The Passion of Jesus Son of Mary

The Passion of Jesus: Son of Mary

By Abdur Raheem Green

Opening Invocation and Introduction

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. We seek refuge with Allah from the evil of ourselves and from the evil consequence of our evil actions. Whomsoever Allah guides, there is no one to misguide. And whomsoever Allah leaves to go astray, there is none to guide. And I testify that Allah alone is worthy of worship and that Muhammad, he is Abdullah. That means he is the worshipper of God. And he is Rasulullah, which means that he is the messenger of God. My dear brothers and sisters, may Allah have mercy upon you.

The Purpose of Today's Gathering

Today we have gathered to talk about someone who is very beloved to us and beloved to Allah. And that is our Prophet Isa Ibn Maryam, who is more often known in English as Jesus Christ or Jesus the son of Mary. And we have gathered here today to defend this messenger of God against the lies and the distortions and the blasphemy that has been attributed to him. About which he is absolutely free of those things that people have put in his mouth and have accused him of and have attributed to him. But specifically we want to talk about today one particular aspect. And that is the passion or the so-called passion of Christ.

Understanding the Passion of Christ

By the passion of Christ, we are referring to what is more commonly known as the Eucharist and the crucifixion. For the Roman Catholic, the essence of Christianity is the Eucharist and the crucifixion. And according to the Pauline doctrine, that is the doctrine of a man, some of them called St. Paul, who preached his own unique gospel. A gospel that was not the gospel of Jesus, who the disciples and the apostles knew. But he was a man who claimed to have received his own gospel, his own message from Jesus. That's what he claimed.

And his message was something quite different, as we are going to discover today, from the message of the messenger of God, Isa Ibn Maryam, Jesus the son of Mary. And it has become widely recognized today amongst even non-Muslim scholars, that there is early Christianity and there is Pauline Christianity. And that they are two quite distinct and different things.

The Doctrine of Paul

And that is one of the issues that we want to explore. But the point is, that we want to emphasize, is that Pauline Christianity or the gospel according to Paul, we could say, teaches that he believes in Christ crucified. The essence of the message of Paul is the belief in a crucified Christ. A Christ who is a type of semi-divine being, although Paul himself stops short of attributing complete divinity to Jesus. This is something, as we discover, is

something that is attributed to Jesus over time. But he did attribute to Jesus a type of creative power. He attributed to Jesus a pre-existence along with God. But he did not make Jesus equal with God. Making Jesus God and equal with God is something that happened later.

Even Paul did not go that far. However, his message was a message of a human being who pre-existed with God, who had come to this earth, who had died, who had suffered and who was crucified. And by accepting this sacrifice and by accepting this death and sacrifice of Jesus that was offered up by God, human beings could find salvation. And according to him, this is the only way that human beings could find salvation. By accepting the death and the crucifixion of Jesus as an atonement for the sins. And this is his claim. This is his message.

The True Message of Jesus

Now I believe, as every Muslim believes, and interestingly enough, there are many scholars and many people who also believe that that is not the message of Jesus himself. That is a message attributed to Jesus. And even I remember myself, when I was brought up a Roman Catholic, becoming aware of two completely different characters, we could say. Two different personalities. There was the Jesus I read about in the Gospel.

This is the Jesus who walks and talks and breathes. This is the Jesus who was born. This is the Jesus who was circumcised. This is the Jesus who grew up. This is the Jesus who taught in the temple. This is the Jesus who performed miracles in the name of God and through the power of God. This is the Jesus who made himself clearly different from God. This is the Jesus who spoke and lived and acted as a human being. And this is the Jesus who taught a message.

The message of this Jesus was a message about how to live. How we should relate to God and how we should relate to each other. This is the Jesus who stands and preaches what is called the Beatitudes. A beautiful series of statements where according to the Gospel narrative, Jesus is mentioning about the blessed people. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are just. Blessed are the poor. He is describing characteristics which human beings should acquire and which they should display towards one another.

Jesus Teaching on Worship and Law

When he is approached and when he is questioned about what people should believe, we never find him. We never find him expounding the Trinity. We never find him expounding in detail some mystical belief in a crucified Messiah whose blood sacrifice is going to absolve humanity of their sins. No, when he is being questioned, he talks about worshipping God. He says the sum of the law of the prophets is what? The Trinity? The crucifixion? No, he never talks about that. When he is asked to summarize the whole teaching of the prophets. Moses, Abraham, Jacob, the prophets sent to the children of Israel. He summarized it by saying, you should worship the Lord your God with all your hearts and all your soul and you should love for your neighbor what you love for yourself.

This is a teaching every single Muslim would be absolutely familiar with. Every Muslim would be familiar with this. The rights of God and the rights of the creation. What we give to God is love. What we must give to God is love, but absolute love. Absolute love that requires absolute obedience. As Allah says in the Quran:

"Say: If it is true that you love God, then follow me. And then God will love you."

And in the time of the Prophet Muhammad, there were people, Jews and Christians and idol worshippers also claimed that they loved God. That they loved God. They claimed that. And God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad to say to these people, If it is true that you love God, then follow me. Then follow me. And then God will love you.

The Rich Young Man's Question

There is a very similar thing that happens. An incident that happens that is narrated in the Gospels. A rich young man approaches Jesus and says to Him, Good Master, how shall I gain eternal life? Here it is. A perfect opportunity, you would think, for Jesus to explain to these people the Trinity. A perfect example, you would think, for Jesus to expound the doctrine that He is going to die on the cross for everybody's sins. But what does He say? He doesn't talk about that. When He is asked about eternal life and how to gain eternal life, He says and He expounds and He says to the man, Why do you call me good? There is only one who is truly good and that is God.

Jesus, here, let alone attributing divinity to Himself, denies even that He is good in the way that God is good. There is only one being that is truly good and that is the Creator. Not me. Don't call me good, He is saying. And then He asks him, very important, Have you followed the commandments? Have you followed the commandments? Have you obeyed the laws of God? Have you, as we would say in Islam, have you submitted yourself to the will of God by obeying His laws? And He says, Yes, I have done that since I was a young man. And He says, Well, there is one more thing you have to do and that is you must give up everything you have and follow Me.

If it is true, and Jesus would have said the same thing, as Muhammad ﷺ was told to say by God. As Moses would have told the Bani Israel the same thing. As every prophet would have said to his people, I am the way and I am the truth and I am the light. The only way to God is through me. Every prophet would have said that same thing to his people. We have very similar phrases in the Qur'an.

The Qur'an tells us:

"Verily, the way of life, the way of living with God is Islam."

Whoever chooses a deen and a way other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them. And in the akhirah, in the afterlife, they will be of the losers. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, If anybody comes to hear of me, be he a Jew or a Christian, and does not follow me, he will dwell eternally in the hellfire. So every prophet came and said that now I am the messenger of God, you must follow me. So Jesus is saying to this young man, follow me.

The Core Message of Jesus

So Jesus expounds here according to this tradition, to love God, to worship God alone, and to love for other human beings what you love for yourself. This is the summary of the law of the prophets. Not the crucifixion of a demigod or a man-god, or God became a man to die for the sins. No. To love God, worship Him, obey Him, follow His commandments, and of course, one has to add to that to follow Jesus, because He was the prophet of that time. So this is a message, this is a message that is teaching human beings how to worship God and how to treat each other.

And that was a message that came across to me as I was brought up in the monastic school, reading and studying the Bible. That was the Jesus of history. That was the man that I could imagine and envisage, walking and talking and teaching.

The Jesus of Theology Versus the Jesus of History

But then there was the Jesus of theology. There was the mythological and the theological Jesus. This was a Jesus that was incomprehensible to me. This was a theology that didn't seem to bear any relation to the man that I was reading about, who said some things and did some things. A theology that tells us there is one God. There is the Father who is God, and there is the Son who is God, and there is the Holy Spirit who is God. But they are not three gods, they are one God. As the Christians like to call it, a triune, a triunity. But it's all playing with words.

Because whichever way we look at it, it becomes extremely complex and incomprehensible. It is in fact a mystery, and by definition a mystery is not something that we can understand. Of course the problem comes is where is the authority for this mystery? Where is this mystery explained?

The Struggle of the Children of Israel for Monotheism

The whole course of the Bible that we have in our hands today, the Old Testament, is the struggle of one group of people on the face of this earth for thousands of years of history above all other human beings that we know. And this is why God favored them. They struggled against all the odds, against every nation to be the people who worship the one God, who avoided all forms of idolatry, of worshipping anyone or anything else other than the one God. That they clung to obedience to the commands of God, the laws that God had revealed through which and by which they should live their lives.

And in opposition to that was paganism, the worship of nature, the worship of the stars, the worship of idols, the worship of the man-gods, and of course the obedience and the submission to the kings and the priests of these idols, and the laws and the dictates of human beings. What made the children of Israel stand out above all other nations? That God favored them above all other nations was the fact that they clung to monotheism, the worship of the one God, the true God. Elohim, Yahweh, Allah, Eli. These are some of the names they gave for God in the Hebrew language. Allah is a name for God in Hebrew and Aramaic. It is not a new God that Muhammad ﷺ invented, no.

If we open any Bible in Arabic, we will find God is called Allah. We find if we read the Hebrew, if we read the Aramaic, God is called Allah. It's the Aramaic or Allaha actually, Allaha. So they clung to the worship of only God. For all of this time, of course some people amongst them went astray and some of them were misguided, and then God would send them another prophet and another prophet, and in fact with every generation of them, God always had a messenger to remind them and to teach them and to expound the truth to them. So they were favored in that regard.

The Pagan Mystery Religions at the Time of Jesus

Now I want us to think very carefully. About the many different and diverse religions and beliefs that existed in the time of Jesus. And what we begin to understand is something quite remarkable. If we examine the mythologies that were prevalent at the time, of the various gods and the various pantheon of gods that people in the world worshipped at that time. We have the likes of Apollo, of Hercules, of Dionysus, who were worshipped by the Greeks and the Romans. Of course Mithra was a god that was worshipped by the Persians. Adonis and Artis were worshipped by the Babylonians, Osiris, Isis and Horus by the Egyptians, Baal, Astarte and Tammuz again by the Mesopotamians. And all of these gods had a very similar story. And this is now where it becomes quite fascinating.

All of these gods, if we examine the mythology, the story and the history of these gods, they all shared an almost identical and similar story. First of all, they were all called Mediator, Savior, Healer, Light Bearer, Deliverer. These were the common names of these gods. And their story almost always is orientated around their birth taking place on or around the 25th of December. Of a virgin in a cave. These are all human beings who are gods. So they are man-gods. And often they are the son of a god. And often we find, as in the case of Mithra, for example, they are part of a trinity of gods.

In the case of Mithra, we have Mithra, Sol Invictus and Saturnalias. This is a trinity of gods the Romans in fact invented. And it becomes very important, this particular trinity and this particular belief the Romans had will become very important and we will understand it God willing, in a minute.

The Pagan Birth and Resurrection Cycle

So all of these gods were born on or around the 25th of December. At that time they were defeated or nearly overcome by darkness and the god of the underworld and they were taken into the underworld. But they were

The Easter Resurrection Cycle

Now we find the story goes on. Because at Easter time is the time of full rebirth, the time of resurrection. Again in the western hemisphere, what happens is things start coming back to life. The leaves start appearing on the trees. The birds start laying their eggs. The little bunny rabbits start appearing again. Thus the Easter bunny. Thus the Easter eggs. It is all connected to paganism.

And very often we find, again in these mystery religions, these pagan religions, this God, whether it's Mithra or Osiris or Artis or Dionysus or Hercules, often they are nailed to a tree. Or they are bled. And their blood and their sacrifice, which they sacrifice themselves at this time of Easter, gives life again. And through that the people are delivered, life returns, sins are forgiven and life is renewed. This is pagan mythology.

The Passion of Baal

Now they discovered in about 1903, German excavators, they discovered the story of the passion of the Babylonian Baal. Baal actually is mentioned quite a bit in the Bible. Baal is one of the gods that the children of Israel, the Bani Israel, again and again they seem to keep going to the worship of this Baal. That's why God keeps sending prophets. Because unfortunately very often, some of these people start going astray, they leave the pure monotheism, they leave the pure and true religion that God revealed to Moses and they go astray. That's one of the reasons God sends prophets. Baal is one of these false gods that they feel tempted to worship.

Now they found the passion of Baal on some clay tablets. Of course, by the way, it's also very important to point out that these religions and these gods existed at the time of Jesus and thousands of years before the time of Jesus. They're not imitations of the Christian story. In fact, as we will clearly see, it's the other way round. The so-called passion of Christ is nothing except a pure imitation of the paganism of these gods and these people that they went through. It's exactly verbatim a copy of it. We will find.

Remarkable Similarities Between Baal and the Crucifixion Narrative

So we take the passion of Baal. The mystery of Baal was enacted every year in the spring in places the Baal text incidents are so close to the gospel sequence that one might even wonder if they formed a written source. They include the details of Baal's capture and his trial in the house on the mount. His torture and being led away to death together with a malfactor. Another also charged as a malfactor was set free. The city broke out in torment and fighting. Baal's clothes were carried away. A woman wiped away the blood from the drawn out weapon thrust into his heart. A goddess sought to tend him and a weeping woman came to lament at the gate of burial. He was brought back to life at the spring equinox.

Of course, the early church tried to claim these similarities is that the devil had deceived people concerning the passion of Jesus and that the devil had made the whole passion of Jesus similar and they had made a similar thing for their gods. However, there is a much more convincing explanation. And the more convincing explanation requires us to go back a little bit again to look at some interesting historical points.

Biblical Text and Its Reliability

Now, in my lecture in Sydney, I tried to look at the truth about Jesus from two particular angles. I tried to look at it from the angle of examining whether the biblical text could really act as an authentic source of information about the life of Jesus. And we showed that there are several problems with that. We showed in that lecture that there are several problems with it. The contradictions within the biblical text. Also, the presence of large numbers of other stories of the life of Jesus that did not agree with the one that is present in the Bible. And that we also showed that the present day biblical text is something that was chosen by one particular sect and one particular group and one particular mentality within Christianity. And these texts were chosen because it agreed with their idea.

In fact, the gospel writers themselves confessed that why did we choose these events? Why did we choose these things? As Luke, for example, confesses to Theophilus that many people have written accounts and many people have said different things. But I chose these things because it seemed good to me. And the reason why is because it testified to their concept that Jesus was the Son of God and that the whole concept of Christ crucified being the essential gospel. Pauline Christianity essentially.

The Q Source Discovery

However, what we find is something very more interesting which I didn't discuss in the former lecture and this is something, one letter Q. Now anyone who has studied a little bit about biblical scholarship will know and understand what Q is. Q actually is short for the German word Quelle and the German word Quelle means source. A very interesting thing happened when some biblical scholars, Protestant biblical scholars started examining the gospels. They found that Matthew and Luke contained a lot of parallel information. In fact, a large number of sayings were almost identical and similar.

Yet this information was not in Mark. Although they generally agree that Mark, in fact, is the oldest of the gospels. So they tried to think from where did Matthew and Luke get this information? Where were they getting this information? And they realized that Matthew and Luke must have had a common source. They must have had a common source. Some bit of information, some tradition, some writings that they were both referring to.

The Significance of the Q Source

And the very interesting thing is that all the similarities between Matthew and Luke are all sayings of Jesus. This is important. It's important because there were no events described. There were no things about what Jesus did and where He went. Particularly in this common source document there is nothing in the common source

document about the crucifixion, the passion. And that, for a minute, for quite a while in biblical scholarship, it didn't mean anything. They didn't really think about it until they discovered a gospel according to Thomas.

They discovered the gospel of Thomas. That was a gospel that was used and has been used by the Egyptian Coptic Church for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And this gospel of Thomas was also a gospel that is what they call a sayings gospel. In other words, all it contained were sayings. Jesus said this and Jesus said that and He said this and He said that. Nothing about what He did. It's all about just what He said.

Revolutionary Implications of the Sayings Gospel

Now that had absolutely mind-boggling and devastating implications because what it meant is there is a whole tradition in early Christianity to whom the death and crucifixion of Jesus meant nothing. It was not even considered to be important. What was important for them is what Jesus said and what Jesus taught. And He didn't say and didn't teach anything about the passion. He didn't say and teach anything about the crucifixion. He taught what I was talking about before:

The rights of God, the rights of the creation. How we should worship God, how we should treat one another. It was a sayings gospel.

Now that of course calls into question the whole presumption that Christianity from day one was this religion that believed in a Christ crucified who had come to save humanity through His death. Rather, it seems clear that early Christians considered what Christ said and what He taught about how to live really important. Whether He died and was crucified or not was almost totally irrelevant. And that means that the whole idea of God becoming a man, the whole idea of a sacrifice for the sins of humanity, the whole idea of the resurrection is unnecessary. It is not relevant to what Jesus really said and what He taught.

Yet that's the whole foundation of Pauline Christianity and that's what we generally today call Christianity.

How Did This Corruption Come About?

Now how did this come about? How did this come about? How did we get this fusion and confusion taking place? Well, to tell you the truth, it is almost impossible for us to come to a definite and definitive understanding how. However, as Muslims, we find the Quran gives us some tantalizing glimpses into how this took place. We find the Quran mentions some things about Jesus, about the false concepts and lies that were attributed to Him and how these things came about.

For example, the Quran pleads, it appeals to the Christians, it says to the Christians, O people of the book, O Christians and Jews, don't exaggerate. Don't go over the bounds in your religion. Don't speak about God anything except the truth. So the first hint we have, the first hint that we have is that exaggeration, exaggeration.

This is one of the ways that this change and this perversion and this corruption came about through exaggeration.

The Prophet's Warning Against Exaggeration

And we have another hint. When the Prophet Muhammad, he said to the Muslims, do not exaggerate in praising me as the Christians exaggerated in praising Jesus. I am Abdullah and I am Rasulullah. I am the worshipper of God and I am the messenger of God. So this is another clue. Don't exaggerate in praising me. So this is another clue that one of the ways this happens is an exaggeration in praising.

Another thing that the Quran talks about is that in calling someone a son of God, the Quran tells us that they imitate the saying of the pagans of old. In other words, calling someone a son of God is an imitation of the language and the usage and the concepts of paganism. And so this is another thing that took place, imitating paganism, an imitation of the ways of the pagans. So exaggeration, imitation of the disbelievers and the idol worshippers, along with that corruption of the scriptures, and along with that evil intentions of some people amongst the Jews who wanted to humiliate and defeat and be away with Jesus.

The Jewish Plot Against Jesus

Because that was one of their characteristics that we found. They displayed sometimes, not all the time, but they used to, if they found a prophet came to them with something they didn't like, they would try to kill that prophet. Jesus was one of those people. He came with a message they didn't want to hear. He came telling them something they didn't like it. So what did they try to do? They tried to kill Him. Now why? We will find out. There is one particular death that they wanted for Jesus and one particular death only. And that particular death was crucifixion. And this becomes very interesting.

The Condition of the Believers in Occupied Palestine

So now if we go back and we look and we imagine. Imagine Israel. Very interesting. In fact, brothers and sisters, if you study, if you get into studying this very deeply, you will be absolutely amazed at the similarities between the condition of the Muslims today and the condition of the Muslims then. And who were the Muslims then? The Jews. They were the Muslims then. They were the believers. They were the followers of the prophets. They were the Muslims. Jesus peace be upon him was a Muslim. His religion was Islam and his followers were Muslims. And what do we find? An amazingly similar situation.

Just as we find our lands are occupied by our enemies who want to implement the laws of disbelief, the ways of democracy, the inventions of human beings and they are forcing us to abandon the laws of Allah. For example, the recent constitution that has been drawn up in Iraq says that the religion of Iraq is Islam but the laws of Iraq are not going to be taken from Islam. Of course, every Muslim who understands what Islam is knows this is just pure kufr. It's pure disbelief because God is the sovereign and every Muslim has to rule according to the laws of