hello and in this episode i want to share with you another fascinating book by a
leading scholar that draws some amazing parallels between islam (the teachings of islam) and the very
earliest christian movement in the first century and i just want to share with you this book
called the jesus dynasty by james d table who is professor at the department of religious studies
at the university of north carolina at charlotte usa he has featured on the bbc in channel 4 and
the history channel on the discovery channel and he's a high-profile biblical archaeologist as well
as a new testament scholar and he argues in this book that far from setting himself up as
the chosen messiah of a new world religion jesus saw himself as a descendant of the royal house of
david and head of an apocalyptic movement aimed at establishing a ruling dynasty in israel
this was led would be led by jesus own family especially at the beginning uh his brother james
who did indeed become the head of the church in jerusalem appointed by the apostles and they would
lead the jewish people in political social and spiritual redemption now this of course is quite
different from the christianity that we know today and so he explores what happened where jesus
family were basically written out from the bible but in fact historically we can show that they
played a really central role in particularly in the first two centuries in the jewish
wing of the church before it was obliterated by paul paul's own understanding in the emerging
catholic church in the second third and fourth centuries so um i just wanted to share with you um
the conclusion uh which where he talks about the similarities between what he has uncovered and
islamic teaching and what he says is quite quite remarkable so professor tabor says on page 287
muslims do not worship jesus who is known as isa in arabic nor do they consider him divine but
they do believe that he was a prophet or messenger of god and he is called the messiah in the quran
however by affirming jesus as messiah they are attesting to his messianic message
not his mission as a heavenly christ there are some rather striking connections between the
research i presented in the jesus dynasty which is his book and the traditional beliefs of islam
the muslim emphasis on jesus as messianic prophet and teacher is quite parallel to what we find in
the queue source in the book of james and in the diddy k just briefly explain by the way the the
q source q stands for quell which is a german word meaning source and this is a technical term in new
testament scholarship which refers to the material that the gospel of matthew and the gospel of luke
share in common and that they both drew on so they drew on a source unknown who produced it but
clearly it's evident you can see passages in both gospels where the greek is the same and this might
have been a written document it might have been an oral narration where we don't know or maybe both
um so matthew for example uses mark's gospel as a source he uses q this other source plus
his own material luke uses mark as a source plus q of course plus his own unique material
uh so the book of james he also refers to that's not really a book as a letter towards the end of
the new testament which you can read it's quite short where james talks very positively about
following the law and the perfect law that gives freedom this is the torah and also how
abraham was justified by his works and not by his faith it's the opposite of what paul teaches
in galatians and romans and so on there's a very interesting letter and also refers to this word
the decay decay is a greek word meaning teaching in greek and it refers to a document that scholars
aren't quite sure when it was written possibly as early as 1850 or as late as the second century
but it prevents a very different understanding of christianity from paul it's a jewish faith the
lord's supper is not about the body and blood of jesus jesus is a human figure a prophet a messiah
so that's a fascinating text that was only rediscovered uh in the 19th century it was
known in the early church and disappeared from view for nearly 2 000 years and was rediscovered
and that caused quite a sensation in the victorian era so professor tabor continues to be the messiah
is to proclaim a message but it is the same message as that proclaimed by abraham moses
and all the prophets islam insists that neither jesus nor muhammad brought a new religion both
sought to call people back to what might be called abrahamic faith this is precisely what
we find emphasized in the book of james there's no new religion christianity in the book in the
letter of james it it's old-time judaism although obviously jesus is a prophet and a messiah like
islam the book of james and the teaching of jesus in queue emphasize doing the will of god
as a demonstration of one's faith judaism much like islam is not terribly preoccupied with
believing a whole set of dogmas it's very much emphasized on doing the will of god on practice
on prayer on the the five pillars or one of them is belief but a lot of it is on charity on actions
rather than endless believing in doctrines and dogmas and creeds
also he says the dietary laws of islam as quoted in the quran echoed the teaching of james in acts
chapter 15 almost word for word quote abstain from swine flesh blood things offering to
things offered to idols and carrion and that's compared with the quran chapter 2 verse 172
since muslims reject all of the poor line affirmations about jesus and thus the central
claims of orthodox christianity the gulf between islam and christianity on jesus is a wide one
however there is little about the view of jesus presented in this book that conflicts with islam's
basic perception prophet muhammad was in contact with christian groups in arabia and there is
evidence to suppose that the christians he might have met might have been closer in their beliefs
to the ebionites than to the western church now the ebionized this comes from a word in hebrew
meaning the poor were a group of jewish christians whose beliefs are virtually identical to islamic
beliefs yes they believe jesus was the messiah and a prophet but no he was not god or divine
in any sense yes he was born of the virgin mary no we haven't come jesus didn't abolish the law
the law the the halakhah or the sharia if you like of judaism is still to be followed and these
people these ebionites uh say but a jewish group a jewish sect they basically died out sometime later
in the second century uh overwhelmed by the gentile christianity of the catholic church
of paul's own understanding of salvation which was quite different
so professor table says if that be the case then one of the most fascinating turns of history
would be that the view of jesus represented by the jesus dynasty
has survived ironically in aspects of islam or islamic tradition as well
so again this is this is a theme which um i've come across again and again in another book which
i shared a few days ago the brother of jesus and the lost teachings of christian christianity by
professor butz he also makes that point and also in that great catholic work the new jerusalem
bible commentary an official publication of the catholic church which also mentions that
the jewish christianity died out in the first century to be reborn as islam in the seventh
century they draw this direct connection between the earliest christianity and islam so this keeps
on cropping up and these are serious academics um one of them is a lutheran minister the catholic
publication obviously is roman catholic uh this guy i think is probably more unitarian in his
outlook so i just wanted to share with you the extraordinary parallels that people are making
between the earliest faith of the disciples and if there's one point i wanted to stress
really to get one's head around what's really at the root issue here
and this has been pointed out by scholars since the 19th century it's nothing new that i've
discovered but it's a very important point that jesus proclaimed according to our earlier sources
jesus proclaimed a message about the coming of the kingdom about god's mercy about sincerity about
uh having a pure intention about obeying the jewish law the torah with a renewed intensity and
an emphasis on love and mercy and faith although not neglecting the other aspects of the law
and people were entered into this renewed is it like a renewal movement within judaism
contrast that this gospel of jesus which according to our sources jesus preached in mark chapter one
it refers to this message that jesus preached to the later message of paul and his followers
which was a gospel about jesus they didn't proclaim the same message as jesus they proclaimed
jesus himself as the message as the content as the the the uh a man who died and risen again
from the dead and is now sitting at the right hand of god and faith in him brings salvation
both in this life and in the life to come and this is a very different religion and i really do
maintain that these are two different religions the religion of jesus the gospel of jesus
versus the religion about jesus the gospel about jesus they're two different gospels um and that is
a striking finding of um new testament scholarship and is probably the dominant view of most scholars
since the 19th century not all scholars would agree with that but the the very conservative
scholars represented by people like tom wright uh and craig blomberg and many others uh evangelicals
would disagree with that very strongly of course but i think more objective historians
do see a fundamental difference between those two the proclaimer became the one proclaimed jesus
preached the kingdom and it was the church that came and these are discontinuities that really lay
uh expose uh the realities of the of christianity um now this is all very controversial of course
and and most christians not aware of these things but i just wanted to share with you um of these
two books um both by american academics i i would uh i would whoops go with this one jeffrey butts
it's slightly more mainstream it's better uh annotated uh it quotes more scholarly sources
and is less dependent on speculation but i think table does make some very interesting
points about jesus's family uh a bit like a sheer dynasty so there we go until next time