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What the Gospels Are, and What they are Not
By Author Eli of Kittim
Some of my readers have not fully understood my position regarding the gospels because they have not read my book, and therefore do not know the extent of these teachings. As a result, they have voiced their disagreement with my position. But in order to conclusively reject my view on the grounds that it fails to be supported by scripture, certain criteria must be met. However, based on some of my debates, their initial grounds for dismissal are often based on erroneous premises, such as tradition or dogma, conjecture and hearsay. At any rate, whatever it is that they think of my view is patently wrong because they haven’t yet grasped the gist of it. For example, I never said or implied that the gospels are made up stories, or that they were invented or manufactured by the writers themselves. Never was I so bold as to say that the gospels are superstitious myths, or the work of pure fiction with no basis in reality. If this is what some of my readers think, they couldn’t be further from the truth.
So, in my defense, let me explain what the gospels are, and what they are not.
1) I believe that the Gospels were verbally inspired by God (known as “Verbal Plenary Inspiration”). This means that every word of the gospels is God-given (“Plenary” means that the gospels are therefore fully authoritative). A side note: This means that it's not just the gospels, but scripture as a whole is authoritative over tradition or dogma. It means that all church tradition must be subordinated to the authority of Scripture. One of those dogmas that we inherited from the church was that the story of Christ happened in history (presumably from their literal interpretation of the gospels). But unless we check it against scripture, we will never know the validity of this dogma.
2) I also believe that in order to form valid conclusions, we must cross-reference between the gospels and the epistles to make sure that the account of Jesus is the same in all these texts and does not vary or present any major problems, especially with regard to chronology (i.e. the timing of his coming). A side note: When we engage in this type of study, certain things become immediately evident:
a) the authors of the Epistles do not mention a lot of the gospel material. For instance, they never once mention the birth narrative of Jesus, the virgin birth, the Flight into Egypt, the Star of Bethlehem, the magi, or even the city of Bethlehem as Jesus’ birth place. Now, that should raise some red flags.
b) In some cases, the authors of the Epistles seemingly contradict the gospels (I say “seemingly” because they don’t really contradict them, it only appears as such from our particular viewpoint) because they allude to Christ’s revelation as occurring “once at the consummation of the ages” (Heb.9:26), or in the “last days” (Heb. 1:1-2), so that the correct timing of Christ’s coming suddenly becomes an open question!
3) Even within the gospel texts themselves, we find language that seems more consistent with the epistles than with the church’s dogma (remember that in all of this, our dispute is not with the gospels per se, but rather with the “interpretation” of the gospels as put forth by church tradition). In the gospel of Luke, there is some indication that the suffering and rejection of Christ is ascribed not to the present, but to a future generation:
“Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He [Jesus] answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; … The days shall come [centuries will pass] when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man and you will not see it. … For just as the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day. BUT FIRST HE MUST SUFFER MANY THINGS AND BE REJECTED BY THIS [implied, future] GENERATION. And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it shall be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, … until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all’” (17:20-27, emphasis added).
During his discourse on the end of days, Jesus promulgates a prophecy which most scholars attribute to his second coming: “For just as the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day” (Luke 17:24). What is surprising, however, is that this prophecy is then expanded by a most intriguing appendage to the previous verse: “But first He must suffer many things” (17:25). In other words, while “the literary Jesus” is predicting his supposed second coming, according to the common view, this terse statement shockingly reveals that his incarnation must necessarily precede his coming from the sky! And since the entire prophecy is set in the future, the sentence pertaining to Christ’s suffering and rejection “by this [chronologically implied] generation” cannot possibly be understood in any other context except as a reference to a future event. Otherwise we would be dislocating this sentence from the end times setting of the prophecy, thus creating a bizarre anachronism. After all, Jesus prophesies that a long time will pass before we behold “the Son of Man” (Luke 17:22), an idiomatic phrase that is deeply tied to his incarnation (Ps. 8:4; Matt. 9:6; 17:9; 24:44; Gal. 4:4). In fact, Luke goes on to say that Jesus will be initially revealed ("ἀποκαλύπτεται" in Greek) in the last days:
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. ... It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed" (Luke 17:26-30).
Now, let’s compare that passage with one from the epistles. Notice that 1 Peter 1:7 exhorts us to have faith so that we are ready “at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” which is “revealed in the last days” (1 Peter 1:5), and then Peter declares categorically and unequivocally that “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” that would follow are really prophecies or “predictions”:
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he PREDICTED the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” (1 Peter 1:10-11, emphasis added, ESV).
4) To shed some light to this apparent controversy, we must also consult the Old Testament. But wherever we look there, we find one prophecy after another that seems to support the epistolary view of Jesus rather than the historical view of the gospels. Zephaniah 1:7, Daniel 12:1-2, Zechariah 12:9-10, and Isaiah 2:19 all place the death and resurrection of the Messiah at “the end of time” (Dan. 12:4). It is not a coincidence that Rabbinical scholars, steeped in Hebrew Scripture, also conclude that, according to their writings, the Messiah will appear once in the last days!
5) There are also literary and historical considerations. We now know that the gospels were written approximately 40-70 years after the purported events, which would indicate that they do not contain eyewitness reports, something the early church was not privy to during the formation of their dogma. Therefore, most of the evidence seems to confirm the epistolary view of Jesus, and the only thing standing in its way from being unanimous is the church’s dogma, which is a thorn in its side because it also creates all of the apparent biblical confusion that is expressed through various diametrically opposed views, such as Preterism versus Futurism, and the like.
Conclusion
Therefore, based on these findings, we must rightly conclude that although the gospels are the word of God, nevertheless, their purpose and function within the New Testament cannot be to give us a literal interpretation of history. After all, the Bible is not a book on science or history, but a book of faith! And if the gospels are the word of God—giving us an outline of the life of Christ within the context of the entire history of mankind, not just past history—then they must be theological documents that give us a glimpse of Jesus’ future history through theological language that imparts instruction into the meanings of salvation, the Messiah, and the nature of God. In other words, the gospels are a mixed bag of theology, history (history written in advance; cf. Isa. 46:10), and prophecy!
The Quran: Revelation or Forgery?
By Goodreads Author Eli Kittim
——-
Did Muhammad Exist?
Before we embark on a brief criticism of the Quran, it’s important to note that there is “very little biographical information” (Wiki) concerning the historicity of its founder, Muhammad:
Attempts to distinguish between the
historical elements and the unhistorical
elements of many of the reports of
Muhammad have not been very successful
(Wiki).
(see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Muhammad#Views_of_secular_historians).
Of course, this opens up the possibility of whether or not the unknown author of the Quran invented the Muhammad tradition to bolster his credibility. In order to determine the answer to this question, it is crucial to consider the evidence of *intertextuality* in the Quran, that is to say, the literary dependence of the Quran on earlier texts and sources.
——-
How historically reliable is the Quran?
Firstly, with regard to source criticism——that is, the sources that the Quran’s message is derived from——there are some very serious issues involved. For example, there are well-known parallelisms between the Quran and the extra-biblical, non-inspired book of Talmud (e.g. Surah 5:32; cf. Sanhedrin 37a) as well as borrowing from Christian apocryphal works that were written hundreds of years after the purported events and which claim to be legitimate Christian gospels but are not. Case in point, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas:
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is thought to
be Gnostic in origin. . . . Early Christians
regarded the Infancy Gospel of Thomas as
inauthentic and heretical. Hippolytus
identified it as a fake and a heresy in his
Refutation of All Heresies, and his
contemporary Origen referred to it in a
similar way in a homily written in the early
third century. Eusebius rejected it as a
heretical ‘fiction’ in the third book of his
fourth-century Church History, and Pope
Gelasius I included it in his list of heretical
books in the fifth century. While non-
canonical in Christianity, the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas contains many miracles and
stories of Jesus referenced in the Qur'an,
such as Jesus giving life to clay birds (Wiki).
So, the Quran clearly employs Jewish and Christian apocryphal works that were never accepted as canonical or as “inspired” either by Jews or Christians. Thus, at least some of the sources of the Quran are highly dubious.
Secondly, in 632 CE, following Muhammad’s death, the Battle of Yamama ensued where a great number of those who had supposedly retained the Quran in their memory (hafiz) actually died. How then can Muslims claim the preservation of the Quran through memory and oral transmission?
Thirdly, the New Testament is the best attested book from the ancient world as well as the most scrutinized book in history, and one which has a critical edition. By contrast, the Quran has not been critically scrutinized rigorously in the same manner, nor does it have a critical edition, nor is the manuscript evidence made available to scholars for serious study. There’s a secrecy surrounding it that seems to prevent scholarly investigations. For example, because it lacks a critical edition, there are no footnotes in the Quran to notify the reader about manuscript evidence or textual discrepancies or omissions, such that “(some verses eaten by a goat; Ibn Majah, Book of Nikah, p.39) or that (Umar records the missing verses; Bukhari 8.82.816 & 817).
Fourthly, Orientalists have often questioned the historical authenticity of the Quran by charging Uthman ibn Affan (the 3rd Caliph of Islam) of consigning variant copies of the Quran to the flames during his reign.
Fifthly, the controlled transmission of the Quran makes it impossible to know what was the original. Hence its textual integrity is seriously compromised. By contrast, in the case of the New Testament, for example, since no one person controlled all the manuscripts, it would be impossible to uniformly corrupt all the documents. In the case of the Quran, however, the text was in fact controlled by one person, the khalifa, as attested by Uthman's authority to recall and uniformly revise all the manuscripts. Therefore, it would have been extremely easy for the Quran to have been uniformly corrupted in a textually undetectable manner. For example, the “Sanaa manuscript,” which contains earlier developments of the Quran, demonstrates textual variances that diverge from the Uthman copy.
In conclusion, the Quran doesn’t allow us to come any closer to the original text than the Uthmanic Revised Standard Version 20 years removed from Muhammad. Any errors which found their way into the URSV would be permanent and uncorrectable. And, unfortunately, historical accounts from early Islam tell us that such errors existed!
——-
The Quran is Based on Dubious Sources
Besides the numerous and traceable Judeo-Christian apocryphal works that the author used within the Quran itself, he also got a lot of his ideas from a group that was an offshoot of the Ebionites called the “Sabians,” variously known as Mandaeans or Elcesaites. The Sabians followed Hermeticism and adored John the Baptizer:
Occasionally,
Mandaeans are called
‘Christians of Saint
John’ . . . the ‘Sabians’
are described several
times in the Quran as
People of the Book,
alongside Jews and
Christians (Wiki).
According to Origen and Eusebius, the Sabians used an extra-biblical book that they claimed was given by an Angel (maybe another idea adopted by Muhammad?) to deny portions of Scripture as well as the writings of Paul! So, this idea of challenging Christianity and claiming to have received a new revelation from an angel is quite common in ancient times. It is not unique to Islam. Others had made similar claims. Thus, without completely rejecting the possibility of *revelation* in at least some portions of the Quran, the majority of its theological narratives are largely based on dubious and questionable sources, derived from spurious texts that were under the radar of heresiologists across the ancient world!
——-
Two Apocryphal Works Employed by the Quran to Deny the Crucifixion of Jesus
//Second Treatise of the Great Seth is an apocryphal Gnostic writing discovered in the Codex VII of the Nag Hammadi codices and dates to around the third century. The author is unknown, and the Seth referenced in the title appears nowhere in the text. Instead Seth is thought to reference the third son of Adam and Eve to whom gnosis was first revealed, according to some gnostics. The author appears to belong to a group of gnostics who maintain that Jesus Christ was not crucified on the cross. Instead the text says that Simon of Cyrene was mistaken for Jesus and crucified in his place. Jesus is described as standing by and "laughing at their ignorance”// (Wiki).
//The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter is a text found amongst the Nag Hammadi library, and part of the New Testament apocrypha. Like the vast majority of texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, it is heavily gnostic. It was probably written around 100-200 AD. Since the only known copy is written in Coptic, it is also known as the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter.
The text takes gnostic interpretations of the crucifixion to the extreme, picturing Jesus as laughing and warning against people who cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking they shall become pure. Like some of the rarer Gnostic writings, this one also doubts the established Crucifixion story which places Jesus on the cross. Instead, according to this text, there was a substitute:
He whom you saw on the
tree, glad and laughing,
this is the living Jesus.
But this one into whose
hands and feet they
drive the nails is his
fleshly part, which is the
substitute being put to
shame, the one who
came into being in his
likeness. But look at him
and me// (Wiki).
This is attested in the Quran:
That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ
Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of
Allah’—but they killed him not, nor crucified
him, but so it was made to appear to them,
and those who differ therein are full of
doubts, with no [certain] knowledge, but
only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they
killed him not—nay, Allah raised him up unto
Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power,
Wise (Sura 4:157-158, Yusuf Ali).
——-
A Possible Forgery: Is Muhammad Copying Augustine?
Muhammad (570 – 632 CE) seems to have modelled his conversion on Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE), who was without a doubt the greatest theologian and philosopher of his day! Case in point, in 386 CE, Augustine converted to Christianity from the pagan Machanean religion. Similarly, in 610 CE, Muhammad converted to Islam from the “Jahiliyya" religion, which worshipped Allah as the creator god as well as the Kaaba in Mecca. About 224 years earlier St. Augustine had heard a voice that told him to “take up and read,” a line which became very famous and reverberated through the centuries:
As Augustine later told it, his conversion
was prompted by hearing a child's voice
say ‘take up and read’ (Latin: tolle, lege).
Resorting to the Sortes Sanctorum, he
opened a book of St. Paul's writings (codex
apostoli, 8.12.29) at random and read
Romans 13: 13–14: Not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying, but
put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts
thereof (Wiki).
By comparison, Muhammad appears to have used a similar line to claim that he, too, heard an Angel’s voice repeatedly say to him: “Read.” Given that Muhammad was presumably familiar with Judaism and Christianity (and especially with the foremost leading authority of his day, the African Augustine of Hippo), it seems very likely that he modelled his conversion on the latter. And, if true, that would certainly constitute a forgery!
——-
Are Allah’s Oaths Self-contradictory in the Quran?
The aforementioned textual criticisms are further compounded when we realize that the Quran contains further theological discrepancies. For example, there are numerous verses in the Quran where Allah is swearing by created things that are less-than-God, thus committing “shirk” (i.e. the sin of ascribing divine status to any other beings beside Allah). Here’s a case in point. In sura 81:15, Allah says: “But nay! I swear by the stars.” Another example is sura 91 verse 1: “I swear by the sun and its brilliance.” When God supposedly swears by something which is less than himself the truth value of his assertion is obviously weakened. By definition, an oath is meant to buttress an argument, not to decrease the weight thereof. Therefore, the truth value of an oath is equivalent to, and connected with, the truth value of the one who declares it. As such, Allah’s oaths (swearing by created things) directly contradict his so-called divine status. By contrast, the God of the Bible swears by Himself, since there is nothing greater to swear under (cf. Gen. 22.16; Isa. 45.23; Heb. 6.13). By definition, an oath is a solemn attestation of the truth of one's words. In this case, how can Allah’s oaths be trustworthy if they appeal to something that is less than himself? Answer: they cannot! It appears, then, that the aforementioned oaths in the Quran are reflecting a human rather than a divine author.
——-
Is Muhammad the Prophesied False Prophet of Revelation?
During the Early Middle
Ages, Christendom
largely viewed Islam as a
Christological heresy
and Muhammad as a
false prophet (Wiki).
In short, following the Arab conquest of the Middle East and due to the *military expansion* of Islam into Europe and Central Asia since the 700’s (toppling one country after another), Muhammad was increasingly seen as a possible candidate for the office of the *false-prophet-of-Revelation* (cf. Rev. 16.13; 19.20; 20.10): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Christian_views_on_Muhammad
——-
Conclusion
Muslims claim that the Quran is neither corrupted nor influenced by Judeo-Christian sources, and yet upon further scrutiny the book clearly incorporates passages from both the Jewish Talmud and from various Christian apocryphal works. Plagiarism abounds, and so does forgery. Therefore, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that it’s a “revelation” when at least some of the sources of the Quran are highly dubious!
Moreover, Islam has nothing new to offer by way of revelation. Its doctrine could simply be classified as a modified theological redundancy of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Biblical heritage that preceded it. The main difference between Islam and Christianity is this. Unlike the Quran’s singular witness and source——given that it was only revealed to *one* man (Muhammad)——the revelations of the New Testament were imparted to many different people, thereby authenticating its message by multiple attestations and witnesses!
——-
Is the Old Testament Inspired?: The Case Against Marcion
By Award-Winning Author Eli Kittim
——-
Is the Old Testament Uninspired Because it Doesn’t Mention Jesus?
Marcion of Sinope (ca. 85 – 160 CE) preached that Jesus’ teachings, especially those on love, were completely at odds with the Old Testament (OT) revelations regarding the God of the Jews, whom he saw as legalistic and punitive, with no connection at all to the essential message of the New Testament (NT). One key Marcionite objection to the authority of the Jewish Bible is that the name of Jesus is never once mentioned there. However, the exclusivity of Jesus in the NT does not preclude the inspiration of the Hebrew Bible. The notion that the father cannot be known apart from Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with the question of the OT’s canonicity. For example, Acts 4.12 says:
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is
no other name under heaven given to
mankind by which we must be saved.
The fact that the name of Jesus is not found in the OT has no bearing on whether this collection of ancient Hebrew writings is inspired or not. After all, the name of Jesus (Ιησοῦς) is found in the Septuagint’s Book of Joshua, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible: https://www.academic-bible.com/en/online-bibles/septuagint-lxx/read-the-bible-text/bibel/text/lesen/?tx_buhbibelmodul_bibletext%5Bscripture%5D=Joshua+4
At any rate, these are two fundamentally different questions. The former has to do with Christology (i.e. the study of Christ), whereas the latter has to do with Biblical theology (i.e. the study of the Bible)!
The former has to to do with “Theology proper,” that is to say, with the exclusivity of Jesus as the unique preexistent Word of God (the Logos) through whom “All things came into being” (John 1.1-4), or as the “only begotten Son” (1 John 4.9) who prior to his incarnation “was in the form of God” (Phil. 2.6). Marcionites will therefore argue that Christ is the *only one* who is capable of revealing the Father, given that “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1.15) “through whom he [the Father] also created the worlds” (Heb. 1.1-2). For example, John 14.6 reads:
Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.’
But this declaration is not a proof-text demonstrating that the OT is not authoritative simply because it doesn’t mention Jesus’ divinity. That has to do with progressive revelation, the idea that revelation is given a little at a time.
Holding to a high Christology has little to do with whether or not the Hebrew Bible is inspired. That’s an entirely different issue involving Biblical theology, Pneumatology, and the like. So, the fact that Jesus is not mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible is not a sufficient reason to dismiss this collection of Books as uninspired.
——-
Is the OT Uncanonical?
If the OT is not authoritative, as some Marcionites have argued, then why would the NT writers quote extensively from an “uninspired” book? And what would be the purpose of the standard *Biblical canon* if the NT authors extensively quoted from so-called “uninspired” books? In other words, if the OT is not authoritative, it would *contradict* the “canon of scripture” principle in which only Biblically-inspired books are accepted into the canon. Not to mention that the OT is widely viewed as authoritative by the NT precisely because it is included as a source of prophetic predictions in many different places, notably in Matthew 24, and especially in the Book of Revelation!
As a matter of fact, the NT authors insist that the OT is inspired! For example, at the time of the composition of the second letter to Timothy, there was no NT Scripture as yet. So, when the Biblical writers referred to Scripture, with the exception of two instances——namely, 2 Pet. 3.16, wherein Paul’s letters are referred to as “Scripture,” and 1 Tim. 5.18, in which Luke’s gospel is referred to as “Scripture”——they always meant the Hebrew Bible. The proof that they considered the Hebrew Bible to be *inspired* is in Second Timothy 3.16, which reads:
All scripture is inspired [πᾶσα γραφὴ
Θεόπνευστος] by God and is useful for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness.
——-
Does Intertextuality Prove that the OT is Inspired?
All the books of the NT are constantly borrowing and quoting extensively from the OT, a “Book” without which the NT would be lacking a foundation. If we were to remove all those OT quotations, the NT would be insupportable, not to mention incomprehensible!
So, whoever thinks that the OT is uncanonical and uninspired is clearly not familiar with the heavy literary dependence of the NT on the OT (i.e. a process known as “intertextuality”). If you were to open up a critical edition of the NT, you’d be astounded by how much of the OT is actually quoted in the NT. Prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Daniel abound all over the place. The Book of Revelation, in particular, is mostly based on a reorganization of OT prophetic material from Zechariah, Joel, Amos, Daniel, and many others. A brief look at a *Chain-Reference-Bible* would quickly illustrate this fact: https://archive.org/details/ThompsonChainReferenceBible/page/n47/mode/2up
So, the proposal to remove this material——-suggested by Marcion of Sinope and, to a lesser extent, by some modern day preachers and closet Marcionites, such as Andy Stanley——is rather absurd as the NT would be without any foundation or justification concerning messianic, eschatological, or prophetic terminology. For example, various questions would inevitably arise: Where did the NT get the idea of the day of the Lord? Or the idea of the resurrection of the dead? Or that of the great tribulation? Or the concept of the Antichrist? Or the notion of the Messiah? All these concepts are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible!
If the OT is not authoritative, then the verbal agreements between the OT and the NT would equally disqualify those same statements as inauthentic NT references. For example, Paul quotes Isaiah verbatim. Many of the Jesus sayings are from the OT. If, say, a Marcionite were to claim that the OT is not inspired, then he would have to concede that some of Paul’s and Jesus’ sayings are equally uninspired, since they are derived from the OT. In other words, unbeknownst to the Marcionites, in rejecting the OT, they would also be rejecting the NT as well!
For example, most of the Matthew-24 prophetic material is based on the OT: from the abomination of desolation (Mt. 24.15; cf. Dan. 9.27) to the time when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light” (Mt.24.29; cf. Joel 3:15). If these OT prophecies were not inspired or authoritative, then they would certainly not have been used in the NT prophetic literature!
The explicit approval of OT passages as authoritative by the NT writers, and especially by Paul and Jesus——as well as the explicit message that “All scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3.16), which obviously includes the OT, given that It has been heavily employed in the NT——argues for the inspiration of the OT!
——-
As for Marcionism, it really involves a syncretism of Christianity and Gnosticism, with all the extra-biblical distortions that this fusion entails, such as the assumed existence of two deities (a lesser and a higher one), and the evil inherent in the material world. These are two diametrically opposed belief-systems between the monotheism of the NT and the polytheism of the Gnostics!
——-
Conclusion
Thus, Marcion, who was an anti-Semite, not only rejected Yahweh as a lesser, evil god, but he went on to dismiss the entire OT as if it were completely uninspired. He felt that it lacked the extravagant love story of the NT, which was ultimately derived from the Supreme God and father of Jesus Christ. He thought that these two testaments pertained to two fundamentally different gods. And so he urged Christians to steer clear of the OT because he considered it to be the product of an inferior deity. However, this is not the view of the NT authors, nor is it part of mainstream NT theology, soteriology, ecclesiology, or eschatology.
What is more, Marcion obviously did not critically assess both testaments to fully explore the extent to which *intertextuality* was involved within these manuscripts (i.e. the literary dependence of one testament on the other) and how inextricably linked they really were! Therefore, a rejection of the entire OT is simultaneously a rejection of many portions of the NT, including many of Jesus’ sayings. Such a separation would render the NT completely useless both theologically and Christologically, if not also eschatologically. Marcion’s claims would therefore undermine Christianity’s overall integrity, and this is probably why Marcion was denounced as a heretic and was excommunicated by the church of Rome ca. 144 CE.
To be fair, Marcion had the right idea, but the wrong approach. It’s true that there’s a radical shift in the NT from an active obedience to the 10-commandments to a passive acceptance of God’s Grace; from an external circumcision of the flesh to an internal circumcision of the heart (and the consequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit). Contrary to the Aleph and Tav in the Hebrew Scriptures, we are suddenly introduced to the NT revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega (using the first and last letters of the Greek rather than the Hebrew alphabet). After all, the NT is written exclusively in Greek, by Greeks, and written predominantly to Greek communities within the Roman empire. Paul himself maintains that we are “justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law” (e.g. Gal. 2.16). So, there is very little here that is Jewish!
But although the NT is a uniquely Greek “Book,” in which the name of Yahweh is never once mentioned, nevertheless the Hebrew Bible is still its foundation, without which the former would lose not only its historical lineage and theological context but also its reliability, validity, and, ultimately, its credibility!
A Critique of the Three Comings of Christ
By Eli Kittim
Mainstream Christianity holds to the three comings of Christ. This modern eschatological position is so bizarre that it has actually devised not one, not two, but three comings of Christ. Some offshoots of this doctrine have additional comings. Here’s a brief summary of this view:
1. First Coming = Christ’s Incarnation, believed to have been witnessed in the first century c.e. (cf. Lk 2.11).
2. Second Coming = Christ will *invisibly* return for the rapture of the faithful (cf. 1 Thess. 4.16-17).
3. Third Coming = Christ will return once again and will be followed by a great multitude of saints (cf. 1 Thess. 3.13).
By contrast, I propose that there’s only *one* coming mentioned in the New Testament (NT), which complements the *one* coming mentioned in the Old Testament (OT).
The Gospel Genre
This is the starting point of all the hermeneutical confusion, which sets the tone for the rest of the Christian Canon. The gospels are not biographies or historiographical accounts. As most Bible scholars acknowledge, they are largely embellished theological or apocalyptic documents that show a heavy literary dependence on the OT. So, the assumption that the gospels are furnishing us with biographical information seems to be a misreading of the genre, which appears to be theological in nature. In comparison with the expository writing of the NT epistolary literature, which is explicit and didactic, the literary style of the canonical gospels can only be described as a theological genre of historical fiction!
The epistles apparently contradict the gospels regarding the timeline of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection by placing it in eschatological categories. The epistolary authors deviate from the gospel writers in their understanding of the overall importance of eschatology in the chronology of Jesus. For them, Scripture comprises revelations and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Pet. 1.19-21; Rev. 22.18-19)! According to the NT Epistles, the Christ will die “once for all” (Gk. ἅπαξ hapax) “at the end of the age” (Heb. 9.26b), a phrase which consistently refers to the end of the world (cf. ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων in Dan. 12.4 LXX; Mt. 13.39-40, 49; 24.3; 28.20). Similarly, just as Heb. 1.2 says that the physical Son speaks to humanity in the “last days,” 1 Pet. 1.20 (NJB) demonstrates the eschatological timing of Christ’s *initial* appearance with unsurpassed lucidity:
“He was marked out before the world was
made, and was revealed at the final point of
time.”
The 70-Weeks Prophecy of Daniel
Daniel’s seventy weeks’ prophecy refers exclusively to the end-time and has nothing to do with the time of Antiquity. It specifically alludes to the reestablishment of the State of Israel, a prophecy that was fulfilled in 1948 (cf. Ezek. 38.8)! A common misconception is to assume that the starting point of this prophecy began after the Hebrews returned from the Babylonian exile during the 500s b.c.e. However, this prophecy refers to the end of all visions and revelations, an end-time period that will in effect “seal both vision and prophet” (Dan. 9.24). John MacArthur, in describing Dan.9.24, was once quoted as saying: “It’s got to be a final thing cause everything is a final… . Boy, that’s final stuff, isn’t it? The end, the finish, the seal, seal it up, close it up, that’s the way it is!” If it is “final stuff,” then the prophecy cannot possibly be referring to the time of Antiquity but rather to the time of the end! This prophecy also refers to “times of distress” (Dan. 9.25 NASB), a phrase which is used elsewhere in the Book of Daniel to refer to the time of the end (see Dan. 12.1). Note also that Daniel outlines the timeline of the Messiah’s *death* as occurring *AFTER* the prophesied rebirth of Israel (9.25-26) at the end of days!
The traditional Christian interpretation is further compounded by breaking up the prophecy into two parts: one part fulfilled during the time of Antiquity, the other referring to the last week of the great tribulation (GT). In other words, exegetes assume that there is a two thousand-year gap between the so-called “sixty nine” weeks and the seventieth week. However, there is no Biblical evidence of a long time-gap between these weeks, but rather a successive sequence of events that combines both *princes* within the same context of the eschatological timetable (cf. Dan. 9.24-27), thus rendering the expositors’ imposition on the text unwarranted. That’s why Isa. 2.19 puts the resurrection of Christ in the last days. He says that people will hide in the caves of rocks when “the Lord … arises to terrify the earth” (cf. Rev. 6.15-17). First Cor. 15.22-24 tells us explicitly that Christ will be resurrected in the end-times (an idea also entertained by British New Testament scholar James Dunn).
2 Thessalonians Chapter 2
The author of 2 Thess. 2 warns against deception by stating unequivocally that the coming of Christ for the rapture cannot occur “unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed” (2.1-3). There’s a further condition that has to be met before the rapture can take place, and before the “lawless one” (i.e. the Antichrist) can be revealed, namely, someone needs to be removed from the earth. A common misinterpretation is that this must either be a reference to the *Holy Spirit* or to the *church*, which will be taken out of the way before the Antichrist can be revealed. But if it is the Holy Spirit or the church it would directly contradict the Book of Revelation (7.13-14), which foresees a great spiritual revival during the time of the GT. For instance, John the Revelator sees “a great multitude that” came “out of the great ordeal [GT]” (Rev. 7.9, 14). This multitude represents the “church” of Christ, which is obviously present, not absent, during the GT. And without the Holy Spirit no one can be saved (Rom. 8.9b). Therefore, the so-called “restrainer” of 2 Thess. 2.6-7 can neither be the Holy Spirit nor the church. This mysterious figure can only be explained by my unique eschatological view. Since I hold that the first horseman of the Apocalypse is Christ (the white horseman), it is he and he alone who is the restrainer, and after he is *slain* the Antichrist will be revealed.
Millennialism
Christian eschatology holds that the so-called “second coming” of Jesus will transpire either before the Millennium (i.e. premillennialism) or after the Millennium (i.e postmillennialism). First, a literal millennial kingdom would contradict the Bible because it would imply more than 2 comings of Christ, 2 apocalypses, 2 Great Wars, 2 resurrections, 2 Great Endings, and so on, as opposed to one of each, which is what the Bible teaches. Second, the endtime war that Satan is said to unleash at the end of the millennium (Rev. 20.8) is the exact same war mentioned in Ezekiel 38: Gog & Magog. Third, 1 Thess. 4.17 says that after the rapture “we will be with the Lord forever,” not just for 1,000 years. Fourth, the Book of Daniel is clear that both the Good and the Damned will be resurrected simultaneously, not successively (12.2). By contrast, the second death in Revelation 20.14 is incorporeal, NOT physical. It’s the lake of fire; a spiritual death. It’s a category, not an event. So, only 1 physical resurrection is indicated in the Bible; not 2! Fifth, the only physical resurrection mentioned in the Bible is the one that is called the 1st resurrection, presumably because it comes prior to the above-mentioned spiritual one. And this resurrection is said to occur when the thousand years are finished (Rev. 20.5). And if it’s explicitly mentioned as the first resurrection, then it means that there couldn’t have been an earlier one. So then, how could the same people who would not be resurrected “until the thousand years were completed” (Rev. 20.5) simultaneously live and reign with Christ for a millennium? (Rev. 20.4). They cannot be both dead and alive at the same time! Therefore, Amillennialism (i.e. the view that there will be no literal millennial reign of the righteous on earth) is not obliged to subscribe to the *three-comings-of-Christ* model!
Does Christ Return Multiple Times?
The belief in the *three comings* of Christ equally contradicts a number of NT passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 15.22—26, 54—55; 2 Tim. 2.16—18; Rev. 19.10; 22.7, 10, 18—19), not to mention those of the OT that do not separate the Messiah’s initial coming from his reign (e.g. Isa. 9.6—7; 61.1—2). Rather than viewing them as three separate and distinguishable historical events, Scripture sets forth a single coming and does not make that distinction (see Lk. 1.31—33). Indeed, each time the “redeeming work” of Messiah is mentioned, it is almost invariably followed or preceded by some kind of reference to judgment (e.g. “day of vengeance”), which signifies the commencement of his reign on earth (see Isa. 63.4).
Conclusion
Most people expect Christ to come from the sky. The truth is, he will come from the earth (cf. Acts 1.11). The sequence of eschatological events is as follows: Christ will appear “at the final point of time” (1 Pet. 1.20 NJB; Rev. 6.2). He will die “once in the end of the world” (Heb. 9.26b KJV; Zeph. 1.7-8, 14-18) and resurrect (1 Cor. 15.22-24; Heb. 9.27-28) to rapture the faithful (1 Cor. 15.51-52; 1 Thess. 4.15-17; 2 Thess. 2.1-3) and fight the nations (Isa. 31.5; 63.3; Zech. 14.3; Rev. 19.15)!
The difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective is that I’m convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but *only one* decisive coming at the end of the world, which includes the resurrection, the rapture, and his appearance in the sky!
8 Theses or Disputations on Modern Christianity’s View of the Bible
By Author Eli Kittim
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A Call For a *New Reformation*
A common bias of modern Christianity is expressed in this way:
“If your doctrine damages other Biblical
doctrines, you’ve gotta change your
doctrine” (see “Galatians 5:1-12 sermon by
Dr. Bob Utley”; YouTube video).
Not necessarily. Maybe the previous Biblical doctrines need to change in light of new discoveries. Bible scholarship is still evolving like every other discipline. No one can say to Einstein: “if your theory damages previous theories, you’ve gotta change your theory.” What if the previous theories are wrong? Are we to view them as infallible?
What did the Reformers mean by sola scriptura? They meant that the Bible alone provides the “constitutive tenets of the Christian faith.” In other words, the basic tenets of the faith (e.g. credal formulations) are NOT to be found in papal decrees or councils but in the Bible alone! And they went to great lengths to show how both the church and its councils had made many mistakes.
If I can similarly demonstrate that the constitutive tenets of the Christian faith are wrong, and that the Bible contradicts modern Christianity, as the reformers did, then I, too, must call for a *new reformation*! Those hard core adherents of historical Christianity will of course excoriate me as a peddler of godless heresies without honestly investigating my multiple lines of evidence.
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1. The New Testament is an Ancient Eastern Text Employing the Literary Conventions of its Time
The New Testament doesn’t use 21st century propositional language but rather Eastern hyperbolic language, parables, poetry, paradox, and the like. Today, any story about a person is immediately seen as a biography. But in those days it could have been a poetic literary expression, akin to what we today would call, “theology.” The gospel writers adopted many of the literary conventions of the ancient writings and created what would be analogous to Greek productions (see Dennis MacDonald’s seminal work, “The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark”). We often miss the genre of the gospels by looking at it with modern western lenses.
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2. The Gospel Genre Is Not Biographical
This is the starting point of all the hermeneutical confusion. The gospels are not biographies or historiographical accounts. As most Bible scholars acknowledge, they are largely embellished theological documents that demonstrate the presence of “intertextuality” (i.e. a heavy literary dependence on the Old Testament [OT]). If we don’t understand a particular genre out of which a unique discourse is operating from, then we will inevitably misinterpret the text. So, the assumption that the gospels are furnishing us with biographical information seems to be a misreading of the genre, which appears to be theological or apocalyptic in nature. It is precisely this quasi-biographical literary form that gives the “novel” some verisimilitude. How can we be sure? Let’s look at the New Testament (NT) letters. The epistles apparently contradict the gospels regarding the timeline of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection by placing it in eschatological categories. The epistolary authors deviate from the gospel writers in their understanding of the overall importance of eschatology in the chronology of Jesus. For them, Scripture comprises revelations and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Pet. 1.19-21; Rev. 22.18-19)! According to the NT Epistles, the Christ will die “once for all” (Gk. ἅπαξ hapax) “at the end of the age” (Heb. 9.26b), a phrase which consistently refers to the end of the world (cf. Mt. 13.39-40, 49; 24.3; 28.20). Similarly, just as Heb. 1.2 says that the physical Son speaks to humanity in the “last days,” 1 Pet. 1.20 (NJB) demonstrates the eschatological timing of Christ’s *initial* appearance with unsurpassed lucidity:
“He was marked out before the world was
made, and was revealed at the final point of
time.”
——-
3. NT Scholars Demonstrate that the Gospels Are Not Historical
During his in-depth dialogue with Mike Licona on the historical reliability of the NT (2016), Bart Ehrman stated that “the NT gospels are historically unreliable accounts of Jesus.” In his book, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach,” NT scholar Michael Licona has actually de-historicized parts of the gospel (i.e. Mt. 27.51-53), showing, for example, that the resurrection of the saints after Jesus’ crucifixion is indicative of a non-literal, apocalyptic genre rather than of an actual historical event. Licona suggests that the appearance of angels at Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection is legendary. He considers parts of the gospels to be “poetic language or legend,” especially in regard to the raising of some dead saints at Jesus’ death (Mt. 27.51-54) and the angel(s) at the tomb (Mk 15.5-7; Mt. 28.2-7; Lk 24.4-7; Jn 20.11-13). NT scholar, James Crossley agrees that the purported events of Mt. 27.52-53 didn’t happen. Licona is, in some sense, de-mythologizing the Bible in the tradition of Rudolf Bultmann. This infiltration of legend in Matthew extends to all the other gospels as well. According to the book called “The Jesus Crisis” by Robert L. Thomas and F. David Farnell, two NT scholars, the sermon on the mount didn’t happen. The commissioning of the 12 did not happen. The parables of Matthew 13 and 14 didn’t happen. According to this book, it’s all made up. The magi? Fiction. The genealogy? Fiction! Robert H. Gundry, a professor of NT studies and koine Greek, has also said that Matthew 1-3 (the infancy narratives) were historical fiction (Midrash). Similarly, NT scholar Robert M. Price argues that all the Gospel stories of Jesus are a kind of midrash on the OT, and therefore completely fictional. Thomas L. Brodie, a Dominican priest, author, and academic, has similarly emphasised that most of the gospel thematic material is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible. These scholarly views have profound implications for so-called “historical Christianity,” its systematic theology, and its doctrines. Moreover, British NT scholar, James Dunn thought that the resurrection of Christ didn’t happen. He thought that Jesus was not resurrected in Antiquity but that Jesus probably meant he would be resurrected at the last judgment! What is more, Ludermann, Crossan, Ehrman, Bultmann all think that the resurrection is based on visions. So does Luke! No one saw Jesus during or after the so-called resurrection. The women saw a “vision” (Lk 24.23–24) just as the eyewitnesses did who were said to be “chosen beforehand” in Acts 10.40–41. Similarly, Paul only knows of the divine Christ (Gal. 1.11–12). With regard to the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, where more than 500 people supposedly saw Christ, Paul suggests that they all saw him just as he did. He declares: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared ALSO to me” (1 Cor. 15.8 emphasis added). In other words, in saying “also to me; Gk. κἀμοί), Paul suggests that Christ appeared to others in the same way or manner that he appeared to him (that is to say, by way of “visions”)!
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4. A Few Examples of Legendary Elements in the Gospels
A few examples from the gospels serve to illustrate these points. From the point of view of form criticism, it is well-known among biblical scholars that The Feeding of the 5,000 (aka the "miracle of the five loaves and two fish") in Jn 6.5-13 is a literary pattern that can be traced back to the OT tradition of 2 Kings 4.40-44. Besides the parallel thematic motifs, there are also near verbal agreements: "They shall eat and have some left” (2 Kings 4.43). Compare Jn 6.13: “So they gathered ... twelve baskets ... left over by those who had eaten.” The magi are also taken from Ps. 72.11: “May all kings fall down before him.” The phrase “they have pierced my hands and my feet” is from Ps. 22.16; “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” is from Psalm 69.21. The virgin birth comes from a Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7.14. The “Calming the storm” episode is taken from Ps. 107.23-30, and so on & so forth. Is there anything real that actually happened which is not taken from the Jewish Bible? Another example demonstrates the legendary nature of the Trial of Jesus. Everything about the trial of Jesus is at odds with what we know about Jewish Law and Jewish proceedings.
Six trials occur between Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion:
Jewish Trials
1. Before Annas
2. Before Caiaphas
3. Before the Sanhedrin
Roman Trials
4. Before Pilate
5. Before Herod
6. Before Pilate
Every single detail of each and every trial is not only illegal, but utterly ridiculous to be considered as a historical “fact.”
Illegalities ...
a) Binding a prisoner before he was condemned was illegal.
b) It was also illegal for Judges to participate in the arrest of the accused.
c) It was also illegal to have legal proceedings, legal transactions, or conduct a trial at night. It’s preposterous to have a trial going on in the middle of the night.
d) According to the law, although an acquittal may be pronounced on the same day, any other verdict required a majority of two and must come on a subsequent day. This law was also violated.
e) Moreover, no prisoner could be convicted on his own evidence. However, following Jesus’ reply under oath, a guilty verdict was pronounced!
f) Furthermore, it was the duty of a judge to make sure that the interest of the accused was fully protected.
g) The use of violence during the trial was completely unopposed by the judges (e.g. they slapped Jesus around). That was not just illegal; that kind of thing just didn’t happen.
h) The judges supposedly sought false witnesses against Jesus. Also illegal.
i) In a Jewish court room the accused was to be assumed innocent until proved guilty by two or more witnesses. This was certainly violated here as well.
j) No witness was ever called by the defense (except Jesus’ self incrimination testimony). Not just illegal; unheard of.
k) The Court lacked the civil authority to condemn a man to death.
l) It was also illegal to conduct a session of the court on a feast day (it was Passover).
m) Finally, the sentence is passed in the palace of the high priest, but Jewish law demanded that it be pronounced in the temple, in the hall of hewn stone. They didn’t do that either.
n) Also, the high priest is said to rend his garment (that was against the law). He was never permitted to tear his official robe (Lev. 21:10). For example, without his priestly robe he couldn’t have put Christ under oath in the first place.
Thus, all these illegalities according to Jewish law are not only quite unimaginable but utterly unrealistic to have happened in history.
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5. Bart Ehrman Says That Paul Tells Us Nothing About the Historical Jesus
One of the staunch proponents of the historical Jesus position is the renowned textual scholar Bart Ehrman, who, surprisingly, said this on his blog:
“Paul says almost *NOTHING* about the
events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird
to people, but just read all of his letters.
Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone,
casting out a demon, doing any other
miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other
leaders, teaching the multitudes, even
speaking a parable, being baptized, being
transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being
arrested, put on trial, found guilty of
blasphemy, appearing before Pontius Pilate
on charges of calling himself the King of the
Jews, being flogged, etc. etc. etc. It’s a
very, very long list of what he doesn’t tell us
about.”
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6. The External Evidence Does Not Support the Historicity of Jesus
A) There are no eyewitnesses.
B) The gospel writers are not eyewitnesses.
C) The epistolary authors are not eyewitnesses.
D) Paul hasn’t seen Jesus in the flesh.
E) As a matter of fact, no one has ever seen or heard Jesus (there are no firsthand accounts)!
F) Contemporaries of Jesus seemingly didn’t see him either; otherwise they’d have written at least a single word about him. For example, Philo of Alexandria is unaware of Jesus’ existence.
G) Later generations didn’t see him either because not even a passing reference to Jesus is ever written by a secular author in the span of approximately 65y.
H) The very first mention of Jesus by a secular source comes at the close of the first century (93-94 CE). Here’s the scholarly verdict on Josephus’ text: “Almost all modern scholars reject the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum in its present form” - wiki
I) Even Kurt Åland——the founder of the Institute for NT textual Research, who was also a textual critic and one of the principal editors of the modern critical NT——questioned whether Jesus existed! In his own words: “it almost then appears as if Jesus were a mere PHANTOM . . . “ (emphasis added)! Bertrand Russell, a British polymath, didn’t think Christ existed either. He said: “Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all” (“Why I am not a Christian”).
J) Interestingly enough, even though scholars usually reject the historicity of Noah, Abraham, and Moses, they nevertheless support the historicity of Jesus, which seems to be a case of special pleading. In his article, “Beware of Consensus Theology,” Dr. Stephen R. Lewis correctly writes:
there have been so many things society has held
as true when in fact they are merely a consensus.
. . . We must beware of our own “consensus
theology.” . . . We must beware of allowing the
theology of anyone—Augustine, Martin Luther,
John Calvin, or whomever—to take precedence
over the teachings of Scripture.
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7. First Peter 1.10-11 Suggests An Eschatological Soteriology:
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow” (1 Pet. 1.10-11 NIV).
Exegesis
First, notice that the prophets (Gk. προφῆται) in the aforementioned passage are said to have the Spirit of Christ (Gk. Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ) within them, thereby making it abundantly clear that they are prophets of the NT, since there’s no reference to the Spirit of Christ in the OT. That they were NT prophets is subsequently attested by verse 12 with its reference to the gospel:
“It was revealed to them that they were not
serving themselves but you, when they
spoke of the things that have now been told
you by those who have preached the gospel
to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.”
Second, the notion that 1 Peter 1.10-11 is referring to NT as opposed to OT prophets is further established by way of the doctrine of salvation (Gk. σωτηρίας), which is said to come through the means of grace! This explicit type of Soteriology (namely, through grace; Gk. χάριτος) cannot be found anywhere in the OT.
Third, and most importantly, observe that “the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow” were actually “PREDICTED” (Gk. προμαρτυρόμενον; i.e., testified beforehand) by “the Spirit of Christ” (Gk. Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ; presumably a reference to the Holy Spirit) and communicated to the NT prophets so that they might record them for posterity’s sake (cf. v. 12). Therefore, the passion of Christ was seemingly written in advance—-or prophesied, if you will—-according to this apocalyptic NT passage!
_______________________________________
Here’s Further Evidence that the Gospel of Christ is Promised Beforehand in the NT. In the undermentioned passage, notice that it was “the gospel concerning his Son” “which he [God] promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.” This passage further demonstrates that these are NT prophets, since there’s no reference to “the gospel (Gk. εὐαγγέλιον) of God … concerning his Son” in the OT:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be
an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,
which he promised beforehand through his
prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel
concerning his Son” (Rom. 1.1-3 NRSV).
Moreover, Paul’s letters are referred to as “Scripture” in 2 Pet. 3.16, while Luke’s gospel is referred to as “Scripture” in 1 Tim. 5.18!
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8. Conclusion: NT History is Written in Advance
The all-pervading scriptural theme——that Christ’s gospel, crucifixion, and resurrection is either promised, known, or witnessed *beforehand* by the foreknowledge of God——should be the guiding principle for NT interpretation. First, we read that “the gospel concerning his [God’s] Son” is “promised beforehand (προεπηγγείλατο; Rom. 1.2). Second, the text reveals that Jesus was foreknown to be crucified “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (προγνώσει; Acts 2.22-23). Third, this theme is reiterated in Acts 10.40-41 in which we are told that Jesus’ resurrection is *only* visible “to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God” (προκεχειροτονημένοις; NASB). Accordingly, the evidence suggests that the knowledge of Christ’s coming was communicated beforehand to the preselected witnesses through the agency of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 16.13; 2 Pet. 1.17-19 ff.). It appears, then, that the theological purpose of the gospels is to provide a fitting introduction to the messianic story beforehand so that it can be passed down from generation to generation until the time of its fulfilment. It is as though New Testament history is written in advance:
“I am God . . . declaring the end from the
beginning and from ancient times things
not yet done (Isa. 46.9-10).
Mine is the only view that appropriately combines the end-time messianic expectations of the Jews with Christian Scripture!
What if the Crucifixion of Christ is a future event? (See my article “WHY DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT REFER TO CHRIST’S FUTURE COMING AS A REVELATION?”: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/187927555567/why-does-the-new-testament-refer-to-christs).
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How Should Christian Scholars Respond to Attacks and Insults?
By Bible Researcher and Author Eli Kittim 🎓
Now these people were more noble-minded
than those in Thessalonica, for they
received the word with great eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily to see
whether these things were so.
——- Acts 17:11 NASB
Should We Believe What Others Say Or Should We Investigate the Scriptures for Ourselves?
People believe in historical Christianity. They believe that if Christianity is not historical then nothing else about the Bible is true. They cannot interpret it in any other way. They can only see it backwards; never forwards. But what ever happened to Bible prophecy? Take, for example, the idea of questioning the historicity of a Biblical event, wondering whether it happened in the past or if it will happen in the future. Isn’t that ultimately a question of faith?
People believe in a historical Jesus and in the so-called “historical” gospel narratives. Believers think that if Jesus didn’t exist——or if he didn’t die and wasn’t resurrected in the past——then everything else in the New Testament is complete and utter fiction, fabricated out of whole cloth, and therefore false. For them, it’s all about past history. But future history (aka Bible prophecy) is just as valid! The notion that Jesus came in the flesh *at some point in human history* somehow seems to escape their hermeneutical purview. It never really occurred to them that if these incidents in the life of Jesus are prophesied to take place in the future, then the Bible is just as valid and just as reliable as if these events had happened in the past. Why? Because the Bible is ultimately not a historical chronicle but a Book on Faith!
People believe what they hear. But sometimes that’s just fake news or long-held assumptions that are based on *wrong interpretations* of the facts. The story of Jesus’ past death and resurrection is a story that has been told millions of times at the dinner table, on television, during Christmas, Easter, in all churches and denominations, it’s heard from preachers in the pulpit, it’s repeated by missionaries, taught in seminaries, and has generally been reiterated by pastors and teachers throughout the culture for thousands of years. So, it’s as if it is written in stone. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s considered to be an undeniable fact. But what if a thorough Biblical investigation challenged any of these points? What then? Mind you, this type of inquiry would only be challenging *the man-made interpretations,* not the actual words of the Bible per se!
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A Biblical Consensus Is Always Evolving
In science, the role of agreement is paramount in establishing empirical facts, and it’s only through verifiable evidence that an epistemic agreement can be reached. However, the body of empirical knowledge is constantly changing. New information is constantly assessed and prior conclusions are always re-examined. What appeared to be a fact yesterday may not be so today. And the methodology is constantly improving and evolving. Today, we have better criteria and more knowledge at our disposal to understand the Bible than ever before. Therefore, our biblical findings can certainly change our previous assumptions and presuppositions. The Biblical consensus has changed considerably over time. With new interdisciplinary evidence at our disposal, our conclusions about Biblical authorship and composition have gradually changed. New evidence in lower and high criticism has prompted new questions that require a new set of criteria and more advanced methodologies to address them. So, as a rule, new findings replace older “facts,” thereby changing the previous consensus!
For example, advances in textual criticism have shown that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. The date of the Pentateuch’s composition is also not as early as once believed. In fact, the scholarly consensus is that Moses probably never existed and that the Exodus never happened: it is a foundation myth. As it happens, no archaeological remains have ever been found in the Sinai Peninsula regarding the exodus or the Israelites.
But try telling that to Orthodox Jews who hold these “truths” to be self-evident, sacred, and non-negotiable. For them, history, archaeology, textual criticism, and Biblical studies are a “demonic” attempt to undermine their faith. But is that true? Of course not! On the contrary, many who are involved in these scientific and Biblical disciplines are themselves faithful Jews and Christians.
Then there was the emergence of other academic disciplines and methods that investigated the historical precursors of the biblical texts. Some of these were “source criticism” and “form criticism,” from which “redaction criticism” was derived. Finally, literary criticism added a new way of looking at the authorial intent via such methods as narrative criticism, rhetorical criticism, and canonical criticism. These emerging methods of biblical criticism, which did not previously exist, ultimately changed how we view and understand the Bible.
For example, the idea that the New Testament authors quoted predominantly from the Greek Old Testament rather than from the Jewish Bible must have certain important textual ramifications. Also, without the understanding of “intertextuality”——the literary dependence of the New Testament on the Old Testament——we would not know what literary material was borrowed from the Hebrew Bible. All you have to do is pick up a chain-reference Bible and you’ll see how much of the Old Testament is found in the New Testament, and how many words, speeches, and events that are attributed to Jesus are actually modelled on these earlier stories. These academic disciplines pave the way for a deeper understanding on various levels that heretofore were untraversed and unknown.
But how, then, can one explain to a believer that Jesus didn’t really say or do that? That it was just a literary narrative in which the evangelist put Jesus in a certain theological context in order to show that he is the prophesied Messiah of Hebrew Scripture. So, it seems that one must put away their emotional component when involved in this type of inquiry. One must leave their ego at the door. That is to say, one must temporarily suspend faith and atheism in dealing with Biblical studies. That’s because, just as in science, pure objectivity is strictly required. Once a person has gathered all the necessary evidence, they can then try to ascertain how it might fit with or be relevant to his/her faith, or how it may further inform it.
There are also many cross-reference and concordance studies that reveal Biblical *meanings* by focusing on certain repetitive linguistic idiomatic expressions, as they’re found throughout scripture. Parallel passages and verbal agreements help to further identify certain *meanings* that are consistently found across the text. Then there are the Biblical languages. Studying the original Biblical languages in Paleo-Hebrew and Koine Greek help us to create faithful and competent translations, which involve a more accurate knowledge and understanding of scripture’s details about timing, location, and authorial intention. Moreover, parsing (or syntax analysis) helps us to further understand the grammar and morphology of the Biblical languages! These methodologies are invaluable in providing a solid foundation that may not always be consistent with previous assumptions. Discoveries in these areas are obviously worthy of serious consideration.
But how do you explain these facts to a simple layperson who may think otherwise? In their eyes, you are seen either as a traitor to the faith, at best, or guided by the deceiver, at worst. To a believer——who is not engaged in these types of studies but reads the Bible literally and superficially——writing about these findings and complex issues may be interpreted as preaching godless heresies. In his/her mind you are simply a false teacher. . . And despite Jesus’ appeal for unity in the church (John 17:21), there have always been fights and quarrels among Christians (James 4:1). It has also become a fashion lately to slander Bible teachers. Many are quick to point fingers at each other and accuse other Christians of wrongdoing. This is antithetical to scripture!
In this case, the only thing a Bible scholar can do is to remind the reader that objectivity rather than fanaticism is more fruitful in biblical interpretation, and that name-calling is not biblical evidence. In fact, scholars welcome the opportunity for peer-review and academic criticism!
The Quran: A Critical Review
By Bible Researcher & Author Eli Kittim 🎓
Islamic Origins
Aside from the fact that the Quran was initially built on bloodshed and violence——in which the founder of Islam, Muhammad, participated in many military battles to convert neighbouring peoples and tribes——there are many other problem areas with the history of Islam as well. Many Jews were slaughtered who would not convert, as well as many other innocent people. The motto is the same now as it was then: “convert or be killed by the sword.” The question is, would the pure and holy God of Heaven and earth condone, or even encourage, such behavior? It’s true that during the Middle Ages the Catholic Church did the same. However, the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, did not engage in any military battles or in any terrorist attacks to convert people to Christianity by force. Muhammad did! One began with peace; the other with war. That’s the main difference.
Bloodshed and violence also marked the beginning of the Islamic period following the death of Muhammad. Rival Muslim leaders were vying for control of the Caliphate. Many killed their rivals or were themselves assassinated. Even Ali (aka ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib)——a cousin, son-in-law, and companion of Muhammad——was himself assassinated in 661 AD. That’s when the Shia–Sunni split began. Since then, there have been so many different splintering sects (denominations) and myriads of different schools and branches of Islamic theology that it is downright misleading to claim that there’s only one interpretation of the Quran:
Islamic schools and branches have
different understandings of Islam. There are
many different sects or denominations,
schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and
schools of Islamic theology, or ʿaqīdah
(creed). Within Islamic groups themselves
there may be differences, such as different
orders (tariqa) within Sufism, and within
Sunnī Islam different schools of theology
(Aṯharī, Ashʿarī, Māturīdī) and jurisprudence
(Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī). Groups in
Islam may be numerous (the largest
branches are Shīʿas and Sunnīs), or
relatively small in size (Ibadis, Zaydīs,
Ismāʿīlīs). Differences between the groups
may not be well known to Muslims outside
of scholarly circles, or may have induced
enough passion to have resulted in political
and religious violence (Barelvi, Deobandi,
Salafism, Wahhabism). There are informal
movements driven by ideas (such as Islamic
modernism and Islamism) as well as
organized groups with a governing body
(Ahmadiyya, Ismāʿīlism, Nation of Islam).
Some of the Islamic sects and groups
regard certain others as deviant or not truly
Muslim (Ahmadiyya, Alawites, Quranists).
Some Islamic sects and groups date back
to the early history of Islam between the 7th
and 9th centuries CE (Kharijites, Sunnīs,
Shīʿas), whereas others have arisen much
more recently (Islamic neo-traditionalism,
liberalism and progressivism, Islamic
modernism, Salafism and Wahhabism) or
even in the 20th century (Nation of Islam).
Still others were influential in their time but
are not longer in existence (non-Ibadi
Kharijites, Muʿtazila, Murji'ah).
—- Wikipedia (Islamic schools and
branches)
Another criticism that has been levelled against the Quran is that it has not been critically scrutinized rigorously in the same manner as the Bible, neither does it have a critical edition, nor is the manuscript evidence made available to scholars for serious study. There’s a secrecy surrounding it that seems to prevent scholarly investigations. For example, because it lacks a critical edition, there are no footnotes in the Quran to notify the reader about manuscript evidence, textual discrepancies, or omissions!
Textual and Linguistic Problems with the Quran
But these are not the only problems. There are many more problems with the Quran. While the Bible remained uniform, even though it was revealed to many different authors and prophets——written in different languages, during different time periods, and in many different locations——the Quran was only revealed to one man who happened to be illiterate. And how good was his memory? We don’t know. How much of what he heard was he able to retain? Let’s face it, the Quran is a relatively large book that is virtually impossible to memorize word for word, especially in the consonantal language of its day. Add to this the fact that in 632 CE, following Muhammad’s death, the Battle of Yamama ensued where a great number of those who had supposedly retained the Quran in their memory (hafiz) actually died. How then can Muslims claim the preservation of the Quran through memory and oral transmission?
Muslims often claim that the Quran is a reliable, uncorrupted text because there is supposedly only one Quran. However, that is actually a misleading and fallacious argument. For one, Classical Arabic was a consonantal language that had no vowels and was thus open to various interpretations. It was different from the Arabic of today. For another, the controlled transmission of the Quran makes it impossible to know what was the original text. Hence its textual integrity has been seriously compromised. The text was in fact controlled by one person, the khalifa, as attested by Uthman's authority to recall and uniformly revise all the manuscripts. Therefore, when Uthman ibn Affan (the 3rd Caliph of Islam) burned all the existing variant copies of the Quran, he uniformly corrupted it in a textually undetectable manner. That’s actually a manipulation of the evidence. Why? Because the Quran doesn’t allow us to come any closer to the original text than the Uthmanic Revised Standard Version 20 years removed from Muhammad. Any errors which found their way into the URSV would be permanent and uncorrectable. And, unfortunately, historical accounts from early Islam tell us that such errors existed because we have, for example, the “Sanaa manuscript,” which contains earlier developments of the Quran, demonstrating textual variances that diverge from the Uthman copy. Besides, there are so many different “readings” of the Quran which give rise to so many different Islamic interpretations.
Moreover, Islam has nothing new to offer by way of revelation. Its doctrine could simply be classified as a modified theological redundancy of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Biblical heritage that preceded it. The main difference between Islam and Christianity is this. Unlike the Quran’s singular witness and source——given that it was only revealed to *one* man (Muhammad)——the revelations of the New Testament were imparted to many different people, thereby authenticating its message by multiple attestations and witnesses!
But there is more. With regard to source criticism——that is, the sources that the Quran’s message is derived from——there are some very serious issues of forgery involved. For example, there are well-known parallelisms between the Quran and the extra-biblical, non-inspired book of Talmud (e.g. Surah 5:32; cf. Sanhedrin 37a) as well as borrowing from Christian apocryphal works. Case in point, the Quran copies from the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus gives life to clay birds. The Quran also uses the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, an apocryphal Gnostic text of the 3rd century. This is one of the texts where the idea that Jesus was not crucified comes from. The text claims that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus’ place. Jesus is seen as standing by and supposedly "laughing at their ignorance.” The Quran also employs the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, an “uninspired” text that is part of the New Testament apocrypha. This text also denies the crucifixion of Jesus and suggests that there was a substitute. This is attested in the Quran, which says that Jesus was neither killed nor crucified (Sura 4:157-158). So, the Quran clearly employs Jewish and Christian apocryphal works that were never accepted as “inspired” either by the Jews or the Christians. Thus, the sources of the Quran are highly dubious, even though they are described within the text as “revelations” from God.
Theological and Historical Discrepancies
Muslims claim that the Quran is neither corrupted nor influenced by Judeo-Christian sources, and yet upon further scrutiny the book clearly incorporates passages from both the Jewish Talmud and from various Christian apocryphal works. Plagiarism abounds, and so does forgery. Therefore, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that it’s a “revelation” when at least some of the sources of the Quran are highly dubious! In fact, the evidence suggests that the Quran is the product of a late *Gnostic Christian revolt* against Byzantine Orthodoxy. What I am proposing is that the *Gnostic-Christian Sects* that were marginalized by Byzantine Orthodoxy from the fourth century onwards didn’t go away quietly but seemingly conspired against the Church during the early part of the dark ages! The result of those efforts eventuated in the Book we now call the Quran. The syncretistic-gnostic elements present in the Quran suggest that it was in fact an amalgamation of heresies that characterized many different Gnostic Christian sects. In other words, Islam was originally a heretical Eastern-Christian sect!
The aforementioned textual criticisms are further compounded when we realize that the Quran contains further theological discrepancies. For example, there are numerous verses in the Quran where Allah is swearing by created things that are less-than-God, thus committing “shirk” (i.e. the sin of ascribing divine status to any other beings beside Allah). Here’s a case in point. In sura 81:15, Allah says: “But nay! I swear by the stars.” Another example is sura 91 verse 1: “I swear by the sun and its brilliance.” When God supposedly swears by something which is less than himself the truth value of his assertion is obviously weakened. By definition, an oath is meant to buttress an argument, not to decrease the weight thereof. Therefore, the truth value of an oath is equivalent to, and connected with, the truth value of the one who declares it. As such, Allah’s oaths (swearing by created things) directly contradict his so-called divine status. By contrast, the God of the Bible swears by Himself, since there is nothing greater to swear under (cf. Gen. 22.16; Isa. 45.23; Heb. 6.13). By definition, an oath is a solemn attestation of the truth of one's words. In this case, how can Allah’s oaths be trustworthy if they appeal to something that is less than himself? Answer: they cannot! It appears, then, that the aforementioned oaths in the Quran are reflecting a human rather than a divine author.
These are just some of the problems of the Quran. But there are many, many more. The Quran lacks historicity. Mecca and Medina, for example, were deserts without water or vegetation, making it highly unlikely for a civilization to live there, let alone thrive, according to Islamic expert Dr. Jay Smith. Not to mention that these cities are not mentioned anywhere until the late 8th century. This would strongly suggest that the stories concerning these locations are probably nothing more than historical fiction.
The Biblical Stories are Altered in the Quran
There’s also a great deal of deliberate misinformation that is coming from Islamic scholars. For example, I’m currently reading “The Clear Quran Series: A Thematic English Translation” (Lombard: Book of Signs Foundation, 2016), translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, with chief editors: Abu-Isa Webb, Aaron Wannamaker, and Hisham Sharif. They are affiliated with the site: TheClearQuran.org. In the preface, Dr. Khattab says (p. xvi):
Arab Muslims, Christians, and Jews call
God ‘Allah.’
This is false. Neither Jews nor Christians call God Allah. In providing a definition for the name, Dr. Khattab is disingenuous because he fails to inform readers that Allah was a pre-Islamic god who was worshipped long before the writing of the Quran. On the same page, he makes another linguistic error by stating that “Jesus used ‘Alaha’ to refer to God.” This is false. Jesus never called God Alaha. On the following page (xvii), Dr. Khattab begins a paragraph with the title “Was the Quran Copied from the Bible?” He writes:
It is worth mentioning that the first Arabic
translation of the Bible was done centuries
after the Prophet’s death.
He attributes the similarities between the Quran and the Bible not on “intertextuality” (i.e. literary copying) but rather on “divine revelation.” However, this is another misleading argument. The Bible had been translated into Syriac, Coptic, Aramaic, and Latin within the first few centuries of the common era, which makes it highly improbable that the first Arabic translation occurred in the 9th century. Just because we haven’t found earlier Arabic manuscripts doesn’t mean they did not exist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Besides, we know that there existed an Arab-Christian community long before the time of Muhammad. There were certainly Christian churches in the East where the Bible was regularly preached. Textual criticism demonstrates a literary dependence of the Quran on various spurious works of a Christian and Jewish bent. Scholars can trace many of the stories of the Quran back to the Bible and the early Gnostic apocryphal texts. How would the early Muslims know about these texts or be able to copy them if they were not written in Arabic? Dr. Khattab makes many other erroneous and fallacious comments that I will not mention at this juncture because they will divert us from the topic in question.
Things actually get much worse once we start reading the Quran. Dr. Khattab claims that it is a masterpiece of Arabic literature, something akin to Shakespeare. But once you start reading it, it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn’t have the majestic refinement, eloquence, elegance, loftiness, or the wisdom of the Bible. In fact, it is so crude, unrefined, and tasteless that it doesn’t even sound “inspired,” let alone revealed. It actually reads like a second rate text in which a very insecure author is trying to establish himself either by gaslighting the readers or by blowing smoke about his knowledge of the Bible via the use of repetitive phrases such as “remember” Moses, “remember” Abraham, etc. But who gave him the literary license to alter the Biblical stories and to present them mangled and distorted? How is the reader supposed to “remember” the Bible if the author of the Quran is constantly interpolating new material and changing the stories, either deliberately or because he never really understood them?
As I started to read the Quran, I noticed that God is not talking in the first person. Rather, there seems to be a human narrator, which begs the question: how is this text divine? The preface claims that the Quran is scientifically accurate, yet Surah 2:22 refers to God who made “the sky a canopy.” The sky is obviously not a canopy. Also, the author seems to have little confidence because he’s constantly challenging the reader to defy him. God would not speak in that tone. As you read on, it becomes apparent that the author wants to discredit the Christian Trinity. But he devised a clever rhetorical device to do so. He has God supposedly saying “We” did this, or “We” did that. And then he explains that God is talking to the Angels. This would suggest that God used the help of angels to co-create. This would elevate the status of angels to “co-creators,” which is certainly a theological and hermeneutical contradiction! This is also theologically problematic because when God says in Genesis 1.26 “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness,” he is obviously not talking to angels because humankind is not made in the image of (created) angels but rather in the image of (the uncreated) God! Yet the Quran (Surah 2:30) directly contradicts this by claiming that God was talking to the angels about the creation of human beings:
‘Remember’ when your Lord said to the
angels, ‘I am going to place a successive
‘human’ authority on earth.’
Further theological discrepancies occur in Surah 2:32 in which the angels admit to not knowing “the names of all things” (Surah 2:31). But, surprisingly, “God said, ‘O Adam! Inform them of their names’ “ (Surah 2:33). In other words, the human Adam had more extensive knowledge than the divine angelic host combined. I’m not sure how a finite and limited human being who doesn’t have access to divine knowledge can possibly know more than the angelic beings who have existed for aeons upon aeons before the creation of the universe! This passage is yet another instance that reveals Allah’s lack of confidence, in which he’s constantly challenging the angels in order to prove that he knows more than they do. To make matters worse, the author once again invokes the memory of an episode that doesn’t exist in the Bible. So, there’s actually nothing to “remember.” This is a fabrication out of whole cloth. Yet, in Surah 2:34, the author writes:
And ‘remember’ when We said to the
angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam,’ so they all
did——but not Iblis [Satan], who refused
and acted arrogantly.
This Quranic commandment actually violates the 1st commandment of the Torah: “You shall have no other God’s before me.” In the New Testament, Romans 1:25 also condemns those who have “worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” The Book of Revelation 19.10 strictly prohibits people from worshipping even angels, let alone humans. Therefore, this Quranic passage not only directly contradicts the Bible but is also ironically forcing us to “remember” a false memory, namely, that God commanded the angels to worship Adam. But there’s no evidence that God ever said that. So how can anyone “remember” something that never happened? This is nothing short of literary gaslighting.
What is more, Surah 2:35-36 directly contradicts the Genesis creation account by claiming that Adam and Eve lived “in Paradise,” and after the fall had to “Descend from the heavens ‘to the earth.’ “ This also contradicts the Bible which states that Adam was created on earth (Genesis 1:27). In Surah 2:51-52, the author says that even though “you worshipped the calf in his [Moses’] absence, … We ‘still’ forgave you.” It appears that the angels have the power to forgive sins. I thought only God forgave sins. Apparently, the angels forgive, too. Then, in Surah 2:57, the author says to the Israelites:
And ‘remember when’ We shaded you with
clouds and sent down to you manna and
quails, ‘saying’, ‘Eat from the good things
We have provided for you.’ The evildoers
‘certainly’ did not wrong Us, but wronged
themselves.
Since the author will later deny the Trinity by proclaiming that God is one, it begs the question: who does the plural pronoun “We” refer to? It seems as if the author of the Quran is trying to reinterpret the plural pronoun “Us” in Genesis 1.26—-when God said “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness”——by suggesting that God was talking to the angels. Thus, the “We” plural pronoun, once again, suggests a reference to the angelic host. However, this theological language is problematic because God wouldn’t speak about the angels as being co-creators or providers of the human race. On the contrary, Philippians 4:19 says that it is God (and God alone) who supplies “every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Furthermore, God wouldn’t share his glory with the angels by implying that they’re co-creators, co-providers, and co-forgivers. Isaiah 42:8 reads:
I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not
yield my glory to another or my praise to
idols.
Therefore, in using the plural pronoun “We” to describe the joint efforts of God and the angels, the author of the Quran clearly demonstrates that he has misunderstood the theology of the Old and New Testaments. That’s precisely why the Quran doesn’t sound like divine scripture. It doesn’t have the ring of truth; it doesn’t sound genuine. This unbiblical conflation of God with angels is seen again in Surah 2:59, which reads: “We sent down a punishment from the heavens upon them for their rebelliousness.” Notice, it is not God who sent it; “We sent” it! Not to mention that God’s language in the Quran is rather vulgar and insulting. Surah 2:65 records the punishment for the Sabbath-Breakers:
You are already aware of those of you who
broke the Sabbath. We said to them, ‘Be
disgraced apes!’
A very insulting and demeaning language is used that is uncharacteristic of a pure and holy God. This is certainly not the language of the Bible. Incidentally, Jesus also broke the Sabbath and healed a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years (John 5:1-18). Is the author of the Quran alluding to Jesus as well, calling him an ape? How insulting!
Then comes a projection. We already know that Muhammad was illiterate. We also know that the Quran knows nothing about Holy Scripture because it keeps getting the stories wrong, misinterpreting them, distorting them, and adding to them. But, ironically, instead of admitting this, the author of the Quran pronounces a condemnation on those who do these things. But that’s exactly what the Quran is doing. He writes in Surah 2:78-79:
And among them are the illiterate who know
nothing about the Scripture except lies, and
‘so’ they ‘wishfully’ speculate. So woe to
those who distort the Scripture with their
own hands [writings] then say, ‘This is from
God’——seeking a fleeting gain! So woe to
them for what their hands have written.
In Surah 2:102, the Quran talks of magical themes:
They ‘instead’ followed the magic promoted
by the devils during the reign of Solomon.
This reference is not found anywhere in Scripture. As far as I know, the only known text to discuss demonic magic during the time of Solomon is a pseudepigraphical text, ascribed to King Solomon, which is known as The “Testament of Solomon.”
Another linguistic problem with the Quran is that it has God openly disrespecting Christians and Jews and their scriptures in a manner that is not theologically persuasive or convincing. God would not talk down to Christians and Jews by mocking their Scriptural beliefs. This is uncharacteristic of the holy and pure God of Scripture (see e.g. Surah 2:111, 113, 120). The Quran is also embellishing and contradicting the Scriptural stories by adding extraneous elements. If these stories were revealed in the 7th century, why were they not known to the earlier prophets or mentioned in Scripture? Nowhere throughout the Old and New Testaments is there the slightest clue, for example, that Abraham was in Mecca. So how are the readers supposed to remember this story? Yet Surah 2:126 declares:
And ‘remember’ when Abraham said, ‘My
Lord, make this city ‘of Mecca’ secure and
provide fruits to its people.
Unless this is copied from a spurious, apocryphal Gnostic text, there’s really nothing to remember. What is more, the Quran distorts Scripture. In the Bible, Ishmael and Hagar are disowned by Abraham. In Genesis 21:8-21, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away. Moreover, Isaac is the promised seed or the heir of the promises (see Gen. 13:15; 15:5; 22:17). But in the Quran it’s the exact opposite. It is Ishmael who is the promised one, and Abraham celebrates him. This is called “twisting God’s Word,” which is a manipulation of the Scriptural evidence. It represents a kind of underhanded (sleight of hand) Islamic apologetics. It is as if we have a new film director who decided to change the plot. In this 7th century (dark ages) sequel to the Bible, it’s all about Abraham and Ishmael. And we have another plot twist in which the second commandment that prohibits the worship of idols is broken. There’s also an allusion to the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which was also venerated in pre-Islamic pagan times. Paradoxically, Surah 2:125 urges the reader to remember a time that never existed. I suppose it’s a clever way of attempting to historicize a fictional narrative that has no basis in history or literature:
And ‘remember’ when We made the Sacred
House [Ka’bah] a centre and a sanctuary
for the people ‘saying’, ‘You may take the
standing-place of Abraham as a site of
prayer.’ And We entrusted Abraham and
Ishmael to purify My House for those who
circle it, who meditate in it, and who bow
and prostrate themselves ‘in prayer’.
Then there is a theological fabrication of the one true God which departs from Scripture and tradition. It also falsifies Hebrew Scripture which never mentions Yahweh as the God of Ishmael. Surah 2:133 declares:
Or did you witness when death came to
Jacob? He asked his children, ‘Who will
you worship after my passing?’ They
replied, ‘We will continue to worship your
God, the God of your forefathers——
Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac——the One
God. And to him we all submit.’
There is also a seeming allusion to the Christians, whom the anonymous author of the Quran is denouncing as polytheists (see Surah 2:135). The author of the Quran obviously doesn’t understand the theological concept of the Trinity. It doesn’t evoke polytheism. The Triune God is defined as one God who exists in three coeternal, coequal, consubstantial divine persons. An analogy would be the fingers of a hand. Although there may be 5 fingers, it is still one (1) hand!
——-
For further details on the Trinity, see the following article:
Is the Trinity a Biblical Teaching?
https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/631800420436754432/is-the-trinity-a-biblical-teaching
——-
The Quran Contradicts Itself
Finally, I will put forth one last statement before I make my closing arguments. The anonymous author of the Quran claims that he follows the revelations of the Hebrew patriarchs and of Jesus. He writes (Surah 2:136):
Say, O believers, ‘We believe in God and
what has been revealed to us; and what
was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac,
Jacob, and his descendants; and what was
given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets
from the Lord. We make no distinction
between any of them.
There are two things, here, worthy of consideration. On the one hand, the author claims to accept the revelation of Jesus. On the other hand, he contradicts the revelation of Jesus by saying that Jesus is no different than anyone else. Well, which is it? Does he accept Jesus’ revelation or not? He’s violating the law of non-contradiction, which states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. Jesus claimed that God is a trinity. Matthew 28.19, for example, is an authentic verse that is part of the New Testament critical edition. In this verse, Jesus describes what God is:
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
If the anonymous author of the Quran accepts Jesus’ revelation, as he claims, then it is incumbent upon him to also accept the revelation of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Moreover, if this author accepts Jesus’ revelation, then it is incumbent upon him to also accept the divinity of Jesus! Otherwise he is contradicting himself.
The Deity of Jesus Christ
In John 1:1 (“the word was God”); Colossians 2:9 (“in him the whole fullness of the godhead [θεότητος] dwells bodily”); Hebrews 1:3 (“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his being”); Titus 2:13 (“our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”); Philippians 2:6 (“being in very nature God”); Colossians 1:15 (“The Son is the image of the invisible God”); 2 Peter 1:1 (“our God and Savior Jesus Christ”). And in John 1:3 and Hebrews 1:2 Jesus is the creator and the “heir of all things, through whom he [God] also created the worlds.” John 1:3: “All things came into being through him [Jesus], and without him not one thing came into being.”
——-
Jesus’ Incarnation Prophesied in the Tanakh (Old Testament)
Leviticus 26.12:
“I will walk among you and be your God”
Micah 5.2:
“out of you will come forth for Me One to be ruler over Israel—One whose origins are of old, from the days of eternity.”
Daniel 7.13-14:
“one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. … He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him.”
Isaiah 53.3-5:
“He was despised and rejected …, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. … Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Zechariah 12:10
“They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn”
Isaiah 9.6 (emphasis added):
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, MIGHTY GOD, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
You have to be exegetically ignorant or completely illiterate not to notice that the divine Messiah was prophesied in both the Tanakh and the Habrit Hachadashah. If the author of the Quran accepts Jesus as the Messiah——as well as Jesus’ revelation, and his future coming——then he must also accept the aforementioned revelations!
Conclusion
So, the Quran was built on bloodshed and violence in which its prophet, Muhammad, participated in many military battles to convert people to Islam. Bloodshed and violence also marked the beginning of the Islamic period following the death of Muhammad. Rival Muslim leaders were vying for control of the Caliphate killing each other off and forcing conversion by the sword. The Quran was written in consonantal Arabic, a language which is susceptible to multiple interpretations. There were also multiple versions that were burned and destroyed, so that the controlled transmission of the Quran makes it impossible to know what was the original text. What is more, the Quran lacks a critical edition, and has no scholarly apparatus to inform us about important text-critical questions. The hafiz died, and so did the oral tradition. And the Quran itself is full of discrepancies and contradictions, constantly changing and falsifying the Biblical stories to suit the author’s theological needs. But Adam was created on earth, not in heaven. God never asked the angels to worship Adam, nor did he make man in their image. And Yahweh is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac. So, when the Quran tells us to “remember” these fabricated stories that have been ripped out of their original contexts and altered, this is a deceptive way to gaslight its readers. The Quran is also a collection of forgeries of many different apocryphal and pseudepigraphical Jewish and Christian texts. The Quran lacks the majestic refinement, eloquence, and loftiness of the Bible. In fact, it is rather crude and unrefined, so much so that it doesn’t even sound “inspired,” let alone revealed. It actually reads like a second rate text in which a very insecure author is trying to establish himself either by gaslighting his readers or by trying to persuade them of his biblical knowledge through the use of repetitive phrases such as “remember” Moses, “remember” Abraham, etc. But who gave him the literary license to alter the Biblical stories and to present them mangled and distorted? No! The Quran doesn’t read like Scripture. It doesn’t have the ring of truth.
The Gospels are Nonhistorical Theological Documents: Only the Epistles Give Us the Real Jesus
By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓
The Theological Gospels Versus the Prophetic Epistles
First, the epistles are the more explicit and didactic portions of the New Testament.
Second, they are expositional writings, giving us facts, not theological narratives with plots, subplots, characters, etc. The gospels are more like broadway plays (theatrical productions) whereas the epistles are more like matter-of-fact newspapers.
Third, the epistles are not only devoid of all the legendary elements of the gospels, but they also apparently contradict the gospels with regard to Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, by placing them in eschatological categories. For them, Scripture comprises revelations and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Pet. 1.19-21; Rev. 22.18-19)! According to the NT Epistles, the Christ will die “once for all” (Gk. ἅπαξ hapax) “at the end of the age” (Heb. 9.26b), a phrase which consistently refers to the end of the world (cf. Mt. 13.39-40, 49; 24.3; 28.20). Similarly, just as Heb. 1.2 says that the physical Son speaks to humanity in the “last days,” 1 Pet. 1.20 (NJB) demonstrates the eschatological timing of Christ’s initial appearance by saying that he will be “revealed at the final point of time.”!
Was There An Oral Tradition?
The oral tradition is hypothetical and presupposed. There is no evidence for it. In fact, the evidence seems to refute it.
There Was No Pre-Pauline Oral Tradition
First, the gospels are written anonymously.
Second, there are no eyewitnesses.
Third, there are no firsthand accounts.
Fourth, how is a supposed Aramaic story suddenly taken over, less than 2 decades after the purported events, by highly articulate Greeks and written about in other countries like Greece and Rome? Do you realize that none of the New Testament books were ever written in Palestine by Jews? None! That doesn’t make any sense and it certainly casts much doubt about the idea of a supposed Aramaic oral tradition.
When, Where, and By Whom Was Each Book of the New Testament Written?
Fifth, you can certainly compare a novel with the gospels. Almost every event in Jesus’ life is borrowed from the Old Testament and reworked as if it’s a new event. This is called intertextuality, meaning a heavy dependence of the New Testament literature on Hebrew Scripture. A few examples from the gospels serve to illustrate these points. It’s well-known among biblical scholars that the Feeding of the 5,000 (aka the miracle of the five loaves and two fish) in Jn 6.5-13 is a literary pattern that can be traced back to the OT tradition of 2 Kings 4.40-44. Besides the parallel thematic motifs, there are also near verbal agreements: "They shall eat and have some left” (2 Kings 4.43). Compare Jn 6.13: “So they gathered ... twelve baskets ... left over by those who had eaten.” The magi are also taken from Ps. 72.11: “May all kings fall down before him.” The phrase “they have pierced my hands and my feet” is from Ps. 22.16; “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” is from Psalm 69.21. The virgin birth comes from a Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7.14. The “Calming the storm” episode is taken from Ps. 107.23-30, and so on & so forth. Is there anything real that actually happened which is not taken from the Jewish Bible? Moreover, everything about the trial of Jesus is at odds with what we know about Jewish Law and Jewish proceedings. It could not have occurred in the middle of the night during Passover, among other things. This is historical fiction. That’s precisely why E.P. Sanders once called the book of Acts (the so-called fifth gospel) historical fiction:
“The majority of New Testament scholars
agree that the Gospels do not contain
eyewitness accounts; but that they present
the theologies of their communities rather
than the testimony of eyewitnesses”. — Wiki
“Many biblical scholars view the discussion
of historicity as secondary, given that
gospels were primarily written as
theological documents rather than historical
accounts”. — Wiki
Scholarship is not necessarily a bad thing for evangelical Christians. It actually helps them to clear up the apparent theological and historical confusion.
8 Theses or Disputations on Modern Christianity’s View of the Bible
What About the Extra-Biblical Sources that Seem to Support the Historicity of Jesus?
First, Jesus is not your everyday, garden-variety Jew, as most apologists depict him when trying to explain why Jesus is never mentioned by any secular contemporary authors.
Mark 1.28
“News about him spread quickly over the
whole region of Galilee”.
Mt. 4.24
“News about him spread all over Syria.”
Matthew 4.25
“Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and
the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea
and from beyond the Jordan.”
So why is it that in approximately 65 years there is not so much as a single word about him in any extra-biblical book?
Why aren’t the meticulous Roman historians (who wrote just about everything) mentioning Jesus? Why is Plutarch and Philo unaware of Jesus’ existence? You’d think they would have, at least, heard of him. So something doesn’t add up. Not even the local Jewish writers mention Jesus, even in passing.
Second, the so-called extra-biblical sources that briefly mention Jesus have all been tampered with. The first mention of Jesus outside the New Testament was at the close of the first century by Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum. Scholars know that this account is inauthentic and unacceptable, containing an interpolation. Josephus scholars suspect that Eusebius might be the culprit.
Third, Pliny the Younger, writing from the 2nd century, was in communication with Tacitus so his account cannot be viewed as an independent attestation.
Fourth, the Talmud was written many centuries later and contains no eyewitnesses. It is totally irrelevant.
Fifth, Tacitus’ Annals was in the possession of Christians (Medicis) and was most probably altered by 11th century monks:
“It is the second Medicean manuscript, 11th
century and from the Benedictine abbey at
Monte Cassino, which is the oldest surviving
copy of the passage describing Christians.
Scholars generally agree that these copies
were written at Monte Cassino and the end
of the document refers to Abbas Raynaldus
cu ... [sic] who was most probably one of
the two abbots of that name at the abbey
during that period”. — Wiki
Moreover, Tacitus probably lifted the passage from Luke 3.1 and even got Pontius Pilate’s title wrong. Scholars have found traces of letters being altered in the text, and they have pointed out that Tacitus, an unbeliever, would not have referred to Jesus as the Christ. Besides, these Roman writers were not even eyewitnesses and are too far removed from the purported events to have any bearing on them. If we can’t make heads or tails from the second generation Christians who themselves were not eyewitnesses, how much more information can these Roman writers give us, writing from nearly one century later? So it’s a strawman argument to use these 2nd century writers, who were drawing on earlier materials, as independent attestations for the existence of Jesus.
Sixth, a consensus can also be used as a fallacious argument, namely, as an appeal to authority fallacy. We know of many things that were once held to be true that were later proven to be false. Like the idea that everything revolved around the earth. That was once a consensus. It was false. Similarly, the current consensus concerning Christ may be equally false! If Bible scholars reject the historicity of Noah, Abraham, and Moses, then why do they support the historicity of Jesus? If there were no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts, if Paul tells us almost nothing about the life of Jesus, if the Testimonium Flavianum and the Annals of Tacitus are inauthentic, and if Bertrand Russell and world-renowned textual critic Kurt Aland questioned the existence of Jesus (as if he were a phantom), then on what grounds does the scholarly consensus affirm the historicity of Jesus? It seems to be a case of special pleading. A nonhistorical Jesus would obviously put a damper on sales and profits. Jesus sells. Everyone knows that. Perhaps that’s the reason why the consensus is maintained!
But Didn’t the Early Church Fathers’ Writings Attribute Authorship to Jesus’ Disciples?
Let’s cut to the chase. The gospels were written anonymously. There were no firsthand accounts. And there were no eyewitnesses. The names of the authors were added in the 2nd century. Even the second generation Christians who wrote the gospels don’t claim to be eyewitnesses. They claim to know someone who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, and so on. The earliest case of attributing a gospel to a particular person comes from the writings of Papias, whom both modern scholars and Eusebius distrust. Eusebius had a "low esteem of Papias' intellect" (Wikipedia). And scholars generally dismiss Papias’ claim that the original gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew.
As for the purported authorship by the disciples themselves, that is utterly impossible for three main reasons. One, they would have been long dead by the close of the first century. Two, they were illiterate fishermen from the backwoods of Galilee. See Acts 4.13 in which Peter and John are described as uneducated and illiterate (ἀγράμματοι) men. Three, they were unable to write in highly sophisticated and articulate Greek. Not to mention that the authors of the gospels spoke very sophisticated Greek and copied predominantly from the Greek rather than from the Hebrew Old Testament. So, the traditional story that we’ve been told just doesn't hold water. It needs to be revisited.
Am I Inconsistent in Trusting Only Part of the New Testament While Tossing Out the Gospels and Claiming to Be a Follower of Christ?
First, I know what Christ’s teachings are by way of direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, similar to those Paul experienced and wrote about in Galatians 1:11-12 (NASB):
“For I would have you know, brothers and
sisters, that the gospel which was preached
by me is not of human invention. For I
neither received it from man, nor was I
taught it, but I received it through a
revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Second, I’m not trusting only part of the New Testament and tossing out the gospels, while claiming to be a follower of Christ. I actually believe in the entire New Testament. I have a high view of scripture and I believe that every word was given by inspiration of God (including those of the gospels). The Bible has many genres: poetry, parable, metaphor, wisdom, prophecy, apocalyptic, history, theology, etc. If someone doesn’t interpret poetry as history, that doesn’t mean that he’s tossing out the poetic part of scripture and claiming that it’s not inspired. He’s simply saying that this part of scripture is not meant to be historical but rather poetic. Similarly, my view that the gospels are theological doesn’t mean that they are not inspired by God or that they’re false. It simply means that I’m interpreting genres correctly, unlike others who have confused biblical literature with history, and turned prophecy into biography. It appears, then, that the theological purpose of the Gospels is to provide a fitting introduction to the messianic story beforehand so that it can be passed down from generation to generation until the time of its fulfillment. It is as though NT history is written in advance. So the gospels have a certain role to play.
There’s No Such Thing As a Follower of Christ
I keep seeing profiles on Facebook and Twitter where people claim to be “followers of Christ.” What does that even mean? You’re either in-Christ or out-of-Christ. Only someone who is not in Christ is a follower of Christ. People often confuse the terminology. They think that a true Christian is a follower of Christ. False! A true Christian is not following Christ. He is in Christ! Only those who have not yet been reborn are “followers of Christ,” seeking to become united with him. Those who are already reborn from above through the spirit (Jn 3.3; Acts 2.1-4) are already in-Christ. They’re not followers of Christ. And you don’t get to be in-Christ through belief alone (Jas. 2:19), professions of faith, the sinner’s prayer, altar calls, by an intellectual assent to the truths of Christianity, or by following Christ through performance-based behaviors (i.e. observing the commandments, etc.). These are all false conversions. You must first get rid of the false self and put on God as your new identity (the true self). I’m afraid there’s no other way.
How Are We Saved: Is It Simply By Belief Alone, Or Do We Have To Go Out Of Ourselves Ecstatically In Order To Make That Happen?
Who Wrote the Gospels? Are They Giving us History? Is Luke 1:1-4 a Case Study?
Eli Kittim
I think we need to seriously reevaluate our traditional view of the New Testament. Almost everything we believe about it is wrong. Christianity is not a historical religion, and it doesn’t need to be defended through archaeology or historical apologetics (e.g. listing eyewitnesses, or proving the resurrection), as is often done. Similarly, the gospels are not historical documents that correspond to real historical events. One would be hard put to reconstruct the so-called “historical Jesus” through fictional/theological stories that are largely based on the Old Testament.
For example, if Luke wrote his gospel based on other people’s opinions (Lk 1:1-4), we are in big trouble! Here’s what probably happened. There was no oral Aramaic tradition.
As scholars are now saying, the New Testament was probably written by the Greco-Roman literati (i.e. the educated upper class/intelligentsia). That’s precisely why the New Testament was composed, for the most part, in Greece and Rome. And that also explains why it was written in Greek by highly literate authors who didn’t understand the finer points of Jewish life in first century Palestine.
The New Testament authors must have been members of the Greco-Roman upper crust and very well-known, and that’s probably why they didn’t add their names to the texts. Some of the potential candidates who may have had a hand in writing the New Testament are Philo, Plutarch, and Josephus. And that’s probably why Luke seems to be familiar with Josephus’ works (Steve Mason). At any rate, it was obviously more than one writer, and all the authors, without exception, must have had transcendent experiences of God. There were no interviews and no “memories” involved, as Luke suggests. Every word they put on paper was coming directly from God. The New Testament is basically written in the form of prophetical writing (i.e. the genre called “apocalyptic literature”) because it’s based exclusively on visions and revelations (see Gal. 1:11-12; 1 Pet. 1:10-11)!
But we have completely misunderstood and misinterpreted these books. The problem is not with the New Testament; it’s with us. If you carefully analyze the New Testament, you’ll find that the epistles give us the “real” Jesus (meaning the actual *timing* of the parousia), whereas the gospels only give us a literary, fictional/theological rendering based on Old Testament material (intertextuality). That’s what’s going on!
Here’s the problem with our traditional interpretation of the preface to Luke’s Gospel. If Luke 1:1-4 is taken as prima facie evidence, then we’re no longer reading the word of God, but a case study. It’s as if Luke is saying: I interviewed someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew one of the apostles. In other words, Luke is basing his gospel on the memories (or false memories) of some individuals. Is this the inspired word of God that we must now accept as eyewitness testimony? I think not!
There are many problems with that view.
First, if Luke is giving us reports from interviews, then his gospel would certainly not be considered as the inspired word of God, but rather a case study which contains the questionable memories of second generation Christians, who may or may not know much, or who may not remember things accurately.
Second, the composite work of Luke-Acts is a fictional composition. The Book of Acts, especially, creates a head-on collision with the authentic Pauline corpus, particularly with Galatians. Not to mention that many of the details in the story are seemingly fabricated (e.g. Pharisees working for Sadducees, the Sanhedrin had no jurisdiction in Syria, Paul’s journeys are contradicted, etc.), and even the term “Christian” was not used until the beginning of the 2nd century. That’s why scholars like EP Sanders and Paula Fredriksen view Acts as a work of historical fiction. In fact, Dr. Fredriksen seriously doubts whether the author of Luke-Acts was Paul's companion. According to her, Luke doesn’t seem to know Paul very well. Bottom line, if you want to understand the actual TIMING of the Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, read the epistles, not the gospels!
How Did God Inspire the Biblical Authors?
Biographizing the Eschaton: The Proleptic Eschatology of the Gospels
Eli Kittim
The canonical epistles strongly indicate that the narratives concerning the revelation of Jesus in the New Testament (NT) gospel literature are proleptic accounts. That is to say, the NT gospels represent the future life of Jesus as if presently accomplished. The term “prolepsis,” here, refers to the anachronistic representation of Jesus’ generation as if existing before its actual historical time. Simply put, the gospels are written before the fact. They are conveyed from a theological angle by way of a proleptic narrative, a means of biographizing the eschaton as if presently accomplished. In other words, these are accounts about events that haven’t happened yet, which are nevertheless narrated as if they have already occurred.
By contrast, the epistles demonstrate that these events will occur at the end of the age. This argument is primarily founded on the authority of the Greek NT Epistles, which affirm the centrality of the future in Christ’s only visitation! In the epistolary literature, the multiple time-references to Christ being “revealed at the end of the ages” (1 Pet. 1.20; cf. Heb. 9.26b) are clearly set in the future, including his birth, death, and resurrection (see Gal. 4.4; Eph. 1.9-10; Rev 12.5). It is as though NT history is written in advance (cf. Isa. 46.10)!
The Proleptic versus the Prophesied Jesus
The historical view is extremely problematic, involving nothing less than a proleptic interpretation of Jesus. It gives rise to numerous chronological discrepancies that cannot be easily reconciled with eschatological contexts of critical importance. What is even more troubling is that it evidently contradicts many explicit passages from both the Old and New Testaments regarding an earthly, end-time Messiah and uses bizarre gaps and anachronistic juxtapositions in chronology in order to make heterogeneous passages appear homogeneous (e.g. Job 19.25; Isa. 2.19; Dan. 12.1—2; Zeph. 1.8—9, 15—18; Zech. 12.9—10; Lk. 17.30; Acts 2.17—21; 2 Thess. 2.1—3, 7—8; Heb. 1.1—2; 9.26; 1 Pet. 1.20; Rev 12.5, 7—10).
Intertextuality in the Gospels
The canonical gospel accounts add another level of intertextual reference to the Old Testament (OT). Almost every event in Jesus’ life is borrowed from the OT and reworked as if it’s a new event. This is called “intertextuality,” meaning a heavy dependence of the NT literature on Hebrew Scripture. A few examples from the gospels serve to illustrate these points. It’s well-known among biblical scholars that the Feeding of the 5,000 (aka the miracle of the five loaves and two fish) in Jn 6.5-13 is a literary pattern that can be traced back to the OT tradition of 2 Kings 4.40-44. The magi are also taken from Ps. 72.11: “May all kings fall down before him.” The phrase “they have pierced my hands and my feet” is from Ps. 22.16; “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” is from Ps. 69.21. The virgin birth comes from a Septuagint translation of Isa. 7.14. The “Calming the storm” episode is taken from Ps. 107.23-30, and so on & so forth. Is there anything real that actually happened which is not taken from the Jewish Bible? Moreover, everything about the trial of Jesus is at odds with what we know about Jewish Law and Jewish proceedings. It could not have occurred in the middle of the night during Passover, among other things.
There is only One Coming, not Two
The belief in the two comings of Christ equally contradicts a number of NT passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 15.22—26, 54—55; 2 Tim. 2.16—18; Rev 19.10; 22.7, 10, 18—19), not to mention those of the OT that do not separate the Messiah’s initial coming from his reign (e.g. Isa. 9.6—7; 61.1—2). Rather than viewing them as two separate and distinguishable historical events, Scripture sets forth a single coming and does not make that distinction (see Lk. 1.31—33). Indeed, each time the “redeeming work” of Messiah is mentioned, it is almost invariably followed or preceded by some kind of reference to judgment (e.g. “day of vengeance”), which signifies the commencement of his reign on earth (see Isa. 63.4). In 2 Thess 2, the author implores us not to be deceived by any rumors claiming that the Lord has already appeared: “to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here” (v. 2; cf. v. 1). His disclaimer insists that these conventions are divisive in view of the fact that they profess to be Biblically based, “as though from us” (v. 2), even though this is not the official message of Scripture.
Why Does the New Testament Refer to Christ’s Future Coming as a “Revelation”?
Why do the NT authors refer to Christ’s future coming as a “revelation”? The actual Greek word used is ἀποκάλυψις (apokalupsis). The English word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalupsis, which means “revelation.” The term revelation indicates the disclosure of something that was previously unknown. Thus, according to the meaning of the term revelation, no one knows the mystery or secret prior to its disclosure. Therefore, we cannot use the biblical term “revelation” to imply that something previously known is made known a second time. That’s not what the Greek term apokalupsis means. If it was previously revealed, then it cannot be revealed again. It’s only a revelation if it is still unknown. Thus, the word “revelation” necessarily implies a first time disclosure or an initial unveiling, appearing, or manifestation. It means that something that was previously unknown and/or unseen has finally been revealed and/or manifested. Thus, a revelation by default means “a first-time” occurrence. In other words, it’s an event that is happening for the very first time. By definition, a “revelation” is never disclosed twice.
Accordingly, the NT verses, which refer to the future revelation of Christ, never mention a second coming, a coming back, or a return, as is commonly thought. See the following verses:
1 Cor. 1.7-8; 4.5; 15.23; Phil. 1.6; 2.16; Col. 3.4; 2 Thess. 1.7; 1.10; 2.1-2; 1 Tim. 6.14; Titus 2.13; Jas. 5.7; 1 Pet. 1.13; 1 Jn. 2.28; Rev 1.1; 22.20.
In the aforementioned verses, a second coming is nowhere indicated. Conversely, Jesus’ Coming is variously referred to as an appearance, a manifestation, or a “revelation” in the last days, which seems to imply an initial coming, a first coming, and the only coming. Surprisingly, it’s not referred to as a return, a coming back, or a second coming. As N.T. Wright correctly points out, the eschatological references to Jesus in the New Testament don’t mention a second coming but rather a future appearance or manifestation. Not only do the NT writers refrain from calling Jesus’ future visitation “a second coming,” but, conversely, they further indicate that this is his first and only advent, a momentous event that will occur hapax (“once for all”) “in the end of the world” (Heb. 9.26 KJV), or “at the final point of time” (1 Peter 1.20 NJB). None of the NT authors refer to the future visitation of Christ as a second coming. It’s as though these communities expected Jesus to appear for the first time in the end of the world! The takeaway is that the NT is an apocalypse. It’s not a history.
To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them. And that's it. That's all.
Owen Sharma, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) dir. Mike Flanagan
Our Dining Table by Mita Ori
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Henri J.M. Nouwen
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The Wind Rises (2013) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
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Love Run (Intro) by The Amazing Devil
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Things You Save In A Fire by Katherine Center
.
Quora
From The Japanese (The Triumph of Achilles, 1985) by Louise Glück
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John Green [Vlog Comment & Tumblr post]
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Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton
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starpeace & serialghost
...
"It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."
'Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas' (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas), Machado de Assis
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering...
Virginia Woolf, from 'Mrs Dalloway'
A siren's hymn this blossom sung, As honey dripped off of her tongue, A serpent charmed, I stood entranced Beholding her Hypnotic dance
My eye had caught a glimpse of red, Of fabric swaying in the wind, And in the midst of heartache's throes, I saw her there, The desert rose
cant get over this
been stuck in my head for days
because i missed you
Hera.
i missed you today hera,
while buying a carton of milk i missed you.
I told mil i missed you,
i didnt even ask her how she was doing,
i forgot.
because i missed you
--M.M.V.