. This is called M material, uppercase M or methion material. Matthew also has material in his Gospel that he has in common with Luke that is not found in Mark, okay? Matthew has material in his Gospel that is in common with Luke but not found in Mark. That means that Matthew and Luke had a source of some sort that Mark did not have access to. And scholars have called this source, this hypothetical source Q, the letter Q, which stands for the German Quella, meaning the unknown. Q is also called the Sayings Gospel, okay? So this actually worked a lot better if I made a diagram but let's explain it again, inshallah. If there's any questions, email me your questions and I can explain this a lot better. Maybe I can give you a chart. But basically you have Mark written in 70, the common era. Then you have Matthew around 80 and Luke around 90. Matthew and Luke, they both take the basic skeletal structure of the Gospel of Mark, right? So 80% of Mark is incorporated into Matthew and about 65% of Mark is incorporated into Luke, okay? And then Matthew and Luke also have material that they share that is not in Mark. That's called Q source material. So Matthew and Luke then they had access to some other source that Mark did not have access to. Matthew also has material that's only found in his Gospel. That's called M, Matthewan material. And Luke also has material only found in his Gospel. That's called L, special, Lukean material, okay? So this is really, really important. Now, Christian fundamentals will say that Matthew is a disciple of Esalae Salaam and a disciple wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The problem with that is if Matthew is a disciple of Esalae Salaam, why is he using the skeletal structure or the chronology of Mark who was not a disciple of Esalae Salaam? Mark is a student of Peter. Mark was not a disciple. Mark was 10 years old when Esalae Salaam walked the earth, right? He studied under Peter, but he's still not an eye and ear witness. Matthew is an eye and ear witness of the ministry of Jesus, yet 80% of Mark, Matthew will incorporate into his Gospel. So this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, one more thing that's interesting. We talk about the Q source document, right? Again, to make this really, really, this is very, very important that we understand Q. That Q is some sort of document. It was probably written. It's probably before Mark wrote his Gospel, right? That Mark did not have access to for some reason. Maybe Q represents the other oral proclamation, the Semitic Jamesonian school of Christianity, the true Christianity. Maybe Mark knew about Q and purposefully or intentionally did not use it in his Gospel because he thought this is from the other side of Christianity. These are the Jewish Christians that are saying these things, right? That could be a possibility, but the mystery of why Mark doesn't know about Q is a mystery that continues to baffle New Testament scholars today. Matthew and Luke definitely had access to Q because they have material that they have in common that is almost verbatim. They're quoting things almost verbatim from some other source that's not in Mark, right? So what is Q? Now this is called the two-source theory. The two-source theory says that Mark wrote first and then Matthew and Luke, they took from Mark's basic skeletal structure. That's called the two-source theory. It assumes Mark in priority, that Mark wrote first and then these two other Gospels. There's another theory, which is very much in the minority, almost an extinct opinion, which is called the two gospel theory or the former Gricebac theory. And according to this theory, Matthew and Luke wrote first and then Mark wrote after that. But the reason that this theory is not very, and this is the theory that Augustine of Hippo actually subscribed to, but the reason this is not very popular is that why would Mark, if he had access to Luke and Matthew, why wouldn't he record so much of this, so much of these beautiful teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, all these beautiful, the prodigal son, the Good Samaritan, he just ignores all of that. Why would Mark do that? It doesn't stand to reason what he would ignore some of the most celebrated teachings of Issa alaihi salam, if indeed he wrote after Luke and Matthew. The dominant opinion here is that Matthew, I'm sorry, Mark wrote first, there's Mark in priority, Mark wrote first and then Luke and Matthew, they used Mark's skeletal structure to formulate their own gospels and they have material in common. What is that material? It's called Q. What does Q contain? Parables of Issa alaihi salam, his hikm, his wisdom teaching, right? These are called aphorisms. What else? The ministry of John the Baptist, Yahya alaihi salam is contained in Q. What else? The Sermon on the Mount, right? This beautiful teaching that we found, we find in Matthew chapter six, Luke chapter 11, which includes the Lord's prayer and the Beatitudes, right? The series of blessings that Issa alaihi salam gives. Also interesting, there's no passion, there's no passion narrative in Q, right? In other words, there's nothing about the death of Issa alaihi salam in Q. There's nothing about even a passion prediction in Q, right? In other words, Matthew and Luke and the material that they have in common that is missing from Mark, nothing in their material that they have in common has anything to do with the death and resurrection of Issa alaihi salam. What does that mean? That means the author of Q, whoever it was, maybe Jewish Christian community from James, they didn't value the crucifixion and resurrection of Issa alaihi salam. Why? Maybe it wasn't important for them, or maybe they didn't even believe in it, which is a possibility, right? So this is very, very important. This is called a synoptic problem, right? Dealing with the interdependency of these three gospels, right? Why does Mark not use Q? Did he know about it? Did he not know about it? What does Q contain? We can sort of ascertain what Q contained because it's simply what Luke and Matthew have in common, right? Read what Q contains. None of it contradicts Islam. None of it contradicts Islam. So this Q, this saying's gospel, could actually be the injil of Issa alaihi salam, but we haven't actually found anything. Matthew and Luke probably had something, but it's been lost to time, right? Maybe they buried it somewhere. Quite often, Christian archeologists, they'll go on and dig. This happens all the time and they'll find something extraordinary, right? In 1887, they found this document called the didikei. Didikei is Greek for teaching, right? The didikei was written in the second century, some say first century, and it represents the teaching of the disciples to Gentile converts. It's very interesting. It's like a church manual, right? The teaching of the disciples, the actual disciples to Gentile converts. And one of something interesting it mentions in the didikei is that Christians will fast twice a week, right? So the concentration on the actual fasting and prayers and so on and so forth. This wasn't discovered until 1887 or so in a monastery, but scholars believe it was written in the second century. Now what's also interesting about Mark, we're gonna finish up with Mark, inshallah, is that there's actually four endings for the gospel of Mark. So remember we talked about the beginning of the gospel of Mark. That the beginning of the, the very beginning of the gospel contains a fabrication. It says, arcetu iwangeliu iesu Christu, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then it says, huyu theyu, the son of God. This phrase, son of God, is not in the oldest and best Greek manuscripts of the gospel of Mark, okay? It was added later. Bruce Metzger, the president of the United Bible Society, he called it a scribal expansion. It's not found in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So this was an example of how the gospel of Mark is Christologically anemic. It's very weak in its Christology. So a scribe went back and they had to sort of pad it a little bit and put that phrase in there. Now if you look at the end of the gospel of Mark, so the gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four gospels. It has only 16 chapters, right? And the true ending of the gospel of Mark is actually 16, eight, chapter 16, verse eight. So this is what happens. Basically, Jesus is apparently crucified and he's put into a tomb and then on Sunday, a group of women, they go to the tomb, they look inside and they see a young man sitting in the tomb and they say, and the young man says to them that basically he's not here, he's gone to Galilee. And then it says, Kai uden e uden e pan e fabunta gar. Then they said nothing to no one for they were afraid. And that's the end of the gospel. That's the true end of the gospel of Mark. What does that mean? That means basically we have no idea what happened to Jesus. All we know is apparently he was crucified. They go to the tomb. He's not there. There's an angel or maybe it says a young man sitting in the tomb and says he's not here. He's in Galilee, right? And that's the end of the gospel. What does that mean? That means that according to the earliest gospel in the New Testament, nobody sees a resurrected Jesus. Nobody sees a resurrected Jesus. In fact, it's quite questionable whether he was crucified at all. Because in the gospel of Mark, if you read chapter 15, it says that after a few hours, Jesus had apparently died on the cross. And when this news was brought to Pontius Pilate, the man who made a profession out of crucifying Jews, it said he marveled. He couldn't believe it. This man is already dead after a few hours? Three hours and he's dead? Because he knew from experience it took days to die on a cross. And now we're told that the women go on Sunday to the supposed tomb and somebody tells them, oh, he's not here. He's in Galilee. So what happened to Issa al-Asana? It's very, very interesting. So the end of this gospel is very ambiguous. And the Christian scholars of the second and third centuries and the fourth century, they didn't like this ambiguity because they wanted to tell you, they wanted to drive the point home that he indeed was killed and he rose from the dead, right? So they added an ending to this gospel, right? They added. So the true end is Mark 16, eight. That's called the true end. But then we have the longer ending of Mark, which is in later manuscripts of the gospel of Mark. And here now, what does it say? It says that Jesus came and appeared to Mary Magdalene and then he appeared to two disciples, right? Why two disciples? Because the true end of the gospel, it says that women went to the tomb, they saw it was empty. There's a young man and said, he's in Galilee. He's gone to Galilee, right? And that's the end of the gospel. A woman's testimony in Judaism in the first century is basically worthless, right? A woman's testimony is not taken into consideration in any court in Judaism in the first century, right? So what you need is male witnesses. So what happens here is that some clever scribe recognized the need for male witnesses. So he went back and added this longer ending where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, but also to two disciples, male disciples, right? And then he commissions them. The commissioning of the disciples would go into all nations. And then he says something interesting to his disciples. The coinage is a longer ending, which is actually a fabrication. He says to them that you'll speak in many tongues, you'll lay your hands on people and they'll be cured. You can drink poison and you'll live. You can handle poisonous snakes and it won't harm you. And then he ascends into heaven, right? This is a longer ending of Mark. What's interesting about this ending of Mark here is you have a group of Christians in America that are called Appalachian snake handlers. This is a sort of offshoot of what's known as Pentecostalism, these Christians who speak in tongues, right? The charismatic type movement. They're in the South in America. You have these Appalachian snake handlers who bring snakes into church and they handle snakes. And one of them recently, his name was Mark Wolford, he was bitten by a snake and he died. In fact, his father also died from doing the same thing, bitten by a snake. I feel like telling his son now that the scripture that says that you can handle snakes is actually a fabrication to the end of Mark's gospel. I debated a Christian one time. I don't know if this has been, maybe you can find this on YouTube. I debated a Christian one time. And this happened a couple of times where I used this. It's really an old Ahmadidat. Rahimullah Ta'ala, old trick from Ahmadidat. But it's very effective. And it's because I said, is the Bible the word of God? He says yes. I said, are you a two Christian? He says yes. I said, two Christians, according to Jesus, can drink poison and nothing can happen to them. So I took some white out, you know, liquid paper out of my bag, which is not really poisonous, but it'll make you pretty sick. And I put it on the table and I said, I want you to drink this white out.  And then you know what he said?  That's a fabrication to the Gospel of Mark. And there was this collective gasp from the audience. They couldn't believe that he had said that. So I said, if it's a fabrication, here's my Bible, rip it out of my Bible. It's a fabrication, take it out, throw it on the ground. He said, no, I refuse to do that. So why do you refuse to do that? If it's a fabrication, right?  Either fabrication or it's not. But scholars are unanimous that this longer ending of Mark is a later addition to the Gospel of Mark. So the earliest Gospel in the New Testament has a fabrication at the very beginning by calling Jesus the Son of God. And as a fabrication at the very end, because it ends very briefly, it's like a cliffhanger. And we don't really know what happened to Jesus. All we know that apparently he was killed on a cross and then suddenly there's an empty tomb. Was he resurrected? Was he actually dead? Is it the wrong tomb? What happened? We have no idea. So they went in and actually added this longer ending. There's actually two more endings of the Gospel of Mark. But the other two are not very important. But there's what's known as the shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark, which is in a few manuscripts. And then you have another ending of the Gospel of Mark, which is found in one manuscript called the Codex Washingtonius, where he says a bunch of things about Satan's power over the age. There's a bunch of hapoxlegominoi, these words that are not characteristic of Mark's writing style. And that's how you can tell that that's also a fabrication. So next time, inshallah, so we're done with the Gospel of Mark. Next time, inshallah ta'ala, we're going to go into the Gospel of Matthew. And the Gospel of Matthew is very, very interesting Gospel to say the very least. We're going to go through the basics, the who, what, when, where, and why of the Gospel of Matthew. We're going to look at the structure, the new characters of the Gospel of Matthew. We're going to look at the major themes of the Gospel, the sources, how did Mark, how did Matthew deal with the Gospel of Mark? Because he had Mark on his table when he wrote his Gospel. How did he deal with the Gospel of Mark? We're going to talk about that next time, inshallah. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim, Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa salam wa alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen, wa salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Bismillahir rahmanir rahim, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallim, Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sahtuh. Subhanaka la ilman lana illa ma'al namtana ilna ka antil al-alim wa l-hakim wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa bil-lahi al-alil al-azim, wa salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. So last time we talked about the Gospel of Mark. We finished up talking about the Gospel of Mark. And we had said that Mark wrote around 70 of the common era, as Gospel represents the oral kerugma or proclamation of Hellenized or Pauline Christianity. Then we said Matthew, he wrote around 80 or 85 of the common era. Luke also around 85, possibly 90 of the common era. And we had said that Matthew used Mark's kind of skeletal structure, chronological order in his own Gospel. About 85% of Mark is incorporated into Matthew. And this establishes the interdependency of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? And these three Gospels are therefore called the Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic. Synoptic means literally the same-eyed Gospel, meaning that all three of these Gospels basically follow the same chronology of events, right? Because Mark wrote first, Matthew and Luke, they take from Mark's chronology. This is why there's an interdependency in these three Gospels, hence they're called the Synoptic Gospels. So let's now talk more, but we'll get back to this idea later when we talk about the sources of Matthew more in detail, inshallah. But let's talk now about the Gospel according to Matthew. This is called Ketah, Matheon in Greek, according to Matthew. So who was Matthew? Matthew is, according to tradition, the disciple, a disciple of Issa alaihissalaam. He's one of the 12 disciples of Issa alaihissalaam. Of course, scholars don't believe that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew, again, just like Mark is anonymous, nobody knows who wrote it. It was ascribed to Matthew by Irenaeus of Leon, around 180 or 190 of the common era. In order to bolster its credibility as an authentic Gospel by giving it apostolic attribution. So it was therefore pseudonymously ascribed to a disciple of Issa alaihissalaam. The Gospel of Matthew was the most popular Gospel in all of antiquity. It was the most popular. The least popular was the Gospel of Mark because it's the shortest Gospel and very Christologically anemic, as we said. Jesus is only called the Son of God twice in the Gospel of Mark, once at the beginning, which we have already established is a fabrication, and once in chapter 15, where a Roman centurion calls him the Son of God at the crucifixion. But when a Roman calls someone the Son of God, of course, that has a very different connotation than a Jew calling someone the Son of God. So there's a lot to be said about that as well. We had also said the end of the Gospel of Mark, there are four different endings to the Gospel of Mark. So Matthew was the most popular by far in antiquity. Where was it written? According to the dominant opinion, the Gospel of Matthew was written in Antioch in Syria. When was it written? Around 80, 85, possibly 90, maybe even as late as 95 of the common era. Now, keep in mind again, there's major turmoil happening right now in Palestine with Judaism all around the world during the time of the composition of all four of these Gospels. We had said in 70 of the common era, General Titus, under commission of his father, the emperor of Aspasian had destroyed the temple, the second temple, never to be rebuilt again, that happened in 70 of the common era. And then you have this persecution during the 80s, the 90s of Christians living in the Mediterranean, especially in Rome. 125 of the common era, you have a final defeat of the Jews in Palestine. And in fact, this was a time when this man named Simon claimed to be the Messiah. We talked about him briefly in past classes. Simon, he was endorsed by big rabbis to be the actual Messiah and he was given the name Bar Kokhba, Simon or Shimon Bar Kokhba, the son of the star, right? Which is the word Kokhub in Arabic, which means star or planet. The reason he was given this name is because in Numbers 2417 it says that a star shall rise out of Jacob, right? So this is seen as a messianic prophecy. So this man, Simon Bar Kokhba, he was eventually defeated by the Romans and the Emperor Hadrian exiled all of the Jews out of Jerusalem and he put a statue of Zeus on the temple site where the temple used to be on the temple mount and then he renamed Jerusalem Elia Capitolina and the Jews were expelled from that city for many, many centuries. So that was kind of the final solution for the Jews in Palestine that happened in 125 of the common era. So Matthew was written about 25, 35 years before that, 80 possibly as late as 95 of the common era. Who is the gospel of Matthew written for? It was written for Jews living in diaspora. Diaspora means the Jews living outside of Palestine. And this was sort of a propagation pamphlet for these Jews to read and to understand who in fact was Issa al-Islam. Also written for Christians and the Mediterranean to increase their certitude is really a polemical tractate against the Jews. Remember, the gospel of Matthew is the most Jewish gospel. Matthew will quote or elude to the Old Testament some 80 or 90 or maybe even 100 times because he wants to prove that every single prophecy in the Old Testament is a reference to Issa al-Islam, to Jesus Christ, to beat people on him and nobody else. This is very, very important. We're gonna come back to this idea in a minute inshallah, but let's look at the structure of the gospel. So when we looked at the gospel of Matthew, sorry, the gospel of Mark, we said basically there's two periods. There's a structure, a very basic structure. The gospel of Mark, chapters one through eight represents the Galilean ministry and chapters eight through 16 or nine through 16 represents the Judean ministry. When it comes to the gospel of Matthew, we have basically four parts to this structure. We have the first part, which is the genealogy and nativity narrative. So Matthew begins his gospel. Remember how Mark started his gospel. Mark started the gospel with the baptism of Issa al-Islam by John the Baptist, Yahya al-Islam. Matthew begins his gospel by giving you a genealogy of Issa al-Islam. What is a genealogy? He's giving you his ancestry that goes all the way back to Ibrahim al-Islam. Why is Matthew doing that? Because again, Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels. That's why it was placed first in the order of the New Testament, although it's the second gospel to be written because it makes a smooth transition from the Old Testament, which is full of genealogies. So Matthew, in order to sort of have that theme of genealogical information that the Jew is so used to, he includes also a genealogy of Issa al-Islam that goes from Abraham to Joseph the Carpenter. And then we have what's known as a nativity or infancy narrative, a molded narrative, if you will. And of course, there's two nativity narratives in the Quran, in Surah al-Aliyyam and in Surah Maryam in the Quran as well. These are called molded narratives. So in the gospel of Matthew, we have Maryam al-Islam. We have this person called Joseph the Carpenter and we have the virgin birth. We'll talk more about that. So that's the first part of the structure, is the genealogy and nativity narrative. The second part of the structure is the beginning of the ministry, the beginning of the ministry of Issa al-Islam. The third part of the structure is called the five major discourses, the five major discourses. And Matthew does this intentionally. He divides this section of his gospel into five distinct sections. The reason he's doing that, again, is to sort of mirror the Torah. There's five books in the Torah. It's called the Pentateuch in Greek. Pentateuch means the five scrolls, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. So Matthew in this middle section of his gospel, he's mimicking those five scrolls. So the first major discourse in Matthew is called the Sermon on the Mount, right? The Sermon on the Mount. The second major discourse are the instructions to his 12 disciples. The third major discourse are the parables of the kingdom of God. The fourth major discourse are the instructions to the church. And the fifth major discourse are warnings of the final judgment. So these five parallel, the five scrolls in the Old Testament. Again, Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels and he's trying to mirror what's happening in the Old Testament. And of course, we have a prophecy that Matthew believes is fulfilled in Issa alaihi salam. That we'll talk about later as well. And finally, the last part of the structure is the passion narrative of Matthew. So to recap, the structure of Matthew is genealogy. That's the first genealogy with nativity narrative, beginning of ministry number two, the five major discourses, number three, and then the passion narrative, number four. New characters in Matthew's gospel. What do I mean by new characters? I mean characters that are found in Matthew and not in Mark, right? Matthew introduces these characters. Who are they? Joseph the carpenter. There's no mention of Joseph the carpenter in the gospel of Mark, because there's no virgin birth. Who is Joseph the carpenter? Joseph the carpenter is the man who was engaged to marry Maryam or betrothed to marry Maryam alaihi salam, according to the gospel of Matthew. Now, depending on who you ask, but church tradition, Catholic as well as Eastern Orthodox, they both say that Joseph the carpenter was actually in his 90s when he was betrothed to Maryam alaihi salam. And Maryam was 11 or 12 years old. So this is obviously a cultural thing that we have to understand. We have to have a cultural consciousness. Sounds kind of strange for us nowadays, but this was quite common in the pre-modern world. Why does Matthew include this person called Joseph the carpenter? It's because of prophecy. Remember, Matthew is very concerned with proving that asa alaihi salam is the fulfillment of all of these Old Testament prophecies. So in the Old Testament, you have what are known as Christological typologies. What are these typologies? Four shadowings of Isa alaihi salam. So for example, when Musa alaihi salam, he comes out of Egypt, right? He leaves Egypt, makes an exilis out of Egypt. Isa alaihi salam in the gospel of Matthew also goes to Egypt and leaves Egypt. We'll talk about that in a minute here. But the point of Joseph the carpenter is to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. The Jews believed that the Messiah will come from the tribe of Judah. This is what it says, for example, in the book of Hosea and the book of Amos and the book of Jeremiah, although many scholars contend that those passages were actually later additions to the Old Testament books. Generally, the Jews believe that Hamashiach the Messiah will come from the tribe of Judah, which means what? He'll be a descendant of David, right? So Matthew knows this. He also knows that this is one of the reasons why the Jews at the time of Isa alaihi salam are not accepting Isa alaihi salam as the Messiah because his mother is not from the tribe of Judah. Maryam alaihi salam is a Levite. She's from Levi. She's from the tribe of Harun alaihi salam. That's why the Quran says, Ya Uhda Harun, right? Oh, sister of Aaron, which can mean basically the reminding her of her priestly lineage, not necessarily she's the sister literally of Harun alaihi salam. Harun lived much earlier than about 14 centuries before Maryam alaihi salam, but the reminding her of her kinship to the tribe of Levi, right? Just like in the New Testament, you have the demons referred to Isa alaihi salam as the son of David. Well, that doesn't mean the son of David literally. That means he's a descendant of David, right? So we have to understand that subtlety. So the Jews believe that the time of Isa alaihi salam, by and large, that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. And this is based also on a verse in the book of Micah, chapter five, verse two, that says, Oh Bethlehem, small as you are amongst the towns of Judah, from you there shall arise a king who shall shepherd my people Israel, right? And Isa alaihi salam, of course, is born in Bethlehem according to Matthew. But notice here in Micah chapter five, verse two, in that verse, it does not say that he'll be a descendant of David or of Judah. It says that simply he'll be born in Bethlehem where David was born. But for Matthew, this is very crucial. He has to sort of, he has to connect Isa alaihi salam with the tribe of Judah. So what does he do? Because he knows that Mary is not from the tribe of Judah. He invents this person called Joseph the carpenter, Yusuf and Najal, Joseph the carpenter. And Joseph is actually from the tribe of Judah. He's a descendant of David. But then the question is, well, so what? Isa alaihi salam was born from a virgin. That's not his father. Isa alaihi salam does not have a father. Yet the Christian will say, even so he somehow mystically inherited the Davidic line from Joseph the carpenter, his supposed father. This is how they reconcile the contradiction in the scripture that says that or the tradition amongst the Jews that's based on scripture that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. So Matthew, he says, there was this person called Joseph the carpenter who's from David, even though he's not the real father of Isa alaihi salam. So Joseph the carpenter. Another new character in the book of Matthew, Gospel of Matthew is Herod the Great. So Herod the Great was the puppet king of Judea. At the time, Isa alaihi salam was born between 40 and four before the common era. Herod the Great. He was a puppet king in the sense that he's one of the kings that the Roman colonial powers put into power because he would basically placate his Roman authorities. So he was considered to be a Jew by religion, but basically in the back pocket of the Roman Empire. Herod the Great. So what Herod the Great does, very interestingly according to Matthew, because again, you have to keep this in mind that Matthew is constantly trying to connect Jesus with the Old Testament. This is his Da'wah tactic in order to convert Jews to Christianity. He has to show that there's a consistency with the Old and New Testaments. So remember Pharaoh, when Musa alaihi salam was born, what did the Pharaoh do? What did Pharaoh do? That he instituted this slaughter of the innocents that the firstborn sons of the Israelites were going to be killed, thrown into the Nile River. So what does Herod the Great do? Herod the Great hears about these wise men who come from Persia, right? And tradition says there were three of them. The gospel doesn't actually say there's three, but they brought three gifts so they assumed that there was three of them. Wise men from Persia, they're probably Zoroastrian. Apparently they follow a star into Palestine, into Bethlehem, and Herod hears about them. So he interrogates them and he says, what are you doing here basically? They say we're here to worship the king of Judah, the king of Israel. We have seen a star in the east. So now Herod understands that the Messiah is going to be born. So what does Herod do? Much like Pharaoh, he institutes this slaughter of the innocents. So the firstborn sons of Bethlehem are killed, right? Why does this happen? Because for Matthew, Pharaoh is a typology of Herod the Great. You see, Matthew is again trying to connect the Old Testament with the New Testament with typologies. So what happens next? That Esalae Salaam is born according to Matthew and then Joseph has a dream that says go to Egypt. They go and they stay in Egypt until it's safe and then they leave Egypt, they make exodus out of Egypt and they settle in the north and Galilee and Esalae Salaam is raised in Nazareth. So again, Matthew's trying to connect Esalae Salaam with Musa Aalaih Salaam. Just as Musa Aalaih Salaam made the exodus out of Egypt so does Esalae Salaam make the exodus out of Egypt because Esalae Salaam is the prophet like Moses and we talked about this in past classes as well that one of the great prophecies of what I believe to be the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Sallam in the Torah is in Deuteronomy 1818 that says Navi Akim Nahim Mikalav Akhayhim Kamokha that I shall raise a prophet from their brethren who's going to be like you is gonna be like Moses. Although Matthew never quotes Deuteronomy 1818 in his gospel, it's sort of a given that he believes that Jesus Aalaih Salaam is the prophet like unto Moses but it seems still a little strange that he never used that as a proof text. But Esalae Salaam according to Muslim conception is not exactly like Musa Aalaih Salaam but rather the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Salaam is very similar in the sense that they were both given Sharia. They were given a system of law and codes and ethics that was not given to Esalae Salaam. Although Esalae Salaam according to the Muslim Christology did make certain amendments and addendums to the Torah but by and large he confirmed the Torah, right? Even though he is still a Rasul but the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Salaam basically was in a position of power over his people. He was the primary law giver just like Musa Aalaih Salaam and there's other points of comparison as well that we can look at. But again, Joseph the carpenter, Herod the Great, right? These people are introduced by Matthew in order to show some sort of typological foreshadowing of what's going to happen in the life of Esalae Salaam. So it's very, very important. These are connections to the Old Testament. Also the Magi, we talked about them. This is, these are people that Matthew invents or talks about in his gospel that are not mentioned in the gospel of Mark. And finally Satan. Satan now in the gospel of Matthew has a speaking role. Of course, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by Satan but he doesn't speak to, we don't hear his speech but now we have a lot more information about this tempting in the wilderness just before the gospel was revealed to Esalae Salaam. We have Satan tempting Esalae Salaam which is very, very strange. The book of James actually says that God cannot be tempted. So if Christians want to believe that Esalae Salaam is in fact a God, then how can they reconcile this with what James says in his epistle in the New Testament that God certainly cannot be tempted. So these are the new characters in James. Joseph the carpenter, Herod the Great, the Magi, the wise men from the East and Satan who now has a speaking role. It's a major themes now in the gospel of Matthew. That Jesus now is the open teacher, the true Messiah. Remember in the gospel of Mark, Jesus was the suffering prophet, right? He was the hidden Messiah, the messianic secret. Remember we talked about the messianic secret, one of the major themes of the gospel of Mark is that Jesus is constantly telling people and demons, rebuking them, don't tell anyone who I am, this is called the messianic secret. That was this term was coined by the German William Reed and we talked about the different reasons why there is this secret. But in Matthew, there is no secret whatsoever. Jesus is the open teacher. He's the true Messiah, right? That's the point again of the genealogy that goes from Abraham all the way to Joseph, the carpenter, he's the true interpreter of the mosaic law. That's Esalae Salaam. That's the Methian Jesus, as we would say. There's the Mark in Jesus, the Methian Jesus, the Luke in Jesus, and the Johannine Jesus that we'll talk about when we get to the gospel of John, inshallah ta'ala. So this is a major theme, Jesus is the open teacher. The second major theme are these Christological typologies that Matthew is constantly quoting from the Old Testament, right? Something happens in the life of Jesus. Matthew will say, this is because of what Isaiah said. This is because of what Jeremiah said, right? Constantly making that connection over a hundred times probably. But something we should keep in mind when Matthew quotes from the Old Testament, he's not quoting from Hebrew and then translating it, his own translation into Greek. He's actually quoting from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It's a very important translation. It's called the Septuagint, Septuagint. And in academic books, it's called the LXX, which is the Roman numeral for 70. Septuagint means 70. So this translation was done in 250 before the common era, before the common era in Alexandria, Egypt, right? So there's a big story about how this happened in a document called The Letter of Aristes, but many scholars believe this is a fabrication. But basically what we can tell from historical standpoint that's authentic is that a group of Jews, they translated the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible into Greek in 250 before the common era in Alexandria. Alexandria at the time was a center of learning of Judaism. So this kind of became the standard, the Greek translation in the sort of Mediterranean as well as in Palestine for learned Jews. So Matthew here is quoting verbatim not from a translation that he's doing with the Hebrew scriptures. He's quoting directly from the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible. So that's another major theme, Christological typology. Another theme, which is very interesting is that Matthew performs what's known as Midrashim in Hebrew. Midrashim comes from the root Darash, or Darasa in Arabic, which means to study. But Midrashim means exegesis. He's commentating upon the text of the Old Testament and putting these comments into the mouth of Isa, alayhi salam. And Matthew performs two types of Midrashim or exegesis, as we would say. He does what's known as Halakha, which is commenting upon verses in the Old Testament that deal with ahkam, legal rulings, right? Or the dhahir aspect of scripture. And then he also does what's known as Haggadah, which is commentating upon the esoteric or the botan aspect of scripture. For example, with respect to Halakha, with respect to the outward or legalistic aspect of scripture, he has Jesus say in Matthew chapter five verse 17, think not that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill, as for verily I tell you, as long as heaven and earth endure, not a jot or a tittle shall pass by the law until all is fulfilled, therefore, whoever sets aside one of the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And then he says to the disciples that unless your righteousness exceeds that of ascribable referesy, you shall know wise enter the kingdom of heaven. And then he says, you have heard it say that you shall not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery, right? So he's taking these verses that deal with ahkam, right? Thou shall not commit adultery. This is a legal ruling and he's commenting upon them. This is called midrashim. What type of midrashim? Midrashim that deals with halaqa, with sharia, with ahkam, right? Very common in the gospel of Matthew, but he also does hagadah. Hagadah means that he's giving esoteric interpretation of things that happen in the Old Testament. And this is with regards to Christological typology. For example, it says in Isaiah chapter seven, Isaiah is speaking to King Ahab and he says to him that a son is going to be born, right, whose name is going to be Emmanuel, right? That a young woman will give birth to a son and his name shall be Emmanuel. So it seems like a very mundane sort of detail that Isaiah gives to this king. And in chapter eight of Isaiah, this son is born named Emmanuel. But Matthew sees in that something much more, right? So in Matthew in chapter one of his gospel, he says Jesus is Emmanuel, right? So he takes this idea that has nothing to do with ahkam that's not related to halakah. It's just a narrative sort of detail and Matthew gives it a really kind of esoteric meaning or interpretation that foreshadows Christ. So Matthew says Emmanuel is Jesus because Emmanuel in Hebrew means God with us, right? So for Matthew, this is a typology of the coming of Esalaam. So this is what Matthew does. And this is true with the Quran, he says in the Mishkat al-Anwar, he says walail Qur'ani zahir al-mubatan, that with the Quran there is an esoteric element and there's an esoteric element as well. So that's in our tradition as well. And that's also in Jewish tradition, although, you know, Haghada is very difficult to do and one must have, you know, some sort of openings in order to perform this type of tafsir, tafsir bid-i-shara, as we would say if you take classes on usul-ud-din on usul-ul-Quran or ulum-ul-Quran. So that's another theme. So let's recap the themes. Jesus is the open teacher, there's no longer a messianic secret, there's a Christological typology's, right? Matthew alludes to the Old Testament. Number three, Matthew performs midrashim of Old Testament scripture, which also relates to Christological typology. Number four, Matthew's gospel is very anti-Jewish, probably the most anti-Jewish of any book in the New Testament. Even though he's writing really for a Jewish audience, he's really showing a lot of animosity towards the Jews. So this very strong, super-sessionist sentiment, this idea that Christianity completely replaces Judaism, is very strong motif in the Gospel of Matthew, that the Christian community is the new Israel, right? And this is seen very clearly in the seven woes of Matthew chapter 23. So this is when Jesus is in Jerusalem, he's in the temple precincts, and he gives the Jews the seven woes, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, how can you escape the punishment of hell? You have overlooked the weightier demands of the law, justice, mercy, and good faith. You strain at the gnat, and you swallow the camel. You're like whiteed sepulchres on the outside, you are clean, but on the inside, you're weak of death. Woe unto you hypocrites, brood, vipers. This is his invective against the Pharisees, the Bani Israel, according to the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew are constantly butting heads, they're debating, they just don't like each other whatsoever. And this culminates in Matthew chapter 27, verse 25. This is when Pilate, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, he interrogates Esalae Salaam according to Matthew, and he finds no fault with him whatsoever. So he says, I'm going to chastise him and release him, I'm going to release him, I don't find fault in him. And then the Jewish mob, they say, no, you have to crucify him, crucify him. And then they say to him, may his blood be upon us and on our descendants after us. And then Pilate takes a basin of water and he washes his hands and he says, I am free and clear of the blood of this innocent man. So this one verse here, this one statement mentioned in Matthew chapter 27, verse 25, this was sort of the cue for a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment in Christian Europe, that the Jews basically, according to this verse, curse themselves that if they don't believe in Esalae Salaam, that his blood, his death, the responsibility of killing a prophet is upon him, upon the Jews, the Caiaphas who said this, the high priest and all the Jews after him. So there was a movie made called The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson in 2004, it was a very controversial movie. It was seen as very anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish. And what's interesting about this movie, and I don't know if a lot of people caught this, but I caught this, is when this scene is played out in the movie, everything's translated, Pilate washing his hands, because the movie's an Aramaic, it's also in Latin. But when Caiaphas says, may his blood be upon us and on those after us, Mel Gibson decided not to translate that part. You just sort of hear it in the background for obvious reasons, it would have caused a great stir for him to reproduce this curse that Caiaphas pronounced upon all of the Jews. So you don't see it actually translated, but you can actually hear it. And if you understand Aramaic, you would understand what the actor actually said during that part of the movie. Of course, in 1974, the Roman Catholic Church officially apologized to the Jews and pardoned them for deicide, for the killing of God. And of course, time and again, we have Christians clashing with Jews in medieval Europe. We talked about this as well. We said that most of the great systematic theologians of Judaism came from Muslim Spain, Muslim countries. They wrote an Arabic Maimonides, the guide of the perplexed. His masterpiece was written in Arabic. Bahia ibn Pakouda, he wrote in Arabic, a great systematic theologian. Rashi, he's a European Jew. Many of these theologians, Sadia, who translated the Old Testament into Arabic, he wrote in Arabic, his masterpieces all are in Arabic. They didn't really enjoy that freedom of religion until Islamic Sharia was set into place and they were considered to be Ahl al-Kitab. But what we have with Jews living in Christian countries, especially in medieval Europe, is you have terrible things happening to them. Of course, we know in the 14th century, there was the Bubonic plague, which wiped out one third of the populace of Europe. And at the time, the Christians had no idea what was happening. Of course, it was rats and it was fleas and things like that. And they noticed that the Jews, they weren't being killed by this plague. And the reason is because the Jews have this idea, this concept of tahara. They make Russell, they make Wudu, these types of things, they keep clean. And the Christians at that time, they didn't have these types of things. Apparently, that's why there was so much disease, but the Jews, they weren't dying. So of course, then the Christians, they scapegoated the Jews and say, oh, that's because the Jews have cursed us. That's why we're dying. So in Strasburg, Germany, on Valentine's Day, it's called the Valentine's Day Massacre on July, February 14th, 1349, 1000 Jews, men, women and children were burned alive.  So eventually the Jews were scapegoated even for the black plague. Of course, on September 12th, 1553, Pope Julius III ordered all Talmudic literature to be burned. Many Talmuds at this time were also censored. The main reason for this is because of what the Talmud actually says about Isa, the Babylonian Gamara mentions very disparaging, there's disrespectful things about him and Maryam, alaihi salam. So they were censored. Many of them were burned. What's also very interesting about this is that 1952, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible came out in America, Revised Standard Version of the Bible. So this is a revision of the traditional King James Version. And the 1952 Revised Standard Version was based on much earlier manuscripts than the 1611 King James Version. But it was very controversial, primarily because the only verse in the entire New Testament that explicitly mentions the Trinity was taken out of the 1952 Revised Standard Version. And here's the King James Version. And you notice how it's red on the edges here and it's kind of faded. But in 1952, the Revised Standard Version had that redness to it as well. And of course, this started this whole conspiracy theory about this is a communist Bible and it was done by communists and it was a witch hunt for these communists in the streets of America. But nonetheless, this is the King James Version of the Bible. And if you read the First Epistle of John chapter five, verse seven in this King James Version, it says, there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. So this is very clearly a reference, an explicit reference to the Trinity that's found in the New Testament. But the 1952 Revised Standard Version removed these verses or changed them significantly. So what we have here now is the Critical Greek Edition. This is the actual New Testament, not what's going on in the English. This is what the scholars are putting out there and revising from time to time. There's 27 versions now of Nestle Allen's Critical Greek Edition. This is what the verse sounds like in this United Bible Society. It says, verse seven, it says, there are three that bear witness. And then it suddenly moves. The verse eight in the Greek says, ta penoma kaita hudur kaita haima kaihoi tres eis to hain eisen. There are three that bear witness. The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood. And these three are one. Very, very different than the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, right? Spirit, Water, and Blood. Meaning you have Spirit in your body, you have Water, and you have Blood. And these are all one in their submission to God. Very, very different than the Father, the Word, the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Why am I mentioning this? Is because when this 1952 Revised Standard Version of the Bible came out, Christians were buying them up and then burning them in the streets of America.  Very, very interesting. In fact, the head of the committee of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in 1952, Dr. Bruce Metzger, he quite regularly would receive a package on his office door and he'd open it and it'd be a bowl of ashes, right? So the Christians are burning his Bible translation, then sending him the ashes, right, as a threat. And then he was asked by a reporter one time, what do you think about this? And he said, well, at least now they're burning translations and not translators. That was his comment. Because if you go back again into medieval Europe, even as late as 1525 of the common era, William Tyndale, the first man ever to translate the Bible from sacred languages into English, right? This is in England. Translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. He was tortured and burned at the stake for making a translation. That's all he did. He never apostated. He simply did a translation. But the church's grip was so intense that they didn't want any laity to read what the Bible had to say. They wanted to just give them portions of the Bible on Sunday to think about not read the entire Bible. So this was happening in America. Of course, you have the Jews being expelled from England in 1290. It happened twice in France in 1315 and 1394. Austria in 1421. Spain in 1492 with the inquisitors. Imam al-Qurtubi, just before that time, he writes in his diary. He says, these Christians are coming in. They're calling me Diablo, Diablo. I don't know what's going on here. What is Diablo? Of course Diablo means Satan. That's what they were calling Imam al-Qurtubi, ar-Rahimahullahu ta'ala. So that's another theme of the Gospel of Matthew. So these are the major themes. Jesus is the open teacher. There's Christological typologies. Matthew performs midrashim and the Gospel is very anti-Jewish as well. So the Christological aim then is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that he fulfills all of the Old Testament. Sometimes in Matthew's overzealousness to prove that Issa al-Islam is a fulfillment of all of the prophecies of the Old Testament, sometimes Matthew will make a mistake. For example, when Judas Iscariot, the man who supposedly betrayed Issa al-Islam and sold him out for 30 pieces of silver, Matthew says that this is what Jeremiah prophesized, Jeremiah. But Matthew is citing the wrong verse. This is not in Jeremiah. This is in Zechariah chapter 11 verses 12 through 13. So Matthew here makes a mistake. So then Matthew cannot be inspired by God here. So the Christians, again, most of them, they don't hold to this belief anymore that the Bible is the inerrant word for word, literal word of God. Only Christians that are very literalist, fundamental type of evangelical Christians will actually believe that about the Bible because it's been demonstrated to be false that the Bible is literal word for word, the word of God. It's not the Ipsissima verba of God because Matthew makes mistakes. If Matthew believed that the gospel of Mark was the word of God, certainly he wouldn't edit portions of Mark's gospel while he was writing his own gospel. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Also, Matthew in chapter 12 of the book of Matthew, he says that Esalaam is a fulfillment of the great prophet of Isaiah chapter 42, right? So Isaiah chapter 42 says, hen abdi eff maqbo bi khirirat sanafshi, behold my servant, the one in whom my soul delights. So, and then it goes on to say that this servant of Isaiah chapter 42, he will bring the message of God to the Keterites, right, to the tribes of Qaidar. And Qaidar is the descendant of Isma'il alaihi salam. These are Arabs, the Keterites are Arabs. So this is not applied to Esalaam, but Matthew in chapter 12, he says, indeed Isaiah chapter 42's servant of God and the light to the Gentiles is indeed Esalaam and he doesn't give a lot of reasons why he believes that. Finally, Matthew chapter two, verse 23, Matthew says that Jesus is from the city of Nazareth so that it was fulfilled what was written by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. So Matthew here is quoting something from the prophets from the Nabeem that says the Messiah shall be called a Nazarene, but this verse is nowhere to be found anywhere in the Old Testament whether inside or outside the canon of the Old Testament. Where does it say he shall be called a Nazarene? It seems like Matthew simply invented this verse to further solidify his belief that Esalaam is the Messiah and every single prophecy of the Old Testament is fulfilled by Esalaam. So next time inshallah ta'ala, we're going to look at new characters in the Gospel of Matthew. We're gonna talk about the source of the Gospel of Matthew and then from there we're gonna do a quick look into some of the Christological differences of opinion amongst the first four centuries of Christians with regard to who was Isa Aalaihis Wala allahu wa salam wa salatu wa salam As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. This class, insha'Allah, we're going to continue with looking at the Gospel according to Matthew. Last time we had said that some of the major themes of the Gospel of Matthew is that Esa Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, is the open teacher, he is the true Messiah, he is the supreme and true interpreter of the mosaic law. We had also said that Matthew uses Christological typology quite often in his Gospel. In other words, he'll interpret a story from the Old Testament to be a foreshadowing of the birth or the life or the death of Esa, from his perspective. So over 100 times from the Septuagint, from the Greek translation, the Old Testament Matthew will allude to it, although actually quote from it verbatim. We also said that Matthew performs what's known as Midrashim, which is he interprets the text of the Old Testament with respect to an exoteric as well as esoteric dimension. This is related to what's known as Halakha in Haggadah in Hebrew, respectively. We'd also said the Gospel of Matthew is vehemently anti-Jewish in the sense that the Christian community is the new Israel and there's a very strong super-sessionist sentiment in the Gospel of Matthew. So we talked about those things last time. We'd also said that the Christological aim of the Gospel of Matthew is to prove that Esa, peace be upon him, is the Messiah. He fulfills all of the Old Testament prophecies.  And we had said as well that this idea of an immediate eschatology, an immediate end of time, this is something that the Gospel of Mark, the community that wrote the Markian Gospel, this is something that influenced them from the Pauline School of Thought because Paul very clearly in his letters, and of course again this class is not about Paul and the letters and epistles, but if we're going to talk about the Gospels, Paul is indispensable because he highly influenced these communities that authored these Gospels. And a central theme in the letters of Paul is an immediate second coming of Jesus Christ. Paul says that people shouldn't even worry about getting married because there's no time. We're going to be transformed in a twinkling of an eye caught up in the clouds of the Lord and with the Lord and so on and so forth. So the source now of the Gospel of Matthew. So we had said last time most scholars believe in what's known as a two-source theory. The two-source theory assumes Markian priority that Mark wrote first around 70 of the common era, and then Matthew and Luke they used Mark's Gospel as their skeleton. So if we look at Gospel of Matthew then he has three sources that he's using. Of course using Mark's Gospel. So we use the analogy of last time, imagine Matthew sitting at his desk. He has on his desk the Gospel of Mark. He also has on his desk the Q-source document. So remember Q, which represents the unknown Quella in German. This is a source that Matthew and Luke had that Mark did not. This explains what's known as the synoptic problem, which is the interdependency of the three Gospel authors, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Why does Luke and Matthew have material in common that is missing from Mark? So scholars have surmised there must have been another source that Matthew and Luke had that Mark did not or Mark rejected. Here the Gospel of Mark is basically the oral charigma or the oral proclamation, the oral tradition of the Hellenistic churches that were founded by Paul that Mark sort of strung together and made into a narrative. So then Matthew, he takes Mark's skeleton or his skeletal narrative and about 80% of Mark has been incorporated into the Gospel of Matthew. It is his narrative frame. We also have the Q-source document integrated into the Gospel of Matthew. And of course some of the material that's found in Q-source is the Ministry of John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, various parables, pericapies that are given by Issa, the interesting thing is none of the material in the Q-source document contradicts anything that the Qur'an or hadith say about the Prophet Issa a.s. So that could actually represent the true injil, and when we say injil with a capital I, al-injil, not these anajil, but what was the true Gospel given to Issa a.s. possibly the Q-source document. Of course nothing physical has ever been found. Again, this is a theory but it's a highly developed theory and it's a theory that's very popular amongst New Testament scholars that there was a Q-source document because this is the only thing that really explains why Matthew and Luke have so much material in common, almost verbatim, that Mark did not. They must have had access to another source. And again, we can sort of reconstruct what Q contained by looking at the similarities between Matthew and Luke. And another thing we mentioned last time as well is that most scholars will actually date the Q-source document to about 55 or earlier, some even say in the 40s. And if it's dated to the 40s that means that it's not been influenced, it was not influenced by Pauline dogmatism or Paul's interpretation of the Gospel of Issa a.s. So it's very, very primitive and very uncorrupted if this document could ever be found. It would be very, very interesting to analyze it, but so far nothing has been found. And of course, the Vatican has 55 miles of shelf space, so we have no idea what they have buried there in the Vatican vault. Maybe they have something similar to this, Allahu Anam. So Matthew then on his desk, he has the Gospel of Mark, he has a Q-source document, and he might have another document as well. Because remember, Matthew also has material in his Gospel that is not found in any other Gospel, right? No other Gospel contains this material which is called M, right? M material, special, methion material. For example, Matthew chapter 7, verse 21, when Jesus says, on that day many will come to me and say, master, master, did we not prophesize in your name and cast out demons? We mentioned this last time as well. That's only found in the Gospel of Matthew. So either Matthew has a third source, a physical manuscript of some sort, or this is oral tradition, right, that he has remembered from his community. So we don't know exactly. Now Matthew's edits and redactions, so this is very interesting because most Christians will say that the Gospel of Mark is the word of God. It's inspired by God. And again, we make a difference between inspiration and revelation, whereas we say as Muslims, the Quran is the revelation of God in the sense that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is simply repeating what he is hearing in the form of Arabic that he is not articulating the inspiration himself. We would call that hadith. The Quran are literally the word spoken by God, the ipsisma verba of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is simply a vessel by which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks to us through him. So every single sentence, every single kalima, every harf of the Quran was chosen by, especially by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is what we believe about the Quran. So then we said studying the syntax of the Quran is part of the process of commenting then upon the Quran. But what we have with the Gospel of Mark is basically like our interpretation of hadith is that Christians believe Mark was inspired by the Holy Spirit and then through his own mind and through his own heart he would try to articulate that inspiration. Now, if Matthew believed that, certainly he would faithfully represent or reproduce what Mark was inspired to write by the Holy Spirit. In fact, that's not the case. We find Matthew time and again, redacting, revising what he has as far as the Gospel of Mark. Just a few examples of this. In Mark chapter one, we are told that, Isa'alayh salam, he cleanses a leper, right? This man who had leprosy, obviously very, very dangerous and very contagious skin disease. It says in the Gospel of Mark that Isa'alayh salam, he was moved by orgystace. This is the Greek word that's used by Mark. Orgystace means that Jesus was moved by anger and wrath and he finally decided to clean the man or the cleanser to heal the man. Matthew changes this word completely and says he was moved by compassion. So Matthew reproduces this pericopee from Mark chapter one in Matthew chapter eight, but he removes this word that he found to be problematic. So this is an example of Matthew redacting Mark. If Matthew believed that Mark was inspired by God, certainly he wouldn't redact a text that was inspired by God. Of course, as we had said again, none of the four Gospel authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, explicitly mention that they're being inspired by anyone to write anything. Actually Luke at the beginning of his Gospel is called the Preamble and that's our next Gospel. We'll get to it in a few minutes. Insha'Allah, Luke actually gives his reasons why he writes his Gospel and has nothing to do with being inspired by the Holy Ghost or by God or anyone. We'll get to that, insha'Allah ta'ala. But another example of Matthew's edits and redactions of the Markian text. In Mark chapter three, this is the pericopee of the man with the withered hand. And Mark says that Jesus looked around with anger and grieved at the hardness of their hearts. So in Matthew chapter 12, Matthew completely removes this entire line from the narrative. Again, he found it very problematic that Jesus can become angry, that he is complaining about people. That's sort of against the Christology that Matthew wants to convey about Isa'Allah. Because Isa'Allah, his maqam, if you will, is growing and growing and growing amongst these Gospels. There's an evolution of Christology. In the Gospel of Mark, again, we have Jesus as the suffering prophet, the hidden messiah, right?  It's a very anemic Christology in the Gospel of Mark. And then suddenly in Matthew, he's the open messiah. And Matthew begins to make these edits of the Markian narrative, reforming Isa'Allah's character, making him more like a demigod than a prophet. And then we get to Luke and then we get to John. And John obviously is the crescendo of Christology. And that's the book, the Gospel of John, that had the most profound influence on Orthodox Christianity, more than any other book in the New Testament, the Gospel of John. And that's the Gospel we're gonna be looking at in future classes. Inshallah to Allah. We're gonna spend several classes looking at the Gospel of John because of its extreme importance to understand Orthodox Christianity. Another example of a Matthewian edit of a Markian pericabee happens in Matthew chapter nine. So in Matthew chapter nine, Matthew is taking the story of Jerryus' daughter, whom Jesus raised from the dead. And Matthew basically cuts the entire narrative in half, right? Because he found Mark to be a little too wordy. Again, if Matthew believes that Mark's narrative is the word of God, certainly he wouldn't do something like that. And finally, in Matthew chapter 15, Matthew, he reproduces the healings that Mark describes in Mark chapter seven. And Mark describes these healings with 65 Greek words. So it's somewhat long, the process of the healings. How did Asa al-Islam, according to Mark, heal people? According to Mark, he would put his fingers in their ears. He would use his saliva, right? He would spit in their face and rub his saliva on their faces because the saliva of a prophet has healing properties, as mentioned in the hadith as well. He would touch their tongues if they were mute and they would speak again. So Matthew doesn't like any of these details. So he takes these 65 words and he makes it into three words. He says, Kai, Itharapeusan, autos. He simply says, and he healed them, right? So again, Matthew is trimming down, paring down these marked pericapies. He finds them too wordy. He finds them unnecessary. Let's get on to bigger and better things. Don't worry about the process of the healing. Let's just talk about what he actually did. He just healed them. So these details are not important for the gospel of Matthew. Now, what's interesting now, if we talk about textual criticism. So we talked about, there's different types of criticisms in the New Testament. This is called the HCM, the historical critical method. So this really began in the 19th century in Germany. You have redaction criticism, source criticism, form criticism, textual criticism, something we touched upon in previous classes, I believe. This is when you actually study the text itself and try to determine what is the original reading of the text if you have two different texts. You have a contradiction, for example. So we have this issue in the Hadith. For example, if there's Hadith that seemed to contradict one another, the Erlema will try to make Jama'a. They'll try to harmonize the account, right? So we mentioned last time, for example, one Hadith says a prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he had his chest split and his heart was washed. When he was a child, another tradition says that this happened when he was an adult, just before the Lady of Isra and Me'raj. So is this a contradiction? The Erlema say, well, it happened twice, right? Or if one is a stronger tradition, then you give that one tarjeeh, you give it preponderance, you give it priority. So with the gospel of Matthew, we have something interesting. Matthew chapter 24, verse 36. It's Jesus, Alaihi Wasallam, is reported to have said, he said, of that day, no with no man, not the angels, not even the son, but only the father, right? And remember again, we can't stress this enough that when Alaihi Wasallam talks about the father in heaven, he's not talking about his literal father who begot him. This comes much later in the church synods and ecumenical councils in the fourth century, this definition of God being the literal father of Jesus, who begot Jesus, he didn't create him. This was articulated much, much later. We're talking about first century Palestine. In that context, God was the father of Bani Israel in a metaphorical sense. Again, Isaiah chapter 64, verse 16, one of the prayers of the prophet Isaiah is, atah adonai avinu, you are the Lord, our Father. So no Jewish rabbi in the history of Judaism has ever said that God is our literal father or God is a literal father of the Messiah. This is a Christian idea that does not really come to fruition in its orthodox sense until about the fourth century of the common era. So don't let this kind of language for the New Testament sort of dilute you and say, oh, this is immediate kufur. How can we even read these types of things when Jesus of that day, no with no man, not the angels, not even the son? When he refers to himself as the son, this is simply a messianic title in the first century. First of all, any Jew who was a practicing Jew is called the son of God. In the book of Psalms, chapter 82, verse six, it says, kullakim, all of you are bani al-yon. You are all sons of the most high God. Again, this was not literal, right? Bal'ibadu mukramun, as the Quran says. They say God has sons. No, they're just servants raised to honor. That was the point of it in the Old Testament, but because this concept of filial love, father and son, mother and son, mother and daughter, this concept was corrupted over time. Therefore, the Quran refrains from using that analogy because the Christians started saying things like, Jesus is the literal begotten son of God. And this obviously is very clearly repudiated in the Quran, lam yelid wa lam yulad and many other places in the Quran as well. Anyway, so getting back to this verse 24, 36 of Matthew, he says of that day, the day of judgment, nobody knows, not the angels, uday hahuias, not even the son referring to himself. So this appears in very early manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, but later manuscripts actually have that part removed from the text. It's removed from the text because scribes of the proto-Orthodox persuasion, those who would come to articulate Trinitarian positions, they didn't like the fact that Isa'a alaihi salam doesn't know the day of judgment. So they had it removed. So textual criticism, what does it do? It looks at what's known as external evidence. That's the first kind of thing they look at, textual critics, what is external evidence? External evidence is, do other Gospels record the saying of Isa'a alaihi salam? If it does, then we could probably establish multiple attestation. So if Matthew has two different readings of the same verse, like one of them says, the son doesn't know, one of them doesn't say that at all. That part has been removed. What do we do? How do we know which one's the true one? Well, what does Mark say? Because Mark predates the Gospel of Matthew. And in Mark chapter 13 verse 32, that's exactly what it says that the son does not know the day of judgment. So from the standpoint of external evidence, it seems like the reading where it says, uday ha-hu-yas, not even the son, seems to be the more authentic reading. And then you look at something called internal evidence. So textual criticism, again, you look at external evidence, other manuscripts, other Gospels, how is the reading preserved? Is it a popular reading? What does Mark say about it? What does Luke say about it? What does John say about it, if anything? And then you look at internal evidence. And internal evidence has two categories. The first one is called intrinsic probabilities. Intrinsic probabilities means you have to look at Matthew himself, his vocabulary, his theology, right? Which reading seems to be more in line with how Matthew presents Jesus, right? So which one is it? Is it that the son does not know or that the son knows the day of judgment? Well, in Matthew chapter 21, it says that Jesus doesn't know when fig trees are in and out of season. So this idea that Jesus doesn't know a few things is already mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. So again, this gives support to the idea, to the theory that the original reading is the correct reading, that huday ha-hu-yas should be in that verse, that Jesus simply does not know the day of judgment. And then you look at something called transcriptional probabilities. Transcriptional probabilities means, okay, if the scribe added it or took it away, why did the scribe do that? And we touched upon that earlier. Why would the scribe, reading Matthew, take out that one clause that says, Jesus does not know the day of judgment? The reason why he would do that is, again, because at this point, probably in the late second century, the early third century, there's a strong trend to deify, Esalaam, to say he was a divine being. He's not just a prophet, he's not just the Messiah, that he's actually the Son of God. In fact, he's God. So they found that verse problematic. It explicitly says, huday ha-hu-yas, not even the Son, knows the day of judgment. So that was removed from the text. So this is called textual criticism. So that ends our look at the Gospel of Matthew. We're gonna move on now to the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke is called Katalu Khan, according to Luke. Luke actually wrote in two volumes. So there's a Gospel of Luke and then there's the book of Acts, A-C-T-S. This is called A'amal al-Rusul, the Acts of the Apostles. Rusul here meaning the disciples of Esalaam. So the book of Acts is sort of the early ecclesiastical or early church history, the history of the Sahaba, if you will, of Esalaam. It's the fifth book of the New Testament. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and then you have the book of Acts or Apostolic history. How did the movement go from Jerusalem, a small movement to Rome? So the book of Acts, it basically ends with Paul going into Rome and falls short of explaining how he actually had died. But now the message of Esalaam basically goes global. That's the book of Acts. Getting back to the Gospel of Luke, however, the Gospel of Luke, who is Luke? Luke is a pupil of Paul. This is the Christian claim that Luke studied with Paul and of course Paul is the messenger to the Gentiles, as also is the Christian claim. This is highly unlikely, however, because Luke never mentions any of Paul's letters in Luke or Acts, which is very strange that if someone studies under somebody, he doesn't mention any of his principal letters or correspondences that he had with the churches that he founded. Also, sometimes Luke's account of certain events is different than Paul's account of certain events. For example, Paul's conversion, the details of Paul's conversion in the desert on the way to Damascus, there's different versions of it. Luke and Paul seem to be in disagreement at some time. Therefore, just like Matthew and Luke and John as well, most scholars will say the Gospel of Luke is anonymous. No one knows who wrote the Gospel of Luke. It was anonymously ascribed to a student of Paul later on. And of course, Irenaeus, the early church father and bishop of Lyon in France, he was the first one to really name these four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Before that time, they were anonymous and then he thought that they need to have some apostolic credibility, so he named them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Where was the Gospel written? We don't know, it's unknown. Possibly in Antioch, possibly in Ephesus. There's difference of opinion about that. Of course, these are places where Pauline influence was heavy, but we'll see, however, that there's something that Luke believes about Jesus that Paul totally disagrees with. We'll get to that in a minute. Very, very interesting, inshallah, we'll get to that. When was the Gospel written? Most scholars say about 85 to 90 of the common era. So this is after the destruction of the second temple. So remember, the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by General Titus in 70 of the common era. The temple was never to be rebuilt again. That's around the time that Mark wrote his Gospel. Therefore, Mark is very apocalyptic, it's very eschatological. Mark believes the end of time is going to come any minute just based on what's going on around him, what happened in Jerusalem, the natural disaster, so on and so forth. Then Matthew wrote a few years later and finally Luke around 85 to 90 of the common era. So the Christian movement is in somewhat disarray during this time, but it is starting to grow and it's starting to enter into the Gentile lands and the congregations are beginning to grow. Who is the Gospel for? New Testament scholars will say that it's written for Gentile Christians dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. Now I want you to turn to the Gospel of Luke at the beginning because here's Luke's preamble and it's very, very revealing because no other Gospel author really gives his intention as to why he wrote his Gospel, maybe except for the Gospel of John at the end of the Gospel of John, he says these things were written because some people say all these things are history and they're trying to present accurate history. History is very much secondary to the Gospel authors. They're writing their history through the lens of theology. I mean, this is theological history. They're not trying to present historical facts and figures. There is some of that happening, but by and large they're trying to write theological history. So John he actually says the point of all of this is that so that you might know that Jesus is the Son of God, not that he was crucified in truth or that he lived in certain dates and that those things are secondary for the authors of the Gospels. So you really can't separate history from theology when studying these Gospels. These Gospels are thoroughly drenched in theology and that's the point of view from which they were written. Anyway, so the Gospel of Luke he says here in as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled amongst us. So what is he talking about here? Luke is saying many people have written about what I'm about to write about. What is he about to write about? He's about to do a Gospel of Jesus Christ of Esalaeiselam. And Luke uses the word many. The Greek here is poloë, like we get the word polytheism, many, right? So we have to ask ourselves, there are many Gospels at this time when Luke is writing, what is he talking about? Which Gospels? The only ones we know of, right? From an Orthodox Christian perspective is the Gospel of Mark. Yes, he had that. He had Q, which can be called the sayings Gospel, but he did not have Matthew. So that's only two Gospels. So what is Luke, so this is evidence here that at Luke's time, 85 to 90 of the common era, there were many Gospels that were floating around. This is very revealing. Where are all these Gospels? What did they contain? We know that there was a Gospel according to the Ebonites. We know there was a Gospel according to the Hebrews. These are from the Jewish Christian perspective, the perspective of Jamesonian Christianity, but these books are lost today. We know that they existed though, because proto-Orthodox church fathers would quote from them in their refutations of them and their polemical works. Is this what Luke is talking about? If so, these are very early Gospels then, right? We have no idea in reality what Luke is talking about when he says there are many Gospels, because from, again, an Orthodox perspective, it's only Mark and Q at this point. So that's interesting, keep that in mind. And then he says, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers to the word delivered amongst us, it seemed good to me also. He says in the Greek, which means literally, it seemed like a good idea to me to write this Gospel. So this is Luke's intention. Luke is saying, it just seems like a good idea. He's not saying, I'm being inspired by the Holy Ghost. God came to me in a dream or a vision or a awakened state and he said to me, oh, Luke, you have to write a Gospel of Jesus Christ. No, he's saying it seems like a good idea to me to write a Gospel of Jesus Christ. He says, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write to you in orderly account, most excellent Theophilus. So this is very, very interesting. Luke here is saying that this Gospel is actually a letter that he's writing to a man named Theophilus, right? So who is Theophilus? So different opinions about this. So one opinion, a strong opinion, a stronger opinion is that Theophilus is some sort of Roman official who wants to know about Issa alaihi salam. So he hires Luke, who's a physician, right?  So he's more educated. So he pays Luke to write this Gospel. So Theophilus could be Luke's patron, right? And this is a letter that he wrote to Theophilus. Another opinion, which is an interesting opinion, is that this is a dedication to Theophilus, not as a literal person, but Theophilus in the sense that because the name Theophilus means a lover of God, right? So maybe Luke here is saying to his reader, if you're a lover of God, then this Gospel is for you. And that's a very interesting interpretation, but the first opinion is the strongest, that there's an actual man named Theophilus, a certain individual who probably patronized Luke and therefore Luke is writing his Gospel because he was hired by Theophilus to do so. Some new characters that are mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, we have Elizabeth and Zechariah mentioned. Elizabeth is the mother of Yahya A.S. She is the mother of John the Baptist, according to the Gospel of Luke, and Zechariah is the priest who is the father of John the Baptist, according to the Gospel of Luke. Both are aged and childless. So Isaac then become sort of this typology of John the Baptist. So remember the story of Isaac, it's mentioned in the book of Genesis. It's also mentioned a few times in the Quran like Surah Hud in which we are told that Sarah, alayhi salam, the mother of Isaac was very, very old at the time the angels came to her home and Ibrahim alayhi salam obviously was there and then they told her she was going to give birth. And she laughed. And interestingly enough, the name Yitzchak in Hebrew is actually Idhaq in Arabic. Idhaqa, yadhaqu, falaf, right? That's what his name actually means in Hebrew. His name means laughter. So because Fadahikat, she laughed, Sarah said, I'm an old woman, my husband is an old man. This is a wonderful strange thing, she said to the angels, right? So Isaac then is sort of this typology of John the Baptist. So Elizabeth and Zechariah also were aged, they were childless. So according to Luke then, John is like the link between Israel's past and future blessings in Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. So then Jacob then is, because Jacob is the son of Isaac, Jacob is then seen as sort of this typology of Isa alayhi salam foreshadowing of Isa alayhi salam. Jacob had 12 sons that represent the 12 tribes of Israel and of course Isa alayhi salam, according to the Gospels, has 12 disciples. Also new characters in the Gospel of Luke. We have in Matthew, in Matthew, we had the Holy Spirit coming to Mary, Maryam alayhi salam and telling her that the Holy Spirit shall come upon you or she was inspired that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall give birth to a son and shall name his name Jesus. It says that was the Holy Spirit. But in the Gospel of Luke, it says that an angel came to Mary. Her English, Gabriel, the angel Gabriel came to Maryam alayhi salam. So if we were to harmonize these two accounts because it seems again like there's a contradiction here. The Gospel of Matthew, it says that it was the Holy Spirit who announced to Maryam that she was going to have a son. In the Gospel of Luke, it says it was an angel named Gabriel. So how do we harmonize these two accounts? Is there a contradiction? No, it's very clear that the Ruh al-Qudus or Ruh al-Qadosh that's mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, this is Jubeel alayhi salam. It simply means that an angel came and announced to her it's it says in Surah al-Maran or in Surah Maryam that it says that an angel came to her in the form of a man and she was afraid, right? Who is this man coming near me? So she said, get away if you fear Allah SWT and he said, don't be afraid. I'm only here to give you glad tidings of a pure and holy son. So this is very interesting that the angel here or the Holy Spirit as it were is identified by Luke as being Gabriel. Also, another new character in Luke is Simeon. Simeon is mentioned early in the Gospel of Luke as a just man. He is a Pharisee. He foretells Jesus as a messiahship as a revelation to the Gentiles. So he's somewhat of a prophetic figure and keep this kind of theme in mind as well when we look at the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke, the author of Luke is trying to really universalize the message of Isa alayhi salam. So he had the Gospel of Mark, right, the messianic secret which sort of helps explain why the Gospel wasn't spread so much. It wasn't very popular. The Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, I was only sent into the Lot Sheep at the house of Israel. So his message is more tailored almost exclusively to Bani Israel, but in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is seen as sort of like this light to the Gentiles, more universal. And his message, we'll talk more about that later, inshallah, ta'ala. We also have the sisters, Mary and Martha that are introduced to us in the Gospel of Luke. This is not Mary, the mother of Isa alayhi salam. These are the sisters of Lazarus. Lazarus is apparently a friend of Isa alayhi salam that's mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of John, he's actually raised from the dead by Isa alayhi salam in John chapter 11. And finally we have Herod Antipas mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, mentioned during the passion narrative of Luke's Gospel. So in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, there's no mention that Isa alayhi salam was taken to Herod. He was simply taken to Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, right? So it's more localized. But here Herod Antipas, who is Herod Antipas? Herod Antipas is the Roman appointed kind of king of Judea, right?  So Luke here, he wants to aggrandize the Jesus event, the passion narrative, that this has global implications, right? That this is touching upon Rome as well, not just kind of a localized thing that happened in the temple with the high priest and a few people, and then there was a crucifixion. No, that Jesus was actually taken to Herod Antipas, the sort of Roman political leader, the Roman puppet, a Jew by religion, but in the back pocket of the Roman Empire. And Herod will interrogate Isa alayhi salam as well. Again, this sort of universalizes, or grandizes the message of the Gospel. And that's an important theme for Luke. And so major concepts that are found in the Gospel of Luke. We have an extension of Israel's blessings to the world, right? So John's successor, who is Jesus, is seen as like the pivot by which history is now turning. So Matthew had this very strong kind of anti-Jewish supercessionism, the Jews have been replaced and they're done, and member Caiaphas said, may his blood be upon us and upon our descendants after us, right? The Jews have sort of been replaced and sort of forsaken by God at this point and cursed by God according to Matthew's apparent understanding. But Luke sort of softens the image on the Jews and says, no, Israel's blessings are now extended to the rest of humanity. And Jesus is sort of that axis by which the world sort of pivoted. And this is interesting because theologians and scholars of religion, historians of religion, they talk about certain epics in history that are known as axial ages, right? An axial age, this term was first coined by a German philosopher named Jaspers, Carl Jaspers, he called it Ashenzeit, which means axis time. So for example, the time between 900 before the common era and 200 before the common era, that 700 year span there, that's known as the great axial age. That's also during the iron age. What happened during that time is you have a massive increase in violence in the world because of iron weaponry, right? And you have these massive, huge, coercive, tyrannical governments all over the world that are now declaring war on people and oppressing people and there's massive oppression and licentiousness and all of these types of things. So it's really interesting during this time you have these axial sages and prophets springing up all over the world really from five distinct geographical locations and those prophets and sages, their teachings still reverberate to this day. The vast majority of humanity today is still swayed by what happened during that axial age. For example, you have in India, you have the Dharmic faiths which stress orthopraxis, right? Doing the right thing. Dharm means orthopraxis, the right action to be compassionate, to be merciful. You have the emergence of the Buddha during this time whose name is Siddhartha Gautama who was a model of compassion who told people that you need to be people of mercy and compassion and that the first noble truth is that the world is in a state of suffering and the reason for that suffering is herbuddunya. He said it's tanha which means attachment or selfish craving. So he's kind of reacting to what's going on during this time in the axial age and then you have Mahavira, also the founder of Jainism who is a contemporary of the Buddha in India and then you have in Persia, you have the emergence of Zoroaster during this time and Zoroaster he stressed on good thoughts, good words and good deeds and then you have in China Confucius and Lao Tzu and Confucius' idea of gen, J-E-N which means goodness or love or beauty. You can even translate ihsan, that you should have beauty in everything that you do. And then you have in Greece, philosophical rationalism with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle during this time, during this axial age, they're about fifth century before the common era and finally you have in Canaan or in Palestine or in Israel, you have the great prophets of many Israel during this time, Elijah in Elias, you have Ezekiel, you have Daniel, you have Jeremiah, you have Amos, you have Hosea and many, many more during this time. So this is a time in which history pivoted, right? A turning point in history. So this is how Luke sees the Jesus event that Isa alaihi salam is the pivot by which history has now turned that the blessings of Israel are now extended to all of humanity. That's a major concept. Another major concept in the Gospel of Luke is Jerusalem as sort of a sacred stage, right? Jerusalem, the Gospel of Luke is focused on Jerusalem, not so much on Galilee, right? Because again, Galilee at the time, northern Palestine, especially Nazareth is sort of this backwater town that is not very well known. Some scholars actually denied, actually existed during that time and that it's sort of an anachronism to talk about Nazareth being in the first century. But nonetheless, Jerusalem is something that Luke concentrates on because again, he wants to aggrandize Isa alaihi salam. He wants to universalize, right? This was the center, this was the hub, this is where everything was happening. So Jerusalem is quite frequently the great setting of the Gospel of Luke. In fact, 10 chapters, Luke chapter nine to 19, that's called Luke's travel narrative, right? So basically, this is Jesus and his disciples making hijra, if you will, walking from Nazareth into Jerusalem and his teaching during this walk. During their traveling during this hijra from north to south, Luke devotes 10 chapters to just the travel narrative. And this material is not found in any other Gospel. This is special Luke in material, Luke chapter nine to 19. We'll talk about some of the celebrated teachings of the travel narrative a little bit later, inshallah ta'ala. Also, it is in Jerusalem where all of the post resurrection appearances happen as well as the ascension into heaven. So remember here, according to Matthew, the post resurrection appearances as well as the ascension happen in Galilee, not in Jerusalem. So this is a clear contradiction here between Luke and Matthew. Of course, in Mark, Mark the true ending of the Gospel of Mark, if you remember, was Mark chapter 16 verse eight. So no one actually sees a resurrected Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark. The women go to the tomb, it's empty, they run away and they're afraid. But the angel inside the tomb, or rather the young man, as he's called, inside the tomb, he tells the women that Jesus is not here. He's gone before you to Galilee. And that's where you can meet him. He's in Galilee. Jesus is no longer in Jerusalem according to Mark and Matthew. But for Luke, Galilee is not very important. It's Jerusalem, which is the center, the hub of Judaism. This is where it has to happen. So according to Luke, Jesus appears to his disciples several times in the city of Jerusalem, and this is actually where he ascends into heaven as well. So this is a clear contradiction between Luke and Matthew, or between Luke and Mark. The third major theme we have here with the Gospel of Luke is a sort of a modified Markan eschatology. That Luke modifies Markan expectation of an immediate end. To show that Jesus' work is continued by the believing community. In Luke chapter 19, the parable of the talents that demonstrates that there's still some work to be done here. So again, Luke as well as Matthew, they sort of downplay this idea that the end of time is imminent any day now because obviously it didn't happen, right? So again, Luke is writing around 85 to 90. Mark believed around 70 that yes, the destruction of the temple means that any day now it's going to be over. So he's taking that from Paul. That's Pauline influence. Whereas Luke as well as Matthew, they downplay this idea of an immediate end. Another major concept of the Gospel of Luke is this exoneration of Gentiles, that the Gentiles are not guilty for doing anything wrong and neither is Jesus for that matter. So if you look at Luke chapter 23, verse 17, this is the Roman centurion when he's at the site of the crucifixion. Of course, in the Gospel of Mark, the centurion says truly this man was the son of God and he uses that phrase son of God. Of course, a Roman pagan saying son of God is very different than a Jew at the time saying son of God because the Romans believed that Zeus has many sons and of course that's a complete pagan theology when compared to the theology of Bani Israel. But here in Luke 23, the Roman centurion says something different. He says in the Greek, he says antos, ha antropos, hutais, dikayosain. He says truly this man was innocent or this man was righteous, dikayos, means innocent, righteous, he was just, right? So what is he doing here? The Roman centurion is exonerating Esalaam saying he's not guilty of anything, right? What's the significance of that? We have to remember at this time, Christianity was seen by many Romans as a threat to the empire, that these Christians, they have these secret underground meanings where they're eating flesh. There was a lot of rumors about them that they were cannibals, that they would engage in immoral practices underground and things like that. So there's a lot of variables. There are a lot of unknowns about this small Christian group that's sort of infiltrating these Roman societies. So what does Luke do? Instead of having the centurion say, indeed this was a son of God and make it more focused on theology, Luke says, no, I'm going to have the centurion say, verily this man was innocent and kind of focus it more on the political scene at the time and sort of quelling sort of this sort of fear that the Romans had about the growing Christian movement. So that's very interesting that Luke actually chooses that wording. Also, there is an interesting verse when Isaias and Jesus apparently, according to the gospel of Luke is on the cross in Luke, he says, father forgive them, pater atheis autois for a father forgive them for the no, not what they're doing. Of course, that verse, and I think we've mentioned this in past classes. If not, we'll mention it now again because it's very important point that that verse of Jesus saying that is not part of Luke's original gospel. That verse was added much later by consensus of New Testament textual critics. So Isaias, according to Luke, he never actually said, father forgive them. What's the point of him saying that is because there was a Christian heretical movement known as Marcionism that was extremely vehemently anti-Jewish. They hated the Jews. They believe that the God of the Jews was actually a different God, right? A lesser God. So they were by theistic. They said there's two gods. There's a God of the Old Testament and then there's Jesus, the true God, and that the Jews are cursed and that the sons of Satan. So the proto-Orthodox scribes and scholars, they didn't like Marcion's position and Marcion was growing, his movement was growing in Rome, which was considered to be the capital of the world at the time. So somewhere down the line, probably in the second or third century, a scribe went back into the Gospel of Luke and put these words into the mouth of Jesus on the cross. Father forgive them, meaning the Jews, for they know not what they do, right? But according to New Testament scholars, Isaias never actually said such a thing. That's a latter, it's a later fabrication to the text of the Gospel of Luke. Again, according to external and internal evidence of textual criticism. Another major concept of Gospel of Luke is Christological revisions, right? Christological revisions in terms of vicarious atonement. So here we're talking about what's known as soteriology. Soteriology means the study of salvation. How does one go to heaven? What do they do? Is it strictly by good works, like in the religion of Jainism, right? Or is it vicarious atonement? Is someone else going to pay the price for you? Or is it works and a trust in God that he's going to have mercy on you? Or anything in between those positions? So this is very important to understand from Luke's perspective, because in Mark, it's very clear that Jesus dies, according to Mark 1045, as a ransom for many. And of course, again, Mark is highly influenced by Paul because they're very close as far as timeframe, right? Mark took this idea or theme of an immediate second coming directly from Paul. He also takes this Christological idea that Jesus dies for your sins from Paul as well. So that's found in the Gospel of Mark. And it seems like Matthew subscribes to that idea as well. But Luke says something very different. Instead, in Luke, Luke makes Jesus an example of someone, an example of service for his disciples. In other words, in Luke, Jesus does not die for your sins. There's no mystical atonement. Jesus sets an example of service and sacrifice, right? And in the book of Acts, Luke's second part, you see Paul and Peter and Stephen exemplifying that same type of service and sacrifice, willing to give their lives for the sake of the cause. Not that Jesus is the savior in the sense that he dies for your sins. No, but rather in the sense that he makes you conscious of sin and teaches you how to deal with it and is a living exemplar for how to conduct your lives. We'll talk more about this idea because it's very, very important in the next class of how Luke conceives of Jesus being the savior, right? And how it's different than how Paul interprets this role of savior. We'll do that next time, inshallah ta'ala. So last time we were talking about the Gospel of Luke. We had mentioned some of the major concepts that are found in Luke's Gospel. We talked about last class, at the end of class, that we're going to repeat and sort of drive home, because very, very important is this idea of a Christological revision of soteriology that happens in Luke. So the word soteriology, again, comes from the word soter and logia, the study of salvation. How does Luke conceive of Jesus with respect to his role in the salvific process? Is it like Matthew and Mark say that Jesus died for your sins because they're taking that directly from Paul lying in influence, or is there something else? So here's something interesting. In Luke, Jesus, again, does not die for your sins. He doesn't vicariously or mystically atone for your sins. He doesn't do that. He dies to set an example of service and sacrifice, just like the apostles did in the book of Acts, which, again, is Luke's second volume, his ecclesiastical history, the history of the early church. Paul, Peter, Stephen, and many other disciples willing to give their lives, emulating the beautiful example of Esalaesala. None of these Peter, Paul, Stephen, or Jesus, none of them died for your sins. What do they do? They're simply presenting themselves as examples on how to deal with sin in a sinful world. So that's very important. To be compassionate and forgiving, this is the chief component, or the chief attribute, of Esalaesala in the Gospel of Luke. So with respect to soteriology, the Gospel of Luke confirms what it says in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 20, it's very clear, the soul that sins shall die, die, meaning in the sense of a spiritual death. It says that the iniquity of the Father shall not be on the Son. The iniquity of the Son shall not be on the Father. And then it says, however, if the wicked would turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. What does turn mean here in Ezekiel chapter 18? Turn in Hebrew is called teshuvah. Like right now, during the recordings of these sessions, we're in something called the asaret yomim teshuvah, the ten days of Toba for the Jews. This begins in Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the year. Rosh Hashanah is Ratsosana, the head of the year, the new year. And it goes ten days until Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. So these ten days for the Jews are called the ten days of Teshuvah. What does it mean according to Judaism? So in Rosh Hashanah, Jews believe that the Taqdir Mu'allaq is written. So suspended Taqdir, suspended Qadr, preordainment, that the names of those who are going to go to heaven and the names of those who are going to go to hell, they're written in a book, but the book is not sealed yet. So these ten days, what are the Jews doing? They're making dua, they're supplicating, they're making Toba, so that their names might be moved to the book of life and then sealed. So this is a very important concept for Jews. This concept of Toba in Hebrew again is called teshuvah. It comes from the verb shuv yashuv, taba yatu bu toba. It's the same meaning, means to reorient oneself, to turn oneself towards Allah SWT. And this is the message of the Gospel. A major theme of the Gospel of Luke is personal responsibility that no one's going to die for your sins, that you are responsible for your own actions. So this is very, very important that in the Gospel of Luke again, Jesus does not die for anyone's sins. We'll return to this idea later, inshallah. Now also the Luke and Jesus is what's known as what Ehrman says, imperturbable. The Luke and Jesus is very calm, is very cool, he's very collected on the order of a stoic philosopher. He's in control, he has a lot of self-discipline. Luke eliminates Mark in descriptions of Jesus, that make him too humanly vulnerable. Luke doesn't like that. So for example, in the Gospel of Mark, we have what's known as the cry of dereliction. When he's, according to Mark, Matthew records this as well. When he's on the cross, he says, why hast thou forsaken me? So Luke doesn't like that. Luke says basically that Jesus would never say something like that. So he doesn't include that. When Jesus is on the cross, he doesn't say anything like that in the Gospel of Luke. And for people to say, well, you know, because in the Gospel of Luke, he says something different. He says, Father into your hands, I commend my spirit. And some people say, well, he said both. He said, Father into your hands, I commend my spirit. But before that, he said, you can believe that, but if you do that, you're really writing your own Gospel. Because Luke, remember, Luke is writing his Gospel, believing that what he is saying is the truth, a more orderly account for this person named Theophilus. He's not saying, well, this is a Gospel that supplements other Gospels. So if you want more information, go read Matthew or go read Mark. No, Luke is saying that my Gospel stands on its own. Therefore, what I'm saying is true. So Luke does not believe that Issa alaihi salam said, elahi ilahi lama sabachtani when he was on the cross. He does not believe Issa alaihi salam said that. And how do we know that? Because he had that text in front of him. He has Mark in front of him, where Jesus apparently said that. He did not include that in his Gospel. Of course, Imam Ghazali, when he read the Gospel in his Jameel, if he wrote it, some people say it's pseudonymous. But he says very clearly, obviously, this is not Issa alaihi salam saying this on the cross. A prophet would never say this. Of course, Issa alaihi salam was crucified to begin with. And of course, this actually supports this idea that this person on the cross might have actually said that. Some person who was made to appear like Jesus, possibly the trader, the man who betrayed him. He would say something like that. But certainly not a prophet of God, certainly not Issa alaihi salam. What's also interesting here is you have this scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Gospel of Luke, where it says that Jesus suddenly he falls down and he sweats, and the sweat becomes like blood. Now this is interesting because this goes back to what's known as textual criticism. Did this actually happen? Now there are some manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke that don't contain this incident. For example, the Aleph 01, the Codex Sinaiticus that we talked about, the oldest complete version of the New Testament in Greek, does not contain these verses of Jesus breaking down in the Garden and sweating like blood. It's also not contained in the manuscript known as B, which is the Codex Vaticanus, also a fourth century, very early, complete Greek version of the New Testament. And when we talk about intrinsic probabilities, we look at internal evidence, intrinsic probabilities, meaning that isn't even in the style of Luke to have Jesus break down in sweat blood, it isn't. Because again, the Luke in Jesus is imperturbable. He's cool, calm, and collected. For him to something break down like that is completely out of character, so it doesn't match the personality type of Isalae Salaam, at least the Luke in Isalae Salaam. And also in that section of blood and sweat, these words are Hapax legamanoi. They appear no other place in the Gospel of Luke nor in the Book of Acts. So this lends credence to the fact that this verse is inauthentic, that this actually did not happen. So the point of this is to tell you that the Gospel of Luke as well is not immune to scribal fabrications. So then the question then becomes what's known as transcriptional probabilities is why were these verses added to the Gospel of Luke? Why do you want to make Jesus break down and start sweating like blood? The reason is because again, this was a response to a Christological heresy known as Marcianism. This shows you how influential Marcianism was during this period. Again, Marcian was a Christian who said that there's two gods. There's a god of the Old Testament. There's a god of the New Testament. The Jews are the sons of Satan. He said that Jesus didn't actually have a physical body. He was a phantom. So Marcian is a dosetist from the Greek doceo, which means to seem. Jesus only seemed to have a body, but he was actually a pure spirit. And so Marcian loved the Gospel of Luke because Luke presents Jesus as sort of this really calm, cool and collected person who's not really affected by a lot of emotion. So he said that's because he's actually a spirit. So what happened is that the scribe understanding this proto-Orthodox scribes, they went back and they added this section, Luke chapter 22 versus 43 and 44 of Jesus suddenly breaking down out of character and sweating like blood because they want to prove that no, Jesus was a human being and he did have his moment, so to speak. But this verse is inauthentic. Again, the point of him mentioning this to you is that the scripture, even in the very early period, is in flux. It's changing. It's being affected by heterodox or heretical movements. So scribes are going in and making these changes. In origin of Alexandria, who lived in the third century, who wrote over a thousand books, the most prolific of the pre-Nicene early church fathers, he admits very clearly that, yes, scribes went into the New Testament and they added things and they deleted things and he actually condemns the scribes for doing that. He says you shouldn't do that. Why do you keep doing that? Right? This is admitted by origin of Alexandria, one of the champions of proto-Orthodox Christianity. So that's very, very interesting. Now, some Lukean themes. What are some of the themes of the Gospel of Luke? One of the major themes is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a major actor in the Gospel of Luke, as well as the book of Acts. So the Christian community in the Gospel of Luke is quite charismatic.  In Acts chapter two, for example, remember Acts also written by Luke, Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost, we are told that 120 disciples were in the upper room where Isaias had his last supper. And the day of Pentecost was 50 days after the supposed resurrection, I believe. And when they're in the upper room, the Holy Spirit will descend like fire and the disciples start speaking in tongues. So if you go to Pentecostal churches today in America, this is what happens in their church. You go to the church and people are speaking in tongues and it's really not any type of intelligent language, though. They actually take classes on how to say things. It's gibberish, not really saying anything. One time this lady, she thought I was possessed by a demon because I knew the Bible, I guess. So she said, oh Lord, give me a language that he'll understand. She started speaking in tongues, but it was complete gibberish. And she asked me, do you understand this language? And I said, no, that's not any type of language. So this is, most of these people are, you know, it's a demagoguery. They're charlatans. But according to the Gospel of Luke, and I'm sorry, the book of Acts, that's what happened according to Acts chapter two. The Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost and 120 disciples. They start speaking the tongues of all the world. And Arabic is actually mentioned as one of the tongues that they were speaking in Acts chapter two. So I asked this Christian lady, I said, look, the disciples can speak in Arabic. Can you please ask the Holy Spirit to give you Arabic so I can understand it? And of course, that didn't happen. So this is an important event because there's also 120 cardinals in the Vatican, right? So the number of cardinals is supposed to be the same as the number of disciples that were inspired by the Holy Spirit. So the logic here is that the cardinals really kind of represent that original first community of the Christians. So when the cardinals in the Vatican, they get together in conclave and elect a pope. The assumption is that the Holy Spirit also will guide them into picking the correct pope. So that's very interesting. The Holy Spirit is a major player in the book of Luke as well as the book of Acts. Also, a major theme in the Gospel of Luke is prayer, right? You see people praying all the time. Jesus prays a lot. The disciples pray a lot, right? Another major theme are crowds. Crowds in Greek is called okloi. That wherever Jesus goes, there's a lot of crowds everywhere. What does that have to do with anything? Remember, the Gospel of Mark is very localized, messianic secret.  Again, Luke is trying to aggrandize Jesus. He's trying to say that this was a very big deal. There's crowds wherever he goes, hundreds and thousands of people following him around. So this is very important for the author of the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus is universal in his appeal. Another major theme is concern for women. Women are essential to the divine plan according to the Gospel of Luke. So you have Elizabeth and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. I'm sorry, Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of John and Jesus respectively. You have Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, also disciples of Jesus. You have the women going to the tomb on Easter Sunday, which is also found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. And of course, when Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke, is going to his crucifixion, of course he's very stoic. He's imperturbable.  So women are a constant theme in the Gospel of Luke. Again, Luke is trying to appeal to a wider audience. He's trying to universalize the message of Jesus. Now, getting back to this idea as Jesus as Savior, because this is very, very important. Because you ask Christians today, say, how do I get to heaven?  Lord and Savior. This is Kurias Kai Sauter. This was the title of the Roman emperor, right? So Christians took this directly from the emperor cult. They called the Roman emperor Kurias Kai Sauter, Lord and Savior, or Master and Savior, right? So what does it mean for Jesus to be Savior? Because it's mentioned that Jesus is the Savior in chapter 2, verse 11. For Luke, Savior, not in the sense, again, that he died for your sins, not in that sense, but rather, as one who teaches you how to deal with sin and a means of salvation. So they revised the, I'm sorry, the New English Bible, right? It translates Sauter as Deliverer, and that's a better translation. One who delivers you from sin, just like Moses did to Bani Isra'il. Musa alaihi salam was a vehicle by which God delivered the Bani Isra'il. Not just delivered them physically from the Pharaoh, but delivered them from sin by means of the Torah, right? So in that sense, every prophet is then a Savior, never in the sense that a prophet dies for the sins of humanity. This has nothing to do with Judaism. Christians will try to say, this is something that's foretold in the Old Testament, right? That on Yom Kippur you sacrificed one lamb and you let one go into the wilderness and the sins of the community are scapegoated upon. Well, that's, that was an outward ritual of an inward reality, which was toba. The real forgiveness was an inward state called tshuva for the Jews. It was toba. It was not vicarious atonement. That goes against the very fabric of their religion. We quoted the book of Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 20. The sin of the father is not on the son and vice versa. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him. The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. As it says in Ezekiel, chapter 18, in the book of Deuteronomy, in the Torah, chapter 24, it says, every man shall be put to death according to his own sin. Very clearly, Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verse 17, every man is put to death for his own sin. No one is put to death for someone else's sins, right? No one can vicariously atone for your sins. Take your sins away like that. That doesn't mean that there isn't tshafa and things like that on the Yom al-Qiyamah. That's not what we're talking about here. That's different. That's not vicarious atonement, right? That's intercession with God, right? That person doesn't take your sin. That person appeals to God and asks God to forgive you. That's very, very different than someone physically taking on your sin and being killed because of that sin, and therefore you're set free and you can go to Jannah and you're home free. So it's a very, very different idea when you get down to the nuances. So this is important. His death, where Christians believe he died, his death for Luke makes people realize that they're guilt before God, so they turn to God in repentance and then he forgives their sin, right? So Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is not a sacrifice for sin. He is an example of compassion for all to emulate. He and his followers are completely innocent of any crime against Rome. Jesus is the martyr prophet. So this is a major theme of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is the martyr prophet. That's the meaning of Savior. Savior here does not mean one who, the Lamb of God like John says, who takes away the sins of the world. John gets back to this idea of Jesus as Savior, right? Because his community was highly influenced by Pauline dogmatism. And that's very interesting because Luke is supposed to be a disciple of Paul, but Luke completely disagrees with Paul in the sense that Jesus is not the Savior in the sense that he died for your sins, but rather as a martyr prophet, one who gives you an example on how to live your life and delivers you by means of his teaching, not by him taking the sins of you in some mysterious type of way. So let's look at, and there's parables that Esai Asalam gives according to Luke that demonstrate this very, very clearly. And maybe we'll get to that this class or maybe the next class, but let's look at the structure first of the Gospel of Luke. So the structure is really eight parts. You have the preface that we read, Luke's preamble or dedication to his patron, a theophilus. Then you have the infancy narratives of John the Baptist and Esai Asalam. Then you have the prelude to the ministry, which includes the baptism of Esai Asalam, the genealogy of Esai Asalam in his temptation in the wilderness by Satan. Now I want to talk about this genealogy for a second. Remember, Matthew also gave a genealogy of Esai Asalam in Matthew chapter one. Matthew says that, and Matthew traces Esai Asalam's ancestry all the way back to Abraham. Luke actually traces it all the way back to Adam. What's interesting is, if you look at these genealogies, if you start with Abraham, the first 13 names on both lists are the same. Basically, Abraham to David, they're the same. After that point, no two names are identical when you look at Matthew and Luke. In other words, here's a man, Jesus, who has two very different genealogies. So the question then becomes, which one of these is the correct genealogy? Is there a way to make jama to harmonize this clear contradiction? Christians have attempted to do it. Some of them say the genealogy in Matthew chapter one is Joseph the Carpenter's genealogy, because that's the final name on the list. Whereas in Luke chapter three, this is the genealogy of Maryam A.S. However, this does not work because if you look at the final name in Luke's genealogy, it is not Mary, it's Joseph the Carpenter. Mary has nothing to do with this genealogy. In fact, Mary is not a descendant of David at all, according to Luke. She's a descendant of Aaron. She's from the tribe of Levi, according to the Gospel of Luke. We'll talk about that verse. So that explanation, that attempt at harmonization does not work. So this is a clear contradiction in the New Testament, that he has two separate and distinct very different genealogies. So there was a second century Christian scholar named Tashin, T-A-T-I-A-N, Tashin, and he was a student of Justin Marder, one of the great proto-Orthodox scholars. Tashin did something called the Deotesseron. Maybe we mentioned this in the past class. Deotesseron means through four, through four. What does this mean, Deotesseron? What is it? It's his gospel harmony. So this is what Tashin did. He took Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he took them and he put them into a single narrative. So instead of four different narratives of Esa, he wanted to put them all and harmonize them, harmonize all of their contradictions, and make it into a single narrative. And the Deotesseron was really the standard in the Syriac-speaking churches until the fourth century, when the Paschita, or the Basita, took its place. And the Basita is not a harmony. It's actually four gospels like it is in the traditional New Testament. But what's interesting about Tashin is he said that he was able to harmonize every single contradiction in the New Testament except for the genealogies. He could not figure out what to do with these genealogies, so he doesn't even attempt to reconcile them. It was too difficult for him to do that. So going back again to the structure, you have the preface. You have the infancy narratives. Number three, you have the prelude to the ministry, which includes the baptism, the genealogy, the temptation. Number four, you have the Galilean ministry. Number five, you have Luke's travel narrative. This is very important. It's kind of the heart of the Gospel of Luke. Luke's travel narrative, right in the middle of the Gospel, chapters nine through nineteen. Again, the travel narrative is when Jesus and his disciples are walking from Galilee into Jerusalem. What is Jesus saying to his disciples during that long trip? It's represented by Luke chapter 19, verses nine through nineteen. It's called the travel narrative. So this is special Lukean material. Just like Matthew had, special Matthewan material represented by M. We also have now special Lukean material. We'll talk more about that when we talk about the sources of the Gospel of Luke, but just to finish the structure here. Number six then, you have the Jerusalem ministry, which lasts about a week. Then you have the final conflict and passion and then chapter, and then the eighth part is the epilogue, the resurrection appearances that happen again exclusively in Jerusalem, nothing in Galilee. Again, and that's also a clear contradiction between Luke and Matthew or Luke and Mark. Remember in Matthew and Mark, Jesus does not appear to his disciples in Jerusalem, but rather in Galilee. So now let's look at the sources of the Gospel of Luke. So remember what we said about Matthew. We said Matthew has three sources on his desk when he's writing his Gospel. He has Mark's Gospel there. He has the Q-source document there, probably in written form, and then he has special Matthewan material either in the form of a manuscript or it's just in his head in the form of oral transmission. That's what Matthew has. What does Luke have? Luke also, like Matthew, has the Gospel of Mark at his desk. He's working from Mark. Mark is his narrative skeleton, just like it's served for Matthew. So the basic chronology of the Gospel of Luke is the same as Mark. So this is called the synoptic tradition. Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow the basic same chronology of events. Luke also has the Q-source document at his desk, just like Matthew does. Mark doesn't have that. Luke then also has special L material called leucan material. This might have been in the form of a manuscript of some sort, some papyrus or something written on leaves or something, or it's simply in his head as oral tradition. So we have the Gospel of Luke, 65% of Mark integrated in the Gospel of Luke, then we have Q, then we have L. What did Matthew have? Mark, Q, and M. So let's look at some of this special leucan material. So in chapter 10 of Luke, we have this parable of the good Samaritan. You've probably heard this if, for example, you're going across the bay bridge and you pay for the person behind you, and you don't even know that person. You would say that that person who paid for you was a good Samaritan. He was a good citizen, he did something good, he was a selfless person, he helped the stranger. This is the point of the good Samaritan, is that Isa A. here is trying to, again, universalize the Gospel according to the Gospel of Luke. Samaritans at the time of Isa A. were known as sort of these pseudo-Jews. They weren't known as real Jews. The Samaritans were sort of a mixed race. So when the Jews, the Bani Israel, they returned from Babylon. They found this group of people claiming to be Jews that had intermixed with other ethnicities and they were known as the Samaritans. In fact, the Samaritans have their own version of the Torah. They have their own temple in the north. They have different ways in which they worship. So it is a different sect of Judaism. So they were very much reviled at the time of Isa A. So when we read this parable of a good Samaritan, we should keep this in mind that the word Samaritan for the Pharisees of his day was a hated word. They did not like the Samaritans. So Jesus' parable here is quite revolutionary in the sense that he's saying there's a good Samaritan and that a Levite and a priest, a Levite and a Pharisee, they did the wrong thing according to this parable. What is the parable? It says that a Samaritan, that a man, it says that a certain man, he was walking down the road and then a group of thieves came and robbed him and beat him and stripped him and left him to die on the side of the road. And then Isa A. says, according to the parable, the good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10, a priest walked by and he totally ignored him. And then he said a Levite walked by and totally ignored him. Then he saw a Samaritan. A Samaritan came and he gave him food and he gave him clothing and he took him and took care of him. So he's saying, this is the point. This is the point of the parable is the universality of the message of Isa A. That Isa A. is teaching universal compassion according to this parable. And then we have something interesting, Luke chapter 15. This is also in the travel narrative. This is what's known as the prodigal son. And this is also something we hear sometimes.   This type of thing. This comes from the Gospel of Luke chapter 15. A man had two sons.  The other son went out to earn a living, but then he fell on hard times and then he began to waste his wealth and then he began to act in a very sinful manner.  And his father welcomes him with open arms. What is the point of this parable? The whole point is toba. That's the whole point of the terrible, the parable, by Isa A.S. Right? Isa A.S. is teaching toba that the father represents God, right? And that the son represents the servant who went astray, but then he's contrite. He has, you know, he feels bad. He has remorse and he has a resolve not to return to the sin. And his father welcomes him with open arms, right? And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he gives certain parables about toba. He says, imagine a man who's out in the desert, right? And it's in Sahih Bukhari. Imagine a man out in the desert and he loses his conveyance, right? With all of his supplies that were on his conveyance and his camel, his horse, whatever it was, his conveyance, it runs away.  So he's walking through the desert. He's filled with pain. He's becoming thirsty.  He's very afraid. And then he suddenly sees his conveyance and he grabs its reins, right? And he's so happy that he's found his conveyance, you know, salvation, that he says, Ya Allah. Anta abdi wa ana Rabbuk. So he lost even control of his speech.  That's how happy the abd was, right? That now he has found his conveyance. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said Allah is more happy. Allah is more happy when a sinner, when someone, a Muslim who is sinning, when a sinner makes toba to him, Allah is more happy when one of his servants makes toba to him than that man was at that moment when he lost control of his speech, right? So this entire parable of the Good Samaritan, I'm sorry, the, the prodigal son, this is about toba. And Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he prefaces the parable by saying, how gladly, how gladly will a shepherd leave 99 of his flock to chase the one that went astray, right? 99 are in line and they're fine. They're in line. They're doing what they're supposed to. But one of them went astray. The shepherd will leave 99 to find the one that went astray. He says, how glad is he wh