 To begin with the Jewish conception of the Messiah, so the Bani Israel were given prophecies of someone to come to deliver them. And most of these prophecies actually were given to Hebrew prophets right around the time of the split of the two kingdoms. So when the Assyrians attacked 722 before the common era, the Kingdom of Israel, the Israelites were divided to the north and south. And as the history goes, the ten tribes in the north were taken into captivity, or some say they were slaughtered, some say they moved to different countries, wallahu alaykum. But around this time, many of the Hebrew prophets were inspired by Allah SWT to give hope to the Bani Israel that some sort of messenger, some sort of salvific figure, eschatological figure would come towards the end of time and that he would gather the lost sheep of the house of Israel and give them victory with respect to the military aspect and also victory in the spiritual realm as well. So there were many messianic pretenders and the Jews were given descriptions of this Mashiach, as he's called, ha Mashiach. So the word Masih in Arabic, it's taken, it's a loan word from the Hebrew Mashiach. Mashiach literally comes from Moshiach in Hebrew, which means one who is anointed. So when the high priest would anoint or concentrate a prophet into the temple, he would pour oil over his head, thus anointing him, shining him, making him glow, choosing him, something like that, into the priesthood. So when we make, for example, make Wudu, we make Masih, so the word Masih comes from the same root of Mashiach, Masih to anoint. So the Bani Israel was given these prophecies and they actually knew where he was going to be born. So in the book of Micah in the Old Testament, Micah is a Hebrew prophet from the fifth century. He actually says that Bethlehem, small as you are amongst the town of Judah, there shall arise from you a king who shall shepherd my people Israel. So this is confirmed in our hadith on Laitat al-Isra al-Mu'araj, the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, peace be upon him, peace be upon him. When he was taken from Beyt al-Haram, he made five stops northward before he prayed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. One of the stops was a place called Beyt al-Ikhem, which in Hebrew means the house of meat or the house of bread. He dismounted and he prayed rak'atayn and then he asked Jabil al-Alihissalam, where are we? And Jabil al-Alihissalam said, this is Bethlehem, the city of the birth of your predecessor, al-Masih, Isa bin Maryam al-Alihissalam. So they knew the city he was going to be born. Now when Isa al-Alihissalam came to them, one of the major reasons why he was rejected by most of the Bani Israel, and we don't really know what was the response of the first generation, because the historical records are quite sketchy. So when Constantine became Christian, he was the first Christian Roman emperor and three twenty-four of the common era, that's when the council of Nicaea was held. He probably became Christian a few years earlier according to Eusebius of Caesarea. Of course Eusebius is not very trustworthy. He was actually an advocate of fraud and deception to catch fish for Christ and things like that, but according to the story and what's known as the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius, he said that Constantine was fighting his rival on the Milvian bridge and then he saw a cross shining through the sun and he knew that and it said, by this sign conquer. So he took it as a sign from God and then he adopted Christianity. But what's interesting is Eusebius doesn't actually say it was a cross. It was actually the Labyrinth, also known as the Cairo. So the first two letters of the name of Jesus or the name Christ in Greek is Cairo. And this is also the symbol of Cronus, who was the father of Zeus. So this is something that was basically taken on by the early Christians. So basically you take a pagan symbol and you sort of Christianize it. And there's many examples of this as well. St. Peter's Basilica used to be a holy ground of the pagans. December 25th, the birthday of Mithra as a sun god and many, many other examples. So before that time, the first 300 years of Christian history really don't know who were the original Christians. Now we know there were groups called Ebionites. We know there were groups called Nazareans, right? So Ebionites, according to historians like Bart Ehrman, they probably represented the true message of Isa A.S. They were Syriac speaking Palestinian Christians who believed in Tau'id. They believed that Isa A.S. was the Messiah. They kept the Mitzvot, the laws and commandments, the cash route, the kosher. All of that was kept by them. They did not identify themselves as being different than Jews. They said we're a sect of Judaism that has come to believe in Isa A.S. as the Messiah. Unfortunately, we don't have any of their writings, right? So the only knowledge we have of Ebionites are Nazareans because there was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Ebionites. There was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Nazareans. There was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Hebrews. This is in the Jewish-Christian genre of early Christian literature. But we don't have these documents. The reason why we don't have them is because these groups and these scriptures were basically marginalized into oblivion, and many of them were persecuted for their beliefs. So every so often, archaeologists, they go digging in the caves and they find these huge libraries of literature, early Christian writings, buried in the caves in the sands of Egypt, like in the non-Khamadi Library in 1945, which actually contained many Gospels of Isa A.S. that are ascribed to apostles. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, was found in 1945, which probably is the closest to what we would say is the original Gospel of Isa A.S. There's no narrative material in the Gospel of Thomas, though. It's 114 sayings of Christ. 114, of course, is the number of suras in the Quran. I don't know what that means, but this is kind of a coincidence. It's 114 sayings. But what's interesting there is that the author says, this is Thomas the Israelite, the twin. So why is Thomas, I mean, Thomas Tomah in Aramaic means the twin. Why is he called the twin? So scholars have theorized that Thomas was actually, he looked very similar to Isa A.S., that he almost looked identical to Isa A.S. And this could explain, wallahu alam, walla kinshubiha lahum, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran that it was made to appear so unto the enemies of Isa A.S. that they had killed Isa A.S. Maybe a look alike was killed in this place. The Quran doesn't go into such details. Most of our details of the would-be crucifixion are from Israelite tradition. But anyway, in the Gospel of Thomas, he says in his introduction, whoever discovers the spiritual meaning behind these words shall not perish, right? Which is very different than the Gospel of John, right? The Gospel of John 316. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, whoever believes in him shall not die, but have everlasting life. Of course, the Pauline doctrine is very different as well, that one must believe in the death and resurrection of Isa A.S., so-called death and resurrection in order to gain salvation. So Thomas's Gospel is very different. Also very interestingly, in Thomas's Gospel, which was according to Elaine Pagels, who's at Harvard, she has an interesting theory. She wrote a book called The Secret Gospel of Thomas, and in her book, she claims that the Gospel of John was written in response to Thomas's Gospel, which places it in the first century or right at the end of the first century. Because in John's Gospel, Thomas is, you know, he's the doubting Thomas, right? He doesn't believe until he sees, right? So perhaps this was a polemic against Thomas who had written his Gospel because Thomas does not mention anything about a passion narrative. Jesus is not killed in the Gospel of Thomas. There's no prophecy of any passion. And this is the crux of Christianity. This is the point of Christianity. This is on the tongue of Paul, who says, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain, right? The resurrection is the quintessential definition of Christian piety, right? So it's interesting because Paul's message is solidified, faith alone, right? It's all about faith. Your works are as filthy rags, which is seen as antinomian by the Muslims. So there's a group of Muslims called the Murgia who had a similar opinion that as long as you call yourself Muslim, you don't have to do anything and you're entered straight into paradise with no punishment and grave. There's no purification in Jehannam. Your faith isn't affected by what you do or what you don't do, this type of thing, right? So here he says in the Gospel of Thomas, he says, when I am gone, wherever you are after me, go to James the Just for whose sake heaven and earth came into being, right? So Isa A.S. here, according to the Gospel of Thomas, very clearly is giving a endorsement for his Khalifa. The Khalifa of Isa A.S. is James the Just. Who is James the Just? So James the Just is called Yaakuv had Sadiq in Aramaic. So what's interesting about the laqab, James the Just, Isa A.S. calls him the Just, the laqab is the same as the laqab of the successor of the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is Abu Bakr as Sadiq. So Yaakuv had Sadiq. They have the same laqab, right? Which I thought was, again, I don't know what that means, but this is really interesting coincidence, right? So who is James? James was a successor of Isa A.S. But if you read the New Testament, there's one book ascribed to James, called the Epistle of James, which is very different in its theology than the rest of the New Testament, right? So we have to understand that very early on, we have two distinct strains of Christianity. You have Semitic Christianity and then you have Hellenistic Christianity. Semitic Christianity is the original Christianity of Isa A.S. and his disciples, his Halarion, his Sahaba. And James was the leader of that church. However, that church was completely marginalized by Paul and his adherents. When Paul goes and preaches in the Mediterranean, this religion, this strain of Christianity is eventually adopted by Constantine. When Constantine becomes emperor, then it's game over. You have to follow Constantine's version of Christianity, right? So Cornel West calls this Constantinian Christianity. And there's still people who have the mindset of Constantine. It's idea that it's all about empire building and building an imperialist type of mentality and forcing people to believe in our way of life. Still very much alive in the world today, very prevalent amongst certain elements of Christianity, unfortunately. So the only thing we really know about the original Christians, like the Ebionites, the Nazarenes, is what proto-Orthodox church fathers say about them in their refutations of them. So for example, Justin Marder or Irenaeus of Lyon or Turtellian of Carthage, these are proto-Orthodox Christian fathers. In other words, these are the forerunners of Christian Orthodoxy. So they're writing about these quote heretical groups called the Nazarenes, the Ebionites. And they're saying, well, they believe this and that. And this is what we say about them. This is our refutations of them. So they'll quote from the Gospel of the Ebionites, but then they'll refute them. But we don't actually have the Gospel of the Ebionites. We don't actually have the book that they're refuting. We just have the refutations of those books. So we only have one side of the story, basically. So going back to the Jewish concept of the Messiah is that when Issa alaihi salam came, it seems like the primary impetus why they rejected his message is because he wasn't immediately a military leader. So the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was one who will come because at the time, what was going on in Palestine when 63, before the common era, the Roman general named Pompey, he comes into Jerusalem and basically sacks the city and makes it into a Roman colony. So you know how these Romans were pagans who are just controlling the city, controlling the country. So this was seen as a defilement by the Bani Israel and the Romans once in a while, they'd have to deal with would-be messiahs coming out of the woodwork. There's been many messianic pretenders. One of the most famous messianic pretenders of recent history was in 1666 of the common era. So a few hundred years ago, his name was Shabtai Svi and this man, it was a European Jew, is a rabbi. He declared himself the messiah in Jerusalem. He stood on top of a hill or something, possibly the Mount of Olives, I don't know, on top of a building and he said, I am the messiah. So then the authorities captured him, they arrested him. The Ottoman authorities, he was taken to the Sultan and because to claim to be the messiah is the title of messiah is bound up with politics. If you're claiming to be the messiah, you're claiming to be the king of Israel. That means you're basically claiming some sort of political authority. So this was seen as sedition or treason against the Ottoman Empire. So the Sultan, he said, you have to recant or else you're going to be executed because sedition in any society today is a capital offense. Even in America, in post-modern America in 2012, if you're guilty of treason against the American government, they'll take you off while we torture you first, although we don't torture in Islam, it's haram. Taadib is haram. So no waterboarding or what does he call it? Advanced interrogation techniques. That's what Cheney said on the Tonight Show. Anyway, so he asked this rabbi, Shabtai Svi, he said, you know, if you're the messiah, then we can't kill you anyway because obviously the Jews didn't believe that Esa al-Aslam was the messiah. But if you're the messiah, according to the Jewish concept, you're untouchable. Because it says in Psalm 91 that the messiah won't even dash his foot against the stone. He won't even stub his toe. He's untouchable. You come near him, halas, legions of angels will protect him, right? And this is the Jewish concept of the messiah, which is very interesting. We'll talk about that more in a minute. So they said to him, if you're the Jewish messiah, if you're the true messiah, then you cannot be killed anyway. And if you're the second coming of the Christian messiah, or the notion of the Christian messiah, then that's also a political office and you have work to do. So we won't be able to kill you anyway. Or you can admit you're lying and we'll let you go. Just make toba. And he said, I admit I'm lying. And he made toba and he lived amongst the changes in the Muhammad something. He didn't need to change his name, but he converted to Islam and he just lived the rest of his life. And he admitted he was a messianic pretender. And this has happened many, many times in Jewish history. Even in Galilee, right at the time of the birth of Isa, there was a man named Yahuda, the Galilean, Judas the Galilean, who claimed to be the messiah and the Romans crucified him. At the time of Isa, there was a man named Barabbah or Barabbas. Barabbah actually wasn't his real name. His real name was actually Jesus, but most people don't know that. There's a good reason why people don't know his first name. Because in the Gospel of Matthew, when Pontius Pilate is going to ask the crowd, right? So this is on the day of the Jewish feast. So there was a custom. He wants to show goodwill to the Bani Israel. So he says, I'm going to release one of your prisoners, right? If you're familiar with the Gospel, the Synoptic Gospels. It's also in the Gospel of John. So he says, which one should I release to you? Barabbah, right? Or Jesus who was called Christ. So the crowd screams, release Barabbah, right? So then they crucified Jesus. Now, in very early manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel, so if you study textual criticism in the New Testament, very revealing historical study, textual criticism, like there's a book called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. This is one of their books. The Orthodox Tahrif of Scripture. And this was written by eminent New Testament scholars like Brutes Metzger and Bart Ehrman. There's another book called Misquoting Jesus, which is written by Bart Ehrman as well, which is more of a like a, it's another version of the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture for the laity. There's another book by Metzger called The Text of the New Testament. It's transmission, it's corruption and restoration. It's corruption. This is something that the scholars admit, right? So one of the variant readings of this story from Matthew, very interesting. And it's based on very reliable Greek manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel called Alexandrian text type. They're the least corrupted type of New Testament Greek manuscript. Basically, Pilate is saying, who shall I release to you? And he says, Jesus Barabbah or Jesus Christ, right? So basically it's the same thing because Barabbah and Aramaic means the son of the father, right? So this is a messianic title. So they say that Barabbah was a zealot. He was an insurrectionist. He was part of a group called Sikarai, which means the dagger men. These were Mujahideen of Bani Israel. We didn't play around with the Romans, right? It's zero tolerance. So it seems like he was given this title by his followers and was being hailed as the Messiah. So therefore he was given a title Barabbah, the son of the father, which is a messianic title. And his first name was also Yeshua, Jesus. So basically Pilate is saying, who shall I release to you? Yeshua Barabbah or Yeshua Barabbah? Yeshua Barabbah or Yeshua Hamashiach? It's the same name in the same title. So possibly they screamed for the wrong Jesus to be crucified, right? And the real Isa A.S. was saved. This is one of the explanations, a possible theory as to what actually happened to Isa A.S., wallahu alam. But later manuscripts of Matthew, they took the first name of Barabbah out of Matthew's gospel for this very reason, that we don't want to be unclear. We don't want to be ambiguous as to who was actually crucified. That Barabbah was the one freed and Isa A.S. was crucified. We want to make that very clear so scribes would remove the name Yeshua, Jesus in Greek, from later manuscripts of Matthew's gospel. So this was a belief of the Jews that the Messiah is born in Bethlehem and that he's untouchable. You can't touch him, right? So there's a very interesting proof text and this is what the Quran says as well. Yeah? Yeah, I mean, according to the Tafsir, so the first level of Quranic Tafsir is Tafsir bin Rewayah. So you would make exegesis of the Quran by looking at other parts of the Quran and then you look at Hadith. So when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, remember in the book the story of Mary how she went to a remote place. They'll say she went, she was in Bethlehem at the time. What she was doing in Bethlehem, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala placed her in Bethlehem for some reason and that's where she gave birth to Isa A.S. But it appears that Isa A.S. was raised in a northern city called Galilee, or the province of Galilee in a city called Nazareth. So that's according to the Tafsir, the she that he was born in Bethlehem and the Hadith mentions that as well. But there's no Joseph the carpenter, there's no stable, like it says in the Gospel of Matthew. I mean, Mark and John, they don't mention a nativity narrative, right? Jesus, he's 30 years old and he's preaching, right? Except for that short prologue in John's Gospel, the prologue of the Logos. But the Quran mentions the mode of Isa A.S. at least twice in the Quranic mention. And so where does this character of Joseph the carpenter come from? This is another way that Christian authors have tried to tie in Isa A.S. with the concept of the Jewish Messiah. So the Jews, they believe based on writings, like the one I quoted Micah, chapter five, verse two, that from Bethlehem, from the towns of Judah, the birthplace of David will come a king who shall shepherd my people Israel. Now, the Jews, they would say, well that means that the Messiah is a descendant of David. He's a descendant of David, he's a descendant of Judah. Judah's one of the sons of Jacob. So, Isa A.S., if you look at his lineage, it does not go back to David, right? So Joseph the carpenter had to be invented in order for Jesus to sort of have this lineage back to David. So Matthew and Luke, they give genealogies of Jesus. These are the genealogies, the generations of Jesus. They say Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah, Judah begot all the way down to Joseph the carpenter. But Joseph the carpenter is not the biological father of Isa A.S., right? So how does he tie in with the lineage of David? Because Mary is not from David. Mary is Uhta Harun. Mary is a Levite, right? And this is what the Gospel of Luke says also, that Mary was from the daughters of Aaron and she was the cousin of Elizabeth, who was a Levite. So in order to connect Jesus with this Davidic line, right, they would invent this, the Gospel authors would say that his stepfather, was Joseph the carpenter, this man named Joseph the carpenter. But he's not mentioned in the Quran. Now what's also interesting about this is that according to Jewish law, the tribal distinction or the Nessab of the child is taken from the mother and all of the tribes except for the tribe of Levite, okay? So you are what your mother is, whatever tribe your mother is, that's what you are, except Levite. So Mary's a Levite and she's not actually allowed to marry outside of her tribe and marry like a Judaic or something or a Benjaminite, right? So the son of Mary will basically have the tribal distinction of his father. Only then can you call him an Israelite, right? So what that means is that Esalaam then cannot be from the Bani Israel, right? He's not from Bani Israel. The Quran makes it very clear, we're listening to Bani Israel. Ya Bani Israel. So in the Quran, every prophet refers to their people by saying ya qawmi, which means oh my people, right? What does it mean for a people to be your qawm? That means your father is from the people. If your father is from that people, then you can say ya qawmi. But Esalaam never says ya qawmi, ya Bani Israel. Oh children of Israel. The wisdom behind that according to the Ulama is that Esalaam is actually in the Ummah of the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that he's a Sahabi of the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Because what is a Sahabi? Let me, I'll get to your question in a minute. What is a Sahabi? According to the definition of the theologians, is that someone who was alive at the time the Prophet laid his blessed gaze upon them. Not they looked at the Prophet. The Prophet looked at them because their Sahaba were blind. The Prophet looked at them while they were both alive and he had faith at the time and he died upon faith. Right? Was not killed or crucified. Right? So he was alive. We believe he's now in occultation. He's been raptured if you will. He'll come at the end of time. But he did not suffer a mortal death, not yet. Everyone will die eventually. Esalaam will die eventually. We believe in the second comment. But he was alive. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam saw him on the night of later till Isra'ul Mi'raj. And Isra'ul Alaihi Wasallam is a Prophet. So he has, is obvious he has faith in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So Imam Suyuti says, you know when we talk about who is the greatest Sahabi some people say Muslims will say Abu Bakr Sadiq. Some Muslims say Sayyidina Ali. He says consider Isra'ul Alaihi Wasallam who is the Sahabi of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam who comes at the end of time and confirms the message of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Yes? Your question? Yeah. Yes, Imran. Yeah, so Imran is a, is that your question? Okay, so Imran according to the book of Exodus was the name of the father of Moses and Aaron. His name was Amran. Now some of the Muslim exegetes will say that Mary's her father was also named Imran. Allahu Alaihi Wasallam. But it seems like from the verse Ya'uf Taharun when they say Ya'uf Taharun they're reminding her of her priestly lineage. Some Christian polemicists will say that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he got two people confused when he wrote the Quran. Right? Because in the Torah, the sister of Aaron is called Miriam or Maryam. So he's saying, oh he's got his chronology is confused here, right? Because Ya'uf Taharun, oh sister of Aaron but Mary the mother of Jesus is not the sister of Aaron. He's obviously, he got something wrong here but that's not necessarily what it means. She could have had a brother named Aaron as well. Very common name. She's a Levi, she's a priestly woman and it's a very common name, Maryam and Aaron are very common name, Harun, right? But many commentators will say that this is not, this does not mean that her literal brother is Harun. But she's from the lineage of Harun. Elizabeth? No, Elizabeth is a contemporary of Maryam Alaihi Wasallam. So Elizabeth is the wife of Zakaria. Right? So the mother of Yahya Alaihi Wasallam. Right? Yeah, so this was many, this is about 1400 years after Harun Alaihi Wasallam. Harun Alaihi Wasallam was the brother of Musa Alaihi Wasallam. So he probably died around 1300 before the common era. So what was the point I was gonna make? Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting because the Christian orientalists or the Christian polemicists, when he comes to the Foran, there tends to be a hermeneutic of suspicion, right? In other words, the prophet is a forger until we can prove that he wasn't. But when it comes to the New Testament and Isa Alaihi Wasallam, it's a hermeneutic of acceptance. We accept him until we can prove him wrong. It's exactly the opposite. And many of that I think is motivated by racism. To give you an idea, I can say the same thing. I can say, well, in the New Testament, when Isa Alaihi Wasallam is extracting demons from people, the demons fall down and they say, have mercy on me, son of David. And I can say, well, he's not the son of David. His father's name is Joseph, according to you, or Mary. And the Christian response is, no, no, no, that's, you know, it's his forefather. Well, Haroun is her forefather. The Uftah Haroun is reminding her of her forefather's lineage. So there's a hermeneutics of suspicion. Another example of this is like, if you listen to like, you know, early Christian debates, there was a Christian scholar named Justin Marder. And he wrote this book called Dialogue with Trifor the Jew. It's very, very interesting. But one of the things that are mentioned in these early debates between Christians and Jews before Islam, because both of them accuse each other of Tahrir, you're changing scripture, right? The Jew would say to the Christian, and then the Christian says, no, you guys were changing scripture to hide things. You're motivated by what's known as Odium Christi, the hatred of Christ. So they're accusing each other of Tahrir. And then when the Quran came and said, both of you are making Tahrir, they suddenly said, no, you know, we're cool and the Muslims are wrong. So there was an alliance by that time. But one of the things that is mentioned in the debate is the Christian will say to the Jew, why don't you accept the Islam as the Messiah? And the Jew will say, you know, why should we accept him? And the Christian will say, look, it says in the book of Zachariah that the king of Zion rides upon a donkey, tumble upon a donkey, right? And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all say that when the Islam was coming into Jerusalem to declare himself the Messiah, he told his disciples, bring me a donkey, right? So he wrote a donkey. And then the Jew will say, what? They'll say, oh yeah, he knew about that. So he told his disciples, bring me a donkey because I want to self-fulfill this prophecy. So that's called a hermeneutic of suspicion, right? So exactly what the Bani Israel are going to do into some Christian elements kind of the Christians are doing to the Muslims, right? And say, oh, the prophet is inventing these things and so on and so forth. But we have to study these things much more closely. So the Jewish concept of the Messiah then is a political leader, a spiritual leader, one who was not touched. There's a very interesting prophecy in the book of Psalms, which was ascribed to Dawood alaih salam. So he writes, you know, Christians will point to different passages in the Old Testament that seem to indicate the crucifixion of Isa alaih salam. I would say, however, they're very ambiguous, very cryptic. The title Messiah is never used in any of these passages. Most Jews will say that these are actually analogies or descriptions of the suffering of the Jewish people, that they have nothing to do with the Messiah. But a Christian hermeneutic of the Old Testament will say these are actually typologies of what happened to Isa alaih salam in an esoteric type of way. So there's two ways of looking at scripture. There's an exoteric way, which takes a literal apparent meaning. And then you have the esoteric way, which takes a mystical meaning. So this mystical meaning could be a foreshadowing of an event to come in the future. So interestingly, there is a passage in Psalms where the Messiah is mentioned explicitly. So David writes in Psalm 20 verse 6. He says in Hebrew, he says, He says, He says, I know that God saves his Messiah. God saves his Messiah. Now, it's very interesting about this statement is that the name of Isa alaih salam, and we don't really know what the name of Isa alaih salam really was. There's always been a difference of opinion because if you look in the Talmud, which is kind of the official position of Judaism regarding Isa alaih salam, obviously he's not gonna be mentioned in the oral law. So we'd have to do a little background. So on Sinai, Jews believe that Musa alaih salam received the Torah, the written law, and also the oral law. And the oral law wasn't written down until about the first century, which became the Mishnah. And then up to the sixth century, you have what's known as rabbinical Judaism where the rabbis would comment on the oral law, right? And this is called the Gamara. And there's a Babylonian version and a Palestinian version. So Isa alaih salam is mentioned in the Babylonian Gamara. And the Gamara and the Mishnah make up the Talmud. Talmud comes from the Arabic, Telmiv, the little student of the Torah, right? So in the Talmud, Isa alaih salam is called by the name Yeshua without the aim. Now scholars have wondered why did they take the aim off the name Isa alaih salam? And some say this is a way of defaming him by changing his name, right? Wallahu alam. But this became problematic, especially in Christian Europe and France when many of the Jews actually converted to Christianity and then they would expose their former co-religionists by saying, don't you Christians know that this is Jesus? And it's saying these things and I won't repeat what the Talmud actually says about Isa alaih salam because it's some a'jeeb and gharib type of insult that I don't want to reproduce. But after that happened, the Pope basically said, well, we have to burn every Talmud in France so that they would have these huge bonfires while Jewish literature was thrown into these fires and so on and so forth. But it seems like the dominant opinion is that Isa alaih salam's original name was Yeshua or Yeshua or Yeshua, it's an aspiration. And if the latter is correct, this is on a form of a passive participle. So a passive participle means a noun that an action is done to, the victim of a verb, right? So for example, if I say I touch the cat, right? So I is the subject, right? Touched is the verb and cat becomes the object, right? It's the victim of the action. So if we make that into a passive participle, for example, the name Muhammad, Muhammad is a passive participle, right? So there's a difference between Muhammad and Muhammad. I don't know anyone named Muhammad but that's actually, it has a meaning. That's an active participle. The one who is praising is called Muhammad. The one who is praised, who's taking the praise, right? It's called Muhammad, right? So the name of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam is also a passive participle, meaning the one who is constantly praised because this is also on the second verbal form, the fa'ala form, which indicates intensive action, intensively being praised. So then if yeshua is the name of sallallahu alayhi sallam, it's on the scale or on the form of a passive participle. So now we have to investigate what is the root meaning of yeshua? And the root meaning is it's a triliteral root like most Semitic names. The root is yasha, which means to save someone, to save someone. So then what would be the passive of to save is the saved one, the saved, not active as in save your, right? But the saved one. So interestingly, his name means the saved one. If his name is yeshua, it means the one who is saved. And there's actually a clue or there's a typology of this in the Psalm that I quoted, 26. Atal yadati hushia adunay meshiqo. I know that God actively saves his messiah. He shall hear him from his holy heaven with the saving power of his right hand. That's what the psalm says. Now for the longest time, Christians would say that the only religion that made this claim that yeshua alayhi sallam was not crucified were the Muslims, right? And initially the Muslims were seen as this heretical group of Christians. So like in Dante's divine comedy, right? He puts the prophet sallam, you know, in jihannam, I would be love. And he says, this is a schismatic. He doesn't say this is a founder of a deviant religion. He said this is a Christian deviant. So that's initially how the Muslims were seen. So for the longest time, 1200 years, 1300 years the only religion that made this claim that he sallam was crucified were the Muslims. And then 1945, they found this huge corpus of literature of the non-Qamadi library. And in this library, they found documents written by Christians that predate Islam. And they found documents like the second treatise of the Great Seth, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter and many other writings that actually categorically denied the crucifixion of Issa alayhi sallam. So the concept of Issa alayhi sallam, the concept of the messiah not being crucified in the Islamic tradition is more in line with Jewish messianic expectations than the Christian idea of the messiah. The Christian idea of the messiah is radically different than what the Jews were expecting. So to give you an example, the idea that the messiah is not only the messiah, but he's a divine incarnation, a divine avatar. So God comes down and dwells within the temporal world. This is called holul or tajasud in Arabic, divine incarnation. This is totally blasphemous from a Jewish perspective, because Jewish theology is very clear and it's very similar to our theology. The first three commandments, it's very, very clear that you shall not make unto thyself any graven image of the likeness of anything in the heavens above or of the earth or beneath the sea, for there's nothing like unto God, right? So if you read Deutero Isaiah, for example, it's very, very clear, this type of theology, that basically the message is whenever we bring God within the temporal world, we make an idol out of God. God does not reside in a temporal world. God transcends space, time, and direction, right? So many of the Jews that came after the conversion of Constantine and kind of inherited this type of theology from the Christian, we can't blame them for rejecting Issa al-Islam really, because what they actually heard about Issa al-Islam was that he was a divine incarnation, right? And that's completely anathema. I mean, that's unacceptable. So the Torah says lo yish el in one place. And in the book of First Kings, it says ki ana adonai belo yish, that I am the Lord and not a man. God is not a man, right? It's very, very clear. So this is another aspect that was rejected by the Jews. Also this idea that Issa al-Islam, and this comes primarily from the teachings of Paul, that Issa al-Islam is a sacrificial lamb that he vicariously atones for the sins of humanity. This type of idea as well. Muslims would say, and Jews would say, has nothing to do with Abrahamic teaching. That is something that was taken from outside elements from Paul's missionary work and was eventually incorporated in Christianity because the book of Ezekiel is very, very clear. Many other places in Deuteronomy, every man has put to death for his own sin. So to summarize the Jewish concept of Messiah is that the Jewish belief about Issa al-Islam is that he was, I guess the most congenial opinion you'll get was that he was a very great rabbi who came to think of himself as being some sort of son of God in a metaphorical sense. And at one point, possibly he claimed to be the Messiah and he was executed by the Romans, right? And then they basically made up a story about his tomb being empty. This is from a Jewish perspective, possibly his disciples took the body or it was just a myth that was borrowed from ancient Greek mythos that was recycled and applied to Issa al-Islam. So, yes. I have two questions. The first one is, during the time of the prophets in the last seven, maybe four or five of the people who were the inhabitants of Amitha, were they Christians who believed in Tau'i or who were the Romans? Yeah, so the Hunafa, these were monotheists. They weren't Christians and they weren't Jews. They were basically, they claimed to be in the tradition of Ibrahim al-Islam, in the tradition of Abraham. So exactly what they believed, what their positions were regarding, for example, the Old Testament, the New Testament is unclear. But we would say that the prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu alayhi sallam, he was a Hanif before he received the Be'athah, before he received the Quran, that he never worshiped idols because the reputation of a prophet is very, very important, right? So, before he was commissioned as a Rasul, he was known as As-Sadiq al-Amin. And what's also interesting is that early Christian, early Muslim historians, like Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham in At-Tabari, they mentioned very interesting things about the year of the birth of the prophet, Sallallahu alayhi sallam. They mentioned that in the year that he was born, it's about 570 of the common era, it's called the amul fi, that there were five children born that year named Muhammad, and that it was never known as a name before that year. There's no record of any child having the name Muhammad in all of history. And the Arabs were masters of Sana'a. They would, and this is, it's one of the beautiful aspects of how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prepared them for this whole science of hadith and Quran memorization, that they would actually memorize not only their own lineages, but the lineages of their horses, like back several generations, and they had amazing memories, and they were very gifted in poetry, right? Again, facilitating them for the message of the prophet, Sallallahu alayhi sallam. But they mentioned that in this year, four children were born in Yathrib named Muhammad, and one in Mecca. And the four that were born in Yathrib were born to Jewish parents. So their conclusion is that somebody knew something from the Bani Isra'i that a prophet would be born, they even knew his name, right? And they also mentioned that when the prophet, Sallallahu alayhi sallam, just before he was commissioned as a prophet, that the Arabs in Medina, which was known as Yathrib, who were idolaters of the time, they were always threatened by the Jews in Medina. The Jews would come to them and say, because the Aus and the Khazraj, which became the Ansar, they were always fighting each other. They fought three civil wars. And so the Jews were monotheists living in Yathrib, which begs the question, what are they doing in Yathrib? Why not? I mean, amongst these pagans and these people were fighting and so on and so forth. But they would always tell the Arabs that a prophet is coming here who's going to punish you for your idolatry, right? So they would actually give Bushra to the Arabs that the prophet would come. And then, I actually have three questions. So, what happened? What happened, will you see, was he a cousin of... Wanaka was a Christian. He was a Christian scribe, yeah. But the dominant opinion is that he died upon Islam because of his statement to the prophets of the Lord, Sallallahu alayhi sallam, where he basically confessed his belief in the messengership of the prophet, Sallallahu alayhi sallam. We don't really know what kind of Christian he was, but he did say that, yeah, he said, He said, So he said, There is come unto you the great law of God. So Namus in Arabic is from the Greek Nomos and Nomos is what the Septuagint calls the Torah. So there's something similar coming to you that came to Musa alayhi sallam, which is also a fulfillment of a prophecy of Deuteronomy, the prophet like unto Musa, that Musa alayhi sallam prophesies as a prophet is coming from our brethren who's going to be similar to me. So Wanaka actually identifies the prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam by saying that this is the same type of sacred law that is coming to you. And then he says that he actually knows, he says that these people are going to persecute you and eventually expel you from the city. And I wish that was alive to defend you then. Now Christian polemicists and Western Orientalists, they try to account for the revelations of the prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam because he wasn't a Shaiyya, he wasn't known to recite poetry. But the early Meccan Suras are so lyrically beautiful that he must have some teacher, right? So they say it was Waraab bin Nofah who was teaching him, right? But the thing is, Waraab bin Nofah died the very next year, right? So you have 12 years that are unaccounted for. And they say, okay, in Medina, there was a Jewish rabbi named Abdullah ibn Sallam, he was his teacher in Medina. But Abdullah ibn Sallam didn't actually become Muslim until two years prior to the prophet's death, right? So this is what I'm talking about when I say a hermeneutic of suspicion, right? The prophet is out and out a forger before anything, just case closed, you have to prove to me and they're not being objective, right? But there must be deeper study into this, into the gift. I have a question. As far as the conspiracy, it's when the fish were hiding in the intestine, is there anything you're understanding about that? Yeah. So what's interesting about that is, there was a great rabbi who basically founded the science of Tafsir of the Torah. His name was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzaki or Rashi. They have these acronyms, like Maimonides is Rambam. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzaki, who is Sheikh Suleiman Ishaqi, right? Like Maimonides was from Spain, he's also called Imam al-Kurtubi, right? That's what the Jews used to call him. So there's two Kurtubi, Sheikh Kurtubi. But he actually gives the fuller dialogue of this event of Genesis 22. So if you read Genesis 22, it says, God says to Abraham, take your son, your only son, the one whom you love, Isaac, and offer him as a burnt offering to the Lord. So it seems like, from a literal reading of this passage, that Isaac is not only the only son of Abraham. One would argue then, no, it doesn't say that. It says he's the only son that Abraham loved. So now the insinuation is that Abraham did not love Ismail al-Islam. Right? And people still make this argument. You go to the bookstore today and you find all of this literature about Ismail al-Islam. And they say, oh, his name really means this and that. And all of these crazy things denigrating. Again, it's motivated by this underlying sense of prejudice and racism against Arabs and Muslims. But Rashi, again, one of the founders of Tawseer of the Torah, he gives the full dialogue of that exchange between Abraham and God. This is totally orthodox Judaism. He's not on the front or something. He's like the al-Ghazali of Islam. He's like the Imam Suyuti of Islam and many other scholars. So he says that God said to Abraham, sacrifice your son. And Abraham says, which son? And he says, your only son. And Abraham says, this is the only son of his mother and this is the only son of his mother. And then God says, the one whom you love. And Abraham says, I love both of them. And then he says, I say, right? So this is the Tawseer of this ayah. That Ibrahim al-Islam, according to Rashi, one of the most authoritative Torah commentators to ever live, that Ibrahim al-Islam loved Ismail al-Islam. Right? Now, however, the story in the Torah has problematic aspects to it. Like for example, it says that they were banished into the desert because Ismail was playing with Isaac on the day of Isaac's weaving. When is a child weaned in Jewish law at three years old? However, the problem here is, according to the Torah, Ibrahim al-Islam was 86 years old when Ismail was born and 100 years old Ishaq was born. In fact, the name Ishaq means laughter in Hebrew. The exact cognate in Arabic is idhaq from dha'iqat. Right? Why is he called laughter? Because the Quran says, and also the Torah says, when the angels came to them and said, you're going to have a son, Sarah did what, for dha'iqat? She laughed. A ta'ajabina min amrillah, do you marvel at the order of God? So they named their son, laughter. Ishaq, yitzhaq means laughter. Right? So this would have made Ismail 17 years old at the time of Isaac's weaving, right? Because 14 years old, when Ismail was 14, Isaac was born. Now today, Isaac's weaning, that means Ismail is 17 years old. He's a grown man. 17-year-old man back then is a grown man, right? So however, we're given the profile of an infant here. What does it say? Banished this woman and her son, and Abraham takes some knapsack and the son and puts them on her shoulder. She's carrying the son into the wilderness. He starts crying. She puts them down under a shrub. He starts kicking his feet. She picks them up, lift them up in your hand. I will make of him a great nation. So the chronologies here don't line up, right? There's something wrong here, right? Because Ismail al-Islam would have been 17 years old at the time. Now, Muslims, the story, as it's told in the Quran, is very interesting because Ismail has not even identified in the Quran. This story is told in the 37th Surah, Qut Surat al-Saffa, right? And Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala doesn't say this is Ismail. Now Imam Suyuti and many others say the verses indicate Ismail and that's a dominant opinion. What big Sahaba said, this is Ishaq. That's an opinion of big Sahaba. Imam Ali had this opinion that the child that Ibrahim was going to sacrifice was Ishaq because it's not a big issue for the Muslim. It's not that big of an issue because the lesson of the story is the most important thing. That Ibrahim al-Islam was willing to sacrifice the most beloved object to him. Even more beloved than himself is his son. It's the hardest thing to do, right? So that's what the Muslim takes from the story. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, he just says فَبَشَرْنَهُ بِغُلَا مِنْ حَلِيبْ We gave him glad tidings of a forbearing son. And then he tells a story. And then he says وَبَشَرْنَهُ بِإِسْحَاقَ نَبِيَ مِنَ الصَّادِخِينَ And then we gave him and it depends on how you take this fah. Is it so or is it and? Is it indicating the story before or is it a new son? So there's a difference of opinion as to how you take this conjunction. The dominant opinion is that the son to be sacrificed is Ismail also based on the hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam اَنَا إِبْنُوا ذِبْحَيْنَ I am the son of the two sacrifices. So when Ismail was ransomed, a ram was sacrificed, a celestial ram brought by Jireel alayhi sallam and also his father Abdullah was ransomed for 100 nuke or she camels because his grandfather had made an oath if I have 10 sons I'm going to kill one of them. Right? We know that story as well. But it's a major issue for Bani Israel that it is Ishaq because for nationalistic considerations and it's also a big deal for the Christian that it's Ishaq because Isa alayhi sallam is a descendant of Ishaq and this is again an esoteric foreshadowing of God killing his own son, right? Abraham killing his son, putting wood on his son's back leading him to the slaughter, right? Binding his son, this type of thing. Of course the son was saved and Muslim will say maybe that's true but he was saved at the end and Isa alayhi sallam was saved at the end as well. Well, that's a long answer to your question. I appreciate it. Well, just open it up for questions and comments. Yes. Oh, it's on my phone. Hi. How are you? Well, the Catholic position is that What was the question? The question is, was Joseph married to Mary? And why is he not the father of Jesus? So the Catholics have a doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. So it's seen as something, I think a lot of it is motivated by sort of this, I don't know how to put this exactly but this kind of low view of women, I think, that the sexual act is something that is seen as something that is kind of just given as a dispensation and not the natural state of things. So the highest ideal amongst the early church fathers is celibacy, right? Paul says, for example, in his letters, it is better for a man not to touch a woman, right? In the book of Revelation it says that 144,000 Israelites will go to paradise, 12,000 from each tribe undefiled by women, right, this type of thing. So a lot of the early Christian writers, not all of them but many of them, especially people like Tertullian of Carthage were total misogynists. I mean, you read Tertullian, it's Eve's fault. She's soulless. She's the reason for the downfall and so on and so forth. And basically puts all the blame on Eve and Paul has similar statements about Eve as well. So this idea of being free from the contact of women was seen as a very high ideal. So the Catholics believe to this day that Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life. The Protestants has no problem with that but also has no problem with taking the position that later on she might have been married, right? Because Islam according to the New Testament had an extended family. He had brothers and sisters. Now these could have been brothers and sisters that she had with Joseph after she had Islam from a miracle. But it's kind of an open question for Protestants. But for Catholics it's very important. Now the reason the Muslims believe in the virgin birth is because it's expressly mentioned in the Quran, right? And that's the only reason why. And the wisdom behind that according to the Mufassirin of the Quran is that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala wanted to manifest his power by performing a special miracle as a sign of Isa A.S.'s Nabooa. And that's all it is. So Adam A.S. to the Quran says, Inna Mathara Isa A.K. Mathari Adam that the similitude of Isa A.S. is like that of Adam, Khalaqahu Minturah. He created it from dust. Thumma, he created him from dust. Thumma qala lahukun fayakun. And then he said to him, B, and there he was. It's a more jizah of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala where he breaks cause and effect or natural law, the prokumu adi in order to demonstrate his power. Now, why is, I mean, Paul in Romans, Paul in Romans actually doesn't know anything about the virgin birth, right? Paul actually says that Jesus is of the seat of David according to the flesh. So he doesn't mention the virgin birth, but the Gospels, at least Matthew and Luke, are clear that Mary was a virgin. So this was something that was problematic for early Christians in order to reconcile. But Jesus also had to be according to, like I said, the early, the previous Jewish conceptions of the Messiah, a descendant of David. So how do you reconcile a virgin birth from a Levite woman and at the same time, he has to be from David. So this became very problematic. It's still a conundrum to this day, is how do you trace Jesus to David? Now, what's also interesting is the Essene community at Qomran, they believed in the dual Messiah and some Jews believe in the dual Messiah and the Essenes were Jews, obviously, that there's two Messiahs. There's a priestly Messiah and there's a kingly Messiah. A Messiah from David and a Messiah from Aaron, which is another very interesting thing to look into. Of course, they found this copy of, it seems like it's Barnabas's gospel. Have you heard about this recently? And I think they found it in Turkey. It's written in Aramaic and like in a gold book or something where it says that Esa Aleson prophesizes the prophet by name, right? And it's dated about 400 years prior to the oldest versions of Barnabas's gospel that we have. What's interesting is that Esa Aleson, this document says that the Messiah is not from David. He's a son of Ishmael and that he identifies the prophet, peace be upon him, as being the Messiah. Now, if we look at that literally or from an outward superficial perspective, the Muslim will say, well, this is counter to the Quran because the Quran says that Esa Aleson is the Messiah, unless somebody takes it in the sense that there's a dual Messiah, a kingly Messiah and a priestly Messiah, which is possible by Allahu A'alaam. I hope I answered it. Okay. So Joseph, he was an actual person. I thought you said he was made up by the Christians. He's probably invented. I mean, that's just my opinion. Yeah, because again, to keep in line with Jewish expectations of the Messiah being from the son of David and Jesus very clearly is Levi from Mary. How do you tie him into David's lineage? It's that you say that Mary was betrothed to Joseph, who is from David and that somehow, mystically, Jesus inherits the Davidic line from his stepfather. What's also very interesting is, according to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition, Joseph was in his 90s at the time when he married Maryam, who was 11 or 12. So he had grandchildren older than his wife. And that was basically the average age of marriage for a girl at the time was 11 or 12 years old in Palestine 2,000 years ago. So it wasn't seen as scandalous or anything like that. Of course, according to our post-modern sensibilities, we say, oh, this is whatever, but there's aspects of our lives today that ancient peoples will say that this is just animalistic behavior. So it goes both ways, I think. I think in Andrew, you mentioned James, the successor of Jesus, I believe the book says that he was the brother. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, James is the brother of Jesus. Yeah, he's also his successor. So that's the thing is how is, how is, what is the nature of James being the brother of Jesus? Is it mean brother in the sense that he's just his Muslim brother, so to speak? Or is it, is he the son of Mary from Joseph that was born after? Or is he actually one of the sons of Joseph and not married, and Mary did not have intercourse for the rest of her life? So Christians have wrestled with this issue. What is the nature of James being the brother of Jesus? What does that mean? So it's an open question. But definitely the book of Acts tells us that James was the successor of Jesus. He is the leader of the Jerusalem apostles. And according to the commentaries of the book of Galatians, the apostles that come into Galatia to correct Paul's deviant teachings were sent by James from Jerusalem. So very early on, this is like in the 40s of the common era, before any gospel that's in the Bible was written, there is a clear difference of opinion that's fundamental between people that Paul is evangelizing and the teachings of James out of Jerusalem. I didn't understand the question. It's the law to manage goodwill. Oh, it wasn't, they didn't draw lots. It was a custom of the Romans to release a Jewish prisoner before the Passover as a show of goodwill. So they bring up the prisoners and say, which one of these men do you want us to release to you? So most of the men were insurrectionists. There were Mojahedin, we tried to fight against the Romans. So from the gospel accounts, they cried for Barabbas to be freed and they crucified Issa and Issanah. But again, the very reading in Matthew says that they're both named Jesus. So it adds a level of ambiguity as to which Jesus was released, which Jesus was actually crucified. The drawing of the lots comes with the guardianship of Mary. And this is mentioned in the Quran and it's also mentioned in what's known as the proto-gospel of James, which is not in the New Testament. So the second century gospel called the proto-gospel of James, which actually has many stories that are confirmed in the Quran, like the casting of the lots to take care of Mary, angels feeding Mary in the temple, like it's mentioned in the Quran, who was her custodian, comes into the temple and he sees, and Imam Al-Tabari says it was fruit out of season. So he says, where did you get this? Allah to whom it ended, this is from God, right? This story is from the gospel of James. That could be the source of the story. Now the thing is that a Christian might say, well, James's gospel is apocryphal. It's not even in the New Testament. But you have to remember that this gospel was written in the second century and the gospel did not become canonized and closed into the council of Trent in the 15th century. So 1,300 years later in the Catholic tradition was the canon finally closed. So that's the whole question is what is heterodox and orthodox Christianity in the first three centuries? Nobody knows. There's a great book written by F.C. Bauer called Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in the earliest Christianity in which he tries to prove that what we know today as being Trinitarian Orthodox Christianity was by no means the dominant opinion of the Christians in the first three centuries. In fact, after the council of Nicaea, when Jesus was made God by vote by 360, the vast majority of bishops had Aaron, Aaronists or Ebonite Christology. They believed that Isa was not God. The vast majority of the bishops by 360 did not believe Isa was not God. Even after Nicaea, when it was put to vote. So I have two questions. One is that regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls and what had been written for Christians and what after the Ebonites would be very similar to the books of the Elysees. The Elysees followed the Elysees as a law that because they were so persecuted by Pauline Christianity and Constantine Christianity that they were kind of pushed or maybe they fled as to the Ramians and in fact, there were some of their actions that were more violent than the Constantine. Yes, good question. So dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Dead Sea Scrolls, as far as we can tell, are not Christian documents. So they were written before the Christian era or contemporary with early Christian writings. Basically the Dead Sea Scrolls was authored by a group of monastic Jews called the Elysees and it's basically the entire Old Testament and a few other documents known as the Community Rule. And then there's some kind of eschatological, very cosmic writings. It's kind of cryptic about a teacher of righteousness, a wicked priest and some Christians will say, well, the teacher of righteousness is Jesus and the wicked priest might be Paul or might be James or the righteous teacher might be James, but that's all conjecture. As far as we can tell, these are Jewish writings and totally Jewish writings. So what does it mean for Christianity? It means that we have manuscripts of the Old Testament and they're not complete manuscripts, but we have manuscripts of the Old Testament that can be dated to the first century because before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in existence is called the Masoretic Text, which is dated to 1008 of the Common Era. So you can imagine, the Torah was revealed to Musa A.S. and 1400 before the Common Era. The oldest complete version of the Old Testament is 1000 of the Common Era. So 2400 years, but there's no complete version of the Old Testament in Hebrew, right? But now we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, which again, it's not complete, but most of it is there. As far as the Ebonites fleeing into the Arabian Peninsula, that's certainly possible. I've heard that argument as well from critics of Islam that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam might have been influenced by Ebonite elements. What's interesting though is the Christology presented in the Quran isn't purely Ebonite. The Quran confirms the virgin birth and as far as we know, the Ebonites did not confirm the virgin birth. The Ebonites were adoptionists. They said that Isa alayhi sallam was made son of God at the baptism, but the Quran says he was born from a virgin and that's something that the Ebonites, that's a proto-orthodox belief. The Ebonites, as far as we can tell also, again, we don't have their writings, but as far as we can tell, they believe that Isa alayhi sallam was crucified, but the Quran says he wasn't crucified. That's actually a nostic, quote unquote, nostic belief, so where did he get this? So this idea that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam, you know the story of Isa alayhi sallam making birds out of clay and then breathing on them. This is found in the Gospel called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is written the second century and it's just so highly improbable that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam, even most Christians even knew about this Gospel in the Arabian Peninsula. There were no Christian or Jewish tribes living in Mecca. We know that for certain. There were individual Christians and Jews that might have passed by, like Waraka was a Christian scribe living in Mecca, but there were no tribes. So this idea that how did the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam know of this story if you wrote the Quran? Some have said, well, maybe he had a copy of Thomas's Gospel underneath his pillow when he was sleeping. It doesn't make any sense to account for the entire Christology, the elements of the Christology. Like saying, alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam was, he was a prophet in the side but not God. That's in the United Christology, but that's not how the Quran says about alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam. alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam, born under a palm tree, speaking as an infant, these come out of seemingly nowhere. There was no source for this. Where does it come from? Where is he getting this from? So it's kind of in Western Academy, you have to find a source for something. Like even in my New Testament Gospels class, what we were talking about what is Mark's source of his gospel? And people are saying, oh, he had, you know, oral tradition and he might have this and that. And I raised my hand, non-Christian, and I said, maybe Mark was inspired to write it from God. And everyone just gasped. How can you say that here? That's something we say in church. And here's a Muslim saying this, right? So in Western Academy there has to be a source. He got it from somewhere, right? So there is a major rift that I notice between Christian laity and the Orlamah Christianity, that they don't see eye to eye most of the time because of issues like this. But the Quran invites this type of criticism. Criticism in an academic way means to analyze something very closely. Allah says, does the Quran have to be dubbed? Do they not have to be dubbed? Which means to penetrate something to find the end of it, right? Do they not have this type of deep contemplation of the Quran? This is what the Quran invites upon itself upon itself, which interestingly was exactly the opposite of what we see in Christian Europe when it was actually forbidden to have a copy of the Bible in your private possession. It's actually a capital offense. And many were executed. William Tyndale, who was executed in 1525. Not that long ago, 1525. He actually, he never apostated. He was a Christian, but what he did was, he translated the Old and New Testament directly from Greek and Hebrew. And they thought that was just heretical. So he was burned at the stake. And then they had the Reformation, right? Just a few years after him. And then in 1611, less than 100 years after Tyndale, they made the official King James Version based on Tyndale's translation, right? So the poor man was burned at the stake and then his contribution became the greatest contribution in the history of American Bible translation, English Bible translation. And I think this kind of led to what's going on in Europe right now as far as Christendom becoming a land of atheism. I mean, there are some countries in Europe that are 80% atheists, right? You know, you have the Protestant Reformation and then you have the printing press. So everyone has access to Bibles in their vernacular and reading the entire Bible for many Christians is, it becomes problematic. Because, you know, before that time, you know, you go to the church and they recite something like the letter of Paul or John 316 or John 11. And when you read the stories of the Torah Old Testament, it can be very faith-shattering and it has been, even to now, many, many Christians are leaving Christianity right now. Millions of them. That's why you have all of these atheists coming out of Europe like, you know, Dawkins and Ditchens and these guys kind of come to America and say, well, you know, this is what the Bible actually teaches and you guys don't know, you guys are, you know, illiterate Americans. I'm from Oxford, I know what I'm talking about. I have two questions. Is there any record of what happened to Barabbas after the crucifixion scene? And secondly, would you talk a little bit more about the scene idea of Bruce Lee Messiah and I think Lee Messiah was that, like, the people of nature within one man? Or, to the point, two questions. Well, as far as Barabbas goes, I don't know if Josephus mentions him. I don't think he does. I know they made a movie about Barabbas starring Anthony Quinn. And according to this movie, according to this movie, he was also crucified at the end. But the only one that I can imagine would mention Barabbas would be Josephus in the Jewish War. But I don't remember a reference to him. But I have to check that, so I don't know. As far as the dual Messiah, it seems like the dominant opinion was that there will be two messiahs, two independent people. And there's even evidence of this in the Old Testament as well. A Messiah from David and a Messiah from Aaron or a Levitical Messiah and a Judaic Messiah. And it seems like this was a major part of the theology, if you will, of the Christology, Christology of the Essenes, that there would be two messiahs. What would that have been that duality between the political and the spiritual? It's possible, yeah, I've heard that opinion as well. But then the question comes, what tribe is he from then? But that could be, I mean, they were very cosmic. The Essenes were very cosmic, very dual in their cosmology, so I've heard that as well. The dominant opinion is that there are two independent salvific figures to come. One was basically a manifestation of Jalal attributes, majestic attributes, and one was a manifestation of Jamal or beautiful attributes. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he has both of these attributes. And Medina, what was manifested from him, because now he's the, Al-Farabi would call him the philosopher king of the city. He's the head of the government, so he has to punish people who are breaking the law, but at the same time, he visited a young boy and his bird died, and he felt bad for the boy. So he is the manifestation of Jalal and Jamal attributes as well. And in reality, his reflection of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, there's no real duality in Islam, right? Everything comes from Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Ultimately, everything comes from Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and even Satan has respite because Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la gave him that ability to do what he does. In Jahannam Hellfire, it's just a manifestation of the Jalal-i or majestic attributes of God. And Jannah is the reflection of the Jamal-i attributes. But yeah, that's a very good question. I'd have to do further research. Yes? Okay, so I know that you said that the lesson doesn't look as bad as I did, but I just need to clarify. So when you were calling back and forth and you were saying that there was a time station going on to the Asian animals, about which sun? Yeah. Who was that conversation with? And that was the time to count on Christian kind of works. And then he said, then the last thing he said was ISIS. Yeah, that's according to Rashi. He's a rabbi. He's a medieval rabbi from France. He's basically one of the most famous exigents of the Torah. And he actually, in commenting on Genesis 22, he gives this full dialogue. Presumably it's from the Talmud, which is the oral law and the opinions of the early rabbis commenting on what does it mean for Isaac to be the only son of Abraham, the one whom he loves? So according to Rashi, which is, again, is mainstream Judaism as you can get. The point I was trying to make was that according to the account, Ibrahim A.S., he loved both children. He didn't hate one and then loved the other one. He loved them both. But ultimately, Isaac was the one to be sacrificed. And that's what the Torah says. And there's some Muslims, like I stated, that have that opinion as well. Some of the Sahaba concluded that Ishaq was the one to be sacrificed because Muslims don't make an issue over the identity of the son. It's not a major issue for us. Although the dominant opinion is that it's Ismail based on hadith of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, not the Ibn of the Pain. I am the son of the two slaughters. But that's, yeah, it's from a Jewish source. Okay, thank you. So we're just gonna have like these last two and then we're gonna wrap up. Okay. So I guess a lot of Christians who do question the identity of Jesus and the Tom, they do end up becoming Muslim. But are there any contemporary Christian groups who do doubt, I said, what's the Trinity? And do you believe that Christians have thought for something along the way? Yeah, I mean, there's Unitarian Christians that are, I mean, apparently they're still around. I've never met a Unitarian Christian in my life. But apparently they're still Unitarians around. It's like a Hanbali, I've never met a Hanbali, but apparently they're still around. Kind of an endangered species. David's like, I think about that. Are there any other smaller? Yeah, I mean, the Jehovah's Witness who are not considered Christian by the mainstream Orthodox, they don't believe in the divinity of Christ. They believe he's the Son of God, but they still believe in the inerrancy of the New Testament. They also have their own translation of the New Testament, which is called the New World Translation. They believe Jesus is the Savior, but they would deny that Jesus is the Deity. And of course you have the Mormon physician that believes that Jesus is a God amongst the plethora of many, many gods. They're actually polytheistic. Probably the most polytheistic religion in the world is Mormonism. So for that reason they're rejected by the mainstream as well. But Orthodox Christianity, as far as Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox and Protestantism will say that Jesus is God, he got not made, co-equal, co-substantial, co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And that obviously is very problematic to the Muslim and we can go into details as to what that actually entails, but it would be beyond the scope of it. Yeah, apparently they're still around. The conclusion that I came to just is that with Christianity and all of the Jewish and Christian scholars and everything, it's like young big endless argument because even when you mention how there's manuscripts and writings of another group's theory or their beliefs, it's still not leading to one of the divine sources of revelation to where it seems like they're drawing a way of life. Where I look at Islam, when we have the scholars of Islam, it seems like it helped the Muslims be a little more organized or they made it easier for us to kind of draw beliefs and actions about how we should live our lives and how we should view Allah and view the articles of faith and our pillars, like it's all put into perspective to where you have Muslims from all over the world who have the same exact view, whatever the concept is or whatever the ritual is, I mean, you may have variances of a ritual, but basically, like Tau'i, we have it, or you go to Hajj and you don't have a bunch of Muslims arguing at the heart. I'm like, what day do you do Sa'i or are you going to Medina today or tomorrow? So it's like at the end of the day, if you just wanted to have a good conversation with a Christian or a Jew about this and that. Right, yeah, that's the thing about the Hajj you mentioned is that it doesn't get a lot of playtime. This is a world event, but very rarely will you see something on Nightline or something or CNN. We just use the word Mecca. Well, they're right at the bottom. They thought millions of Muslims, the little script at the bottom, will they show like a still shot because it's very, very powerful. The image of, I mean, they've done Hajj in the micro wolf did a Hajj special a few years ago. Once in a while they do something, but it's so powerful because there's nothing like this on earth, right? And you're absolutely right. I mean, we can go to a muster in China and be able to follow a very, what's going on as far as he's making the adhan that we're going to pray to Sunna, that we're going to do the sermon, right? So on and so forth. They're interesting. There are churches in the Middle East. There's actually congregations in Syria that still conduct their liturgy and Aramaic. And if you go to the church, you'll see the Christians standing in rows and praying and making sajdah and they're reciting an Aramaic. You'll think it's a musty. I saw the Jews. I saw some Jews doing that. Yeah, Samaritans, they pray like that as well. Yeah. So it's very interesting. I mean, you take one of those Christians in a Muslim country they haven't been influenced by Islam. They were there before Islam. That's, this is how they've been taught to pray. They actually believe like in Egypt that St. Mark started that church. And you go to Iraq and Fideas with these are disciples of Jesus, right? The pre-day to Islam. If you took one of those Christians from that church and put them into Yankee Stadium and that Joel Austin revival, you would have no idea what's going on. What are they going to talk about? But if you put them in a musty, he's like, okay, I see what's going on here. There's the praying and making sajdah. That's because he's inherited something of a sonnet. So transmission from Isadeh Saddam, from James, the Jerusalem Apostles. We're going to wrap up unless we got any pressing questions. We don't answer them tonight. Somebody's going to like apostates. No, it's not. So we just have somebody make the adhan and then we'll just end with prayer and so on. I'm sorry if I said anything that offended anyone. It's not our intention. Please pray for us.