Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Islam critiqued seeks the path of the nazarenes; what is Jesus' way?

In answer to the video "Answering Muslims: Jesus and the "Lost Sheep of Israel"

"The way" of Jesus Jn14:6 is outlined in Lk10:25-28 where he commands strict observance of Jewish laws. In that passage from Luke he is asked about the conditions of salvation and the questionner quotes from 2 passages. The first is Lev19 which details certains laws like the observence of the sabbath and admonishes to
"Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD".
The 2nd passage quoted by the questionner is the second is Deut6 which speaks of loving the One God and obeying His commandements
"keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight..obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness".
As one can clearly see, one is justified before God, not by faith alone but by deeds too. Consequently the Nazarenes, Jesus' early group of small band of followers, observed all Jewish customs outlined in the Torah but differed from Jews in that they recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The Nazarenes grew among the Israelites but persecutions forced them to go into hiding, with Paul playing a central role in their persecution prior to his convertion. After he joined their ranks, he started influencing the group leaders, namely Peter and James, to reach out to Gentiles. With more non-Jews entering the fold, many Jewish customs were abandonned Acts15:1-29 and the Nazarenes who were centered in Jerusalem gradually became isolated.

The main Christian movement started looking up to Paul for leadership, instead of Jesus' brother James, a strict observer of Jewish Law and considered as Jesus' successor in non-canonical Gospels. With the establishment of Christianity as a state religion in Rome by Constantine in the 4th century, this small original band definetly fled Jerusalem, in the surrounding deserts and managed to survive outside Palestine as they are mentionned by Jerome upto 380AD to have lived in the Syrian desert. Among them the Ebionites (who claimed to descend from the original Jewish disciples led by James) and Elchasites who rejected Paul as a charlatan and his teachings as falsehood, as well as the Zadokites, Essenes, Rechabites, Sabeans, Mandaeans etc.

They had their own writing which they considered scripture, composed of an oral tradition attributed to Jesus, and some HB books. Their writings are known, among others as Gospel of the Nazareans, Gospel of the Hebrews and Gospel of the Ebionites.

They would later write that Paul was a false apostle who taught heresy based on the fact he was a failed convert who was disappointed with Judaism and therefore motivated to teach against its laws (circumcision, kashrut, etc..). Unfortunately the group that opposed them and their practices gained more converts, obviously as it appealed much more to non-Jews, more particularily the hellenized Romans and Greeks.

The Nazarenes and similar groups were inevitably marginalised while the more and more dominant groups decided what the Church’s organizational structure would be, as well as its official creeds, or which books would be accepted as Scripture. The group that became "orthodox", further sealed its victory, by the pens of early writers like Iraeneus Justin Martyr and Tertullian, claiming that it had always been the majority opinion of Christianity, Jesus and his apostles.

As a final note, the Church father Eusebius (260-340), Bishop of Caesarea, quotes many bible verses in his "Ecclesiastical History" among them the great commission passage of Matt28:19 quoted more than once and never appears like in modern bibles but rather:
“Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name” (Book III,History,Chap5,Sec2&Oration in Praise of Emperor Constantine,Chap16,Sec8).
He was involved in debates with the Arians on whether Jesus was God or His creation and if the manuscripts he had in front of him read "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" he would have used that argument in his favor, no matter how weak the argument is in favor of the trinity doctrine, and never quoted it as simply "in my name". This observation is often discarded as mere argument from silence by Trinitarian apologists, but it certainly is a strong and compelling one simply because Eusebius would certainly have known about it had it been a fact and would therefore under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it.

His grossly biased work, he wrote it when he had access to the Theological Library of Caesarea and made use of many ecclesiastical monuments and documents, acts of the martyrs, letters, extracts from earlier Christian writings, lists of bishops, and similar sources, often quoting the originals at great length so that his work contains materials not elsewhere preserved.

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