Dear Malik:
Thank you for your long message. Maybe we can write shorter emails and stick
to one point at a time until we reach either agreement or dead end! However,
your long words force me to answer in a similarly long message.
I am glad that you are widely read. I hope that you read a wide variety of
books from different points of view. Let me tell you a little more about
myself. I know the following languages in addition to English: Arabic,
Greek and Hebrew (plus some French).
Congratulations! We are agreed on several major points. Let me try to
summarize them . . . let me know if I am write on this.
1. Jesus is the Word of God
2. No other person is given this title in the Torah, Injil or Quran (at
least not explicitly)
3. He is sinless
4. He was born of a virgin
Now let me give you my comments on other parts of your message:
1. Malik, have you thought why Jesus was born without male intervention? In
the case of Adam and Eve it was necessary that they come through direct
divine creation since they are our first parents. But why of all the
billions of people that have come from them only Jesus is born of a virgin
woman?
2. The Quranic verse 3:059 neither states nor implies that Adam is the Word
of God. I doubt that the majority of reputable Islamic commentators would
agree with your interpretation.
3. There is a similarity between Jesus and Adam. They both represent the
human race as no other men do. Adam is the original head of the race who
introduced sin and death into the human race. In the Bible Jesus is the
second Adam who saves humanity from sin and death by His sacrificial death.
Do not forget, however, that in Scripture Jesus is the Word of God incarnate.
Therefore, as the eternal Word of God He is without compare. But as man He
resembles Adam as explained above.
4. As the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ is the Creator of the universe.
He existed before He was born. This is the plain teaching of the Torah and
Injil (Isaiah 9:6, 7, Micah 5: 2, John 1:1-4, 14, 15, 8:58, Hebrews 1:1-4,
8-12 to cite only a few passages). If you read the context of John 1:1 you
will see what the Bible means by the title "the Word of God": "All things
were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made" (Jn.
1:3).
5. Jesus did not write any part of the Bible. Even His words were written
down by His holy apostles. Everything written by the prophets and apostles
in the Bible is of equal authority (2 Tim.3:16).
6. Both Philo and John lived in the first century so there is not a long
time between them as you state. I am well aware that Philo personified the
Word of God and that he was influenced by Greek philosophy. But his concept
of the Word of God is largely from the Old Testament (Torah) NOT from the
Greeks. In many places in the OT prophets we read this phrase " the Word of
the Lord came to me saying . . . " (for example in Ezekiel 35: 1, Zechariah
7: 4, Jeremiah 33: 19 again citing just a few of the many occurrences of this
phrase). Thus the Word of the Lord in the Old Testament comes and speaks to
the prophets. John was given divine insight and inspiration to write his
first chapter in light of this prior truth in the Old Testament.
7. Your explanation of the Greek grammar of John 1:1 is confused. I won't
get into it deeply now since I don't want to break my promise of short
emails. Suffice it to say that ton theos is the accusative form (mansoub) of
ho theos (marfu')--it is the same word with the same meaning but takes
different forms based on its function in the sentence. Much more to say but
later.
8. Proverbs 8:23-30 is not speaking about Solomon! Please go to the
beginning of the passage (verse 12) to see that the speaker is wisdom
personified. This whole poem is metaphorical which brings up an important
point in biblical interpretation: The Bible contains many figures of speech
(metaphors, similes, parables, etc.) therefore one needs to be careful in
interpreting passages like those about Melchizedek in Heb. 7 or 2 Cor. 4:4
(more later).
9. No Christian church has ever worshipped 3 Gods. I am not sure who the
Quran is advising in its warnings. We believe in One God who eternally
exists as Father, Word (or Son) and Spirit. It does appear that there were
heretics in Arabia in the time of the prophet (7th century AD) like Waraka
and Buhaira who gave a wrong impression about Christianity--one that is
rejected by the church everywhere in every century.
I enjoy our exchange. Let's keep it up in a spirit of humility.
Sherif
Sherif
I think I now clearly understand your point in regards to the email replies, so
we'll stick to one issue. So here I'll give my replies...
>Dear Malik:
>
>Thank you for your long message. Maybe we can write shorter emails and
stick
>to one point at a time until we reach either agreement or dead end!
However,
>your long words force me to answer in a similarly long message.
>
>I am glad that you are widely read. I hope that you read a wide
variety of
>books from different points of view. Let me tell you a little more
about
>myself. I know the following languages in addition to English:
Arabic,
>Greek and Hebrew (plus some French).
Thankyou very much Sherif. Yes, I do read a lot of
history, theology, philosophy etc.. And
I'm sure you have similar interests in such fields. Incidentally, the fact that
you know various languages
does not insinuate a warrant for holding the truth. As knowledge of a language
can be used and abused
for ones interests. Offcourse I'm not accusing you of anything, but I've learnt
in the past using the "I know
language pretext" to be very flawed. But I'm very familiar with Hebrew and
Greek terminology and concepts,
although I cannot speak the languages. Arabic is my mother tongue, and I have an
excellent command of
the English language
>Congratulations! We are agreed on several major
points. Let me try to
>summarize them . . . let me know if I am write on this.
>
>1. Jesus is the Word of God
>2. No other person is given this title in the Torah, Injil or Quran
(at
>least not explicitly)
>3. He is sinless
>4. He was born of a virgin
I think there is a misunderstanding here, agreement is not
in full.
1. & 2. Jesus is a Word from God, not the Word of God. As the Quran
states
While he was standing in prayer in the chamber, the angels called unto him:
"Allah doth give thee glad tidings of Yahya, witnessing the truth of a Word
from Allah,
and (be besides) noble, chaste, and a prophet,- of the (goodly) company of the
righteous." 3:39
Yahya is John the Baptist. A word of Allah does not place any uniqueness on
Jesus as this
word is Kun (Be), the same word used for the creation of Adam. The fact that
Adam is not refererred to
as the Word of God does not prove or disprove anything. Abraham in the Quran is
referred to as
the "Friend of God", but that does not cancel out other Prophets as
being a "Friend of God" just because
their not given that title. Abdullah Yusuf Ali commentary on the above verse.
"Notice: a "a Word from Allah", not "the Word of
Allah", the epithet that mystical Christianity uses for Jesus. As
stated in iii. 59 below, Jesus was created by a miracle, by Allah's word
"Be", and he was."
So what is this iii. 59?, it is the verse that refers to the the likeness of
Jesus being like that of Adam.
3.
We believe all Prophets of God are sinless. Either that or their mission on
earth would be futile, to lead people
to rightousness they must lead by example. What?, is a sinful prophet going to
preach against sin, it would be
the ultimate act of hypocrisy. That's why Muslims can never believe the
monstrous crimes that are atributed to the
Hebrew Prophets in the Bible. Those like Noah, Lot, Moses, David, Solomon,
Isaiah, Saul etc in whom you accuse of incest, rapes, fornication, massacres, idolatry (in the case of Solomon, the most serious sin
in Islam and Judaism), as well as other ludicrous acts such as dancing naked etc etc. What, are you going to imply that sinless in the sense
that Jesus didn't inherit the sin of Adam (the so-called Original sin). I'll
get onto that soon.
>Now let me give you my comments on other parts of your
message:
>
>1. Malik, have you thought why Jesus was born without male
intervention? In
>the case of Adam and Eve it was necessary that they come through direct
>divine creation since they are our first parents. But why of all the
>billions of people that have come from them only Jesus is born of a virgin
>woman?
And God almighty clearly answers this question
Even so, Allah createth what he willeth:
When he has decreed a matter, He but saith to it 'BE', and it is!
3:47
God almighty doesn't need to give a philosophy or mystery behind a certain
creation or act of his. The Quran says
clearly God made him as a sign to men. In other words to manifest the Power of what God
can do, not to prove Jesus is God.
Just like Moses parting the Red Sea, it definatly was not made to prove Moses
was God. And the Quran does not make
any mention of Jesus being a saviour to redeem mankind. Al-Hamdillah, Greek
thought or any other superstitious influences have not touched the Holy
Quran.
>2. The Quranic verse 3:059 neither states nor
implies that Adam is the Word
>of God. I doubt that the majority of reputable Islamic commentators
would
>agree with your interpretation.
Please Sherif, see what I mentioned above for 1 & 2.
Jesus is referred to as
" A Word from Allah" which defeats any attempt to inject
divinity into the epithet. And even
if it did, the Qur'an clearly restores Jesus'' dignity as a human prophet by the
many verses
that denounce his alleged divinity that Christians ascribe to him.
>3. There is a similarity between Jesus and Adam.
They both represent the
>human race as no other men do. Adam is the original head of the race
who
>introduced sin and death into the human race. In the Bible Jesus is
the
>second Adam who saves humanity from sin and death by His sacrificial death.
>Do not forget, however, that in Scripture Jesus is the Word of God
incarnate.
> Therefore, as the eternal Word of God He is without compare. But as
man He
>resembles Adam as explained above.
I've noticed this problem with many Christian missionaries
when prosyletyzing to Muslims. Islam does not believe in original
sin. As The Holy Qur'an repeats that "every soul will carry its own
burden". Not the burden of our father, grandfather,
let alone our primary ancestor. This idea was even alien to Judaism, as
the Old Testament bears witness:
"The Fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the
children be put to death for the
fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deueronomy
24:16)
"But everyone shall die for his own iniquity" (Jeremiah 31:30)
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity
of the father, neither shall the father bear the
iniquity of the son: the rightousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and
the wickedness of the wicked shall be
upon him". (Ezekiel 18:20)
So Adam and Eve were responsible for their own sin, and
according to the Qur'an, they were forgiven by Allah.
>4. As the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ is
the Creator of the universe.
>He existed before He was born. This is the plain teaching of the Torah
and
>Injil (Isaiah 9:6, 7, Micah 5: 2, John 1:1-4, 14, 15, 8:58, Hebrews 1:1-4,
>8-12 to cite only a few passages). If you read the context of John 1:1
you
>will see what the Bible means by the title "the Word of God":
"All things
>were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made"
(Jn.
>1:3).
The Jews till this day have never ascribed divinity to
their expected Messiah. And yet you attempt to
quote verses to prove otherwise. If you were quoting me verses to prove he was
the Messiah, that I could accept. But to
prove his God. Does it not clearly state that God is not a man (Numbers 23:19).
How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born
of a woman?
Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his
sight.
How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?
Job 25:4-6
This verse gives a lie to the divinity of Jesus. How can man be
justified with God its asking, and just incase you have
in the back of your mind that Jesus is an exception. It says "and the son
of man, which is a worm?" and Jesus himself
clearly refers to himself as the "son of man" 83 times. And the fact
that he was born of a women makes him unclean
according to the same verse above.
>5. Jesus did not write any part of the Bible.
Even His words were written
>down by His holy apostles. Everything written by the prophets and
apostles
>in the Bible is of equal authority (2 Tim.3:16).
Few people really ever think before they quote. If they
find something that seems close to what they believe there is no stopping them
from quoting it. Let us see now what the passage really means.
To really understand the passage we have to know who wrote it, what he meant by
it, and what he expected his first readers to understand by it.
Who wrote it? Christians believe that Paul wrote that passage in a letter to his
student Timothy.
What did Paul mean by `all scripture'? Did he mean `the whole Bible'? Many
people assume so. But Paul did not say that. He did not say, "the entire
Bible is inspired." He said "All scripture is inspired." So, back
to our question. What did Paul mean by "all scripture"?
Some people may say, "But `all scripture' means `all scripture,' don't you
understand?" But I ask, "Should I understand that the Hindu Scripture,
the Buddhist Scripture, the Muslim Scripture, the Christian Scripture and all
other scripture is inspired by God?"
Christians will say, "No, because Paul would not have meant all that."
But that makes us ask again, "What exactly did Paul mean?"
usualy the Christian will say ,"The whole Bible," this takes us back
to the beginning of this discussion.
You have to understand that this verse is read out of context. By taking the
verse in isolation, you give it a different meaning than what the author had
intended. To see the proper context, let us read the verse again, this time
starting with the verse that comes before it. Here are verses 15 and 16:
. . . from infancy you have known the holy writings, which are able to
make you wise for salvation through the faith in connection with Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching . . . (2
Timothy 3:15-16)
If you look at the previous verse (i.e. 2 Timothy 3:15) you will realise that
Paul was speaking to his student Timothy about the scriptures which Timothy knew
from his infancy. It was definitely not the whole Bible. The whole Bible was not
yet complete.
The Bible is made up of basically two sections. The first is called the Old
Testament, and the second is called the New Testament. Many books of the New
Testament section were written after Paul's death. Paul was not telling Timothy
that Timothy knew from infancy about books which are not yet written, was he?
To show how many books Paul was not referring to here. The approximate date
given for the writing of 2 Timothy is the year 65 C.E. (i.e. A.D. but
contemporary users prefer C.E. instead of A.D.). Now we can see that many books
were written much later than that. Consider the list of Books of the New
Testament together with their approximate year of authorship as given by
scholars:
Revelation 96 C.E. (A.D.)
John between 98 and 110C.E. (A.D.)
1 John 98 C.E. (A.D.)
2 John 98 C.E. (A.D.)
3 John 98 C.E. (A.D.)
Obviously, Paul was not telling Timothy to hold on to the above books which did
not exist at the time.
Furthermore many other books were written too close to the year 65 C.E. for
Timothy to have been familiar with them since his infancy. I leave this for you
to explore.
That scripture Paul was telling Timothy about was the Old Testament. These
ancient scriptures in the oldest form in which they exist today are written in
the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Chaldee languages.
A problem, however, is that Timothy was familiar with that book not in its
original languages, but in its Greek language translation (the translation of
the Old Testament into the Greek language is called the Septuagint Version).
That Greek translation was prepared about three hundred years before Christ to
enable those who could not read Hebrew to still benefit from the scriptures.
This is the version which the early Christians like Timothy were reading. And
Paul was telling him to hold on to that book.
But is that a problem? Yes! A double problem. First, the translation disagrees
with the original in many points. Which should we take as the inspired book —
the original or the translation? This presents a dilemma. If the Hebrew original
is inspired then the Greek translation is wrong. But if the Greek is wrong then
Paul is wrong to call it inspired — unless Paul thinks that a book is still
inspired even if it contains mistakes.
A second problem is that the Septuagint Greek version contains seven more books
than the Hebrew version. These seven books are included in the Catholic Bible
but not in the Protestants' Bible. But they were included in the Scriptures
which Timothy knew from childhood. And Paul said all of it is inspired.
If Paul is right here, then Christians (particularly Protestants in which I
assume you are Sherif) are wrong. But if Christians are right, then Paul's words
are wrong even though they are found in the King James Bible, and the the rest
of the other versions.
This is why missionaries have a hard time converting Muslims. The fact that we
do not believe the present day Gospels to
be the original Injeel. Please Sherrif, read this booklet http://www.benet.net.au/~tahseen/IsTheBibleGodsWord/BibleIntro.html
it will explain the stance of the Muslim view of the present Injil. Not only
that, we don't believe in the epistles and other books of the New Testament. And
yet, you'll find Christians quoting Hebrews, Romans, Acts, John, Peter etc books
that God Almighty had nothing to do with. As was explained above.
>6. Both Philo and John lived in the first
century so there is not a long
>time between them as you state. I am well aware that Philo personified
the
>Word of God and that he was influenced by Greek philosophy. But his
concept
>of the Word of God is largely from the Old Testament (Torah) NOT from the
>Greeks. In many places in the OT prophets we read this phrase "
the Word of
>the Lord came to me saying . . . " (for example in Ezekiel 35: 1,
Zechariah
>7: 4, Jeremiah 33: 19 again citing just a few of the many occurences of this
>phrase). Thus the Word of the Lord in the Old Testament comes and
speaks to
>the prophets. John was given divine insight and inspiration to write
his
>first chapter in light of this prior truth in the Old Testament.
Philo Judaeus is recorded to have died between 45 and 50
C.E. John on the other hand, wrote "his" Gospel
roughly between 98 and 110 C.E. So their is a large timespan in decades for
Philos popular works to have reached
and influenced the Mediterranean world by the time John wrote his Gospel. Incidentally,
Philo was
well known for synthesizing Jewish religion with Greek thought. Philo never
equated the Word with the
expected Messiah. Jews and Muslims view phrases like "the Word of the
Lord" as "the Word of the Lord", nothing else but Gods commands
to his Prophets, we don't attempt to mystify the mere word
"Word" (or Logos in Greek).
>7. Your explanation of the Greek grammar of John
1:1 is confused. I won't
>get into it deeply now since I don't want to break my promise of short
>emails. Suffice it to say that ton theos is the accusative form (mansoub)
of
>ho theos (marfu')--it is the same word with the same meaning but takes
>different forms based on its function in the sentence. Much more to
say but
>later.
This I'll come back to in my next email
>8. Proverbs 8:23-30 is not speaking about
Solomon! Please go to the
>beginning of the passage (verse 12) to see that the speaker is wisdom
>personified. This whole poem is metaphorical which brings up an
important
>point in biblical interpretation: The Bible contains many figures of
speech
>(metaphors, similes, parables, etc.) therefore one needs to be careful in
>interpreting passages like those about Melchizedek in Heb. 7 or 2 Cor. 4:4
>(more later).
If this was so the case, allegories and figure of speeches
etc can be easily applied
to John 1:1 and so on. As there is nothing to indicate so about Melchizedek.
In regards to Solomon, Wisdom is spoken as an inheretable nature of him. Read
chapter one,
As Solomon is talking in the first person. But even if it meant what you said,
it would not surprise
me, had these words been coming out of the mouth of Jesus, Christians would have
been quick to
exploit it as proof of Christ's eternal divinity. But in Solomon's case, it's
just a mere metaphor.
>9. No Christian church has ever worshipped 3
Gods. I am not sure who the
>Quran is advising in its warnings. We believe in One God who eternally
>exists as Father, Word (or Son) and Spirit. It does appear that there
were
>heretics in Arabia in the time of the prophet (7th century AD) like Waraka
>and Buhaira who gave a wrong impression about Christianity--one that is
>rejected by the church everywhere in every century.
No the Qur'an means what it says. It's referring to
Christendom whom deifies Jesus and the Holy Spirit
next to the Father. Claiming Trinity, that three is one, and one is three, has
been the sole singular concept
in history that has defied logic and reason. I'll discuss this point later on
when I reply to your other email.
It's great exchanging emails Sherif, apologies if I over exceeded your expected
length of my reply. But for the
amount you've written, it sufficed me to reply in such a manner
Regards
Malik