The True Message of Jesus Christ

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Jesus Christ represents the common link between the two religions having the most followers on the earth today, Christianity and Islam. The following study of Jesus’ message and his person is based on this link. It is hoped that through this study, both Muslims and Christians will better understand the significance of Jesus and the importance of his message.

However, for us to accurately identify the true message of Jesus Christ, an objective point of view must be maintained throughout the course of our research. We should not allow our emotions to cloud our vision and thereby blind us from the truth. We must look at all of the issues rationally and separate the truth from falsehood—with the help of the Almighty.

When we look at the variety of false religions and deviant beliefs around the world and the zeal with which their followers uphold these beliefs, it becomes quite evident that these people are not able to find the truth because of their blind commitment to their beliefs. Their tenacious adherence is usually not based on an intellectual understanding of the teachings, but on powerful cultural and emotional influences. Because they were brought up in a particular family or society, they firmly cling to the beliefs of that society, believing that they are upholding the truth.

The only way that we may find the truth about anything is to approach it systematically and logically. First, we weigh the evidence and then we judge it by the intelligence which God has given us. In the material world, it is fundamentally intelligence that distinguishes humans from animals, which act purely on instinct. After determining what the objective truth is, we must then commit ourselves to it emotionally. Yes, there is a place for emotional commitment, but emotional commitment must come after a reasoned comprehension of the issues. Emotional commitment is essential, because it is evidence of a true understanding. When one fully and properly understands the reality of the issue, one is then mentally and spiritually prepared to vigorously uphold that reality.

It is from this intellectual and spiritual point of view that the subject of Jesus’ message and his relevance to those who desire to follow God will be analyzed in the following pages.

The topic ‘The True Message of Jesus Christ’ is comprised of two basic parts: 1.The Message and 2.The Person of Jesus Christ. Each one is inseparable from the other. In order to understand Jesus’ message, we must know who he was. However, for us to understand who he was, it is also necessary to identify and comprehend his message.

There are two possible avenues which may be taken to look into the identity of Jesus Christ and the content of his message. One is based on the historical record compiled by modern historians from the writings and relics of that period and the other is based on the reports contained in the revealed Scriptures.

In reality, there is very little historical evidence available to inform us about who Jesus Christ was or to determine what his message was. The official historical documents of that time contain virtually no record of Jesus. A biblical scholar, R.T. France, writes, “No 1st century inscription mentions him and no object or building has survived which has a specific link to him.”[1] This fact has even led some Western historians to mistakenly claim that Jesus Christ never actually existed. Therefore, research has to be primarily based on the scriptures which address the person and the mission of Jesus Christ. The scriptures in question are those officially recognized by both Christianity and Islam. However, to accurately analyze the information contained in these religious texts, it is essential to first determine their validity. Are they reliable sources of documentary evidence, or humanly concocted tales and myths, or a mixture of both? Are the Bible’s Old and New Testaments divinely revealed scriptures? Is the Qur’aan (Koran) authentic?

For the Bible and the Qur’aan to be the divine word of God, they must be free from inexplicable contradictions, and there should be no doubt about their content nor about their authors. If this is the case, the material contained in the Old and New Testaments and the Qur’aan can then be considered reliable sources of information concerning the message and the person of Jesus Christ.

It has been documented by many scholars from various branches and sects of Christianity that much of the material in the Bible is of doubtful authenticity.

In the preface of The Myth of God Incarnate, the editor wrote the following: “In the nineteenth century, Western Christianity made two major new adjustments in response to important enlargements of human knowledge: it accepted that man is a part of nature and has emerged within the evolution of the forms of life on this earth; and it accepted that the books of the Bible were written by a variety of human beings in a variety of circumstances, and cannot be accorded a verbal divine authority.”[2]

In the international news magazine, Newsweek[3], which carried an article entitled ‘O Lord, Who Wrote Thy Prayer?’, a group of theologians from the major Protestant sects, along with noted Roman Catholic Biblical scholars in the United States, after a detailed examination of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, concluded that the only words of the “Lord’s prayer”[4] that can be accurately attributed to Jesus Christ is “father”. That is, according to these learned church scholars, all the words that came after the beginning phrase, “Our father”, of the most fundamental Christian prayer, were added centuries later by church scribes who copied the early manuscripts of the Gospels[5]. U.S. News & World Report, further quotes the team of scholars as saying that over 80 percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels may be apocryphal[6]. That includes Jesus’ Eucharistic[7] speech at the Last Supper (“Take, eat. This is my body ...”) and every word he is said to have uttered from the cross.[8]

Dr. J.K. Elliott, of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds University, wrote an article published in The Times, London (10th Sept., 1987) entitled “Checking the Bible’s Roots”. In it, he stated that: “More than 5,000 manuscripts contain all or part of the New Testament in its original language. These range in date from the second century up to the invention of printing. It has been estimated that no two agree in all particulars. Inevitably, all handwritten documents are liable to contain accidental errors in copying. However, in living theological works it is not surprising that deliberate changes were introduced to avoid or alter statements that the copyist found unsound. There was also a tendency for copyists to add explanatory glosses[9]. Deliberate changes are more likely to have been introduced at an early stage before the canonical status of the New Testament was established.”

The author went on to explain that “no one manuscript contains the original, unaltered text in its entirety,” and that, “one cannot select any one of these manuscripts and rely exclusively on its text as if it contained the monopoly the original words of the original authors.”

He further said: “If one further argues that the original text has survived somewhere among the thousands of extant[10] manuscripts, then one is forced to read all these manuscripts, to assemble the differences between them in a systematic way, and then to assess, variant by variant, which manuscripts have the original [text] and which the secondary text. Such a prospect has daunted[11] many biblical scholars who have been content to rely on the printed texts of earlier ages, in which the evidence of only a few favored manuscripts were used. Even many recent printed editions of the Greek New Testament, and modern translations based on these, usually follow this practice of building their text on a narrow base that is unlikely to be entirely original.”

Versions of the English Bible

In the preface of the most widely used version of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version, the authors wrote the following:

“The Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611...

“The King James Version had to compete with the Geneva Bible (1560) in popular use; but in the end it prevailed, and for more than two and a half centuries no other authorized translation of the Bible into English was made. The King James Version became the “Authorized Version” of the English-speaking peoples...Yet the King James Version has grave defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for revision of the English translation. The task was undertaken, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870. The English Revised Version of the Bible was published in 1881-1885; and the American Standard Version, its variant embodying the preferences of the American scholars associated in the work, was published in 1901.”[12]

“The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus.”[13]

“...The American Standard Version was copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes. In 1928 this copyright was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education, and thus passed into the ownership of the churches of the United States and Canada which were associated in this Council through their boards of education and publication. The Council appointed a committee of scholars to have charge of the text of the American Standard Version and to undertake inquiry as to whether further revision was necessary... [After two years] the decision was reached that there is need for a thorough revision of the version of 1901, which will stay as close to the Tyndale-King James tradition as it can...In 1937 the revision was authorized by vote of the Council.”[14]

“Thirty-two scholars have served as members of the Committee charged with making the revision, and they have secured the review and counsel of an Advisory Board of fifty representatives of the co-operating denominations...The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was published in 1946.”[15] “The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, was published on September 30, 1952, and has met with wide acceptance.”[16]

In the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, a number of key verses from the King James Version of the Old and the New Testaments, which Biblical scholars concluded were added in later centuries, were removed from the text and placed in the footnotes. For example, the famous passage in the Gospel of John 8.7 about an adulteress who was about to be stoned. Jesus was supposed to have said: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The footnotes of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1952) state “The most ancient authorities omit 7.53-8.11”.[17] Since the Vatican manuscript no. 1209 and the Sinaitic manuscript codex from the 4th century do not contain these twelve verses, Biblical scholars have concluded that these words cannot be attributed to Jesus. Another example is the passage attributed to Jesus and used as evidence of reference to the Trinity in the Scriptures. In 1 John 5.7, Jesus was supposed to have said: “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”[18] The well-known Biblical scholar, Benjamin Wilson, writes that this text concerning the “heavenly witness” is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the 15th century! Consequently, in the Revised Standard Version, this verse was deleted from the text without even so much as a footnote. However, in order to keep the total number of verses in the Revised Standard Version the same as that of the King James Version, the revisers split verse 6 into two verses.

The Second Edition of the translation of the New Testament (1971) profited from textual and linguistic studies published since the Revised Standard Version New Testament was first issued in 1946.[19] Consequently, some previously deleted passages were reinstated, and some accepted passages were deleted. “Two passages, the longer ending of Mark (16.9-20) and the account of the woman caught in adultery (John 7.53-8.11), were restored to the text, separated from it by a blank space and accompanied by informative notes...With new manuscript support, two passages, Luke 22.19b-20 and 24.51b, were restored to the text, and one passage, Luke 22.43-44, was placed in the footnotes, as was a phrase in Luke 12.39.”[20]

Authorship

According to Biblical scholars, even the authorship of the Old Testament books and the Gospels themselves is in doubt.

Torah

The first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch)[21] are traditionally attributed to Prophet Moses,[22] however, there are many verses within these books which indicate that Prophet Moses could not possibly have written everything in them. For example, Deuteronomy 34.5-8 states: “5 So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, 6 and he buried him in the valley of the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day. 7 Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. 8 And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses ended.” It is quite obvious that someone else wrote these verses about Prophet Moses’ death.

Some Christian scholars have explained these discrepancies by suggesting that Moses had written his books, but that later prophets, as well as inspired scribes, had made the additions previously mentioned. Consequently, according to them, the text, in its entirety, remained an inspired scripture of God. However, this explanation did not stand up to scrutiny, because the style and literary characteristics of the interpolated verses are the same as the remainder of the text.

In the 19th century, Christian Bible scholars began to debate the meaning of “doublets” that appeared in the Torah. These are stories which appear twice, each time with different details. Among these are the two versions of the creation of the world, of the covenant between God and Abraham, of God changing Jacob’s name to Israel and of Moses getting water from a rock.[23]

Defenders of Moses’ authorship said that the doublets were not contradictory, but instructive. Their intent was to teach us about the deeper, subtler meanings of the Torah. However, this claim was soon brushed aside by open-minded scholars who noted that, not only were some accounts clearly contradictory, but also that when the doublets were separated into two separate accounts, each account consistently used a different name for God. One would always refer to God as Yahweh / Jehovah, This document was called “J”. The other always referred to God as Elohim, and was called “E”.[24] There were various other literary characteristics found to be common to one document or the other. Modern linguistic analyses, according to Professor Richard Friedman,[25] indicate that the five books of Moses are a mixture of Hebrew from the ninth, eighth, seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Therefore, Moses, who was alive in the 13th century B.C., was further away from the Hebrew of the Bible than Shakespeare was from the English of today.

Further study of the Pentateuch led to the discovery that it was not made up of two major sources but of four. It was discovered that some stories were not only doublets but triplets. Additional literary characteristics were identified for these documents. The third source was called “P” (for priestly), and the fourth called “D” (for Deuteronomy).[26]

The extent to which less obvious additions were made to the original text is very difficult to determine. Consequently, a great shadow of doubt has been cast on the authorship of the books as a whole.

In the appendix of the Revised Standard Version entitled “Books of the Bible,” the following is written concerning the authorship of over one third of the remaining books of the Old Testament:

More than half of the world’s Christians are Roman Catholics. Their version of the Bible was published in 1582 from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, and reproduced at Douay in 1609. The Old Testament of the RCV (Roman Catholic Version) contains seven more books than the King James Version recognized by the Protestant world. The extra books are referred to as the apocrypha (i.e., of doubtful authority) and were removed from the Bible in 1611 by Protestant Bible scholars.

The Gospels

Aramaic was the spoken language of the Jews of Palestine. Consequently, it is believed that Jesus and his disciples spoke and taught in Aramaic.[27] “The earliest oral tradition of Jesus’ deeds and sayings undoubtedly circulated in Aramaic. However, the four Gospels were written in an entirely different speech, common Greek, the spoken language of the civilized Mediterranean world, to serve the majority of the Church, which was becoming Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) instead of Palestinian. Traces of Aramaic survive in the Greek Gospels. For example, in Mark 5:41, “Taking her by the hand he said to her, ‘Tal’itha cu’mi’; which means ’Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ ” and Mark 15:34, “And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘E’lo-i, E’lo-i, la’ma sabachtha’ni?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ”[28]

The New Testament Gospel of Mark, though considered by Church scholars to be the oldest of the Gospels, was not written by a disciple of Jesus. Biblical scholars concluded, based on the evidence contained in the Gospel, that Mark himself was not a disciple of Jesus. Furthermore, according to them, it is not even certain who Mark really was. The ancient Christian author, Eusebius (325 C.E.), reported that another ancient author, Papias (130 C.E.), was the first to attribute the Gospel to John Mark, a companion of Paul.[29] Others suggested that he may have been the scribe of Peter and yet others hold that he was probably someone else.

The same is the case with the other Gospels. Although Matthew, Luke and John are the names of disciples of Jesus, the authors of the Gospels bearing their names were not those famous disciples, but other individuals who used the disciples’ names to give their accounts credibility. In fact, all the Gospels originally circulated anonymously. Authoritative names were later assigned to them by unknown figures in the early church.[30]

J.B. Phillips, a prebendary[37] of the Chichester Cathedral, the Anglican Church of England, wrote the following preface for his translation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Early tradition ascribed this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view. The author, whom we can conveniently call Matthew, has plainly drawn on the mysterious “Q”,[38] which may have been a collection of oral traditions. He has used Mark’s Gospel freely, though he has rearranged the order of events and has in several instances used different words for what is plainly the same story.”[39] The Fourth Gospel (John) was opposed as heretical in the early church, and it knows none of the stories associated with John, son of Zebedee.[40] In the judgement of many scholars, it was produced by a “school” of disciples, probably in Syria in the last decade of the first century.[41]

Contradictions

Evidence for the unreliability of much of the material in the Bible can also be found in the many contradictions in the texts of the Old and New Testaments. The following are only a few examples:

The Old Testament

1. The authors of Samuel and Chronicles relate the same story about Prophet David taking a census of the Jews. However, in 2nd Samuel, it states that Prophet David acted on God’s instructions, while in 1st Chronicles, he acted on Satan’s instructions.

2. In describing the length of a plague prophesied by Gad[42], the author of 2nd Samuel listed it as seven years, while the author of 1st Chronicles listed it as three years.

3. In 2nd Chronicles, Jehoiachin was described as being eight years old when he began to reign, while in 2nd Kings he is described as being eighteen years old.

4. The author of 2nd Samuel described the number of Syrians who died during a battle with Prophet David as being seven hundred, while the author of 1st Chronicles gave their number as seven thousand.

Although some may say that the adding or dropping of a ‘1’ or a zero is not significant, as it is only a copying mistake, here that is not the case because the Jews spelled out their numbers in words and did not use numerals.

Such descrepancies cannot be accepted as part of a divinely revealed text. Moreover, they prove the fallability of the human authors and further prove that the texts of the Old Testament were not divinely preserved.

The New Testament

In the New Testament many similar contradictions may also be found. The following are but a few:

1.The Gospel accounts vary regarding who carried the cross on which Jesus was supposed to have been crucified. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, it was Simon of Cyrene, and in John, it was Jesus.

2. After Jesus’ “crucifixion”, the Gospel accounts differ as to who visited his tomb, when the visit took place, as well as the state of the tomb when it was visited. The Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John state that the visit took place before sunrise, while the Gospel of Mark states that it was after sunrise. In another three Gospels (Mark, Luke and John) the women found the stone door of the tomb rolled away, but in one (Matthew) the tomb was closed until an angel descended before them and rolled it away.

3. The New Testament accounts vary regarding the fate of Judas Iscariot and the money he received for betraying Jesus. In Matthew, he hung himself, while in Acts, he fell in a field and died there.

4. When the genealogy of Jesus from David in Matthew 1:6-16, is compared to that of Luke 3:23-31, there are major discrepancies. Firstly, Jesus in Matthew has 26 parents between himself and David, but in Luke he has 41. Secondly, the names in both lists vary radically after David, and only two names are the same: Joseph, and Zorobabel. Both lists start off with Joseph, strangely enough, as the father of Jesus, but in Matthew, the author records Jesus’ paternal grandfather as being Jacob, while in Luke he is Heli. If one were to accept the suggestion of some that one of the lists is actually the genealogy of Mary, it could not possibly account for any differences after their common ancestor David. Both lists meet again at Abraham and between David and Abraham most of the names are the same. However, in Matthew’s list, Hezron’s son’s name is Ram, the father of Ammin’adab, while in Luke’s list, Hezron’s son’s name is Arni, whose son’s name is Admin, the father of Ammin’adab.[45] Consequently, between David and Abraham there are 12 forefathers in Matthew’s list and 13 in Luke’s list.

These discrepancies and many others like them in the Gospels are clearly errors that cast a shadow of doubt on their authenticity as divinely revealed texts. Consequently, most Christian scholars today look at the Old and New Testament books as human accounts which they believe were inspired by God. However, even the claim that they were inspired by God is questionable as it implies that God inspired the authors to write mistakes and contradictions in His scriptures.

Having established that the authenticity of both the New and the Old Testament is questionable, it can then be said with certainty that the Bible cannot be used by itself as an authentic reference source for establishing who Jesus was, nor the content of his message.

The Qur’aan

On the other hand, the Qur‘aan—believed by Muslims to be the word of God revealed to Prophet Muhammad(e)—was written down and memorized, from beginning to end, during the lifetime of the Prophet himself.

Within a year after his death, the first standard written text was produced.[46] And within 14 years after his death, authorized copies (the ‘Uthmanic Text) made from the standard codex[47] were sent to the capitals of the Muslim state, and unauthorized copies were destroyed.[48]

Since the Prophet’s death in 632 CE, an increasing number of people in each successive generation have memorized the complete text of the Qur’aan from beginning to end. Today there exist tens of thousands of people around the world who recite the whole text, from memory, during the month of Ramadaan every year, as well as on other occasions.

One of the leading orientalists, Kenneth Cragg, said the following regarding the memorization and preservation of the Qur’aanic text, “This phenomenon of Qur’anic recital means that the text has traversed the centuries in an unbroken living sequence of devotion. It cannot, therefore, be handled as an antiquarian thing, nor as a historical document out of a distant past.”[49] Another orientalist scholar, William Graham, wrote: “For countless millions of Muslims over more than fourteen centuries of Islamic history, ‘scripture’, al-kitab has been a book learned, read and passed on by vocal repetition and memorization. The written Qur’an may ‘fix’ visibly the authoritative text of the Divine Word in a way unknown in history, but the authoritativeness of the Qur’anic book is only realized in its fullness and perfection when it is correctly recited.”[50] Yet another, John Burton, stated: “The method of transmitting the Qur’an from one generation to the next by having the young memorize the oral tradition of their elders had mitigated somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on written records...”[51] At the end of a voluminous work on the Qur’aan’s collection, Burton stated that the text of the Qur’aan available today is “the text which has come down to us in the form in which it was organised and approved by the Prophet...What we have today in our hands is the mushaf[52] of Muhammad.”[53]

Scriptural Criticism

The same principles of analysis which were applied to Bible manuscripts by Bible scholars and which exposed the flaws and changes, have been applied to Qur’aanic manuscripts gathered from around the world. Ancient manuscripts found in the Library of Congress in Washington, the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin, Ireland, the London Museum, as well as Museums in Tashkent, Turkey and Egypt, from all periods of Islamic history, have been compared. The result of all such studies confirm that there has not been any change in the text from its original writing. For example, the “Institute fur Koranforschung” of the University of Munich, Germany, collected and collated over 42,000 complete or incomplete copies of the Qur’aan. After some fifty years of study, they reported that in terms of differences between the various copies, there were no variants, except occasional mistakes of copyists, which could easily be ascertained. The institute was destroyed by American bombs during the Second World War.[54]

Contradictions in the Qur’aan

The Qur’aan remains in itoriginal language, Arabic, and the Qur’aan challenges its readers in Chapter an-Nisaa, (4):82, to find any errors in it, if they do not believe it is really from God.