Chris­tian­i­ty

In the well-known sec­tion of Annales 15.44, Tac­i­tus refers unmis­tak­ably to ​“Chris­tiani.” We shall present­ly take a fresh look at anoth­er pas­sage thought to be at least part­ly Tacitean and which also men­tions a sect called ​“Chris­tiani.” In so doing, this will demon­strate how much his­tor­i­cal data can be suc­cess­ful­ly con­cealed in one brief pas­sage. As will be seen, when it comes to these ​“Chris­tiani,” things are not at all as they have seemed. The sec­ond pas­sage in ques­tion is com­mon­ly known as Tac­i­tus’ frag­ment 2, much of which is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to have once been part of the now lost por­tion of the fifth book of Tac­i­tus’ His­to­ri­ae. Frag­ment 2 was pre­served by the Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an Sulpi­cius Severus in his Chron­i­ca 2.30.6 – 7 (ca. 400 – 403 CE).

Praise be to Allah who grant­ed us with the bless­ing of monothe­ism, I seek the refuge of Allah from dis­be­lief and those peo­ple who asso­ciate them­selves with dis­be­lief. The author of the Book of Rev­e­la­tions had described/​portrayed his god as a slain lamb with sev­en horns and sev­en eyes. Please notice the dis­tinc­tion in the last verse between God ​“which sit­teth upon the throne” and the Lamb indi­cat­ing that Chris­tians have anoth­er god — a lamb — to wor­ship in asso­ci­a­tion with Allah, the True God Who is upon the throne.

Ibn al-Qayy­im al-Jauziyyah was a promi­nent Mus­lim jurist dur­ing Islam’s Gold­en Age. Apart from his juris­dis­tic prowess, he was also com­pe­tent in com­pos­ing qasi­dah (Ara­bic poet­ry). Among his more famous works was the qasi­dah enti­tled A’ob­bad al-Maseeh Fi Naqd al-Nas­raniyyah (O Christ-Wor­ship­pers ! A Poem Refut­ing Chris­tian­i­ty). This qasi­dah is well-known in the Mus­lim world and has even been turned into a song. The fol­low­ing is the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the poet­ry which is imme­di­ate­ly accom­pa­nied by the Ara­bic original.

It is unwar­rantably assumed by Chris­t­ian writ­ers that the incar­nat­ed Gods and cru­ci­fied Sav­iors of the pagan reli­gions were all either mere fab­u­lous char­ac­ters, or ordi­nary human beings invest­ed with divine titles, and divine attrib­ut­es ; while, on the oth­er hand, the assump­tion is put forth with equal bold­ness that Jesus Christ was a real divine per­son­age, ​“seen and believed on in the world, and final­ly cru­ci­fied on Mount Cal­vary.” But we do not find the facts in his­to­ry to war­rant any such assump­tions or any such dis­tinc­tions. They all stand in these respects upon the same ground and on equal footing.

A spe­cial ​“gift” for the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies on occa­sion of Good Fri­day. I wish to show by an analy­sis of Wis­dom Chris­tol­ogy in Matthew’s gospel chap­ter 23, that the evan­ge­list took the dra­mat­ic step of chang­ing Jesus’ meta­phys­i­cal sta­tus from crea­ture to Cre­ator by alter­ing the Q tra­di­tion, and to reflect on the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this meta­mor­pho­sis for Chris­tian­i­ty, and where we go from here.

One of the big ques­tions nobody has asked about Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion Of The Christ is this : If the cru­ci­fix­ion was a his­toric event and so cen­tral to the Chris­t­ian Gospel, why is it that there is no evi­dence what­ev­er of a man on a cross in Chris­t­ian art and mon­u­ments for almost sev­en cen­turies ? Not until 692 CE, in the reign of Emper­or Jus­tin­ian II, was it decreed that hence­forth instead of a lamb (the zodi­a­cal sign of Aries) fixed on the cross, the fig­ure of Jesus be placed there instead. Anoth­er ques­tion : How is it that the ear­li­est known fig­ure of any man on a cross comes from about 300 BCE and that ​“per­son” is not Jesus but Orpheus, a myth­i­cal Greek sun-god ?

The authors of the New Tes­ta­ment have often quot­ed pas­sages from the Old Tes­ta­ment, claim­ing such state­ments to be prophe­cies ful­filled in the per­son of Jesus Christ. The num­ber of such quot­ed pas­sages is actu­al­ly very high. Among the evan­ge­lists, Matthew is the one hav­ing made this phe­nom­e­non char­ac­ter­is­tic to his Gospel. The prophe­cy car­ries a very impor­tant place in the Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. Every Chris­t­ian knows about the prophe­cies of the books of Psalms, Isa­iah, and Daniel relat­ed to the child­hood, life, mis­sion, and death of Jesus. To every Chris­t­ian, these prophe­cies are the clear evi­dence of the truth of Gospels and mis­sion of Jesus in gen­er­al. The prob­lem is that accord­ing to the Bible, there exists true prophe­cies as well as false ones. Hence the ques­tion aris­es on the nec­es­sary cri­te­ria to dis­tin­guish a false prophe­cy from a true one.

Accord­ing to most Chris­tians, Jesus was God-incar­nate, ful­ly man and ful­ly God. Can the finite and the infi­nite be one ? ​“To be ful­ly God” means free­dom from finite forms and from help­less­ness, and to be ​“full man” means the absence of divin­i­ty. Chris­tians assert that Jesus claimed to be God when they quote him in John 14:9 : ​“He that has seen me has seen the Father”. Didn’t Jesus clear­ly say that peo­ple have nev­er seen God, as it says in John 5:37 : ​“And the father him­self which Has sent me, has borne wit­ness of me. You have nei­ther heard His voice at any time nor seen His shape”?

Few peo­ple real­ize that the ori­gins of a form of Christ­mas was pagan and cel­e­brat­ed in Europe long before any­one there had heard of Jesus (P). No one knows what day Jesus (P) was born on. From the bib­li­cal descrip­tion, most his­to­ri­ans believe that his birth prob­a­bly occurred in Sep­tem­ber, approx­i­mate­ly six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlike­ly that Jesus was born in Decem­ber, since the Bible records shep­herds tend­ing their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlike­ly to have hap­pened dur­ing a cold Judean win­ter. So why do we cel­e­brate Christ’s birth­day as Christ­mas, on Decem­ber 25th ?

Since the pagan fes­ti­val of Christ­mas, cel­e­brat­ed by the Trini­tar­i­an poly­the­ists, is fast approach­ing on the 25th of Decem­ber, we would like on this occas­sion present a fatawa (Islam­ic rul­ing) for the Mus­lims with regard to cel­e­brat­ing their fes­ti­val or even con­grat­u­lat­ing them. It should be not­ed that the Chris­tians believe that Jesus is lit­er­al­ly God, hence to par­tic­i­pate or even greet them is to agree with their doc­trine. There­fore Mus­lims should be aware of the bound­aries with regard to Christ­mas and how one should approach it.

How can Jesus son Mary, be a sign of the Hour (Dooms­day)? It can­not be except with his descent being in the last stage and peri­od. His descent would then be a great sign and one of the major por­tents of the Hour — a sign that announces the close­ness of its occur­rence. This is how the verse has com­mon­ly been explained by the schol­ars of tafsir (exe­ge­sis of the Quran). Amongst them are Mujahid, Sud­dee, Qata­da, Hasan al-Bas­ri, Dah­haak and Ibn Zayd. It is also the say­ing of Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him). They all have stat­ed this explic­it­ly, that Jesus son of Mary is one of the signs of the Hour in the sense that he will descend and rule the earth and dwell there­in for forty years, as is men­tioned in the authen­tic hadith, that will be men­tioned short­ly. And his descent will be one of the great signs of Allah and one of the supreme por­tents of the Hour.

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, Peter the Ven­er­a­ble, Abbot of Cluny, ini­ti­at­ed a dia­logue with the Islam­ic world. ​“I approach you not with arms, but…

Today, we see Mus­lims being propo­si­tioned by Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cal groups and mis­sion­ar­ies relent­less­ly with a zeal that astounds us. Day by day, they seek out the weak, the poor, the sick, the des­ti­tutes amongst the Mus­lims of Asia and work their way in. Many of these mis­sion­ar­ies work under guise of char­i­ties and relief effort work­ers. By doing a bit of research, what do I find ? Count­less projects by the Chris­t­ian Glob­al Mis­sion­ar­ies out with a purpose…to con­vert the Mus­lims to their creed.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Decep­tion, argue that a paci­fistic Jesus was very unlike­ly. As the authors point out, Qum­ran­ian phras­es flowed from his lips, some­times word for word. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, schol­ars con­cede that at least some Zealots made up Jesus inner cir­cle. The Bible itself reveals him act­ing in a Zealot-like way, dri­ving the mon­ey chang­ers out of the Tem­ple. He states in the gospels : ​“I am come not to bring peace, but a sword”. In the same vein, when a cohort of Roman sol­diers comes for him in Geth­se­mane, Peter rais­es his sword against them, hard­ly the act of a meek Chris­t­ian. As reveal­ing is the num­ber of sol­diers in a Roman cohort, six hun­dred. Why send six hun­dred sol­diers except in antic­i­pa­tion of armed resis­tance ? And cru­ci­fix­ion, remem­ber, was the method of exe­cu­tion for rebels, not rab­bis. These bib­li­cal events, in con­flict with Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion, do not con­flict with the Qum­ran con­text. On the con­trary, they fit.

Recent­ly Sam Shamoun, a well-known bel­liger­ent and provoca­tive Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary at Answer­ing Islam, issued a chal­lenge to Mus­lims to prove that Jesus (peace be upon him) did not claim to be God, as per the Qur’an­ic state­ment. It is obvi­ous, how­ev­er, that his demands are as pre­pos­ter­ous as it is stu­pid. The Qur’an cer­tain­ly quotes or para­phras­es Jesus as say­ing that he is not God, but in Ara­bic. This is because the Qur’an has affirmed itself to be revealed in Ara­bic text, sent down to an Arab prophet, lest its audi­ence uses the excuse that they will not be able to under­stand the Qur’an if were brought down in a for­eign tongue.