On the Crucifixion -
I was asked a question by a Christian apologist regarding my views on the crucifixion, the following was my response:
I believe that Christians made it appear as if Christ was crucified through their stories and eventually in the Gospel traditions. Allow me to quote Gunnar Samuelsson here, who writes in his "Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background and Significance of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion", the following:
"Concise - and very uninformative. Mark's account is remarkably silent on the theme of the punishment method. Matthew's words are fairly close to Mark." (p. 246)
In continuing from the above quote, he goes on to state:
"The other gospels are no exception."
Later, he says:
"The New Testament authors are strikingly silent about the punishment Jesus had to suffer on Calvary. The vivid pictures
of the death of Jesus in the theology and art of the church - and among scholars - do not have their main source here. Perhaps crucifixion as it is known today did not even come into being on Calvary, but in the Christian interpretation of the event." (p. 304)
of the death of Jesus in the theology and art of the church - and among scholars - do not have their main source here. Perhaps crucifixion as it is known today did not even come into being on Calvary, but in the Christian interpretation of the event." (p. 304)
Finally he quotes Raymond Brown who says:
"We now come to the centerpiece of passion, the crucifixion itself, more often portrayed in art than any other scene in history - with great variation in the shape and position of the crosses, in how Jesus is affixed to the cross, in how he is clothed, in his expressions of anguish, etc. Yet in all comparable literature, has so crucial a moment ever been phrased so briefly and uninformatively?" (p. 247)
This is where proper exegesis of Qur'an 4:157 needs to be done, for it says:
"and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to appear so."
The Qur'an does not say *Allah made it appear so*, rather that it merely says it was made to appear in this way but not by whom. In this case, given my studies of the New Testament, I hold the view that the New Testament authors made it appear so through development of their tradition. This is what scholars would refer to as "myth-making", much like popular hagiographies of that time (see Dr. Moss).
"Even those who argue for this ˹crucifixion˺ are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever—only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him."
I would say the quotes above and the insufficient textual exemplars for the Gospel tradition affirm in great part what the Qur'an teaches on this issue.
Not all Christians believed Christ died, or was crucified himself as Epiphanius' Panarion teaches. Allow me to quote Dale C. Allison Jr. on my perspective (he is not writing on the crucifixion here):
"Even more clear-eyed was Origen, who in the third century anticipated modern criticism by candidly observing that at “many points” the four Gospels “do not agree.” He inferred that their truth cannot reside in “the material letter:” The Evangelists “sometimes altered things which, from the eye of history, occurred otherwise.” They could “speak of something thing that happened in one place as if it had happened in another, or of what happened at a certain time as if it had happened at another time,” and they introduced “into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own.” “The spiritual truth was often preserved, one might say, in the material falsehood.”
Source: Allison, Dale C., Jr.. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Kindle Locations 42-46). Kindle Edition.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق