Hate thy family and Love thy enemies

[Genesis315]

Just to clarify, the Quran in one place says Christians believe Mary is a diety or the third person of the Trinity (or three gods, as the Quran describes our beliefs) along with Jesus and Allah (obviously an incorrect understanding of our doctrine)–but Muslims do not believe in a Trinity at all themselves. Here’s the relevant verse:

And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, “O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?’” He will say, "Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen.

Surah Al-Ma'idah - 116-120 - Quran.com

(116) And ˹on Judgment Day˺ Allah will say, “O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you ever ask the people to worship you and your mother as gods besides Allah?” ...

quran.com

And the Quran also says Jesus’ death was an illusion and it was someone else, but I’m not sure where the other details you mention are:

And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah .” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.

Surah An-Nisa - 157 - Quran.com

and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to a...

quran.com

 

[Niblo]

Sources for my claim.

The Crucifix on Mecca’s Front Porch by David Pinault
111 Questions on Islam by Samir Khalil Samir

Both of whom speak Arabic and are far more learned than I am on the sources. Are you saying Islam doesn’t teach that Jesus wasn’t crucified?

No. I am saying that nowhere in the Qur’an will you read that Yesha (peace be upon him): ‘Stood off to the side laughing while someone else was crucified.’

 

[StudentMI]

The details about Jesus laughing off to the side might be from a hadith or something. I’ll have to look again.

 

[TULIPed]

Thanks for your kind response, and for participating in this discussion. It’s good to have a Muslim perspective on this board.

As-salaam Alaikum.

 

[StudentMI]

but Muslims do not believe in a Trinity at all themselves

Yes that’s what I meant. I meant they teach that Christians believe that. My bad on the wording.

 

[StudentMI]

Ah ha! Found it. It’s from a Gnostic text. My bad on the confusion.

 

[Niblo]

Not to worry. God willing, I’ll return to this topic later. No harm done.

Peace.

 

[Niblo]

Thanks for your kind response, and for participating in this discussion. It’s good to have a Muslim perspective on this board.

As-salaam Alaikum.

Wa ʿalaykumu s-salam.

That’s very kind of you to say so.

May the Exalted reward you for your good will.

 

[BartholomewB]

The verb “to hate” in Luke 14:26

The much-discussed saying of Jesus is translated as follows in the RSV: 26 “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

There is no such verb in English as “unprefer”, but if it existed, it would be a good translation of the Greek verb “misein” in this saying. In the Septuagint, it’s the verb used in connection with Jacob and his two wives. He prefers Rachel to Leah. Or, to put it the other way around, he “unprefers” Leah to Rachel. But he doesn’t hate Leah. He just unprefers her, that’s all.

Luke 14:26

εἴ τις ἔρχεται πρός με καὶ οὐ μισεῖ τὸν πατέρα ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς καὶ τὰς ἀδελφάς, ἔτι τε καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἑαυτοῦ οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής.

Gen 29:31

ἰδὼν δὲ κύριος ὅτι μισεῖται Λεια ἤνοιξεν τὴν μήτραν αὐτῆς Ραχηλ δὲ ἦν στεῖρα

 

[Hodos]

Every verse must be read in the context of the passage. It must also take into account the nuances used throughout the total body of scripture.

So in Matthew 5, Jesus is taking a number of pharisaic oral teachings and demonstrating how they have been corrupted from what scripture actually commands one to do. The command to love your neighbor comes from Leviticus 19 where it says that you shall not taken vengeance nor bear any grudge against your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The Pharisees were saying the command to love your neighbor does not apply to your enemy. Jesus rightly points out that in its original context, to love your neighbor IS to love your enemy.

 

[Hodos]

With regard to Luke 14, Jesus is addressing people who are curious about his teaching, and he is pointing to the cost of discipleship of Jesus. One must love Jesus above all other things and be prepared to lose them in their devotion to Christ. The parallel passages in Mark and Matthew further expand on that saying that households will be divided on account of Christ. This is fulfilled because the following of Christ will cause people to reject them from the synagogues and even put them to death. Your best bet when dealing with these kinds of arguments is to open your Bible and go through the entire passage, exegeting the passage so that they might have a sound understanding of each, then demonstrate how their presupposition about the passage is actually an abuse of it.

 

[Niblo]

Just to clarify, the Quran in one place says Christians believe Mary is a diety or the third person of the Trinity (or three gods, as the Quran describes our beliefs) along with Jesus and Allah (obviously an incorrect understanding of our doctrine)–

The Rev. Dr. Gilbert Reid writes: ‘As to Christianity as it was represented in Arabia, it was not a clear untarnished theism, but tritheism. The Heavenly Father, Mary the mother of God and Jesus their son, were worshipped as three Gods……Christianity as taught by Christ had lost its identity in the formalism and errors of the church of Arabia……The reformation of Mohammed was thus a return to the first and second commandment of the Prophet Moses, which Jesus himself had taught.’ (‘The Biblical World; Volume 48, Number 1).

Here is the relevant sūrah:

'When Allāh says: ‘Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to people, ‘‘Take me and my mother as two gods alongside God’’?’ he will say: ''May You be exalted! I would never say what I had no right to say……’ (Al-Ma’ida: 116).

As you can see, this verse does not name any particular group. I opine that it is not Christians who are being condemned for taking Mary as a god; it is the Collyridians, and possibly the Mariamites.

William Cook Taylor writes: ‘In Arabia itself some of the worst heresies were propagated: the chief of these were the heresies of the Ebonites, the Nazareans, and the Collydrians, the last of which derived its name from the collyris, or twisted cake offered by them to the Virgin Mary, whom they worshipped as a deity. It is known to all readers of ecclesiastical history that a sect called Mariamites exalted the Virgin to a participation in the Godhead………….’ (‘Readings in Biography: A Selection of the Lives of Eminent Men of All Nations’).

Washington Irving writes: ‘The Mariamites, or worshippers of Mary, regarded the Trinity as consisting of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Virgin Mary. The Collydrians were a sect of Arabian Christians, composed chiefly of females. They worshipped the Virgin Mary as possessed of divinity……’ (‘Mohammed’).

Peace.

 

[Niblo]

Ah ha! Found it. It’s from a Gnostic text. My bad on the confusion.

‘And so for breaking their pledge, for rejecting Allāh’s revelations, for unjustly killing their prophets, for saying: “Our minds are closed” - No! Allāh has sealed them in their disbelief, so they believe only a little - and because they disbelieved and uttered a terrible slander against Mary, and said: “We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of Allāh.” They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them; those that disagreed about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him - Allāh raised him up to Himself. Allāh is almighty and wise.’ (Al-Nisa: 155-158).

The words: ‘It was made to appear’ render the verb ‘shubbiha’ ; a verb that – in this form – occurs just once in the Qur’an. If the Qur’an had intended us to believe that another was made to resemble Yeshua (ʿalayhi as-salām) then the verb form ‘tashābaha’ (‘to look alike’, ‘to seem alike’) would have been used.

Having said that, there are ‘tafâsîr’ (interpretations of the Qur’an) that do speak of a substitute. I don’t know why, when the Qur’an does not.

What made me gasp in your earlier post was the notion that Yeshua would stand to one side ‘laughing’ while another was being crucified – an accursed death, as you know – in his place. I know of no Islamic scholar who says this. In any case, we have resolved this misunderstanding.

Peace.

 

[OddBird]

There is no such verb in English as “unprefer”, but if it existed, it would be a good translation of the Greek verb “misein” in this saying.

It’s not far off, I think – but maybe a little too quick.

One of my favorite Lucanian specialists, François Bovon, used to point out that there probably is a semitism under that formula. Hebrew loves to express itself with contrasting words and using stark opposites, so “to hate” would be the natural pendant of “to love”, much for rhetorical reasons.

But he also underlined that a look at parallels is telling: while Matthew “translates” the semitism into words that make more sense for a Greek-speaking audience, and expresses the general meaning in a softer way (“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…” 10:37), Luke, whose Greek cannot be said to be poor (much to the contrary), deliberately chooses to keep the “shock value” and go along with the verb “to hate” (in classical Greek at least, as far as I’m aware, the word does not mean "to “unprefer” " but unambiguously “to detest”, “to hate”).

Bovon goes on to comment that there is something in Luke’s formulation that is true on an affective level : that where there is love, and particularly natural love, there can also easily be violent feelings when one chooses something that doesn’t belong the the loved one’s worldview. He also reminds that, in Luke’s verse, the culmination of hatred is self-hatred – which, to him, indicates that the object of hatred is not so much a person than those relational dynamics, as well inside the family circle as with oneself, which have a tendency to be closed on themselves and become their own end and justification – in other words, to become idolatrous.

 

[Bithynian]

in classical Greek at least, as far as I’m aware, the word does not mean "to “unprefer” " but unambiguously “to detest”, “to hate

The verb has a very wide range of intensity. In pre-Christian Classical literature, it was a sort of objective or neutral hate, unlike say, ἔχθειν echthein which meant ‘hate as an enemy (ἔχθρος echthros)’. Sometimes it was more of a mild dislike or ‘unpreference’ as @BartholomewB described it. Abhorrence was usually marked by the verb στυγεῖν stugein, which evoked the river Styx (both sharing the same root, more readily seen in the genitive of Styx στυγός stugos).

But by the 1st century AD, μισεῖν misein came to used in the sense of στυγεῖν as well. For example, Josephus describes how Moses μεμίσηκεν memiseken (reviled or abhorred) incestual acts (Jewish Antiquities, III.274)

 

[OddBird]

The verb has a very wide range of intensity.

Thank you, @Bithynian, for yet another extremely informative post !

 

[Genesis315]

Not sure where these random Protestant authors get their ideas (Protestants tend to also have skewed views of Church history and Marian veneration). In any event, the Ebionites, Collydrians, and Nazareans were all long gone by Muhammed’s time. Only the Collydrians are thought to have possibly worshiped Mary as a deity (based on the fact they offered cakes in her honor, but it could have simply been excessive veneration without explicitly considering her a deity), but scholars disagree as to their actual existence in the first place, being only mentioned by St. Epiphanius in one source. There was no group called the Mariamites that worshiped Mary, only a much later Maronite order (who are orthodox) and an ancient cathedral often called this that was built in Mary’s honor by orthodox Christians. There seems to be a misunderstanding based on the name and possibly confusion with the Collydrians.

In any event, why would Muhammed be focused on these obscure, long gone heresies, instead of orthodox Christianity which was much more widespread and well known in his time?

 

[BartholomewB]

In any event, why would Muhammed be focused on these obscure, long gone heresies, instead of orthodox Christianity which was much more widespread and well known in his time?

Perhaps because, never having traveled outside the Mecca area, he didn’t know many Christians? And the few that he did know happened to be followers of one of those obscure sects?

 

[Niblo]

You have raised a number of interesting points. However, to continue this conversation - in this particular thread- will take us off topic by a country mile.

In the Non-Catholic Religions section is a thread on Islam. Would it be possible to continue our conversation there? I would welcome this.

@camoderator: Please advise. Thank you.

Peace.