um just come across something very interesting uh just as a follow-on from the last video about the
surprising things one learns about the original uh jewish palestinian community of christian
believers i was just uh looking at this book the islamic uh jesus how the king of the jews became
a prophet of the muslims and um it says some really interesting little things here i just
want to share with you chapter four uh the missing link has a quote um from a uh well-known german
professor of uh religions of religious history at a university in germany hans joel king schweppes
if i pronounce his name correctly um he is quoted as saying here is a paradox of
world historical proportions jewish christianity indeed disappeared within the christian church but
was preserved in islam isn't that extraordinary a paradox of amazing proportions jewish christianity
uh disappeared as we know within the church but was preserved in islam and that's the beginning of
the chapter that quote and then it gets even more interesting he quotes the author of this book uh
quotes uh more writings on the continuum he calls it between jewish christianity and islam um
and uh how this is largely unnoticed even by most of the experts in academia
it is really astonishing that this discussion has had virtually no resonance among specialists
in arabic and islamic studies the eminent theologian father hans kung who's a catholic
also found it astonishing that the unmistakable parallels between the koran and the understanding
of christ in jewish christian communities have found only a few echoes one of the main
one major reason kung argues is the common unwillingness to ask disturbing questions
quote not only muslim theologians but also christian dogmatic theologians of all confessions
often simply ignore inconvenient results of exegetical and historical truth
and then the author of this book explores them there's a little detail here which i completely
forgotten about and i wish i'd share this before there was a a scholar called uh patricia crone
now if you know anything about chronic studies in the west you'll know all about patricia cohn she
was a she died in 2015 she was an american dutch historians specializing in early islamic history
and and the koran and she was probably one of the most if not the most famous western scholar of the
quran she said uh many controversial things and changed her views quite radically over the years
but the reason i'm quoting uh mentioning her is because uh the author of this uh book says this
the images of jewish sorry the images of jesus in jewish christianity and islam are very similar
if not identical as well we mentioned that the quran insists that jesus was the messiah
which is interesting for it was probably an alien concept for seventh century pagan
arabs also interesting is the quran's emphasis that jesus was sent to the jews
that he was as the chronic verse noted a messenger to the children of israel
the cinema the seemingly insignificant but actually impressive point here was captured
by patricia crome who suggested quote that jesus was sent to the israelites is an astonishing claim
for a seventh century preacher to make that was british account why astonishing because unless one
had a sense of his of historical jesus one would rather think that jesus was sent to christians
that is in fact what most muslims readily think today imagining that moses is the prophet
of the jews and jesus is the prophet of the christians and muhammad is the prophet of muslims
therefore patricia crone suggests from her perspective in quoting here
one would have expected the messenger i muhammad to say that jesus was sent to the christians
of course there were no christians before jesus but this would hardly have prevented the messenger
from seeing god as sending jesus to them and even if we assume his historical sense to
have been too well developed for him to do so one would have expected him to say that
the israelites responded to his preaching by dividing into jews and christians which is
historically correct but what he actually says is that they divided into believing in unbelieving
israelites in quran 61 14. in religious terms they split but ethnically they remained the same
and then he quotes from um jewish christian texts which use it precisely that language um and the
krantz perspective uh patricia crone goes on to say is unquestionably jewish christian so
in other words this is a remarkable uh shall we say bit of luck um that the quran gets it
uh very technically correct here from um the leading historian's point of view
he wasn't just using uh the anachronistic language of later centuries uh he was when he was referring
to the israelites into breaking into two groups uh this is precisely correct they weren't really just
christians and jews they were israelites some who believed in the messiah and some who didn't and as
uh james jimmy dunn uh was being discussed earlier he made uh the same point so this is a fascinating
uh insight a little detail where um say the quran gets it uh very precisely right but also
perhaps more importantly that the uh the jesus of the jewish christian faith the earliest
faith is fundamentally the same as the islamic understanding here is a paradox of world
historical proportions jewish christianity in other words the original christianity
of of the faith indeed disappeared so at the end of the first century in the
second century as i've said before uh it became seen as heretical and unorthodox
and the early church fathers uh polemicized against it and it was ultimately suppressed
so that disappeared within the emerging catholic christian church but was preserved in islam
so one could say that to be a good christian sorry a good follower of jesus today you would follow
islam and not what we call christianity at least that's the lesson of history one could argue
so i do recommend this book by the way i read it a long time ago
um and uh it's it's uh it's very good um for uh it's a muslim uh author i think he's a
american and um it's had some good reviews on the back um so there we go i just thought
i'd just share that little addendum with you just to ride on the back of the previous video