BLOCKBUSTER ABOUT JESUS RAISES
PASSIONS
Harun Yahya
 The
famous actor-director Mel Gibson's film The Passion of
the Christ has finally gone on general release after months
of debate. Watched with enormous interest in the USA, the
film caused some cinemas to assume the air of churches. Millions
of Christians have queued to watch this important work about
Jesus (peace be upon him), the corner stone of their beliefs.
One of the aspects most concentrated on by film critics is
the way that this film is not pure "entertainment," unlike
classic Hollywood movies. On the contrary, there are suffering
and even torture in a great many scenes. Christians believe
that Jesus was killed by the Romans by being crucified, and
Mel Gibson shows what a dreadful form of torture crucifixion
and the cruelty that went before it were.
The Jewish Reaction
The greatest reaction to Mel Gibson's film came from Jews,
and is indeed still doing so. Why is that? The answer to that
question lies in the history of Christianity as described
in the Bible.
According to the Bible, Jesus is the savior whom the Jews
had been awaiting for centuries, in other words the Messiah.
When he began to preach his message, however, he both called
on the Jewish people to believe in God and also criticized
the hypocrisy of various men of religion who enjoyed great
prestige among the Jews. For that reason, although a large
part of the Jewish people came to love Jesus, the men of religion
in question had enormous hostility towards him and decided
to set a trap to kill him. Eventually they decided to complain
to the Romans, who ruled Palestine at the time. Appearing
before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, they told him Jesus
claimed to be a king whereas their king was Caesar, and was
causing political unrest. Pilate questioned Jesus, and seeing
that he had committed no crime wanted to set him free. The
Jewish religious leaders insisted, however. They demanded
he be crucified, and Pilate accepted that demand. Again according
to the Bible, it was the Jews who were actually responsible
for the decision to execute Jesus.
This led to some Christians harboring an enmity for the Jews
throughout history. One of the reasons for the emergence of
"anti-Semitism," or hatred of Jews, is that Christians regarded
the Jews as "Christ-killers."
The reaction of Jewish leaders to Mel Gibson's film in recent
months has been that the film has revitalized this concept,
which has persisted for the last 2,000 years. In many scenes
in the film the hatred and anger of some Jewish religious
figures towards Jesus are depicted. This is an important point
of conflict which divides Christianity and Judaism, which
have a great deal in common, and even sets them in opposition
to one another.
The Truth Revealed in the Qur'an
However, there is a most important truth behind the current
debate over Jesus between Jews and Christians.
This truth is revealed in the Qur'an. According to the verses
of Almighty God, Jesus was not actually put to death by being
crucified. The Jews set such a trap for him, but God foiled
that trap with a miracle and rescued Jesus, with someone else
being crucified in his place. This truth is described in Surat
an-Nisa':
And [on account of] their saying: "We killed
the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Messenger of God." They did
not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made
to seem so to them. Those who argue about him are in doubt
about it. They have no real knowledge of it, just conjecture.
But they certainly did not kill him. (Qur'an, 4:157)
The expression, "they did not kill him
and they did not crucify him" reveals that Jesus was
not killed and crucified. The next statement also contains
very important information: the person crucified was not Jesus,
but somebody else, although those who performed the crucifixion
believed that he was Jesus. That was because this person resembled
Jesus, or was made to look like him. (Only God knows for certain.)
This information in the Qur'an has been the subject of debate
between Christians and Muslims for hundreds of years. Christians
say that Jesus was crucified before hundreds of witnesses,
that the gospels and other Christian authors are agreed on
this, and that this is a certain and attested truth believed
in by millions over hundreds of years.
The fact is, however, that some Christians have also accepted
the fact that Jesus was not crucified.
Christians Who Have Not Believed
in the Crucifixion
Christians have provided different answers to the question
of who it was who was crucified. These possessed a belief
regarded as "heretical" according to Catholic doctrine. That
movement is known as "Docetism."
The most important information about Docetism comes from
the document Adversus Haereses (Against Herecies) written
by the priest Irenaeus (115-202) at the end of the second
century CE. Irenaeus refers to one Basilides, one of the representatives
of this movement. According to Irenaeus, Basilides, a historian
from Alexandria, insisted in his writings between 130 and
150 CE that Jesus had not been crucified. He maintained that
somebody else, one Simon of Cyrene, had been crucified and
that God had miraculously altered Simon's appearance to resemble
that of Jesus, and that the Jews and Romans thus thought they
were crucifying Jesus himself. Basilides even wrote that Jesus
watched as Simon of Cyrene was being crucified, and that he
then moved away and was raised alive into the presence of
God. (William Smith, D., A Dictionary of Christian Biography,
Volume 1, p. 768)
Where might this information have reached Basilides from?
According to the writings of a 3rd century Christian theologian,
Clement of Alexandria (150-215), Basilides claimed to have
received secret information. According to his account, an
individual called Glaucius, who had acted as interpreter for
Simon Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, learned this secret
from Peter, and Basilides heard it from him. Basilides wrote
a new "Bible," in which the gospels were corrected in the
light of the information he had received from Glaucius.
Basilides was not the only Docetist to support this claim.
In addition to him, various individuals or sects regarded
as "heretics" by the Church also supported the view that Jesus
was not crucified, but was replaced by someone bearing a resemblance
to him. In Was Christ Really Crucified? The Christian
writer Faris al-Qayrawani writes:
In the year A.D. 185 a . . . sect of the descendant of
the priests of Thebes who embraced Christianity claimed
that "God forbids that Christ should be crucified. He was
safely lifted up to heaven." Also in the year A.D. 370 a
hermetic Gnostic sect that denied the crucifixion of Jesus
taught that He "was not crucified but it seemed so to the
spectators who crucified Him." Again, in the year A.D. 520
Severus, bishop of Syria, fled to Alexandria where he encountered
a group of philosophers teaching that Jesus Christ was not
crucified but that it only appeared so to the people who
nailed Him on the cross. . . . About A.D. 610 Bishop John,
son of the governor of Cyprus, began to proclaim that Christ
was not crucified but that it only seemed so to the spectators
who crucified Him. (Faris al-Qayrawani, Was Christ Really
Crucified?, Villach: Light of Life, 1994, p. 23)
As of the 4th century, however, when the absolute
dominion of the Catholic Church was established, Docetists
gradually disappeared just like the other movements regarded
as "heretical." The teaching that Jesus was crucified confirmed
its place as a fundamental dogma of the Christian world by
being imposed by the Church.
Mankind only learned the truth about this subject by means
of the revelation of the Qur'an to the Prophet Mohammed. In
the Qur'an God has revealed this about Jesus:
"… They did not kill him and they did not crucify
him, but it was made to seem so to them..." (Qur'an, 4:157)
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THE LIFE OF JESUS ACCORDING
TO THE QUR'AN
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