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 

Jesus from Arabia?

According to Kamal Salibi, for many years, Paul known as the Apolstle of the Gentiles, he had a dissenting relationship with Jesus original followers from Jerusalem, and when he had the religious revelation,  the first thing he did was to travel to Arabia, not to Jerusalem,  It is known that at that time there were important jewish communities, in Arabia, including Medina, Mecca and Najarn.
These communities had strong relationship with the “legitime” priestly lineage of Issa (Jesus?), the son of Mariam (Mary), as it is described in the Koran, whixh Salibi dats around the sixth century B.C. and that perhaps were also related with Jesus, who might have been descendent of this ancient lineage. Perhaps Jesus was a descendant of Issa and somehow both persons were syncretized in the early Christians jew communities of Arabia.  It is importante to remember thatKoran was written in the VII century A.D. when Christian traditions werel alive and there were organized Christian communities (the Nazarens)..  

“Once Paul received the revelation the first thing he did was to go 'at once' (Greek eutheos) to Arabia, and not to Jerusalem; also, that he only went to Jerusalem 'three years' (not merely 'many days') later, where he only met Peter and James, staying no more than two weeks in Peter's house. Paul further points out that he did not visit Jerusalem again until fourteen years later (Galatians 2:1). This was the time he met Peter and the other apostles, who finally agreed to recognize his apostleship to the Gentiles, then immediately asked him for money. Three questions arise here. First, why did Paul, having experienced his revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, decide to go at once to Arabia instead of Jerusalem, although he was fully aware that the apostles who had known Jesus were in Jerusalem? Second, why did the book of Acts omit all reference to Paul's Arabian visit, although Paul himself appears to have regarded it as highly important, since he decided to go immediately after his conversion? Third, why does Paul nowhere explain exactly why he went to Arabia – at least nowhere in his available writings?

… Clearly, the voyage which Paul hastened to undertake immediately following his conversion was to a place that lay beyond Roman Arabia, in the peninsula: probably the Hijaz, or the Yemen. There was an old-established and known community of Jews there at that time, and it is quite possible that Paul went to visit them. These Arabian Jews were important enough to be included among the Jewish communities of the world mentioned by Josephus in the opening passages of his book, The Jewish Wars, which he wrote shortly after the Roman sack of Jerusalem in AD 70. Possibly, they knew something extremely important about Jesus himself and his mission which Paul wanted to learn from them first-hand before embarking on his own apostolic work. In Jerusalem, he could only acquire this information secondhand – and perhaps in a highly edited fashion – from the followers of Jesus. Paul must have had a strong suspicion that James, Peter, John and their party were covering up some secret, and certainly not telling the full truth about the origins of their mission. Having become an apostle in his own

What  Acts  does  not  say  about  Paul right by virtue of the independent revelation he had received, Paul may have felt entitled to discover for himself what this secret was. If there was a secret about Jesus which could only be directly learnt in Arabia, and not in Palestine, then the Jerusalem apostles, and also Jesus himself, must have been in Arabia at some point. Perhaps they were Arabian Israelites who came from there. Is it for this reason that the Gospels, apart from the different infancy narratives given by Matthew and Luke, only speak of the last three years – possibly the last months or even weeks – of the career of Jesus, without saying anything about his earlier life and activity? As the self-appointed guardians of the secret of their Way (hodos) outside Arabia, the original disciples of Jesus must have been gravely disturbed to discover that Paul, who was not one of their number, had undertaken a journey to Arabia to find out what they knew and so, as an outside party, learn their secret. They certainly did not wish the knowledge of Paul's visit to Arabia to spread. It must have been for this reason that they deliberately suppressed all mention of this visit in accounts of Paul's early career which they fabricated and circulated. In these accounts, they claimed instead that Paul was first baptized and introduced to their Way in Damascus by Ananias who, if he was not a fictitious character, was presumably one of their own followers. After that, they claimed, Paul came to seek further instruction in Jerusalem, directly from themselves, thereby alleging that his apostleship was not independent of their own, but derived from it. Once he had gone to Arabia and gained a direct knowledge of the secret origins of the Nazarene Way, Paul was in a position to challenge the Jerusalem apostles on their own grounds, even to the extent of standing up to James, the 'Lord's brother'. He could undermine the religious authority which these apostles were determined to keep as their special preserve. The question, however, remains: if Paul did not go to Arabia to meditate, preach or reconnoitre, but to learn something, what was it that he learnt? Was it something concerning the life of Jesus of which the Jerusalem apostles never spoke? Was it a special Israelite theology or cult from which the mission of Jesus and the apostles derived?"

(to be continued)

From  the book   “Who was Jesus? Conspiracy in Jerusalem”, Kamal Salibi