JESUS – SON OF WHOM?

JESUS – SON OF WHOM?
The first major hurdle we will address is the parentage or alleged parentage of Jesus. The
fundamental belief in present day Christianity is that Jesus is the literal begotten son of God
and is second in the Divine Trinity of God’s being. If this is somehow disturbed, then as this
is the foundation of the Christian belief, Christianity itself collapses. If the foundation is
solid and the ‘testimony’ is consistent, the Christian religion has in fact proven its case
beyond a reasonable doubt. Before I begin quoting from the Bible I would like to point out
that these verses from the Bible are written in English. The Gospels themselves were first
written down in Greek and not in Jesus’ tongue of Aramaic. This is generally known
amongst Bible scholars. There are no original Aramaic or Hebrew texts that exist to crossreference
the Greek and English translations with. As anyone who studies languages will tell
you, a language can either lose or gain many meanings in a translation. This is critical when it
comes to scripture. The word ‘son’ may have a totally different connotative meaning when
translated from Aramaic to Greek to English. It is quite difficult to convey the meanings of
Eastern languages to English without losing something or gaining something that is not
intended. The same goes for the word ‘lord’.
The verse most quoted amongst Christians to support the notion of Jesus being the
literal divine son of God is of course John 3:16 in which it is written…
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.”(John 3:16) KJV.
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Now this is a straight forward verse that is clear in its meaning and what in what it is
trying to convey. The first thing that should be noted, however, is that this verse is not
attributed to Jesus nor is it a quote from Jesus. This is a verse written by someone else. The
verse is attributed to a man named John. John was the last of the Gospels to be written and
no one is sure of exactly which John this is supposed to be. The Gospel of John was written
around 100 C.E. at Ephesus. That is approximately seventy years after the time of Jesus. As
Adolf Harnack points out in his book, What is Christianity?:
“the fourth Gospel does not emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, who cannot be taken as an
historical authority…the author of the fourth Gospel acted with sovereign freedom, trans-posed events and put
them in a strange light. “
The Gospel of John is considered to be the most beautifully written of the Gospels.
According to Acts 4:13, however, Peter and John were both ignorant and unlearned men.
The Gospel of John is written as a drama of sorts, unfolding layers of measured resolution
and emotion. Not something unlearned men are known to produce. ‘He was divinely
inspired by God…’ can be heard as an argument. ‘Look at your Qur’an and its masterly
prose. Muslims claim Muhammad was unlearned yet look at the Qur’an…’. The problem
with that argument is that Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) is a fully realized and documented historical
figure. History recognizes Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) as a man who definitely lived, taught, and
revolutionized his society. His sayings have been documented to the letter. The Qur’an was
memorized by not only by the Prophet himself but also by his followers. Even the most
secular historians must admit this. The personality and person of John, however, cannot be
substantiated with historical documented evidence. Bible historians debate over whether or
not John the Apostle was the same John who is credited with writing this Gospel. According
to Blacks Bible Dictionary, John was beheaded before 70 C.E., and a connection to the first
manuscript of ‘the Gospel of John’ at Ephesus around 100 C.E. would be difficult to
establish. So let us revisit the passage.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.”(John 3:16) KJV.
The real test of the verse is in its consistency with the rest of the Bible whom the
Christians claim to accept as a whole. As you can see, it reads “…only begotten son…” but
when we look at Psalms 2:7 David says, “…the Lord said unto me, Thou art my son; this day have I
begotten thee.” This is a serious discrepancy for the sincere Bible reader. Who is telling the
truth, David or the mystery John? Can we rely on the Psalms for the truth or ‘The Gospel of
John’? Is the Gospel the literal and the Psalms the figurative or vice versa? Jesus is given
many ‘fathers’ in the N.T. The first line in the New Testament reads, “ The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1). Are we to accept the
literal meaning of this or the figurative? And if we are to assume that the verse only means
that he was a spiritual son of David, then why can’t we assume the same thing is meant when
Jesus refers to God the “Father”? For according to the N.T. statements attributed to Jesus
he says, “…Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48). As
well as, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father…”(Matt 6:9). And to confirm the
spiritual connection of the righteous, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother (Matt 12:50). This verse uses the word ‘Father’
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but Mark 3:35 reads, “ For whosoever does the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and
mother.” How many times in the N.T. is the word ‘Father’ used to describe God? If ‘Father’
has substituted the word ‘God’ in this verse, how many other verses have been tweaked?
That this is not a literal relationship is plain to see and comprehend. Another verse is
describing David as being Jesus’ father, “…And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David (Luke 1:32). Now if God was Jesus’ literal physical father, wouldn’t it have made
sense to distinguish the difference in this verse which presents Jesus along with David as his
father? Let’s assume that Jesus is understood to be God’s son in this verse and rewrite the
verse stating that idea. It would read, “…And his father, the Lord God shall give unto him the throne
of his father David…”. This makes absolutely no sense at all and the authors knew this. The
author of this verse knew that in order for it to make any sense, only one could be
connected to Jesus as a ‘Father’. And since the legitimacy of Jesus’ mission must come
through David, according to the Bible, it was more prudent to connect Jesus as an heir to
David than to infuse the verse with ‘son of God’ dogma. The curious thing is that in
Matthew and Luke, the genealogy of Jesus is traced through Joseph as if Joseph had some
blood relation to Jesus. Jesus is supposed to have been divinely conceived within Mary
without the husbandly help of Joseph. How then can Jesus’ genealogy be logically traced
back to David through Joseph? In Luke 2:41 it reads, “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every
year at the feast of the Passover.” His parents being Mary and Joseph? The only person that
anyone can be sure of about Jesus’ parentage is Mary yet no where is Jesus explicitly called
son of Mary in the Bible. The Qur’an is consistent and clear on this matter. Jesus is referred
to as Al-Maseeh ‘Isa ibn Maryam or The Messiah (Christ) Jesus, son of Mary.
(Remember) when the angels said: "O Maryam (Mary)! Verily, Allah gives you
the glad tidings of a Wo rd ["Be!" - and he was! i.e. 'Isa (Jesus) the son of Maryam
(Mary)] from Him, his name will be the Messiah 'Isa (Jesus), the son of Maryam
(Mary), held in honor in this world and in the Hereafter, and will be one of those
who are near to Allah." (3:45)
According to the Bible God had even more sons. The Book of Job 2:1 reads, “Again there
was a day when sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord…”. This is yet another
contradiction of the “…only begotten son…” notion of John 3:16. But wait, there is more. In
Luke, after tracing the so-called genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam it reads,
“…Which was the son of Enos, Which was the son of Seth, Which was the son of Adam, Which was the
son of God”(Luke 3:38).
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So will real the real father of Jesus and the real sons of God please stand up! This is
confusing as well it should be for the average Bible reader. The problem lies in the
interpretation of lost manuscripts that have been roughly translated or mistranslated through
the ages. There is an allegorical message in these books that has been interpreted and taught
as literal. There have also been concessions made by the Early Pauline Church to make the
simple teachings of Jesus palatable to the pagans of Europe and western Asia. Throughout
ancient forms of worship there have been religions of divine offspring of a great god. These
areas of Syria, Greece, and Rome were practicing pagans who worshipped human beings
whom they thought were god incarnates. The ancient rites of Mithraism, Attis, Adonis,
Diana, Dionysus and many more all were practiced in the so called gentile lands that the
Pauline church longed to bring into their fold. These pagan religions all contained elements
of what now compose Christianity. That, however, is another topic.
TRINITY IN THE BIBLE
There is a quick and easy way to explain the concept of Trinity in the Bible…It’s not in
there. Well, actually, it depends on which Bible you read. If you read the old King James
Version, you will of course read I John 5:7 where it says, “ For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word, and The Holy Ghost: And these three are one.” I would like to point out
that virtually all Biblical scholars and historians have unanimously concluded that this verse
is an insertion! If you think that this statement that I have just put forth is biased then I
suggest you pick up any recent publication of the Bible such as the Revised Standard
Version, New Revised Standard Version, The New International Version, the New
American Standard Bible, The New English Bible, etc, etc. All of these versions have
completely excluded the verse. Benjamin Wilson says in his Emphatic Diaglott,
“his text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was
written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers…”
Peake’s Commentary on the Bible notes;
“The Famous interpolation after ‘three witnesses’ is not printed even in RSV, and rightly. It cites the
heavenly testimony of the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian
controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th –cent. Latin text, it entered
the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus.”
The same verse quoted above from the original KJV of the Bible, reads this way in the
NRSV.
“There are three that testify:”(I John 5:7)
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That’s it! That’s all there is in I John chapter 5 verse 7 from the New Revised Standard
Version. It goes on in verse 8 to say, “…the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three
agree.”
There is nothing about Father and Son. Even if some scholar were to interpret the spirit,
water, blood as analogous to the ‘Holy Trinity’, the difference between one text saying
“…and these three are one” and “…and these three agree” is too blatant a contradiction to ignore.
There is a difference between being in agreement and being ‘one’, unless the word ‘one’ is
being used figuratively to mean in agreement. If the message of Jesus is in alignment with
what God has ordered, then, in an allegorical sense, he is ‘one’ with God. So which Bible are
Christians meant to follow? Is one a ‘Holy Bible’ and the other a ‘Holier Bible’? If these texts
can be deleted and interpolated by men, how can this book be considered the “word of
God”? Are Christian Bible readers supposed to read their Bibles faithfully until another
revised addition is published then cast the old one aside like an out-dated software program?
What about the faithful who still have old KJV bibles who haven’t been notified that their
text has been upgraded and some verses have been left out because it has been determined
that the verses were in fact interpolations? What about the preachers who still teach from
Bibles that are out-dated and contain verses that have been identified as false according to
most Bible scholars?
The fact remains it is difficult to discuss the concept of Trinity and its Biblical
references because there aren’t any. The concept of Trinity was developed over the span of
three and a half centuries after the time of Jesus. In the New Catholic Encyclopedia, it says,
“…when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian
origins to say, the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive
Trinitarian dogma ‘One God in three persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and
thought…it was a product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development”
Trinities were worshipped in several places during the time of Jesus as well as in
antiquity. The Egyptians worshipped trinities. So did the Babylonians and Zoroastrians.
Hindu worship revolves around a trinity. Many societies based their worship around the
concept of trinities. Once the ‘One God’ of Jesus was introduced to the pagan Romans and
others in the area in the form of a ‘trinity’ through Christianity, it became easy for the
heathen worshippers to move laterally to a form of worship that had the same elements but
with different names. This is the environment that Paul was immersed in. Paul was in fact
heavily influenced by Greco-Roman ideologies and philosophies of God incarnate in man,
religious blood sacrifice and resurrection and triune Platonic theories of the ‘first cause’, the
‘reason’ or ‘logos’, and the ‘spirit’ of the universe. Many of the man-deities were the rulers of
Greece, Rome, Egypt, etc. It is well known that the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs were
worshipped as gods and in some of the ancient myths, the ‘man-god’ Pharaoh had to be
sacrificed for the greater good of the society. History records that Julius Caesar was deified
by the Romans and the Greeks with the approval of the senate and this was commemorated
with a temple and statue dedicated to his worship. Constantine was considered the human
manifestation of the Roman sun-god, Sol-invictus. Many compromises were made early on
in the church to accommodate these pagan beliefs. The Sabbath (in Arabic, sab’ah – seven)
was changed from the seventh day to Sun-day, the holy day for the Roman sun god and
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Christmas was set to be celebrated on December 25th, which happened to be not only the
birthday of the Roman sun-god Sol-Invictus but also the very popular Persian Sun-god
Mithra. According to A.D. Ajijola in his book, The Hijacking of Christianity, the Persian
sun-deity Mithra was worshiped almost 600 yeas before it was introduced to Rome. Mithra
was supposedly born of a virgin on December 25th and died in service to humanity. He was
buried and he rose from the tomb to be heralded as a ‘savior’ for all humanity. He is
depicted in ancient drawings as a ‘lamb’. The concept of a ‘resurrected’ deity was also well
ingrained in the beliefs of the people of the Mediterranean Region. In his monumental work,
The Golden Bough, James George Frazer writes,
“ Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia
represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who
annually died and rose again from the dead.”