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mensetmanusman 7 months ago

For completeness to the reader, the creed preached by Jesus is historically very different.

Rejection of Jesus’s Divinity: • Islam acknowledges Jesus (Isa) as a prophet but explicitly denies His divinity or status as the Son of God. The Qur’an states: “He [Jesus] was no more than a servant: We granted Our favor to him” (Qur’an 43:59). • The Qur’an emphasizes that Jesus did not die on the cross but was raised to heaven by God (Qur’an 4:157-158).

Etc., etc.

Islam historically reinterpreted Jesus and rejects the accounts of the first followers of Christ (the Church Fathers circa 100-300 AD).

ralmidani 7 months ago | parent [-]

This is not by any means a “complete” picture. There was no consensus that Jesus is divine, or about the nature of the divinity ascribed to him, even after the declaration in 325 of the Nicene Creed - from which 5 bishops abstained and were at least temporarily exiled. This NPR interview with Bart Ehrman, a former Evangelical who later became a historian and wrote “How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee” is very illuminating:

https://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300246095/if-jesus-never-call...

Excerpts:

> During his lifetime, Jesus himself didn't call himself God and didn't consider himself God, and ... none of his disciples had any inkling at all that he was God. ...

> You do find Jesus calling himself God in the Gospel of John, or the last Gospel. Jesus says things like, "Before Abraham was, I am." And, "I and the Father are one," and, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." These are all statements you find only in the Gospel of John, and that's striking because we have earlier gospels and we have the writings of Paul, and in none of them is there any indication that Jesus said such things.

> I think it's completely implausible that Matthew, Mark and Luke would not mention that Jesus called himself God if that's what he was declaring about himself. That would be a rather important point to make. This is not an unusual view amongst scholars; it's simply the view that the Gospel of John is providing a theological understanding of Jesus that is not what was historically accurate.

> Right at the same time that Christians were calling Jesus "God" is exactly when Romans started calling their emperors "God." So these Christians were not doing this in a vacuum; they were actually doing it in a context. I don't think this could be an accident that this is a point at which the emperors are being called "God." So by calling Jesus "God," in fact, it was a competition between your God, the emperor, and our God, Jesus.

mensetmanusman 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

There is never a consensus on anything until one decides who the interpreters are :)

PrismCrystal 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> no consensus that Jesus is divine, or about the nature of the divinity ascribed to him, even after the declaration in 325 of the Nicene Creed

Which shouldn’t be surprising, because by 325 CE (and really, by 100 CE) Christianity had been around long enough for groups to take it in all kinds of directions, just like some Asian or African peoples have created new religions that are ostensibly Christian but preserve little of the Christianity originally introduced by colonial powers. In my own academic field, I deal a lot with third-century Manichaeism, where it is obvious how popular preachers could repurpose existing monotheistic religions into something that bore little resemblance to them.

> This NPR interview with a former Evangelical…

You really ought to state plainly in your post that this is Bart Ehrman. While he is a prominent scholar, even researchers of early Christianity who are not themselves Christians take issue with some of his claims.