Transcription
Hello. In this episode, I want to ask: Who was the God that Jesus and his followers worshipped? And I'd like to argue that the evidence suggests Jesus said Allah, not Deus. Deus being the Roman Western name for the deity.
And I want to read some words from this marvelous book, *Commentary on the 11th Contention* by Abdal Hakim Murad. Now, he is otherwise known as Professor Tim Winter of the University of Cambridge. He teaches Islamic studies there. Obviously, he's a convert to Islam. And on page 22 of this book, which I'd like to read to you, he says the following.
"The Aramaic Gospels present Jesus praying to and praising [clears throat] the God whom he worshipped, naming him Allah or Allo, the Eastern and Western vocalizations. Aramaic is a language so close in structure, vocabulary, and sensibility to Quranic Arabic that Arab viewers of Mel Gibson's snuff movie, *The Passion of the Christ*, can follow much of the dialogue. Crusaders and every Southern multiplex should wonder about this. Jesus surrendered to his Lord, and his words, whether or not they are authentically preserved, indicate perfect slavehood to L {slash} Elohim, which is Hebrew. Allah, Aramaic. Allaha, Syriac. Allah, the true name of the one God of Abraham, peace be upon him."
After the end of his ministry, Jesus' followers continued to worship the Jewish God in congregation at the temple. And here, Tim Winter references Acts chapter 3, verse 1, which I'm now going to read from my New Revised Standard Version, where we read: "One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at 3:00 in the afternoon."
Now, why is that significant? Well, this is—so, this is after Jesus' ascension into heaven. Now, the hour of prayer at 3:00 in the afternoon is not like in, say, the Church of England, where you—where you go just to have some prayers. No. This is the hour of sacrifice as well. So, the Jewish system, with its sacrifices, detailed in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, and the Jewish understanding of God is still very much adhered to by the chief disciples of Jesus, Peter and John in this case. And Tim Winter correctly goes on to note, "Like Jesus, they continued to worship the God of the prophets."
Now, Tim Winter then goes on to quote a very high-profile and famous Roman Catholic priest called Hans Kung. Now, he's a very distinguished Catholic theologian, and he wrote the following, and Tim Winter quotes him: "This was the original Jewish Christianity of the first disciples of Jesus, the original Jerusalem community, and the communities east of the Jordan. In other words, the very first paradigm of Christianity before the shift to the Greek Hellenistic paradigm." And Hans Kung goes on to note that "Primal Christianity contains the theology of Judaism and Islam, and obliquely proposes this as a basis for reconciliation." End quote.
So, that's the—the chapter 12 in this book, *Commentary on the 11th Contention*. And it's fascinating that it's only later, with the theologizing of the Hellenistic Greek Jew called Paul of Tarsus, Christians call him the Apostle Paul, it's only then that we find this shift, this paradigm shift to a quite different understanding, where you have a savior cult, where the Messiah himself, Jesus, becomes a savior figure, God himself. Whereas in the original historical Jesus, God is the center of Jesus' proclamation. So, he proclaims the oneness of God. In, in the Gospels, we still see that today.
But it's fascinating that Hans Kung is quoted. He's such a senior Roman Catholic theologian, and he sees the truth of this, and he proposes this as a way of bringing together the—the people of the book into a common word. And on that very theme, I just want to quote to you some words from the Quran. I'm going to quote from *The Clear Quran*, a very famous verse in chapter 3, *The Family of Imran*, where it says: "Say, 'O Prophet, O people of the book, Jews and Christians, let us come to common terms, that we will worship none but God, associate none with him, nor take one another as lords instead of God. But if they turn away, then say, 'Bear witness that we have submitted to God alone.'"
And that strikes me as something I'm sure that Jesus, the historical Jesus, would have accepted and agreed with, in fact. And on a slightly different note, I just want to quote some words from this fascinating book, *The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity* by an American called Jeffrey J. Butts. He's an ordained Lutheran minister and a professor of world religions at Penn State University in the US, obviously. And he says some fascinating things about Islam and Christianity and Judaism and what happened to Jesus. And I just want to read these words to—this is self-explanatory, I think.
By the way, he is a Christian writer, so he believes Jesus died for his—died on the cross. But he says this: "As abundant evidence has shown us, after Jesus' crucifixion, his family and disciples continued to worship together in the temple in Jerusalem." Remember I quoted from Acts chapter 3, verse 1, this history of the early church. "Manifesting no difference from their fellow Jews, except in their belief that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah." In other words, he's a Messiah like David. He's called the son of David in the Gospels.
"Unfortunately for those—unfortunately, for these harmonious beginnings, Pauline Christianity, this is the religion of Paul, increasingly adopted an understanding of Jesus that Judaism could not ultimately bear. The Hellenistic theological belief that Jesus was literally God incarnate in human flesh. As the doctrine of the incarnate—incarnation became ever more central to Gentile Catholic Christianity, this was later on, of course, an impossible theological wall arose between Jews and Christians. You see the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians here, later in the first century. The doctrine of the incarnation is also a great wall that separates Muslims and Christians. Most Christians today are completely unaware that Muslims highly revere Jesus and honor his teachings, even though they—they even believe in the virgin birth. But like their Jewish cousins, the strict monotheism of Islam could never accept the key Christian dogmas of the incarnation and the Trinity. It is therefore potentially significant for interreligious dialogue today. Remember the quote from the Quran there, 'Let us come to a common word.'"
That one of the firm conclusions of modern research into James, and he's already established in his book that James is the actual brother, blood brother, of Jesus, and he would actually became the leader of the early church, interestingly. One of the conclusions of research into James has revealed is that neither Jesus' family, nor the apostles, nor his Jewish disciples believed that Jesus was literally God. They believed that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah, adopted, in inverted commas, by God as his son at the—at his baptism by John, but still a human being. That the earliest Christian doctrine was in no way incompatible with Christian—with Jewish doctrine is evidenced above all—above all by the fact that the Jews in Jerusalem continued to accept Jesus' followers as fellow Jews. In fact, they saw them as being particularly rigorous and pious Jews.
And earlier in this book, Jeffrey Butts references Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, who does mention James, and particularly that James was seen by other Jews as particularly pious and law-abiding. And this is remarkable as it shows that at that stage, the original family and disciples of Jesus hadn't broken from Judaism. The idea of the oneness—uh, ahad, the oneness of God, was still believed by them. If they had proclaimed the Messiah to be God, and that one's sins were forgiven through the incarnation of Jesus and death on the cross, that would have been of course completely anathema to the Jews as it is today. No Jew today, no practicing Orthodox Jew, would even go into a church, a Christian church, because they see it as a place of idolatry.
Very interesting. So, the author continues: "It is more than intriguing that the Muslim understanding of Jesus is very much in conformity with the first Christian orthodoxy, the original Jewish-Christian understanding of Jesus." So, here we have a Christian academic who—who is still followers Christianity. He gets it that the Islamic understanding of Jesus is in fact the same as the earliest understanding of Jesus, what they originally believed. Isn't that interesting? Very interesting.
And I'll just read the last paragraph here. "If Jewish Christianity, the original that is, Christianity, had prevailed over Pauline Christianity, history would likely have been written quite differently. It is quite likely that such atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust would never have transpired." That's an incredible statement, this. "If the Jewish-Christian understanding of Jesus had prevailed, which obviously it didn't initially, Jews and Christians might never have parted ways, and Islam would never have become Christianity's perceived enemy."
"To this day, it is the refusal of Jews and Muslims, remember who have the original understanding of Jesus and the community around Jesus, is their refusal of these people, the Jews and Muslims today, to accept the full divinity of Jesus that makes them pagans and heathens in the eyes of many Christians." End quote.
Now, isn't this supremely ironic that those who most publicly confess to being followers of Jesus, the Christians today, are mostly not following the faith of Jesus and his original disciples themselves? People who are though following that original understanding are of course Muslims, because unlike Jews, Muslims still do accept Jesus as a prophet, as the—the promised Messiah. Now, Jews, unfortunately, do not. So, so one could argue the only people today who are authentically following the real Jesus, the Jesus of history, are Muslims. And one—I think one should add those Christians, and they do exist in large numbers, who also accept that Jesus was a prophet and Messiah. Now, Unitarian Christians obviously do that, but also I have discovered many priests and even bishops in the mainline churches. I'm thinking of say the Church of England and some other churches like the Methodist Church, actually privately also believe that too, that Jesus was only a prophet. And if they believe he is a son of God, it's in a metaphorical sense. It's not meant literally as a metaphysical actual God begetting a son.
Now, that's criticized of course in the 112th sura of the Quran. In an extraordinary piece of precision theology, it lasers in to the Council of Nicaea, which uses this language of the son begotten of the father, and it—it directly refutes that and affirms the original belief of the—the Jews themselves. So, the Quran is very much endorsing the tawhid of Jewish monotheism as we see in—in the Torah, for example.
So, that's the end of this video. Just to conclude, Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is extremely close to Arabic, as is Hebrew. They are cognate Semitic languages. So, of course Jesus would have called God Allah with his Aramaic accent, his Aramaic pronunciation.