Lord Larehip

I was raised a Christian but I'm not one of those either.

It's not. My "in particular" remark had nothing to do with the goofiness of Islam but its propensity for fanatic, zealous violence and its utter hatred of anyone who is not a Muslim. I lived for 2 years in Pakistan, Dubai, UAE and Saudi Arabia. I did not return with a greater appreciation for Muslims and Islam but exactly the opposite--I had a higher opinion of them before I lived among them.

I never knew any Muslim women because I wasn't allowed to speak to any and the men have the sexual maturity of a 6-year-old. They are full of rage because they are so unbelievably sexually repressed--so much so that they have essentially no quality of life. That makes them dangerous people. It is no puzzle to me why they blow themselves up and can be so easily manipulated into committing atrocities in the name of their religion. I probably would too if my mental and emotional life was that stunted and wasted.

But getting back on the subject, I believe Islam was, at one time, a sect of early Jewish Christianity that eventually rejected everything taught in other Christian schools and isolated themselves to the point where they forgot they were Christians once. Yet the Quran cannot stop talking about Jesus even more than Muhammad who supposedly wrote it and it's obvious that book confuses Jesus and Muhammad.

butthead aka 216

what if god was one of us?


just a stranger on the bus


tryna make his way home??? ever think of that>


i will see myself out

CallMeTex

Ah... my bad. I really meant the universal "you" or perhaps "one". Stat averages often fail at the individual level. But I still hit my 14 against the dealer's 10 off the top of the shoe.

Lord Larehip

If the earliest Muslims were actually some obscure sect of very early Christianity as I posit that they probably were, is there anything in the bible, specifically the New Testament that might verify this? Not directly but if we accept that the early Muslims believed in Jesus as prophet and messiah without being divine then they were close to the Adoptionists. The Adoptionists were a school that believed that Jesus was exalted by god AFTER his birth but not before--that is, Jesus was adopted by god as his son. Some Adoptionist sects believe this occurred at the baptism in the Jordan by John and the another sect believed it occurred after the death of Jesus. This latter sect appeared to have arisen earlier.

Some books of the NT, particularly Acts, appear to have been Adoptionist documents that were later modified to reflect the "Divine Jesus" school of thought. This would mean that Adoptionism is older and so this early quasi-Christian Islam might, in fact, be an older sect of Christianity than any denomination today.

Let's take a look:

-In Mark 1:1, we read, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God." There are at least eight important early texts that omit the phrase "son of god." Scholars try to account for the omission by saying it was a mistake on the part of the scribes but we should find it odd that such a mistake would appear immediately in a text rather than somewhere in the middle and that every scribe who copied a Markan gospel text independently of the others managed to make the same mistake over and over again.

-Then we read of the baptism of Jesus by John:
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." (Mk 1:10-11)

Here was originally an Adoptionist moment. For them, Jesus became son of god at that moment. He was not the son of god before then. First of all, the wording of the passage indicates that ONLY Jesus saw the heavens part and dove descend and the voice of god speak to him. No one else present saw or heard anything. This would be odd for Jesus to require this personal epiphany were he already the actual son of god especially since his miraculous birth would have made everyone around him aware of his special status. Nevertheless, orthodox Christians of today can say there is no declaration of god that Jesus was only appointed his son at that moment. IOW, Jesus still could have been preexistent in this baptism account and it is therefore not Adoptionist.

Luke 3:22 also recounts the incident but the earliest Lukan manuscripts do not have god saying, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." Rather, god says, "Thou art my beloved Son; today I have begotten thee." This is an important distinction. By saying "today I have begotten thee" we see that god adopted Jesus as his son at that moment and that Jesus was not an actual quasi-divine son of god from birth and was not pre-existent. He was an ordinary man who was adopted by god at his baptism. Hebrews 5:5 still retains this incident: "So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee." So even Mark's account of the baptism was corrupted by the orthodoxy so the preexistence of Jesus could not be questioned here.

-The baptism incident, too central to Christianity to be deleted, had to be changed to choke off the Adoptionist claims which were apparently quite widespread at that time (remember that two Roman Church bishops--Irenaeus and Papias--did not believe Jesus died on the cross but lived in Asia to age 50). Strangely, though, the early Lukan MSS did not remove the Adoptionist language from 3:22 even though it blatantly contradicted Luke's claim in 1:35 where he wrote:

And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

So we see why the early Lukan MSS were changed, they contradicted the orthodox claim put forth in 1:35--namely that Jesus was son of god from birth. 3:22 is probably the original verse of text since it would be highly questionable that scribes educated in the later orthodox school would have added Adoptionist Christology since it was more in their interests to eradicate it.

-The Lukan MSS, which include Acts, must have been hugely revised because Acts is strewn with Adoptionist statements--some of them extremely blatant.

In Acts 10:37-38, Jesus is declared to be adopted by god at his baptism:
"...the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power..."

-We find traces of the older Adoptionist creed that Jesus was adopted at his resurrection in Acts 2:36 spoken by Peter:

"Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

In 5:30-31, we find a more blatant example:

"The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins."

In all likelihood, blatant creeds as this were not deleted because they represented an older Adoptionist Christology no longer practiced and so did not present a problem to the anti-Adoptionist group pushing to become the orthodoxy.

The Adoptionist creed is an older Christology than Paul's since he addresses the Adoptionists in his opening lines in Romans:

"...the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead..." (Rom 1:3-4)

Once again, we run across Jesus being designated as Son of God at his resurrection. Paul was forced to address the issue of Adoptionism and Jesus being descended from David because these were the main groups he would preach to in Rome (assuming he ever really went there--he wasn't in Rome when he wrote Romans and there is no record he ever went there much less died there).

The Transfiguration, if Spong is correct, was a post-resurrection event recast as a pre-resurrection one. The very nature of the episode indicates that Jesus was already dead when it occurred and that Peter would have no reason to want to build a tabernacle to Jesus right then and there were Jesus still alive--Luke even includes a bit about Peter saying this in his confusion.

If Spong is right--and I think he is--then this may have been another original Adoptionist moment that came at the resurrection since while he was on the mount with Peter, John and James, a "bright cloud" comes over them and a voice declares Jesus to be his son and that the others listen to him. A strange order since they were already following him. This then may have originally been the moment Jesus first appeared as son of God after his death. Again, the Transfiguration episode may have been so central to orthodox Christology that the incident was not deleted but changed from post- to pre-resurrection status.

Why not just write entirely new gospels instead of revising old Adoptionist literature? Same reason. These writings were THE Christian writings of that period and for the orthodoxy to be regarded as legitimate they would have to gradually revise the original documents rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water by creating entirely new ones.

This indicates that the miraculous birth movement came up through the Adoptionist church and, by degrees, took it over.

If the early Muslims were also early Christians, they would have been among the schools pushed out of Christianity--namely, those rejected the divine status of the Jesus.

Submergedbysea

No. Jesus is the son of God,
They have no relation.

Mondo Bungle

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Mr. Charlie

We are all Gods children, no?

dhburns

Mohammad could be the real bearer of the Two fish, the Pisces and Jesus was just some 'god' like many others.
AstroNOMERS have seen that we have between a forth and a third of the era to go. Thats means 600 year roughly.
Which translates to the year 450AD the year when this era began, more less. So we would be today on the year 1564 standing.

Wpnfire

Done. I-I'm done. The first sentence is flat out wrong. Islam is the only religion that spread through the philosophy of 'convert' or, to quote one of my favorite Slayer songs, 'DIE BY THE SWORD.'

Most religions are shoved down your throat? Hilarious.

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Janszoon

A lot of religion has been spread by force throughout history, not just Islam.

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