Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi ijma'in. Subhanaka la ilmah lana illa ma alam tana inna ka antal adim wa l-haqeem. Wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi al-Ali al-Azim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. This is a class on the New Testament Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, an introduction for Muslims. I will be your instructor, insha'Allah ta'ala, Ali al-Athai. Before we begin the actual first gospel, which is going to be the gospel according to Mark, just a few words about the importance of having interdisciplinary knowledge. This vastly improves our outreach efforts, our da'wah efforts to the non-Muslim community, especially the Judeo-Christians in the West. It's important for us to understand where they're coming from and to be able to make those connections in our religious faiths. The discipline of comparative religion is really a Muslim contribution to the world. And this is basically by consensus of even Western scholars that the first scholars to actually write objectively about religion, religions in general, documenting them, talking about their historical development, their origins, and founders were really Muslim theologians. And some of the great ones are Shah Rastani and Abu Rayhan al-Birooni, who's polymath, who's basically credited for inventing this discipline known as comparative religion. So this is something that is an art form or a science that is part of our tradition as Muslims. This is something that we gave to the world and this is something that we need to engage in. The Christians at the time, in the medieval times when these scholars were writing, most of their works were primarily polemical in nature. They weren't trying to objectively or near objectively present other religions, especially Islam. They're basically vilifying Muslims and Islam and attacking them. The first Christian to really write a sort of academic, if you will, refutation of Islam was a man named John of Damascus or John Demesine, who lived in the 8th century in Damascus, obviously, under Muslim rule. The majority populace at the time, however, was Christian and he knew Arabic. But the problem with John Demesine is that he actually believed that Islam was a Christian heresy, not a separate independent faith. So his understanding of the religion was very weak and he has a book concerning heresies and the final chapter is called Concerning the Ishmaelite Heresy. He doesn't even call the Muslims Muslims. He calls them Ishmaelites or Hagerians. Then we have Peter the Venerable, so-called Venerable. He was the abbot of Clooney who wrote books about Islam as well and in order to refute religious beliefs of the Muslims. But here again, primarily, we don't have objective presentations of the religion. What we have is a polemical sort of attacks, vitrolic sort of attacks against the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. For example, he actually claims Peter the Venerable. He actually claims that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was born and were actually passed in the year 666. And of course, if you know anything about the date, 666, this was the number of the Antichrist according to the Book of Revelation, which is a book that we're going to be talking about briefly. Although this class is basically focused, more focused on the four gospels, Anagila, Arba'a, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament tradition. We're going to talk about these other books as well to understand these books a little more in detail. Of course you have Thomas Aquinas whose theology and philosophy is still the standard in the Roman Catholic Church even to this day. And of course he's known for the Sumo Theologica, which is his masterpiece, his magnum opus, where he talks about, it's really three sections. There are Pima Parse, which is talking about Dodd. And the second part talks about virtue, ethics. And then the third part talks about Isa'alayh salam, who is Jesus in the Christian tradition. But he wrote another book as well which is not as well known, but it's called the Sumo Contra Gentiles, which means basically the refutation of the infidels or the non-Christians. And this book is really geared towards Jews and especially Muslims. And a lot of scholars actually believe that Thomas Aquinas here is specifically rebutting some of the things that he's read from Abu Hamad al-Ghazali. So this is the Christian tradition in the medieval times. We don't have really anything really objective. Again, more polemical in nature, nothing ironic, nothing really scholarly or academic. But in Muslim circles, you have this unbelievable growth of knowledge and this birth of this discipline known as comparative world religion. So it's important for Muslims not only to be able to present the religious beliefs of others objectively or near objectively, because true objectivity is probably a myth, but at least present the religion in a sense that is fair and try to be balanced and at least represents the majority of what those people actually believe regarding the religion. But also there's a hermeneutical aspect to it. In other words, there has to be an aspect to the study where you can actually evaluate the religious claims of others as well. So this is very, very important. Of course, every science has 10 Mabadi as they're called. There's 10 foundations of every fan or every science or art and we won't go through those, but traditionally this is called Al-Milal Wa-Nihal studies in nations and creeds and Kitabun Milal Wa-Nihal, for example, but Ibn Hazm, he talks about this aspect, analyzing other religions, but also giving an evaluative sort of commentary on the truth or falsity of these religions as well, and this is obviously done with academic rigor not to be disrespectful towards those religions. The first thing we'll do, inshallah, is sort of give you an introduction to the Bible itself. What is the Bible? The word Bible comes from a Greek word, ta-tan biblian, which means the book. So for example, many of the Ulama believe that when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in the Quran, ahlil Kitab, the people of the book, al-Kitab here is the Bible, because the word Bible literally means the book. Now, more in detail, more specifically, the Bible is actually a collection of books. It's actually a bibliography, a collection of books. You have the Old Testament, the so-called Old Testament, and of course, this is Christian terminology. When we say Old Testament, ahdul qadeem, for example, a Jewish rabbi would actually be offended by that terminology because he doesn't consider the Old Testament to be old at all, that the Old Testament is binding and that the laws and commandments are eternally binding upon every person that believes in those scriptures. So this is a Christian terminology. If we want to be more precise in our language, we would call the Old Testament the tanakh, tanakh. And this is really an acronym, and it stands for Torah, Nibim and Kitabim. So we look at the Old Testament, we're looking at 39 books, 39 books, beginning with the Torah. This is the written Torah, right? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This is called the written Torah. This is the beginning of the Christian Bible, the beginning of the Old Testament. Then after that, after these five books, you have 34 other books, but concentrating on these five books.  This is how it begins. And you have the story of the creation of Adam, there's two different versions of it. You have the flood. You have the story of Ibrahim, the book of Genesis will actually end with the death of Yusuf, in Egypt, Genesis, then you have Exodus, which is the story of Musa, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Leviticus and Numbers is the 613 mitzvot, or the commandments that are given to the prophet Musa, alaihi salam, according to the religion of Judaism that are recorded in these two books. And Deuteronomy means second law, Deuteronomus, which is basically a summary of what was already stated in the first four books and a few more prophecies and laws and whatnot. So this is called the Torah. And we have to remember also that the Jews believe in two Torahs, not just one Torah. There's the written Torah, which is the first five books that I just explained, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But Jews also believe, and this is a classical Jewish position, and the religion of Judaism has gone through a lot of turmoil. It was effectively ended when the second temple was burnt in 70 of the common era. We'll talk more about that. We'll talk about the Gospel of Mark, inshallah ta'ala. But the principal formulators or articulators of the Jewish religion are also from the Middle Ages. So you have people like Maimonides, and you have people like Joseph Albo, and you have Bahia, you have Rashi, these different rabbis and sages in the Middle Ages, most of them working in Arabic in Muslim countries, articulating their religion and being systematic. These are systematic theologians. And this is the first time in their history that they really have the ability to do this because under Christian Europe and Christendom, a lot of these things were outlawed and the Jews were pretty much under microscope during their entire existence in Christian Europe. And oftentimes they were exiled from different countries. We'll talk about that as well. That comes into play when we look at the Gospel of Mark and Matthew as well. But the Jews believe, in addition to these written books, there's an oral Torah, right? An oral Torah. So this is called the Torah, the Ketuv in Hebrew, the written Torah. And there's a Torah, Bi Peh, which is by mouth, an oral Torah. And this oral Torah was also given to Musa A.S., and it was not intended to be written down. And the purpose of the oral Torah was to safeguard the true meanings of the written Torah. So this would safeguard against somebody, for example, going to the written Torah and extracting legal rulings or exegeting the text by himself if he doesn't have the requisite knowledge. So he'd have to actually go to a rabbi and the rabbi, he would sit with the rabbi and the rabbi would teach him the written Torah in light of the oral Torah, right? So oral tradition was very, very important. And this is interesting in our tradition as well. We have the tradition of the Senate, right? The chain of transmission. And it's really incredible because Islam did not have these church synods and councils that we'll talk about as well, where these bishops come together and they literally will vote on a certain issue to make it Christian orthodoxy. And the reason for that is because there's such disunity in the religion and there's so much sectarianism, you know, firqah that these ecumenical, so-called ecumenical councils were something that was very much needed. If you look at Islam, Muslims, you go to Mecca, for example, Muslims are basically doing the same thing, whether they're Maliki or Shafi'i or if they're Shi'i or Ibadi, whatever they are, Salafi, basically they're doing the same thing. So this is a testament to the strong sanat in our tradition. However, the early scholars of Islam, for example, Ibn Asher, when he wrote his al-Murshid al-Mu'een, you know, 300 some odd lines of poetry, which is really a distillation to use the words of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a sort of a muhtasar, a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a greater text, which was a summary of a major text by Imam Malik Ibn Anas. The reason why these texts were distilled or made more comprehensive is because the Salaf would write these books and treatises under the impression that the student of knowledge would sit with a scholar who would then give that student the oral transmission of that text. So the oral transmission is very, very important. In the Gospels, Esa'alayhi salam wa alaykum, Jerusalem, he's approached by Pharisees, a group of Jewish scholars, doctors and lawyers of the law, and they say, under whose authority are you doing these things? They wanna know the Senate of Esa'alayhi salam is very, very important. And of course, Esa'alayhi salam is a messenger of God, and that's what he said, I'm a messenger of God. Of course, according to the tradition in the New Testament, he actually gives a different answer because he's very confrontational at times with the Pharisees. But obviously, the Senate of Esa'alayhi salam is that he's a messenger of God and he receives revelation from Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So that's important to understand as well. Now, the oral Torah eventually was written down and it was written down after the Christian era. And again, the reason why that happened is because when the second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 of the common era, in order to preserve the ethos of the religion of Judaism, the oral Torah was eventually written down and now you have the beginning of what's known as rabbinical Judaism, right? You know, post-temple Judaism. And the first part of the Talmud, which is called the Mishnah, that's the actual oral Torah that was eventually written down. We'll talk more about what is the Talmud later, inshallah ta'ala, because it's going to come up when we talk about the Gospel of Matthew, which is the most Jewish, if you will, of the four Gospels of the New Testament. So you have the Torah, then you have the next 34 books in the Old Testament, which are split between what's known as the prophets and the writings. So basically, if a book in the Old Testament is named after a prophet, it's considered to be from the prophets, which is called Nibbim in Hebrew. If it's not the name of a prophet, like for example, if it's First Kings or Second Kings or First and Second Samuel or other books like that, First and Second Chronicles, then this is called Kitubim, the writings. So you have Nibbim and Kitubim. So therefore you have the Torah, first five books. Then you have the Nibbim and Kitubim, which represent the latter 34 books of the New Testament. So you take the T, or the Tau from Torah, the Nun from Nibbim, and the Ka'af from Kitubim. You have T-N-K, and you add a few vowels and you have the word Tanakh. So this is what the Jews call the Old Testament. It's an acronym, Torah, Nibbim, Kitubim, the Tanakh. Christians call this the Old Testament. Jews call this the Tanakh, okay? Now the Christians also believe that all of the ahkam, all of the legal rulings of the Old Testament have been abrogated. And this is a very controversial issue in the news today with different, most of them are either fundamentalist Christian authors. Some of them are atheists that will bring up this issue with regards to the Quran. The Muslims believe that the latest revelation will cancel the one that came before that. And they say, well, this is true in every case. Therefore, all of the verses in the Quran that talk about peace have been abrogated. Of course, this is not true, and it's not as simplistic as that, and this requires a lot of scholarship. But basically they'll say this idea of nasch, right? This idea of cancellation, abrogation of different verses in the Quran, they kind of take this as being a way of Muslims sort of covering up these contradictions, so-called contradictions in the Quran, not realizing that this actually happens in the Bible as well. Christians believe that all of the ahkam of the Old Testament are summarily abrogated by the New Testament. They've been completely abrogated. They're a mansuch of the New Testament. So that's important to understand. So basically Christians now are under no obligation of the Torah that they don't have to circumcise their male children. They can eat pork, right? They're allowed to get a divorce now, because in the Torah apparently it says that you're not allowed to get a divorce. Even within the New Testament itself, right? Intranew Testament, you have abrogation. You have nasch. You can see this very clearly, Matthew 15, 24, which we'll talk about obviously the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus commissions his disciples initially, he says go into, he says enter ye not into any Gentile land. Don't go into the lands of the Gentiles, into the Goyim, only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But at the end of the Gospel, right? Matthew chapter 28, you have the great commissioning go into all nations, right? So Isa A.S., at least what it says in Matthew is abrogating the previous command that he had given to the Hawari'un or to the disciples because now their training has been complete as it were. So we have this evolution of teaching. We have this in the New Testament. We haven't going from Old Testament to New Testament. We have this in the Quran as well, because this is how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks to humanity. Humanity needs progression. That's how we are, right? So that's the Tanakh. Now what's interesting also is that the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language is dated to 1008 of the common era. 1008 of the common era, Miladi. So this is after Islam. This is the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language. So this is some 2,300 years removed from Musa A.S., right? So that's a big span of time. Of course you have the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered by a Muslim Bedouin in Qubran in Palestine in 1947, but the Dead Sea Scrolls are not complete. There are missing books. The Book of Esther is completely missing. There's portions of the Book of Isaiah that are missing. There are no tashkil, there are no diacritical notations in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So it's a big mystery as to how to actually pronounce many of the passages there. So it's not considered to be complete. The oldest complete version of the Old Testament is dated 1008 of the common era. This is called the Masoretic Text. The name of the scribes that produced the text were called the Mazarets. It's also called the Codex Leningrad. So that's important to understand. Now talking about the New Testament, coming to the New Testament now. The New Testament obviously again is Christian terminology. The Jews do not believe in the New Testament in any way, shape, or form. Jews do not believe in Isaii Salaam at all. There's no belief about him. He is mentioned in the Talmud at times. Christians will point to certain things in the Old Testament as far as prophecies of Isaii Salaam. And Allah knows some of them seem to be pretty legit. There are prophecies of the prophet in the Tanakh as well that are very compelling. But Jews, they don't believe in Isaii Salaam in any way, shape, or form. They don't believe in the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The Talmud mentioned some few disparaging things about Isaii Salaam that we won't go into. But Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells us basically when they said, Wa qawdihim, Inna qatalna al-Masih Isabna Maryam Rasulallah that they said in boast, we killed Isaii Salaam and then they have some sort of descriptions that they give on how they killed him and cursing him and things like that that we won't go into. And they also say a few things about Maryam Alaihi Salaam. As you can imagine, Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la also addresses this. Wa bi kufrihim ma qawlihim ala Maryam abuhtan al-Azimah that they utter against Maryam Alaihi Salaam a Kalanist grave charge. So that's mentioned in the Talmud and this was written by rabbis after the Christian era. This is also one of the reasons why many times in the Middle Ages, in Christian countries, the Talmud was ordered to be burned by church authorities because they came to learn of these things that are written in Jewish scriptures. We'll talk more about that, inshallah, as well. So when we look at the New Testament, basically we have four Gospels that begin the New Testament. These are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is a focus of our study for this course. Looking at these four books and looking at their origins, their authorship, basically the who, what, when, where, why of these four books. Looking at the evolution of Christology of these four books. What is Christology? This comes from a word Christos, which means Christ or Messiah in Greek and logos or logia, which means the study. So Christology is the study of Christ. So how does Mark look at Jesus? How does Matthew envision Jesus from a theological standpoint? How does Luke? How does John? Are they the same? Are they different? It's very, very important. Who wrote these books? Were they written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Who are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? How do we know that they wrote these books? What language did they write these books in? Where were they written? Why are they important? Why are there only four of them? All of these questions are very, very important. And the vast majority of Christians that I've come across in 15 years or so of interfaith work, the vast majority of Christian laity, those who kind of just go to church once a week and that's about it, they have no idea the origins of these books. They kind of go to church and listen to the sermon and that's spiritually uplifting for them, obviously. But if you want to actually get into the studies a little more in depth, we have to sit with scholars of the New Testament and listen to what they have to say about the state of the book. And it's very, very interesting for Muslims. And this could really be a good starting point for very quality Dawa or invitation to the religion of Islam. Many of the issues that they have with the New Testament in particular the Gospels can be resolved by studying Islamic tradition, the Quran, the Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the work of the Ulama of Islam. So you have the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This begins the New Testament. And then you have what's known as a book of Acts which is called A'mal al-Rusul, the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic version. So this is basically early ecclesiastical history or church history or apostolic history. What was happening to the Sahaba, if you will, of Issa al-Islam after his ascension into the heavens. So here we have the book of Acts which documents the early church, what was going on with James and Peter and Paul in the early church. And then you have what's known as the Apostolic Letters and Epistles. And this makes up the greater or the greatest portion of the New Testament. And there's 11 of these Apostolic Letters and Epistles. And these are written by Paul. And Paul is an interesting person. He actually authored 14 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Paul of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin who initially persecuted the early Christian movement. And then according to his own testimony that we read in the book of Galatians and also what Luke says in the book of Acts a few times, a couple of times at least. On the way to Damascus, he has this vision of the resurrected Christ and he's immediately converted. And then Issa al-Islam according to Paul tells Paul to go and evangelize the Gentile nations around the Mediterranean. So Paul goes to places like Ephesus and Roman Athens and Thessalonica and Corinth and he evangelizes them with his own understanding of what he believes the gospel to be. And that's fine, but the problem now is when we actually read the letters of Paul we see that he has major conflict, major difference of opinion, not with pagans and Jews obviously that's a given but with other types of Christians, fundamental difference of opinion that he has with them. And if you read the commentaries again if you read from Christian scholars who are Paul's opponents like in the book of Galatians when he rails against these people and calls them hypocrites and so-called pillars he calls them dogs and so on and so forth. Who is he talking about? The vast majority of Christian commentators FC Bauer is the authority on the book of Galatians. He says Paul is actually talking about other disciples of Jesus that were sent from Jerusalem who studied with James who's the brother of Esalaam. So in other words, and we'll go over this later when we talk about the gospel of Matthew inshallah in other words, Paul has major, major difference of opinion, fundamental difference of opinion with other apostles that are from Jerusalem that have studied with James and who is James? James is the brother of Esalaam according to history and according to Christian history and he's also the Khalifa if you will of Esalaam, James. And James in Hebrew is Ya'aqov had Sadiq Ya'aqov or Ya'aqob which is James in English and the reason why Ya'aqov became James is because early on many of the Christians they try to distance themselves from their Jewish roots because there was a lot of animosity between Christianity and Judaism. But James is Ya'aqov and his Laqab that was given his sort of surname or nickname that was given to him by Esalaam according to Christian history is had Sadiq which is the exact equivalent of Esadiq. So his Laqab is the same as the Laqab of the Khalifa of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Abu Bakr Esadiq and this is an interesting coincidence they have the same nickname. So then you have the Catholic epistles. So basically the four gospels, you have the book of Acts and then you have 21 total epistles, letters or correspondences, most of them written by Paul some of them written by Peter and John one written by James and one written by Jude but we have to say at this point the vast majority of these books all of the books of the New Testament the vast majority are actually anonymous nobody knows who wrote them and this is not my opinion this is not the opinion of secular Western scholarship this is the opinion of Christian scholars in Christian seminaries because this is a fact of the issue. When we say Matthew, Mark, Luke and John these books are anonymous nobody knows who wrote these books why are they called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? We'll talk about that when we get to the gospel of Mark inshallah to Allah. So you have four gospels, the book of Acts 21 letters and epistles and then finally at the end of the New Testament you have the book of Revelation which is an apocalypse which are basically a dream that a man named John of Patmos had while he was on this island he was exiled and he had these visions of the end of time what's going to happen in the end of time and he wrote those visions down and that's the end of the Bible so the Bible is a very linear book so you have Genesis 1.1, Genesis means beginning because the first word of the Bible, Genesis 1.1 is Bereshit Bereshit means in the beginning Bereshit Barah Elohim Et Ha Shemayim Et Ha Eretz in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that's how it begins once upon a time and then you read through the entire Bible it's very linear you go through the ancient patriarchs then you go to the time of David and Solomon the time of the judges and the divide of the kingdom then you have the Babylonian the Assyrian invasion, Babylonian invasion then you have the Persian period then you skip across the Greek period into the Roman period and the New Testament and at the end of the New Testament you have the book of Revelation so again, very linear once upon a time and then they lived happily ever after and this is how man will write but if you look at the Qur'an the Qur'an is not linear the Qur'an is circular so initially when the Western Orientalist who has a force structure that is very much Christian because he is Christian when he reads the Qur'an it seems like it's a jumbled a chronological mess why isn't this an order and the Qur'an actually addresses this issue the Qur'an says they say to you why don't you have this in order why don't you have it in chronology because that's how man thinks but the Qur'an is not written linearly it's written circularly and there's a great wisdom as to why Allah SWT will return to certain themes in the Qur'an it will not present his book in a linear fashion the oldest complete version of the New Testament so remember we talked about the Old Testament the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in Hebrew like we said is dated to 1008 of the common era this is after Islam this is a medieval text called the Masoretic text when it comes to the New Testament the oldest complete version of the New Testament in Greek is dated to 375 of the common era so considerably earlier than the Old Testament which is very strange because obviously the Old Testament was written first however this text which is called the Codex Cyanidekis or is cataloged as Aleph-01 the entire text is actually online I think it's a Codex Cyanidekis .org or .com or something if you can read Greek although it is translated there the actual manuscript was photographed under two different types of light and you can actually read it on that website but this still dates to about 330 some odd years after the ascension of Issa al-Islam so this is also very very late and the thing about the Codex Cyanidekis is is that there's actually extra books in the Codex Cyanidekis like the Epistle of Barnabas the Shepherd of Hermes these are extra books that are not found in the traditional 27 Canon books of the New Testament as we have them today and there's reasons for that as well and we'll talk about those as well you know why are there 27 books in the New Testament why not 28, why not 29 why are there four Gospels why is there only one ecclesiastical history the Book of Acts what about these other letters and epistles why aren't those included in the New Testament so this is a very interesting study when you get to that inshallah ta'ala but just a word quickly about our Christology as Muslims so there's very importance of very interesting things here is that again Christology is the study of Issa al-Islam the study of Issa al-Islam, the study of Christ and obviously our primary text in this area of study, in this discipline is the Quran the Quran is considered Dalil Qatee it is a definitive proof text it's mutawater in its transmission it's multiply attested in its transmission we believe that the Quran is the word of God the speech of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala so we believe that Issa al-Islam is a genuine prophet a prophet, the word prophet comes from the Greek prafaites and this is actually a Greek word we say nabi in Arabic and the word in Hebrew is navi and the word navi is found many many times in the Old Testament there's actually a prophecy that we'll talk about in the book of Deuteronomy which is called hannavi kamom moshay in Hebrew, the prophet who is like Moses and this is a prophecy of someone to come in the future that Musa al-Islam prophesied that will come in the future that is similar to him and we'll talk about that very very interesting we believe that Issa al-Islam was born of a virgin we believe that he could perform miracles so this is important we believe in Mu'ajizat different types of miracles there's Mu'ajizat which are miracles that are performed by prophets al-Anbiya wa al-Mursaleen bi-idnillahi ta'ala so prophets they have this ability by the permission of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to produce these physical sort of signs you know kharkul adat these breaks of natural law in order to sort of support their missions now these are not definitive proofs because false prophets can also perform miracles so you have to look at the sincerity of a prophet you have to look at the nature of his message if he's preaching tohid if he's preaching selflessness, altruism all of these types of things have to be considered into taken into consideration his istiqama in the shari'a of the religion all of these things are very very important because there are different types of miracles there are things called istidraj which are which sometimes translated as divine bagailment that a non-Muslim can do which seems to be a break in natural law but in reality there's no tofiq and what that person is doing and that person does not have istiqama and that person is calling to his own hawaa so it's very very important that when we see these types of things and these things don't happen much anymore it's because the state of the human the state of the human condition but in the pre-modern world these things were very very common and the Erlema has certain stringent measures that they would look to when these things would happen and of course we have miracles, karamat these charismatic exploits or talents of al-awliya of saints and these are well documented as well, thousands of miracles and it's part of our aqeeda as Muslims at least as Ahlus Sunnah and al-Jama'a that we believe in the the karamat al-awliya the miracles of the awliya and there's many of them mentioned like we said in Imam Abu Jafaratah how he mentions them Imam Ibrahim al-Laqani in the Johara he mentions that those who deny the miracles of the awliya then you deny them it's part of our essential aqeeda so Isa alayhi salam he could perform these miracles because he has a station of Nabua he is a prophet we also believe that Isa alayhi salam is a messenger of God an apostle of God apostle also comes from a Greek word apostolas which means someone who is sent out or sent forth Isa alayhi salam he or someone who receives some sort of message and Isa alayhi salam obviously receives a revelation from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala which is called al-injil injil seems to be the Arabic sort of way of saying iwan-gelion or evangelon right which is also a Greek word according to the Quran Isa alayhi salam is also the Christ he is Hamashiach he is al-Masih he is the Christ in other words he is the one the anointed one that the bani Israel were waiting for to come and unite them or to give them the true essence of their religion according to our conception of the Christ one of his primary functions is to prepare the bani Israel and by extension prepare the world for the coming of Ahmad sallallahu alayhi salam who's the final messenger of God and this is based on a verse in the Quran in which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that Isa alayhi salam said oh children of Israel I'm the messenger of God sent to you confirming the Torah which came before me and this is very important when we talk about does Isa alayhi salam confirm the Torah or does he cancel it or is it somewhere in the middle this is a big controversy a big difference of opinion at least amongst Christians as to the function of the law the Torah when it comes to Isa alayhi salam and then he says and to give you glad tidings of a messenger to come after me whose name is Ahmad and of course we know the name Ahmad is another name for the name of the prophet sallallahu alayhi salam some of the ulama have mentioned that the name of the prophet sallallahu alayhi salam in the terrestrial in the celestial realm above the the mulk in the Malakut and the Jabarut is Ahmad sallallahu alayhi salam or his name on the Yomul Qiyamah will be Ahmad Allahu Alam so unlike Judaism that does not believe that Isa alayhi salam is the Christ so even though this is a Jewish concept right the concept of the Messiah is a Jewish concept the Jews did not accept Isa alayhi salam as the Messiah and there have been many would be Messiahs in their history a lot of messianic claimants Isa alayhi salam to them is just another one of those and then they had you know in the year six of the common era Judas the Galilean who claimed to be the Messiah Barabbas at the time of Isa alayhi salam might have claimed to be the Messiah certainly Barabbas the son of the father is a messianic patronymic and it seems like his followers were touting him to be the Messiah after Isa alayhi salam you have a number of messianic claimants the most famous of course is Simon Barakokhba who was executed by the Romans in 125 of the common era this was a global movement basically thousand sixty thousand or so Jews were killed in Jerusalem by the Romans because of this uprising and you have other ones down the line in the Middle Ages you have Shabtai Svi who died in 1666 or he actually claimed to be the Messiah in the year 1666 and he was a European Jew who went to Jerusalem was endorsed by big rabbis in Jerusalem to be the Messiah he was captured by the the Ottoman Sultanate and because he was claiming to be the Messiah and you know just claiming to be the Messiah is not like you're claiming to be some spiritual mystic it carries with it a very clear political implication so anyone who claims to be the Messiah is basically claiming to be the rightful king of the planet earth so the Ottomans they understood that about his claim so this is treason this is clear Chayana so they gave him a choice because Chayana even by today's standards if you make Chayana against for example an American citizen conspires against his own government this is treason and it's punishable by death and it's the same in the pre-modern world as well so the Ottoman Sultan he said to Shabtai Svi he said you have a choice either repent of your claim and we'll let you go and you can be Muslim or you're going to be put to death and of course Shabtai Svi very famously he relinquished his claim to Messiahship and became a Muslim and changed his name to Muhammad something and he lived the rest of his life as a normal Muslim sort of always been these messianic claimants the most famous of whom was Isa A.S. at least from a Jewish perspective he was not the Messiah Christians and Muslims obviously accept him as the Messiah and this is a great topic of unity that we can come together as Muslims and Christians of course the significance of what it means for him to be the Messiah at times is radically different between Christianity and Islam but nonetheless we both both groups believe that he was the Messiah so again when I say the word you know the Christ immediately we think of Christianity and that's just the way that we've been you know sort of socialized it's an immediate signifier of Christianity but the Christ concept is a very Jewish monotheistic concept also if I say for example if I say the Holy Spirit right if I say the Holy Spirit immediately most people at least will think of Christianity because the Christians have sort of monopolized this term the Holy Spirit but Ruh Akkodosh in Hebrew Holy Spirit has its origins in Judaism not in Christianity the Christians took from that concept obviously and they changed it theologically but it is a Jewish concept it is a monotheistic concept even if I say something like God the Father right that sounds like Christian confessional language right if for example if I quote to you the Nicene Creed this is basically the the Orthodox Akkida of Christianity it says in the Greek language Pisteo Omen and Eis Hena Theon Patera Pantokratora we believe in one Father God the Creator of all right God the Father it immediately reminds you or makes you think of Christianity but God the Father I mean God has called Father in the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah chapter 64 verse 16 one of the Dua that are mentioned by Isaiah one of the supplications is Atta Adonai Avino you are the Lord our Father right and of course the Jews do not mean this in a literal sense right so again when the Jew says God is our Father he means Rabb he is our sustainer he is our cherisher we have that sort of uh... it's a symbolical title right that we have that love of God as if Ka'anna as if he is our Father of course this whole concept according to Islam um was destroyed this sort of metaphysical metaphysical aspect of God being our Father and it was made very much uh... literal uh... by the Christian uh... bishops and various ecumenical church councils that jee that that God the Father is literally literally the Father of Jesus who begot Isa alaihi salam so that's obviously something that's condemned in the Quran also condemned in Jewish circles as well uh... so that's important to to remember how did Isa alaihi salam because if you read in the New Testament Gospels you read Isa alaihi salam referring to God as his Father how does he mean it does he mean that God is his Father who begot him literally no Jesus peace be upon him Isa alaihi salam is in a very Jewish context so the way that he's using these terms is in a very Jewish way we cannot ignore the social and theological context of the Christ event of the Jesus event uh... because then we're reading into things anachronistically Isa alaihi salam when he refers to God as his Father he doesn't mean it in the nicene sense of the word that's an anachronistic reading outside of time that's not being logical in the way we approach the New Testament that's not how he meant it he's simply using the the terminology or the synagogue liturgy that's available to him that's why when we read the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter six and Matthew chapter eleven uh... i'm sorry Matthew chapter six and Luke chapter eleven something in that Matthew and Luke have in common uh... when he teaches his disciples how to pray he says in the in the syriac language Avunda Vashmayu our Father who art in heaven not just my Father but all of us and he means this obviously in a metaphorical sense not in the literal sense but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the Quran he refrains from using this attribute of ab or walad or ibn we don't use these you know abinah allah we don't use these types of things anymore because they've been corrupted over time by christian orthodoxy so that's uh... important to understand as well so the Quran says that they say that Allah has begun children bal ibadu mukramun no these are servants raised to honor these are servants that have takreem that they're simply saying these are sons and daughters of God they're not literal sons and daughters of God we don't say that anyone we do not say that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala begets nor was he begun we that's what we believe lam yalid walam yulat that's what we say lam yalid walam yulat and that's what we believe God did not give birth nor was he given birth to so that's very very important uh... of course when christians say that jesus is begun not made right uh... unless they're Mormon they're not saying that you know god had physical relations with madhyam alaihi salam for example the Mormons will say that but the vast majority of christians that are protestant orthodox in easter and and uh... catholic they don't believe that when they say jesus is begotten and this is important when jesus is begotten not made they simply mean that is alaihi salam is uncreated he's not created by god he's not from the makhuluqat right this is what they mean that the sun has pre-eternality which again is a paradox because they still believe however that he was caused by god he was caused by god which means what that god is a monarch then that god has priority over the sun because he is the the cause of the sun who is the effect but christian scholars would say no there is no essential or temporal or ontological priority of the father over the sun because these things were done outside of time nonetheless muslims would disagree and say even so if something causes something else the effect of that cause is by its very nature inferior to the primal cause whether it was inside or outside of time for example i have a ring on my hand and if i move my hand like this the ring moves it's done at the same time my hand in my ring moves at the same time but can my ring move without my hand no my hand is still causing it to move even though it's done at the same time therefore my hand is superior to the ring because my ring cannot do anything by itself so this is one of the logical arguments we can use against this idea that isa alaihi salam is uncreated yet caused by god this is an orthodox belief of the christians and some of it is based on neoplatonic ideas we won't get too much into christology because this is supposed to be a basic course so we're going to look at the four gospels but maybe in the future inshallah ta'ala we'll talk more about christian theology the origins of theology what is christian theology or orthodox christology and we'll talk more about that inshallah so even if you look at the old testament you have titles like b'nai-al-yon right like in psalm eighty two six it says that you are all gods all sons of the most high b'nai-al-yon sons of the most high so this is an honorific title that god calls the israelites you are my sons this is not meant to be uh... in the literal sense so this idea of triune gods right a trinity divine incarnation that god comes down to earth in the form of a living creature incarnation this is a a latin root incarnate to be in flesh god does not come down and reside in flesh these are christian ideas these are christian dogmatic beliefs that jews do not believe in they don't believe in these things the jews will use this type of language in a figurative sense very important for us to understand that jews will say yes god is our father we are sons of god there's a holy spirit but none of that is meant literally they believe very much as muslims do allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is wahid an ahad he's one of a kind there's nothing like unto him leisik amith lihi shaitan this is what they believe and this is evident if we read uh... the old testament as well so we would say as muslims then that islam restores the true christology the true belief about israeli salam uh... the the actual teaching of israeli salam because we believe the quran is a revelation of god and we'll talk more about that later what's interesting here we're looking at the gospel of mark initially is mark chapter twelve verse twenty nine when ascribe comes to jesus uh... peace be upon him according to mark and he says uh... what is the greatest commandment and jesus responds in the greek language of course he spoke syriac in the new testament books are in greek which is an immediate disadvantage for christians the reason why they're in greek we'll get more into this later the reason why they're in greek because greek was the language of the colonial power of that day the roman empire spoke greek so it's considered to be the lingua franca of that area in palestine so syriac was a language that the jews were speaking mostly the peasants were speaking uh... so syriac really didn't have and syriac is a is a dialect of aramaic very similar to arabic islamic language it really didn't have that ability to go into these gentile lands uh... and uh... to be used in other christian congregations that paul eventually evangelized greek was sort of the language of the elites the language of the the colonizer the language of the new testament became greek and not syriac so immediately we don't have what's known as the ipsissima verba of issa alaihi salam in the new testament ipsissima verba is a latin phrase it means the very words of issa alaihi salam we don't have those issa alaihi salam his response to this rabbi in mark chapter twelve verse twenty nine was in syriac we have no idea what he said in syriac or might have been in hebrew uh... but what we do have are greek translations at best so that's a difference between ipsissima verba and ipsissima vux ipsissima verba are the very words of someone like we have hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam we believe that these are the actual words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam of course we have hadith that have variations and so on and so forth but it's still in his language and if a hadith is multiply transmitted and it's a strong hadith and all of the requisites of the strong hadith are there these represent the very words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam the very words he chose the word order the syntax that he chose to express it and this is very very important because one of the first levels of tafsir is what's known as syntactical exegesis you can extract meanings by simply looking at grammar just by looking at the grammar you can extract meanings right for example ʿāʿṭaynā kal qawthar ʿāʿṭaynā this is in the past tense why does Allah swt say verily we have given you qawthar in the past tense so now the grammar has a theological dimension but if you don't actually have those actual words of a prophet then you lose that dimension so this is the problem now with the New Testament we don't have the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Syriac we have them in Greek nonetheless ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam he responds to this rabbi he says ʿakua ʿisrael ʿkuryas ʿathayas ʿaymu ʿan ʿkuryas ʿhais ʿistin he says here or Israel when he's asked a question what is the greatest commandment here or Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one right and here he's actually quoting from the Torah this is very very important ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam is asked point blank what is the greatest commandment and what does he do? does he talk about the trinity? does he talk about vicarious atonement? does he talk about he's the son of God? does he talk about transubstantiation and all these other sacraments that these Catholics believe in or the Orthodox believe in? no what does he say? he appeals to the Old Testament he appears he appeals to the concept of God in the Torah right ʿūsad ʿdī qalim ʿabayn ʿyadayyam ʿina ʿtawra he's quoted in the Quran is saying I confirm the Torah so he's quoting from Deuteronomy 6.4 Deuteronomy 6.4 sounds like this in Hebrew ʿshema ʿisrael ʿadunai ʿilohainu ʿadunai ʿikhād here or Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one right ʿikhād ʿīsā ʿalayhi ʿsalaam he uses his word ʿikhād he's quoting from the Torah ʿikhād ʿahad are exact cognates of course the Quran says ʿqul ʿuallahu ʿahad and there's a difference between ʿwāḥid ʿahad so students of Arabic this is something that's very interesting and a nuance is that when we say that Allah is ʿwāḥid we're saying he's one but that doesn't negate the possible existence of other deities because by and large the Arabs at the time of the Prophet ʿsala ʿalayhi ʿsalaam uh... they worshiped Allah ʿsubḥāna wa ʿta'āla but they also believed in the existence or the possibility of other deities right so this is not to hate this is not monotheism this is henotheism there's a difference these are greek terms that are english now monotheism means you believe in one god and you worship one god there's only one god henotheism means that there's many gods but you choose to worship only one so for example if i say i am one man i say ʿana ʿrajulun ʿwāḥid in arabic i am one man that doesn't mean that there aren't other men in the world right there's other men in the world obviously right but i happen to be one of them but if i say ʿana ʿrajulun ʿahad i am one man ʿahad now what i'm saying is i am the only man in existence there's no one else in all of existence that has the qualities ʿrajul man except for me so one of a kind when we say ʿahad we mean he one of a kind right so this is the word that's used by ʿisa ʿalayhi s-salām in mark 1229 how do we know he used this word because he's quoting from the old testament and the old testament is in hebrew and it says ʿshamā ʿisray al-Adunay ʿilohainu ʿadunay ʿiqad very very important concept and then he says if you keep reading the passage in mark he keeps quoting the Torah he quotes the Torah over and over again why does he do that? because ʿmusad ʿdiqal ʿyemabayna ʿyadayya ʿmina ʿtaura ʿisa ʿalayhi s-salām he confirms the Torah he says ʿva ʿahafta ʿadunay ʿiloha ʿiqa ʿbkul ʿleva ʿvakha ʿva ʿkul ʿnafshaykha ʿva ʿkul ʿmaʿudekha he says ʿand you shall love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart all of thy lathe right the qalb all of your heart and all of your nafsh or nafs all of yourself and with all of thy strength right so loving Allah ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿta'āla believe God is one and love Allah ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿta'āla and then he says love your neighbor as yourself right this is the essence of the message of ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām the message of Musa ʿalayhi ʿsalām and the message of the Prophet ʿsūpḥāna wa ʿalayhi ʿalayhi ʿalayhi ʿsalām this is the essence of the message right so it's very very important and then you know this word Allah very interesting word that you know Allah the dominant opinion is that because we hear a lot of things from different types of people different you know Christian polemicists you have you know Muslim haters you know profligates on TV or making a lot of money writing books about Islam and so on and so forth and they're saying you know Muslims worship a different God Allah is not the Judeo-Christian God right what's interesting is that ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām himself the word he used for God was Allah and this is evident if you study or if you've read the Syriac translation of the New Testament so here we have the New Testament in Greek translated back into the language of ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām which was done in the 4th century of the common era is called the Pashitta on Arabic the Basitta meaning it's very simple Basitta means simple in Arabic and that's what it means in Syriac as well very simple to understand Syriac and the word that ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām uses over and over again for God is Allah Allah Allah this is the word that he uses so next time somebody comes to you and says Muslims worship Allah who's a different God or the moon God or the Muslim God whatever they want to say you can tell them ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām himself uses the word Allah for God as evident in the Pashitta translation of the New Testament the Old Testament also says لَوْ تَعْسَئِ لَخَفْسِلْ بَكُلْتَمُونَ you shall not make unto thyself the image or the likeness of anything so very very important establishing ʿtoʻʿi'd in the Old Testament what does that mean? that means لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْوَن there's nothing like God whatsoever so the Christian will say for example yes God is one God is ʿahad but ʿisa ʿalayhi ʿsalām is ʿahad so then we say how can he be ʿahad when he's a man a man there's other men that's not ʿahad right also ʿahad entails that he's independent Allah who summoned he's independent of everything meaning that he doesn't depend on food and water and gravity and sun and all of these types of things like we do he is completely independent of everything this is the meaning of ʿsammat and the word ʿsammat in the Qur'an is called the Ḥaqqs ʿla gamanan which means that it's the only occurrence of this word in the entire Qur'an what does it mean? it means everything is dependent on Allah everything is dependent كل شيء يحتاج إلى الله but Allah does not need anything لا يحتاج إلى شيء this is the meaning of ʿsammat so when we bring God down and incarnate him and put him into flesh this is called ʿtejʃim right ʿtejʃud when we do that what we're doing then is making God dependent on certain things and this is the breach of the Old Testament that says now shall not make unto thyself an image or the likeness of anything right this is God's commandment to humanity God would not breach his own commandment theological commandment and then become a human being so that's the end of our first session next time inshallah ta'ala we're going to continue uh... talking about the concept of God very briefly again it's not a theology class the concept of God in the Christian tradition and then we're going to get right into the Gospel of Mark inshallah ta'ala ʿsallallahu ʿalayhi sallam wa ʿalayhi wa sallam wa ʿalhamdu lillahi rabbil ʿalameen ʿsallam ʿalaykum wa ʿrahmatullahi wa ʿalameen Bismillah ʿrahmam ʿalameen peace be upon you peace and blessings be upon you and also on the national national left welcome to our second session on the four gospels i mean testament uh... class for muslims introduction to the four gospels last time we talked about uh... some of the theological trends that we see uh... in the old and new testament We had mentioned a few things about Isa A.S. and how he confirms the theology of the Old Testament. This is something that's a recurring theme in the Qur'an. We find this in the Qur'an many times that Isa A.S. is quoted as saying, I have come to confirm the theology of the Torah and time and again in the New Testament, Isa A.S. he will quote from the Old Testament, he will quote from the Torah in order to teach the Bani Israel their theology, a reminder of their theology. So we talked about Exodus chapter 20, which is the beginning of the Ten Commandments. And there are two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Torah. There's one in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20. Exodus 20 appears to be the older text. If you're familiar with higher criticism of the Old Testament, Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis that there are four different sources basically of the Torah, we won't get into that much in detail again. This class is more focused on the Gospels, but basically to make a long story short, the text of Exodus seems to be older than the text of Deuteronomy. And it's very, very clear the first three Commandments are dealing explicitly with theology. They shall not make unto thyself the image or the likeness of anything in the heavens or in the earth or in the oceans. We see this theme again in the book of Deutero Isaiah, which is the middle portion of the book of Isaiah, this proto-Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah. Deutero Isaiah basically states that God is completely transcendent of His creation in any material or temporal or spatial sense. He transcends space-time and materiality. And this is true theology as we would see it as Muslims. So the definition of idolatry according to Deutero Isaiah and Exodus 20, this is Old Testament or Jewish theology, the very definition of idolatry is that is when we bring God down into His material creation, right, is when we say that this stick or this statue or this animal or this human being, whatever that thing is, if we believe that's God, then this is a very definition of idolatry, because Allah is by His very nature transcendent of space-time and materiality. That doesn't mean that He's not close to us in a relational sense. Of course He is. He is transcendent in a physical sense, but also close to us in a metaphysical sense, in a relational sense, in the sense that Allah SWT loves us and He cares for us and this is evident in the Qur'an. When my servants ask you concerning me, say, indeed I am close to them. So Allah SWT is a personal deity.  He's far removed. He's remote. He's unapproachable, things like that. That's not true at all. Inniqareeb, Allah is close to us. Waladina amrua asshadduhu harbalilla. Those who believe are overflowing in their love for Allah SWT. Al-Wadud, He is the All-Loving. This is a name, one of the great attributes of Allah SWT in the Qur'an. This whole idea of God having sons, we reject physically. But that doesn't mean that the meaning, the ma'na, isn't there. Right? And this is indicated in hadith. When the Prophet SAW, when he saw that woman running around looking for her son, that was lost and then she picked him up, picked up her son and she hugged him and squeezed him and kissed him and he said to the Sahaba, can you imagine this woman throwing her son into a fire? And they said, Allah, Wallahi. He said, Allah is more merciful to his servants than this woman is to her son. So he's using that filial, parental analogy when describing the love of God. Is it literally like that? No, it's not literally like that. Allah SWT, it's not our literal father, we're not his literal children. Right? We're not the Abna Allah. Right? As you know, when this verse, Ayatul Imtihan, according to the Mufassalin was revealed, Qul in kuntum tuhibbun Allah, fattabi'ooni yuhbibkum Allah. Say, if you love Allah, if you love Allah, you have to follow me. Then Allah will love you. Why was this verse revealed? According to some of the exegetes, like Ibn Abbas, he says because Bani Israel, the Jew said, Nahnu Abna Allah, we are the sons of God. And they didn't even mean that in a literal sense. They meant that in the sense that Allah loves us so much, we don't even have to believe in your message. Right? And that's the form of kufr. So even if you love Allah in the true sense, in the correct sense, if you reject his messengers, then this is not true love. This love will not be reciprocated from Allah SWT. If we want to be loved by Allah SWT, that's what the Orlema say. It's much more important for you to be loved by Allah than for you to love Allah. Right? Because that's what counts at the end of the day. Does Allah love you? And one of the ways that we can tell or indications that Allah loves us is when we meet the Orlema, when they look at us, how do they feel when they look at us? Do they have love for us? That's a good indication that Allah loves you as well. And the indication that you love Allah is, if when you look at the Orlema, what comes into your heart? Do you feel jealousy? Do you feel hatred? Do you are you disgusted by them? Or is there love? Do you want to adhere to what they're saying? If that's true, the latter is true, then it's an indication that you love Allah SWT. So this was a problem early on. Thomas Aquinas, because he's a Neoplatonist. Again, we talked about Thomas Aquinas last time. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica, one of the most comprehensive expositions of Orthodox Christianity, or at least Catholic orthodoxy, dealing with virtue, ethics, the nature of God, the nature of Islam, nature of Jesus Christ.  So Thomas Aquinas is known as being the great synthesizer of Orthodox Trinitarian Christianity and Neoplatonism, which is from the ancient Greeks, obviously. So he's trying to work with this idea of Aristotle. Aristotle, who said that it's impossible for God to love human beings and vice versa. Why did Aristotle say that? Aristotle said, because human beings and God are not the same genus, they're not the same species. So it's really impossible for God to love you and for you to love God. So Aristotle's God is a God that is totally transcendent, a God removed, the deistic God, like the God of the Founding Fathers of America, probably the first six presidents were deists. They're not Christian, right? Which means that they did not believe that Esalae Salaam is even a prophet. They didn't believe in the Bible at all. Thomas Jefferson, for example, did not believe that God has any interaction with humanity, that he simply created us and then he leaves us to our own devices. This is deism, right? And it's really from the post-enlightenment period that has its origins in Neoplatonism, which has its origins in these ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. So Aristotle very clearly says, it's impossible for God to love you. There's too big of a gap, you're not the same species.  So what Aquinas does, and again Aquinas's theology and philosophy is still the standard in the Roman Catholic Church. He integrates the two. He tries to find a medium position or a solution for this dilemma. And he says, yes, that's true. God and man are not of the same genus. How do we bridge this gap? Is that God becomes a man, right? So he asks a question in his Summa Theologica.  Because he wants to demonstrate love to us, right? But the problem with this idea is that when we bring God physically into his creation, again, this is a very definition of idolatry as espoused by the Old Testament. So this is not a solution. This is unnecessary. God does not dwell within his creation because then he becomes dependent on things, right? And this is the Roman Catholic Church. They accuse the Jews of deicide, of killing God because Catholics believe, Christians in general believe that God came down to earth in the form of a man. It's very, very... So the answer, Islamically, Imam Razali, for example, who is one of the influences of Thomas Aquinas' virtue theory, not necessarily his theology, but his virtue theory, Imam Razali would say that God demonstrates his love to us by sending messengers, not becoming a messenger or becoming a human being, because Subhanahu, he is above such things. He transcends space-time and materiality. The greatest demonstration of God's love towards humanity is the sending of messengers. And the greatest messenger is the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is why he's called the Rahmatin Lila Alameen, right? This is truly how to bridge the gap. And this stays in line with the theology that was given to Musa, Alaihi Wasallam and given to Haroon, Alaihi Wasallam and Elias, Alaihi Wasallam and Yunus, and these great prophets of Bani Israel. This was their theology. Le-sik-e-mi-fil-hi-shey'un, the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, chapter 11, verse 19, says very clearly in the Hebrew language, ki anuhi eil ve lo-ish, verily I am God and not a man, right? It's very clear. And this is mentioned a few times in the book of Numbers also, right? Lo-ish eil, God is not a man. What does that mean? That God and man are mutually exclusive. That's what it means. God and man are mutually exclusive in Jewish theology and in what we would consider to be true original Christian, if you want to say Christian, or the theology of Isa, Alaihi Wasallam and the Hawar-e-Yun. This does not mean again that we can't have a personal relationship with God. We can't love God. No. We love Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Why do we love Him? Because we recognize His blessings, His ni'am and the greatest manifestation of the ni'am of Allah is the sending of al-Anbiyah and the greatest Anbiyah is the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is why he's rahmatil al-Alamin. So this verse 21.107, verse 21.107, surah al-Anbiyah, ayah 107. This is our equivalent of John 3.16. So I'm sure many Muslims when you watch like a football game, a basketball game, somebody in the crowd will pull out a poster and it says John 3.16. Or if you go to a restaurant, you know, in and out burger or forever 19, you look on the tags on the bottom of the cup sometimes. It says John 3.16. What is John 3.16? We'll talk about that when we get to the Gospel of John. Very interesting Gospel, by the way. By far my favorite Gospel, the Gospel of John. But John 3.16 is one verse in the New Testament which is sort of the summation of how Christians feel or what they believe about Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. If you were to take Christian theology and break it down to its essence, its core or in a nutshell, right? You would quote John 3.16. I would say surah al-Anbiyah, ayah number 107, that's our equivalent of John 3.16. That if you were to take the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and you had one statement, you can say that captures the essence most fully about who he was and what he sent to the world. This is the verse that all of us should have memorized. So talking about the Gospel of Mark, one more thing we'll mention here and this is also found in Mark and this is very, very important for Muslims to make a note of. Mark chapter 10 verse 18. And, you know, Western secularist historians like Dale Martin at Yale, they have certain methods of historiography that they use to analyze the New Testament. And one of these methods is called, one of these criterion is called dissimilarity. In other words, if something is in the New Testament that sort of cuts against the grain of what early Hellenistic Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus, then that's probably true because it's embarrassing for them, right? To give an example, in Mark 10, 18, a scribe comes to Jesus and he says, good master, right? Didas qalei aghafei, good master, what must I do to gain eternal life, right? Jesus responds by saying, according to the Greek, he says, ti me legis agathan, u des agathan e me heis hatheis. He says, why me are you calling good? No one is good but one, that is God, right? This is very embarrassing for Hellenistic, Trinitarian Christians. So Dale Martin, according to his historiography, he says that this verse is probably authentic then because it cuts against the grain of what early Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus, right? Very interesting. But an interesting sentence structure here in the Greek, you know, some translations say, it says, you know, why are you calling me good, right? But the Greek actually says ti me legis, so it brings the maf'ul, which is the direct object, forward and essentially is saying, why me do you call good, right? So it's almost as if Issa al-Islam is offended by the question, is offended by being called good, and this is from his tawador, this is from his humility. There's no one good but one, and that is God. He's teaching them, you know, this type of really rigid, strict tawhid, this monotheism, but still that relational aspect, that love of God, of course, is there as well. So Orthodox Trinitarian Christology, you know, as we know it today did not really start to take shape until after 381 of the common era. That's when Athanasius, you know, he was represented representing the Orthodox position, proto-Orthodox position at these, at Council of Nicaea, we'll talk more about these councils. After that was after the day Trinitate of Augustine of Hippo, the Cappadocian first church fathers as well, and so on and so forth. So we'll talk more about that. Now we're gonna get into the actual first gospel in the New Testament. Now you might say the first gospel, according to my New Testament, is the gospel of Matthew, right? That's the first book of the New Testament. However, by consensus, the first gospel out of these four to be written was not Matthew, it was Mark. Mark was the first one to be written out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So why is Matthew at the beginning of the New Testament? Scholars say it's because Matthew provides a more fluid transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, right? Because Matthew is the most, quote, Jewish gospel. Issa alaihi salam, in the gospel of Matthew, quotes most extensively from the Old Testament, Matthew alludes to the Old Testament over a hundred times in his gospel, the gospel according to Matthew. So it makes a more smoother transition, right? But if we're going to study chronologically, then we would study first the gospel of Mark. This was the first of the four gospels. Of course, there are many other gospels that did not make it into the New Testament, right? And we'll talk about that as well. There's a gospel according to Peter, right? There's a gospel according to Mary Magdalene. There's a gospel according to Philip. There's a gospel according to Judas. There's a gospel according to Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, right? Well, it's very interesting why these books were rejected by the bishops at certain church synods and councils. Why were these rejected? And these four books accepted, right? So, you know, the gospel of Mark, who is Mark, you know, Mark is called John Mark. He was a student of Peter according to Christian tradition, right? Mark was a student of Peter. But we have a gospel according to Peter. Why is this book not in the New Testament? Because Christian scholars say, oh, that book is spurious. It's apocryphal, right? It's heresy, right? But he's the teacher of Mark. So, there's an inconsistency here. You're taking the book of a tabi, a follower, but not the book of the Sahabi, Peter, right? So, the reality of the situation is this, that Mark did not in fact write Mark, nor did Peter write Peter. No real scholar believes that. You might get some really fundamentalist type Christians that'll believe that. The vast majority of Christian scholars do not believe that Matthew wrote Matthew, that Mark wrote Mark, Luke, Luke, John, John. No one really believes that. Again, these books are anonymous. So, when we look at the gospel of Mark, for example, Mark does not identify himself, right? He doesn't say, for example, this is the gospel of me, Mark. I'm a student of Peter. There's no such identification, self-identification. This book is totally anonymous. Then how did they come up with the word Mark? How did they come up with this title? You see, there was a Christian bishop who lived at the very beginning of the third century, the end of the second century. His name was Irenaeus of Lyon, Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers, the patristic leaders of the church. And he was the actual one that named these four books. He named them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? And why did he name them these four books? Why did he pick these four names? Because at that time, there were so many gospels floating around that were attributed to companions of Issa al-Islam, disciples of Issa al-Islam. And he liked these four books. So, in order to bolster their credibility, right, he ascribed them to two disciples of Issa al-Islam and two pupils of two disciples. In order to do what? In order to bolster their credibility. So these books are basically what's known as pseudonymous. Pseudonymous, so they're anonymous, which means they're not identifying themselves, but above and beyond that, they're pseudonymous, which means they were falsely ascribed to different people, to people that did not write them. This is called pseudonymity. This was quite common in the ancient world, but it was not an accepted practice. Some Christians will say, oh, that's just the way the world was and it was an accepted practice. It was not an accepted practice. It was seen as forgery. It was seen as deception, right? So these four books are really essentially forgeries. And if you want a really good book that talks more about this, I recommend Dr. Bart Ehrman, E-H-R-M-A-N, who is very famous. He wrote, you know, misquoting Jesus, the orthodox corruption of scripture, truth and fiction in the Da Vinci Code. He has another book called Forged, where he actually goes into these issues, implications of people writing in the name of God, not just in the name of an apostle or a prophet, but in the name of God. Where are the implications of that? So even though this was common in the Greco-Roman world, pseudonymity, it was always looked down upon because the main reason for doing something like that was to deceive people. Now, why do you want to deceive people? There's a number of reasons. Maybe you want to make a lot of money. This certainly is very plausible today. You have people that forge a lot of things and forge autographs, for example, take it to the pawn shop and say this is an autograph of whoever, the president or something like that, and try to make a lot of money. But back then, there's really no money to be made. Why would people forge things back then? It's because they wanted their own ideological positions to take the upper hand because there's always a political aspect to things. And politics is a very corrupting factor, as we know. So in the ancient world, for example, if somebody was a student of Aristotle and they were brilliant and they wanted their opinions to get out there to make a difference in the world, they might write something and say this is by Aristotle and sign Aristotle and that's a form of forgery. Now, in his mind, he might be totally justified and say, well, my intentions are good. I have good things to say to people, but still that's a form of forgery, right? And that's something that was condemned in the ancient world. What's really interesting is, if you read the book of 2 Thessalonians in the New Testament, this is a book that apparently was written by Paul, the person who wrote this epistle identifies himself as Paul. And in this epistle, the author, Paul, he condemns a letter or another letter that is being circulated around the churches that is a false letter, a forgery, right? So this was very common even in the first century. Someone in the first century is writing, pretending to be Paul. The irony of all of this is that most scholars actually believe the author of the book of 2 Thessalonians is not Paul, it's someone pretending to be Paul. So in other words, someone pretending to be Paul is condemning someone who's pretending to be Paul. And the reason that a person would do that is to sort of cover his own track, right? Condemning something that he's already doing. So this is very, very interesting. So Mark did not write the Gospel according to Mark. This is by consensus of New Testament scholarship. The only people that really believe that again are people that study it like Jerry Falwell's University, Liberty University, or the Moody Bible Institute. These people would be even a literal, fundamentalist type of interpretation of the Bible, the vast majority of Christian scholars do not believe. Irenaeus of Lyon, who died 202 of the common era, he was the one who attributed apostolic authorities to these four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the reason why he did that is to bolster their credibility amongst all in the face, or vis-a-vis all of these opposing writings that claim to have apostolic authorities as well. But traditionally, Christians do believe that Mark is a student of Peter. And who is Peter? The Catholic Christians, Roman Catholics, believe that Peter was the first pope, the first pontiff, right? And that he's buried in Rome, that he died in Rome. And the actual site of the Vatican is buried on his, is built upon his grave. And they use a verse that's found in the synoptic tradition, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for example, in Mark, chapter 16, verse 18, Jesus says to Peter, su apetras, you are Peter. So the word Peter is not his actual name. It comes from the Greek petras. And petras means a stone, like petra, right? A stone or a rock. This is the nickname that Esalaeslam gave to him according to the New Testament. His actual name was Shimon Boryona, Shimon Boryona, Simon, the son of Jonah. But he was surnamed Peter or Petras in Greek or Safa in Hebrew by Esalaeslam. Now there's also, with regards to the author of the Gospel of Mark, there's an incident, very interesting incident that happens at the end of the Gospel, or towards the end of the Gospel in Mark, chapter 14, when Esalaeslam is on the Mount of Olives and he's praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. And according to Mark, some of the temple guard from the temple in Jerusalem, they come to arrest him.  But he manages to kind of slip out of his garments and he runs away gumnas. He runs away naked, right? There's a youth who's there, he runs away naked. According to many scholars, this is actually Mark, right? That is on the Mount of Olives with Esalaeslam and slips away from them. Many other scholars believe that this person is a fictional person that Mark invented for the purposes of getting a theological message across that we have to be as innocent as children. We have to follow Jesus as innocent as children and it may require us to strip off the clothes of the dunya. And if you notice at the end of the Gospel of Mark, when Mary Magdalene and the other women, they look inside the tomb, they see this young man sitting in the tomb and it's probably the same young man. Again, the message here is not that this was literally what happened, but that we need to consider ourselves to be people of the grave while we're still living. Wallahu alim. When was the Gospel written? By consensus, it was written around 67 to 70 of the common era, 67 to 70 of the common era. And this date is significant and we'll talk about it in a minute. Where was it written? It was written in Rome, that's the dominant opinion. So again, Rome is where Peter and Paul died and were buried traditionally. Historians in reality have no idea really where these men were buried or even if they lived, especially Peter, but traditionally it's in Rome and that's where the Gospel was written by the dominant opinion of New Testament scholars. For whom was the Gospel written? Hellenistic Christians living around the Mediterranean. Hellenistic Christians living around the, so basically the Christian congregations that were founded by Paul in his missionary activity. Paul and his adherents like Timothy and Titus and Barnabas and the rest of them. So these are churches that Paul founded in Ephesus and Rome and Athens in Corinth, in other places, Colossia, Thessalonica, right? So then the historical background here is very, very important to understand the Gospel of Mark. This is very much a wartime Gospel, okay? 67 to 70 of the Common Era was the time of the Jewish War. So there was a Jewish philosopher, an historian named Flavius Josephus who actually has a book called The Jewish War which he documents what happened during this time. Of course, this was the time when a group of zealot Jews were holed up in the temple precincts and the emperor Vespasian sent his son, General Titus, to crush the rebellion. These Jews refused to come out of the temple. They had sought sanctuary. Titus told them to leave. They did not. So he completely destroyed. He burned the temple to the ground. The only remaining part of the temple that stands to this day is called Hakutel or the Wailing Wall, the Western Wall where we've seen pictures where Jews go and they will pray standing in front of this wall. So this was happening at the time of the composition of Mark's Gospel, the Jewish War, which is obviously a time of turmoil happening in Palestine. The temple was destroyed for the second time. It was destroyed in 586 before the Common Era, the first time by the Babylonians with under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. And it happened on the 9th of Av. This is the Hebrew calendar. The 9th of Av, the 9th of the month of Av and 586 before the Common Era. The temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. And now in 70 of the Common Era, again on the 9th of Av, the temple is destroyed by the Romans under General Titus. So this 9th of Av is a day of fasting for Jews. There's four major fasting days for Jews. Of course, Yom Kippur and the 9th of Av is also included amongst the major fasting days. And this again is the beginning of what's known as rabbinical Judaism, right? The temple is destroyed, the rabbis, they start this council at Geminiah, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Hillel are the founders, Rabbi Judah Hanasi, Judah the Prince. What do we do now? So they decided we need to write down the oral law we talked about, the oral law needs to be written down. It became the first part of the Talmud and then rabbis would comment upon the first part of the Talmud, which is called the Mishnah. And the commentaries are called the Gamara. Together the Mishnah and the Gamara, these make up the Talmud, right? So this is the beginnings of rabbinical Judaism or post-second temple Judaism. Of course, also at this point, the Roman emperor, the fifth, it was the fifth Roman emperor was named Nero. And Nero did not like Christians at all. In fact, he persecuted Christians. His reign ended around 68 of the common era. Again, contemporary with the composition of the gospel of Mark. Nero actually, according to the Roman historians, Tacitus and Cetonius, he actually burnt down, set ablaze a great part of the city of Rome. The reason he did that is because he wanted to construct new architecture for himself. So he burnt down intentionally a major part of the city and then he blamed it on the Christians of the city of Rome. So this is known as a false flag operation, right? Where the government will do something and blame a minority within his country. So then it takes the focus off of him. And this happened, you know, the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin, for example, to get America into the war and other instances as well that we won't go into right now. But a very common type of thing to do, governments in power, false flag operation. So this is what Nero did. He set a major part of the city of Rome on fire and then he blamed the Christians. And Tacitus, Cetonius and Josephus, they mentioned some of the horrific ways in which Nero would torture and execute the Christians living in the city. Also during this time, you have natural disasters, earthquakes at Pompey, Naples, the Eastern Mediterranean and 79, you have Mount Vesuvius, right, exploding. So these were seen by early Christians as portents of the end of time, right? Christians believed at the time of the Gospel of Mark's composition that all of these things meant that the end of time, which is known as the eschaton, right, in Greek, the eschaton, was imminent. It was about to happen, right? Asa'alaihi salam had come, he was rejected. He was crucified according to Christians. He was resurrected. He promises to come again in the future, right? Then you have these natural disasters. You have Nero persecuting Christians. You have the temple being completely destroyed, right? So these were seen as major portents of the end of time. So we have to remember this. Mark is writing in this context. Mark believes, very much like Paul believed, that the end of time was in his lifetime. This is very, very apparent when you read the Pauline epistles. If you read the 14 epistles that are attributed to Paul, Paul actually only wrote seven of them genuinely. The other seven are forgeries in the name of Paul. But the central Pauline theme is that the end of time is going to happen very soon in his own lifetime. So Paul's advice on marriage, celibacy, divorce, slavery, all of that is predicated upon his belief in an immediate parosia, an immediate second coming of Esa'alaihi salam. That's what he believed and it didn't happen, right? Paul says, we're going to be transformed in the twinkling of an eye caught up in the clouds with the Lord, the very frame of the world is passing away. He tells people, don't even worry about getting married. You're not going to have enough time to enjoy yourselves. Don't even count on using your goods that you just bought in the marketplace, right? It's going to happen very, very quickly. Not in the sense of, yeah, relatively speaking, like the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, Anna was sa kahaateen, that I and the hour are like this, relatively speaking, right? Because human beings have been on the earth for tens of thousands of years, but that's not how Paul is speaking here. Paul is saying in his own lifetime, the end of time will happen, and this is verifiably false, right? Paul made a major error here so we can rule out Paul as being a true prophet even by the standards of the Old Testament. The Book of Deuteronomy says, if a would-be prophet says something will come to pass and it does not, then he is a false prophet. It's very simple. And it's very interesting, we talked about the Book of Second Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, which is not written by Paul, but written in the name of Paul, will actually try to delay the end of time to sort of save Paul some face. Very, very interesting, but that's outside the scope of this class. So anyway, the bottom line here is that the Mark in Jesus, right? The Jesus in the Gospel of Mark will call him the Mark in Jesus. He also believes that the end of time is going to happen during his lifetime. He says in Mark chapter nine, he says, for example, there's some standing here that will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in great power, right?  He says, the present generation will live to see it all. So these words were put into the mouth of the Mark in Jesus by Pauline elements. All four Gospels have been influenced by Paul. Paul was the first one to write anything down that was later to be considered scripture of the Christians, right? Paul is writing around 4550 of the common era. The Gospel of Mark is written 67 to 70 of the common era to those same congregations that were founded by Paul in those congregations around the Mediterranean. So that has to be made clear. Now there's two periods that Mark is talking about, right? You can divide the Gospel of Mark into two distinct periods. The Galilean period, right? Of Esa'u'llah. So the ministry of Esa'u'llah according to Mark is only about one year. So he starts when he's 30, by 31 he's already been ascended, right? According to the Gospel of Mark, the vast majority of his ministry, almost the entire year, he's in Galilee. Galilee is in Northern Palestine. The province of Galilee, he's in a city called Nazareth. This is called the Galilean ministry. So this is basically the first eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark. Chapters one through eight is Jesus's Galilean ministry. And the Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. There is no nativity narrative. There's no mohled mentioned of Esa'u'llah. There's no virgin birth mentioned by the Gospel of Mark. There's no virgin birth. It begins with the baptism of Esa'u'llah. There's no nativity narrative in the Gospel of Mark, okay? The nativity narrative comes later in the Gospel of Matthew and in Luke. Mark begins at the baptism. The second half of the Gospel of Mark is the Judean ministry, Judean ministry. This is Esa'u'llah when he goes to the province of Judea, the city of Jerusalem, and he's only there for about a week. So basically 51 weeks he's in Galilee and one week he's in Jerusalem according to the Gospel of Mark. He enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, right? He manages to seize the temple, right? Which again, this is something that is, it sort of cuts against the grain of what early Christians would have wanted to have said about Jesus. The early Christians want to say about Jesus that he's God. He's a son of God, Hellenistic Christians, that is, and that he is a prince of peace. He turns the other cheek. But now you have this incident of Jesus seizing the temple, right? And this mentioned in all four Gospels, actually twice in the Gospel of John. How does someone seize the temple if not through military means? This is the week of Passover. There's tens of thousands of Jews in the temple precincts. The Roman centurions everywhere. How does Esalae Salaam seize the temple if people aren't armed? This is somewhat embarrassing for Christians to talk about because that's the only logical sort of explanation for what happened. The Gospels say that Esalae Salaam, he simply went and rode a donkey into Jerusalem. He took a small whip and started turning over tables, but that's not how you seize an entire temple. It must have been done through military means, at least according to Dale Martin, who's a Christian historian at Yale University. So this is kind of an embarrassing sort of thing for Christians, but if you think about it, that's probably what happened, Allahu Alam anyway. So he enters the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He seizes the temple. So for that entire week, he's teaching in the temple, right? At that time, they don't just let any rabbi into the temple. If he's teaching in the temple, that means he has authority. He has indeed seized the temple through militaristic means, Allahu Alam. However, by Good Friday, he's already dead, right? So he enters the city of Jerusalem on Sunday. He preaches throughout the week on Friday, which is called Good Friday, by 3 p.m. according to the Gospel of Mark. He dies on the cross, and then two days later on Easter Sunday, he's resurrected according to the Gospel of Mark, and then he ascends a short time later, although the ascension is not mentioned by Mark. The ending of Mark is very interesting, and we'll talk about that as well. So basically, again, these are the two periods of the Gospel of Mark. You have the Galilean ministry, then you have the Judean ministry. Now we have major themes, major themes of the Gospel of Mark. One of the major themes, as we mentioned earlier, is that Mark believes in an imminent eschaton, that the end of time is going to happen during his lifetime, during the lifetime of Isa A.S. This is a central theme in the Gospel of Mark, an imminent eschatology. Eschatology means the study of the last things. So like, Ahadith of Akhir Zaman. We have a very large literature in our tradition of end of time literature. We would say these are eschatological Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The central theme of the Gospel of Mark is an immediate end of time. That's why Mark uses the adverb, euthos, time and time again, dozens of times in the Gospel of Mark. Mark uses the Greek, euthos, which means immediately, suddenly, immediately, suddenly, because he wants to give you that impression that this thing is coming to an end. It's going to be over. The Isa A.S. is going to return any time now and it's going to be the end of the world. Also, another theme of the Gospel of Mark is that you have somewhat of this, in our tradition, we would say like a Nasibe, sort of this sort of hatred of the family of Isa A.S. Or at least this sort of sliding of the family of Isa A.S. And this is apparent in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 3, Verse 35, when a group of disciples come to Isa A.S. and they say, your mother and your brother are waiting outside. And he says, who are my mother and my brother? Whoever does the will of God are my mother, my brother and my sisters. And this is seen as sort of Isa A.S. according to Mark, sliding his family, which is very, very interesting because remember the Khalifa, if you will, of Isa A.S., after his ascension was his brother James, right? His brother James was the successor of Isa A.S. But James has no real role in any Gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, you don't come across James at all really. And it's very, very strange that you don't hear about him. And it's not until the Book of Acts where James has a very central role that he is the actual successor of Isa A.S. And don't forget as well, as we mentioned in the last class, that Paul's enemy, if you will, is in fact, James. There is this very clear Pauline, Jamesonian tension that happens in the New Testament that these two men are teaching fundamentally different things, right? And that's gonna be made more clear when we study the Pauline corpus of literature. You also have this sort of, I guess we would say in our tradition, kind of raw fiddly, it's kind of this hatred of the disciples of Isa A.S. in the Gospel of Mark as well. Not only of his family, but of the disciples in general. The disciples in the Gospel of Mark are truly inept people, right? They just don't understand anything. They're always making mistakes in judgment. Jesus is always lecturing them. I mean, it's a really sad situation that the disciples of Isa A.S. are really kind of just insulted, looked down upon, people who just simply don't get it. And this might be an indication of Mark's sort of anti-Jewish, anti-Jamesonian sort of orientation or stances taken favoring Paul's position on certain things as well. So the Gospel of Mark is somewhat anti-Jewish in that sense, is that the disciples, because they're Jews, they just don't get Isa A.S. at all. So this idea also of supersessionism that Judaism has effectively been replaced by Christianity, that Judaism really doesn't have any type of reality anymore. Early Christian fathers like Justin, Martyr, in origin of Alexandria, they actually believe that the temple, the destruction of the temple in 70 of the common era was a direct result of the Jews' disbelief in Isa A.S., very, very interesting. Another major theme, so you have eschatology, you have anti-Jewishness. Another theme is, it's very secretive, the Gospel of Mark, if you read the Gospel of Mark, you'll find when Isa A.S. is extracting demons, for example, he tells those demons, when they bow down to him and say, you are the son of the blessed, you are the son of David, and Jesus is always saying to them, be quiet, don't tell anyone, he commands them not to tell anybody. This is called the Messianic secret, and it's found only in the Gospel of Mark. Why is it such a secret? This phrase, Messianic secret, was coined by the German scholar, William Reed, and there's many theories as to why Jesus is keeping these things a secret while he's in Galilee. One prominent theory is that the Galileans, of course, the Jews in northern Palestine, they were known for two things, they were known for fishing, and they were known for zealotry, zealotry or insurrectionism against the Roman occupiers. So if Jesus comes out and says, for example, yes, I am the Messiah, again, that has political ramifications. It's not just him being a mystic, sort of itinerant teacher. If you say that you're the Messiah, what you're saying basically is you're the king of Israel, in fact, the king of the world, eventually. So this is something that would get him killed very quickly. So this is one of the theories of New Testament scholars as to why Esalaam is always commanding people not to divulge that he is the actual Messiah. Of course, when Jesus was young and living in Nazareth, he probably remembers what had happened to Judas the Galilean, one of the Messianic claimants who in sixth of the common era was crucified by the Romans and a bunch of his men as well for making Messianic claims and for general insurrectionism against the Roman Empire. Another reason scholars have surmised that explains the Messianic secret is because maybe there just wasn't a lot of Christians at the time of the Gospel of Mark. And so Mark kind of embarrassed as to why this movement is so fledgling and it's not growing. He has Jesus command people not to divulge his true identity, Allahu Adam. But this is definitely a major theme in the New Testament and specifically in the Gospel of Mark, exclusively in the Gospel of Mark. So you have eschatology, you have anti-Jewishness, you have the Messianic secret. Another theme is the cross, right? The death of Issa al-Islam, again, according to the Gospel of Mark. In fact, the entire Gospel of Mark is basically an extended passion narrative of Issa al-Islam. So this is the whole point of the Gospel of Mark is the death of Issa al-Islam that he has to die, right? It's an extended passion narrative. What does passion narrative mean? It means basically the final week or the final weekend or the final few days of the life of Issa al-Islam. So remember when we look at the Gospel of Mark, you have eight chapters about 51 or so weeks and then another eight chapters about one week. So this is the focus of the Gospel of Mark is that final week of the life of Issa al-Islam. So the cross or the death of Issa al-Islam, this is the seminal moment of all of history according to Mark. And again, this is influenced from Paul. So Paul's Gospel in Paul's interpretation of what happened to Issa al-Islam, the cross is very central. He says, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. In other words, if Jesus was not killed and resurrected, then there's no point to Christianity.  Which Paul recognizes is a contradiction for Jews because the Jews did not believe that the Messiah was going to be killed and they still maintain that. And of course, Islam has a very interesting answer to reconcile this problem within Judeo-Christianity. And then we have another theme, which is the Parousia, the second coming. So the really, you know, five main themes of the Gospel of Mark. You have eschatology, right? And belief in the end of time, which is going to be imminent. You have this sort of anti-Jewishness, the sliding of Jesus' family and his disciples. You have the messianic secret. It's very secretive. Number four, you have the cross, which is central. And then you have the second coming, right? That Jesus is promising that he'll come again in the lifetime of the disciples. Of course, this did not happen. And we don't ascribe this false prophecy to the actual Esalaam. This is what the Mark in Jesus is saying. And again, the Mark in Jesus is influenced by Pauline elements because the Mark in Jesus community was founded by Paul and his adherents. And Paul was verifiably wrong about the second coming of Esalaam. And also something interesting here about the Gospel of Mark is that it's Christologically anemic. And what do I mean by that? So the concept of Christ in the Gospel of Mark, right, is basically that Jesus is a suffering prophet and that he's a hidden messiah, right?  And that's, you know, basically nothing compared to like the Gospel of John, which we'll get to and you'll see how much this Christology has evolved. The first time he's called the Son of God is in the very first verse of the Gospel of Mark, right? So if we turn to the Gospel of Mark and I have the United Bible Society's Greek edition here. So look at the original languages. It's important to look at the actual Greek when we read. So John, I'm sorry, Mark 1-1, right? Chapter one, verse one of Cata Markon. That's what it's called in Greek. It says, Arche to Iwangiliu, Iesu Christu, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Huyu Theu, the Son of God. And if you look at the English translation, that's what it says exactly. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But in the Greek, the phrase Son of God is in brackets. It's in brackets. And the reason why it's in brackets is because the scholars or the editors of this critical Greek edition, the United Bible Society, is telling us that this phrase was not in the original Gospel of Mark. It was added later, right? That's what they're telling us.  So they'll retain it in the text, but they let the scholars know who read the text that the brackets mean that the scholars don't believe, Mark actually wrote that. So the actual first verse of the Gospel of Mark is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ period. It didn't say anything about the Son of God. Dr. Brutz Metzger, who used to be the head of the United Bible Society, he says this was a scribal expansion, right? A scribal expansion means that it's a forgery. Somebody later on, a scribe, proto-orthodox scribe, later on went back into a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark and added Son of God. Why? Because again, the Gospel of Mark is Christologically anemic. It's not, it's very weak in its Christology, right? It's very weak. So in order to bulk it up a little bit, right? This phrase, Son of God, was entered into the text. If you read again, the Gospel of John, it's very high Christology. Jesus is called the Son of God in many places. Jesus is called God in the prologue of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God, right? So it's very high Christology, but Mark is a very frail anemic Christology. So the proto-orthodox bishops and fathers and scholars, they didn't like that about the Gospel of Mark. So in order to bulk it up a little bit, make it more orthodox, right? They went back into the Gospel of Mark and they put in these two words, Hwayu Theu, the Son of God. To Mark chapter one, verse one. Last class we talked about the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest Greek version of the New Testament on earth, right, which was found at St. Catherine's Monastery. 320, it was written in 375 of the common era. It was found by a German scholar named Tischendorf in the 19th century. And if you read Mark one, one, indeed it does not say Son of God. It says, Arche to Ewangeliu Iesu Christu without the phrase Son of God. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, period. So the oldest and best manuscripts of the New Testament of the Gospel of Mark do not contain the phrase Son of God. Okay, so that's, we've established now that there has been scribal fabrications made to the New Testament. This is just one example. We'll come across many other examples as well, especially when we talk about the end of the Gospel of Mark. There are actually four endings to the Gospel of Mark. So again, the Gospel of Mark is, you know, Christologically anemic. If you look at the actual crucifixion of Esalae Salaam according to the Gospel of Mark, it's very, very kind of different than what we have in Matthew, Luke, and John. The crucifixion of Esalae Salaam according to the Gospel of Mark is kind of pathetic. He's interviewed at his trial. They ask him, are you the Messiah? He says, it is as you say. And then he doesn't say another word until the very end when he's on the cross and he cries out this, what's known as the cry of dereliction when he says, ilahi ilahi lama sabahdani, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaking me? And of course, Imam Ghazali and his Radh al-Jameel, who basically takes the text and says the text is fine. The tahrif, the corruption of the New Testament comes in the ma'ana. And he says here that this cannot be Esalae Salaam. Esalae Salaam would never say such a statement, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Right? So we compare now, when we get to Matthew, Luke, and John, we look at the passion narratives of all four Gospels. We'll notice that they're very different. They might initially seem basically the same because we're used to reading the Gospels of what's known as horizontally. In other words, we start with Mark and then Matthew, then Luke, then John. But the real way to read the Gospels, according to Bart Ehrman, is to read them vertically. In other words, read the passion narrative of Mark and then immediately read the passion narrative in Matthew and then in Luke and in John and then you can compare, right, how different they really are because they are different and there are market differences between them that are very significant. So next time, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to talk more about the Gospel of Mark. We're going to talk about Mark's source. Where is Mark getting his information from, right? So this is very, very important and we're going to talk about what's known as a synoptic problem because we're going to move from the Gospel of Mark towards the Gospel of Matthew and why is Matthew different than Mark? Why is Luke different than Mark? How did they use Mark if they used Mark at all? So that's next time, inshallah ta'ala. quota. Continuing with our class on the four Gospels in the New Testament, the last time we talked about the Gospel of Mark and we talked about how Mark is divided into two periods, the Galenian Ministry and the Judean Ministry. We also talked about something very important, major themes of the Gospel of Mark. We said some of the major themes are eschatology and expectation of the end of time to come immediately. And we said the reason for that is because of things that were happening around the world, major natural disasters. You have persecution of Christians in Rome by the emperor Nero. You have the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. You have a rejection of Issa alaihi salam by the vast majority of the Jews. So this immediate eschatology. We also said another major theme is the anti-Jewishness of the Gospel of Mark. And that's primarily because the Gospel of Mark is reflective of Pauline Christianity or Hellenistic Christianity as opposed to a more Semitic or Jewish Christianity that was found in Jerusalem at that time under the guidance of James or Yaqub had Sadiq who is the brother and successor of Issa alaihi salam. So very clearly we have two different distinct strands of Christianity. And from an early period you have Pauline Hellenistic Christianity which eventually became the Orthodox Christianity. And then you have the Jamesonian Semitic or Ebianite as sometimes is called Tohed Christianity which believed that Issa alaihi salam was simply the messiah and a prophet of God. And of course we have that reconfirmed in the Quran. Why did Pauline Christianity win? The primary reason is because when the Emperor, the Roman Emperor becomes Christian he becomes a Pauline Christian and that was Constantine in 318 of the Common Era. If Eusebius' ecclesiastical history is correct and there's a lot of question whether it is correct but according to Eusebius Constantine was fighting his enemies at the Milvian Bridge and suddenly he looked at the sun because he used to worship the sun. He worshiped the soul Invictus and he saw a cross in the sun. In fact it was actually not a cross, it was the Cairo, the first two letters of the name of Christ which happens also to be the symbol of Cronus, the father of Zeus. And when he saw that he took it as a sign because he heard a voice that said Inhokvincay or Inhokv-signowincay in this sign you will conquer. So he apparently converted to Christianity and some say he actually converted on his deathbed in 337 of the Common Era. The point is when Constantine, when the Roman Emperor endorses one brand of Christianity then everyone is mandated also to follow that version of Christianity. There's no individualism in the Roman Empire at this point. This is a Christianity that he chose to go with therefore everyone else has to sort of fall in line. So Jamesonian or Ebonite Christianity was basically marginalized completely and this Pauline Trinitarian Christianity became the dominant Christianity. Of course with the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam that original Christianity was once again revived and brought center stage with the revelation of the Qur'an. And the Qur'an really is a revelation that incorporates the essence of all of the previous Qutb, all of the previous books of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. So like in Surah Al Bayna Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala he describes the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam, Rasulul min Allahi yatalu suhufam mutahara fihak kutubun qayyima that he is reciting scrolls that are pure in it are books that are made straight. What does that mean? Scrolls and inside the scrolls there are books or Qutub that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam is reciting Qutub. What does that mean? According to the Ulama that means he's reciting the essence of the previous books, the correctness. Qutubun qayyima what is true essentially from the Torah and the Zabur and the Injil is also found in the Qur'an that the Qur'an it affirms the truth elements of those books but also renders them now obsolete because now the revelation is the Qur'an and now the Prophet is the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa ta'ala. So we have also we have this so immediate eschatology. We have this idea anti-Jewishness. It's very secretive. We talked about the messianic secret. We talked about the cross being a central motif of the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark again is essentially an extended passion narrative. Half of the Gospel of Mark talks about one week in the life of Esa alayhi sallam. So that's what really counts for Pauline Christianity. So what we would say is then Jamesonian Christianity if you look at the Ebonite Christianity as opposed to Paul the focus there is not on the death of Esa alayhi sallam or the apparent significance of the death of Esa alayhi sallam. That's what Paul is saying. The point of Jamesonian or Ebonite Christianity is what is the religion of Esa alayhi sallam. What is his actual teaching? That's what's important. Not a religion about him but the religion of him. That's the difference between Pauline Christianity and what we would say Islamic teaching about Esa alayhi sallam. The Muslim claim is that Islam is the religion of Esa alayhi sallam. Whereas Christianity is a religion about Esa alayhi sallam or they're worshiping Esa alayhi sallam. But we say no. Esa alayhi sallam was not a Christian. He didn't say I'm a Christian. He never even heard of this word. He was a Muslim in the sense that he's actively creating peace in the world. This is what the word Muslim means. So the Muslims before the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam were those who believed in the Prophet of their time and that was Esa alayhi sallam. So the word Muslim by itself does not technically mean a follower of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam. That's not what it technically means. Nowadays, that's what it means because now we are in the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam. The Quran has been revealed. He was sent as a messenger. But before the Prophet was sent, who are the Muslims, Bani Israel? But when they rejected the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, they are no longer in a state of al-Islam. They're no longer in a state of submission because some people were perennialists and this is people who actually masquerade as Muslims. They say things like Jews and Christians and Buddhists and everyone, all of these people are Muslims with a capital M. We would say no, they're Muslims in the sense that they submit and they must submit to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Everything is in submission to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. This is Islam with a lower case I or Islam with a tanween in definite article. Everything is in submission to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Whether they're Muslim or Kaffir, whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not, everything is in submission, everything. So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la wills everything and he can will evil. He can will evil but he doesn't call towards evil nor is he pleased with evil. So this is a very important distinction. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is part of his irada, his will to will shar evil but he doesn't call people to do that nor is he pleased with it. But al-Islam, al-iflam, Islam with a big eye, these are people who are following the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. These are people who simply want to please Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. They want to actively please him. They don't want to do evil. They don't want to disobey Allah. They want to please Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la by following the guidance which was brought by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So this is the difference here. So this perennialist philosophy that is so prevalent in Western Academy that all religions are basically the same, you know, and it doesn't matter which religion you follow. It doesn't matter if you believe in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. They're all the same. This is just patently false. And the reason why it's false is because of a logical fallacy, right? How can Christianity and Islam be both correct at the same time? How can they both be true? Either Isallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is God or he's not. He can't be both, right? So the Qur'an is very, very clear. The Qur'an has a clear polemic against Christian theology, right? Very clearly criticizes Christian theology. If all religions are the same and it doesn't matter, why do we have this very prevalent polemic in the Qur'an against Christian theology, right? So Laqad Kaffirah Lathina Qalu Inna Allaha Wa Al-Masih is very, very clear that whoever says that Allah is Isallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, they have disbelieved, right?  No, we don't co-sign people to the fire. That's actually impermissible for Muslims to do that. We don't know how a person is going to die. We don't establish tukleaf for people. We don't know whether that person was exposed to a good prophetic summons or not. These are variables that are best left with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But what we can say is that this belief is upon kufr. Those who believe, Isallam is God. This belief is kufr. Whether that person is going to go to jahannam forever, Allahu Alam, we're not in a position to judge. If he dies upon that belief and tukleaf has been established, then indeed this person is in trouble. But that's not for us to judge. We don't know a person's state of death. We don't know our own state of death. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to give us khustin khatima, to give us a good ending. We should worry about ourselves and preach the message and make da'wah to people and ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for hidaya for them. People forget dua. One of my teachers said that 50% of da'wah is dua. That if we're not making dua for people, then we're missing half of da'wah. Half of da'wah is speaking and doing this and organizing lectures and your akhalaq is done. The other half is dua. So we have to make dua for people, inshallah to Allah. The final thing we said here regarding the major themes of the Gospel of Mark is the parousia, the second coming of Isa alayhi salam. Now, let's talk a little bit about Mark's source according to the vast majority of Christian scholars. So Mark's Gospel is reflective of Hellenistic oral tradition, right? Hellenistic kerugma. Kerugma is a Greek word, which means proclamation. So remember, when Isa alayhi salam preached his message around 30 to 33 of the common era, there was two distinct interpretations, at least two, but two major distinct interpretations of that message. There's sort of a Hellenistic understanding that Paul is bringing, which we would say is incorrect. And then there's a sort of Semitic or Jewish monotheistic way of interpreting the message that is exemplified by James and the other disciples. We would say that's correct. But Mark represents now is the oral traditions of Hellenistic Christianity, right? Of Pauline Christianity, the Pauline proclamation, the Pauline kerugma that is floating out there amongst these Pauline churches around the Mediterranean. And the reason why these things weren't written, it's probably oral tradition, is because the vast, vast majority of people at that time were illiterate and they simply can't read or write. So oral tradition was very, very strong. In fact, according to Bart Ehrman, at the height of Athens civilization in ancient Greece, the time of Plato and Socrates, 90% of the general populace did not know how to read and write, right? This was something that only a few people knew how to do. Also, according to Ehrman and the majority of scholars, probably all of the disciples of Issa A.S. were unlettered people, unlettered men. They had simple craft. They were carpenters, they were fishermen. They were this and that. They didn't know letters. So everything is by oral transmission. But when you have things by oral transmission, of course, it develops the memory. So like the Arabs at the time with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, also many of them were unlettered. But the concept of sened was so strong for the Arabs before Islam that they would not only memorize their own lineages back several generations, but they would also memorize the lineage of their horses all the way back several, several generations. And also poetry. They were masters of poetry in the Arabic language. And these two things, knowledge of sened, knowledge of poetry, helped them recognize that this revelation is in fact from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And also in the promulgation of the hadith literature, when you're masters of sened, then you already have that as part of your culture, as part of your expertise. It makes compiling the sunnah that much easier for that generation. So these are things that were done from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But here in the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Mark is reflective of that Hellenistic K-Rugma. And there's truth in there and there's falsehood in there because this is indicative of what Paul is teaching his churches, not what the Ebonites, the Semitic Christians are teaching.  Pericapy is a Greek word, which means literary units. He had these stories of Issa alaihi salam, these sayings, these aphorisms, the Hikam literature, for example, parables, brief narrations that people were saying about Issa alaihi salam. So Mark has these things. He has these oral traditions. But now Mark is able to write them down, whoever Mark is. We're conveniently calling him Mark, but we don't know the actual. Again, these books are anonymous. The Gospel of Mark, we don't know who wrote it. But some educated Gentile Christian in Rome has all of these oral traditions. Now he's going to write them down. And instead of writing them down, like Jesus said, Jesus said, Jesus said, like Hadith, for example, or like the Gospel of Thomas, that's how the Gospel of Thomas is, Jesus said, Jesus said. Mark knows, because he's smart, that that's not going to fly with a Greco-Roman audience. That might fly, that might work with a Jewish audience. But the Greco-Romans are used to reading the Iliad, an Odyssey of Homer. They want a narrative.  So what Mark has to do now is take these pericapies, these literary units, right? These aphorisms, these sayings, these parables. He has to make it into a narrative, a chronological narrative. So he has to put these pericapies into context. So the vast majority of scholars say, Mark puts these pericapies in context that he simply invents. They're subjective and they're contrived contexts, you see. Because Mark doesn't know the context of these pericapies. But in order to placate his audience, which is a Greco-Roman audience, he has to have it into a narrative. For example, we read the Sira of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. We know that there was, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was taken to Jerusalem, al-Ladut al-Isra al-Mia'raj. We know that he went to Taif for Da'wah. We know that the Quresh put a Muqata'ah, they put a boycott on the Bani Hashem. We know these stories, we know these pericapies of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. But what is the chronological order of these, right? Somebody might say, who doesn't know the chronological order, perhaps the Isra was first. Perhaps the Isra was first. And then when he came back, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said, okay, now I'll go to the Bani Thaqif. He went there, he was rejected. When he came back to Mecca, and then the Quresh became angry because he went to the Bani Thaqif and now they implemented the Muqata'ah. And that makes sense, but that's not the correct chronological order. So even if something makes sense logically, as far as your justification of that order of events or that sequence, it doesn't mean that it's true. And this is the problem that Mark had. Mark has all of these stories of Isra al-Isra'am and he has to put them into a context in a narrative, right? So the narrative of Mark then is something that he invented. This is according to the vast, vast majority of scholars of the New Testament, okay? So we have a principle in usul and the Hanafis have something a little bit different, but if you have, for example, two hadith that are saying two different things, right? They contradict each other. You have to try to make a jama'a, you have to harmonize them. Try to make them work. For example, it says, one hadith says the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he had his chest split when he was a child. Another hadith says it happened on the night of the Isra'a. Which one is correct? The ulema say both of them are correct. It happened twice. This is called jama'a. Or if you can't make jama'a, you have to make what's known as tarjir. You have to pick a tradition based on the preponderance of evidence. For example, if Sierra literature says that a man named Labid put a spell on the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and he started to forget things, that's what Sierra says. But the Quran says, wa laahu ya'asimuqamin an-nas, that Allah protects you from humanity. Then Quran takes preponderance over Sierra, right? So you don't have to believe in that story from Sierra. Because the Quran says very clearly, we protect you from these things that people are doing to you, right? So can this be done with the New Testament? This was actually attempted to be done by a Christian scholar named Tashin. Tashin lived in the second century. He was a student of Justin Marder, who's one of the chief architects of the Logos Trinitarian theology. Tashin, he took all four Gospels because there's a lot of contradictions in the Gospels. And when we actually get to the Gospel of John, after we study Mark and Matthew and Luke, you'll see that there's so many discrepancies in these four books that it's virtually impossible to reconcile because you can't have, for example, something happen and not happen at the same time, right? So either Isa, he was either crucified on the eve of Passover or the night before Passover. It can't be either one, right? Matthew, Mark and Luke says he was crucified on the eve of Passover. John says it was the night before the eve of Passover. Both cannot be correct. Somebody is wrong. There is no way to make jama'ah of this. Somebody has to be wrong unless Christians believe that he was crucified twice, which of course is ridiculous, right? In fact, he wasn't crucified at all, according to the Islamic Orthodox position. We'll talk more about that, inshallah, when we get to the passion narrative. But Tashin, what he tried to do is he took Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and he tried to harmonize them. And his harmonization is called the Dea Tessaron, which means through four, right? Through four. In other words, he took all four Gospels and he made it into a single narrative. And apparently he was able to reconcile all of the contradictions and discrepancies in the New Testament. I'd like to see how he did that. I've only read some of it, but the one thing he couldn't reconcile are the genealogies that are given by Matthew and Luke. And we haven't talked about Matthew and Luke, but Matthew and Luke give a genealogy, right? A lineage of Isa, that are completely different, right? And he couldn't reconcile that aspect. So, Mark's source again. So to put things in perspective a little bit, you have the Gospel, the Evangelion in Greek, the Ingeel revealed to Isa, between the year 30, 31, 32, 33, right around there. So then you have what's known as oral logia, oral logia, in other words, oral sayings, pericapies, right? Kerugma, proclamation, erisala, that's oral tradition. And you have two interpretations of it very early. You have the Semitic Kerugma, right? You have the sort of Ebonite Jewish Christian traditions and interpretations. And then you have the Pauline or Hellenistic Kerugma, right? So you have two different camps, and this happens almost immediately. So then, and these sayings proliferate in Palestine and around the Mediterranean in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And of course, Paul is now writing in the 50s, right? So when Paul is starting these congregations and making converts to his sort of school of thought, right? So that school begins to really grow and make a lot of converts. Now, in 70 or so of the common era, a person decides to write down these oral traditions of Jesus in line with Pauline dogmatism. And this person was Mark, right? So the Gospel of Mark, again, represents the Hellenistic Pauline interpretation of these oral kerugma, these oral proclamations, pericapies of Issa alaihi salam. In 80 or so of the common era, then you have the Gospel of Matthew. We'll talk about this. So Matthew was written about 80, 85 of the common era. Matthew, according to church tradition, is a disciple of Issa alaihi salam. Matthew, of course, is not a Hebrew way of pronouncing his name. It was either Matai or Levi, right? His actual name. But again, during this time, there's sort of distancing of Judaism from Christianity, animosity between the two religions. So Matthew, the book of Matthew, which is our next Gospel, is also anonymous. And no one knows who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. So even when Matthew is talking about Matthew in his Gospel, he talks about him in the third person, right? So in other words, Matthew doesn't say, and then Jesus came up to me and he said, follow me and I'll make you a fisher among, he doesn't say that. He says, then Jesus came to Matthew in the third person, right? So again, it wasn't until Irenaeus' time that these four books were named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All four Gospels, again, are anonymous. And more technically, they're pseudonymous. They're ascribed later on to disciples of Esalaesala. So what does Matthew do here? Matthew, he uses Mark's Gospel as his sort of skeleton. So you know how we said that Mark took these loose traditions of Jesus and he put them into a narrative. So Matthew, he takes Mark's skeleton, he likes that chronological order, okay? But Matthew also has other material in his Gospel, right? He has material in his Gospel that is not found in any other Gospel