Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Huon · 03-30-2012, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

The authors of the Qur'an were among those convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was sole deity made manifest, and attempted to recognise trinitarianism as Christian orthodoxy.

That is how Islam became a variety of Christianity.

Only if the moon is made of cheese.

Christian Cheddar, or Muslim Stilton ? Please tell me, I am eager to learn something from you!

sotto voce · 03-30-2012, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

The authors of the Qur'an were among those convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was sole deity made manifest, and attempted to recognise trinitarianism as Christian orthodoxy.

That is how Islam became a variety of Christianity.

Only if the moon is made of cheese.

Christian Cheddar, or Muslim Stilton ? Please tell me, I am eager to learn something from you!

That will be the day.

Duvduv · 03-30-2012, 08:30 AM

No, that's not true. The Quran believes that there was an original uncorrupted Injil that disappeared or was corrupted by the trinitarians. But again, it seems clear that the actual sources for the Jesus stories were not the canonical texts but older Arab tales circulating in Arabia from pre-Islamic times as I have argued.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

Yes they were, but their interpretation may have changed over time and were considered more "authentic" than the canonical texts forming what was described as the corrupted Injil.

According to the belief of the Muslims, the Injil was corrupted, any Injil.

The Christians believe in the Trinity, which implies that Jesus was the second aspect of God.

John the Baptist is a prophet. Almost everybody accepts the idea that somebody can be a prophet. Of course, not all self-proclaimed prophets are really authentic prophets.

Jesus was a prophet, but he was not the second aspect of Allah.

Quote:

And they don't cite any aphorisms to be traced to the canon either.

Muhammad was able to say many things. The hadiths are a proof.

sotto voce · 03-30-2012, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

No, that's not true. The Quran believes

Books state. People lie. People dream.

Quote:

that there was an original uncorrupted Injil that disappeared or was corrupted by the trinitarians.

Two dreams, two lies in one line!

Quote:

But again, it seems clear that the actual sources for the Jesus stories were not the canonical texts but older Arab tales circulating in Arabia from pre-Islamic times as I have argued.

Seems clear to whom?

Toto · 03-30-2012, 09:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

No, that's not true. The Quran believes that there was an original uncorrupted Injil that disappeared or was corrupted by the trinitarians. But again, it seems clear that the actual sources for the Jesus stories were not the canonical texts but older Arab tales circulating in Arabia from pre-Islamic times as I have argued.

Your case seems to be based on differences between the canonical details and details in the Qur'an. But there is no need to invent older Arab tales from pre-Islamic times. There were Christian missionaries, gnostic gospels, and the creative use of imagination and/or inspiration.

Why would there be an Arabian oral tradition about Jesus? What did he matter to non-Christians?

Duvduv · 03-30-2012, 11:41 AM

There could be older Arab traditions from pre-canonical times. There have been other stories in the Quran from earlier Arab times such as the mention of the prophet Hud.
We have seen that the Quran knows of a different virgin birth story than the one known by the canonical texts and a different birth scenario of Jesus. There is no particular Islamic reason for there to have been a virgin birth, including one without Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod, etc. Not to mention the absence of any mention of anything found in the epistles as part of the condemnation of the corrupted Injil (which I still wonder was not "Fanjilyun").

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

No, that's not true. The Quran believes that there was an original uncorrupted Injil that disappeared or was corrupted by the trinitarians. But again, it seems clear that the actual sources for the Jesus stories were not the canonical texts but older Arab tales circulating in Arabia from pre-Islamic times as I have argued.

Your case seems to be based on differences between the canonical details and details in the Qur'an. But there is no need to invent older Arab tales from pre-Islamic times. There were Christian missionaries, gnostic gospels, and the creative use of imagination and/or inspiration.

Why would there be an Arabian oral tradition about Jesus? What did he matter to non-Christians?

Toto · 04-09-2012, 01:41 PM

This article was just published on the New Yorker site: How Muslims view Easter

Quote:

In Islam, he emphasized, “believing in Jesus is an absolute requirement. If you don’t believe in him, you’re automatically not a Muslim.” According to the hadith—sayings of the Prophet, second only to the Koran in Islamic authority—Jesus was assumed into heaven, and will return at the end of time in the east of Damascus, his hands resting on the shoulders of two angels. When it sees him, the Antichrist will dissolve like salt in water, and Jesus will rule the earth for forty years. What Muslims don’t believe, though, is that Jesus died on the cross. It’s spelled out quite clearly, Sayar said, in the Koran’s fourth Sura, verse 157: “They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him.”

The Bible is considered a holy book in Islam. How then, I asked, can this verse in the Koran be reconciled with the accounts of Jesus’ death in the Gospels? Sayar said the key is in the phrase that follows “nor did they crucify him”: “though it was made to look like that to them.” Muslim scholars, he explained, interpret this passage in a range of ways. Some believe that someone was, in fact, crucified, but it was not Jesus; maybe it was Judas. Whoever it was, they say, God changed his face to resemble Jesus, and Jesus himself was spared. A slight variation posits that God changed the vision of all those who witnessed the crucifixion to make them think they were seeing Jesus. Others argue that it was Jesus who was nailed to the cross, but that he survived it; what happened on Easter Sunday was not a resurrection but a resuscitation. Some say that no one was crucified at all. “Of course,” Sayar said, “they all have their own proofs.”

For Muslims, the specifics of the crucifixion are largely academic. The disagreement between Christians and Muslims on the nature of Jesus, though, is fundamental, no matter how many ways their understanding of him may correspond. To Muslims, Jesus is not, and could not possibly be, divine. He is a prophet but he’s still a mortal, and God is not his father. “I understand that if you believe someone to be God, and others say he’s not God, it’s like an insult,” Sayar said. “But if you look at it from the Muslim perspective, there’s no difference between Jesus, Abraham, Mohammed.” The Koran mentions twenty-five prophets, and nearly all of them are familiar from the Bible: Adam and Noah, Moses and Abraham, David and Solomon, Lot and Job, John the Baptist. “They’re all messengers,” Sayar said. But to Christians, the message of Jesus is inseparable from his crucifixion and resurrection.

mountainman · 04-09-2012, 04:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

The history of which is a post-Nicaean import into christian doctrine from Plotinic Platonism.

There is a view that Greek thought influenced Christian, but imv the evidence is for influence in the other direction.

That Plato got his wisdom from Moses?

I dont think this happened as Eusebius (and his historical ideologies and propaganda) would wish us to BELIEVE.

Quote:

I think that Plotinus reacted adversely to genuine Christian teaching

Plotinus does not appear to have mentioned or been aware of Christians.

mountainman · 04-10-2012, 09:02 PM

Some extremely interesting and cogent points are raised by Tom Holland in his recent book: In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Some interesting interviews are available such as:

Tom Holland: In the Shadow of the Sword

Quote:

Originally Posted by From Interview at approx 18:10 / 32:01

The first mention of the city of Mecca in any dateable text is from c.741 CE, over 100 years after the death of Muhammad, where it is located "in the deserts beyond Iraq". It was not a major city in Muhammads day. There is no evidence that Mecca existed in the lifetime of Muhammad.

Does anyone see a parallel between this and the city of Nazareth ?

Also, Tom Holland's website has some interesting articles, such as Xty and Europe

Quote:

... history might be a nightmare
from which we have not,
after all, woken up.

Quote:

The question of what precisely Europe owes to its Christian past may be a neuralgic one for many – but that is precisely why it needs to be aired, and not closed down. Repression is repression, after all, whether in an individual or an institution.

Certainly, as it stands, the current attitude of European secularists towards Christianity is like that of a once openly gay man who has since barricaded himself inside the closet, and taken to sneering at homosexuality as something deviant. Secularism, in its Western form, derives ultimately not from Greek philosophy, nor from Roman law, nor even from Enlightenment anticlericalism, but rather from teachings and presumptions that are specifically Christian. Its fons et origo, of course, is to be found in the celebrated retort of Jesus to the Pharisees who had thought to catch him out by asking whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” This admonition, far from prescribing political quiescence, was rather a reflection of Jesus’ presumption that the Kingdom of Heaven was soon to be established on earth, causing Rome and all her works to melt like so much mist upon the morning sun. But the centuries passed, the Kingdom of Heaven did not descend from the skies –

Unless, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven actually somehow descended from the skies at the Council of Nicaea c,324/325 CE, when the servants of Jesus fought for the Christian Kingdom of Heaven.

Quote:

- and in due course Caesar himself ended up a Christian. The resulting upheaval, under Constantine and his successors, was a truly seismic one: the enshrining of a division between church and state, and between clergy and laity, that would have been unrecognisable to the pagans of classical antiquity. Yet still the the distinctions were less than fundamental. In particular, Caesar himself, by laying claim to the rule of the world as the lieutenant and complement of the celestial Emperor, God, was a figure universally regarded as being quite as implicated in the mysterious dimensions of the heavenly as any priest. His subjects took it for granted that he had not merely a right to intrude upon the business of the Church, but a positive duty.

Duvduv · 04-23-2012, 09:53 AM

I think that this chapter/sura and verse of the Quran also indicates that the authors of the Quran were not using first-hand texts, but rather their own writings or beliefs. Where anywhere would any Jew have believed that Ezra the Scribe was the equivalent of the Christ as the son of God? On the contrary, since Ezra is said to have been the prophet Malachi, he would have been the equivalent of how the Muslims would have viewed Jesus as a prophet rather than a divine being.

9:30 The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

04-23-2012, 09:53 AM	#250
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	I think that this chapter/sura and verse of the Quran also indicates that the authors of the Quran were not using first-hand texts, but rather their own writings or beliefs. Where anywhere would any Jew have believed that Ezra the Scribe was the equivalent of the Christ as the son of God? On the contrary, since Ezra is said to have been the prophet Malachi, he would have been the equivalent of how the Muslims would have viewed Jesus as a prophet rather than a divine being. 9:30 The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.