Is Jesus God? continued discussion
Omya,
Sorry about creating a new topic, but your mail got lost in amongst the rest, and I wanted to ensure we didn't lose the thread in amongst all the many others being posted. I actually only saw this one today after looking carefully back through the posts. I hope this is the one you were meaning.
Before answering your concerns, we need to come to a basic foundation for my answers.
Let me discuss that first
1. To claim a change of the Gospel message as expressed by the Apostle Paul is to attack the Bible itself, a book the Qur'an calls the "Book of God" the "Word of God" "a light and guidance to man" "a decision for all matters" "the lucid Book". How could such commendation be heaped by Allah, on a book which at the time of the so called Revelation to Muhummed, was in circulation in the same format and saying the same thing, as our present Bibles do today? How could Allah, who is Almighty according to the Qur"an, allow such a Book which contains His word, to become corrupt? It goes against His very nature.
2. The idea that Paul changed the New Temple is inconsistent with what is read in Paul's epistles (letters) and the four Gospels. The Christian must be able to match what Paul said about Christ in Colossians 2:9 In Him dwlls all the fulness of the Godhead bodily")with what the Apostle John said in John 1:1,14 In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.")
There is no evidence at all that Paul altered anything, regardless of any you may think you find.. Christians can show you many, many more extra-biblical sources, even pagan sources, which affirm every detail of the Bible as authentic. Futhur, why would the eyewitnesses who walked with Jesus and eventually gave their lives for Him, allow a Jew to change what they had seen with their own eyes and believed with their whole hearts.
Biblical evidence, through the manuscript copies illustrates the preservation of the Bible, not the corruption. For every supposed inconsistency shown in the latter day translations,(the problem of any translation attempt, even those of the Qur'an, by your admission.. isn't that why you accept that only the Arabic Qur'an in the original text, is the only true Qur'an?). Christians can show that the original manuscripts, compared to the translations in circulation today, DO not change the meaning of the original, and all inconsistencies are explainable. God's Word, which the Qur'an affords the respect AS The Word of God is like it's author. It changes not! . it has to be ("I am the Lord and I change not")
3. "No Muslim is a true Muslim unless He believes in Jesus" is the affirmation I have read in a few publications. However, a high view of Jeus Christ, does not necessarily mean a correct one. The cross is the stumbling block.. it is the thing which divides us. If the cross happened, and if Jesus died on the cross as Christians maintain, then He is not merely an example of righteousness, he IS the sacrifice that enables us to obtain righteousness. He is the Saviour.
4. If I want to know WHO Jesus really is, I cannot go to the Qur'an only for answers. "The Qur'an records no sermons, no parables, none of His gentle words to the poor and dispossessed, none of his cutting challenges to the religious establishment of the day." The Qur'an only revises what the Bible portrays of Jesus. Muslims, only believe that the Bible is corrupted, because it holds a higher view of Jesus, than the Qur'an portrays. As you have no recordings of his life's work, how do Muslims know He was a righteous man? They certainly don't find that out in the Qur'an. The only source of information about Him besides the Qur'an, is the Bible, or the secular history books. And what do they say?
Most secular historians discount the Bible and the Qur'an as corrupted, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, look at these claims from non religious peers of Jesus at the time of the early church in the first century.
1 Flavious Josephus, a Jewish Priest in the first century, retells the story of Jesus' trial and death in Antiquities 18:63, written in AD 93-94:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him, at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named after him, are not extinct at this day."
Fellow Jews considered Josephus a traitor. He had sympathised with Jesus and given credibility to Christ's actions. The Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish Council, which protected the religious laws of Israel, supported Josephus' facts when it said "as nothing was brought forward in Jesus' defence, he was hanged on Passover Eve."
Pliny the Younger, governor of Pontus and Bithynia, provides more relevent information about from the view of Christ's Disciples, some of who had direct contact with the historical Jesus. In a letter to the Emperor Trajan in AD 96, he explains His first encounter with the Christian sect and their view of the risen Saviour.
"They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accostomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food, but ordinary innocent food." Pliny the Younger, Letters 10:96-97
These Christians he was describing, were only two generations (60 years) removed from the historical Christ, and they worshipped Him as God in songs of Praise. Yet, Muslims assert that Jesus was not worthy of worship and praise, but only of admiration.
5. In the light of all of this, and in the light of Surah 10:94 "If you were in doubt as to what We have revealed unto you, then ASK those who have been reading THE BOOK from before you. The TRUTH has indeed come to you from your Lord: so be in no wise of those in doubt."
Muhammed here, is putting his own personal words on par with the authenticity of the Bible as it existed in the seventh century. If then, you can show me corruptions from the Bible as it was then, compared to the Bible now, I would have reason to agree with you. If however, they are the same (and they are), then by the logic and words of the Surah quoted,
Muslims should accept the Biblical authenticity just as Muhammed did at the time of the Revelation.
So, as I answer all your questions Omya, I have included others here of my own and a basis for my answers for our discussion.