Professional Documents
Culture Documents
J. Luis Dizon
In the world today, three world religions claim to be Abrahamic Faiths,
because they profess to be the faith of the patriarch Abraham: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. Each claims to present of the fullness of the big
picture story of what God is doing to relate to humanity. But does each of
these faiths do justice to the big-picture story? It is worth looking at how
each of these religions stands in relation to the redemptive history as it is
given to us in the Bible.
Judaism: An Incomplete Picture
Judaism is the word used for the faith of the people who are
descended from Jacob, whom God renamed Israel (Genesis 32:28). Of
course, this is a misnomer, as the faith of the Jewish people has evolved over
the centuries. The Judaism of the Hebrew Bible is not exactly the same as
the Judaism of the Second Temple Period, and neither are exactly the same
as modern Judaism. Yet all these permutations of Judaism are united in the
belief that there is one God, and that He has revealed Himself in a special
way to the Jewish people.
The great Jewish rabbi Moshe b. Maimon (1135-1204), better known to
the world as Maimonides, enunciated thirteen articles of faith, which serve
as the foundation for Judaism. These are:
1. The existence of God;
2. His unity;
3. His spirituality;
4. His eternity;
5. God alone the object of worship;
6. Revelation through his prophets;
7. The pre-eminence of Moses among the Prophets;
8. God's law given on Mount Sinai;
9. The immutability of the Torah as God's Law;
10.
God's foreknowledge of men's actions;
11.
Retribution;
12.
The coming of the Messiah;
13.
Resurrection.1
1 Jewish Concepts: Articles of Faith, Jewish Virtual Library (Accessed 25
February 2015),
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/articles_of_faith.html
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
identify this figure as the Messiah. We see here that the Messiahs kingship
extends not only over Israel but all the nations.
Another such passage, which is confirmed to be Messianic in Targum
Jonathan,7 is Micah 5:2. It reads: But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are
too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who
is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Two
things stand out immediately in this verse: 1) The Messiah is born in Bethlehem,
and 2) his origins are from ancient days, which indicates pre-existence. A high
Christology is readily apparent here.
6 Ibid., 11.
7 Ibid., 92.
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
11 Two very important books on this topic are worth mentioning. First is Gabriel
Said Reynolds The Quran in its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2010). The
second book, edited by the same author, is The Quran in Its Historical Context
(New York: Routledge, 2008). Both are part of the Routledge Studies in the Quran
(ed. Andrew Rippin).
12 Samir Khalil Samir, The Theological Christian Influence on the Quran: A
Reflection, The Quran in Its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (New
York: Routledge, 2008), 161. Samir recognizes that such an assertion is
controversial amongst Orthodox Muslims, noting that the very concept of
influence is generally rejected by all of traditional Islam. The Quran cannot be
subject to influences, since it comes directly from God and is in no way a human
work. If it were a work attributable to Muhammad himself, it could be subject to
influences. However, being a divine message brought down upon Muhammad,
there is no other influence but that of God. By this fact alone the very question that
we raise is already excluded by traditional Islamic thought (Ibid., 141).
13 Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, Towards Understanding Islam (U.K.I.M. Dawah
Centre, 1960), 70. Some sources include a sixth article: Belief in Divine
Predestination (Qadr). However, the nature of predestination tends to be a source
of disagreement between Muslim groups, especially between Sunni and Shii
Islam.
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
description of the Yom Kippur festival (Leviticus 16). The next chapter
states that the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you
to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes
atonement for ones life (Leviticus 17:11). Moreover, the prophets declared
that the Messiah would make atonement for sin (see above discussion of
Isaiah 53), which Jesus affirmed when He said that the Son of Man did not
come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many
(Mark 10:45). Islam denies all this, arguing that Jesus did not even die on
the cross (Q 4:157).15
The problem for Muslims is how to reconcile the Quran with the
previous scriptures. The classical argument of Islamic polemicists is that
the previous scriptures were corrupted by the People of the Book. Most of
these books no longer exist, while some (such as the aforementioned three)
remain extant in a corrupted form. Abul Ala Mawdudi summarizes the
popular Muslim viewpoint as such:
The real death of a Prophet consists not in his physical demise but
in the ending of the influence of his teachings. The earlier
Prophets have died because their followers have adulterated their
teachings, distorted their instructions, and besmirched their lifeexamples by attaching fictitious events to them. Not one of the
earlier books - Torah, Zabur (Psalms of David), Injil (Gospel of
Jesus), for example - exists today in its original text and even the
adherents of these books confess that they do not possess the
original books. The life-histories of the earlier Prophets have been
so mixed up with fiction that an accurate and authentic account of
their lives has become impossible. Their lives have become tales
and legends and no trustworthy record is available anywhere. It
15 As Lawson points out, there is no unanimity among Muslim commentators on the
interpretation of this passage. In fact, there are conflicting interpretations even until now.
He states regarding 4:157: Muslim teaching... on the life and ministry of Jesus is by no
means consistent or monolithic.... there are numerous forces at work in various levels of
the Islamic learned tradition that impinge upon the hermeneutic culture out of which
doctrine may be thought to have arisen and endured.... any number of readersMuslim or
notcould read and have read the same verse without coming to this conclusion. See
Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Quran: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought
(Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 1-2. According to Lawson, the most likely
interpretation is that Jesus did indeed die physically, but not spiritually. He states that the
semantic constitution of such a statement strongly points to a reading that would go well
beyond the mundane realms of murder and physical death (Ibid., 41.). Support for this
interpretation comes from cross-referencing Q 4:157 with Q 2:154 and 3:169. This view is
held today by the Ismaili sect of Shiism.
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
Al-Bukhari reported that Ibn Abbas said that the Ayah means they
alter and add although none among Allah's creation can remove
the Words of Allah from His Books, they alter and distort their
apparent meanings. Wahb bin Munabbih said, The Tawrah and
the Injil remain as Allah revealed them, and no letter in them was
removed. However, the people misguide others by addition and
false interpretation, relying on books that they wrote
themselves.18
It is unclear when the shift from claiming Tahrif al-Mana to Tahrif al-Nass
occurred. Dr. Nickel suggests that this viewpoint came into vogue in the 11th
century, when Ibn Hazm popularized it for polemical purposes. Prior to him,
the textual integrity of the Bible was taken for granted by most Muslims. 19
Nickel writes,
[E]xegetes from the formative period of Quranic commentary did
not in the first instance understand the words of the Quran to
mean that the Jews and Christians had falsified their scriptures. ...
They have little good to say about the communities to whom God
entrusted his revelations in the distant past, and even less good to
relate about those who did not accept the claims of the messenger
of Islam. But the negative evaluations of the People of the Book
in the commentaries do not generally attach to the revealed books
themselves.20
Even after Ibn Hazm, many Muslims continued to reject Tahrif al-Nass. For
instance, Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) cites stories from the
Jewish scriptures in his Muqaddimah, and then goes on to defend the
general authenticity of those scriptures:
18 Ismail b. Kathir, The Jews Alter Allahs Words, Quran Tafsir Ibn Kathir
(Accessed 25 February 2015), http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=525&Itemid=46#1
19 Gordon Nickel, Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the
Quran (London: Brill Academic, 2011), 23.
20 Ibid., 13.
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
Someone might come out against this tradition with the argument
that it occurs only in the Torah which, as is well known, was
altered by the Jews. The reply to this argument would be that the
statement concerning the alteration of the Torah by the Jews is
unacceptable to thorough scholars and cannot be understood in its
plain meaning, since custom prevents people who have a revealed
religion from dealing with the divine scriptures in such a manner.21
More recently, Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub wrote concerning the
charge that the previous scriptures were corrupted:
Contrary to the general Islamic view, the Qur'an does not accuse
Jews and Christians of altering the text of their scriptures, but
rather of altering the truth which those scriptures contain. The
people do this by concealing some of the sacred texts, by
misapplying their precepts, or by altering words from their right
position (4:26; 5:13, 41; see also 2:75). However, this refers more
to interpretation than to actual addition or deletion of words from
the sacred books. The problem of alteration (tahrif) needs further
study.22
Besides, the Quran states that it has come to confirm what is between his
hands (Q 3:3 and 5:48). This would not make sense if the text at that time
had been altered, since then the Quran would be confirming a corrupted
text. The Quran also states that God made Jesus disciples superior to the
unbelievers until the day of Resurrection (Q 3:52-55 and 61:14). It would
not make sense if their writings were corrupted or if unbelievers
successfully passed on their own writings as those of Jesus disciples, since
that means the unbelievers triumphed over them. Finally, the ahadith state
that Muhammad treated the Torah reverently. One hadith records the
following anecdote:
Having seen the flaws in Judaism and Islam, we are left with one
remaining Abrahamic Faith: Christianity. The Christian faith sees the story
of the Bible as Redemptive History,24 where God works to bring an
estranged humanity back to a right relationship with Himself. This
Redemptive History can be seen as a succession of covenants, beginning
with the Edenic Covenant and culminating in the New Covenant. Between
Adam and Christ, there are four other covenants, which God made with
Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, respectively.
Each covenant builds upon each other, clarifying each covenant that
came before it and sometimes fulfilling their provisions. For example, the
Mosaic covenant contains provisions for a monarchy, yet there was no
monarchy in Israel for another 400 years (Deut. 17:14-20). When a
monarchy is established, God takes the house of David and promises to
establish their throne forever (2 Samuel 7). This is finally fulfilled in the
New Covenant, with Christ as the eternal king.
The following scheme can be used to remember the basic thrust of
each covenant:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Gods plan for his people. But the diversity ultimately merges into a single
purpose overarching the ages.26
Different theologians have different ways of explaining this grand
narrative. In classical Protestant thought, the unifying theme of the
covenants is called the Covenant of Grace. All the biblical-historical
covenants are administrations within this Covenant of Grace. It is so-called
because its main factor is Gods grace. All His dealings with man under the
Covenant of Grace involve His gracious condescension to us to save us and
redeem us despite our incapability to merit His favour. This redemptive plan
finds its fullest expression in what Saint Paul calls the fullness of time
(Galatians 4:4), with the coming of Jesus Christ, whose life, death and
resurrection form the lynchpin of Redemptive History.
Much more can be said on this matter, but I leave it to the reader to
explore the Biblical story for themselves. To better understand its narrative,
I refer the reader to The Grand Narrative of History, which summarizes
the story of the Bible.27
26 Ibid.
27 J. Luis Dizon, The Grand Narrative of History, Evangelium and Apologia
Ministries, http://eamcanada.org/2014/10/28/the-grand-narrative-of-history
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.
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Copyright 2015 J. Luis Dizon. All rights Reserved.