austin2

I believe the muslims deny the diety of Jesus, not the crucifixion of Jesus

in any case, the Romans crucified thousands of Jews

Steven Avery

"deity" .. or "Deity" The standard islamic stance is a swoon theory, that Jesus came off the cross still alived, and revived, perhaps in that beautiful nite air in the tomb, that they picked up from Hugh Schonfield of the Passover Plot Not sure what they do with that pesky large stone.

Whether that is in the quran as a primary writing, or some level of hadith or something I dunno offhand, although it shouldn't be hard to find out.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

spamandham

Sort of. The Ebionites were said to posses an alternate version of Matthew, known as the Gospel of the Hebrews. It was said to have been written in Aramaic and was referred to by Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius of Salamis. (no copies of it are known to exist, so we have only second hand descriptions of what was in it).

Although it is not mentioned whether they denied the crucifixion per se, they did deny Jesus' death as atonement. Theoretically, their version would have supported their positions. If they believed Jesus was crucified, they thought it an ordinary cricifixion.

Kosh

This type of explanation falls into the same category as the attempts to explain away the 10 plagues in Egypt as a series of "natural" catastrophes that just happened to occur sequentionally. It's all a waste of time, including the swoon theory, when you realize that nothing of the sort actually took place. The stories were made up after the fact out of whole cloth. There is nothing to rationalize other than mythmaking.

Didymus

Not sure whether you're referring to the twelve apostles who appear in the gospels, or to the "pillars" - Peter, James and John - mentioned by Paul. Although most Christians assume that they are the same people, Paul does not mention the pillars as having been companions of Jesus. That's a glaring oversight, and an indication that he regarded them, not as men who "walked with the Lord," but only as rival Christian leaders, specifically of the Jerusalem church. Although he met with them, he never suggested that he interviewed them about Jesus' teachings or about events in Jesus' life, nor did he give them any special status as witnesses to the earthly Jesus, nor did he report any of Jesus' sayings or teachings that they might have shared with him.

Ignorance is not quite the right word, IMO. Paul didn't know anything about Jesus' earthly ministry because that ministry was merely a legend that was eventually put into writing by Mark and the other gospel writers. Outside the gospels, there's no evidence that Jesus existed, and there's enough internal biblical counterevidence - including Paul's glaring omissions about his life, his teachings and (most notably) the Trial and Crucifixion - to convince me that the gospels are merely pseudohistorical fiction.

Didymus

Amaleq13

Thanks for the clarification, Didymus. I thought there was a bigger difference in our views but apparently not.

Net2004

Muhammed Asad wrote about this verse:



"Thus, the Qur'an categorically denies the story of the crucifixion of
Jesus. There exist, among Muslims, many FANCIFUL LEGENDS telling us
that at the last moment God substituted for Jesus a person closely
resembling him (according to some accounts, that person was Judas), who
was subsequently crucified in his place. However, none of these LEGENDS
finds the slightest support in the Qur'an or in authentic Traditions,
and the stories produced in this connection by the classical
commentators must be summarily rejected. They represent no more than
confused attempts at "harmonizing" the Qur'anic statement that Jesus
was not crucified with the graphic description, in the Gospels, of his
crucifixion. The story of the crucifixion as such has been succinctly
explained in the Qur'anic phrase wa-sakin shubbiha lahum, which I
render as "but it only appeared to them as if it had been so" -
implying that in the course of time, long after the time of Jesus, a
legend had somehow grown up (possibly under the then-powerful influence
of Mithraistic beliefs) to the effect that he had died on the cross in
order to atone for the "original sin" with which mankind is allegedly
burdened; and this legend became so firmly established among the
latter-day followers of Jesus that even his enemies, the Jews, began to
believe it - albeit in a derogatory sense (for crucifixion was, in
those times, a heinous form of death-penalty reserved for the lowest of
criminals). This, to my mind, is the only satisfactory explanation of
the phrase wa-lakin shubbiha lahum, the more so as the expression
shubbiha li is idiomatically synonymous with khuyyila li, "[a thing]
became a fancied image to me", i.e., "in my mind" - in other words,
"[it] seemed to me" (see Qamas, art. khayala, as well as Lane II, 833,
and IV, 1500). (p. 134, fn. 171, online source; capital and underlined
emphasis ours)

And

The phrase is "shubbiha lahum" and contains no direct object of
the verb "shubbiha" (root sh-b-h, not sh-b) to support the
construction that one thing was "made to seem like" another thing. In
other words it does not say "shubbihaha," which would make the verb
transitive ~ something done to an object, whether "he" or "it," as in
"it was made to look like *it*" ("[what didn't happen] was made to
seem like [a crucifixion] to them). ALLAH did not deceive them, they
deceived themselves.


"[One thing] appeared like [another thing] to them" is not
supported by the words ALLAH used in the Ayat until the word
"shubbiha" is misconstrued to mean something it clearly does not say ~
exclusively "for the sake of argument" over this non-event or "for the
sake of interpretation" of it, both of which are proscribed by Q3:6.
Where else in the Arabic language do you find "shubbiha" used to mean
something like this?


I have elsewhere shown that the verb shubbiha means "obscured" ~
that something is obscured ~ and that this is well-known to be the
intransitive branch of meanings on that root sh-b-h. This is the
condition of this mythical "crucifixion" as shown by other Ayats,
which label what the Christians "are on" as "pursuit of speculation"
and as "not a thing" (i.e., nonexistent, "laa shay'in").


It is clear that there was no such event whatsoever that involved
'Isa bin Maryam 'alaihi as-salaam in any way; that the accounts in
Pauline literature (which modern research is showing were widely
unknown in Palestine for at least the first century and a half) are
made up stories intended by the corrupt of Temple Israel to discredit
Jesus; and that as ALLAH says clearly in His Book, they neither killed
him nor crucified him as they then had claimed. It did not "seem like
it" at all ~ it never happened, and the entirety of the myth is
obscure to them.


The "interpreters" of this Ayat are saying something akin to
"There was never any Minotaur, Cyclops, or Medusa, but it was made to
seem like it." ALLAH does not provide such fictions, He allows people
to make them up on their own. The Pauline "crucifixion" is completely
mythological, and Paulines who believe it happened do so entirely on
the basis of illogical belief with absolutely no evidence whatever,
only stories told a century later by people demonstrably intent on
subverting the prophetic mission of 'Isa bin Maryam and annihilating
his unitarian Torah-keeping faithful followers.


The "Ten Persecutions" of the early histories were carried out by
ten Roman emperors against unitarian, Torah-keeping, followers of
Jesus, the "faithful remnant" of Israel spreading the real "Good
News," until Constantine, and again after him the Trinitarians sought
to annihilate the unitarians until the muslims destroyed the attacking
legions and liberated Palestine from the Roman occupation.


That is the meaning of "shubbiha lahum" ~ "it is obscure to them."
This is a plain Arabic meaning of the word "shubbiha," and to say
"it appeared so" merely fuels the pursuit of speculation about
something ALLAH says is "not a thing." ALLAH ta'ala has condemned the
pursuit of speculation and the prophet sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam
has warned us against hypothetical conjecture. The words of the
Qur'an thus cannot be intended to support either pursuit of
speculation or hypothetical conjecture, as "it seemed like it" would.


This construction of the term "shubbiha" was invented during the
Abbasid era on the sole basis of a report attributed to Ibn Abbas radi
ALLAHU anhu which related a story from an unknown Christian convert to
Islam who had said that some people in Palestine had believed Judas
Iscariot had been made to look like Jesus, with the face of Jesus and
the body of Judas. That's the speculative basis of this speculative
"interpretation" of this grammatically unsustainable construction of
the phrase "shubbiha lahum."


Nothing of the kind happened, as ALLAH says.


We now return you to the pseudo-scholarly quibbling and bickering
and posturing of the speculators and hypothe-seers and uncertain

taken from http://groups.google.com/group/soc.religion.islam?hl=en

Doug Shaver

At the time they were written? Maybe not.

premjan

There is no reason why Muhammad should know anything definite about the crucifixion (other than that it is unlikely that any resurrection, being physically impossible, took place).

Doug Shaver

You talk about "most people who ask that question." What about the exceptions?

I used to believe in God, the Bible, Jesus, the whole ball of wax. Then I went looking for evidence to support my beliefs. Believe you me, I wanted to find that evidence, but I could not find any. How do you explain that?