology of the Old Testament and nowhere in the Old Testament is God presented as a triune deity. In fact, nowhere in the New Testament is God presented as a triune deity. You won't find a single verse in the entire New Testament where the word three in God appear, the word three in God appear in the same verse. It just doesn't happen. First John 5.7, there are three of the bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. That's a fabrication to the text, universally accepted to be a fabrication of the text. So, the Christian will immediately say, well, look, in John 8.58, right, the Jews, they're having this dialogue or debate if you like with Jesus. And Jesus says to them, before Abraham was, I am. In Greek it says, print Abraham genestai egoemi, I am. And they usually write, I am in big capital, bold letters, right, if you have English translations. What are they trying to tell you here? What are the translators trying to tell you? Because the first level of commentary, the first level of exegesis is translation. When you translate, you automatically are interpreting the text. They are inseparable. So, what are the translators trying to do when they capitalize, I am? They're trying to tell you that here, Esalaam is claiming to be the God of the Old Testament. And you might say, well, how is that? Well, again, if you look at the story in Exodus, when Moses is at the burning bush, and he says, when I go to the Israelites, you're going to ask me, what's your name? And then God says to him, I am whom I am, right. I am what I am, I am who I am, something like that. And interestingly, this is translated into the Greek as, I am the one who is, that's the divine aspect of the statement. Whereas Esalaam, according to John 8, he doesn't say, I am the one who is, I am God, I am a God, he doesn't say anything like that. He simply says, before Abraham was, I am, I am what? I am the Messiah. Because this is the entire context of the Gospel of John. Again, at the very end of the Gospel of John, the true ending of John is chapter 20, verse 31, in which the author writes, these things have been written to convince you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Again, Son of God here means Messiah. We cannot import our post biblical or post apostolic understanding of the phrase, Son of God onto the Bible. That's to be anachronistic. We can't do that, right? Because in the Bible, again, the phrase Son of God does not mean God, does not mean deity, does not mean any type of divine incarnation. This is total kufr for the Jewish mindset, according to Jewish theology. What Son of God simply means is an exalted human being and in the context of first century Palestinian Judaism, it means the Messiah. That's what it means. So this has to be made clear that when Isa, if he made the statement, of course, the vast majority of historians don't even believe that the historical Jesus made these statements in the Gospel of John. Why don't they believe that? Number one, these statements are not multiply attested. They're not at the level of Tawatur, if you will, right? So again, if you ask a Christian, where does Jesus claim to be God? John 8.58, John 10.30, right? John 14.6, before Abraham was I am the father and I are one. I am the way, the truth and the life, right? These statements are called the I am statements from the Gospel of John. But the problem here is that Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not record a single one of these statements. So what does that tell you about the supposed authenticity of these I am statements? A Christian will try to say, well, it's that classic example of the four blind men touching four different parts of the elephant. John simply touched a different part of the elephant, so he has a different description. But that's an inadequate description or explanation simply because if these are divine claims and they're being heard by disciples like Matthew, who is an eye and ear witness, he's not blind, he's listening to these statements of Esalae Salaam. He doesn't even record a single one of them, right? Whereas John has all of these I am statements, five, six, seven of them. Matthew doesn't record a single one of them. What does that tell you then? That tells you that John either made them up or Matthew knew them but didn't include them in his Gospel for some reason, right? Which is very troubling for Christians to hear sometimes. Why didn't Matthew include these I am statements in his Gospel? If he's a disciple of Jesus, right? These are essential divine claims. You would think if Matthew worshiped Jesus as God, which is the claim of all traditional Orthodox Christians, why doesn't it include these I am statements? By the way, nowhere in the Gospels does Esalae Salaam command anyone to worship him. And again, this is a problem of language. You know, we have the word Huyas Tuthayu, the Son of God. What does that mean, right? In the post apostolic churches, it means God the Son. That's not what it means in the Bible. You have this idea of the hagyan penoma, the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Yes, in the post apostolic churches, right? In contemporary Christianity, it means the third person of a triune Godhead. But that's not what it means at the time of the New Testament, right? So people get caught up in these languages. They don't know what they're talking about, right? What do these terms actually mean at the time of Esalae Salaam? So when we look at this, look at these I am statements, right? We have to determine how is John using the statement, right? Well, let's go back to Matthew for a minute, because that's what we were talking about. So if Matthew believed these statements, again, to be divine claims, oh, that's what I wanted to mention, the word for worship in the New Testament. So the word for worship in the New Testament is proskenuo, which means to revere or to worship. It can be done to deity or to human beings. It depends on context, right? So for example, if we read in the Quran, the brothers of Yusuf Alayhi Salaam and Yusuf Alayhi Salaam had a dream, right, at the beginning of Surah Yusuf, and he saw 11 planets and the sun and the moon, and they were prostrating to him. Sajidin, this comes from Sajda, Sajda, right? And when he told this dream to his father, Yaqub Alayhi Salaam, it's also mentioned in the Book of Genesis. What did Yaqub say? Did he say, Astaghfirullah, who do you think you are? Do you think you're God? People are making Sajda to you? No, because at that time, this was a different type of Sajda. It's the same word, right? And we find this interestingly in Hebrew. The word for worship in Hebrew, pelach, can also mean to revere or to pay homage to. And in the Old Testament, this word is applied to prophets and kings as well as to God, right? That people come and they pay homage, for example, to the prophet Eliyahu, the prophet Elijah or Elias, right? This does not mean that they're worshiping him, right? So when the disciples are quote-unquote worshiping Jesus, right, that's really not the right word to use. The word in Greek that designates worship as God is called latreo. That means to worship someone as God. Proskuneo means to worship as God could be or to pay homage or to respect someone as a great human being. So proskuneo is for both, right? It's not exclusive to God. But the verb latreo is only for God. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that anyone made latreo to Isa, this does not occur. But in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew, God is worshipped by using this word, Allah, the God of Israel is worshipped, the God of Abraham by using this word. So Matthew, Mark and Luke, all of them record that Isa, he wrote a donkey into Jerusalem. You might think, well, what's the big deal about that? Who cares about writing a donkey into Jerusalem? But apparently it's based on a prophecy in the book of Zechariah, right? So Matthew thought it was so important to record that Jesus wrote a donkey into Jerusalem. Matthew actually says he wrote a donkey and a colt. He wrote two animals into Jerusalem. He takes that passage quite literally, right? But Matthew, who apparently is a disciple, an ear and eye witness of the ministry of Isa, he doesn't record a single I Am statement. Essential divine claims. He doesn't record them. So what does that tell you about these statements? So that's a problem that from a historical perspective, the vast majority of historians don't believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth made these statements before Abraham was I Am because they're not multiply attested. They're not recorded by Matthew, Mark or Luke, right? Also, these statements, they're not early in historians like statements that are early. They're closer to the source, the more authentic, that's the general rule. And the Gospel of John was written about 90, 95, maybe 100 in the year 100 of the common era. Also, they also, they don't appear to be contextually coherent with the time and the place of their occurrence. So, Isa, supposedly made these statements in Galilee, which was a monotheistic environment. You have Jews believing in the rigid oneness of God. And then suddenly you have a man saying, before Abraham was I Am, and that's supposed to mean that he's claiming to be God. So this does not fit the context socially, theologically, right? So these are a few things that historians look at. But let's just humor the Christian for now and say, okay, he made these statements. He made that statement before Abraham was I Am. So what does it mean? I am what? I am God. We mentioned this last time. The first of these I Am statements occurs actually in John chapter four, verse 26, 27, 28, and thereafter, where Jesus, peace be upon him, is speaking to a woman at the well. And this woman says to him, I know that the Messiah will come. I know that the Messiah will come. And then John says in the Greek here, Jesus said to her, I am the one who is speaking with you. I am who? The Messiah, right? So here in this verse in John chapter four, Esalaam is tying, he's connecting this phrase, egoemi, with his claim of Messiahship, they're identical. He's claiming to be the Messiah, right? And again, if we go back to the Gospel of Mark chapter 14, back into the synoptic tradition, there's another I Am statement here. So Jesus, peace be upon him, he's being interrogated by the high priest. And he says to him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And the answer of Esalaam is egoemi. I am. I am what? I am God? No, I am the Christ. Another example from the Gospel of John, one of the miracles of the Gospel of John, according to the book of signs, this is miracle number six out of seven, is when Esalaam, he heals the blind man. And we also mentioned this last time, he heals the blind man. And the Pharisees are investigating this so-called miracle. So, and some of the people can't discern, is this the same man or not? So they say, are you the blind man? And he says, egoemi, I am. I am what? I am God? Is he claiming to be God? So what is the meaning then? The Christian will report and say, what, why does he say then, prin abraham genestai, before Abraham was, I am? Why does he make that statement before he says, I am? What does that mean? That Esalaam ontologically can predate Ibrahim, well there's different ways of looking at that statement as well, that don't necessarily make Esalaam God, right? So you have two types of area of unitarianism. We talked about this in the past as well. We have Sokinian Arianism, which says that Esalaam, there's no aspect of him that predates his physical body, right? That his soul and his body were created at the same time. There's no pre-existent, pre-human aspect to Esalaam. So the meaning of the statement then, prin abraham genestai egoemi, simply means that since I am the Messiah, I am foremost over Abraham. That's what the statement means, that he has a higher maqam, a higher station than Ibrahim, Ibrahim a.s. Simply by virtue of him being the Messiah, right? Just like we say that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, he is Sayyid al awwaleen wa akhereen. He is the master of the first and the last, which means to say that his maqam is the greatest maqam. He has maqam al mahmud. But in temporality, yes, he was the last prophet, but he is the foremost of the prophets in the sense that he has the highest station. It doesn't necessarily make Esalaam God by saying before Abraham was I.m. That's one way of looking at it. That's called Sokinian Unitarianism. And that was actually one of the dominant theologies at Harvard Seminary from 1805 to 1840. It was the dominant theology at Harvard Seminary during those years, when a man named Henry Ware became the haulest chair of divinity. He was a Sokinian Unitarian. That was his belief about Esalaam. Another way of looking at this statement is another thread of Unitarianism, which is called Arian Unitarianism. And Arian Unitarianism believes that Esalaam did pre-exist his physical body. And he was called the Logos. He was called the Word of God. But this Word is created. It is the initial creation and it is the best creation. Right? So in this sense, when he says, prin abraham genestai ego emmi, before Abraham was I.m., he is saying, yes, I have literally ontological precedence over Ibrahim, because I was created before he was, but I'm still created. Right? What the Trinitarian wants to do here is he wants to say, when Esalaam claims to be foremost over Abraham, he's suddenly God. He's the second person of a triune deity. And that's a big leap. And that doesn't work with the internal consistency of the Christology of the Gospel of John. Remember our anchor verse in the Gospel of John. This is very important. It's John chapter 17, verse 3. This is our anchor verse. This is what anchors the entire Christology of the Gospel of John. Jesus says, speaking to the Father, again, when I say speaking to the Father, we're not talking about this post apostolic, post biblical Trinitarian, Athanasian and Nicene way of saying that he's the first person of a triune Godhead. No. When Jesus refers to God as the Father, he's doing exactly what many of the Jews of his time are doing. That's how they would call God. And the import of that statement, abba is rabbi. That's what that means. When a Jew says abba or avinu, like it says in the book of Isaiah 64-16, one of the prayers of the Jews, is adunay avinu. You are the Lord, our Father, in the metaphorical sense, completely. So Jesus is speaking to the Father. It's very clear in John 17, verse 1. It says he's speaking to the Father. And he says this is eternal life. What is eternal life? This is guidance. He's going to tell you what it is. What is he going to say? You can ask almost any Christian, how do I go to heaven? And the Christian will start spouting off these sort of ambiguous, convoluted, creedal statements that they've been taught that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but there are not three gods but one God. Jesus died for your sins. Jesus is your Lord and Savior. Things like that. But what does Isaiah, peace be upon him, himself, according to the Gospel of John, how does he define eternal life? He says to know you, the only true God. He says in the Greek it says, ton manon aleithinon theon. Manon is like the word monotheism. Only aleithinon true theon, God. Who is the only true God? The Father is the only true God. And Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. So here clearly he's limiting the Godhead to only the Father, that they're mutually exclusive. The Son of God, meaning Messiah, and the Father, meaning the only God, are mutually exclusive. Just like it says in the Book of Hosea, ki anuhi el vilohish. Indeed I am God and not a man. This is very, very clear. And the Christian reads that statement, the Trinitarian, and he starts doing these verbal and mental gymnastics to try to justify a Trinitarian reading of the Scripture, where it's very, very clear that Jesus is speaking to the Father, that the Father is the only true God. So how can Jesus also be a God if the Father is the only true God, right? That's why we said last time, Augustine of Hippo, one of the architects, one of the pioneers of the Trinity. He's called the theologian by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, Augustine of Hippo. He lived in the fifth century, right? He wrote the famous book De Trinitate on the Trinity, one of the greatest, if not the greatest of the Latin theologians. He came across that verse, and he was completely stuck. He did not know what to do with it. So in his homilies, he changed the verse around. And he says, this is how he wrote it. This is eternal life to know you, to know you and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent as the only true God. You see how he flipped it around. We mentioned this in the last class as well. I'm reiterating this because this is very, very important. Because in this verse, John 17.3, very clearly, the Father is the only true God, not the Son. The Son is not God. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say God, the Son. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say God, the Son. Nowhere in the New Testament is there a single verse where it says God and three, or God and Trinity. So this has to be made very, very clear. This is the clear, unambiguous creed of Mark 12.29. Here, or Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. John 17.3. This is eternal life to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. So that's very, very important. If language means anything, then a lot of Christians will say, well, when we talk about God, language is inferior and we can't really express ourselves adequately. That's true. But if this is a scripture, there is an element that we can understand. And there's an element that is essential for us to understand. And if God wants to reveal something to us, to teach us fundamentals of his theology, then certainly it's going to be comprehensible, especially if it's about how many gods there are. Yes, when we talk about the essence of God and who Allah is essentially, it's beyond speech. But we're not asking who is Allah describe his essence. What we want to know is how many gods are there. That's it. Is there one God? Is there two gods? Is there three gods? Because when you say the Father is in heaven and the Son is walking the earth, that sounds like two persons, right? That sounds like two gods. And that sounds like bi-theism. And if you believe that, that's taking you outside, outside the pale of Judeo foundational bedrock of monotheism. And that's the milieu, if you will. That's the context in which Isa A.S. came out of. He was a practicing Jew in northern Palestine in the province of Galilee, raised in Nazareth. He believed and loved the theology of his forefathers. That God is one, God is Eichad and Yahid, which means that he is one and he is totally unique. There's nothing like him whatsoever. The book of Deutero, Isaiah makes it very clear that the minute we bring God down into his creation, we make an idol out of God. That's idolatry. So Christian missionaries go to India and they say, look at these pagans. They believe in divine incarnations. The seventh, eighth and ninth incarnations, Rama, Buddha, Krishna, they're all pagans. I don't see a difference between what Hindus are doing and what Christians are doing. Hindus say, Brahman, he incarnated. If you subscribe to that school of thought in Hinduism, it's called bhakti yoga. There are different views in Hinduism that are more transpersonal. But this sort of imminent personal theology of Brahmanism believes in numerous, endless incarnations of Brahman. Brahman comes down to earth in the form of a man, a woman, an animal of some sort. What's the difference between that and God coming down to earth in the form of a human being, a Jewish carpenter from 2000 years ago? That's idolatry. Idolatry isn't simply worshiping a statue of gold, silver, or bronze, or wood, or worshiping some sort of monument or something like that because flesh and blood is also matter and God transcends matter. God transcends space, time and direction. The minute we bring him down into his creation, which is matter, we make an idol out of God. This is why it's very, very clear in the Old Testament. In the Decalogue, the first four commandments are all about theology. Thou shalt not make unto thyself the image of anything in the heavens above, or in the waters, or on the earth. There is nothing like unto God-lesa, kamithli, shaitan. What's interesting is Paul, in the book of Romans, he actually gives the reason why he believes there are homosexuals in the world. This is very, very interesting. What is the cause of homosexuality? According to Paul, in the book of Romans, he says, professing themselves to be wise, they turned the invisible, incorruptible God into an image like that of corruptible man, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator. What does that mean? Paul is saying the reason why you have homosexuals is because of idolatry, is because of men worshiping other men. This is the reason why there's homosexuality, according to Paul. Even Paul, who in my mind makes a lot of mistakes in his letters and epistles, first and foremost, he believes that Jesus died for your sins, and that he's going to come again during his own lifetime, which is verifiably wrong. Nonetheless, Paul never, ever calls Jesus God, or God the Son, or equates him with the Father. He never does it. Not even Paul does that. So what does his belief come from? Where does the belief come from? I meet Christians all the time. Just the other day, I met a Christian, and I said, do you believe Jesus is God? He says, yes. I said, where does he claim to be God? And he had to stop and he had to think for a minute. He says, in the Gospel of John, he said, where in the Gospel of John? He says, somewhere in John. So what do you mean, somewhere in John? You worshiping Jesus. If you ask me, is Allah God? I say, yes. He said, where in the Qur'an does he claim to be God? In the very first, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil A'alameen. That's where he claims to be God. He is Rabbil A'alameen. He is the Lord of all of creation. It's the very first verse of the Qur'an. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Ar-Rahman. Sigut al-Mubalaga. He is infinitely, absolutely most merciful. So I ask the Christian brother, where does Jesus claim to be God? Somewhere in John. There's somewhere, he says, that he's one with the, oh, I say, John 1030. He says, yes, exactly. John 1030. The father and I are one. So I say, what does that mean, though? One in what? He said, I don't know. They're one person. He said, you believe the father and the son are the same person? He says, yes. That's not Trinitarianism. They don't even know the Trinitarian belief. That the father, son, holy spirit are separate and distinct persons, but one essence. Three who's and one what. That's what the belief says. So they don't even know their own belief. When I said, you know, in John chapter 17, Jesus says about the disciples. He's praying to the father. This is in his prayer. Right after he says, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ from now has sent. Right after that, he says, that they, the disciples, may be one in us. What does that mean? The disciples are also one in Jesus and the father. Does that mean the disciples are God? They also share an essence with the father and the son. What does that mean? The same word is used. Hen and hen means one. That means that the disciples, that means the father is God. The son is God. The holy spirit is God. There's a Trinity, but then there are 12 disciples who are also God. So there's a 15 unit Godhead and they're all God because Jesus says about the disciples. They're also one in us. So what does that mean? And he said, oh, I don't know. So you need to know the context of these things. Why is he God? I said, have you heard of the Council of Nicea? He said, never heard about this council. This is a college educated Christian. Right. He's almost got his bachelor's degree at a school of higher education who's never heard of the Council of Nicea. This is when it was officially declared that Son of God is God the Son. Officially declared by vote. Right. They voted on this. And the Aryans lost. The Aryans who said that Jesus pre-existed his physical body, but he was created. He's catisma teleon. He's the best of creation, but they said, ain pate hate ukein. There was a time when he did not exist. Issa alaihi s-salam came into being, they said. And the Trinitarian said, no, he's eternally begotten, which is a big contradiction. It's an oxymoron. Eternally begotten, they say that Jesus was caused by the Father. He's an effect of the, the effect of the Father, but they're equal in their, in their, in their union, in their essence, that there was never a time when the Son did not exist, yet he is an effect of the Father. This doesn't make any sense. To beget something means to come into existence. How can one be eternally begotten? This is a contradiction of terms. It's gibberish. It doesn't mean anything. It's like, I say, I can draw a four-sided triangle. And he said, no, you can't, you just have to believe that I can. So, no, that doesn't make any sense. No, you just have to believe it. I can draw a four-sided triangle. We say, try angle means three. What you're saying doesn't make sense. Eternally begotten doesn't make any sense. Right? So, you're violating a classic rule of logic. Right? That one thing is one thing, or it's another thing. It can't be both things at the same time. This is called the, the principle of contradiction as, as articulated by Aristotle. He says, for example, it's either day or night. It can't be both. You're either here or you're not. You can't be both. Jesus is either begotten. He comes into being or he's eternal. But you can't say eternally begotten. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And no one can explain these things. So, why do people believe in these things? What does it say in the New Testament? Jesus is eternally begotten. It doesn't say that anywhere. Right? It's very, very clear. His statements in the New Testament, the Father is the only God. God is one. He is echad. He's ahad. That's the word he uses in the New Testament. We say, well, Jesus is the Son of God. Well, Paul says in the book of Romans, chapter 8, that as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. What does that mean? That's a metaphorical. It's, it's majaz. It's figurative. Meaning that you're beloved of God. The first epistle of John says, whoever loves Christ is begotten of God. What does that mean? That means God loves them. Right? So, why are we making Isa, part of God or sharing an essence with God? There's no warrant for doing that whatsoever. So, we have to reason with our Christian friends. Right? Because they're going to pull these issues up. The Father and I are one. Read the context of that exchange. Why does Isa make that statement? Again, most historians do not believe he made that statement. But if we take an affirmative, textual approach of Abu Hamal al-Ghazali in his Radhul Jameel, who says, okay, Jesus said that. What does he mean by it? So, listen to what he says. He says, you know, these disciples of mine, I watch over them. No one can take them away from me. Meaning, he's a shepherd. He's watching out for his flock, like the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He's a universal shepherd. He cares for his ummah. Right? Even after his passing, he cares for his ummah. Because he says that your deeds are presented to me. This is a sound hadith in Al-Bazar. Tu'radu alayya amalakum. Your deeds are presented to me. And at his grave, he says, if I see good, I ask forgiveness for you. I'm sorry. If I see good, I praise Allah. If I see evil, right? Then I ask Allah to forgive you. So, he's Rahmatilli Al-Alamin, even after his passing. So, he's still our shepherd. He's Al-Ra'i. He's the shepherd of the entire humanity. Because he's Rahmatilli Al-Alamin. So, Isa A.S. says, in the context of John chapter 10, I'm watching over my disciples. And then he says, my father who is greater than all. This is how he makes the statement. He prefaces the statement, my father who is greater than all. The father, the person of the father, is greater than the person of the son. I thought they were co-equal, co-substantial, co-eternal. What happened to that? Suddenly, Isa A.S. himself is negating Trinitarian doctrine. He says, my father who is greater than all is watching over them. No one can snatch them from his hand. The father and I are one. So, what is he talking about? Oneness of purpose, oneness of objective, right? Oneness of this thereof quote-unquote of the same heart. That Isa A.S. he doesn't do his own will, he is doing exactly what Allah wants him to do. And whatever he does is according to the perfect will of Allah SWT. Because it's impossible for a prophet to disobey Allah SWT. Whatever a prophet does is guided. The prophet, Allah SWT says in the Qur'an that the prophet never speaks from his own will. Somebody might say, well, yeah, when he's reciting the Qur'an, that's not, no, Allah doesn't say He doesn't use which usually negates the imperfect tense. You say, but here Allah says he's using to negate a imperfect tense verb which gives it emphasis, which means never, ever does the prophet SAW speak from his own hawa. It is only wahi. Whatever he says, SAW, is wahi. So, when you follow the prophet, it is as if you are following Allah SWT. As if. But he is not Allah SWT. He is a man like you except I receive the wahi. Whoever obeys the messenger is obeying Allah SWT because they're one in their objective, they're one in their goal, they're one in their aim and their obedience is the same. You cannot obey the messenger and disobey Allah or vice versa. You can't do that, right? They're equal in their obedience. So this is what we have to get across to our Christian brethren. We look at some of these statements, right? Invariably, they're going to look at John. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus doesn't know when fig trees are out of season. This is a big problem. Why doesn't an omniscient deity know when fig trees are out of season? You can ask your Christian friends. Certainly, if Isa A.S. created the fig tree, right? And he's God, he knows when fig trees are in and out of season. But according to the reading in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 9, when he's coming into the city of Jerusalem, he sees the fig tree from afar, thinking that it has fruit, that it has figs, which he's wrong about. If this is God, it's very problematic. If he's a human being, then it's understandable. Human beings make mistakes and prophets can make errors in judgment. It's not wajib for a prophet to know everything about everything. It's not wajib, for example, a prophet to know how to change the oil on a car, if that's not his specialty, but he knows about theology. He cannot lose a theological debate, right? Like the, there's a hadith about the palm trees and how they're seated in the Prophet He didn't know how that process worked. That's okay. He doesn't need to know that about palm trees. It's not wajib for a prophet to know something specific about a certain vocation or trade, right? So Isa A.S. according to Mark, Chapter 9, he expects to find figs. He doesn't find any. And then he curses the fig tree. Why is he cursing the fig tree for doing something that he himself willed that fig tree to do if he's God? A lot of theological problems with this statement. A lot of theological problems with the Trinity, right? It doesn't make any sense. It's not cogent. It's not based on Scripture. It comes after the biblical period. It comes from the post apostolic period. The writers of the New Testament were by and large Jewish monotheists who believed that Isa A.S. was the Messiah. They called him the Son of God in a figurative sense. And then in the middle of the second century, you have all of these pagan philosophers converting the Christianity and start writing about Jesus. And someone like Justin Marder, he says about Jesus that he is Alas Theos, which means another God. This is what he said. Justin Marder, who is the chief architect of the Logos Christology, one of the greatest commentators on the Gospel of John called Jesus, quote, Alas Theos, another God. Where does Jesus claim to be God? Anywhere in the New Testament. Never says it. Never says it, right? Like we have in the Quran. I think I mentioned this in the previous show as well. Chapter 3, verse 79. What is the sabbubu nuzul of this ayah? The Christians came to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam, and they said, Isa alayhi sallam commanded us to worship him. And this verse was revealed. It is not for a Bashar to whom Allah gave the Kitab, al-Hukma, al-Nabuwa, the revelation, the wisdom, the application of that revelation, and the office of prophecy. They say, Kounu ibadali min dunillah, worship me in derogation of God. Walakin, kounu rabbaniyin, rather he would say, become lordly. This is a beautiful ayah in the Quran. Very, very beautiful ayah in the Quran. What does that mean? Kounu rabbaniyin. Become like God. Become God-like. What if we can be like God? What is it? What is that? Kufur? What is he talking about? Become lordly? No, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, he said, takhallaku bi aqalaq illa. There's weakness in the Hadith, but it's sound and it's meaning. Meaning that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is ar-Rahman. He is the most merciful. So we should be people of mercy. Of course we can never ever ever reach the level of mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is infinite and absolute, and we are finite and limited. But we can reflect Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by becoming people of mercy. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is called Ra'uf al-Rahim in the Quran. Bil mu'mineena ra'uf al-Rahim. One of those beautiful passages of the Quran. The last two ayahs of Surah At-Tawbah. Ra'uf al-Rahim. These are divine attributes. Does that mean the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is Rahim as Allah is Rahim? No, of course not. He is Rahim in the sense that he is the most merciful of all human beings. It's limited and contingent. His nature is a human being. So we try to be God-like in the sense that we want to have our character like God. We want to be divine with a lower case D. This is called Theosis in Greek Orthodox tradition. This is called Mystical Union. This is called, it goes by different names. Theophany to experience Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So that we become God-like in every sense except in our ontology. We can never merge our essence with God. This is called Itihad and this is Kufr. We don't share an essence with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We don't share anything with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. His essence, his attributes are his actions. But if we become Rabbaniyin, if we become Lordly, and how do we do that? How do we become Lordly? We follow our example. Who is our example? Who is our Usbatun? Hasana? Who has khuluq azeem? Is the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? He is a reflection of his Lord in human terms as the sun, as the moon reflects the light of the sun. He is not Allah. He doesn't have the attributes of Allah, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He is not Allah. Essentially, he is not Allah in his attributes. He doesn't do the work of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the actions of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. He is the pure action of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is totally guided by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So when he does something, it is as if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is doing it. You didn't throw Allah through. Does that mean Allah incarnated into the body of the Prophet and threw some stones? No. It means that the actions of the Prophet are totally guided by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is called theosis. And when we become like our Lord, in that sense, when we become like our Lord, and then we start breaking the laws of nature, the awliya. We believe in karamat, charismatic exploits, charismatic talents. There are miracles that can be done by them because they have become beloved to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And their only object of contemplation and love is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. They've been annihilated. The ego is gone. They've been annihilated in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That does not mean that they've merged with Allah's essence or that they've become divine incarnations or something like hulul and tajasud and iti had, all of these ideas. These are all kufr. That's not what we're talking about. That's what Christians believe. And Isa alaihi s-salam and the Gospel of John is not talking about those things, right? He's talking about mystical union with God in the sense that you fall in love with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so that your only thought is of Allah. Your only motivation in doing anything is to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. In that sense, you become one with the Father, if you will. And that's why he prays that they, the disciples, may be one in us. That's the meaning. It's theosis. It's not some sort of merging of our essence with the essence of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That is total kufr, right? And unfortunately, the Christian philosophers of the second and third and fourth and fifth centuries, when they're dealing with these texts, it got to a point where the New Testament was actually thrown on the back burner and now they're just talking about how to justify their own prejudiced theology about Jesus without even having recourse to the New Testament. The New Testament does not endorse the deity of Isa alaihi s-salam in any way, shape or form. And okay, which book of the New Testament you read? Nowhere does it mention that he is God. So when we talk about these IM statements, we shouldn't connect it to the statement of Moses in Exodus chapter 3, verse 14. That's not what Isa alaihi s-salam here is quoting. Again, if he made these statements, he's not quoting from Exodus, right? If anything, he's quoting from the wisdom literature. In the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew Bible writers often depict wisdom or hukma. Philo called it logos, which is what John calls Jesus, speaking in the first person by using I am. I am the word which was spoken by the Most High. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, right? Before time, he created me. What does that mean? The Arians would actually quote these verses. These are verses found in the book of Proverbs, the wisdom of Solomon, the book of Ecclesiasticus, right? That the Arians would quote these and say, look, this is what it means for Isa alaihi s-salam to predate Abraham. It simply means he was the first created entity. That's all it means. He's still created. You can't say he's uncreated because these verses, and this is what he's talking about when he says I am. He's talking about how he was before Abraham in the sense that he was divine wisdom that was created by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, by the Father in heaven, if you will, right? So that's very, very important. In fact, Paul says in the book of Colossians, Paul himself, chapter one verse 15, another verse quoted by the Arians, he says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So think about what that means. The image of the invisible God. What is he talking about here? How can something invisible have an image? He's contradicting himself. Or is he contradicting himself? No. He's saying that Jesus reflects divine attributes. That's what he's saying. That Jesus is a perfect reflection of God. You follow Jesus, it is as if you're following God because God is invisible. We can say the same, the Prophet s-salam is an image of the invisible God. This type of very high sounding language could be very misleading for people who don't have a theological foundation because the Gospel of John also says, no man has at any time seen God. This is what it says in the Gospel of John chapter five. No man has at any time seen God. Jesus Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father, made him known. Jesus makes God known. Jesus exegetes, if you will, God. Right? He is the vessel, the agent, the Shaluach, the Rasul, the Messiah, whatever you want to call him, by which God informs himself about himself through a human messenger. Right? Jesus Christ made him known. No one has at any time seen God. This is what it says in John chapter five. And then listen to what Paul says back to Colossians 115. He says in the Greek, he says, he says, Jesus is the first of all creation. Right? This is what the Aryan said. Jesus is the best of creation. Paul says Jesus is created. And if you say this to your average Trinitarian Christian who knows something about their theology, you say, Jesus is created. He's going to say, God forbid, that's heresy. Well, that's what Paul says. Paul calls Jesus the image of the invisible God, the God that no one has ever seen. Right? And that Jesus is the firstborn of creation. Jesus is created. Everything is created. Inna mafala'isa'inda allahika mafali Adam. Khalaqahu min tur'al. Thumma qalallahu kun fayakun. The similitude of Jesus is like that of Adam. God created him from dust and then he said to him, be, and there he was. Right? Some Christians will try to say, well, you know, simple-minded kind of people will say, well, Jesus doesn't have a father. So therefore, God must be his father. Right? God must be the father of Jesus. Well, Adam in the New Testament is called the Son of God. In the Gospel of Luke, Adam is called the Son of God. But Christians here will say, oh, that's metaphorical. That's metaphorical. But when Jesus called the Son of God, that's literal. Why? Why are you making fish of one and fowl of the other? No, it's all metaphorical. Adam did not have a mother or a father. Shouldn't he deserve to be called the preeminent Son of God? Whereas Jesus did have a mother, which is a greater miracle. All of them are easy for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Everything is easy for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Everything. So when we say Son of God, of course we don't use this phrase anymore, but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the Qur'an, this means servants raised to honor, servants raised to honor. But Son of God, he became corrupted and he became God the Son. Therefore, in the Qur'an, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala condemns calling Isa, the Son of God. This is just something that they're saying, that he's God the Son, the Son of God. This is just something that they're saying. There's no basis for it. They've changed the meaning of the phrase Son of God, which is a messianic title. So we've basically finished the Gospel of John. Insha'Allah ta'ala. In our final class, we're going to do a review of all four Gospels. That's our final class or our 12th class, our 12th recorded class. And then during the course of the semester, insha'Allah, we're going to have three or four live sessions. Hopefully you guys are listening to these things and pushing pause and rewinding and writing down questions because I know we're going very quickly. And hopefully you're speaking with some of your Christian friends and neighbors, obviously in a very polite way, as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, speak with them with hikmah and beautiful exhortation and argue with them in ways that are best, but definitely engage with people. People are lost. People don't know what they're believing in. People who go to church, they have no idea what their theology is about. They're worshiping Isa, because their father is telling him to worship Isa, the worshiping him blindly. This is idolatry. They're putting themselves in a dangerous position. We need to balighu anni walaw aaya. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said to convey for me even one verse or one statement. Just let them hear about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. People don't know. They don't know anything about him. If you say something, for example, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is a descendant of Abraham, most people will find this revelatory. They have no idea. If you see the Ka'aba was built by Ibrahim, most people will find this completely revelatory. They have no idea that these things are part of our tradition, that we're in that progressive revelation of Judeo-Christianity and that the scripture has found its finality in the Qur'an and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the Khatimul Anbiya in the long line of prophets that began with Adam and goes through Abraham, through the Hebrew patriarchs, even Moses and Isa alayhi wa sallam. So next time, insha'Allah, we'll do a quick review of the four Gospels, insha'Allah, So this is our final recorded session for this class on the four Gospels in the New Testament. So I'm going to take the opportunity in this final class session to review some of the key concepts and ideas that we talked about with regards to the four canonical Gospels, beginning with the Gospel of Mark. First of all, we had said that these four Gospels, they're actually anonymous books. They weren't named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John until about the year 180 of the common era by the bishop of lions named Irenaeus. So at that point, they were suit anonymously ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we had said that Mark was a student of Peter and Luke was a student of Paul. So they're considered from the tabi'een, if you will. And then John is supposed to be John the son of Zebedee, disciple of Jesus, who's probably the beloved disciple that the Gospel talks about. And then Matthew is also a disciple of Isa, but remember these books are in reality anonymous. So another thing about these four books is that none of the people who wrote these books, the autograph authors, none of them claim that what they're writing is divine inspiration. None of them claim that they're being inspired by the Holy Ghost, if you will, when they're writing. So if you look at the Quran, Ar-Rahman Allama Al-Quran. Very clearly, we read in the Quran that the one who taught the Quran, the one who's revealing the Quran is Ar-Rahman. And Ar-Rahman is one of the most exalted names of Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So this is a divine revelation. This is a Tanzil, the Rabbal Alameen. Many times in the Quran, we are told that this is a revelation of God, a revelation and it's from Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, nowhere is this claim made that by the authors, that what they're writing is a revelation of God. And again, they're anonymous books. Another thing that they're in the wrong language. They're written in Koine Greek. And as the vast, vast majority of New Testament scholarship and historians will attest, the actual spoken language of Isa, was not Koine Greek. It was Syriac, which is a dialect of the Aramaic language, a Semitic language. That was the language of the children of Israel at the time. They had borrowed that from the Persian Empire when they were in captivity in Babylon. They still continued to pray in Hebrew in the synagogue. The liturgy was conducted in Hebrew. The spoken language of the masses was Aramaic or Syriac. The lingua franca of the empire in that region was Koine Greek. So the aristocracy, the Roman legionnaires, they would speak Greek. But the people on the ground at the grassroots level, the Awam, if you will, the laity, they spoke Syriac. So we don't have a gospel in the first century that's written in the first century, that's written in the language of Isa, we don't have anything like that extant. It might have been out there somewhere, but we haven't discovered it. So remember something when we said we looked at the sources of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? So it's very important. So Mark, for example, Mark is the first gospel to be written according to the consensus of New Testament scholars. The first of the four gospels in the New Testament to be written, even though Matthew comes first when you read the New Testament. And that's because Matthew is the most Jewish gospel and it seems like a good segue from the Old Testament to the New Testament. But by and large, the vast majority of scholars believe Mark was the first to be written. Mark is the shortest gospel. Mark's gospel is the most unpolished in its Greek 16 chapters. There's several fabrications that were made to the gospel of Mark. The very first verse of the gospel of Mark contains a fabrication. Mark 1-1, in the Greek it says, The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now this phrase, in the critical editions of the New Testament, the Greek critical editions, are in brackets. You won't find those brackets in English translations, so you'll think that's what Mark actually wrote. But Mark didn't write that. That phrase, Son of God, was added later by admission of the United Bible Society. Brutes Metzger, Bart Ehrman, and the vast majority of textual critics believe that that phrase, Son of God, was added later. Again, Son of God does not mean God, right? So why did the author, why did a scribe add that? Because the gospel of Mark is quite anemic in its Christology. It's very weak in its Christology, right? Jesus is only called the Son of God in two places. Mark 1-1, which is a fabrication, and also in Mark chapter 15, the Roman centurion, who's witnessing the crucifixion, he says truly this was the Son of God, or in fact he says truly this was a Son of God, right? And what does that mean for a Roman pagan to say Son of God? Certainly, when a pagan at that time says Son of God, because for them, God Zeus has sons by the tons, right? It's a very different meaning than if a Jewish monotheist says Son of God. So some scribe who was editing Mark's gospel did not like the fact that the only time the phrase Son of God appears in the Gospel of Mark is when a Roman centurion says it, so he went back to the very beginning of the gospel and he put the phrase, Hwayu Thayu, after R.K., Iwangiliu, Iyesu Christu, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, now Son of God. Also we said the end of the Gospel has a fabricated insertion. The true end of the Gospel of Mark is Mark chapter 16 verse 8. That's when the Gospel actually ended, an end. This is by consensus of New Testament scholars. What happened in Mark chapter 16 verse 8? You have the women, they go to the tomb and they find that the stone has been rolled away. There's a little boy who's sitting on the right side of something inside the tomb and he says, oh you're looking for Jesus, he is risen. And risen doesn't necessarily mean resurrected, right? He is risen. Go to Galilee, he'll meet you in Galilee, right? And then it says the women ran away and they were afraid. And that's the end of the Gospel of Mark, the true end of the Gospel of Mark. Nobody saw a resurrected Jesus according to the earliest canonical Gospel. In fact, it's quite a cliffhanger what actually happened, right? And interestingly enough, in Jewish culture at that time, the witness of a woman doesn't mean anything, even if it's 10 women. It's completely inadmissible in court for a woman should not even allow to give witness to anything. So the fact that a group of women are saying, oh he might have been resurrected, that really holds no weight in their society at that time. So what happens? Somewhere down the line, a scribe, he goes back and he adds a better ending to the Gospel of Mark. He adds 12 verses, Mark chapter 16 verses 9 through 20. He adds that where the women go and they tell male disciples, right? And these male disciples now they go and they confirm, oh yes, the tomb is empty. And then you have Jesus appearing to his disciples in Galilee and telling them that if they handle snakes, they can drink poison, they're not going to be harmed. Of course, just last year, a man named Mark Wilford, who was a pastor in the South of America, an Appalachian snake handler, he was holding a poisonous snake during church and the snake bit him and he died, right? And interestingly enough, his own father died from the same thing. And now he has a son who's going to inherit his father's legacy of this type of church liturgical service. And I feel like calling or emailing him and saying, you know when Jesus says you can hold poisonous snakes and they'll bite you and you won't be harmed? That's a fabrication to the Gospel of Mark. Jesus never said that according to the vast, vast majority of New Testament scholars. So this is the Gospel of Mark. So where does Mark get his Gospel from? So Mark basically has a group of a set of pericapies. Pericapies means statements or hadith, right? About Esa A.S. You know, he has narratives, he has sayings, he has aphorisms, he has these brief narratives, right? Just these kind of loose sayings about Esa A.S. And he has all these sayings and he wants to put them down into a narrative, right? Because he can't just say Jesus said, then Jesus said, then Jesus said. That's what the Gospel of Thomas does. The Gospel of Thomas does not pretend to know the context of these statements of Jesus. It simply says, Jesus said, like hadith, Jesus said, Jesus said, Qala Isa Qala Isa Qala, 114 statements of Esa A.S. That's the Gospel of Thomas. He doesn't know the context. He's being very honest. This is simply what I heard from Jesus, right? But Mark, that's not going to work because Mark is writing for a Greco-Roman audience. And the Greco-Romans are used to reading these elaborate epic narratives like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, right? So he needs to have a narrative. So Mark then takes all of these loose pericapies and he puts them down into a narrative. And this narrative is something that he basically constructed. It's subjective and contrived context. That's why Mark, quite often, he'll use the adjective aethus. Aethus, aethus, we mean immediately, immediately. Jesus did this, then immediately he did that. Then immediately he did that, which many scholars believe is a cover-up for his lack of knowledge of the context of which Jesus is saying something. So Jesus did this and then he did that. Somebody might ask, well, what did he do in the meantime? Nothing. Immediately he did this. And then immediately he did that, right? So it's a cover-up for his lack of knowledge of the context of this oral tradition of Isa A.S. So Mark had this oral tradition, right? And he wrote it down. Now Matthew and Luke now, I'm going to talk about Matthew and Luke. How did they write their gospels? Matthew and Luke, they had access to Mark's gospel. And again, this is according to the dominant position in New Testament Academy, New Testament scholarship, that Matthew and Luke, they had Mark in front of them, right? And they used Mark as their narrative skeleton, right? So Mark was very important for them. But there are times when Matthew and Luke will edit Mark's gospel. So Mark will have a pericope of Jesus saying something, and Mark will put that pericope in a certain context that he feels is correct. And for the most part, Matthew will agree with Mark, but sometimes he'll disagree with Mark and put that pericope in another context. This is why we have discrepancies in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, right? Which begs another question, if Matthew truly believed that Mark's gospel is divine inspiration, would Matthew edit Mark's gospel? Of course not. Matthew, if Matthew believed, oh, Mark, my colleague, a student of Peter, was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write an inerrant gospel, an error-free gospel of Jesus. Would Matthew go in there and start editing, redacting, changing things in the gospel of Mark? No, of course not. What does that tell you? That means that the author of the gospel of Matthew believed that he believed not only that his gospel wasn't the revelation of God, but he believed that the gospel of Mark also was not the revelation of God, because certainly you're not going to edit and redact something you believe to be the revelation of God, right? So basically, Matthew is sitting down. He has Mark's gospel in front of him, right? He also has another document in front of him which scholars have called Q. Q is from the German Quella, which means the unknown. So in this culture would say Gospel X, the unknown gospel. Some have called this the sayings gospel. Some have called this the Q source document, right? Gospel X. And how do we know he had this source called Gospel X? Because Luke, he also quotes from it. So what does that mean? That means we have Matthew and Luke, and both of them are using Mark as their narrative skeleton. But sometimes Matthew and Luke, they have material in common that's almost verbatim in many places that's missing from Mark's gospel. That means they have access to a source document that Mark does not have access to, or Mark did have access to but rejected it, which is unlikely. So what is this material? What is this Q source material? What does Q contain? Some of the most celebrated teachings of Jesus, peace be upon him. You have various parables of the kingdom of God. You have descriptions of John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Nativity, the birth of Esa, right? What you don't have in the Q source document is any passion narrative material. There's no passion narrative material in the Q source document, right? In other words, the Q source document does not mention that Jesus died or that he died for your sins or that he was resurrected. Not even a passion prediction is in the Q source document. How do we know that? Because when we look at Matthew and Luke, all of their passion material comes either directly from Mark or it comes from their own unique material, right? So that's very important to understand that there was this document. It's called the Sayings Gospel or Gospel X and many scholars actually believe that this gospel was written either concurrently or before the letters of Paul were written. And remember, Pauline Christianity basically set the entire foundation for the New Testament, that Jesus is someone who died for your sins and the law has been abrogated by the death of Jesus and that the second coming is imminent. These are central Pauline motifs. But if you look at the Q source material, right? There's no passion material, primarily because the author of this Sayings Gospel, this Gospel X either believed Jesus was crucified but put no theological weight on it whatsoever or didn't believe Jesus was crucified at all. That's why there's no passion material. So again, this is called the Two Source Theory and this is the most prevalent theory in New Testament scholarship. It assumes Mark in priority. Mark wrote first, then you have Matthew and Luke who are using Mark as their chief source. Matthew and Luke also have access to this Sayings Gospel that's in both of their narratives. Matthew also has material that's called M Special Matthewan material that's only found in his Gospel. Luke also has material called L Special Lukean material which is only found in his Gospel, right? So this whole idea is called the Synoptic Problem. The Synoptic Problem meaning that there's definitely an interdependency of the three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke but how are they dependent? One theory and actually Augustine of Hippo, he actually believed that Mark was written after Matthew and Luke, right? But almost all modern scholarship disagrees with Augustine because if that's true, why would Mark ignore so much of the celebrated Sayings, the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the peacemaker, blessed are the poor, our Father who art in heaven, the Lord's Prayer? Why would he ignore all of this beautiful material? Why would he do that, right? It doesn't make any sense why Mark would ignore that. So most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke followed Mark's Gospel. A central theme of the Gospel of Mark is imminent eschatology. The end of the world is going to come imminently and again, this is something that the Markian community which was probably in Rome inherited from Paul. Remember Paul believes that the Second Coming of Christ will be in his own lifetime. So his advice on celibacy, marriage, divorce, buying and selling goods, all of that is predicated on his immediate expectation of the Parousia, the Second Coming of Jesus. It simply did not happen. It didn't materialize and this was very, very troublesome, very disturbing for many early Christians that Paul is verifiably wrong about something here. Mark who's writing around 70 of the common era inherited that. So he puts words into the mouth of Jesus. Like there are some standing here that will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God coming in great power. The present generation will live to see it all. This is what Mark says that Jesus said. And of course we know Jesus, peace be upon him was a true prophet of God. So he could never make these statements. He could never make a false prophecy. What's the problem here is that Mark is putting these words into the mouth of Jesus because he's inherited this Pauline baggage that Jesus will come back in the lifetime of the apostles and it just simply did not happen. So imminent eschatology. We also have this thing called the Messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark. The Messianic secret is if you notice if you read the Gospel of Mark, for example, Jesus heals a leper and then he tells him go wash yourself but don't tell anyone that I'm the Messiah. It's a big secret. Or he does something else. He asked Peter who am I? Peter says you're the Christ and he says don't tell anybody. The Messianic secret. This was a phrase that was coined by German scholar William Reed and scholars have difference of opinion as to why that is. One opinion is that Mark invented the Messianic secret to sort of explain why the vast majority of Jews simply didn't believe in Jesus. It's because Jesus is not really telling them anything about himself, which is a little strange. Another opinion is that Jesus is very fearful of telling the people of Galilee that he's the Messiah because he is afraid that he won't complete his mission and that he has to actually go to Galilee, to Jerusalem to complete his mission. And if he goes around telling people he's the Messiah in Galilee, authorities will take him and kill him in Galilee before he's completed his mission. God knows best the reason for that. So that's the gospel of Mark. So we look at Matthew now. Matthew writing around 80 to 85 of the common era. Some of the major themes of the gospel of Matthew is Jesus is the open Messiah. He's teaching, he's not afraid. There's no Messianic secret. He is the supreme authority and interpreter of the mosaic law. Matthew has over 100 illusions and citations of the Old Testament in his gospel. So Christological typologies, right? Is a major theme in the gospel of Matthew. In other words, every single prophecy of the Old Testament is a reference to Jesus Christ, peace be upon him that he fulfills. So Matthew, he does a few things here. Matthew does Midrashim. Midrashim is to exegete, right? Is to make a commentary or to interpret the Old Testament. There's two types of Midrashim. There's Midrashim that is called Halakik Midrashim, which is basically Tafsir of verses that are muhkamat, right? So you're explicating upon verses that have primarily a legal aspect. So for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter five verses 17 through 14, Jesus says, according to Matthew, you have heard it say don't commit adultery, right? That's a clear mosaic injunction. But he says, but I say unto you, if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart. So this is an example of what's known as Midrashim of the Halakik Midrashim. He also does something called Haggadik Midrashim. So this is more ta'will of mutashabi hat. So esoteric interpretation of verses that are obscure or that are not clear immediately in their meaning. So for example, it says in the book of Isaiah chapter seven, it says that a young woman will give birth to a son and his name shall be Immanuel, right? And Matthew says, oh, Immanuel, Immanuel in Hebrew literally is Allahu ma'ana, right? God is with us. So this is a reference to Jesus. Now Matthew is not saying that Jesus is God here. We have to be very, very clear. When Matthew says, oh, Jesus is Immanuel and Immanuel means God with us. Remember the word ale, the word Elohim, the word Theos in Greek and in Hebrew are applied to human beings, to kings, to priests, even to Satan. Satan in 2 Corinthians chapter four, verse four is called Theos 2. He's called the God of this world, the God of this world. So God Theos in Greek simply means someone who has some sort of extraordinary ability, not necessarily the God, right? So if you read for example, another example in Exodus chapter seven, we mentioned this in the past. God says to Moses, I will send you as Elohim as God unto Pharaoh and Aaron as your prophet. Does that mean Moses is God? He is the God? No, no Jewish exegete in the history of Judaism ever said, oh, I guess we have to start worshiping Moses now because the Torah calls Moses Elohim. No, angels are called Elohim, kings, priests, judges, even Satan in the New Testament. So we have to look at context. The New Testament, the Old Testament does not subscribe to divine incarnations. The name of the prophet Isma'il, means God hears. Does that mean that Isma'il, that the prophet Isma'il has, he's all hearing because his name means God will hear? No, of course not. We don't take these names literally. These names are to remind us of God. The name Hezekiah means the mighty God, mighty God. Hezekiah was a king of Israel. Is he the mighty God? Because that's what his name means? Of course not, right? These names remind us of God's greatness. That's what they mean, right? And that's clear. So anyway, also in the Gospel of Matthew, we have this sort of anti-Jewish sentiment that the Christian community is the new Israel. So basically it's a very strong, super-sessionist type of sentiment that Judaism has been summarily replaced by the Christians. And this culminates in Matthew chapter 23, the seven woes when Jesus is speaking to the scribes and the Pharisees in Jerusalem. He says to them, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You've overlooked the way dear demands of the law. How can you escape the punishment of hell, this type of thing, right? And then you have Pilate washing his hands, right? And saying, I am free of the blood of this innocent man. So the Romans are just a tool that these venomous Jews are using to get Jesus killed. And then you hear the crowd according to Matthew. This is all according to Matthew. It says that the Laos, which is the crowd, they say, tahima autu effaimas ka epitatekna haimun. May his blood be upon us and our children after us, right? So that one verse, which is Matthew 27, 25, was used as an excuse all throughout Christian Europe to terrorize and demonize and kill and commit genocide against Jews living in Europe because the Jews, they cursed themselves according to the Gospel of Matthew, kill him. May his blood be upon us and our descendants after us. Whereas the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had killed thousands of Jews in the past, he washes his hands and he simply has Felix Culpa. He has good blame. He's just a pawn that these demonic Jews are using to kill Jesus. He's totally innocent though. It was the Jews that did it and that's what Matthew was trying to say. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church in 1974 had to officially pardon the Jews for what they call deicide. You heard a suicide, suicide means to kill oneself. Homicide means to kill another person but deicide means to kill God, right? So in 1974, the Roman Catholic Church officially declared that we are pardoning the Jews of deicide. God has willed that now they are pardoned for killing God. So Matthew's Christological aim is very easy. It is to prove that Isa A.S. is the Messiah who fulfills all of the Old Testament. And at times, Matthew in his overzealousness to prove that Jesus is a fulfillment of the Old Testament will misquote the Old Testament like he does in Matthew 27.9. He says, you know, this is what Jeremiah wrote about but in reality, that's what Zachariah wrote about the 30 pieces of silver. And sometimes he'll make something up like in Matthew chapter two. He says, Jesus dwelt in Nazareth so that it might be fulfilled what was said by the prophets. The Nabeem, he shall be called the Nazarean. That verse is nowhere to be found in the whole of Jewish literature, right? So we look at Matthew's sources. We're gonna take a break, inshallah, Ta'ala and we'll come back but we're gonna look at Matthew's sources, inshallah. We have Matthew who uses 80% of the Gospel of Mark, right? Like we said earlier, when we talked about Mark, Matthew basically uses the same chronology of events. Sometimes he'll take a mark in pericope and he'll tweak it a little bit. He'll change it, he'll clean it up, clean up the grammar, he'll make it cleaner, he'll move it to a different context. Sometimes he does that also but basically he uses the same chronology of the Gospel of Mark. He has the Q-source document in front of him. We mentioned that as well, right? Something that he has in common with Luke that Mark does not know about or Mark does know about and is simply rejecting. And then he has material called M, special methion material which is only found in his Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew. So we're gonna take a break at this point for the prayer and inshallah, we'll come back and we'll do the final half an hour. We're gonna talk about a recap of the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, inshallah. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa alayhi wa sallam wa alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa alayhi wa sallam alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. So this is the second half of our final session, session number 12. We're continuing our summary review of the four Gospels of the New Testament last time before the break. We talked about the Gospel of Mark, we talked about the Gospel of Matthew and now we're talking about Kata Lukan, the Gospel of Luke. We had said that the Gospel of Luke is actually the first volume of a two-volume work, Luke Acts, the book of Acts was also written by the author of the Gospel of Luke, according to the vast majority of scholars. Some of these major concepts of the Gospel of Luke is that Luke is trying to universalize the Gospel message, so aggrandize what's going on with alayhi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. A very common word that's used in the Gospel of Luke is the word aqlas, and aqlas means a large crowd of people. So wherever Esalaam goes according to the Gospel of Luke, there's a large crowd of people. Luke also uses this, he employs in the passion narrative, this episode of Herod Antipas also interrogating Esalaam, which is not mentioned by Mark or by Matthew. And again, this is simply to let you know, the reader know that this isn't simply some localized disturbance, that this has global implications. Herod Antipas, of course, as we know, is the king of the southern half of Palestine known as Judea. So again, Luke is trying to aggrandize the Jesus event, and also interestingly enough in the Gospel of Luke, something that he reveals that is not found in the other synoptic gospels. Luke actually gives, in his preamble, his reasons for writing his Gospel. So he says, for example, in the very first verses of the Gospel of Luke, that this is actually a letter to a man named Theophilus. And Theophilus, according to the vast majority of New Testament scholars, was some sort of Roman, Greco-Roman official who's probably the patron of Luke. So this is a man who's paid Luke to write a Gospel about Esalaam, and so Luke is dedicating his Gospel here to Theophilus. And there is a minority of scholars who will say, well, Theophilus is simply the reader, because Theophilus in Greek means the lover of God. So Luke is actually addressing the reader of his Gospel. What's really interesting when it comes to Christological revisions that Luke undertakes is that in terms of vicarious atonement, right, Jesus of the Gospel of Luke does not die for your sins, right, so this is with respect to soteriology. Soteriology means the study of salvation. How is one saved in the synoptic Gospels, Mark and Matthew, as well as the Pauline letters? It's very clear that Jesus dies for your sins. Put your trust in Jesus. He paid the price for you, this type of vicarious atonement. This is really not found in Luke in Christology. In Mark 10.45, Jesus is recorded to have said that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. Instead, in the Gospel of Luke, you have Jesus as an example of service for his disciples. He is known as the martyr prophet, so we imitate Christ, imitatio Christi, as the Latin theologians used to say. You imitate Christ in his virtue ethics, and you have that same willingness to give your life for your cause, but the death of Jesus does not vicariously atone for your sins. That's something that's foreign to Judeo-Christianity, at least as Luke sees it. If you look in the Old Testament, very clearly Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 17 says, every man is put to death for his own sin. No one is killed in the place of another. He would not fly in any modern court if someone is guilty of murder, and then the judge decides to execute another person instead of the guilty party. That does not fly. That's a breach of justice. That's not justice whatsoever. So, Esalaam Jesus Christ being this lamb led to the slaughter, as it were, being killed for our sins, is something that Muslims and Jews, and apparently the Lukean community would consider to be anathema, something that is truly disturbing, that an innocent man will be killed in place of another. And if you actually just read the narratives in the New Testament, you have Jesus on the Mount of Olives, sweating blood according to the Gospel of Luke, begging for his life in the synoptic gospels, remove this cup away from me. And it's interesting because Orthodox Christians will say, before the foundations of the world, God the Father and God the Son entered into a metaphysical covenant or contract, stipulating that in the year 4000 after Adam, the Son would incarnate into a human being and die for the sins of humanity. Yet Jesus is on the Mount of Olives, crying and begging for his life. It doesn't seem like he knows anything about such a covenant. In fact, Jesus says that the Father will give you whatever you ask. He says that what any Father amongst you will give his Son a serpent when he asks for a fish. You say no, then why would God do that to his own son, quote unquote son, if his son is asking for his life to be saved and then God decides to reject his son's request and have him beaten and spat upon and flogged down to his bowels according to traditional Christian iconography and descriptions of the passion narrative and then crucified, nailed to a cross between two thieves and then sent to hell for three days. This is not love. This is sadistic murder, first degree murder. This has nothing to do with Judaism. There's no indications that anyone will die for anyone's sins. This is a pagan belief that was adopted outside of Palestine in the Mediterranean lands. This idea of a dying and rising savior, man God, very, very common in Greek mystery, religious cults. The Old Testament is very, very clear. The way to become right with God is through Tashuva, which is Toba, which is repentance. Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 20 says very, very clearly that the iniquity of the son shall not be upon the father and the iniquity of the father shall not be on the son. Sin is not inherited by anyone. No one is killed in place of another. And then it says the wickedness of the wicked is upon him, the righteousness of the righteous is upon him but if the wicked would turn from his wickedness and do that which is lawful and right and turn here in Hebrew is Yashuv, right? Yashuv is Shuv, Yashuv, Tashuva. That's the past, present and infinitive. Taba, Yatobu, Toba. Turn meaning reorient oneself, make repentance which requires contrition, right? Nadama, which is remorse and a firm resolve. Azima, not to return to the sin. Then Ezekiel says, if he does that, then he shall surely live, he shall not die. This is how we make ourselves right with God. We have to be in constant repentance with God. We don't place our sin on some vicarious atonement or some savior other than Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Other than God, blessed and exalted is he and this is how Luke, the Luke in Jesus is described that he dies to set an example of service and sacrifice. That's why you read the book of Acts which again was written by Luke depicting the early apostles, especially Stephen who was the first Christian martyr, willing to give his life for the cause in that sense, emulating Jesus that in Jesus's willingness to give his life for the cause, to be compassionate and forgiving like Jesus, to be non-resistant like Jesus, not in the sense that Jesus is your savior in the sense that he quite literally takes on your sin and he's killed for your sin. This is a breach of justice. An example I give all the time is quite a simple example is let's say for example that I come home from work one night and I'm very, very tired and I had a very rough day at work and then you're my neighbor and your dog is barking all night long and I get very upset. I go outside, I throw a rock over my fence and it hits your dog in the head and it kills your dog and I go back to sleep but the next morning I wake up and I'm full of remorse so I go to your house and I say, you know last night I was very tired and I couldn't sleep, your dog was barking all night long and I threw a rock, I was very angry and I think it hit your dog and it died and then you say, oh that's okay because you see me, I'm crying, I'm full of remorse, I'm very contrite and you say that's okay, don't worry about it, I forgive you. Now this matter is closed, I sinned against you and you have the position to forgive me. It was your dog, right? So the matter is over. Now let's say I go back to my house, I take my own dog and I cut its throat and I say, hey, there has to be justice, blood for blood, somebody has to die, did I have to kill my dog? No, it's completely unnecessary, in fact it is injustice, it is unjust for me to have killed my dog. Because I sinned against you, I was contrite and you forgave me so nobody has to die. We sin against God, we make toba, we have a good opinion of God that he will forgive us, nobody has to pay the price for us, that is a breach of justice. So in Luke, that's Luke's soteriology. Now Luke does call Jesus savior, soter, we have to understand by that he simply means in the sense not that he died for your sins but rather as one who teaches you how to deal with sin and is a means of your salvation. So the new English Bible, which was done by preeminent European scholars, the way they translate soter is actually deliverer. So Moses in the sense is a savior, he's a deliverer in the sense that he teaches us how to deal with, how to recognize sin, how to deal with sin, how to make us right with God, right? And that's very, very apparent in the Gospel of Luke that the death of Jesus makes us realize our guilt before God so that we turn to God in repentance and God will forgive our sin. That's Luke's Christology, right? So it's very, very important to understand that. Also something that's very important about the Luke in Jesus is that he is, as Ereman calls, quite imperturbable, which means that he is very cool, he is very calm, he is very collected on the order of a stoic philosopher because Luke again is writing for a Gentile audience, a Greco-Roman audience, he's also a physician and he can do things more systematically. His Gospel is actually the best Gospel as far as grammar and syntax, the most polished in its Greek. So he seems to be the most educated and he's writing for an audience that is basically very academic, very imperturbable, very stoic in their orientation. The stoics believed in a deistic God, an impersonal God. They were all about self-discipline and reason. That reason is all you need to understand the true makings of the universe. So Luke, what he'll do is he'll eliminate, mark in descriptions of Jesus that make him seem too human, right? So as we know in the Gospel of Mark, as well as the Gospel of Matthew, they tell us that when Jesus was put on the cross, he made this cry of dereliction, elahi, elahi, la ma sabachthani, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, right? Which is very disturbing for a prophet to have said something like that. This is why Imam Rizali again says in his camel that there's no way that Jesus Christ be upon him would ever make such a statement. A prophet would never make such a statement. Luke agrees with Imam Rizali actually and he doesn't record Jesus making this cry of dereliction. Jesus in the Gospel of Luke again is imperturbable. He's always in control. So in the Gospel of Mark, if you remember, the death of Jesus was quite pathetic. He's interrogated by Pilate. Are you the king of the Jews? He says, that's what you say. And then he's completely silent up until the cry of dereliction. And then he dies. The women go to the empty tomb. They don't find him there. It's kind of a cliffhanger. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is in control. He's on his way to Golgotha to his own execution. There's a group of women who are weeping. He says, don't weep for me, weep for yourselves. A reference to the destruction of the temple that's imminent, of course it had already happened by the time Luke had written his Gospel. And then Jesus on the cross, he simply says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. No cry of dereliction. No ilahi ilahi lama sabachtani. Because for Luke, he found that quite disturbing. This is also one of the reasons why the Gospel of Luke was so beloved by a group of Christians called the Marcianites. So if you remember, Marcian, he was a second century anti-Jewish, dosetist, bi-theist. In other words, he was someone who believed that Jesus actually did not have a physical body. He was of the gnostic persuasion that Jesus did not have a flesh and blood body. He was simply a phantasm. He was a dosetist from the Greek doceo, which means that Jesus only seemed to have a physical body. But in reality, he didn't have a physical body. And he believed that the God of the Old Testament was actually a different God, right? A lesser God, he called him the demi-urge, or the Yalda Boeth. This God who is a trickster and that Jesus is the true God. So Marcian was a bi-theist. And this movement, Marcianism, was quite popular, especially in Rome. And Marcian loved the Gospel of Luke because the way Jesus is so imperturbable. He's so non-human-seeming, right? He doesn't get upset. He's always calm, cool, and collected. He commends his own spirit into the hands of his father. So he started to say things like, well, Jesus wasn't actually flesh and blood and the Gospel of Luke proves it. And Marcian, again, also hated the Jews. He said they were sons of the devil, right? And they were accursed people. And he incited violence against the Jews. So it's interesting, there are late manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke, which include an additional statement of Jesus on the cross, where he says, pater afeis autois in the Greek language, which means father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. You've probably heard this. If you watch any Jesus movie, usually they have this, the actor portraying Jesus will say this, because it's quite a beautiful statement that Jesus is forgiving the people who crucified him, forgiving the Jews from the cross for crucifying him. In fact, that statement was not part of the original Gospel of Luke. It was added later by consensus of New Testament scholars because it was a Christological reply to what Marcian was saying. It was a polemical response to a Christological heresy that Marcian was saying, the Jews are accursed and the God of the Old Testament was a different God. We have a few examples of fabrication in the Gospel of Luke that was motivated by a response to what Marcian is actually doing. We talk about the sources of the Gospel of Luke. They're almost the same as the Gospel of Matthew. You have Luke using Mark's Gospel as his narrative skeleton, although making a few changes here and there, which of course means that Luke did not believe Mark was inspired by God because of Luke believed that Mark was inspired by God. That certainly he wouldn't redact and change and revise and change the context of certain pericapies. And the example we give of that is Mark chapter six. Jesus, it's called the rejection at Nazareth. Luke will take that pericapy in Mark six, which is almost halfway through Mark's Gospel, the end of the Galilean ministry and he'll move it up to Luke chapter four. So he'll compromise the context of this pericapy to make a theological point. And that's what the four Gospels are. The four Gospels, the four Gospel authors are not trying to necessarily give you accurate history. History is by far secondary. Primary of primary importance is theology. They're trying to teach you what to believe about Jesus Christ, even if it means distorting the historical aspect. There is no historical record that there was ever this census taken in the entire Roman Empire at the time of the birth of Jesus, peace be upon him. Luke probably made this up in order to get the holy family into Bethlehem because according to Luke, they were living in Nazareth and it really doesn't make a difference for Luke probably, whether this is true or not, whether it's factual or not. It's very, very important to understand the mindset of the Gospel authors that something can be true and not factual. Something can be true and not factual. It's probably not factual that people came out of their graves. The saints of old came out of their graves when Jesus was crucified and there was an eclipse. There was a thunderstorm. The skies darkened as Matthew says. That probably didn't happen. It seems like Matthew is kind of copying what some of the ancient historians, Roman historians, said about the death of, what Plutarch says about the death of Romulus, the founder of the Roman Empire. For Luke, it doesn't make a difference whether that was actually factual did the saints come out of their graves. He's trying to make a theological point. A theological truth is that the death of Jesus was a really big deal. To demonstrate that, you can think of saints coming out of their graves. There's an eclipse. These things didn't really happen, probably according to Matthew, but he's trying to make a theological point that the death of Jesus was truly a pivotal moment, an axial moment in the history of the world. Anyway, so we have, oh, another example is the slaughter of the innocents. Remember Matthew says that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod Antipas, he decreed the slaughter of the innocents very much like the Pharaoh did at the time of Moses. There is no historical evidence of this happening whatsoever. Again, for Matthew, it's not really important whether this is actually factual, but it's true in the sense that the birth of Jesus was a really big deal and Jesus is the new Moses and Jesus is the prophet like unto Moses, as was prophesized in Deuteronomy 1818, which was actually, in my opinion, a clear prophecy of the prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa la alaihi wa salam. And in the Quran, again, you find that correspondence many times between Musa alaihi salam and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa salam. For example, Warak ibn Naufal, when the initial revelation came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa salam, he said to him, qad ja'aka annamusul akbar kama ja'a ila Musa. To you has come the great law, kama ja'a, just as. Kama is a particle of similarity, right? Just as it came to Moses, the great law, the nomos, namus in Arabic has come to you, just as it came to Musa alaihi salam. So we find that correspondence quite often between the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa salam and Musa alaihi salam. And there's other examples of that. Now, one of the interesting things about the Gospel of Luke's sources, so we have, again, Mark's Gospel as forming the skeleton, we have the Q-source document that Luke has in common with Matthew, and then we have special L material, Luke and material, which is only found in the Gospel of Luke. Now, the special Luke and material is quite memorable. It's very famous. Pericope's of Jesus, peace be upon him, basically takes place between chapters 9 and 19 of the Gospel of Luke. This is called Luke's Travel Narrative. So one of my favorites here is what's known as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. We'll start with the Prodigal Son. This is an interesting parable of Pericope that is given by Jesus. This is Luke chapter 15, in which he says a man has two sons, an older son and a younger son. His younger son goes off and does his own thing and becomes prodigal, becomes a spendthrift and becomes a sinner, actually ends up hurting a bunch of pigs of swine, loses all of his money and then decides to go back home to his father and Jesus says, peace be upon him, according to Luke chapter 15, that from afar when his father saw him, he welcomed him with open arms and they hugged each other, right? And then the son that was the older son said, you know, I've been here this whole time, I've never disobeyed you and you showed this kind of love, right? And then the father says, yes, but you've always been, I've always loved you, but this son of mine was lost and is now find, is now found, right? He was dead, it is now alive. What does that mean? How do you go from death to life? This whole parable is about Tobah. The whole point of the parable is about Teshuvah in Hebrew, Tobah, just like we said, Ezekiel chapter 18 verse 20, if the wicked would turn and do that which is lawful and right, that if you turn towards God, you reorient yourselves towards God, you will find God as it were, not in any anthropomorphic sense, welcoming you with open arms, if you make Tobah, that's the whole point of the parable. Jesus is not making a point here that I'm gonna come back from the dead, I'm gonna die for your sins, I'm the son of God in the literal sense, nothing like that, nothing like that is mentioned. The whole point of the prodigal son is repentance. So that's very, very clear. Also we have this parable chapter 18, the Pharisee in the tax collector, chapter 18 of Luke, that's also very clearly about Tobah, again, the soteriology of the Gospel of Luke is very, very different than what we find in Mark and Matthew and the Pauline epistles, Jesus does not die for your sins, Jesus is not a vicarious atonement, a lamb led to the slaughter, anything like that, Jesus is savior in the sense that he makes you aware of sin and teaches you how to deal with sin so that you might turn to God yourself in repentance and Jesus is someone that you emulate. He is Uswatu-N-Hassana as the Quranic language would say in the Quranic nomenclature, he is Huluq Azeem, he has great moral and virtue, great moral virtue ethics that we need to emulate. That's the point of the Gospel of Luke. So that's Luke's Gospel running out of time. Now if we go to the Gospel of John, this is the Gospel that we covered last time. In the Gospel of John we had said originally was seen as a very strange alien body of literature next to the synoptics. Remember, synoptic means one-eyed. Matthew, Mark, and Luke basically follow the same chronology of events in their tellings of the narratives of the life of Isa A.S. In the Gospel of John, however, we have something very, very different. The narrative, the chronology of events is very different. The content of the Gospel of John is also very, very different. You have Jesus going back and forth between Galilee and Nazareth. You don't have these parables. You don't have these exorcisms that we have in the synoptic tradition. Rather, we have Isa A.S. giving these really long monologues or dialogues or debates he has with the Pharisees. Jesus in the Gospel of John is presented or is ascribed the highest Christology. And this is, again, this is the Gospel that most Christians will use to show you or to demonstrate that Isa A.S. is God. For example, it says, Jesus says in John 10, verse 30, the father and I are one. And we talked about this in our last class. What does he mean by the nature of this oneness? Does he mean essential oneness? Does he mean that Jesus shares an essence with God? There's no verse in the Bible that mentions that nowhere in any Gospel does Isa A.S. say, I am God. Nowhere does he say worship me. There is no verse in the Gospel that contains the word God and three in the same verse. There's no verse in the Gospel that contains the words God and Trinity in the same verse. The word Trinity is in the Quran. It says, Don't say Trinity. It is better for you. Innamallahu ilahun wahid. For your God is one. God is one. Again, there's certain anchors that you have to know. Mark chapter 12, verse 29. Shema Israel adonai ilohainu adonai echad. Here are Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is echad. Echad means one. It only means one. Christians will try to say something like, yes it means one, but there's allowance for multiplicity or plurality within oneness. No, one means one. This is one pencil. I'm not going to say this is one pencil, but it's also three pencils. This is gibberish. This is nonsense, right? When the Gospel of Mark, Isa A.S. and the Gospel of Mark confirms the theology of Bani Israel, that's exactly what it says. He's confirming. Musaddi Qalima bayna yadaya minatoura. He is quoted in the Quran is saying, I confirm the Torah. The theology of Isa A.S. is no different than the theology of Musa A.S. And that's no different than the theology presented in the Quran. Qulhu Allahu ahad. The same word is used in the Quran. Ahad means one. It means one and only. A radical, rigid, monotheistic God. The God of the Hebrews, the God of the Israelites, the God of Abraham. So that's very, very clear. John 17.3 again, another verse you should be very, very familiar with when Jesus, peace be upon him apparently says, speaking to the Father in heaven, you are the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent that the Father is the only God, the only true God. Very, very clear, right? If you look at this reading from a clear, simplistic, very superficial, easy to understand perspective, it's very clear that the only God is the God of Isa A.S. Another verse that's important and John, we didn't cover this verse last time. We talked about John, but I just remembered it. John chapter 20, verse 17. This is when he tells Mary Magdalene. He says, tell my brethren that I'm going to ascend unto my Father and your Father, my God and your God. Here, Jesus says that he has a God. I thought Jesus was supposed to be God. If Jesus has a God, then certainly he himself cannot be God. Can God have a God? Well, if you want to believe that, then you believe in two gods. You can't say, Jesus is God and he also has a God. He says in the Greek, Theosmu, my God. How can Jesus have a God and be God at the same time? This is not even within the bounds of Trinitarian theology. So these are some things that we should bring up with our Christian friends. We're actually out of time right now. I hope this class has been beneficial. We've done 12 recorded sessions, inshallah ta'ala, when we actually start with the semester in the spring of 2014. We're going to have two or three live sessions. And I hope people again are writing down their questions and you can email me your questions as well. But if you want to ask me on live shows and certain live classes, certainly we can take those questions at that time as well. I hope you've enjoyed the class. Please keep us in your dua. You are in our dua, inshallah ta'ala, wa sallallahu alayhi sallim, wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam, wa l-hamdu lillahi rabbil alamin, wa sallamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.