In answer to the video "Paul Won Converts Through Peaceful Preaching; Muhammad Used Bribes and Threats (PvM 17)"
Paul was spending all day in his writings trying to gain credibility as seen in the Epistles, saying he was equal to, if not greater, than the Apostles of Jesus and making statements such as even if angels were to come down, and they said differently than what he was preaching, not the believe the angel.
That is in stark contrast with the Paul described in Acts, supposedly written by his disciple Luke, where he is more of a team player, subordinated to the early apostles of Jesus.
And yet the man never once met Jesus in his life, and here he was coming to those that knew and followed him, telling them they were all wrong the whole time. He never even quotes him once in any of his writings, doesnt show any knowledge about the historical Jesus at all. He was all for the assimilation of the Gentiles into the Judaic faith, and the Jews compromising on their faith as opposed to the other way around. Thus, his focus on grace as opposed to law. He asserts his authority before the Greek people, but never to the community in Jerusalem, and more particularly James, Jesus' brother. James' approval was necessary for anyone claiming to preach Jesus' teachings as explicitly stated in the church-rejected Pseudo-Clementine chapter 4 and implicitly alluded to by Paul in 2Cor3:1-6,1 Cor9:2,Gal1:20-24. He sharply disagrees with James and what Jesus taught when he preached salvation through faith alone Rom3:30. James, like all prophets of the scriptures, repeated the basic principle that faith and deeds go hand in hand and that one without the other is useless James2:19-22. So important are the good deeds for one's salvation in the Hereafter that the prophets prayed God to remember these deeds for the final judgement Neh13:14.
Paul's authority was constantly challenged, not only by Christians but by Jews whom he went seeking in their synagogues. In Acts21, Paul is asked to partake in the Nazirite purification sacrifice to prove he was still "kosher". After all he is the one to have instaured the deceptive missionary modus operandi (Jew to a Jew, gentile to a gentile etc). This challenge to Paul shows something important, Jesus' earliest followers were still practicing sacrifices after Jesus' death and never believed Jesus abolished the mosaic law, much less the sacrificial system. Why would he, when the HB to which he abided to the letter, explicitly says that all the mosaic law including animal sacrifices will be reinstated once the 3rd temple is built.
As to the Christians that challenged him, he accused them, more particularly Jesus' disciples and apostles of being false and deceitful 2Cor11:13-15, sarcastically said they "seemed to be pillars" of the church Gal2:9, even cursed them Gal5:12. It took 3 angelic apearances to confirm and justify Paul's abrogation of the mosaic dietary laws and others laws, to Jesus' early disciples.
Peter reconsidered his firm stance on abiding by these laws, when he was eventually convinced that abrogating dietary laws like not eating pork would result in Romans being saved from Hell. If Jesus' message was what Paul said it was the entire time, why did it take a vision, reinforced repeatedly, for Peter to do something that Jesus had allegedly already instructed him to do? Sometimes Christians try finding justification for Paul's dietary reforms in Jesus' saying
Mk7:14-19"There is nothing that goes into a person from the outside which can make him ritually unclean. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean...Nothing that goes into a person from outside can really make him unclean, because it does not go into his heart but into his stomach and then goes on out of the body".If all food is good for consumption regardless of pre meal rituals because it merely enters stomach and not the heart then why are James and Paul himself so concerned about food offered to idols Acts15,1Cor10? Jesus here wasnt denying the law, rather infusing it with a much needed spiritual dimension, as he applied himself to do all throughout his career. Similarily, the sabbath, whose transgression is punishable by death according to the Law upheld by Jesus, became a matter of free choice with no consequence Col2:16-17,Rom14:4 thus easing the way further for any potential converts.
Paul, who was at most a hellenezied Jew, was explaining Jesus teachings in ways that were unheard of by Jesus' disciples. Paul's letters were written about AD 50-60, while the Gospels were not written until 60-90 meaning Paul's theories were already established before the unknown writers of the gospels started their works and earlier christian thought was quickly branded heretical.
After Jesus' death, Paul's main problem was to convince his Jewish audience that the messiah's death, without accomplishing any of the messianic criteria, instead of being a failure was actually a necessity. He did so by introducing the doctrine of total depravity, making all humans de facto sinners and therefore in need of an atoning sacrifice Rom7:14-25,Rom3:10-11,5:13,8:7-8,1Cor2:14,Eph2:1-3,Titus3:3. His addressees however already believed in the resurrection of the dead, in a just God who forgave the sins of a penitent heart. Nothing was missing in their system that Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection could fix. Paul's redeeming hero was a redundancy to them, so he was obviously met with fierce resistence wherever he preached his unscriptural ideas. This led him to eventually turn to the gentiles among whom he found a much more favorable audience.
Paul's major tenet is that man is a slave to sin, cannot reach holiness by his actions, and must be "saved" from inherent damnation. One by his own will cannot choose to turn to God unless by God's grace. The doctrine was further developped by Augustine of Hippo but some righteous early christians objected and were quickly branded as heretical. Among Augustine's powerful arguments was that human depravity could be demonstrated by the "involuntariness" of the male erection. This base impulse belonged to nature, or the flesh, not to the spirit. In his logic, because of man's uncontrolable urges, it was women who had to be constrained. Tertullian taught when a parent sinned, this physical taint of the soul was passed on to children.
Paul applied himself to give everyone a reason to reconsider Jesus’ death, now turned into a suicide missionplaned since the beginning of creation. But the cursed law of Moses stood in his way. If one could find salvation through obedience to the law, as all past prophets including Jesus taught, then it would make Jesus' supposedly purposeful sacrifice redundant
Gal2:21"If righteousness come by law, Christ is dead in vain".
But how about Jesus, what did he think of the law of Moses.
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.
As regards Matt26:28 and elsewhere where it is believed Jesus declared the ushering of a "new" covenant
"This is my blood of the new covenant",some manuscripts have "new" others dont and even if we go with the former translations, there is still the problem of Jesus allegedly ushering in a new covenant yet he specifically told his followers to abide by the Law or what Paul refered to as the Old covenant, which Jesus called "the way" and upheld to the letter. Where did Jesus say the Law of Moses would become "old" and needed to be abandonned subsequently to his alleged sacrifice?
In fact, we find in the Gospels Jesus invoking the Torah when arguing with the religious elite because Jesus' mission was exposing the Pharisees for their hypocritical and rigid application of the Torah, not to abolish it. He gives the example of David who worked on the Sabbath, driven by necessity to eat food Matt12:1-8,1Sam21:1-6. He was this way upholding the spirit of the Law because saving a life is lawful on the Sabbath per the Torah Mk3:4 hence his quoting from
Hosea6:6"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice".The Rabbis knew and understood this, that is why they couldn't answer as there was no violation of the Law. Similarly when he was accused of breaking the Sabbath because he healed the sick, what he was actually doing once again is exposing their rigid and soulless outlook of the religion. He took advantage of that situation to infuse the law with its lost wisdom. He showed them the Torah itself allowed circumsising or caring for an animal on a sabbath, then what to say of helping a suffering human being Matt12:9-13,Jn7:23-4,Lk13:10-17,Mk3:1-6. By breaking it he was doing what he "sees" the Father doing, sustaining His creation at all times. Jesus, the most knowledgeable person among his contemporaries in religious law further told his Jewish audience that he was in this way working together with God. As correctly understood by the faithfull blind man who was cured on Sabbath, this action did not make Jesus a sinner nor a blasphemer as his enemies among the Jews accused him, but rather a true prophet Jn11:11-33. Yet even to this day, the Talmudic "sages" whose legalistic deductions are viewed as God-given still hold that
“one does not assist a gentile woman in childbirth on the Sabbath” (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 330:2).The Quran accurately sums up Jesus' mission as such
3:50"And a verifier of that which is before me of the Torah and that I may allow you part of that which has been forbidden to you".Jesus verified the truth remaining in the past scriptures, relieved the bani Israel of some of the things forbidden to them through the soulless and far fetched conjectures of their rabbis. That is what Jesus meant when he told his disciples that they must practice and teach these laws to the letter while surpassing the "righteousness" of the Pharisees, meaning they must practice the body and soul of the law not only the body as they did
"whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven".Per the Quran, the divine mercy is such that when it is absolutely necessary for survival, or in circumstances beyond one's control, there is no blame if one transgresses temporarily. But in all cases -normal or extraordinary- the spirit of the divine law must be kept in mind. This is demonstrated in 2:173-7 where in the context of mentionning the forbidden foods, the Quran reminds that distorting what God has revealed and profiting from it, ie not acting accordingly is equal to consumming fire.
The Quran further says that the essence of religion is faith in God and benevolence towards men
"It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteousness is this that one should believe in Allah and the last day and the angels and the Book and the prophets, and give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for (the emancipation of) the captives, and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate; and the performers of their promise when they make a promise, and the patient in distress and affliction and in time of conflicts-- these are they who are true (to themselves) and these are they who guard (against evil)".
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