Thursday, April 2, 2020

Acts17apologetics find banal, down to earth truth; Jesus' purpose?

In answer to the video "The Significance of Jesus' Resurrection"

Jesus' purpose, in addition to claryfing the issue of afterlife to the Jews, as shown in a previous post, was to allow some of the things that were forbidden to them through the traditions of men 3:50,5:46,(NT Matt15,23).  HE was the most qualified to do so, through his inspired knowledge
3:48"And Allah will teach him the Book and Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel".
That is why he applied himself to turning their attention away from their oral man-made traditions to the true divine source, the Torah which he claimed to uphold and fulfill to the letter Matt5:17-20. In that passage, the "Law and the Prophets" was a regular expression Jews of Jesus' day used in reference to the entire HB Matt7:12,22:40,Acts24:14,28:23,Rom3:21.

The fulfillement of the Torah refers to the revival of its spirit, which the Jews had neglected by focusing more on baseless rituals, and issuing ever new conjectured complications to those rituals, attributing their origins to the revealed Oral Torah/Talmud. These additions had distorted Moses' religion beyond recognition Mk7:7. Humans, because of their very nature as volitional creatures are bound to differ in almost every aspect of life, as stated elsewhere in the Quran. This isnt necessarily an evil, however the only sphere in which they should not contend but rather unite are the original and clear tenets of the religion. The innovations of the Jews in that area inevitably caused dissension among them and Jesus came to unite them by clarifying their misunderstandings and/or deliberate distortions
43:63"And when Isa came with clear arguments he said: I have come to you indeed with wisdom, and that I may make clear to you part of what you differ in; so be careful of (your duty to) Allah and obey me".
Jesus wasnt an all-knowing being charged with resolving every conflict, his function wasnt to unify them in every aspect of life, but only in the relevant religious matters hence the statement in the verse
"part of what you differ in".
The Quran here again, as it does in countless places, demonstrates its surgical precision in its meaningful choice of every word and to further corroborate, when God the all-knowing best of judges swift in reckoning will resurrect and gather the people, He shall judge between them in all that which they differed
39:46"Say: O Allah, Originator of the heavens and the earth, Knower of the unseen and the seen! Thou (only) judgest between Thy servants as to that wherein they differ".
What is very revealing and that most Christians are oblivious of, is that after the councils of Hippo and Cartage in the end of the 4th century where 27 books were finally canonized as NT scriptures, one would expect the Church to want its adherents to get to know the official books of the Church. Especially when there were many non-canonical books in circulation, competing sects and heresies. And yet this is absolutely not what happened. Not only were the people discouraged from reading the Bible on their own, but translations into native languages were prohibited (Council of Toulouse 1229, Tarragona 1234, Constance 1415), forcing translation efforts to go underground. Some were burned for doing so (Tyndale 1536). With the proliferation of unreliable versions, the church athorities had no choice but to begin an effort of official translations, especially done in the monasteries. Two main reasons motivated this concealment by the Church. First to maintain their own aura of elitism. Among the reasons Martin Luther was persecuted in the 1500s was because of his translation, giving the lowly folk access to the "lofty" Bible.

Compare this to the early efforts of the Quran compilers just 10 years following the prophet Muhammad's death, to spread copies of the book in scripts that would unlock the primitive consonantal structure of the text.

The second and most important reason for the Church's reluctance to make its canon accessible to the commoner, was to prevent Christians from finding out about Jesus' purely Jewish environement, teachings, legacy, as well as the Jewishness of his followers, prior to Paul's appearance on the scene. Despite all of Paul's missionary activities, early Jewish converts to Christianity still worshiped in synagogues until the late 4th century (Homilies against Jews by Chrysostom). The dominant Pauline Church wanted and needed to break with Jesus and his early followers' Jewish heritage. Something that would have been impossible to do as early on in the history of Christianity where the traditions transmitted by the original cluster of Jewish sects claiming descendency from Jesus and his followers, were still known. Instead the church presented limited editions to the people, they could not show the full version because the Gospel writers didnt and couldnt erase Judaism from Jesus' ministry. They couldnt do it, because it would have made Jesus contextually irrelevant, as if appearing in a vacuum.

Through a concise statement, the Quran explains the mutual relationship between the Torah and the Gospel; they complete one another by centering the attention on the wisdom and spirit of every aspect of God's Laws so that they do not end up as something lifeless and burdensome for the people
3:48-50"And He will teach him the Book and the wisdom and the Tawrat and the Injeel..And a verifier of that which is before me of the Taurat and that I may allow you part of that which has been forbidden to you, and I have come to you with a sign from your Lord therefore be careful of (your duty to) Allah and obey me".
By the beginning of the 1st century Judaism was a sterile, lifeless organism, waiting to be infused with a spirituality that only Jesus could provide.

Jesus repeatedly condemned those traditions in the NT, denounced the Jews and their leaders as "hypocrites" and told the people to beware of these "teachers of law" for their soulless traditions, and "children of the Devil" because of their claim of inherited righteousness through their affiliation to Abraham Jn8:37-44.

Not in one single instance within the whole NT is it reported that Jesus said that the law of Moses needs to be abandoned, contrary to Paul who besides stating it was a curse Gal3:13 given not by God but by angels Gal3:19-25,Heb2:2 declared it obsolete Rom3:20,7:4,10:4,Heb8:13,Gal2:21,3:23-25,4:21-31,5:1,Eph2:15 even describing his former Jewish beliefs as worthless, rejecting his former Jewishness by warning of Jewish dogs saying in the original Greek
Phil3:2-8"I consider them excrement".
He told people he was seeking to convert that they were now under the vague 'law of Christ'. Jesus himself never alludes to such law, hence it being unknown to any of those who met and followed him and respected all Jewish laws to the letter as per his actual instructions. That law of christ, tailored so as to apeal to Paul's mainly pagan audience, has removed the old burden from mankind 1Corin9:21,Gal6:2. He sometimes paid lip service to the Law if the situation or audience required a show of obedience to the law Acts21:20-26 but immidiately denounced the likes of James and Peter for telling the Gentiles to follow the law Gal2, evidently because it attracted less converts.

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