The Death of Jesus vs Islamic Objections [Sermon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNX1AJFixxA

Outline

1.0 The Christian View Of The Death Of Jesus

1.1 The Fact Of Crucifixion

1.2 The View Of Crucifixion

1.3 The Report Of The Crucifixion

2.0 The Islamic Objections to the Death of Jesus

2.1 Theistic Swoon Theory

2.2 Substitution Theory

1.0 The Christian View Of The Death Of Jesus

1.1 The Fact Of Crucifixion

The cross was one of the most vicious, cruel, depraved methods of execution that humanity has ever devised.

No one in history has survived a full Roman crucifixion.

1.2 The View Of Crucifixion

1 Cor. 1:23 ESV

but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,

Jews: Not just Romans but also Jews saw the cross as a tremendous stigma. Deuteronomy 21:23 teaches that “the curse of God is on the one who is hanged on a stake (for capital punishment).” By and large, Jews were not expecting a suffering Messiah, let alone one upon whom rested the curse of God.

Romans: The earliest known pictorial representation of Jesus on the cross is a drawing intended to mock a Christian named Alexamenos. It depicts Jesus on the cross as having the head of a donkey, and the scrawled caption reads, “Alexamenos worships his god!”

To be crucified was exceedingly shameful; to worship such a one, even more so.

Alexamenos worships his god.

No one would want to claim that their God was crucified.

1.3 The Report Of The Crucifixion

Christian: Phil 2, 1 Cor 15, gospel writers, and Paul

Jewish: Josephus

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3 (18.63–64), in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, Books XVIII–XIX, trans. Louis H. Feldman, Loeb Classical Library 433 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 49–51.

Romans: Tacitus

“Christus, from whom the name [Christians] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”

Tacitus, Annals 15.44, in The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, trans. J. C. Yardley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 313–14.

In the first one hundred years after Jesus, we have Christian, Jewish, and Roman reports that Jesus died by crucifixion, and not a single report that he may not have died by crucifixion.

2.0 The Islamic Objections to the Death of Jesus

Surah 4:157:

And their saying: Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium, the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure.

2.1 Jesus was placed on the cross, but he was not killed. Theistic Swoon Theory

Jesus miraculously survived the cross, was taken down alive, placed in a tomb to heal, and then escaped the clutches of the Romans.

Islam: A miracle happened: Allah protected him from death and healed him.

Although Jesus might have died on the cross under natural circumstances, he did not die because Allah miraculously preserved him.

Evidence:

Pilate did not want to kill Jesus because of his wife’s dream. He tried to release Jesus. Thus, he could have colluded with the centurion to see that Jesus didn’t die

Joseph of Arimathea could have colluded with Pilate

Women could have brought aloes and myrrh for medicinal purposes

Jesus was disguised as a gardener to escape the guards

The holes in his hands showed that he had not died and risen again.

Jesus didn’t want to die.

Heb. 5:7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. ESV

Therefore, Allah protected him from death on a cross.

RESPONSE

1. What is the most likely explanation?

Islam claims this miracle occurred.

In light of the nature of crucifixion, the derogatory view of crucifixion, and the report about the crucifixion from 3 different sources, is it likely that a miracle occurred such that Jesus did not die?

2. Obscure verses

Regarding the biblical verses cited as subtle traces of God’s divine plan, it should be noted that these verses appear in the context of the four Gospels, which repeatedly proclaim that Jesus prophesied his death and that he died.

There are many clear verses that Jesus would die, compared to the few stray thoughts that he didn’t.

In hermeneutics, you should interpret difficult passages using clear ones.

3. Historical Concerns

Pilate is seen as colluding with the Jews, when the opposite is true. Pilate was ruthless and didn’t care about the Jews.

4. The Origin Of The Church

If the disciples were part of the deception, how could they preach that Jesus was resurrected?

The substantial body of evidence shows that the early church firmly believed that Jesus died, rose again, and was seen by many of them.

2.2 His Death Was Made To Appear So - The Substitution Theory.

It is the belief that Jesus’ face was placed on someone else. Most often, Muslims argue that this was either Simon of Cyrene, who literally switched places with Jesus as he was carrying the cross to the site of crucifixion, or Judas Iscariot, who justly deserved the punishment for betraying his prophet.

The Gospels disagree as to what happened when the women went to the tomb on the third day. Mark’s gospel depicts a youth dressed in white; Matthew tells of an angel who rolled back the stone; Luke describes two men who appeared next to the women; and John says two angels were sitting where Jesus had been. The disagreements among the Gospels reflect the confusion in their reports; the writers did not know what actually happened.

Here, Allah is making it appear as if Jesus died, but he did not.

RESPONSE

a. What Is The Most Likely Explanation?

No objective observer should conclude God conducted a miracle when an obvious explanation is available. Why would anyone argue that Jesus did not die and that God instead transposed Jesus’ image onto someone else?

b. Why would Allah cause this deception?

What is the benefit?

If he didn’t die, but all the people there thought he did.

Then, when he showed up again, the disciples claimed that he had risen.

So Allah’s deception resulted in the preaching of the resurrection and in the formation of the church.

c. “What authority does the Quran have to make claims about Jesus?”

Is it possible that the Quran knows something that the bible doesn’t?

The Quran is 600 miles away and 600 years away from Jesus.

The gospels were from the lifetime of Jesus.

The details of Jesus in the Quran can be traced to a time earlier than the sixth century.

Surah 5:110 The The The

When Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! Remember My favor on you and on your mother, when I strengthened you I with the holy Spirit, you spoke to the people in the cradle and I when of old age, and when I taught you the Book and the wisdom and the Taurat and the Injeel; and when you determined out of clay a thing like the form of a bird by My permission, then you breathed into it and it became a bird by My permission, and you healed the blind and the leprous by My permission; and when you brought forth the dead by My permission; and when I withheld the children of Israel from you …

The Quran teaches that Jesus miraculously gave life to clay birds. The Quran declares this as if it were a historical truth. Where is this from? Not from the biblical gospels

This is from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas:

Surah 19.23 And the throes (of childbirth) compelled her to betake herself to the trunk of a palm tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten! [19.24] Then (the child) called out to her from beneath her: Grieve not, surely your Lord has made a stream to flow beneath you… [19.28] O sister of Haroun! your father was not a bad man, nor, was your mother an unchaste woman. [19.29] But she pointed to him. They said: How should we speak to one who was a child in the cradle? [19.30] He said: Surely I am a servant of Allah; He has given me the Book and made me a prophet…

This is from the Arabic Infancy Gospel.

Where did the Quran get the story of the crucifixion?

The Gospel according to Basilides, a Gnostic teacher whose school of thought lasted for centuries after his death. The word Gnostic refers to secret knowledge, as the Gnostics believed that people needed it to be freed from the material world, which they regarded as inherently evil.

Irenaeus records what Basilides taught about the death of Jesus on the cross:

“He [Christ] did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them.”

Gnosticism believed that Jesus could not have had a physical body, so he could not have died.

The Qur’anic teaching is from a 2nd-century Gnostic source.

So it should be rejected since the gospels have an earlier account.

Interestingly, in each of these three spurious “gospels,” the stories about Jesus make sense.

Why clay birds? As a miraculous mischief-maker,

Why did he speak as an infant? He spoke words at birth because he was the eternal Word of God

Why was he substituted? he was neither killed nor crucified because he was divine and did not have a material body.

But when copied into the Quran, these three stories have no context and don’t make sense.

For both Islamic views, we can easily counter the objections with the truth for a genuine seeker.

Resources:

Qureshi, Nabeel. No God but One: Allah or Jesus? A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016.

Qureshi, Nabeel. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.