Nazarene Jews and Christians. the version of the Koran about the person of Jesus (Issa)

Kamal Salibi's book "Who Was Jesus ?, Conspiracy in Jerusalem" investigates in depth the origins of the three monotheistic religions with the most faithful in the contemporary world: Judaism, Christianity and Ialam. Salibi, recently deceased, was a Lebanese linguistic scholar with extensive knowledge of the history of the Middle East, who unraveled many of the unknowns of the early days of these religions. Here I transcribe a fragment of the aforementioned book where he presents the version of the Koran about the person of Jesus (Issa). For those interested in this historical topic, this story may be worth it. In other chapters we will include some innovative aspects of Kamal Salibi's hypotheses.

"The information the Quran provides about the person of Jesus, which is called Issa in the Quran Arabic, can be organized into a coherent narrative.

According to her, the version of the Koran about Jesus (Issa) is related to the origin of the people of Israel that was organized in a religious community by Moses, who gave them the Torah.

Later, the people of Israel received two other prophets, first Ezra, and then Issa.

The followers of the former became the Jews; the followers of the second are called "Nazarene Christians".

Each of these communities revered their founding apostle as a child of God. Among some "Nazarenes" (Christians), Jesus came to be worshiped as God Himself.

The Jesus of the Koran, born of a virgin, was a miraculous being whose human personality was a living manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the divine kalimah, or prophetic 'word'. He performed miracles, and was able to raise the dead.

As a man, he was a consecrated or ordained person, implying an association with the priesthood. While he accepted the essence of the Mosaic law, he emphasized easing some of its rigor in his own preaching of where the Gospel came from. In life, he was surrounded by a select group of followers called al-Hawariyyun, apparently because they were wearing special white robes. The Jews, however, opposed his mission and mocked his miracles, and it is reported that they actually managed to execute it, either by crucifixion or in some other way. The person who was actually crucified, however, was not Issa himself but someone whose identity was confused. The true Issa was raised to heaven, regardless of whether or not he died a natural human death. Before leaving earth, he prophesied the coming of another apostle named Ahmad. Ultimately, Issa was to come back to life, pass the final judgment on humanity on the day of the Resurrection.

There are two points in this reconstructed Quranic story that are particularly remarkable. First, it draws the correct distinction between the mosaic monotheism of the early Israelites and the Jewish faith, which began to evolve from it in the post-exile times, with the Ezra priesthood. Second, the story clearly shows the Judaism and original Christianity of the Nazarenes as different deviations from the original religion of Israel, and suggests a new vision of the origins of Christianity as a sister religion to Judaism, rather than as a Jewish sect. derived from Judaism. as the common vision has long been

Although the Koran does not set a place or date for Issa's mission, it gives the general impression that, as a prophet of Israel, he was active in times and places where Islam was born, that is, in western Arabia. On the other hand, it also follows that Nazarene Christianity arose at a time when the Israelites, as a people, were different from the Jewish people as a religious community, which implies a date for the mission of the Jesus of the Koran, which may be more close until the 5th century BC than in the 1st century AD. While there is nothing in Islamic literature to support such an early date for Issa's life, there is at least one hint in this literature that Christianity (undoubtedly the Nasara religion) originated in Arabia rather than in Palestine. Writing his geographical dictionary alRawd al-mi'tar fi khabar al-aqtar in the fourteenth century AD, Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Himyari, a North African Arab native to Yemen, expanded the sequence of events historical. Islamic Christianity in the Najran region, on the north-eastern fringes of Yemen, unequivocally affirms that "the origin of this religion was in Najran" (wa-kan asl dhalik al-din bi-Najran).

That Christianity should have originated in Arabia before making a fresh start and taking on a new form in Palestine is not implausible. As I indicated in the introduction, I remain personally convinced that the history of the Biblical Israelites ran its full course in Western Arabia, and that both the original monotheism of Moses and the Judaism that arose from there have their roots there, and not in Palestine. . . In terms of historical geography, Palestine can be seen as an extension to northern western Arabia, and some Arab Israelites apparently came to settle in that country in Biblical times. Later, during the Hellenistic period, Judaism under the Hasmonean dynasty came to have one of its main political centers in Palestine, where the main Jewish city was called Jerusalem after the oldest, Israelite (and therefore Biblical) Jerusalem of Arabia, probably the current village of Al Sharim in the highlands of Assyr, once mentioned in ancient Arabic literature as Uri Shalim. "

  

* See al-Rawd al-Mi'tar