My apologies for the poor quality of the images taken on my iPhone earlier. These are taken from the invaluable scholarly resource A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels by Dr J.R. Daniel Kirk. Many Jewish figures are called ‘God’ in the Jewish scriptures and other non-canonical Jewish writings, disproving the often made Christian claim (by Richard Bauckham for example) that these titles (and their roles) are the exclusive preserve of God Himself. In the Bible and in the DSS they are not.
Categories: Bible, Books, Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism, New Testament scholarship, Recommended reading
@ Paul
Don’t Christians try to explain this problem away by saying Melchizedek is just Jesus(as)?
the reference is only to Melchizedek, not Jesus.
Christians can – and do – believe whatever they like.
They cannot say that! Hebrews 7:15 chokes them!
By the way, I encourage everyone to read Hebrews 7 so that you can see that kind of language and environment in which that text developed. It can be easily used against christians.
I encourage everyone to go to the website islamtheway.org and read about this mysterious character who is blessed by ALLAH to be a very honored personage. His birth (according to the Dead Sea Scrolls) – Habakuk commentary?- is in the time of Noah (pbh) and although his parents didn’t make it pass the Great Flood, he was taken up to heaven and given two instructors Gabriel and Michael and then sent down sometime around 16,000 year ago and you can read about him in Sura 18 in the Quran.
Later, he pops up in the time of Abraham (pbh) as of one likened to a person who has no father or mother.at-Tabari gives him a life of about 700 years which according to logic and the Old Testament would place him thousands of years before father Abraham (pbh)!
Further, he is the one who must ‘bless the FOOD’ of the people (prophets) sitting at the table before they can eat EVEN THE KING (that is the leader of the Prophets (Muhammad-pbh). The FOOD represent the various peoples in the various Ummahs of the different prophets!
Time-wise meaning first will come the Messiah kingdom and that will be followed by the kingdom of satan when the Quran is lifted up and THEN we get ready for the GREAT JUDGMENT DAY! The KINGDOM that won’t end! and the time for the great Intersession granted only to Muhammad (pbh)
Jesus (pbh) admits it best in the Gospel of John when he declares several things. First, his big ‘gift’ from ALLAH is that he, Jesus, gets to lay down his life and also to take it up again such that no one (man, angel, jinn, etc.) can take it from him! And following only his GOD’s WILL, he takes up his life AGAIN with of course ALLAH’s Permission!
And ALLAH declares in HIS BOOK that different prophets were given different ‘gifts’ or if you want Commandments to help them in HIS PERFECT PLAN! And one of the gifts given to Jesus (pbh) is to follow, WITH ALLAH’S PERMISSION, WHEN TO LEAVE AND WHEN TO COME AGAIN!
When you are looking at Zul-Qarnain, don’t look at him as the man with ‘two horns’ but look at another meaning for his name – lord (MASTER) of the TWO AGES! And know that an age is not 10, 100 or even seperated by only a 1000 years but seperated by a greater length of time!
One of the amazing things about this is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947!
(There is a popular misconception that the author of Hebrews identifies Jesus as Melchizedek himself. This is not the case, as the author simply says Jesus’ priesthood ‘resembles’ Melchizedek.)
https://www.badtheologians.com/2019/06/the-origin-of-melchizedek.html
good point
Williams, i didnt make the point, mark edwards did lol
Salam Aliekum dear brothers and sisters and Paul and Mystery:
Sometimes it takes a lot of thought to understand what is going on. The teachers like Paul and the author of Hebrews who spent at times more than 6 months in an area have complained that they wished to have given their students meat but because they were STILL NOT READY they had to keep giving them milk for their minds to digest.
Let me try to give an example of what they were trying to make their students perceive. Take 5 equal glasses and paint each one a different color. Place common water in the first glass and make sure that every glass has a strong filter above it. Now poor the water from glass one all the way to glass 5. Is glass one the same as glass 5? How could it be since each class has a different color. Is the water the same? How could it be since the water has become filtered over and over again.
The glass is the body while the filtered water becomes the soul as in soul development. The limited number of glasses represent the ‘term of appointment’ for that person because there is one person or ‘soul’ going through different experiences either building redeeming signs or destructive ones.
Man undertook the ‘challange’ that even the mountains and clouds and sky were affaraid to take (Quran) but he was hasty and foolish to think that things would be so easy and ALLAH says so!
ALLAH has a PLAN and though men plot and plan ALLAH is the Best of Planners!
Take that character SAF in Sahih Muslim vol. 4. He wanted to be the anti-christ. But who cares what he wanted. It is what ALLAH wants that matters. So one time, he ballooned up but couldn’t make the ‘switch’. Why not? ALLAH turns the souls of men this way and that between HIS fingers AS HE PLEASES (hadith). Besides, the hadith that the anti-christ will die when and where appointed EVEN IF JESUS WOULD NOT BE PRESENT shows just who is in TOTAL CONTROL! The anti-christ soul can’t abort ALLAH’s Plan and declare ALLAH weak.
If a fly were to grab anything from Muhammad, Jesus or any one, they would have no way to get it back without ALLAH’s Permission. No just estimate do they have of ALLAH….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, was this character the soul of the anti-christ? Yes, and that explains a lot of the reaction to him by the Companions, ‘Umar and the Prophet’s silence about who this idiot was. But was this soul the anti-christ? No, because it was NOT HIS TIME to come forth and metamorphize into that scum. He can’t decide over ALLAH’s Qadar! Who is in charge of all things? IT IS ALLAH AND ONLY ALLAH and certainly not that fool anti-christ!
When the Companions asked Muhammad (pbh) if he could get to Paradise by his actions which honestly were more in value than ALL his Companions put together (according to being weighed on the scale- hadith), his reply was that he could not! He had to depend on his CREATOR’s MERCY! Such is the Magnitude and Majestic Majesty of ALLAH WHO is BEYOND COMPARE AND COMPREHENSION!
Jesus (pbh) healed by the finger of ALLAH (Acts) or saying the same idiomatic expression found in the Quan ‘with ALLAH’s Permission’. ‘A rose by any other name smells just as sweet’!
If it swims like a duck, looks like a duck, flies like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck!
Either ALLAH knows what HE is talking about – Quran (4:136) or HE doesn’t!!! HE is either in control turning events the way HE has planned or not! You be the judge and make the judgment consistant with the values you think when you think about your CREATOR.
If one says that one can’t read the other scriptures because they are so corrupted, then one is denying the POWER OF ALLAH and Quran (4:136). True, only the Quran is 100% correct but learn how to interpret the other scriptures to validate Quran (4:136) without turning this ayah (verse) into mush!
And don’t be hasty about islamtheway.org as it has been in the makings for over 50 years with only the last 60 articles or so being of much value. Here a little, there a little. Step by step, Line upon Line.