 Tonight, inshallah ta'ala, I'm going to talk about the historical and theological critique of the Christian passion narrative of Sayyidina Isa A.S. The Qur'an is a bold text. It makes bold claims. I think one of the boldest of claims in the Qur'an is when Allah SWT says about that they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear so unto them. For surety, they killed him not. Of course, this is in Surah An-Nisa, ayah 157. So here's the essence of the Christian thesis as expounded by Christian apologist and polemicist and Christian academics is that it's a historical fact, historical fact that Jesus was crucified and that he rose from the dead. Therefore, the Qur'an is egregiously wrong when it says they did not kill him nor did they crucify him. So why believe a text that came 500 years later written in Arabic that says otherwise when you have these four Gospels written by independent eyewitnesses according to them, multiply attested in Greek that say that he was crucified? So you Muslims are denying history. You deny history, you deny history. So let's talk about history. So this is the essence of the Christian claim. That according to modern historiography, it's a fact that Jesus was crucified and he was resurrected. Okay, according to modern historiographical methodology, modern historians, they try to establish what probably happened. What probably happened? That's what determines all of modern history. It's levels of probability. So did Obama win the election in 2012? Yeah, I think you can say with a very high degree of probability that he won the election. There's no global conspiracy in that regard. It's very high that he won the election. Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone nut, the lone assassin? Well, in the mid-60s, that was the historical position. That was the dominant position. And then, you know, you had the Jim Garrison investigation. You had this uprooter video coming out in 1975. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined definitively, yes, in fact it was a conspiracy and that's the latest from the government on the JFK assassination. Did Constantine convert to Christianity before the Council of Nicaea in 325 of the Common Era? Again, very hazy. Further back in time you go, the more hazy it becomes. Were Muslims in America first or Christians? Well, it depends on whose history you're going to read. Certainly, European history tells us that in 1492 Columbus saw the ocean blue and they killed Muslims and the Jews. Whatever, I don't know the end of the rhyme. But according to Muslim historians at Masoudi, at Idrisi, there was a Muslim presence. Voyages sent from Andalusia into the Americas as early as 889 of the Common Era, so 600 years before Columbus was discovered. So, the past doesn't change, right? Only our perception of the past change. And that's modern history. That's how history is done in modern times. What is history or perception of the past? So, modern historians cannot establish miracles as the most probable occurrence because miracles, by definition, are the least probable occurrence. In Arabic they're called khawadikul adat, breaks in natural law, right? And we believe in them, but if you saw a man standing on the top of a building and I told you he got there one of three ways. Either he flew up there like Superman, or he took the elevators, or he took the staircase. Which one would you conclude is probably what happened? You'd probably say that he took, because people don't take stairs anymore, right? People are lazy now. So you'd say, and you'd say, well, maybe he flew, we believe in Karamat, Karismata, the miracles of the Awriyah, but that's such a rare occurrence. He probably went up there with an elevator, right? And that's how history is done. So a miracle, right? A miracle is the least probable occurrence, by definition. Therefore, the least probable historically. So, historians cannot presuppose modern historians. Do not presuppose God's existence or non-existence. They have no access to God. So something like the virgin birth of Issa al-Isra, that's something we believe as Muslims. So there's a difference between sacred history and secular history. Secular history, or non-confessional history, is based on probability, right? So that's history with a lowercase h, a small h. Sacred history, or confessional history, is based on revelation, right? So the Qur'an gives us sacred history, and we believe that's true history, a capital h. But you cannot repeat past events through experimentation. So you can't prove anything through the modern scientific method that happened in the past. So to say that we can prove that Issa al-Isra was crucified and resurrected, we can prove it through the modern scientific method is false. The only way to do that is either go back in time, right, and witness the event yourself, which is impossible, or reproduce the event now, which is also impossible, right? So if you make, if your thesis is that, you know, certain types of mice prefer cheddar cheese over Monterey Jack, you can produce that experiment and do it a few times, and then have your conclusion, which you cannot prove through the scientific method that something happened in the past. Maybe it happened, but you can't prove it historically. It is a faith conviction. The resurrection of Jesus, the so-called resurrection of Jesus, is a theological claim. It's a theological claim. It's a faith claim. Now does it have theological consistency? We're going to talk about that later, inshallah. So this is my historical critique of the Christian narrative. Then we'll get to the theological critique. The big question is, are the four Gospels in the New Testament reliable as historical sources? According to classical historians like Schweitzer and F.C. Bauer, Walter Bauer, Rudolf Baltimore and H. Ramirez, and others, they are not reliable historical sources. According to contemporary historians like Dale Martin, who himself is a Trinitarian Catholic at Yale University, also Bart Ehrman, they also say no, they're not reliable historical sources, but rather theological sources. Why are they not reliable historical sources? According to these historians, they say there's six reasons. They say they're too late. They're written between 40 and 70 years after the events that they purport to describe. They say that they're anonymous. The four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not identify themselves. They were later pseudonymously ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are two disciples of Esalaam. One is a disciple of Peter and one is a disciple of Paul. So they're not written by eyewitnesses. That's the third reason. Number four, they're not disinterested. We'll come back to this one. Number five, they're written in the wrong language. They're written in Greek, whereas Esalaam and his disciples spoke Syriac, a Semitic language. And number six, they have certain or numerous inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled or harmonized. Let's go back to number four, that the four Gospels are not disinterested. So this is to say that the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, reflect what's known as Pauline Christology, Paul's Christology, who many would argue is the actual founder of Christianity. Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, verse 8, he says, Remember Jesus Christ, experimentas David in the Greek, literally from the sperm of David, from the seed of David. Interestingly, Paul doesn't know about the virgin birth at all. He never mentions it. He believes that Jesus is literally a descendant of David. He said, remember Jesus of the seed of David was raised from the dead, kata ta iwangeliu mu in the Greek, according to my gospel. That's my gospel. So if he's just scratched under the surface here, it seems like Paul is saying that there are other Gospels, and indeed in Galatians, he does say that explicitly. And we're going to get to that in a minute, inshallah. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 17, Paul says, if Christ is not raised, there's no resurrection. mataiah hay pistis heimun. Our faith is null and void. Our faith is in vain. Paul is saying everything, every Christian faith hinges completely on this event, the so-called death and resurrection of Isa alaih s-salam. So you have these four Gospels that are basically, they have theological agendas. They're polemical tractates, right? The primary goal of the evangelists, the authors of these books, is to convince you with respect to a theological position, not to describe accurate history. History is written through the lens of their theology. John admits this at the end of his gospel, the gospel of John chapter 20, verse 31. He says, these things have been written in order, in order that you might know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This is the whole point of writing these Gospels, is to impart theology, not history, not accurate history. So the big question here is then, if the evangelists and subsequent scribes can change and embellish and manipulate traditions or stories in the Gospels due to apologetic or polemical or Christological considerations, how do we know that what they said was true? I'll give you an example. In Luke chapter 23, Luke says that when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he cries out, pater afeis autois, in the original Greek, which means father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now if you go into the most ancient and best manuscripts of the gospel of Luke in Greek, this verse is nowhere to be found. Scholars have concluded that it's basically a polemical response to a Christological heresy in the late first century called Marcionism. So there's this Christian guy named Marcion, very influential, who was by theists. He said the God of the Old Testament is a different God than Jesus, the God of the New Testament, and he was vehemently anti-Jewish. And he called the Jews God killers, they're guilty of deicide, killing God, right? So sometime in the second century, a scribe put these words upon the lips of Jesus, fabricated the gospel of Luke, now you have Jesus forgiving the Jews from the cross. Okay. So, and there are other examples. So what Bart Ehrman, his advice is, when you read the four gospels, you should read them horizontally rather than vertically. So vertical reading of the gospels is what we do naturally. We start with Matthew, we read it all the way through, then we go to Mark, then we go to Luke, then we go to John. But he says that's not the right way to read the gospels. Horizontal reading of the gospels is when you read it according to a synopsis. So Kurt Allen and Barbara Allen did this really beautiful job, synopsis of the New Testament gospels. I think it's called synopsis of the four gospels that they study in seminary. So how do you do that? Basically, you read a pericope or a passage in one gospel and then go to that same event described in another gospel and notice the differences. With horizontal reading, you'll notice these differences. The subtle changes made by scribes. So for example, you read Matthew's gospel, read about the baptism of Jesus in Matthew's gospel. Then you go to Mark and read about the baptism of Jesus. You'll notice some differences. Go to Luke and read his description of the baptism. Then go to John, there's no baptism. Go to Matthew, read about the Sermon on the Mount. What does Jesus say on the Sermon on the Mount? Go to Luke, slightly different. The Lord's Prayer, slightly different. A little bit different here and there. Sermon on the Mount. Mark, no Sermon on the Mount. John, no Sermon on the Mount. So this is a horizontal reading. Now let's look at the passion narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Did Jesus defend himself at his trial according to the New Testament Gospels? What's the answer to borrow a phrase from airmen? It depends on which gospel you read. In some gospels, he defends himself. In other ones, he does not. Was he flogged before he was crucified according to the Bible? Well, it depends on which gospel you read. Was he crucified on the eve of Passover or the night before? It depends on which gospel you read. Did he bear his own cross to Golgotha, the place where he was supposedly crucified? Did he carry his own cross or did someone else carry it for him? It depends on which gospel you read. Was he impaled on the cross? Was he speared to death on the cross? It depends on which gospel you read. Did the crossmates, the men who were crucified with him, did they make fun of him? Did they mock him and revile him? Or did one of them actually praise him? It depends on which gospel you read. Was there an earthquake, an eclipse, a storm? Did saints come out of their graves and walk around Jerusalem? It depends on which gospel you read. Who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday? It depends on which gospel you read. How many people went there? It depends on which gospel you read. Why did they go to the tomb? What was the reason? It depends on which gospel you read. What did they see when they got there? It depends on which gospel you read. What did they do next? It depends on which gospel you read. Did Jesus appear to his disciples in Galilee? Or in Jerusalem and its suburbs? Or to nobody? It depends on which gospels you read. So, is there any way to harmonize these four books? I would say that harmonization of these four passion narratives is impossible. What time was he crucified? 9 a.m. or at noon? When did he die? It depends on which gospel you read. So, if you want to harmonize these four gospels and put them into a single account, like Tatian actually did, a student of Justin Martyr. He called it the Dea Tesseron, the gospel through four. Then, essentially what you're doing is you're writing your own gospel. Like the gospel according to Mel Gibson, also known as the passion according, the passion of the Christ, right? Or he integrates elements of all four gospels. And sometimes he takes elements that are found in no gospel. Satan at the Garden of Gethsemane during Jesus' prayer in agony, that's not mentioned in any gospel. There's no Satan there. Why is he mentioning that? Because there was an Augustinian nun named Anne Emmerich who was astigmatic. She would bleed from her hands of Christ and she wrote these things down in her diary. So, a lot of what she wrote down was taken into the movie, was incorporated into that movie by Mel Gibson, being a devout Catholic. So, scholars believe that what's known as mark in priority. Mark wrote first. Matthew and Luke used Mark's skeletal chronology and wrote their own gospels based on Mark. If this is true, which is a dominant opinion in academia, why would Matthew, using Mark's gospel, why would Matthew rework, reword and redact Mark in passages if he believed Mark was inspired by God? What does this tell you about how Matthew felt about Mark's gospel? If he felt it was inspired by God as the vast majority of Christians believe the gospel of Mark to be, why is Matthew, who's also supposed to be inspired by God, changing Mark's gospel at times, cleaning up the grammar, Mark's grammar is not very good in the Greek. It repeats a lot of words over and over again. It doesn't sound very good, right? So, Matthew has to clean it up. Now, William Lane Craig and Mike Lacona, these are prominent Christian apologists, they admit that Matthew made embellishments, right? For example, the saints coming out of their graves when Jesus was resurrected, walking around Jerusalem, they say, yeah, that sounds a lot like Plutarch's, you know, account of the death of Romulus, one of the founders of Rome. So, if they admit that Matthew and Luke and John made embellishments, what else did they embellish? What does it say about these books being the Word of God? Interestingly, there are only four references to Jesus in pagan and Jewish sources. By pagan, I mean Roman, Roman and Jewish sources in the first 100 years of the Christian era. From the year 33 to 133, there are only four references to Jesus in Roman and Jewish sources. In other words, outside Christian sources. One of them is by the Roman historian Tacitus in his annals around 116 of the common era, and he simply repeated what some of the Christians at that place were saying about Jesus. The other one is by Pliny the Younger, a Roman official around 110 of the common era, writing to the emperor Trajan as to how to deal with Christians in his province. Then you have two passages from Josephus, the Jewish philosopher, around 95 of the common era in his antiquities. One is a very, very quick reference to Christ where he's actually describing James, the brother of Jesus. He says James, whose brother was called Christ. The other reference by Josephus is called the Testimonium Flavinium, the testimony of Josephus, which describes Jesus as the Christ and how he died and then was resurrected. This is a total fabrication to the antiquities by admission of almost all Christian scholars. So in reality, none of these sources, none of these non-Christian sources say that Jesus was resurrected. So by default, historians use the New Testament Gospels. This is all we have from the first century. In other words, the only sources that say Jesus was crucified from the first century are the New Testament Gospels and they are not reliable as historical sources but rather theological sources. Let me give you an example. Luke, he takes a mark in Pericope. So Mark chapter 6, this is called the Rejection at Nazareth. This is sort of Jesus' final sort of speech in Galilee before he goes into Jerusalem. It's in Mark chapter 6. Luke takes that speech and moves it to the beginning of his gospel and makes it Jesus' inaugural address. Now, Luke knows that hundreds of years from now, people are going to know that he deliberately manipulated the chronology of events here. He doesn't care because for the four evangelists, the most important thing is imparting theology, right? Not history. They're not interested. There's a historical element, no doubt, to the four gospels but much more important and trumping history completely, taking a total backseat is history to theology. They're trying to incorporate and impart theology. They're theological stances. They're writing their theology. They're writing their history, I should say. Through the lens of their theology. And only theology in the Pauline or Hellenistic or what we call the proto-Trinitarian schools of thought. And the gospels have very little to do with the Jamesonian or Semitic or proto-Unitarian schools of thought. So Paul versus James, you know, this dichotomy is a big topic to sum it up very quickly for you. In the first century, it's very, very clear that there are two distinct interpretations of the Gospel of Jesus, right? There's Paul's interpretation. Paul, a self-proclaimed apostle of Christ, never met the historical Christ, is basing his apostleship on a vision he had on the way to Damascus. And then there's Jamesonian Christianity based on James, who is the brother of Jesus and the successor of Christ, the leader of the Jerusalem Episcopate after the ascension of Risa, they have two vastly different interpretations of the Gospel. In fact, many scholars, like the two Bowers I mentioned, FC Bauer, Walter Bauer, even Kierkegaard, even Thomas Jefferson, believe that Paul is the corruptor of the Gospel. In Galatians, and keep in mind that Paul, he authored more than half of the New Testament, all of his letters and epistles were written before the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In Galatians, written around 55 of the Common Era, Paul admits that he has enemies, and he says that these enemies believe in, in his own words, Heteron Ewangelion, Heteron Heterodox Gospel. His enemies believe in another Gospel. So Paul is not, he has other enemies, like the Jews were his enemies, the Pagans are his enemies, but he's not talking about them here. He's talking about other Christians that he considers to be his enemies. FC Bauer is sort of the traditional authority on the book of Galatians, and this is what he says happened. He says Paul, a freelance apostle, goes into Galatia in modern-day Turkey and evangelizes the populace. James in Jerusalem, the successor of Christ, he hears about Paul's deviant teachings, so he sends his own apostles into Galatia with letters of recommendation. This is what Paul is telling us. They have letters of recommendation. What are these letters? These are Ijazat. These are teaching licenses that are given to them by James, the brother of Jesus, because Senad, like Telakdi knowledge, is very important to the early Christian movement. Paul does not have Senad. He's not an apostle. He doesn't have permission to teach the Gospel. This is what FC Bauer says based on Paul's writings in Galatians. These apostles go into Galatia to correct Paul's deviant teachings. Paul names his enemies in Galatia. You read something like the book of Romans. Paul wrote Romans. That's Paul's sort of Christology, his soteriology, but the scholars say that Galatians is really what Paul was thinking. This is really what he's thinking. He names his enemies. He says these apostles in Jerusalem, he calls them so-called pillars. He calls them hypocrites. He calls them, sarcastically, super apostles. Right? Who are these apostles he's talking about? He name drops. He says their names are Yaakov, and Kaifa, and Yochanan. James, Peter, and John. These are direct students of Isa, that Paul is accusing of hypocrisy. There's fundamental difference of opinion between the Jamesonian school with respect to what the gospel is, and the Pauline school. In the Gospel of Thomas, statement number 12, which is not in the New Testament, obviously, but some consider to be a fifth gospel. Some even consider the Gospel of Thomas to be more early than the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus says in statement number 12, in the Gospel of Thomas, when I am gone, you must go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being. Jesus here is giving the apostles his Khalifa, as it were, endorsing James as his successor. James the Just, Yaakov had Sadiq. Interestingly enough, the Khalifa of Isa, his Laqab, his nickname, is the same Laqab of the Khalifa of the Prophet Muhammad, as Sadiq. Yaakov had Sadiq in Hebrew, and Abu Bakr as Sadiq in Arabic. That's in the Gospel of Thomas. In Philippians, Paul calls his enemies, these other apostles, these other Christians, who believe in another gospel, he calls them dogs. Enemies of the cross. Raymond Brown, a great authority, a sage exeget of the New Testament. He says this is probably because these apostles denied the crucifixion of Isa, so the New Testament is by and large representative of Pauline Christianity, and the cross is central. Remember what Paul said? If Christ is not raised, our faith is vain, it's null and void. Of the 27 books of the New Testament, are either written by Paul or someone pretending to be Paul. One book of the New Testament is written by James, the successor of Isa, so how did this happen? Well, in a nutshell, Constantine, the first Christian emperor, when he converted to Christianity or when he embraced or endorsed Pauline Christianity, he called for the Council of Nicaea in 325, the first ecumenical council, and many of the bishops that were there, 318 bishops, they took a vote. Many of them historians believe, like Henry Chadwick, were intimidated by Constantine to vote that Jesus is in fact Hama Uzias. He is of the same essence as the father, so therefore Jesus becomes God officially. And of course, in 381, the Council of Constantinople, Theodosius, the next emperor or a later emperor, they voted again and indeed the Holy Spirit was also found to be God by vote. Very democratic process, apparently. All other forms of Christianity were marginalized, declared illegal by imperial mandate. So where are all the Jewish Christian writings? Where are their books and their polemics and their apologies? They're gone because they were deemed heresy. We know that there was a book called the Gospel of the Evionim, the Gospel of the Ebianites. We know there was a book called the Gospel of the Nozrim, of the Nazarenes. We know there was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Hebrews. The communities that authored these books did not believe that Jesus was God, nor that he died for their sins. They believed they were practicing Jews who worshiped in the temple. They followed the Kashrut and the Mitzvot. All the laws and commandments, the only difference was that they believed, to be the Messiah. The Gospel of the Evionites, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Gospel of the Hebrews, these books are lost. The only reason why we know about them is because proto-Orthodox Christian apologists like Tertullian and Irenaeus, Origen and Jerome, they would quote these books and their refutations of these books. So in other words, we only have one side of the story. So the four Gospels are not reliable historically and they only represent one side of the conflict, one side of the conflict. In fact, there have been seasoned historians, Bruno Bauer, G.A. Wells, Tom Harper, that completely denied Jesus even ever existed, let alone that he was crucified and resurrected. A modern day atheist and historian Richard Carrier, he calls this the Jesus myth movement and he wants this to have peer review. He wants scholars, PhDs to sit down and actually discuss this issue, but it's so sensitive. Of course, I wouldn't go that far and we can't go that far because we know Issa A.S. existed because As-Sadiq al-Amin, Sayyid al-Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said that Issa A.S. existed in Qalahu Faqad Sadaq and if the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said it, then it's true, right? But I would argue this idea that it's historical fact that Christ was crucified, I would say that needs to be reviewed by peers, by academics. Okay. And it's interesting there was a there was a preacher called Apollonius of Tiana. He's a contemporary with Jesus. He lived in a different country though. He died around 100, he was like from 15 to 100 of the common era and he performed miracles and things like that and he was also seen by his disciples after his death. You know, my question is, you know, why don't Christians believe that Apollonius of Tiana was seen by his disciples and visions? Mike Lacona answered because I debated Mike Lacona. You can actually find this on YouTube if you want. He debated like 2006 or something. He said, you know, those accounts about Apollonius of Tiana, he said they're late, they're not eyewitness accounts and they're all biased. He said that's exactly what historians say about the New Testament Gospels. They're late, they're not based on eyewitness accounts and they're very biased. Lacona will say, however, everyone agrees that the Titanic sank, right? There's only differences in the peripherals. In other words, no one believed Jesus was killed and resurrected. There's a little bit difference of opinion on sort of, you know, side issues. But the sinking of the Titanic is probable because there's physical evidence of it. There's forensic evidence. There's eyewitness testimony. But the resurrection of a man god is highly improbable. In fact, miraculous. And by definition, a miracle is the least probable occurrence. The historian cannot say Jesus rose from the dead, but only that he was claimed to have been seen after his death. Bart Ehrman says, you know, visual experiences of Jesus documented thousands of times are much more probable than the miracle of the resurrection. This is theological. It's a faith conviction. Also, we have no evidence as to how the disciples died. Christians want to say to disciples, they died defending the truth that Jesus was resurrected. We have no idea how the disciples died. There were third century sort of romantic legends about them, you know, Thomas going into India, Thadeus going into Iraq, Mark founding the church in Egypt, even Andrew going as far as England, but nobody takes these stories very seriously. So I want to give you Bart Ehrman's historical hypothesis, and he's got many of them. So he's trying to, he wants to present a narrative, a passion narrative of Christ that is more probable and therefore more historical than the Christian passion narrative because it's devoid of miracles. This is what Ehrman says. He says, Jesus was crucified. He was killed. He has no reason to question this event. He was killed. He was put into a common grave, he says, and he points out that most times the Romans would not allow families to claim the bodies of crucified victims. It was almost unheard of. It would be thrown into common graves. Jesus was then seen in visions by certain people, his disciples because they loved and longed for him and he said it was very common and then the myth of the empty tomb began later. Interestingly, Paul does not mention an empty tomb anywhere in his writings. In this idea of a dying and rising savior man-god, a soter or man-god it was very common or attractive to Hellenistic Christians at that time. We'll get to Paul's Pneumatology a little bit later. So this is what Ehrman says probably happened. He says this is more probable. This is more historical than the Christian passion narrative of Jesus being crucified and then being resurrected. In fact, according to Dale Martin, it was Hellen, the mother of Constantine in the fourth century who first chose the place of the tomb of Christ and the building of the church of the Holy Supplicer. It was not known with any certainty before this time. Now, what I'm going to offer now are four more probable, hence more plausible, naturalistic, hence more historical hypotheses as to what happened to Issa A.S. that is simultaneously more consistent theologically with pre-Christian Jewish messianic expectations than the Christian passion and resurrection narrative. In other words, four more historical hypotheses that happened to agree with Islam. Why are they more historical? Because I don't have to resort to miracles. Now obviously we believe in miracles, but the point here is to repudiate this idea that the Christian position of Jesus being killed and resurrected is historical and the Muslims are denying history. So, I won't resort to miracles. The first one is called the twin hypothesis. The twin hypothesis. Did you know that second century Syrian Christians believed Jesus had a twin brother? His name was Jude, also known as Judas Thomas. In fact, the name Thomas Tomah in Aramaic means twin. Now, not literally a twin brother, but someone who looked a lot like Jesus. So Jesus affectionately calls him Tomah. He's like my twin. He looks just like me, right? In fact, in the Acts of Thomas, a book that is not in the New Testament, Jesus and Thomas are always being confused for one another because they look very similar. In fact, Ja'far Ibn Abi Talib was a companion that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said something similar. He says, you know, from a distance he looks exactly like me and he's similar to me, not only in his khalq, in his physical appearance, but in his khuluq, in his character. So here's the twin hypothesis. Jesus is on the mound of olives. Not a group of temple guards are coming to arrest him and to kill him. Thomas, his twin, volunteers to die for him because he loved him. Thomas is taken and crucified, buried in a common grave. Several days later, people claim to have seen Jesus alive. In fact, he was alive. Some claim that he was resurrected. He explains the truth to his disciples, but rumors continue to grow and grow. Eventually, legends of an empty tomb begin amongst Hellenistic Christians who are already attracted to this idea of a dying and rising savior, man-god. Christians like Mark, who writes in 70 of the common era, 40 years later, Matthew and Luke follow suit. So this is a hypothesis which is more historical than the Christian passion narrative, because I didn't have to resort to a miracle. Again, the claim here is that Christians are saying that Jesus dying and being resurrected is historical bedrock, and Muslims are denying history. But to say that Jesus resurrected resurrected himself is not historical. That's not how history is done. That's a faith conviction. And now, in light of new archeological discoveries, we'll get to those later, this whole idea of Jesus being crucified as being historical fact, that has to be reassessed as well. Second theory is called the Barabbas Hypothesis. So for this one, you can see Bruce Metzger's textual analysis of the New Testament. He goes into it a little bit, but I'll sort of give you the quick version of it. So we are told that it was Roman custom for the Roman governor of Judea, whose name was Pontius Pilate, that once a year before Passover, he would simply release a Jewish prisoner that he had in custody as a show of good will. Now there's no historical evidence of this ever happening in Roman records. So this could be another example of Matthew writing history through the lens of his theology. You can think about it, on Yom Kippur, a lamb is slaughtered and one is released. It seems like Matthew has this in mind. So two men are going to be extended, one is going to be released, one is going to be slaughtered. So this could be something non-historical, but Matthew is trying to make a theological point. But let's just say it is historical. Let's say it did happen, even though it was not attested in Roman sources. Say Pilate did have this custom. So this is what it says in Matthew 27. It says Pilate brought out two prisoners. One was named Barabbas. The other was named Jesus Christ. And he says, which shall I release to you? The crowd screams, apparently they say, release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. So then according to Matthew Pilate releases Barabbas and crucifies Jesus. Now what's interesting is that early versions of Matthew's gospel give us the first name of Barabbas. It's an interesting first name. Does anyone know what his first name is? Jesus is also Jesus. And in fact, Barabbas is not a name. It's a title. It's a patronym. In Aramaic, Bar Abba Bar Abba means the son of the father. Barabbas is no ordinary brigander, thief. He is a messianic claimant. He's claiming to be the Messiah. He's probably a Galilean like Jesus. You can tell them from their accents. They have a strange accent. And the Galileans were known for two things. They were good fishermen and they were zealots. They're known for insurrections against the Roman occupiers. So you have these two would be Messiahs that are brought out. So think about it now. Early versions of Matthew tell us that Barabbas's first name is also Jesus. So think about what Pilate is asking the crowd. He's saying, who do I release to you? Yeshua Bar Abba, Jesus Christ, or Yeshua Mashiach? Jesus Christ. Who do I release? Jesus Christ or Jesus Christ? And they say Jesus Christ. And who do I crucify? Jesus Christ. So you see how there's confusion, right? Who was crucified? So, subsequent scribes of Matthew's gospel they went into the gospel and they erased Barabbas's first name, right? So, most of the English translations that you have of the Bible, look at 17, you won't find Barabbas's first name. I think only the NIV the new international version goes back to more ancient Greek manuscripts where you actually get that first name of Barabbas. Why was the name removed? Probably because there was confusion in the early church as to who was actually crucified. Which Jesus was actually crucified. So, here's the Barabbas hypothesis. Is that Pilate releases Issa alaihissalam and describes Barabbas. Many in the crowd are confused and don't know who is who. The Pharisees complain but it's too late. It was the will of the crowd and Pilate let them judge. Take it up with the crowd he says and then he washes his hands of it. Barabbas is crucified and buried in a common grave. Several days later people claim to have seen Jesus alive and in fact he was alive. Some claim he was resurrected. He explains the truth to his disciples but the Barabbas grow and grow. Eventually legends of an empty tomb begin amongst Hellenistic Christians were attracted to this idea of dying and rising savior. Mangods like Mark who wrote in 70 and then 40 years later Matthew and Luke follow suit. Third hypothesis is called the Simon hypothesis. Simon. Okay. The synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us this is what it says in the New Testament when they're going to crucify Jesus the Romans for no reason inexplicably they take the cross of Jesus and they give it to a random guy standing in the crowd now Christians conjecture that that's because Jesus was just so beat down and he just he couldn't carry the cross right although that's not mentioned in argument from absence doesn't mention that in the New Testament to the extent of the injuries of Jesus in a minute what the gospels actually say but for no good reason they pull this man out of the crowd in Simon of Cyrene his only appearance in the entire New Testament and they compel him to bear the cross and as the narrative goes in the New Testament Simon takes the cross all the way up to Golgotha and then they crucify Jesus on the cross. Here's the Simon hypothesis. The Romans compel Simon to bear the cross. Jesus follows behind but becomes immersed in the crowd a couple of disciples grab hold of him and pull him quickly into a neighboring apartment at Golgotha the Pharisees complain to the Roman centurions this is not Jesus but the Romans fearing execution for their incompetence fasten Simon to the cross Simon goes willingly because he loved Jesus he was a secret disciple and desires martyrdom Simon is crucified and buried in a common grave several days later people see Jesus who's actually alive so on and so forth rumors of an empty tomb did you know that there was a Christian scholar named Basilides Basilides a teacher in Egypt around 125 of the common era he wrote the first ever comprehensive tafsir exegesis on the New Testament called the exegetica 25 volumes now completely lost he denied the crucifixion of Jesus his followers championed a text called the second treatise of the great Seth which was discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi Egypt what does it say it says Simon was crucified instead of Jesus so historical precedent for this hypothesis the final theory that I'll give you in my historical critique and then we're going to get to the theological critique inshallah ta'ala probably have to go a little bit after Maghreb as well this is called the swoon theory and this one is a little controversial because the essence of the swoon theory is that Jesus was put on the cross but he did not die on the cross he survived the crucifixion and of course this theory is made popular by religious like Ahmadiyya for example the Ahmadiyya a pseudo Islamic sect they actually believe this is what really happened but again as far as there is no definitive answer as to what happened these are hypotheses the swoon theory is very interesting though so I'll say it for the sake of argument so in Luke 11 and Matthew 12 the Pharisees come to Jesus so anytime Luke and Matthew I won't get too technical here anytime Luke and Matthew have material in common that is missing from Mark the dominant opinion from western academics is that Matthew and Luke had access to another source called Q they call it Q the sayings gospel the sayings gospel represents the most accurate teachings of Christ written concurrently with Paul's letters so they haven't been touched or tainted by Pauline Christology so what Jesus says right now is considered by western scholars of higher biblical criticism to be extremely accurate as far as representing the actual teachings of the Luke 11 and Matthew 12 the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say to him give us a sign do something do a miracle pull a rabbit out of your hat come to them no sign an evil and adulterous generation seek it after signs no sign shall be given unto you except the sign of the prophet Jonah for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale so shall the son of man referring to himself Ben-Adam or Bar-I-Nash so shall the son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights the sign of Jonah we'll get back to Jonah in a minute now Mark says Jesus was put on the cross at 9 a.m. John says it was noon Mark says he died at the ninth hour which was 3 p.m. if we take John's start date and Mark's end date he was on the cross for three hours in Mark 1544 when Pilate was told that Jesus was dead Mark says Pilate marveled he's amazed he's dead already and this is someone who was witness to the so-called beat down and the flogging and so on and so forth yet he marveled this was the Roman governor his career was crucifying Jews he knew it was impossible for a man to expire after only three hours it took days to die on the cross interestingly Matthew and Luke they leave out that little tidbit marveled we're also told that in Mark that Jesus was scourged he was flogged no details are given of the flogging so in popular sort of depiction of Christ in movies you have Jesus being whipped within an inch of his life his bowels are falling out of his back according to Joshua McDowell a Christian apologist but there are no such details given in the gospels that's an example of what I call non-unical waterboarding that you torture a text long enough and the text will say what you want it to say yeah he was flogged he was a bloody mess his flesh was cut to ribbons that's not historically accurate even the Romans did not do that in fact Luke says that Pilate only threatened to flog him and never actually flogged him Pilate says I'll chastise him and release him which means that flogging was meant as a sort of minor punishment because I'm going to release him after that not leave him as a bloody mess to bleed out and die but he never actually does it only one gospel says he was nailed to the cross only one out of four and it's implicit and that's the gospel of John doesn't directly say it but you can infer from John that he was nailed to the cross in fact there's almost zero forensic evidence that Jews were nailed to crosses almost one piece of a heel bone that was found that they found a nail driven through it but according to Josephus Titus General Titus he crucified so many Jews in Jerusalem that they ran out of lumber so tens of thousands of Jews being nailed to crosses almost zero forensic evidence of being nailed to a cross most likely he was tied to the cross another thing so this idea of him being beaten beyond recognition he's bleeding to death is untenable why do the Christians overemphasize the pain of Jesus in popular iconography it's because his pain is our gain the more he takes a beat down and dies and it's painful the more we are forgiven for our sins his pain is our gain now when he's on the cross in John we were told that there's an eclipse a solar eclipse and the Jews say oh look Sabbath is approaching and it's a defilement to our land that people are hung on crosses get him down from the cross so the Romans apparently at the beck and call of these Jewish leaders they start breaking the legs of his cross mates because if you break someone's legs they immediately suffocate on the cross because you're hanging from the cross in inhale position in order to get breath out you have to push up with your legs and you keep doing this for days until fatigue that's in and then you die so if you break a man's legs he can't push up for oxygen he dies immediately suffocates and it says in John that when they came to Jesus the Roman soldier looked at him and said he's already dead and then he spears him but the spears only mention in John so no pulse was taken could have been comatose you know in in pre-modern times you know the term graveyard shift you guys work the graveyard shift to your security guard or something so where does that term come from there used to be a guy that used to sit in graveyards quite often what would happen is a man would die and they would bury him the doctor at that time would say yeah he's dead but he was actually in a coma so they put this pedal at the end of the coffin that was attached to a rope that would come up through the earth attached to a little bell so it's quite often that someone would wake up in their grave and start kicking their feet and then and then this guy who's working the graveyard shift he would go down and start kicking this guy out of his grave that was medicine back then you can't read brain waves he doesn't seem to be breathing he's dead so no pulse was taken from Jesus on the cross now interestingly we're told in the Gospel of John Jesus had secret disciples from the Pharisees one of them was named Joseph of Arimathea who came and took Jesus' body very quickly and took it to his own grave Joseph of Arimathea his own grave and then he rolled a stone in front of the grave so according to the swoon theory Joseph did in fact take the body of Jesus he took it to a safe location and then he rolled the stone in front of his tomb his own tomb his empty tomb Jesus recovered over the next few days Jesus was seen alive some claimed a resurrection so they went to the tomb they removed the stone and lo and behold it's empty because he was never there the more you read the Gospels the more you have this evolution of not only Christology in this sort of heightened stature of Christ but the more the evangelists try to convince the readers that Jesus was killed the end of Mark's Gospel is very enigmatic the end of Mark's Gospel is chapter 16 verse 8 that's the true end of Mark's Gospel there was some verses added later but this is the end of Mark's Gospel Jesus is crucified he's put into a tomb a few women go there on Sunday morning they find out the tomb is already open there's an angel there and the angel says you're looking for Christ who was crucified he's alive and he's in Galilee you're looking for Christ who was crucified he's alive and he's in Galilee and it says then Mark says and the women ran away and they said nothing to no one for they were afraid period that's the end of Mark's Gospel what happened was he resurrected is it the wrong tomb was it a vision they had did he survive the crucifixion what's going on here why is he in Galilee so it's a cliffhanger so it's very confusing we're on 70 of the common era and the ending it it was so bothersome to so many Christians that later on a scribe went back and added 11 more verses to the end of the Gospel of Mark Mark 16, 9 through 20 which said Jesus came and he made these post-mortem appearances and then he told the disciples that go into all of the nations and baptize them and if you drink poison it will not harm you you know I was debating this Christian guy Mike David Wood one time and I said to him you might have seen this and I said to him I have a vial of white out and you can probably drink white out and be okay but it'll probably make you sick so I said you know Jesus says that a true Christian can drink poison and nothing will happen to him I said I want you to drink this whole bottle of white out right now and then you're looking at it and he's thinking about it and we're talking about the longer ending of Mark that's a fabrication to the text and there was a collective gasp in the audience he said the F word fabrication he dropped the F bomb on us right so it's interesting how quickly they've become biblical scholars of higher textual criticism when you actually present to them the words of Christ in their own books anyway that's the end of Mark now interestingly Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us again that Jesus did not bear his own cross Simon of Cyrene did what does John say the last of the gospels around 100 110 of the common era John says that Jesus bore his own cross contradicting Matthew, Mark and Luke why because John knows that their Christians at his during his time that believed Simon was crucified and in fact there were Christians at that time who denied Jesus' crucifixion John also says Jesus was impaled on the cross not found in Matthew, Mark and Luke why does John say that to ensure non-survival he's dead John also says that his body was already anointed on the night of his crucifixion right Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us that on Sunday morning they were coming to anoint Jesus' body which is very strange there's a group of women that are apparently not related to him who are somehow going to gain access into his tomb and start rubbing oil on his body is that a Jewish custom why are they coming to the tomb to anoint his body if that was already done according to John on the night of the crucifixion why are they coming to the tomb on Sunday for what nobody knows when Jesus appears to his disciples in the Gospel of John it says the doors were locked out of fear of the Jews very strange out of fear of the Jews I thought everyone was Jewish so this is an example of an anachronism obviously the Gospel of John was written much later at a time when there was a clear distinction between Jews and Christians and this didn't happen until the second century so that definitely did not happen Paul says let's talk a little bit about Pauline Pneumatology Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus when he was resurrected he became a life giving spirit penoma he uses the Greek word penoma he became spiritualized he also says that Jesus was the first fruits of the resurrection he became a pneumatic body he's the first one to be resurrected into the body that were all going to be resurrected on the day of judgment ok so there's something called a somatic body and something called a pneumatic body we are all in somatic bodies right now physically oriented bodies there's a ruach in our body and it's material it's a material ruach right but it's not of this world it's from the malakut right but we do have a penoma we have a soul it's called a ruach we have somatic bodies when we're resurrected on the day of judgment the dominant attribute of our bodies is pneumatic with a somatic element so the body is physically resurrected and Allah SWT resurrects down to the fingertip as he says everything is brought back reconstructed from the ajab from the end of the tailbone which is the seat of the human being but the body is now pneumatically oriented there's no more spirit than flesh now right so you don't need to eat you don't need to eat or drink you never die you're given baka, perpetuity and matter is not an obstruction like walls and stones and bricks they're not an obstruction to you anymore right so this is what Paul is saying listen very carefully Paul is saying when Jesus was resurrected he was resurrected into this pneumatic body pneumatic body you never die matter is not an obstruction if this is true then why did the stone need to be rolled away for Jesus to exit the tomb if he's a pneumatic body he doesn't need to wait for a stone to be moved he can just what's that what's the phrase from Star Trek he can just beam in and out of places of the body we're told that Jesus' legs were not broken on the cross so I want to ask a Christian when Jesus was resurrected was he limping around because if his legs were broken would he be limping around he would be healed then how come his nail marks weren't healed why weren't those healed is there a selective healing process to resurrected bodies so it's very mysterious it doesn't make any sense Jesus is in disguise after he's resurrected you know in the Gospel of John it says Mary went to the tomb and he's not there he hears a voice behind him thinking he's a gardener resurrected bodies look like gardeners why does he think this guy's a gardener because he's disguised as a gardener that's why why is he in disguise why because he survived the crucifixion and if Jewish leaders see him they'll make sure that they put an end to him and then he says touch me not so what does Mary do Mary actually hugs him so this is his wife it's obvious Mary Magdalene is his wife no doubt about it she hugs him and he says touch me not and he uses the present imperative in Greek which means stop doing what you're already doing so she's already hugging him touch me why not why don't touch me because he's in pain he's just been crucified he's in pain, he's in disguise does this sound like a resurrected pneumatic body furthermore in the Gospel of Luke he walks down the street two disciples meet him he's still in disguise they don't recognize him they walk all the way to a mouse like three or four miles he's in disguise like a prophet named Jesus they go to have a meal by the way he breaks the bread they say ah this is the master by the way he breaks bread and they recognize him and then he slips out of there why is he in disguise and then he comes back in the Gospel of Luke to the upper room and it says that the disciples saw him and were afraid because they thought they had seen a spirit they thought they had seen a spirit they thought a resurrected body go back to the sign of Jonah what happened to Jonah very short book in the Old Testament Jonah was an Israelite he was sent to Nineveh for Da'wah and he was there making Da'wah and then he thought to himself these people are not going to believe so he leaves the city without asking Allah SWT so he goes and tries to catch a boat to this other city called Japa while he's in the ocean with pagan men and he knows exactly why it's happening so the men start to draw straws as to you know who who they're going to throw over because they recognize also this is because of a bad omen that someone has brought and Jonah says don't worry about doing that it's because of me I'm going to jump in willingly into the ocean they say okay Jonah jumps into the ocean the waves calm the men row away from him imagine you're one of those men on the boat rowing away from Jonah what is your logical conclusion as to the state of Jonah what's going to happen to him he's a prophet so he's strong but he's probably going to drown he can't tread water for very long so you think oh that's the end of Jonah and then you look back in a whale or a fish or some kind of creature swallows him now you're like he's dead there's no doubt about it you're back on the shore you're one of those men in that boat you're back on the shore three days later he's coming towards you what are you thinking it's a ghost right this is exactly what the disciples thought they had seen when they saw Jesus they became afraid because they thought they had seen a spirit they thought right for as Jonah was remember from the Q source for as Jonah was so shall the son of man be in the belly of the whale alive alive not dead not resurrected so what does Jesus do here he says handle me in sea a spirit has no flesh and bones as you see that I have again Paul says when Jesus was resurrected Mike Lacona says Paul taught the total transformation of Jesus' body resurrected into a spiritual body the first fruits of the resurrection a life giving penoma yet in disguise eating food handle me I have flesh and bones this is not a resurrected body this is the same exact Jesus and then he says do you have anything to eat and they say yes here's a fish and a honeycomb and then he eats it to prove what that he's a resurrected body to prove he's the same exact Jesus so what do we get out of all of this and why is he in disguise and why in Matthew, Mark and Luke the angel says to the disciples go to Galilee he's not here because he has to get out of dodge because if they spot him they're going to kill him he survived the crucifixion so we can conclude there's three types of resurrections in the New Testament three types of resurrections Jesus resurrected a man named Lazarus in John chapter 11 and the Quran confirms that he resurrected people and Imam Ghazali says his name was Lazarus in the Ihiah when Jesus resurrected Lazarus into what type of body was Lazarus resurrected into a somatic body or a pneumatic body well it seems like a somatic body into the same exact body so Christians will say yeah that's Jesus that's not what Paul says Paul says Jesus was resurrected into a spiritualized body like the same type of body that all of us are resurrected on the day of judgment so there's a conflict here with who with Paul the conflict is with who with Paul so Lazarus resurrection then you have a doomsday resurrection the doomsday resurrection this is what Paul says Jesus was resurrected into a body reconstructed physically but made spiritual like all of us will be on the Yomul Chayama right? this is what Paul says happens to Jesus but the gospel say no that's not the same type of body because Jesus the stone had to be rolled away he has nail marks in his hands apparently he's in disguise he eats food he has flesh and blood this is not a pneumatic body this is a somatic body this is not a doomsday resurrection again Paul is wrong and then the third type is the Jonas resurrection the Jonas resurrection not the Jonas brothers Jonas resurrection which means that you think someone's dead so you see them but they were never dead in the first place this is actually what happened if you look at these verses in the New Testament one could compellingly make that type of argument for more information about Paul's pneumatology there's a book called the Corinthian body by Dale Martin there's another way of reading Paul also another way of reading Paul is through the lens of sort of a Greek anthropology and Paul was heavily Hellenized that Paul believes that Jesus's body was never reconstituted in the first place it stayed in his tomb and it's in his tomb until this day that only the soul of Jesus was extracted from him and these scholars believe that's what Paul is actually saying and that's why Paul never ever mentions an empty tomb in any of his letters because it's not important to him because he's operating through the framework of a Hellenized Greek anthropology not a Jewish anthropology okay I want to start now I know I've been talking for a long time when are we going to pray Maghreb without time to pray Maghreb okay we're going to pray Maghreb 20 minutes 25 more minutes because I want to get to theological critique so we're just talking about the historical critique of the Christian passion narrative but I want to start getting to some theological points as well and scriptural points that are important so let's pray Maghreb and then we'll come back quickly inshallah for maybe 20-25 minutes