The True Message of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ represents the common link between the two religions having the most followers on the earth today, Christianity and Islam. The following study of Jesus’ message and his person is based on this link. It is hoped that through this study, both Muslims and Christians will better understand the significance of Jesus and the importance of his message.

However, for us to accurately identify the true message of Jesus Christ, an objective point of view must be maintained throughout the course of our research. We should not allow our emotions to cloud our vision and thereby blind us from the truth. We must look at all of the issues rationally and separate the truth from falsehood—with the help of the Almighty.

When we look at the variety of false religions and deviant beliefs around the world and the zeal with which their followers uphold these beliefs, it becomes quite evident that these people are not able to find the truth because of their blind commitment to their beliefs. Their tenacious adherence is usually not based on an intellectual understanding of the teachings, but on powerful cultural and emotional influences. Because they were brought up in a particular family or society, they firmly cling to the beliefs of that society, believing that they are upholding the truth.

The only way that we may find the truth about anything is to approach it systematically and logically. First, we weigh the evidence and then we judge it by the intelligence which God has given us. In the material world, it is fundamentally intelligence that distinguishes humans from animals, which act purely on instinct. After determining what the objective truth is, we must then commit ourselves to it emotionally. Yes, there is a place for emotional commitment, but emotional commitment must come after a reasoned comprehension of the issues. Emotional commitment is essential, because it is evidence of a true understanding. When one fully and properly understands the reality of the issue, one is then mentally and spiritually prepared to vigorously uphold that reality.

-- Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

Jesus Christ birthday coincides with Quranic verses on the Messiah, research

Neither December 25 nor January 7, but June 17 is Jesus Christ's real birthday, says an Australian astronomer who used a computer software and St. Matthew's Gospel as a reference point to calculate the new date.

The astronomer's research coincides with Quranic verses on the Messiah, which suggest that Mary gave birth to Jesus during the summer season.

Reneke's reference point, Mathew's gospel, coincides with Quranic references to the birth of Jesus Christ as both texts place the event in the summer season.

While Mathew's gospel placed the nativity at somewhere between 3 B.C. and 1 A.D, allowing Reneke to locate the planetary movement to an accurate date in 2 B.C., the Quran notes that Mary went into labor during the summer time as she was instructed by the Angel to eat dates, a summer fruit, from a nearby tree after giving birth to Jesus.

Full article here: Jesus was born in June: Australian scientist

Related article 1: Sekudus Nur Ilahi
Related article 2: He shall give you another Paracletos (Muhammad) - Bible

Who Changed the Bible

Who’s Dr. Bart Ehrman?

Dr. Bart Ehrman, the author of Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures, has devoted his scholarly life to the recovery and interpretation of ancient biblical texts. He is unapologetic about his intense commitment: In the absence of original manuscripts of the books of the New Testament, he notes, questions of transmission and text become paramount. Misquoting Jesus offers a revelatory view of the Gospels and Paul's Epistles, arguing that scribes and editors altered almost all extant manuscripts. Part memoir, part biblical history, part textual criticism, Misquoting Jesus challenges us to look anew at texts that have shaped our culture.

The Bible Delusion
A Review by Doug Brown

Source: Powell Books

Those who call the King James Version of the Bible the unerring word of God have a slight problem. The New Testament of the KJV (as the King James Version is usually referred) was translated into English from a version of the Greek New Testament that had been collected from twelfth-century copies by Erasmus. Where Erasmus couldn't find Greek manuscripts, he translated to Greek from the Latin Vulgate (which itself had been translated from Greek back in the fourth century).

Here the problem splits into two problems. First, Jesus spoke Aramaic --- his actual words, never recorded, were only rendered in Greek in the original gospels. Thus, the KJV consists of Jesus' words twice refracted through the prism of translation. Second, Erasmus's Greek New Testament was based on handwritten copies of copies of copies of copies, etc., going back over a millennium, and today is considered one of the poorer Greek New Testaments. It is this second problem that Ehrman spends most time on in Misquoting Jesus, a fascinating account of New Testament textual criticism.

Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original texts. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. The earliest surviving versions of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the original texts were written. Also, we don't just have a single version of each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is, none of the versions agree with each other. As Ehrman puts it, there are more points of disagreement between manuscripts than there are words in the Gospels. So which one is right? How can one tell what the original authors intended?

One way is to try and establish which manuscript is the earliest, and call it closest to the author's intent. However, it may not be. Ehrman describes how the earliest copies of Christian texts were done by everyday folks, many of whom were barely literate; it is thus among the earliest copies that the greatest disagreements are found. In later times, professional scribes did most of the copying, resulting in fewer inter-copy disagreements. Also, we may have a document from the fourth century and one from the eighth; but the latter might have been copied from a second-century document, making it closer to the original. In general, though, if most early manuscripts have a given wording and later versions have another, scholars assume the early version is correct.

Another method of deciding which of two text versions is closer to the original is geographic comparison. If all the manuscripts from Alexandria have one version of text, but copies from everywhere else have another version, the Alexandria version is probably incorrect. Also, Ehrman controversially argues that if we have two passages, one with an easier interpretation and another with a harder, the latter is more likely correct. Scribes would often clean up passages that were hard to interpret, or that seemed to make Jesus hard to understand.

Then there is the issue of later scribes just plain adding in things that weren't there before. These additions often came from the verbal tradition of the early church, or to bring a given gospel in line with other gospels. One of the biggest apparent additions to the gospels is the last twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20). They are not present in early versions of the gospel, and include the famous passage that is the primary basis for Pentecostal and snake-handling churches, as well as for many a fly-by-night faith healer:

And these are the signs that will accompany those who believe: they will cast out demons in my name; they will speak in new tongues; and they will take up snakes in their hands; and if they drink any poison it will not harm them; they will place their hands upon the sick and heal them.

In addition to not being present in earlier versions, Ehrman states the writing style of these verses are different from the rest of Mark, and contain vocabulary not present in the rest of the gospel. Some later scribe possibly felt that the gospel ended too abruptly and added a more Messianic coda. And in doing so, condemned many an Appalachian pit viper to a life of abuse at the hands of people who think Jesus said something he likely didn't.

Alteration of texts by copyists was such a problem that many ancient scribes and authors would include warnings similar to today's anti-copying legal disclaimers. One figure in Misquoting Jesus is a page of a fourth-century manuscript on which a medieval scribe has scrawled a complaint in the margins about an earlier scribe altering the text: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it." The book of Revelation contains one of the first copyright warnings, which Ehrman quotes: "I testify to everyone who hears to the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book; and if anyone removes any of the words of the book of this prophecy, God will remove his share from the tree of life...." The wording may have changed over the centuries, but the sentiment hasn't.

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. So many hands have altered and edited the now lost originals that we will never know for sure what those originals said. I find it amusing that the Christian Right in America spends its energy attacking evolution, arguing that teaching evolution is teaching atheism.

For Ehrman, learning about the Bible is what caused his belief to change. He still believes in God, but no longer believes the Bible is an inerrant source of the Word. It would be interesting to know how many people became less religiously devout after learning science versus learning about Bible and church history. Instead of convincing believers not to read Dawkins and Darwin, the biblical literalists might better spend their energy keeping folks away from Ehrman (in fact, backlash books attacking Ehrman --- often personally --- and defending Biblical infallibility are already appearing).

Ehrman isn't an atheist assaulting belief; he is just a scholarly believer saying he feels the evidence is clear that the gospels were written by men with personal agendas, and both accidentally and intentionally altered over the centuries by other men with agendas of their own. Then, from all the texts that existed, some other men with agendas selected the canon and deemed the other texts apocrypha. The main thrust of what Jesus said and did is undoubtedly in there, but that's all we can be sure of. For believer or atheist, I recommend Misquoting Jesus to anyone with an interest in where this ancient anthology that has helped shape our culture came from.

P/s: I’m Muslim but I have two Bibles for my own reference.