Muhammad in the Bible Part - 4

by - Professor David Benjamin Keldani
Muslim Name: Abdu'l-Ahad Dawud


The Baptism Of John And Jesus Only A Type Of Religious Marking "Sibghatullah" (1) 

"The (indelible religious) marking of Allah. And who marks better than Allah! And for Him we are worshipers." (Qur'an 2:138)
 
It is a great pity that the Evangelists have not left us a complete and detailed account of the sermon of John the Baptist; and assuming they ever did, it is nothing short of a crime on the part of the Church not to have preserved its text. For it is impossible to imagine the mysterious and enigmatic words of the Baptist in their present shape could have been understood even by the most erudite among his audience We know that the Jewish doctors and lawyers asked him to explain himself upon various points and to make his declarations more explicit and plain (John i. 19-23 and v. 33). There is no doubt that he elucidated those vital points to his hearers, and did not leave them in obscurity; for he was "a burning and enlightening candle," who "gave witness concerning the truth" (John v. 33, 35). What was this witness, and what was the nature of the truth about which that witness was given? And what makes it still more obscure is the fact that each Evangelist does not report the same points in identical terms. There is no precision about the character of the truth; was it about the person of Christ and the nature of his mission, or was it about the Messenger of Allah as foretold by Jacob (Gen. xlix.)? What were the precise terms of John's witness about Jesus, and about the future Prophet who was his superior?

In the third article of this series (1) I offered ample proofs that the Prophet foretold by the Baptist was other than Jesus Christ; and in the fourth article (2) we find several arguments in favor of the Messenger of Allah as being a superior and more powerful Prophet than John. Those arguments, in my humble opinion, and in my solid conviction, are logical, true, and conclusive. Each of those arguments could be easily developed so as to make a voluminous book. I am fully conscious of the fact that these argumentations will present a jarring sound to the fanatical ears of many a Christian. But truth exalts itself and extols him who propagates it. The truth about which John gave witness, as quoted above, we unhesitatingly believe to be concerning Prophet Muhammad. Prophet John gave two witnesses, one about the "Shliha d'Allaha" - according to the then Palestinian dialect, which means the "Messenger of Allah" - and the other about Jesus, whom he declared to have been born of the Holy Spirit and not of an earthly father; to be the true Messiah who was sent by Allah as the last great Jewish Prophet to give a new light and spirit to the Law of Moses; and to having been commissioned to teach the Jews that their salvation rested on submitting to the great son of Ishmael. Like the old Jews who threw into disorder their Scriptures, the new Jews of the Christian Church, in imitation of their forefathers, have corrupted their own. But even these corruptions in the Gospels cannot conceal the truth.

------------Footnote: (1). Vide Islamic Review for March - April, 1930. (2). Ibid., May, 1930. ------------ end of footnote

The principal point which constitutes the power and the superiority of the Prince of the Messengers of Allah is the baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The admission by the author of the Fourth Gospel that Prophet Jesus and his disciples also used to baptize with water simultaneously with John the Baptist is an abrogation de facto of the parenthetical note that "Jesus did not baptize himself, but his disciples only" (John iii. 23 and iv. 1, 2).

But granting that he himself did not baptize, the admission that his disciples did, while yet initiates and unlearned, shows that their baptism was of the same nature as that of John's. Considering the fact that Jesus during the period of his earthly mission administered that rite exactly as the Baptist was doing at the streams or pools of water, and that he ordered his disciples to continue the same, it becomes as evident and as clear as a barn door that he was not the person intended by the Crier in the Wilderness when he foretold the advent of a powerful Prophet with the baptism of the Spirit and fire. It does not require much learning or an extraordinary intelligence to understand the force of the argument - namely, Jesus during his lifetime baptized not a single person with the Holy Spirit and with fire. How, then, can he be regarded as the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit and with fire, or be identified with the Prophet foretold by John? If words, sermons, and prophecies mean anything, and are uttered in order to teach anything at all, then the words of the Baptist mean and teach us that the baptism with water would continue to be practiced until the Appearance of the "Shilohah" or the Messenger of Allah, and then it would cease and give place to the exercise of the baptism with the Spirit and fire. This is the only logical and intelligible conclusion to be deduced from the preaching as recorded in the third chapter of the First Gospel. The continuation of the Christian baptism and its elevation to the dignity of a Sacrament is a clear proof that the Church does not believe in a baptism other than that which is performed with water. Logic, common sense, and respect for any sacred writ ought to convince every impartial reader that the two baptisms are quite different things. The Prophet of the desert does not recognize the baptism with fire in the baptism with water. The nature and the efficacy of each baptism is distinctly stated and defined. The one is performed by immersing or washing the body with water as a sign or mark of repentance; and the other is performed no longer by water but by the Holy Spirit and the fire, the effect of which is a thorough change of heart, faith, and feeling. One purifies the body, the other enlightens the mind, confirms the faith, and regenerates the heart. One is outward, it is Judaism; the other is inward, it is Islam. The baptism of Prophets John and Jesus washes the shell, but the baptism of the Messenger of Allah washes the kernel. In short, the Judaeo-Christian baptism is substituted by the Islamic "Ghusl" and "Wudhu" - or the ablutions which are performed, not by a prophet or priest, but by the believing individual himself. The Judaeo-Christian baptism was necessary and obligatory so long as the baptism of Allah - the Qur'anic "Sibghatullah" - was anticipated; and when Prophet Muhammad thundered the Divine Revelations of the Qur'an, then it was that the former baptism vanished as a shadow.

The extreme importance of the two baptisms deserves a very serious consideration, and I believe the observations made in this article must considerably interest both the Muslims and other readers. For the point under discussion, from a religious standpoint, is vital to salvation. The Christians, I honestly maintain, are not justified in perpetuating their baptism with water ad infinitum, since their own Gospels foretell that it will be abrogated by another one which will exclude the use of water altogether. I submit the following observations to the thoughtful and impartial judgment of my readers.
WHAT BAPTISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
(a) It is within our rights to agree or to disagree with a doctrine or a theory, but nothing can justify our conduct if we deliberately distort and misrepresent a doctrine in order to prove our own theory about it. To distort the Scriptures is iniquitous and criminal; for the error caused in this respect is irreparable and pernicious. Now the baptism of John and Jesus is plainly described and illustrated to us in the Gospels, and is entirely alien and opposed to the baptism of the Churches.

We are not positively certain about the original Hebrew or Aramaic word for the Greek baptism. The Pshittha Version uses the word "ma'muditha" from the verb "aimad" and aa'mid," which means "to stand up like an a'muda" (a pillar or column), and its causative form "aa'mid" "to erect, set up, establish, confirm" and so on, but it has no signification of "to immerse, dip, wash, sprinkle, bathe, as the ecclesiastical baptism is supposed to mean. The original Hebrew verbs "rahas" "to bathe", "tabhal' (read "taval") "to dip, to immerse," might give the sense conveyed by the Greek word "baptizo" - "I baptize." The Arabic versions of the New Testament have adopted the Aramaic form, and call the Baptist "al-Ma'midan," and "ma'mudiyeh" for "baptism." In all the Semitic languages, including the Arabic, the verb "a'mad" signifies in its simple or qal form "to stand erect like a pillar," and does not contain the meaning of washing or immersion; and therefore it could not be the original word from which the Greek "baptismos" is the translation. There is no necessary to argue that both John and Jesus never heard of the word "baptismos" in its Greek form, but that there was evidently another Semitic nomenclature used by them.

(b) Considering the classical signification of the Greek "baptismos" which means tincture, dye, and immersion," the word in use could not be other than "Saba," and the Arabic "Sabagha," "to dye." It is a well-known fact that the Sabians, mentioned in the Qur'an and by the early Christian Fathers - such as Epiphanus and others - were the followers of John. The very name "Sabians," according to the celebrated Ernest Renan (La vie de Jesus, ch. vi), signifies "Baptists." They practiced baptism, and like the old Hassayi (Essenians, or al-Chassaites) and Ibionayi (Ebionites) led an austere life. Considering the fact that their founder, Budasp, was a Chaldean sage, the true orthography of their name would be "Saba'i," i.e. "Dyers" or "Baptists." A famous Chaldean or Assyrian Catholics of the fourth century, Mar Shimon, was called "Bar Saba'i," "Son of the Dyers." Probably his family belonged to the Sabin religion. The Qur'an writes this name "Sabi'm"' with the hamza vowel instead of ain as it is in the original Aramaic "Saba'i," I am cognizant, however, of other interpretations placed on the name "Sabian": some authors suppose it to be derived from "Sabi'," the son of Sheth, and others from the Hebrew "Saba," which means "army," because they used to have a kind of special devotion to the stars as the host of heaven. Although they have nothing in common with the Christian Churches, except their peculiar 'Sab'utha," or Baptism, they are wrongly called "the Christians of St. John-Baptist." The Qur'an, as usual, writes all foreign names as they were pronounced by the Arabs.
An extensive and deep research in the religion of the Sabians, who had almost overrun the Arab nation long before the light of Islam shone with the appearance of the Holy Prophet of Allah, will show us several truths. There were three forms of baptism practiced by the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians. The Jewish baptism, which had no origin in their sacred books, was invented chiefly for the proselytes. Each religion had its definite baptismal formula and a special ritual. The Jewish "Cohen" (priest) baptized his convert in the Name of Allah; the Sabian in the Name of Allah and of John; but the Christian "Qushlsha" (in Arabic "qassis" or presbyter) baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in which the names of Allah and of Jesus are not directly recited. The diversity and the antagonism of the three baptismal systems is apparent. The Jew, as a true Unitarian, could not tolerate the name of John to be associated with that of the Elohim; whereas the Christian formula was extremely repugnant to his religious taste. There is no doubt that the Christian baptism, with its sacramental character and polytheistic taint, was abhorred also by the Sabians. The symbol of the convenant between Allah and His worshipers was not baptism but circumcision (Gen. xvii), an ancient institution which was strictly observed, not only by the three religions, but also by many pagan Arab tribes. These diverse baptismal forms and rituals among the Semitic peoples in the East were not an essential divine institution but only a symbol or sign, and therefore not strong and efficacious enough to supplant one another. They all used water for the material of their baptism, and, more or less, in similar form or manner. But each religion adopted a different name to distinguish its own practice from that of the other two. The original Aramaic "Sab'urtha" - properly and truly translated into the Greek "baptismos" was faithfully preserved by the Saba'ites (Sabians). It appears that the Semitic Christians, in order to distinguish their sacramental baptism from that of the Sabaites, adopted the appellation of "ma'muditha" which, from a linguistic point of view, has nothing whatever to do with baptism or even with washing or immersion. It is only an ecclesiatical coinage. Why "ma'muditha" was adopted to replace "Sab'utha" is a question altogether foreign to our present subject; but en passant, I may add that this word in the Pshittha is used also for a pool, a basin for ablution (John v.2). The only explanation which may lead towards the solution of this problem of the "ma'muditha" is the fact that John the Baptist and his followers, including Jesus the son of Mary and his disciples, cause a penitent or a proselyte to stand straight like a pillar in a pool of water or in a river in order to be bathed with water, hence the names of aa'mid" and "ma'muditha."

(c) The Christian baptism, notwithstanding its fanfaronade definitions, is nothing more or less than an aspersion with water or an immersion in it. The Council of Trent anathematizes anyone who would say that the Christian baptism is the same as that of St. John's. I venture to declare that the Christian baptism has not only no spiritual character or effect, but it is also even below the baptism of the Baptist. And if I deserve the anathema of the Church for my conviction, I shall deem it as a great honor before my Creator. I consider the pretensions of a Christian priest about the baptism as a means of purification of the soul from original sin and all the rest of it as of a piece with the claims of a sorcerer. The baptism with water was only a symbol of baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and after the establishment of Islam as the official kingdom of God all the three previous baptisms vanished and were abolished.

(d) From the meager and scant account in the Gospels we cannot get a positive definition of the true nature of the baptism practiced by Prophets John and Jesus. The claim that the Church is the depository of the Divine Revelation and its true interpreter is as absurd as it is ridiculous the claim that the baptized infant or adult receives the Holy Spirit and becomes a child of God.

If the Greek word "baptismos" is the exact word for the Aramaic "Sab'utha" or "Sbhu'tha," which I am sure it is, then the Arabic "Sibghat" in the Qur'an, not only does it solve the problem and uncover the veil hiding the mysterious prophecy of John the Baptist,but also is a marvelous proof that the sacred scripture of Islam is a direction Revelation of Allah, and that His Prophet true and the real person whom John predicted! The baptist ("Saba'a") plunges or immerses his neophyte or an infant into a pond, as a dyer or a fuller plunges a cloth or garment into a kettle of dye. It is easily understood that baptism is not a "thara." purification or washing, nor "Tabhala," an immersion nor even a "rahsa," a bathing or washing, but "sab'aitha," a dyeing, a coloring. It is extremely important to know these distinctions. Just as a "saba'a," a dyer, gives a new color to a garment by dipping it into a kettle of tincture, so a baptist gives his convert a new spiritual hue. Here we must make a fundamental distinction between a proselyte Gentile and a penitent Jew and Ishmaelite Arab. The former was formally circumcised, whereas thee latter baptized only. By the circumcision a Gentile was admitted into the family of Abraham, and therefore into the fold of God's people. By baptism a circumcised believer was admitted into the society of the penitent and reformed believers. Circumcision is an ancient Divine institution which was not abrogated by Prophet Jesus nor by Prophet Muhammad. The baptism practiced by John and the Christ was only for the benefit of the penitent persons among the circumcised. Both these institutions indicated and presented a religion. The baptism of John and of his cousin Jesus was a mark of admission into the society of the purified penitents who promised loyalty and homage to Messenger of Allah whose coming they both foretold.

It follows, therefore, that just as circumcision signified the religion of Prophet Abraham and his adherents (his slaves were also circumcised), so baptism signified the religion of John and Jesus, which was a preparation for the Jews and the Gentiles to accord a cordial reception to the Messenger of Islam and to embrace his religion.

(e) According to the testimony of St. Mark (i. 1-8), the baptism of John had the character of the "remission of sins." It is stated that "all the country of Judaea and the inhabitants of Jerusalem went out to him and were all baptized by him in the River Jordan while confessing their sins." This is tantamount to saying that millions of the penitent Jews confessed their sins, were baptized by the Prophet, and then their sins were obliterated by the waters of baptism. It is generally admitted that St. Mark's Gospel is the oldest of the Four Gospels. All the ancient Greek manuscripts do not contain the last twelve verses added to chapter xvi. of this Gospel (verses 9-20). Even in these supplementary verses the formula "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" is not inscribed. Jesus simply says: "Go and preach my Gospel unto the whole world; he who believes and is baptized shall live, and he who does not believe shall be damned."

It is evident that the baptism of Jesus was the same as that of John's and a continuation of it. If the baptism of John was a sufficient means of the remission of sins, then the assertion that the "Lamb of God carries away the sins of the world" (John i.) is exploded. If the waters of the Jordan were efficacious enough to cleanse the leprosy of Naaman through the prayer of the Prophet Elisha (2 Kings v), and to remit the sins of the myriads through that of the Prophet John, the shedding of the blood of a god would be superfluous and, indeed, incompatible with the Divine Justice.

There is no doubt that until the appearance of Paul on the scene, the followers of Jesus Christ practiced the baptismal ritual of Prophet John the Baptist. It is significant to note that Paul was a "Pharisee" belonging to a famous Jewish sect - like that of the Saducess - whom Prophets John and Jesus denounced as "the sons of the vipers." It is also to be observed that the author of the fifth book of the New Testament, called the "Acts of the Apostles," was a companion of this Paul, and pretends to show that those baptized by John the Baptist had not received the Holy Spirit "and therefore were rebaptized and then filled" with the Holy Spirit (Acts viii. 16, 17 and xix. 2-7), not through baptism in the name of Prophet Jesus, but through the "laying of hands". It is clearly stated in these quotations that the two baptisms were identical in their nature and efficacy, and that they did not "bring down" the Holy Spirit upon the person baptized whether by John, Jesus, or in the name of either of the two. By the "laying of their hands" of the Apostles upon a baptized person the Holy Spirit touched his heart, to fill it with faith and love of God. But this Divine gift was granted only to the Messengers who were really prophets, and cannot be claimed by their so-called successors.

(f) If the Gospels mean anything at all in their statements concerning baptism, they leave behind the impression that there was no difference between the two baptisms, except that they were administered in the name of one or other of the two Prophets. The Pharisee Paul or Saul of Tarsus has not a single kind word about John the Baptist, who had branded the sect of the Pharisees with the opprobrious epithet "the children of the vipers." There is a tinge of grudge against Prophet John and against the value of his baptism in the remarks made by Luke in the "Acts of the Apostles." And Luke was a disciple and companion of Paul. The admission by Luke that the baptism in the name of Jesus, too, was not carried out by the Holy Spirit is a sure proof against the Church which has arbitrarily and wantonly transformed it into a sacrament or a mystery. The Church's baptism was a perpetuation of John's baptism and nothing more; but the baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire was reserved only for Islam. The expression that some twelve persons in Samaria "had not yet received the Holy Spirit, because they were only baptized in the name of our lord Jesus" Acts vii. 16, 17), is decisive to frustrate the pretensions of the Church.

The last three verses in the passage cited are held by many to be an interpolation. They did not exist in the oldest existing MS., which is, of course, the origin of all subsequent versions of the Bible, including the Vulgate. A document is absolutely unworthy of serious judicial notice if a portion of it is proved to be a forgery. But here we go a step farther for the said addition to the original text is admitted to be such even by those who speak of its genuineness.

But let us take the prophecy as it stands. I need not say that it speaks of things at which ordinary common sense can guess, seeing that the events foretold are always occurring from time to time in the course of nature. Pestilence and war, famine and earthquakes have visited the world so often that a mention of them in a prophecy as a sign of its authenticity would deprive it of any importance it might otherwise possess. Besides, the first followers of a new faith are sure to meet with persecution, especially if they chance to be of inferior social position. But apart from this, the prophecy speaks in one strain of several things, which may or may not occur together at any one time. They have never yet so occurred. The persecution of the disciples began immediately after the departure of Jesus from Judaea. They were "delivered up to the synagogues and into prison, and brought before kings and rulers" for his name's sake. The prediction, however, did not need a prophetic mind, since the persecution had started even when Prophet Jesus was with his disciples. These events were the natural sequel of teachings distasteful to the Jews. The disciples no doubt bore every conceivable hardship and trial with patience and courage, but they were sure of the return of the Master in accordance with his promise: "Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done." Belief in these words created a wonderful patience in the generation referred to. But his words passed away though the time did not come for the "heaven and the earth to pass away." Moreover, the days of the disciples' persecution did not witness any unusual phenomena in the form of earthquake, fighting, or pestilence. Even in the period immediately following, the prophesied four events did not synchronize. In the last two scores of years of the last two centuries we heard "of wars and commotions." "Nation" did "rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom." "Great earthquakes" were experienced in divers places and famines and pestilence, but neither did the sun become darkened nor the moon fail to give its light, which things had to occur before "the coming of the Son of Man." These words may be taken in a metaphorical sense, but in that case, why should the Adventists look for the second coming in its literal sense? Moreover, most of the abovementioned phenomena have taken place at times when those who preached and taught in the name of Jesus were not likely, for political reasons, to be brought before kings and rulers for punishment. On the contrary, they had obtained free access into lands that had long been closed against them. All of which goes to prove that either the prediction is folklore or a legendary account of the things of which Jesus spoke on different occasions. Either he himself had had but a hazy notion of coming events, or the recorders of his life, who wrote two centuries after, mixed up hopelessly different things dealing with different matters.
The "Sibghatullah," Or The Baptism With The Holy Spirit And With Fire

One of the few religious phenomena I have not been able to explain is this: How is it that the well-known Saba'ltes (Sabians), so predominant in the Arabian peninsula and Mesopotamia, did not embrace Christianity if the Prophet John the Baptist had really and openly declared and presented Jesus as the "more powerful" Prophet than himself, and the Messiah whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose? If, as foretold by John, Jesus was the Prophet of Allah who came to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire the myriads whom he "dyed" in the water of the Jordan and elsewhere, why did not Prophet Jesus baptize them instantly with the Spirit and with fire and then purge of idolatry all the lands promised by Allah to the seed of Prophet Abraham and establish the Kingdom of God by force and fire? It is absolutely inconceivable that the disciples and the believers in the divine mission of John should not follow Jesus if he had been presented to the public as his Lord or Superior on the spot. The followers of John might have been excused for their refusal to enter into the Christian Church if Jesus Christ had come, say, a century later than the Baptist, but happily such was not the case. They were both contemporaries and born in the same year. They both baptized with water unto repentance, and prepared their penitent converts for the Kingdom of God that was approaching but not established in their time.

The Sabaites, the "Dyers" or "Baptists," were the faithful adherents of John. They may have fallen into error and superstition; but they knew perfectly well that it was not Jesus who was intended in the prophecy of their Prophet. They embraced Islam when Prophet Muhammad came. The people of Harran in Syria are not - as they have been supposed to be - the remnant of the old Saba'ites. In the promised lands only three non-Muslim religions were recognized and tolerated by the Qur'an, namely, Judaism, Christianity, and Sabianism. It is stated that the Harranians pretended to be the remnant of the old Saba'ites, and they were, therefore, permitted to practice their peculiar religion without molestation by the Turkish Government.
The Christian conception of the Holy Spirit is entirely different from the Islamic and the Jewish. The Holy Spirit is not a divine person with divine attributes and functions not belonging to this or that other divine persons of a triple god. The Christian belief that this same holy ghost, the third divine person, descends from his (or her, or its) heavenly throne at the bidding of every priest - in his daily celebration of some sacrament - to consecrate its elements and change their essence and qualities into some supernatural elements is extremely repugnant to the religious sentiments of every Unitarian, whether Jew or Muslim. Nothing could horrify a Muslim's feeling more than the belief that the Holy Spirit - always at the intervention of a priest - changes the water of baptism into the blood of a crucified god and blots out the so-called original sin; or a belief that the magic operation upon the material elements of the Eucharist transubstantiates them into the blood and body of an incarnate god. These beliefs were absolutely opposed to the teachings of the Old Testament and a falsification of the real doctrine of John and Jesus. The Christian assertion that the Holy Spirit at the incantations of a priest, fills certain individuals and sanctifies them, but does not guarantee their impeccability and ignorance, is meaningless. We are told that Hananiah (Ananias) and his wife Shapirah were baptized, which is to say filled with the Holy Ghost. They were thus inspired by the third divine person to sell their field and to place its price in cash at the feet of the Apostle Peter, but at the same time were seduced by the devil to conceal a portion of the money. The consequence was that the unfortunate communist couple were stricken dead miraculously (Acts v).

Think of the belief that the third person of the trinity descends upon men, sanctifies them, and then allows them to fall into error, heresy, and atheism, and abandons them to commit murderous wars and massacres. Is this possible? Can the devil seduce a man filled with and guarded by the Holy Ghost and change him into a demon? The Holy Qur'an is very expressive on this point. Allah says to the devil: "He said: 'This is for Me the Right Path over My worshipers, you have no power over My worshipers, except the sinners who follow you...'" Ch.15:41-42 Qur'an

We cannot believe, nor even imagine for a moment, that a worshiper of God, a righteous believer who has received the Spirit of sanctification, can fall into a deadly sin and perish in Hell. No, a holy person, so long as he is in this material world, is to combat and struggle against sin and evil; he may fall, but he will rise again and shall never be abandoned by the pure Spirit that guards him. True repentance is the work of the good Spirit that lives in us. If a Christian is baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, in the sense which the book of the "Acts of the Apostles" describes and the Churches accept, then every baptized Latin, Greek, or Abyssinian must not only become a sinless saint but also a linguist and a polyglot prophet!

The truth is that the Christians have not a definite or precise conception about the Holy Spirit filling a baptized Christian. If it is God, then how dare the devil approach, tempt, and seduce the hallowed or rather defied man? And, besides, what is more serious is: How can the devil chase away the Holy Ghost and settle himself in the heart of a baptized heretic or atheist? On the other hand, if the Holy Spirit means the Archangel Gabriel or some other angel, then the Christian Churches roam in a desert of superstition; for an angel is not omni-present. If this Spirit that purifies and fills a baptized Christian is God Himself, for such is their belief in the third person of the Trinity, then all the baptized Christians ought to claim themselves divine or deified!
Then there is a Protestant conception of the Holy Spirit, which (or who (1)) fills the hearts of those who, at the highest excitement and ecstasy during an inflammatory sermon of an ignorant or learned haranguer, believe themselves to become "new-born"; yet many among them slide back and become what they were before, rogues and swindlers!

------------Footnote (1) The Holy Spirit, in all the Christian literature of diverse languages, has not a fixed gender. He, she, it, are all commonly used as the personal pronouns for the Holy Ghost. ------------- End of footnote

Now before I come to explain, according to my humble understanding, the spiritual and fiery baptism, I wish to admit and confess that there are many pious and God-fearing persons among the Jews and the Christians. For however their religious views and beliefs may differ from ours, they love their God and do good in His name. We cannot comprehend and determine the dealings of God with the peoples of different religions. The Christian conception of the Deity is only an erroneous definition of the true God in whom they believe and love. If they extol Jesus and deify him, it is not that they wish to dishonor God, but because they see His beauty in that Ruh-Allah (the "Spirit of God," i.e. Jesus). They certainly cannot appreciate the Messengerhood of Prophet Muhammad, not, because they deny his unparalleled service to the cause of Allah by inflicting the greatest blow on the devil and his cult of idolatry, but because they do not understand as he did the true nature of the mission and person of Jesus Christ. Similar reasoning may be put forward with regard to the attitude of the Jews towards Prophet Jesus and Prophet Muhammad. Allah is Merciful and Forgiving!
The Holy Spirit, with the definite article "the," means a special angelic Gabriel, or any one of the numerous "pure" spirits created by Allah, and appointed to perform some particular mission. The descent of the Holy Spirit upon a human person is to reveal to him the will of Allah, and to make him a prophet. Such a one can never be seduced by the satan.

What is known as "baptism" before the era of Prophet Muhammad is called "Sibghatullah", namely, the religious indelible marking mentioned in the Qur'an which Prophet Muhammad brought is explained to us by the Divine Revelation only in one verse of Al-Qur'an: Ch 2:138

"The (religious indelible) marking (of the believers) of Allah. And who marks better than Allah? And for Him we are worshipers."

Muslim commentators rightly understand the word "Sibghat," not in its literal signification of "dyeing," but in its spiritual or metaphorical sense of "religion." This Qur'anic verse cancels and abolishes the religions of the "Sab'utha" and of the "Ma'muditha" or both the Saba'ites and the Nasara. "Sibghatullah" is the religious indelible marking of the believers of Allah, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire! The religion professed by any of the companions of the Prophet of Allah in the first years of the Hijrat is to-day professed in its entirety by every Muslim. This cannot be said of the baptismal religion. More than sixteen Ecumenical Councils have been summoned to define the religion of Christianity, only to be discovered by the Synod of the Vatican in the nineteenth century that the mysteries of the "Infallibility" and the "Immaculate Conception" were two of the principal dogmas, both unknown to the Apostle Peter and the Blessed Virgin Mary! Any faith or religion dependent upon the deliberations and decisions of General Synods - holy or heretical - is artificial and human. The Religion of Islam is the belief in One God (Allah) and absolute resignation to His Will, and this faith is professed by the angels in the heavens and by the Muslims on earth. It is the religion of sanctification and of enlightenment, and an impregnable bulwark against idolatry. Let us develop these points a little further.
The spiritual indelible marking is the direct work of Allah Himself. As a fuller or a laundress washes the linen or any other object with water; as a dyer tints the wool or cotton with a tincture to give it a new hue; and as a indelible marking blots out the past sins of the true penitent believer, so does Allah Almighty mark, not the body, but the spirit and the soul of him whom He mercifully directs and guides unto the Holy Religion of Islam. This is the "Sibghatullah," the marking of Allah, which makes a person fit and dignified to become a citizen of the Kingdom of Allah and a member of His religion. When the Angel Gabriel communicated the Word of Allah for the first time to Prophet Muhammad, he (Prophet Muhammad) was invested with the gift of prophecy. His spirit was purified and magnified with the Holy Spirit to such a degree and extent that sever times the Angel Gabriel opened his chest and heart and washed it, thereby removing any bases for the whispering of satan. Once when he was a child playing in the desert, and one in Ka'ba before his ascent, and to the extent that when he in his turn pronounced that Word to those whose spirit Allah pleased to guide were also purified, marked. They, too, thus became holy officers in the new army of the faithful Muslims. This spiritual marking does not make the Muslims prophets, sinless saints, or miracle-mongers. For after the Revelation of the Will and Word of Allah in the Holy Qur'an there is the end of the prophecy and of revelation. They are not made sinless saints because their piety and good works would not be the outcome of effort and struggle against evil, and therefore not justly meritorious. They are not appointed to become workers of supernatural miracles because they have a firm and sound faith in their Creator, Allah.
Further, this "Sibghatullah" makes the true Muslims grave, constant in their duties to Allah and towards their fellowmen, especially towards their families. It does not move them to the folly of believing themselves holier than their co-religionists, and so to arrogate the post of pastorship to themselves over others as if they were their flocks and herds. Fanaticism, religious conceit, and the like are not operations of the Holy Spirit. Every Muslim receives at his creation the same "Sibghatullah," the same religion and spiritual religious indelible marking, and has to run the race of his short earthly life to the best of his ability and effort in order to win the crown of glory in the next world. Every Muslim needs only education and religious training in accordance with the wisdom of the Word of God. But he needs not the intercession of a priest, sacrament, or saint. Every enlightened believer can become an Imam (leader of prayer), missionary, preacher according to his learning and religious zeal, not for vain glory or lucrative gain.

In short, every Muslim, whether at his birth or at his conversion, is marked spiritually, and becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a free man, and possesses equal rights and obligations, according to his ability, virtue, knowledge, wealth, rank.

St. John the Baptist ascribes this spiritual and igneous marking to the Great Prophet of Allah, not as a divine being, God, or son of God, but as a holy agent, and as an instrument through which this divine marking was to be operated. Prophet Muhammad delivered the Message of Allah which was His Word; he led the prayers, administered the Divine service, and fought the holy wars against the unbelievers and the idolators to defend his cause. But the success and the victory achieved was God's. In the same way John preached and baptized, but the contrition, penance, and the remission of sins could only be done by God. The Prophet John's prediction that "he who comes after me is more powerful than I; he will baptize (mark) you with the Spirit and with fire" is quite intelligible, because only through Prophet Muhammad this spiritual marking was given and performed.
It is to be remarked that the form and material of this marking is altogether Divine and supernatural. We feel and see the effect of an invisible but real cause which accomplishes that effect. There is no longer water as the material, nor a marker to officiate at the ritual or the form. It is Allah who, through the Spirit, works it out. The materials of the "Sibghatullah" in the words of the Marker are the Holy Spirit and fire. The form exclusively belongs to Allah. We cannot attribute to the Almighty any form of operation except His Word "Kun" - "Be!" - and His command is obeyed or created. The result is that a Muslim becomes sanctified, enlightened, and an equipped soldier to fight the Satan and his idolatry. These three effects of the "Sibghatullah" deserve a serious consideration and study. Their exposition is but brief.

1) The Holy Spirit, whether the Archangel Gabriel or another of the created Superior Spirits, by the command of God sanctifies the spirit of a Muslim at his birth or conversion - as the case may be; and this sanctification means:

a. Engraving a perfect faith in the One true God. The "Subghatu 'I-Lah" makes the spirit of a true Muslim believe in the absolute Oneness of Allah, to rely upon Him, and to know He alone is his Master, Owner, and Lord. This faith in the true God is manifest in every person who professes himself a Muslim. The mark and the evidence of this ingrained faith in a Muslim shines brilliantly when he affirms, "Ana muslim, Alhamud li 'l-Lahi ("I am Muslim; praised be Allah!"). What is more impressive and singularly obvious a sign of a Holy belief than the hatred and repugnance which a Muslim feels against any other object of worship besides God? Which of the two is holier in the Sight of Allah: he who worships his Creator in a simple building of the Mosque, or he who worships the fourteen pictures and images representing the scenes of the crucifixion in a building whose walls and altars are adorned with the idolatrous statues, its ground covering the bones of the dead, and its dome decorated with the figures of angels and the saints?

b. The sanctification by the Holy Spirit and fire which God works upon the spirit of a Muslim is that He impregnates and fills it with love for, and submission to, Him. An honorable husband would rather divorce his beloved wife than see her sharing his love with any other man. The Almighty will cast away any "believer" who associates any other object or being with Him. The Muslim's love for Allah is not theoretical or idealistic but practical and real. He will not hesitate for a moment to expel from his house his wife, son, or friend if he should blaspheme the Holy Name or Person. A pagan or a person of an other religion may show a similar furious zeal for his object of worship. But that love which is shown for the One True God is Holy and sanctified; and such love can only exist in the heart of a Muslim. Those auspicatory and doxological formulae "Bismi 'l-Lahi" and "Alhamdu li 'l-Lahi," which mean, respectively, "In the Name of Allah" and "Praised be Allah" at the beginning and the end of every action or enterprise, are the most sincere expressions of the purified Muslim spirit impressed and inebriate with the "Love of God" that transcends and excels every other love. These ejaculations are not artificial or hypocritical expressions in the mouths of Muslims, but they are the prayer and the praise of the indelibly marked spirit that resides in his body. And if a Christian and a Jew are imbued with the same faith and devotion, and if their soul does effuse those expressions that the spirit of a Muslim does, then he is a Muslim though he knows it not.
c. The indelible marking of sanctification which the "Sibghatullah" inspires in the spirit of a Muslim, besides faith and love, is a total submission and resignation to the Holy Will of Allah. This absolute submission emanates not only from belief and love, but also from a holy fear and from a deep respect so latent in the soul and spirit of every true believer.

Such are the principal characteristics of the spiritual indelible marking, and nowhere are they manifest but among the adherents of Islam. John the Baptist, Jesus Christ and his apostles believed in, loved, and feared the same Allah as every Muslim does according to the degree of the Divine Grace and Mercy. The Holy Spirit, or as known in Islam as the Purified Spirit, meaning Angel Gabriel himself, who, also holds the rank of Messenger, is also too a creature and loves and fears Allah whom you and I do.

2) The second sign of the spiritual indelible marking is enlightenment. The true knowledge of Allah and of His Will, so much as men are enable to possess, can only and exclusively be seen in Muslims. This knowledge sparkles dazzlingly in the countenance and the general behavior of every Muslim. He may not comprehend the Essence of God, just as a child cannot understand the nature and the qualities of his parents; yet a baby recognizes its mother among all other women. The analogy is by far below the reality, and the comparison infinitely inferior between an enlightened good Muslim in relation to his Creator and a baby crying after its own good mother. Every Muslim, however ignorant, poor, and sinful, sees the signs of Allah in every phenomenon of the nature. Whatever befalls him, in happiness or misery, Allah is in his mind. The Muslim call to prayer is a living witness of this enlightenment. "There is no object of worship besides Allah," is an eternal protest against all those who associate with Him other objects unworthy of worship. Every Muslim confesses: "I bear witness that Allah is the only Being worthy of worship."

In this respect I may hint at the fact that the human soul is quite different from the human spirit. It is this holy spirit that enlightens the soul and implants in it the knowledge of truth. It is again the evil spirit that induces the soul to error, idolatry, and ungodliness.

3) The "Sibghatullah" is that Divine marking with fire which arms and equips the Muslim to become a bulwark against error and superstition, chiefly against idolatry of every kind. It is this mark of fire that melts the soul and spirit of a Muslim, thus separating its golden substance from the rubbish and ordure. It is the Power of God which strengthens and consolidates the connection between Him and the believing worshiper, and arms him to fight for the religion of God. The fervor and the zeal of the Muslim for Allah and His Religion is unique and holy. The savages also fight for their fetishes, the heathen for their idols, and the Christians for their cross; but what a contrast between these unworthy object of worship and the God of Islam!
In conclusion, I must draw the attention of my Muslim brethren to think who they are; to remember the favors of Allah; and to live accordingly.

The "Paraclete" Is Not The Holy Spirit

In this article we can now discuss the famous "Paraclete" of the Fourth Gospel. Jesus Christ, like John the Baptist, announced the advent of the Kingdom of God, invited the people to repentance, and baptized them for the remission of their sins. He honorably accomplished his mission, and faithfully delivered the message of God to the people of Israel. He was not himself the founder of the Kingdom of God, but only its herald, and that is why he wrote nothing and authorized no one to write the Holy Gospel that was inscribed in his mind. He revealed the Gospel which meant the "good news" concerning the "Kingdom of God" and the "Pereiklitos" to his followers, not in writing, but in oral discourses, and in public sermons. These discourses sermons, and parables were transmitted by those who had heard them to those who had not. Later on it was that the sayings and teachings of the Master were reduced to writing. Jesus was no longer the Rabbi, but the Logos - the Divine Word; no longer the Forerunner of the Paraclete but his very Lord and Superior. His pure and true words were adulterated and mixed with myth and legend. For a time he was expected at any moment to come down from the clouds with legions of angels. The Apostles had all passed away; the second coming of Jesus Christ was delayed. His person and doctrine gave rise to a variety of religious and philosophical speculations. Sects succeeded one another; Gospels and Epistles under different names and titles appeared in many centers; and a multitude of the Christian scholars and apologists combated and criticized each other's theory. If there had been written a Gospel during the lifetime of Jesus, or even a book authorized by the College of the Apostles, the teachings of the Prophet of Nazareth would have preserved their purity and integrity until the appearance of the Periqlit - Ahmad. But such was not the case. Each writer took a different view about the Master and his religion, and described him in his book - which he named Gospel or Epistle - according to his own imagination. The high-soaring flight of thought concerning the Word; the prophecy about the Periqlit; the inexplicable discourse of Jesus upon his flesh and blood; and a series of several miracles, events, and sayings recorded in the Fourth Gospel were unknown to the Synoptics and consequently to a great majority of the Christians who had not seen it at least for a couple of centuries.

The Fourth Gospel, too, like every other book of the New Testament, was written in Greek and not in Aramaic, which was the mother-tongue of Jesus and his disciples. Consequently, we are again confronted with the same difficulty which we met with when we were discussing the "Eudokia" of St. Luke, namely: What word or name was it that Jesus used in his native tongue to express that which the Fourth Gospel has translated as "the Paraclete" and which has been converted into "comforter" in all the versions of that Gospel?
Before discussing the etymology and the true signification of this unclassical or rather corrupt form of the Paraclete it is necessary to make a brief observation upon one particular feature of St. John's Gospel. The authorship and authenticity of this Gospel are questions which concern the Higher Biblical Criticism; but it is impossible to believe that the Apostle could have written this book as we have it in its present shape and contents. The author, whether Yohannan (John) the son of Zebedee, or someone else under that name, seems to be familiar with the doctrine of the celebrated Jewish scholar and philosopher Philon concerning the Logos (Word). It is well known that the conquest of Palestine and the foundation of Alexandria by Alexander the Great opened up, for the first time, a new epoch for culture and civilization. It was then that the disciples of Moses met with those of Epicurus, and the mighty impact of the spiritual doctrines of the Bible on the materialism of the Greek paganism took place. The Greek art and philosophy began to be admired and studied by the Jewish doctors of the law both in Palestine and in Egypt, where they had a very numerous community. The penetration of the Greek thought and belles-lettres into the Jewish schools alarmed their priests and learned men. In fact, Hebrew was so much neglected that the Scriptures were read in the Alexandrian Synagogues in the Septuagint Version. This invasion by a foreign knowledge, however, moved the Jews to make a better study of their own law, and to defend it against the inauspicious new spirit. They endeavored, therefore, to find a new method for the interpretation of the Bible in order to enable the possibility of a "rapprochement" and reconciliation of the Biblical truths with the Hellenic thought. For their former method of a literal interpretation of the law was felt to be unworkable and too weak to stand against the fine reasoning of Plato and Aristotle. At the same time the solid activities of the Jews and their profound devotion to their religion often aroused against themselves the jealousy and hatred of the Greeks. Already, under Alexander the Great, an Egyptian priest, Manetho, had written libels or calumnies against Judaism. Under Tiberius, too, the great orator Apion had resuscitated and envenomed the insults of Manetho. So that this literature poisoned the people who, later on, cruelly persecuted the believers in the One true God.
The new method was accordingly found and adopted. It was an allegorical interpretation of every law, precept, narration and even the names of great personages were considered to conceal in them a secret idea which it attempted to bring to light. This allegorical interpretation soon arrogated to itself the place of the Bible, and was like an envelope enclosing in itself a system of religious philosophy.
Now the most prominent man who personified this science was Philon, who was born of a rich Jewish family in Alexandria in the year 25 before the Christian Era. Well versed in the philosophy of Plato, he wrote his allegorical work in a pure and harmonious Greek style. He believed that the doctrines of the Revelation could agree with the highest human knowledge and wisdom. What preoccupied his mind most was the phenomenon of the dealings of God, the pure Spirit, with the earthly beings. Following Plato's theory of the "Ideas," he invented a series of intermediary ideas called "the Emanations of the Divinity," which he transformed into angles who unite God with the world. The fundamental substance of these ideas, the Logos (Word), constituted the supreme wisdom created in the world and the highest expression of the Providential action.
The Alexandrian School followed the triumph of Judaism over Paganism. "But," as rightly remarks the Grand-Rabin Paul Haguenauer in his interesting little book Manuel de Litterature luive (p. 24). "mais d'elle surgirent, plus tard, des systemes nuisibles Li l'hebraisme" indeed noxious systems, not only to Judaism but to Christendom too!
The origin of the doctrine of the Logos is to be traced, therefore, to the theology of Philon, and the Apostle John - or the author of the Fourth Gospel, whoever he be - only dogmatized the theory of the "ideas" which had sprung up first from the golden brain of Plato. As remarked in the first article of this series, the Divine Word means the Word of God, and not God the Word. The word is an attribute of a rational being; it belongs to any speaker, but it is not the rational being, the speaker. The Divine Word is not eternal, it has an origin, a beginning; it did not exist before the beginning except potentially. The word is not the essence. It is a serious error to substantialize any attribute whatever. If it be permitted to say "God the Word," why should it be prohibited to say, God the Mercy, God the Love, God the Vengeance, God the Life, God the Power, and so forth? I can well understand and accept the appellation of Jesus "the Spirit of Allah" ("Ruhu l-Lah"), of Moses "the Word of Allah" ("Kalamu 'I-Lah"), of Muhammad "the Messenger of Allah" ("Rasul Allah"), meaning the Spirit of God, the Word of God, the Messenger of God respectively. But I can never understand nor accept that the Spirit, or the Word, or the Messenger, is a Divine Person having divine and human natures.
Now we will proceed to expose and confute the Christian error about the Paraclete. In this article I shall try to prove that the Paraclete is not, as the Christian Churches believe, the Holy Ghost, nor does it at all mean the "comforter" or the "intercessor;" and in the following article, please God, I shall clearly show that it is not "Paraclete" but "Periclyte" which precisely signifies "Ahmad" in the sense of "the most Illustrious, Praised, and Celebrated."

1. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS DESCRIBED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AS OTHERWISE THAN A PERSONALITY 

A careful examination of the following passages in the New Testament will convince the readers that the Holy Spirit, not only is it not the third person of the Trinity, but is not even a distinct person. But the "Paraclete" foretold by Jesus Christ is a distinct person. This fundamental difference between the two is, therefore, a decisive argument against the hypothesis of their being one and the same person.
(a) In Luke xi. 13 the Holy Spirit is declared to be a "gift" of God. The contrast between the "good gifts" which are given by wicked parents and the Holy Spirit which is bestowed upon the believers by God entirely excludes the idea of any personality of the Spirit. Can we conscientiously and positively affirm that Jesus Christ, when he made the above contrast, meant to teach his hearers that "God the Father" makes a gift of "God the Holy Spirit" to His earthly "children"? Did he ever insinuate that he believed the third person of the Trinity to be a gift of the first person of the Trinity? Can we conscientiously admit that the Apostles believed this "gift" to be God the Almighty offered by God the Almighty to mortals? The very idea of such a belief makes a Muslim shudder.

(b) In 1 Cor. ii. 12 this Holy Spirit is described in the neuter gender "the Spirit from God". Paul clearly states that as the Spirit which is in man makes him know the things that appertain to him so the Spirit of God makes a man know the things divine (1 Cor. 11). Consequently, the Holy Spirit here is not God but a divine issue, channel, or medium through which God teaches, enlightens, and inspire those whom He pleases. It is simply an action of God upon human soul and mind.

Just as the philosophy of Plato is not the Plato, and the Platonist Philon not the creator of that specific wisdom, so Peter was not God because of his enlightenment by the Spirit of God. Paul clearly sets forth, in the passage just quoted, that the human soul cannot discern the truths concerning God but only through His Spirit, inspiration, and direction.

(c) Again, in 1 Cor. vi. 19 we read that the righteous worshipers of God are called "the temple of the Holy Spirit" which they "received from God." Here again the Spirit of God is not indicated to be a person or an angel, but His virtue, word, or power and religion. Both the body and the soul of a righteous believer are compared with a temple dedicated to the worship of the Eternal.

(d) In the Epistle to the Romans (viii. 9) this same spirit that "lives" within the believers is called alternately "the Spirit of God" and the "Spirit of Christ." In this passage "the Spirit" means simply the faith and the true religion of God which Jesus proclaimed. Surely this spirit cannot mean to be the Christian ideal of the Holy Ghost, viz. another third of the three. We Muslims always wish and intend to regulate our lives and conduct ourselves in accordance with the spirit of Prophet Muhammad, meaning thereby that we are resolved to be faithful to the religion of Allah in much the same way as the Last Prophet was. For the holy Spirit in Prophet Muhammad, in Prophet Jesus, and in every other prophet was no other than the Spirit of Allah - praised be His Holy Name! This spirit is called "holy" to distinguish it from the impure and wicked spirit of the devil and his companions. This spirit is not a divine person, but a divine ray that enlightens and sanctifies the people of God.

(e) The Gospel formula, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," even if authentic and truly prescribed by Christ, may be legitimately accepted as a formula of faith before the formal establishment of Islam, which is the real Kingdom of God upon earth. God Almighty in His quality of Creator is the Father of all beings, things, and intelligences, but not the Father of one particular son. The Orientalists know that the Semitic word "abb" or "abba," which is translated as "father," means "one who brings forth, or bears fruit" ("ibba" = fruit). This sense of the word is quite intelligible and its use legitimate enough. The Bible frequently makes use of the appellation "Father." God, somewhere in the Bible, says: "Israel is my first-born son"; and elsewhere in the book of Job He is called "the father of the rain." It is because of the abuse of this Divine Appellation of the Creator by Christendom that the Qur'an refrains from using it. From a purely Muslim point of belief the Christian dogma concerning the eternal birth or generation of the Son is a blasphemy.
Whether the Christian baptismal formula is authentic or spurious I believe there is a hidden truth in it. For it must be admitted that the Evangelists never authorize the use of it in any other ritual, prayer, or creed other than that of Baptism. This point is extremely important. St. John had foretold the Baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire by the Prophet Muhammad, as we saw in the preceding articles. The immediate Baptizer being God Himself, and the mediate the Son of Man or the Barnasha of the vision of Daniel, it was perfectly just and legitimate to mention those two names as the first and second efficient causes; and the name of the Holy Spirit, too, as the causa materialis of the Sibghatullah! Now the Divine Appellation "Father," before its abuse by the Church, was rightly invoked. In fact, the Sibghatullah is a new birth, a nativity into the Kingdom of God which is Islam. The Baptizer who causes this regeneration is directly Allah. To be born in the religion if Islam, to be endowed with the faith in the true God, is the greatest favor and gift of the "Heavenly Father" - to use the evangelistic expression. In this respect God is infinitely more beneficent than an earthly father.

As regards the second name in the formula, "the Son," one is at a loss to know who or what this "son" is? Whose son? If God is rightly addressed "Father," then one is curious, inquisitive, and anxious to know which of His innumerable "sons" is intended in the baptismal formula. Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father who art in heaven." If we are all His sons in the sense of His creatures, then the mention of the word "son" in the formula becomes somehow senseless and even ridiculous. We know that the name "the Son of Man" - or "Barnasha" - is mentioned eighty-three times in the discourses of Jesus. The Qur'an never calls Jesus "the son of man" but always "the son of Mary." He could not call himself "the son of man" because he was only "the son of woman." There is no getting away from the fact. You may make him "the son of God" as you do, but you can't make him "the son of man" unless you believe him to be the offspring of Joseph or someone else, and consequently fasten on to him the taint of illegitimacy.

I don't know exactly how, whether through intuition, inspiration, or dream, I am taught and convinced that the second name in the formula is an ill-fated corruption of "the Son of Man," viz. the Barnasha of Daniel (vii.), and therefore Ahmad "the Periqlytos" (Paraclete) of St. John's Gospel.

As to the Holy Spirit in the formula, it is not a person or an individual spirit, but an agency, force, energy of God with which a man is born or converted into the religion and knowledge of the One God.

2. - WHAT THE EARLY FATHERS OF THE NASARA (CHRISTIANITY) SAY ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

(a) Hermas (Similitude v. 5, 6) understands, by the "Holy Spirit," the divine element in Christ, namely the Son created before all things. Without entering into the useless or rather meaningless discussion whether Hermas confounds the Holy Spirit with the Word, or if it is a distinct element belonging to Christ, it is admitted that the latter was created before all things - that is to say, in the beginning - and that the Spirit in Hermas' belief is not a person.

(b) Justin - called the "Martyr" (100?-167? A.C.) - and Theophilus (120?-180? A.C.) understand by the Holy Spirit sometimes a peculiar form of the manifestation of the Word and sometimes a divine attribute, but never a divine person. It must be remembered that these two Greek fathers and writers of the second century A.C. had no definite knowledge and belief about the Holy Ghost of the Trinitarians of the fourth and the succeeding centuries.

(c) Athenagoras (110-180 A.C.) says the Holy Spirit is an emanation of God proceeding from and returning to Him like the rays of the sun (Deprecatio pro Christiarus, ix, x). Irenaeus (130?-202? A.C.) says that the Holy Spirit and the Son are two worshipers of God and that the angels submit to them. The wide difference between the belief and the conceptions of these two early fathers about the Holy Spirit is too obvious to need any further comment. It is surprising that the two worshipers of God, according to the declaration of such an authority as Irenaeus, should, two centuries afterwards, be raised to the dignity of God and proclaimed two divine persons in company with the one true God by whom they were created.

(d) The most illustrious and learned of all the ante-Nicene fathers and the Christian apologists was Origen (185-254 A C.). The author of the Hexepla ascribes personality to the Holy Spirit, but makes it a creature of the Son. The creation of the Holy Spirit by the Son cannot be even in the beginning when the Word - or the Son - was created by God.

The doctrine concerning this Holy Spirit was not sufficiently developed in 325 A.C., and therefore was not defined by the Council of Nicea. It was only in 386 A.C. at the second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople that it was declared to be the Third Person of the Trinity, consubstantial and coeval with the Father and the Son.

3. - The "Paraclete" does not signify either "consoler" or "advocate"; in truth, it is not a classical word at all. The Greek orthography of the word is Paraklytos which in ecclesiastical literature is made to mean "one called to aid, advocate, intercessor" (Dict. Grec.-Francais, by Alexandre). One need not profess to be a Greek scholar to know that the Greek word for "comforter or consoler" is not "Paraclytos" but "Paracalon". I have no Greek version of the Septuagint with me, but I remember perfectly well that the Hebrew word for "comforter" ("mnahem") in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (i. 2, 9, 16, 17, 21, etc.) is translated into Parakaloon, from the verb Parakaloo, which means to call to, invite, exhort, console, pray, invoke. It should be noticed that there is a long alpha vowel after the consonant kappa in the "Paracalon" which does not exist in the "Paraclytos." In the phrase (He who consoles us in all our afflictions") "paracalon" and not "paraclytos" is used. ("I exhort, or invite, thee to work"). Many other examples can be cited here.

There is another Greek word for comforter and consoler, i.e. "Parygorytys" from "I console."
As to the other meaning of "intercessor or advocate" which is given in the ecclesiastical word "Paraclete," I again insist that "Paracalon" and not "Paraclytos" can convey in itself a similar sense. The proper Greek term for "advocate" is Sunegorus and for "intercessor" or "mediator" Meditea.

In my next article I shall give the true Greek form of which Paraklytos is a corruption. En passant, I wish to correct an error into which the French savant Ernest Renan has also fallen. If I recollect well, Monsieur Renan, in his famous The Life of Christ, interprets the "Paraclete" of St John (xiv. 16, 26; xv. 7; 1 John ii. 1) as an "advocate." He cites the Syro-Chaldean form "Peraklit" as opposed to "Ktighra" "the accuser" from Kategorus. The Syrian name for mediator or intercessor is "mis'aaya," but in law courts the "Snighra" (from the Greek Sunegorus) is used for an advocate. Many Syrians unfamiliar with the Greek language consider the "Paraqlita" to be really the Aramaic or the Syriac form of the "Paraclete" in the Pshittha Version and to be composed of "Paraq," "to save from, to deliver from," and "lita" "the accursed." The idea that Christ is the "Savior from the curse of the law," and therefore he is himself too "Paraqlita" (1 John ii. 1), may have led some to think that the Greek word is originally an Aramaic word, just as the Greek sentence "Maran atha" in Aramaic is "Maran Athi," i.e. "our Lord is coming" (1 John xvi. 22), which seems to be an expression among the believers regarding the coming of the Last Great Prophet. This 'Maran Athi," as well as, especially, the baptismal formula, contains points too important to be neglected. They both deserve a special study and a valuable exposition. They both embody in themselves marks and indications otherwise than favorable to Christianity.

I think I have sufficiently proved that the "Paraclytos," from a linguistic and etymological point of view, does not mean "advocate, consoler, or comforter." For centuries the ignorant Latins and Europeans have been writing the name of Prophet Muhammad "Mahomet," that of Mushi "Moses." Is it, therefore, small wonder that some sturdy Christian monk or scribe should have written the true name in the corrupted form of Paraklytos? The former means the "most Illustrious, Praiseworthy," but the corrupted form means nothing at all except a standing shame to those who have for eighteen centuries understood it to signify an advocate or a consoler.

"Periqlytos" Means "Ahmad"

The Holy Qur'an (ch.61:6 ) declares that Jesus announced unto the people of Israel the coming of Ahmad: "And when Jesus, the son of Mary said: 'Children of Israel, I am sent to you by Allah to confirm the Torah that is before me, and to give news of a Messenger who will come after me whose name shall be Ahmad.' Yet when he came to them with clear proofs, they said: 'This is clear sorcery.'"

"And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Periqlytos, that he may stay with you for ever" (John xiv. 16, etc.).

There is some incoherency in the words ascribed to Jesus by the Fourth Gospel. It reads as if several Periqlytes had already come and gone, and that "another Periqlytos" would be given only at the request of Jesus. These words also leave behind the impression that the Apostles were already made familiar with this name which the Greek text renders Periqlytos. The adjective "another" preceding a foreign noun for the first time announced seems very strange and totally superfluous. There is no doubt that the text has been tampered with and distorted. It pretends that the Father will send the Periqlyte at the request of Jesus, otherwise the Periqlyte would never have come! The word "ask," too, seems superficial, and unjustly displays a touch of arrogance on the part of the Prophet of Nazareth. If we want to find out the real sense in these words we must correct the text and supply the stolen or corrupted words, thus:

"I shall go to the Father, and he shall send you another messenger whose name shall be Periqlytos, that he may remain with you for ever." Now with the additional italicized words, both the robbed modesty of Jesus is restored and the nature of the Periqlyte identified.

We have already seen that the Periqlyte is not the Holy Spirit, that is to say, a divine person, Gabriel, or any other angel. It now remains to prove that the Periqlyte could not be a consoler nor an advocate between God and men.

1. The Periqlyte is not the "Consoler" nor the "Intercessor." We have fully shown the material impossibility of discovering the least signification of "consolation" or of "intercession". Christ does not use Paraqalon. Besides, even from a religious and moral point of view the idea of consolation and intercession is inadmissible.

(a) The belief that the death of Jesus upon the Cross redeemed the believers from the curse of original sin, and that his spirit, grace, and presence in the Eucharist would be for ever with them, left them in need of no consolation nor of the coming of a consoler at all. On the other hand, if they needed such a comforter, then all the Christian presumptions and pretensions concerning the sacrifice of Calvary fall to the ground. In fact, the language of the Gospels and that of the Epistles explicitly indicates that the second coming Jesus upon the clouds was imminent (Matt. xvi. 28; Mark ix. 1; Luke ix. 27; 1 John ii. 18; 2 Tim. ii. 1; 2 Thess. ii. 3, etc.).

(b) Consolation can never make restitution of the loss. To console a man who has lost his sight, wealth, son, or situation, cannot restore any of those losses. The promise that a consoler would be sent by God after Jesus had gone would indicate the total collapse of all hope in the triumph of the Kingdom of God. The promise of a consoler indicates mourning and lamentation and would naturally drive the Apostles into disappointment if not into despair. They needed, not a consoler in their distress and afflictions, but a victorious warrior to crush the devil and his power, one who would put an end to their troubles and persecutions.

(c) The idea of an "intercessor" between God and man is even more untenable than that of the "consoler." There is no absolute mediator between the Creator and the creature. The Oneness of Allah alone is our absolute intercessor. The Christ who advised his audience to pray to God in secret, to enter the closet and shut the door and then to pray - for only under such a condition their heavenly "Father" would hear their prayer and grant them His grace and succor - could not promise them an intercessor. How to reconcile this contradiction!

(d) All believers, in their prayers, intercede for each other, the prophets and angels do the same. It is our duty to invoke the Mercy of Allah, pardon, and help for ourselves as well as for others. But Allah is not bound or obliged to accept the intercession of anyone unless He pleases. If Allah had accepted the intercession of His Holy Prophet Muhammad, all men and women would have been converted to the religion of Islam.

I would be duly grateful to the person through whose intercession I obtained pardon, and relief. But I shall always dread the judge or the despot who was delivering me into the hands of an executioner. How learned these Christians are, when they believe that Jesus at the right hand of his Father intercedes for them, and at the same time believe in another intercessor - inferior to himself - who sits on the throne of the Almighty! The Holy Qur'an strictly forbids the faith, the trust in a "shafi" or intercessor in this manner. Of course, we do not know for certain but it is quite conceivable that certain angels, the spirits of the prophets and those of the saints, are permitted by God to render help and guidance to those who are placed under their patronage. The idea of an advocate before the tribunal of God, pleading the cause of his clients, may be very admirable, but it is erroneous, because God is not a human judge subject to passion, ignorance, partiality, and all the rest of it. The Muslims, the believers, need only education and religious training; God knows the actions and the hearts of men infinitely better than the angels and prophets. Consequently there is no necessity for intercessors between the Deity and the creatures.

It is worth noting that the intercession of any good person for others is limited to those who followed his prophet and those who accepted the suceeding prophet, but not for those who followed his prophet then rejected the suceeding prophet.

(e) The belief in intercessors emanates from the belief in sacrifices, burnt offerings, priesthood, and a massive edifice of superstition. This belief leads men into the worship of sepulchers and images of saints and martyrs; it helps to increase the influence and domination of the priest and monk; it keeps the people ignorant in the things divine; a dense cloud of the intermediary dead cover the spiritual atmosphere between God and the spirit of man. Then this belief prompts men who, for the pretended glory of God and the conversion of the people belonging to a different religion than theirs, raise immense sums of money, establish powerful and rich missions, and lordly mansions; but at heart those missionaries are political agents of their respective Governments. The real cause of the calamities which have befallen the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Chaldeo-Assyrians in Turkey and Persia ought to be sought in the treacherous and revolutionary instruction given by all the foreign missions in the East. Indeed, the belief in the intercessors has always been a source of abuse, fanaticism, persecution, ignorance, and of many other evils.

Having proved that the "Paraclete" of St. John's Gospel does not and cannot mean either "consoler" or "advocate," nor any other thing at all, and that it is a corrupted form of Periqlytos, we shall now proceed to discuss the real signification of it.
2. Periqlytos etymologically and literally means "the most illustrious, renowned, and praiseworthy." I take for my authority Alexandre's Dictionnaire Grec-Francais=Periqlytos, "Qu'on peut entendre de tous les cotes; qu'il est facile a entendre. Tres celebre," etc. "= Periqleitos, tres celebre, illustre, glorieux; = Periqleys, tres celebre, illustre, glorieux," from = Kleos, glorire, renommee, celebrite." This compound noun is composed of the prefix "peri," and "kleotis," the latter derived from "to glorify, praise." The noun, which I write in English characters Periqleitos or Periqlytos, means precisely what AHMAD means in Arabic, namely the most illustrious, glorious, and renowned. The only difficulty to be solved and overcome is to discover the original Semitic name used by Jesus Christ either in Hebrew or Aramaic.

(a) The Syriac Pshittha, while writing "Paraqleita," does not even in a glossary give its meaning. But the Vulgate translates it into "consolator" or "consoler." If I am not mistaken the Aramaic form must have been "Mhamda" or "Hamida"' to correspond with the Arabic "Muhammad" or "Ahmad" and the Greek 'Periqlyte."
The interpretation of the Greek word in the sense of consolation does not imply that the name Periqlyte itself is the consoler, but the belief and the hope in the promise that he will come "to console the early Christians. The expectation that Jesus would come down again in glory before many of his auditors had "tasted the death" had disappointed them, and concentrated all their hopes in the coming of the Periqlyte.

(b) The Qur'anic revelation that Jesus, the son of Mary, declared unto the people of Israel that he was "bringing glad tidings of a messenger, who shall come after me and whose name shall be Ahmad," is one of the strongest proofs that Prophet Muhammad was truly a Prophet and that the Qur'an is really a Divine Revelation. He could never have known that the Periqlyte meant Ahmad, unless through inspiration and Divine Revelation. The authority of the Qur'an is decisive and final; for the literal signification of the Greek name exactly and indisputably corresponds with Ahmad and Muhammad.
Indeed, the Angel Gabriel, or the Holy Spirit, seems even to have distinguished the positive from the superlative form the former signifying precisely Muhammad and the latter Ahmad.
It is marvelous that this unique name, never before given to any other person, was miraculously preserved for the most Illustrious and Praiseworthy Prophet of Allah! We never come across any Greek bearing the name Periqleitos (or Periqlytos), nor any Arab bearing the name of Ahmad. True, there was a famous Athenian called Periqleys which means "illustrious," etc., but not in the superlative degree.

(c) It is quite clear from the description of the Fourth Gospel that Periqlyte is a definite person, a created holy spirit, who would come and dwell in a human body to perform and accomplish the prodigious work assigned to him by God, which no other man, including Moses, Jesus, and any other prophet, had ever accomplished.
We, of course, do not deny that the disciples of Prophet Jesus did receive the Spirit of God, that the true converts to the faith of Jesus were hallowed with the Holy Spirit, and that there were numerous Unitarian Christians who led a saintly and righteous life. On the day of the Pentecost - that is, ten days after the Ascension of Jesus Christ - the Spirit of God descended upon the disciples and other believers numbering one hundred and twenty persons, in the form of tongues of fire (Acts ii.); and this number, which had received the Holy Spirit in the form of one hundred and twenty tongues of fire, was increased unto three thousand souls who were baptized, but were not visited by the flame of the Spirit. Surely one definite Spirit cannot be divided into six-score of individuals. By the Holy Spirit, unless definitely described as a personality, we may understand it to be God's power, grace, gift, action, and inspiration. Jesus had promised this heavenly gift and power to sanctify, enlighten, strengthen, and teach his flock; but this Spirit was quite different from the Periqlyte who alone accomplished the great work which Jesus and after him the Apostles were not authorized and empowered to accomplish, as we shall see later.

(d) The early Christians of the first and second centuries relied more upon tradition than upon writings concerning the new religion. Papias and others belong to this category. Even in the lifetime of the Apostles several sects, pseudochrists, Antichrists, and false teachers, tore asunder the Church (I John ii. 18-26; 2 Thess. ii. 1-12; 2 Peter ii. iii. 1; John 7-13; 1 Tim. iv. 1-3; 2 Tim. iii. 1-13; etc.). The "believers" are advised and exhorted to stick to and abide by the Tradition, namely, the oral teaching of the Apostles. These so-called "heretical" sects, such as the Gnostics, Apollinarians, Docetae, and others, appear to have no faith in the fables, legends, and extravagant views about the sacrifice and the redemption of Jesus Christ as contained in many fabulous writings spoken of by Luke (i. 1-4). One of the heresiarchs of a certain sect - whose name has escaped my memory - actually assumed "Periqleitos" as his name, pretending to be "the most praiseworthy" Prophet foretold by Jesus, and had many followers. If there were an authentic Gospel authorized by Jesus Christ or by all the Apostles, there could be no such numerous sects, all opposed to the contents of the books contained in or outside the existing New Testament. We can safely infer from the action of the pseudo-Periqlyte that the early Christians considered the promised "Spirit of Truth" to be a person and the final Prophet of God.

3. There is not the slightest doubt that by "Periqlyte," Prophet Muhammad, i.e. Ahmad, is intended. The two names, one in Greek and the other in Arabic, have precisely the same signification, and both mean the "most Illustrious and Praised," just as "Pneuma" and "Ruh." mean nothing more or less than "Spirit" in both languages. We have seen that the translation of the word into "consoler" or "advocate" is absolutely untenable and wrong. The compound form of Paraqalon is derived from the verb composed of the prefix-Para-qalo, but the Periqlyte is derived from the Peri-qluo. The difference is as clear as anything could be. Let us examine, then, the marks of the Periqlyte which can only be found in Ahmad - Prophet Muhammad.

(a) Prophet Muhammad alone revealed the whole truth about God, His Oneness, religion, and corrected the impious libels and calumnies written and believed against Himself and many of His holy worshipers.
Jesus is reported to have said about Periqlyte that he is "the Spirit of Truth," that he "will give witness" concerning the true nature of Jesus and of his mission (John xiv. 17; xv. 26). In his discourses and orations Jesus speaks of the pre-existence of his own spirit (John viii. 58 xvii. 5, etc.). In the Gospel of Barnabas, Jesus is reported to have often spoken of the glory and the splendor of Prophet Muhammad's spirit whom he had seen. There is no doubt that the Spirit of the Last Prophet was created long before Adam. Therefore Jesus, in speaking about him, naturally would declare and describe him as "the Spirit of Truth." It was this Spirit of Truth that reprimanded the Christians for dividing the Oneness of God into a trinity of persons; for their having raised Jesus to the dignity of God and son of God, and for their having invented all sorts of superstitions and innovations. It was this Spirit of Truth that exposed the frauds of both the Jews and Christians for having corrupted their Scriptures; that condemned the former for their libels against the chastity of the Blessed Virgin and against the birth of her son Jesus. It was this Spirit of Truth that demonstrated the birthright of Ishmael, the innocence of Lot, Solomon, and many other prophets of old and cleared their name of the slur and infamy cast upon them by the Jewish forgers. It was this Spirit of Truth, too, that gave witness about the true Jesus, man, prophet, and worshiper of God; and has made it absolutely impossible for Muslims to become idolaters, magicians, and believers in more than the One and only Allah.

(b) Among the principal marks of Periqlyte, "the Spirit of Truth," when he comes in the person of the "Son of Man" - Ahmad - is "he will chastise the world for sin" (John xvi. 8, 9). No other worshiper of Allah, whether a king like David and Solomon or a prophet like Abraham and Moses, did carry on this chastisement for sin to the extreme end, with resolution, fervor, and courage as Prophet Muhammad did. Every breach of the law is a sin, but idolatry is its mother and source. We sin against God when we love an object more than Him, but the worship of any other object or being besides God is idolatry, the evil and the total negligence of the Good - in short, sin in general. All the men of God chastised their neighbors and people for sin, but not "the world," as Prophet Muhammad did. He not only rooted out idolatry in the peninsula of Arabia in his lifetime, but also he sent envoys to the Chosroes Parviz and to Heraclius, the sovereigns of the two greatest empires, Persia and Rome, and to the King of Ethiopia, the Governor of Egypt, and several other Kings and amirs, inviting them all to embrace the religion of Islam and to abandon idolatry and false faiths. The chastisement by Prophet Muhammad began with the delivery of the Word of God as he received it, namely, the recital of the verses of the Qur'an; then with preaching, teaching, and practicing the true religion; but when the Power of Darkness, idolatry, opposed him with arms he drew the sword and punished the unbelieving enemy. This was in fulfillment of the decree of God (Dan. vii.). Prophet Muhammad was endowed by God with power and dominion to establish the Kingdom of God, and to become the first Prince and Commander-in-Chief under the "King of Kings and the Lord of Lords."

(c) The other characteristic feature of the exploits of Periqlyte - Ahmad - is that he will reprove the world of righteousness and justice (loc. cit.). The interpretation "of righteousness, because I am going to my Father" (John xvi. 10) put into the mouth of Jesus is obscure and ambiguous. The return of Jesus unto his God is given as one of the reasons for the chastisement of the world by the coming Periqlyte. Why so? And who did chastise the world on that account? The Jews believed that they crucified and killed Jesus, and did not believe that he was raised and taken up into heaven. It was Prophet Muhammad who chastised and punished them severely for their infidelity. "Rather, Allah raised him (Jesus) up to Him..." (Qur'an Ch.4 v158). The same chastisement was inflicted upon the Christians who believed and still believe that he was really crucified and killed upon the Cross, and imagine him to be God or the son of God. To these the Qur'an replied: "...They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but to them (the one crucified) was given the look (of Jesus). Those who differ concerning him (Jesus) surely are in doubt regarding him, they have no knowlege of him, except the following of supposition and they did not kill him - a certainty." (Ch.4 v157) Several believers in Jesus in the very beginning of Christianity denied that Christ himself suffered upon the Cross, but maintained that another among his followers, Judas Iscariot or another very like him, was seized and crucified in his stead. The Corinthians, the Basilidians, the Corpocratians and many other sectaries held the same view. I have fully discussed this question of the Crucifixion in my work entitled Injil wa Salib ("The Gospel and the Cross") of which only one volume was published in Turkish just before the Great War. I shall devote an article to this subject. So the justice done to Jesus by Ahmad was to authoritatively declare that he was "Ruhu 'l-Lah," the Spirit of God that he was not himself crucified and killed, and that he was a human being but a beloved and Holy Messenger of God. This was what Jesus meant by justice concerning his person, mission, and transportation into heaven, and this was actually accomplished by the Prophet and Messenger of Allah, Muhammad.

(d) The most important mark of Periqlyte is that he would chastise the world on account of Judgement "because the prince of this world is to be judged" (John xvi. 11). The King or Prince of this world was satan (John xii. 31, xiv. 30), because the world was subject to him. I must draw the kind attention of my readers to the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel written in Aramaic or Babylonian dialect. There it illustrates how the "thrones" ("Kursawan") and the "Judgment" ("dina") were set up, and the "books" ("siphrin") were opened. In Arabic, too, the word "dinu", like the Aramaic "dina," means judgment, but it is generally used to signify religion. That the Qur'an should make use of the "Dina" of Daniel as an expression of judgment and religion is more than significant. In my humble opinion this is a direct sign and evidence of the truth revealed by the same Holy Spirit or Gabriel to Prophets Daniel, Jesus, and Muhammad. Prophet Muhammad could not forge or fabricate this even if he were as learned a philosopher as Aristotle. The judgment described with all its majesty and glory was set up to judge the satan in the form of the fearful fourth Beast by the Supreme Judge, the Eternal. It was then that someone appeared "like a son of man" ("kbar inish") or "barnasha," who was presented to the Almighty, invested with power, honor, and kingdom for ever, and appointed to kill the Beast and to establish the Kingdom of the People of the Saints of the Most High.
Jesus Christ was not appointed to destroy the Beast; he abstained from political affairs, paid tribute to caesar, and fled away when they wanted to crown him King. He clearly declares that the Chief of this world is coming; for the Periqlyte will root out the abominable cult of idolatry. All this was accomplished by Prophet Muhammad in a few years. Islam is Kingdom and Judgment, or religion; it has the Book of Law, the Holy Al-Qur'an; it has Allah as its Supreme Judge and King, and Prophet Muhammad as its victorious hero of everlasting bliss and glory!

(e) "The last but not the least mark of the Periqlyte is that he will not speak anything of himself, but whatsoever he hears that will he speak, and he will show you the future things" (John xv. 13). There is not one iota, not a single word or comment of Prophet Muhammad or of his devoted and holy companions in the text of the glorious Qur'an. All its contents are the revealed Word of Allah. Prophet Muhammad recited, pronounced the Word of God as he heard it read to him by the Angel Gabriel, and then it was memorized and written by the faithful scribes. The words, sayings, and teachings of the Prophet, though sacred and edifying, are not the Word of God,. and they are called Hadith or Traditions.
Is he not, then, even in this description, the true Periqlyte? Can you show us another person, besides Ahmad, to possess in himself all these material, moral, and practical qualities, marks, and distinctions of Periqlyte? You cannot.
I think I have said enough on the Periqlyte and shall conclude with a sacred verse from the Qur'an: "I follow only what is revealed to me, I am only a clear warner." Ch.46:9.

"The Son Of Man," Who Is He?

The Holy Qur'an presents to us the true Jesus Christ as "the Son of Mary;" and the Holy Gospels, too, present him to us as "the Son of Mary;" but that Gospel which was written on the white tablets of the heart of Jesus and delivered to his disciples and followers orally, alas was soon adulterated with a mass of myth and legend. "The Son of Mary" becomes "the Son of Joseph," having brothers and sisters (1). Then he becomes "the Son of David;" (2) "the Son of Man;" (3) "the Son of God;" (4) "the Son" only;(5) "the Christ;" and "the Lamb" (7).

------------ Footnotes: 1. Matt. xiii 55,56; Mark vi 3; iii 31; Luke ii 48; viii 19-21; John ii 12; vii 3, 5; Acts i 14; I Cor. ix. 5; Gal. i 19; Jude i 2. Matt xxii 42, Mark xii 35, Luke xx 41, Matt. xx 30; ix 27; xxi 9; Acts xiii 22, 23; Apoc. v 5; Rom. xv 12; Heb. vii 14, etc. 3. About eighty-three times in the discourses of Jesus this appellation is repeated. 4. Matt. xiv 32, xvi 16; John xi 27; Acts ix 20; I John iv 15; v 5; Heb. i 2, 5, etc. 5. John v 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, etc.; and in the Baptismal formula, Matt. xxviii. 19; John i. 34, etc. 6. Matt. xvi. 16, and frequently in the Epistles. 7. John i. 29, 36; and often in the Revelation. ----------- end of footnotes

Many years ago, one day I visited the Exeter Hall in London; I was a Catholic priest then; nolens volens I was conducted to the Hall where a young medical gentleman began to preach to a meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association. "I repeat what I have often said," exclaimed the doctor, "Jesus Christ must be either what he claims to be in the Gospel or he must be the greatest impostor the world has ever seen!" I have never forgotten this dogmatizing statement. What he wanted to say was that Jesus was either the Son of God or the greatest impostor. If you accept the first hypothesis you are a Christian, a Trinitarian; if the second, then you are an unbelieving Jew. But we who accept neither of these two propositions are naturally Muslims. We Muslims cannot accept either of the two titles given to Jesus Christ in the sense which the Churches and their unreliable Scriptures pretend to ascribe to those appellations. Not alone is he "the Son of God," and not alone "the Son of Man," for if it be permitted to call God "Father," then not only Jesus, but every prophet and righteous believer, is particularly a "son of God." In the same way, if Jesus were really the son of Joseph the Carpenter, and had four brothers and several married sisters as the Gospels pretend, then why alone should he assume this strange appellation of "the Son of Man" which is common to any human being?

It would seem that these Christian priests and pastors, theologians and apologists have a peculiar logic of their own for reasoning and a special propensity for mysteries and absurdities. Their logic knows no medium, no distinction of the terms, and no definite idea of the titles and appellations they use. They have an enviable taste for irreconcilable and contradictory statements which they alone can swallow like boiled eggs. They can believe, without the least hesitation, that Mary was both virgin and wife, that Joseph was both spouse and husband, that James, Jossi, Simon, and Judah were both cousins of Jesus and his brothers, that Jesus is perfect God and perfect man, and that "the Son of God," "the Son of Man," "the Lamb," and "the Son of David" are all one and the same person! They feed themselves on heterogeneous and opposed doctrines which these terms represent with as greedy an appetite as they feel for bacon and eggs at breakfast. They never stop to think and ponder on the object they worship; they adore the crucifix and the Almighty as if they were kissing the bloody dagger of the assassin of their brother in the presence of his father!

I do not think there is even one Christian in ten millions who really has a precise idea or a definite knowledge about the origin and the true signification of the term "the Son of Man." All Churches and their commentators without exception will tell you that "the Son of God" assumed the appellation of "the Son of Man" or "the Barnasha" out of humility and meekness, never knowing that the Jewish Apocalyptical Scriptures, in which Jesus and his disciples heart and soul believed, foretold not a "Son of Man" who would be meek, humble, having nowhere to lay his head, and be delivered into the hands of the evildoers and killed, but a strong man with tremendous power and strength to destroy and disperse the birds of prey and the ferocious beasts that were tearing and devouring his sheep and lambs! The Jews who heard Jesus speaking of "the Son of Man" full well understood to whom he was alluding. Jesus did not invent the name "Barnasha," but borrowed it from the Apocalyptical Jewish Scriptures: the Book of Enoch, the Sibylline Books, the Assumption of Moses, the Book of Daniel, etc. Let us examine the origin of this title "the Barnasha" or "the Son of Man."

1. "The Son of Man" is the Last Prophet, who established "the Kingdom of Peace" and saved the people of God from servitude and persecutions under the idolatrous powers of satan. The title "Barnasha" is a symbolical expression to distinguish the Savior from the people of God who are represented as the "sheep," and the other idolatrous nations of the earth under various species of the birds of prey, ferocious beasts, and unclean animals. The Prophet Hezekiel is almost always addressed by God as "Ben Adam," that is "the Son of Man" (or of Adam) in the sense of a Shepherd of the Sheep of Israel. This Prophet has also some Apocalyptical portions in his book. In his first vision with which he begins his prophetic book he sees besides the sapphire throne of the Eternal the appearance of "the Son of Man." (l) This "Son of Man" who is repeatedly mentioned as always in the presence of God and above the Cherubim is not Hezekiel (or Ezekiel) him- self (2). He is the prophetical "Barnasha," the Last Prophet, who was appointed to save the people of God from the hands of the unbelievers here upon this earth, and not elsewhere!

------------- Footnotes: 1. Ezek. i. 26. 2. Ezek. x. 2. ------------- end of footnotes

(a) "The Son of Man" according to the Apocalypse of Enoch (or Henoh). 

There is no doubt that Jesus Christ was very familiar with the Revelation of Enoch, believed to be written by the seventh patriarch from Adam. For Judah, "the brother of James" and the "servant of Jesus Christ," that is the brother of Jesus, believes that Enoch was the real author of the work bearing his name (l). There are some dispersed frag- ments of this wonderful Apocalypse preserved in the quotations of the Early Christian writers. The book was lost long before Photius. It was only about the beginning of last century that this important work was found in the Canon of the Scriptures belonging to the Abyssinian Church, and translated from the Ethiopic into the German language by Dr. Dillmann, with notes and explanations (2). The book is divided into five parts or books, and the whole contains one hundred and ten chapters of unequal length. The author describes the fall of the angels, their illicit commerce with the daughters of men, giving birth to a race of giants who invent all sorts of artifices and noxious knowledge. Then vice and evil increase to such a pitch that the Almighty punishes them all with the Deluge. He also relates his two journeys to the heavens and across the earth, being guided by good angels, and the mysteries and wonders he saw therein. In the second part, which is a description of the Kingdom of Peace, "the Son of Man" catches the kings in the midst of their voluptuous life and precipitates them into hell (3). But this second book does not belong to one author, and assuredly it is much corrupted by Christian hands. The third book (or part) contains some curious and developed astronomical and physical notions. The fourth part presents an Apocalyptical view of the human race from the beginning to the Islamic days, which the author styles the "Messianic" times, in two symbolical parables or rather allegories. A white bull comes out of the earth; then a white heifer joins him they give birth to two calves: one black, the other red; the black bull beats and chases away the red one; then he meets a heifer and they give birth to several calves of black color, until the mother cow leaves the black bull in the search the red one; and, as she does not find him, bawls and shrieks aloud, when a red bull appears, and they begin to propagate their species. Of course, this transparent parable symbolizes Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Sheth, etc., down to Jacob whose offspring is represented by a "flock of sheep" - as the Chosen People of Israel; but the offspring of his brother Esau, i.e. the Edomites, is described as a swarm of boars. In this second parable the flock of sheep is frequently harassed, attacked, dispersed, and butchered by the beasts and birds of prey until we come to the so-called Messianic times, when the flock of sheep is again attacked fiercely by ravens and other carnivorous animals; but a gallant "Ram" resists with great courage and valor. It is then that "the Son of Man," who is the real master or owner of the flock, comes forth to deliver his flock.

------------- Footnote: (1). Judah i. 14. In the Gospels he is mentioned as one of the four brothers of Jesus, Matt. xiii. 55, 56, etc. (2). It has also been translated into English by an Irish Bishop Laurence. (3). Enoch xlvi. 4 - 8. ------------

A non-Muslim scholar can never explain the vision of a Sophee - or a Seer. He will - as all of them do - bring down the vision to the Maccabees and the King Antiochus Epiphanes in the middle of the second century B.C., when the Deliverer comes with a tremendous truncheon or scepter and strikes right and left upon the birds and the beasts, making a great slaughter among them; the earth, opening its mouth, swallows them in; and the rest take to flight. Then swords are distributed among the sheep, and a white bull leads them on in perfect peace and security.

As to the fifth book, it contains religious and moral exhortations. The whole work in its present shape exhibits indications which show that it was composed as late as 110 B.C., in the original Aramaic dialect, by a Palestinian Jew. At least such is the opinion of the French Encyclopedia.

The Qur'an only mentions Enoch under his surname "Idris" - the Arabic form of the Aramaic "Drisha" being of the same category of simple nouns as "Iblis" and "Blisa" (l) "Idris" and "Drisha" signify a man of great learning, a scholar and an erudite, from "darash" (Arabic "darisa"). The Qur'anic text says: "And mention in the Book Idris; he too was a man of truth and a Prophet, whom We exalted." Ch.19:56-57 Qur'an.

------------- Footnote: (1). "Iblis," the Arabic form of the Aramaic "Blisa," an epithet given to the devil which means the "Bruised One." ------------- end of footnote

The Muslim commentators, Al-Baydhawi and Jalalu 'd-Din, seem to know that Enoch had studied astronomy, physics, arithmetic, that he was the first who wrote with the pen, and that "Idris" signifies a man of much knowledge, thus showing that the Apocalypse of Enoch had not been lost in their time.

After the close of the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures in the fourth century or so B.C. by the "Members of the Great Synagogue," established by Ezra and Nehemiah, all other sacred or religious literature besides those included within the Canon was called Apocrypha and excluded from the Hebrew Bible by an assembly of the learned and pious Jews, the last of whom was the famous "Simeon the Just," who died in 310 B.C. Now among these Apocryphal books are included the Apocalypses of Enoch, Barukh, Moses, Ezra, and the Sibyline books, written at different epochs between the time of the Maccabees and after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. It seems to be quite a la mode with the Jewish Sages to compose Apocalyptical and religious literature under the name of some celebrated personage of antiquity. The Apocalypse at the end of the New Testament which bears the name of John the Divine is no exception to this old Judeo Christian habitude. If "Judah the brother of the Lord" could believe that "Henoh the Seventh from Adam" was really the author of the one hundred and ten chapters bearing that name, there is no wonder that Justin the Martyr, Papias, and Eusebius would believe in the authorship of Matthew and John.

However, my aim is not to criticize the authorship of, or to extend the comments upon these enigmatic and mysterious revelations which were compiled under the most painful and grievous circumstances in the history of the Jewish nation; but to give an account of the origin of this surname "the Son of Man" and to shed some light upon its true signification. The Book of Enoch too, like the Apocalypse of the Churches and like the Gospels, speaks of the coming of "the Son of Man" to deliver the people of God from their enemies and confuses this vision with the Last Judgment.

(b) The Sibylline Revelation, which was composed after the last collapse of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, states that "the Son of Man" will appear and destroy the Roman Empire and deliver the Believers in One God. This book was written at least fourscore years after Jesus Christ.

(c) We have already given an exposition of "the Son of Man" when we discussed the vision of Daniel, (l) where he is presented to the Almighty and invested with power to destroy the Roman Beast. So the visions, in the

"Assumption of Moses," in the Book of Baruch (or Barukh), more or less similar in their views and expectations to those described in the above-mentioned "Revelations," all unanimously describe the Deliverer of the people of God as "Barnasha" or "the Son of Man," to distinguish him from the "Monster;" for the former is created in the image of God and the latter transformed into the image of Satan.

------------ Footnotes: 1. Dan. vii. See the article, "Muhammad in the Old Testament," in the Islamic Review for November, 1938. ------------

2. The Apocalyptic "Son of Man" could not be Jesus Christ. 

This surname, "Son of Man," is absolutely inapplicable to the son of Mary. All the pretensions of the so-called "Gospels" which make the "Lamb" of Nazareth to "catch the kings in the midst of their voluptuous life and hurl them down into the Hell;" (1) lack every bit of authenticity, and the distance separating him from "the Son of Man" marching with the legions of angels upon the clouds towards the Throne of the Eternal is more than that of our globe from the planet of Jupiter. He may be a "son of man" and a "messiah," as every Jewish king, prophet, and high! priest was, but he was not "the Son of Man" nor "the Messiah" whom the Hebrew prophets and apocalyptists foretold. And the Jews were perfectly right to refuse him that title and office. They were certainly wrong to deny him his prophethood, and criminal to have shed his innocent blood - as they and the Christians believe. "The Assembly of the Great Synagogue," after the death of Simeon the just in 310 B.C., was replaced by the "Sanhedrin," whose president had the surname of "Nassi" or Prince. It is astonishing that the "Nassi" who passed the judgment against Jesus, saying: "It is more profitable that one man should die rather than the whole nation should be

destroyed," (2) was a prophet (3)! If he were a prophet, how was it that he did not recognize the prophetic mission or the Messianic character of "the Messiah"?

------------- Footnotes: (1). Enoch xlvi. 4 - 8. (2). John xi. 50. (3). Idem, 51. ------------- end of footnotes


Here are, then the principal reasons why Jesus was not "the Son of Man" nor the Apocalyptic Messiah:

(a) A messenger of God is not commissioned to pro- phesy about himself as a personage of some future epoch, or to foretell his own reincarnation and thus present him- self as the hero in some great future drama of the world. Jacob prophesied about "the Prophet of Allah," (1) Moses about a prophet who would come after him with the Law, and Israel was exhorted to "obey him; (2) Haggai foretold Ahmad (3); Malachi predicted the coming of the "Messenger of the Covenant" and of Elijah; (4) but none of the prophets ever did prophesy about his own second coming into the world. What is extremely abnormal in the case of Jesus is that he is made to pretend his identity with "the Son of Man," yet he is unable to do in the least degree the work that the foretold "Son of Man" was expected to accomplish! To declare to the Jews under the grip of Pilate that he was "the Son of Man," and then to pay tribute to Caesar; and to confess that "the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head;" and then to postpone the deliverance of the people from the Roman yoke to an indefinite future, was practically to trifle with his nation; and those who put all these incoherences as sayings in the mouth of Jesus only make idiots of themselves.

------------- Footnotes: (1) Gen. xlix. 10. (2) Deut. xviii. 15 (3). Hag. ii. 7. (4) Mal. iii. 1, iv. 5. ------------- end of footnotes

(b) Jesus knew better than everybody else in Israel who "the Son of Man" was and what was his mission. He was to dethrone the profligate kings and to cast them into the Hell-fire. The "Revelation of Baruch" and that of Ezra - the Fourth Book of Esdras in the Vulgate - speak of the appearance of "the Son of Man" who will establish the powerful Kingdom of Peace upon the ruins of the Roman Empire. All these Apocryphal Revelations show the state of the Jewish mind about the coming of the last great Deliverer whom they surname "the Son of Man" and "the Messiah." Jesus could not be unaware of and un- familiar with this literature and this ardent expectation of his people. He could not assume either of those two titles to himself in the sense which the Sanhedrin - that Supreme Tribunal of Jerusalem - and Judaism attached to them; for he was not "the Son of Man" and "the Messiah," because he had no political program and no social scheme, and because he was himself the precursor of "the Son of Man', and of "the Messiah" - the Adon, the Conquering Prophet, the Anointed and crowned Sultan of the Prophets.

(c) A critical examination of the surname "Son of Man" put three and eighty times in the mouth of the master will and must result in the only conclusion that he never appropriated it to himself; and in fact he often uses that title in the third person. A few examples will suffice to convince us that Jesus applied that surname to someone else who was to appear in the future.

(i) A Scribe, that is a learned man, says: "I will follow thee wheresoever thou goest." Jesus answers: "The foxes have their holes; the birds of heaven their own nests; but the Son of Man has no place where to lay his head." (1) In the verse following he refuses one of his followers per- mission to go and bury his father! You will find not a single saint, father, or commentator to have troubled his head or the faculty of reasoning in order to discover the very simple sense embodied in the refusal of Jesus to allow that learned Scribe to follow him. If he had place for thirteen heads he could certainly provide a place for the fourteenth too. Besides, he could have registered him among the seventy adherents he had (2). The Scribe in question was not an ignorant fisherman like the sons of Zebedee and of Jonah; he was a scholar and a practiced lawyer. There is no reason to suspect his sincerity; he was led to believe that Jesus was the predicted Messiah, the Son of Man, who at any moment might summon his heavenly legions and mount upon the throne of his ancestor David. Jesus perceived the erroneous notion of the Scribe, and plainly let him understand that he who had not two square yards of ground on earth to lay his head could naturally not be "the Son of Man"! He was not harsh to the Scribe; he benevolently saved him from wasting his time in the pursuit of a futile hope!

------------- Footnote: (1). Matt. viii. 20 (2). Luke x. 1 ------------- end of footnote

(ii) Jesus Christ is reported to have declared that the Son of Man "will separate the sheep from the goats." (1) The "sheep" symbolize the believing Israelites who will enter into the Kingdom but the "goats" signify the unbelieving Jews who had joined with the enemies of the true religion and were consequently doomed to perdition. This was practically what the Apocalypse of Enoch had predicted about the Son of Man. Jesus simply confirmed the revelation of Enoch and gave it a Divine character. He himself was sent to exhort the sheep of Israel (2) to remain faith- ful to God and await patiently the advent of the Son of Man who was coming to save them for ever from their enemies; but he himself was not the Son of Man, and had nothing to do with the political world, nor with the "sheep" and "goats" which both alike rejected and despised him, except a very small number who loved and believed in him.

------------- Footnotes: (1). Matt. xxv. 31 - 34. (2). Matt. xv. 24 ------------- end of footnotes

(iii) The Son of Man is said to be "the Lord of the Sabbath day," that is, he had the power to abrogate the law which made it a holy day of rest from labor and work. Jesus was a strict observer of the Sabbath, on which day he used to attend the services in the Temple or in the Synagogue. He expressly commands his followers to pray that the national collapse at the destruction of Jerusalem should not happen on a Sabbath day. How could, then, Jesus claim to be the Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath day, while he was obliged to observe and keep it like every Jew? How could he venture to claim that proud title and then predict the destruction of the Temple and of the Capital City?

These and many other examples show that Jesus could never appropriate the surname of "Barnasha" to himself, but he ascribed it to the Last Powerful Prophet, who really saved the "sheep," i.e. the believing Jews; and either destroyed or dispersed the unbelievers among them; abolished the day of Sabbath; established the Kingdom of Peace; and promised that this religion and kingdom will last to the day of the Last Judgment.
We shall in our next essay turn our attention to find all the marks and qualities of the Apocalyptic "Son of Man" which are literally and completely found in the last Prophet of Allah, upon whom be peace and the blessing of God!

Chapter 20

By The Apocalyptical "Son Of Man," Prophet Muhammad Is Intended 

In my previous article I showed that "the Son of Man" foretold in the Jewish Apocalypses was not Jesus Christ, and that Jesus never assumed that appellation for himself, for thus he would have made himself ridiculous in the eyes of his audience.

There were only two courses open to him: either to denounce the Messianic prophecies and the Apocalyptical visions about the Barnasha as forgeries and legends, or to confirm them and at the same time to fill, if he were that lofty personage, the office of the "Son of Man." To say: "The Son of Man came to serve and not to be served," (l) or "The Son of Man shall be delivered unto the hands of the Chief Priests and the Scribes" (2) or "The Son of Man came eating and drinking [wine]" with the sinners and the publicans, (3) and at the same time to confess that he was a beggar living on the charity and hospitality of others, was to insult his nation and its nation and its holiest religious sentiments! To boast that he was the Son of Man and had come to save and recover the lost sheep of Israel, (4) but had to leave this salvation to the Last Judgement, and even then to be cast into the eternal flames, was to frustrate all the hopes of that persecuted people, who alone in all mankind had the honor of being the only nation that professed the faith and religion of the true God; and it was to scorn their prophets and Apocalypses.
-------------
Footnotes:
(1). Matt. xx. 28.
(2). Ibid. xx 18.
(3). Ibid.xi 18.
(4). Ibid. vxiii. 11.
------------- end of footnotes

Could Jesus Christ assume that title? Are the authors of the four Gospels Hebrews? Could Jesus conscientiously believe himself to be what these spurious Gospels allege? Could a Jew conscientiously write such stories which are purposely written to disconcert and foil the expectation of that people? Of course, other than a negative answer cannot be expected from me to these questions. Neither Prophet Jesus nor his apostles would ever use such an extravagant title among a people already familiar with the legitimate owner of that surname It would be analogous to putting the crown of the king upon the head of his ambassador, the latter having no army to proclaim him king. It would be simply an insane usurpation of the rights and privileges of the legitimate Son of Man. Consequently, such an unjustifiable usurpation on the part of Jesus would be equivalent to the assumption of the epithet of "the Pseudo Son of Man" and of the Antichrist! The very imagination of a similar act of audacity on the part of the Holy Christ Jesus makes my whole nature revolt. The more I read these Gospels the more I become convinced to believe that they are a production - at least in their present shape and contents - of authors other than the Jews. These Gospels are a counterpoise to the Jewish Revelations - particularly as a counter-project against the Sibyllian Books. This could only be done by Greek Christians who had no interest in the claims of the children of Abraham. The author of the Sibyllian Books places side by side with the Jewish prophets Enoch, Solomon, Daniel, and Ezra, the names of the Greek sages Hermes, Homer, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and others, evidently with the object of making propaganda for the Hebrew religion. These books were written when Jerusalem and the Temple were in ruins, some time before or after the publication of St. John's Apocalypse. The purport of the Sibyllian Revelation is that the Hebrew (l) Son of Man or the Messiah will come to destroy the power of Rome and to establish the religion of the true God for all men.

----------- Footnote:
(1) The name "Hebrew" in its wider sense is applied to all the descendants of Abraham who afterwards assumed the names of their respective ancestors, such as the Ishmaelites, Edomites Israelites, etc.
----------- end of footnote

We can produce many sound arguments to prove the identity of "the Son of Man" with Prophet Muhammad only, and shall divide these arguments as follows:

ARGUMENTS FROM THE GOSPELS, AND FROM THE APOCALYPSES 

In the most coherent and significant passages in the discourses of Jesus where the appellation "Barnasha" - or "the Son of Man" - appears, only Prophet Muhammad is intended, and in him alone the prediction contained therein is literally fulfilled. In some passages wherein Jesus is supposed to have assumed that title for himself, that passage becomes incoherent, senseless, and extremely obscure. Take for instance the following passages: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they said, Behold." (1) John-Baptist was a teetotaler, he fed himself only on water, locusts, and wild honey; they said he was a demoniac; but "the Son of Man," id est Jesus (?), who ate and drank wine, was branded as "the friend of publicans and sinners"! To blame a prophet for his fastings and abstinence is a sin of infidelity or of gross ignorance. But to reproach a person who claims to be a Messenger of God of frequenting the banquets of publicans and sinners, and for being fond of wine, is quite natural and a very serious charge against the sincerity of that person who pretends to be a spiritual guide of men. Can we Muslims believe in the sincerity of a Khwaja or Mullah when we see him mixing with drunkards and prostitutes? Could the Christians bear with a curate or parson of a similar conduct? Certainly not. A spiritual guide may have conversations with all sorts of sinners in order to convert and reform them, providing that he is sober, abstemious, and sincere. According to the quotation just mentioned, Christ admits that his behavior had scandalized the religious leaders of his nation. True, the officers of the Custom-house, called "publicans," were hated by the Jews simply because of their office. We are told only two "publicans" (2) and one "harlot" (3) and one "possessed" woman (4) were converted by Jesus; but all the clergy and the lawyers were branded with curses and anathemas (5). All this looks awkward and incredible The idea or thought that a Holy Prophet, so chaste and sinless like Jesus, was fond of wine, that he changed six barrels of water into a most intoxicating wine in order to render crazy a large company of guests already tipsy in the wedding-hall at Cana, (6) is practically to depict him an impostor and sorcerer! Think of a miracle performed by a thaumaturge before a rabble of drunkards! To describe Jesus as a drunkard, and gluttonous, and a friend of the ungodly, and then to give him the title of "the Son of Man" is to deny all the Jewish Revelations and religion.

Again, Jesus is reported to have said that "The Son of Man came to seek and recover that which was lost."(7)

------------- Footnotes:
(1). Matt. xi. 19.
(2). Matthew and Zacchaeus (Matt. ix. 9; Luke xix. 1 - 11).
(3). John iv.
(4). Mary Magdalene (Luke viii. 2).
(5). Matt. xiii., etc.
(6). John ii.
(7). Matt. xiii. 11, Luke ix. 56; xix. 10, etc.
------------- end of footnotes

The commentators of course interpret this passage in a spiritual sense only. Well, it is the mission and the office of every prophet and the preacher of the religion to call the sinners to repent of their iniquity and wickedness. We quite admit that Jesus was sent only to the "lost sheep of Israel," to reform and convert them from their sins; and especially to teach them more plainly concerning "the Son of Man" who was to come with power and salvation to restore what was lost and to reconstruct what was ruined; no, to conquer and destroy the enemies of the true believers. Jesus could not assume for himself that Apocalyptic title "the Barnasha," and then not be able to save his people except Zacchaeus, a Samaritan woman, and a few other Jews, including the Apostles, who were mostly slain afterwards on his account. Most probably what Prophet Jesus said was: "The Son of Man will come to seek and recover what is lost." For in Prophet Muhammad alone the believing Jews as well as the Arabs and other believers found all that was irremediably lost and destroyed - Jerusalem and Mecca, all the promised territories; many truths concerning the true religion; the power and kingdom of God; the peace and blessing that Islam confers in this world and in the next.

We cannot afford space for further quotations of the numerous passages in which "the Son of Man" occurs as either the subject or the object or the predicate of the sentence. But one more quotation will suffice, namely: "The Son of Man shall be delivered unto the hands of men," (Matt. xvi. 21; xvii. 12, etc.), and all the passages where he is made the subject of passion and death. Such utterances are put into the mouth of Jesus by some fraudulent non-Hebrew writer with the object of perverting the truth concerning "the Son of Man" as understood and believe by the Jews, and of making them believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Apocalyptical triumphant Savior, but he would only appear on the Day of the Last Judgement. It was a policy and a cunning propaganda of dissuasion, and then of persuasion, made purposely for the Jews. But the fraud was discovered, and the Jewish Christians belong to the Church which held these Gospels to be divinely revealed. For nothing could be more repugnant to Jewish national aspiration and relidous sentiment than to present to them the expected Messiah, the great Barnasha, in the person of Jesus whom the Chief Priests and the Elders condemned to be crucified as a seducer! It is quite evident, therefore, that Jesus never appropriated the title of "the Son of Man;" but he reserved it only for Prophet Muhammad. Here are a few of the arguments:

(a) The Jewish Apocalypses ascribe the titles "the Messiah" and "the Son of Man" exclusively to the Last Prophet, who will fight with the Powers of Darkness and vanquish them, and then will establish the Kingdom of Peace and of Light on earth. Thus the two titles are synonymous; to disown either of them is to disown altogether the claim to being the Last Prophet. Now we read in the Synoptics that Jesus categorically denied his being the Christ and forbade his disciples to declare him "the Messiah"! It is reported that Simon Peter, in reply to the question put by Jesus: "Whom say you that I am?" said: "Thou art the Christ [Messiah] of God." (l) Then Christ commanded his disciples not to say to anybody that he is the Christ. (2) St. Mark and St. Luke know nothing about the "power of the keys" given to Peter; they, not being there, had not heard of it. John has not a word about this Messianic conversation; probably he had forgotten it! St. Matthew reports (3) that when Jesus told them not to say that he was the Christ he explained to them how he would be delivered and killed. Thereupon Peter began to reprove and admonish him not to repeat the same words about his passion and death. According to this story of St. Matthew, Peter was perfectly right when he said: "Master, be it far from thee!" If it is true that his confession, "Thou art the Messiah," pleased Jesus, who conferred the title of "Sapha" or "Cepha" on Simon, then to declare that "the Son of Man" was to suffer the ignominous death upon the Cross was neither more nor less than a flat denial of his Messianic character. But Jesus became more positive and indignantly scolded Peter, saying: "Get thee behind me, satan!" What follows this sharp rebuke are most explicit words of the Master, leaving not a modicum of doubt that he was not "the Messiah" or "the Son of Man." How to reconcile the "faith" of Peter, recompensed with the glorious title of "Sapha" and the power of the keys of Heaven and of Hell, with the "infidelity" of Peter punished with the opprobrious epithet of "satan," within half an hour's time or so? Several reflections present themselves to my mind, and I feel it my bounden duty to put them in black and white. If Jesus were "the Son of Man" or "the Messiah" as seen and foretold by Daniel, Ezra, Enoch, and the other Jewish prophets and divines, he would have authorized his disciples to proclaim and acclaim him as such; and he himself would have supported them. The fact is that he acted the very reverse. Again, if he were the Messiah, or the Barnasha, he would have at once struck his enemies with terror, and by the aid of his invisible angels destroyed the Roman and Persian powers, then dominant over the civilized world. But he did nothing of the sort; or, like Prophet Muhammad, he would have recruited some valiant warriors like 'Ali, Omar, Khalid, etc., and not like Zebedees and Jonahs, who vanished, like a frightened specter when the Roman police came to arrest them.

------------- Footnotes:
1. Luke ix. 20.
2. Luke (ix. 21) says: "He rebuked them and commanded them not to say that he was the Messiah." Cf. Matn xvi. 20; Mark viii. 30.
3. Lcc. cit., 21 - 28.
------------- end of footnotes

There are two irreconcilable statements made by Matthew (or corrupted by his interpolator), which logically destroy each other. Within an hour Peter is "the Rock of Faith," as Catholicism will boast, and, 'the satan of Infidelity," as Protestanism will scout him! Why so? Because when he believed Jesus to be the Messiah he was rewarded; but when he refused to admit that his master was not the Messiah he was convicted! There are no two "Sons of Man," the one to be the Commander of the Faithful, fight sword in hand the wars of God, and uproot idolatry and its empires and kingdoms; the other to be an Abbot of the poor Anchorites on the summit of Calvary, fight the wars of God cross in hand, and be martyred ignominously by idolatrous Romans and unbelieving Jewish Pontiffs and Rabbis! "The Son of Man," whose hands were seen under the wings of the Cherubs by the Prophet Ezekiel (ii), and before the throne of the Almighty by the Prophet Daniel (vii), and described in the other Jewish Apocalypses was not predestined to be hanged upon Golgotha, but to transform the thrones of the pagan kings into their own crosses; to change their palaces into calvaries, and to make sepulchers of their capital cities. Not Prophet Jesus, but Prophet Muhammad, had the honor of this title, "the Son of Man"! The facts are more eloquent than even the Apocalypses and the visions. The material and moral conquests achieved by Prophet Muhammad the Holy Messenger of Allah over the enemy are unrivalled.

(b) "The Son of Man" is called by Jesus "the Lord of the Sabbath day." (1) This is very remarkable indeed. The sanctity of the seventh day is the theme of the Law of Moses. God accomplished the work of creation in six days, and on the seventh He rested from all work. Men and women, children and slaves, even the domestic animals were to repose from all labor under the pain of death. The Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue orders the people of Israel: "Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it." (2) The students of the Bible know how jealous God is reported to be concerning the strict observation of the Day of Rest. Before Moses there was no special law about this; and the nomad Patriarchs do not seem to have observed it. It is very likely that the Jewish Sabbath had its origin in the Babylonian Sabattu.
------------- Footnotes: (1). Matt. xii. 7. (2). Exod. xx. ------------- end of footnotes
The Qur'an repudiates the Jewish anthropomorphous conception of the Deity, for it means to say, as if like man, God labored six days, got fatigued, reposed and slumbered. The sacred verse of the Qur'an thus runs: "And verily We have created the heavens and the earth, and whatever is between them in six days; and no weariness affected Us".

The Jewish idea about the Sabbath had become too material and insidious. Instead of making it a day of comfortable rest and a pleasant holiday, it had been turned into a day of abstinence and confinement. No cooking, no walk, and no work of charity or beneficence were permitted. The priests in the temple would bake bread and offer sacrifices on the Sabbath-day, but reproached the Prophet of Nazareth when he miraculously cured a man whose arm was withered. (1) To this Christ said that it was the Sabbath which was instituted for the benefit of man, and not man for the sake of the Sabbath. Instead of making it a day of worship and then a day of recreation, of innocent pleasure and real repose, they had made it a day of imprisonment and weariness. The least breach of any precept concerning the seventh day was punished with lapidation or some other penalty. Moses himself sentences a poor man to lapidation for having picked up a few sticks from the ground on a Sabbath day; and the disciples of Jesus were reproached for plucking some ears of corn on a Sabbath day, although they were hungry. It is quite evident that Jesus Christ was not a Sabbatarian and did not adhere to the literal interpretation of the draconic ordinances regarding the Sabbath. He wanted mercy or acts of kindness and not sacrifices. Nevertheless, he never thought of abrogating the Sabbath, nor could he have ventured to do so. Had he ventured to declare the abolition of that day or to substitute the Sunday for it, he would have been undoubtedly abandoned by his followers, and instantly mobbed and stoned. But he observed, so to say, the Law of Moses to its title. As we learn from the Jewish historian, Joseph Flavius, and from Eusebius and others, James the "brother" of Jesus was a strict Ibionite and the head of the Judaistic Christians who observed the Law of Moses and the Sabbath with all its rigors. The Hellenistic Christians gradually substituted first the "Lord's Day," i.e. the Sunday; but the Eastern Churches until the fourth century observed both days.

------------- Footnote: Matt. xii 10-13 ------------- end of footnote

Now if Jesus were the Lord of the Sabbath day he would have certainly either modified its rigorous law or entirely abolished it. He did neither the one nor the other. The Jews who heard him understood perfectly well that he referred to the expected Messiah as the Lord of the Sabbath, and that is why they kept their silence. The Redactor of the Synoptics, here as everywhere, has suppressed some of the words of Jesus whenever "the Son of Man" forms the subject of his discourse, and this suppression is the cause of all these ambiguities, contradictions, and misunderstandings. Unless we take the Holy Qur'an as our guide, and the Prophet of Allah as the object of the Bible, all attempts to find the truth and to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion will end in failure. The Higher Biblical Criticism will guide you as far as the gate of the sacred shrine of truth, and there it stops, stricken with awe and incredulity. It does not open the door to enter inside and search for the eternal documents therein deposited. All research and erudition shown by these "impartial" critics, whether Liberal Thinkers, Rationalists, or indifferent writers, are, after all, deplorably cold, skeptical, and disappointing.
Lately I was reading the works of the French savant Ernest Renan, La vie de Jesus, Saint Paul, and L' Antichrist. I was astonished at the extent of works, ancient and modern, which he has examined; he reminded me of Gibbon and others. But, alas, what is the conclusion of their inexhaustible research and study? Zero or negation! In the domain of science the marvels of Nature are discovered by the Positivists; but in the domain of Religion these Positivists make hay of it and poison the religious sentiments of their readers. If these learned critics were to take the spirit of the Qur'an for their guidance and Prophet Muhammad as the literal, moral, and practical fulfillment of Holy Writ, their research could not be so desultory and destructive. Religious men want a real and not an ideal religion; they want a "Son of Man" who will draw his sword and march at the head of his valiant army to pulverize the enemies of God and to prove by word and deed that he is the "Lord of the Sabbath day," and to abrogate it altogether because it was abused by the Jews as the "Fatherhood" of God was abused by the Christians. Prophet Muhammad did this! As I have often repeated in these pages, we can only understand these corrupted scriptures when we penetrate, with the help of the light of Al-Qur'an, into their enigmatic and contradictory statements, and it is only then that we can sift them with the sieve of truthfulness and separate the genuine from the spurious. When, for example, speaking about the priests continually dissolving the Sabbath in the Temple, Jesus is reported to have said: "Behold, here is one that is greater than the Temple." (1) I can guess of no sense in the existence of the adverb "here" in this clause, unless we supply and attach to it an additional "t," and make it read "there." For, if Jesus or any other prophet before him should have had the audacity of declaring himself "greater than the Temple," he would have been instantly lynched or stoned by the Jews as a "blasphemer" unless he could prove himself to be the Son of Man, invested with power and greatness, as the Prophet of Allah was.

------------- Footnote: (1). Matt. xii 6 -------------

The abrogation of Saturday by the Prince of the Prophets - Prophet Muhammad - is hinted at in the LXII Sura of the Qur'an entitled "Al-Jumu'a" or "The Assembly." Before Prophet Muhammad the Arabs called Friday "al A'ruba," the same as the Syriac Pshitta "A'rubta" from the Aramaic "arabh" - " to set down (the sun)." It was so called because after the setting of the sun on Friday the Sabbath day commenced. The reason given for the sacred character of Saturday is that on that day God "rested" from His work of creation. But the reason for the choice of Friday, as it can easily be understood, is of a double nature. First, because on this day the great work of the creation, or of the universal formation of all the innumerable worlds, beings and things visible and invisible, planets, and microbes was completed. This was the first event that interrupted eternity, when time, space, and matter came into being. The commemoration, the anniversary, and the sanctity of such a prodigious event on the day on which it was achieved is just, reasonable, and even necessary. The second reason is that on this day prayers and worship are conducted by the faithful unanimously, and for this reason it is called the "jumu'a," that is to say, the congregation or assembly; the Divine verse on this subject characterizes the nature of our obligation on Friday as: "O believers! When it is called to the prayer on Friday, hasten to the remembrance of God and leave merchandise," etc.

The faithful are called to join in the Divine service together in a House dedicated to the worship of God, and to leave off at that time any lucrative work; but after the congregational prayers are over they are not forbidden to resume their usual occupations. A true Muslim within twenty-four hours worships his Creator five times in prayer and devotion.
(c) We have already made a few remarks on the passage in St. Matthew (xviii. 11) where the mission of the "Son of Man" is "to seek and recover what was lost." This is another important prediction - though undoubtedly corrupted in form - about Prophet Muhammad, or the Apocalyptical Barnasha. These "lost things" which the Barnasha would seek and restore are of two categories, religious and national. Let us examine them in detail:

(1) The mission of the Barnasha was to restore the purity and the universality of the religion of Prophet Abraham which was lost. All the peoples and tribes descended from that patriarch of the believers were to be brought into the fold of the "Religion of Peace," which is no other than the "Dina da-Shlama," or the Religion of Islam. The religion of Moses was national and particular, and therefore its hereditary priesthood, its Levitical sacrifices and pompous rituals, its Sabbaths, jubilees, and festivals, and all its laws and corrupted scriptures would be abolished and substituted by new ones having a universal character, force, and durability. Prophet Jesus was a Jew; he could not have accomplished such a gigantic and stupendous undertaking because it was materially impossible for him to do it. "I came not to change the law or the prophets," (l) said he. On the other hand, the rank idolatry, with all its abominable pagan practices, superstition, and sorcery, to which the Arab nationalities were addicted, had entirely to be wiped out, and the Oneness of Allah and of religion to be restored under the flag of the Messenger of Allah bearing the Holy Inscription: "I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except God; and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."

------------ Footnote (1). Matt. v.17-19 ------------ end of footnote

2. The unification of the nations descended from Prophet Abraham, and their dependencies were to be restored and accomplished. Of the many corrupted, selfish, and unjustifiable silly notions the Hebrew Scriptures contain there is the indiscriminate bias they entertain against the non-Israelite nations. They never honor the other descendants of their great progenitor Prophet Abraham; and this antipathy is shown against the Ishmaelites, Edomites, and other Abrahamite tribes even when Israel had become the worst idolator and heathen. The fact that besides Prophets Abraham and Ishmael about three hundred and eleven male slaves and warriors in his service were circumcised (1) is an incalculably forcible argument against the Jewish attitude towards their cousin nationalities. The kingdom of David hardly extended its frontiers beyond the territory which in the Ottoman Empire formed only two adjacent "Vilayets," or Provinces. And the "Son of David," whom the Jews anticipate to come with the attribute of the "final Messiah," may or may not be able to occupy even those two provinces; and besides, when will he come? He was to have come to destroy the Roman "Beast." That "Beast" was only mutilated and slaughtered by Prophet Muhammad! What else is expected? When Prophet Muhammad, the Apocalyptic Barnasha, founded the Kingdom of Peace (Islam), the majority of the Jews in Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc., voluntarily rushed to the greatest shepherd of mankind when he appeared with the terrific blows which he struck at the "Brute" of paganism. Prophet Muhammad founded a universal Brotherhood, the nucleus of which is certainly the family of Prophet Abraham, including among its members the Persians, the Turks, the Chinese, the Negroes, the Javanese, the Indians, the English, etc., all forming one "ummat" (Arabic) or "Umtha da-Shlama," i.e. the Islamic Nation!

------------- Footnote (1). Gen. ------------ end of footnote

3. Then the recovery of the promised lands, including the land of Canaan and all the territories from the Nile to the Euphrates, and gradually the extension of the Kingdom of Allah from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern shores of the Atlantic, is a marvelous fulfillment of all the prophecies about the Holiest and the Greatest of the Sons of Man!
Considering the stupendous work accomplished by Prophet Muhammad for the One True God, the brief time spent by him and his brave and devoted companions in its accomplishment, and the ineffaceable effects that the work and the religion of Prophet Muhammad have left upon all the kingdoms and the thinkers of mankind, one is at a loss to know what tribute to pay to this Prophet of Arabia, except the wish to behold him shining in redoubled glory before the Throne of the Eternal as Daniel saw in his vision!

Chapter 21

The Son Of Man According To The Jewish Apocalypses
From what has been already discussed in these pages it will have been that the appellation "Barnasha," or "the Son of Man," is not a title like "Messiah," that could be applied to every prophet, high-priest, and legally anointed king; but that it is a proper noun, belonging exclusively to the Last Prophet. The Hebrew Seers, Sophees, and the Apocalyptists describe the Son of Man, who is to come in due time as appointed by the Almighty to deliver Israel and Jerusalem from the heathenish oppression and to establish the permanent kingdom for "the People of the Saints of the Most High." The Seers, the Sophees, foretell the advent of the Powerful Deliverer; they see him - only in a vision, revelation, and faith - with all his might and glory. No Prophet or Sophee ever said that he himself was "the Son of Man," and that he would "come again on the Last Day to judge both the quick and the dead," as the Nicene Creed puts it on the pretended authority of the Sayings of Jesus Christ.

The frequent use of the appellation in question by the evangelists indicates, most assuredly, their acquaintance with the Jewish Apocalypses, as also a firm belief in their authenticity and Divine origin. It is quite evident that the Apocalypses bearing the names of Prophets Enoch, Moses, Baruch, and Ezra were written long before the Gospels; and that the name "Barnasha" therein mentioned was borrowed by the authors of the Gospels; otherwise its frequent use would be enigmatic and an incomprehensible - if not a meaningless - novelty. It follows, therefore, that Prophet Jesus either believed himself to be the Apocalyptic "Son of Man," or that he knew the Son of Man to be a person distinctly other than himself. If he believed himself to be the Son of Man, it would follow that either he or the Apocalyptists were in error; and in either case the argument goes most decidedly against Jesus Christ. For his error concerning his own personality and mission is as bad as the erroneous predictions of the Apocalyptists, whom he believed to be divinely inspired. Of course, this dilemmatic reasoning will lead us to a final conclusion unfavorable to himself. The only way to save Prophet Jesus from this dishonor is to look upon him as the Qur'an pictures him to us; and accordingly to attribute all the contradictory and incoherent statements about him in the Gospels to their authors or redactors.

Before discussing further the subject, "the Son of Man" as depicted in the Jewish Apocalypses, a few facts must be carefully taken into consideration. First, these Apocalypses not only do not belong to the canon of the Hebrew Bible, but also they are not even included among the Apocrypha or the so-called "Deutro-canonical" books of the Old Testament. Secondly, their authorship is not known. They bear the names of Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra, but their real authors or editors seem to have known the final destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews under the Romans. These pseudonyms were chosen, not for fraudulent purposes, but out of a pious motive by the Sophees or Seers who composed them. Did not Plato put his own views and dialectics into the mouth of his master, Socrates? Thirdly, "these books," in the words of the Grand Rabbin Paul Haguenauer, "in an enigmatical, mystical, supernatural form, try to explain the secrets of the nature, the origin [sic] of God, the problems of good and evil, justice and happiness, the past and the future. The Apocalypse makes upon all these questions some revelations which surpass human understanding. Their principal personages are Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra. These writings are evidently the product of the painful and disastrous epochs of Judaism." (1) Consequently they cannot be fully understood any more than the Apocalypse which bears the name of St. John the Apostle. Fourthly, these Apocalypses have been interpolated by the Christians. In the Book of Enoch "the Son of Man" is also called "the Son of Woman" and "the Son of God," thus interpolating the Church theory of incarnation; surely no Jewish Seer would write "Son of God." Fifthly, it would be noticed that the Messianic doctrine is a later development of the old prophecies concerning the Last Prophet of Allah, as foretold by Jacob and other Prophets. It is only in the Apocrypha and the Apocalypses, and especially in the Rabbinical writings, that this "Last Deliverer" is claimed to descend from David. True, there are prophecies after the Babylonian captivity, and even after the deportation of the Ten Tribes into Assyria, about a "Son of David" who would come to gather together the dispersed Israel. But these predictions were fulfilled only partly under Zorobabel - a descendant of King David. Then after the Greek invasion the same predictions were preached and announced, and we only see a Judah Maqbaya fighting with a slight success against Antiochus Epiphanes. Besides, this success was temporary and of no permanent value. The Apocalypses, which carry their visions down to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and Vespasian, foretell "the Son of Man" who will appear with great power to destroy the Roman power and the other enemies of Israel. Twenty centuries had to elapse before the Rome Empire was destroyed in the fifth century A.D. by a Turkish Emperor, Atilla - a pagan Hun - and finally by a Muslim Turk, the Fatih Muhammad II. But that power was completely destroyed, and for ever, in the lands promised to Ishmael by the Sultan of the Prophets, Muhammad al-Mustapha.

------------- Footnote: 1. Munuel de Litterature Juivre Nancy, 1927. ------------ end of footnote

There remain two other observations which I cannot ignore in this connection. If I were a most ardent Zionist, or a most learned Rabbi, I would once more study this Messianic question as profoundly and impartially as I could. And then I would vigorously exhort my co-religionist Jews to desist from and abandon this hope for ever. Even if a "Son of David" should appear on the hill of Zion, and blow the trumpet, and claim to be the "Messiah," I would be the first to tell him boldly: "Please, Sire! You are too late! Don't disturb the equilibrium in Palestine! Don't shed blood! Don't let your angels meddle with these formidable aeroplanes! Whatever be the successes of your adventures, I am afraid they will not surpass those of your ancestors David, Zorobabel, and Judah Maccabaeus (Maqbaya)!" The great Hebrew conqueror was not David but Jesus bar Nun (Joshuah); he was the first Messiah, who instead of conver- ting the pagan tribes of the Canaan that had shown so much hospitality and goodness to Prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, mercilessly massacred them wholesale. And Joshuah was, of course, a Prophet and the Messiah of the time. Every Israelite Judge during a period of three centuries or more was a Messiah and Deliverer. Thus we find that during every national calamity, especially a catastrophe, a Messiah is predicted, and as a rule the deliverance is achieved always subsequent to the disaster and quite in an inadequate degree. It is a peculiar characteristic of the Jews that they alone of all the nationalities aspire, through the miraculous conquests by a Son of David, after a universal domination of the inhabi- tants of the globe. Their slovenliness and inertia are quite compatible with their unshaking belief in the advent of the "Lion of Judah." While they are awaiting the Moshiakh refered to in Islam as "Massiekh, ad-dajjal" meaning the anti-Christ or the false messiah. And that is, perhaps the reason why they have attempted to concentrate all, their national resources, energy, and force and make a united effort to become a self-governing people. This is the introduction of conclusion of the appearance of the anti-christ and the appearance of the great grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Al Mahdi, via his daughter Fatima, which both Sunni and Shi'a believe. Al Mahdi will fight the anti-christ, then Jesus will descend and kill him under a tree facing the Lake of Tiberias which had been dry for a long time, but now it has been replenished. Now to the Christians who claim Jesus to be the pro-phetical Son of Man, I would venture to say: If he were the expected Deliverer of Israel he would have delivered that people from the Roman yoke, no matter if the Jews had believed in him or not. Deliverance first, gratitude and loyalty after; and not vice versa. A man must first be liberated from the hands of his captors by killing or frighten- ing them, and then be expected to show his permanent attachment and devotion to the liberator. The Jews were not inmates of a hospital to be attended by physicians and nurses; they were practically prisoners in bonds and needed a hero to set them free. Their faith in God and in His Law was as perfect as was that of their ancestors at the foot of Mount Sinai when He delivered it to Moses. They were not in need of a thaumaturgical prophet; all their history was interwoven with wonders and miracles. The raising to life of a dead Lazarus, the opening of the eyes of a blind Barti- maeus, or the cleansing of an outcast leper, would neither strengthen their faith nor satiate their thirst for independence and liberty. The Jews rejected Jesus, not because he was not the Apocalyptic "Son of Man" or the Messiah - not be- cause he was not a Prophet, for they knew very well that he did not claim to be the former, and that he was a Prophet - but because they hated him for his words: Messiah was not the Son of David, but his Lord. (1) This admission of the Synoptics confirms the statement in the Gospel of Barnabas, where Jesus is reported to have added that the Covenant will be fulfilled with the "Shiloah" - the Prophet of Allah - who will come from the family of Prophet Ishmael. For this reason the Talmudists describe Jesus as "the second Balaam" - that is, the Prophet who prophesies for the benefit of the heathen at the expense of the "chosen people."

------------ Footnote: (1). Matt. xxii 44-46; Mark xii 35-37; Luke xx. 41-44. ------------ end of footnote


It is quite clear, therefore, that the Jewish reception to, or their rejection of, Jesus was not the condition sine qua non to determine the nature of his mission. If he were the Final Deliverer he would have made the Jews submit to him, nolens volens, as Prophet Muhammad did. But the contrast between the circumstances in which each of those two Prophets found himself, and their work, knows no dimensions and no limits. Suffice it to say that Prophet Muhammad converted about ten million pagan Arabs into most sincere and ardent believers in the true God, and utterly uprooted idolatry in the lands where it had struck root. This he did, because he held in one hand the Law and in the other the Scepter; the one was the Holy Qur'an and the other the emblem of power and government. He was hated, despised, persecuted by the noblest Arab tribe to which he belonged, and forced to flee for his life; but by the Power of Allah he accomplished the greatest work for cause of the true religion which no other Prophet before him had ever been able to do.

I shall now proceed to show that the Apocalyptic Son of Man was no other than the Prophet Muhammad al-Mustapha.

1. The most cogent and important proof that the Apocalyptic Barnasha is Prophet Muhammad is given in a wonderful description in the vision of Prophet Daniel (vii.) already discussed in a previous article. In no way whatever the Barnasha therein described can be identified with any of the Macca- bees' heroes or with Prophet Jesus; nor can the terrible Beast which was utterly killed and destroyed by that Son of Man be a prototype of Antiochus Epiphanes or the Roman Caesar, Nero. The culminating evil of that dreadful Beast was the "Little Horn," which uttered blasphemies against the Most High by associating with His Essence three co-eternal divine persons and by its persecution of those who maintained the absolute Oneness of God. Constantine the Great is the person symbolized by that hideous Horn.

2. The Apocalypse of Enoch (l) foretells the appearance of the Son of Man at a moment when the small flock of the sheep, though vigorously defended by a ram, will be fiercely attacked by the birds of prey from above and by the car- nivorous beast on land. Among the enemies of the little flock are seen many other goats and sheep that had gone astray. The lord of the flock, like a good shepherd, sudden- ly appears and strikes the earth with his rod or scepter; it opens its mouth and swallows up the assailing enemy; chases and drives away from the pastures the rest of the pernicious birds and brutes. Then a sword is given to the flock as an emblem of power and the weapon of destruction. After which the flock is no longer headed by a ram but by a white bull with two large black horns.

------------- Footnote: (1). I regret to say that the "Jewish Apocalypses" are inaccessible to me. The Encyclopedias given only a compendium of each book, which does not satisfy my purpose of examining the text. I know that the Irish Archbishop Laurence has translated this Apocalypse into English, but it is, unfortunately, beyond my reach. ------------ end of footnotes

This parabolical vision is transparent enough. From Prophet Jacob downwards the "chosen people" is represented symbolically by the flock of sheep. The descendants of Esau are described as boars. Other heathen people and tribes are represented in the vision, according to their respective characteristics, as ravens, eagles, vultures, and different species of brutes, all thirsty to suck the blood of the sheep or hungry to devour them. Almost all Biblical scholars agree that the vision indicates the painful period of the Maccabees and their bloody struggles with the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes until the death of John Hurcanus in 110(?) B.C. This method of interpreting the vision is totally erroneous, and reduces the value of the whole book to nothing. That an antediluvian Prophet or a Seer should illustrate the history of the human race from a religious point of view, beginning with Adam, under the symbol of a White Bull, and ending with John Hurcanus or his brother Judah Maccabaeus (Maqbaya) as the Last White Bull, and then leave the flock of the "Believers" to be devoured again by the Romans, the Christians, and the Muslims to this very day, is ridiculous and shocking! In fact, the wars of the Maccabees and their consequence are not of such great significance in the history of the religion of God as to be the terminus of its development. None of the Maccabees was a Prophet, nor the founder of the so-called "Messianic reign" which the Gospels name the "Kingdom of God." Besides, this interpretation of the vision is inconsistent with the characters represented in the drama under the figurative symbols of the master of the flock, scepter in hand, the Ram, and the White Bull; and then with the large sword given to the shepherds with which they kill or drive away the impure animals and birds. Furthermore, this Christian interpretation of Enoch's Apocalypse does not explain the mystical transplantation or the transportation of the terrestrial Jerusalem into a country farther to the south; and what meaning can be given to the new House of God built on the spot of the old one, larger and higher than the former sacred edifice, to which flock not only the believing sheep - the faithful Jews - but also the various pagan nationalities that have embraced the religion of the Son of Man who destroyed the enemies with his Scepter or Rod! For all these particular acts and representations are seen and described in this dramatic vision. The chain that links together the events depicted in this figurative language begins with Prophet Adam and ends in the person of the Prophet of Mecca! There are several cogent arguments to prove this assertion.

a. The two divisions of the sheep indicate the people of the Scriptures, whether Jews or Christians, among whom were those who were believers in the Oneness of God, and those who made Prophet Jesus and the Holy Spirit also equal and consubstantial with God. The Seer distinguishes the be- lievers from the apostates. The Gospels report that on the day of the Last Judgement "the sheep will be separated from the goats," (1) which indicates the same view. As to the symbolical Ram, we may understand thereby Arius or some spiritual Unitarian leader for the true Nassara and the chief Rabbi for the faithful Jews - because they both had the same common enemy. If we identify Constantine with the evil Horn, we may justly identify Arius with the Ram. In fact, Arius is entitled to this dignity because he headed the larger group in the Council of Nicea and vigorously defended the true religion against the monstrous doctrines of Trinitarian and Sacramentarian Churches. From a strictly Muslim point of view the Jews, from the moment they rejected and condemned Jesus Christ to death, ceased to be the "chosen people," and that honorable title was given only to those who believed in his apostleship.

------------- Footnote: 1. Matt. xxv. 32 - 46, etc. ------------- end of footnote

b. The Son of Man who saved the flock of sheep from its various enemies whom he sent down into the bosom of the earth by striking vehemently his pastoral station it and gave a strong sword to the sheep to slaughter the impure brutes and birds of prey, was decidedly Prophet Muhammad. The scepter (in Hebrew "shebet" - rod, staff is the emblem of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and administration. The little scepter accorded by God to the tribe of Judah (1) was taken away, and a stronger and larger one was given to the Prophet of Allah (the "Shiloah") in its place. It is indeed marvel- ous how this prophetical vision of the Seer was literally fulfilled when Prophet Muhammad's scepter became the emblem of the Muslim sovereignty over all the countries - in Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, Syria, and Arabia - where the people of God were persecuted by the pagan powers of those countries and by the foreign heathen powers of the Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans! What a glorious fulfillment of the vision it is when the flock of sheep, for many centuries having been exposed to the merciless beaks and claws of the birds of prey and to the sharp and terrible teeth and claws of the beasts, was now equipped with a large sword to defend which every Muslim carried until the blood of the Saints and Martyrs (2) was equitably avenged.

------------- Footnotes: 1. Gen. xlix. 10. 2. Rev. vi. 9 - 11. ------------- end of footnotes

c. The White Bull. Until Prophet Ishmael, all the Prophets are represented as white bulls; but from Prophet Jacob downwards the princes of the chosen people appear in the form of rams. The universal religion had been reduced to a national one; and the Emperor had become a petty chief. Here is again another amazing fulfillment of the vision in the Islamic era. The leaders or the patriarchs of the ancient international religion are represented as white bulls, and those of the Muslim Commanders of the Faithful also as white bulls, with the only distinction that the latter have large black horns, emblem of twofold power, spiritual and tem- poral. Among all clean quadrupeds there is nothing more beautiful and noble than the white bull, and more so especial- ly when it is crowned with a pair of large black horns. It looks most majestic and full of grace! It is very remarkable that the Imam of the believers, whether a Calipha or a Sultan, or possessing both titles, is distinguished and per- ceived day and night by the purity of his faith and actions and by the solidity of his power and majesty at the head of the vast and innumerable hosts of the faithful composed of all races and languages! The vision expressly avows the entrance and admission of the apostates and unbelievers into the flock. Jews - thousands of Jews - Christians, and Sabians, as well as millions of Arabs and other heathen nationalities, believed in the Oneness of Allah and embraced Islam. In this connection it is worthy of note that all the blood shed in the wars of Badr, Ohud, and other campaigns led personally by the Prophet Muhammad, could not exceed one-hundredth of the blood shed by Prophet Joshua. Yet not a single instance of cruelty or injustice can be proved against the Prophet of Allah. He was clement, noble, magnanimous, and forgiving. This is why he is alone among all the human race represented in all prophetical visions "the Son of Man," like the first man before his fall!


d. The Son of Man establishes the Kingdom of Peace, the capital of which is no longer the old Jerusalem, but the new Jerusalem - the "Daru 's-Salam," the "city or court of Peace." The Sophee or Seer in this wonderful vision nar- rates how the terrestrial Jerusalem is lifted up and trans- planted in a southern country; but a new Temple, larger and higher than the first one, is built upon the ruins of the old edifice! Gracious God! how wonderfully all this was accomplished by Your most illustrious and Holy Prophet Muhammad! The new Jerusalem is none other than Mecca, for it is in a southern country, its two hills, the "Marwa" and "Sapha," bear the same names as those of Moriah and Zion, of the same root and signification but originally earlier. "Irushalem" or "Urshalem" of old becomes a city of "Light and Peace." It is for this reason, too, that Mecca as the seat of the sacred Ka'aba became the "Qibla" - the direction towards which the Muslims turn their faces at prayer. Here every year tens of thousands of pilgrims from all Muslim countries assemble, visit the Holy Ka'aba, offer sacrifices, and renew their fidelity to Allah and promise to lead a new life worthy of a Muslim. Not only Mecca, but also Medina and the territory surrounding them, has become sacred and inviolable, and forbidden to any non-Muslim man or woman! It was in the fulfillment of his vision of Prophet Idris or Enoch, too, that the second Caliph, Omar, rebuilt the Sacred Mosque at Jerusalem on the hill of Moriah, on the spot of the Temple of Solomon! All these marvelously prove that the vision was seen by a Seer inspired by God, who saw the Muslim events in a far-distant future. Could Rome or Byzantium claim to be the New Jerusalem? Can the Pope or any schismatic Patriarch claim to be the Apocalyptic White Bull with two large horns? Can Christianity claim to be the Kingdom of Peace (Islam = "Shalom") while it makes Prophet Jesus and the Holy Ghost coeval and consubstantial with the Absolute One God? Most decidedly not.


e. In those chapters dealing with the Kingdom of Peace, the Messiah is called Son of Man, but in the description of the Last Judgement which follows at the end of this Reign of Islam or Peace he is called "Son of Woman" and "Son of God," and made to share with God in the Judgement of the World. It is admitted by all scholars that these extravagant and foolish statements are not of Jewish origin but belong to the Christian imagina- tions, inserted and interpolated by them.

The other Apocalypses, those which bear the names of Moses, Baruch, Ezra, the Jubilees, and the Oracula Sibylliana, should be studied impartially, for it is then that they, like those of Daniel and Enoch, will not only be understood but also prove to be fulfilled in Prophet Muhammad.

The Prophet Of Arabia As Spoken Of In The Bible "The Burden Upon Arabia" - Isaiah xxi. 13.
The present barren period of classical scholarship, together with the increasing paucity of our knowledge of ancient languages, has crippled modern taste in its efforts to appreciate any such attempts as I intend to make in that direction. The following pages have produced a series of most able articles from the Rev. Professor 'Abdu 'l-Ahad Dawud, but I wonder if there are many, even among the hierarchy of the Christian Church, who could follow the erudite exposition of the learned Professor. All the more do I wonder when he seeks to carry his readers into a labyrinth of languages, dead and done with thousands of years ago. What about Aramaic, when very few even among the Clergy are able to understand the Vulgate and the original Greek version of the New Testament? More especially when our researches are based simply upon Greek and Latin etymology! Whatever may be the value of such dissertations in the eye's of others we, nowadays, are absolutely incapable of appreciating them from the angle of erudition; for the oracular ambiguity attached to the prophetic utter- ances to which I allude makes them elastic enough to cover any case. The "least" in the prophecy of St. John the Baptist may not be the son of Mary, though he was looked upon as such contemptuously by his own tribe. The Holy Carpenter came from humble parentage. He was shouted down, mocked and discredited; he was belittled and made to appear the "least" in the public estimation by the Scribes and Pharisees. The excess of zeal displayed by his followers in the second and third centuries A.D., which was ever prone to jump at anything in the form of a prophecy in the Bible, would naturally induce them to believe that their Lord was the person alluded to by the Baptist.

However, there is another difficulty in the way. How can a person rely on the testimony of a book admittedly filled with folk-lore? The genuineness of the Bible has univer- sally been questioned. Without going into the question of its genuineness, we may at least say that we cannot depend on its statements concerning Jesus and his miracles. Some even go so far as to assert that his existence as an historical person is questionable, and that on the authority of the Gospels it would be dangerous to arrive at any apparently safe conclusion in this matter. A Christian of the Funda- mentalist type cannot well say anything against my statement of the case. If "stray sentences" and detached words in the Old Testament can be singled out by synoptic writers as applicable to Jesus, the comments of the learned writer of these erudite and absorbing articles must command every respect and appreciation even from the Clergy. I write in the same strain, but I have tried to base my arguments on portions of the Bible which hardly allow of any linguistic dispute. I would not go to Latin, Greek, or Aramaic, for that would be useless: I just give the following quotation in the very words of the Revised Version as published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

We read the following words in the Book of Deuteronomy chapter xviii. verse 18: "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth." If these words do not apply to Prophet Muhammad, they still remain unfulfilled. Prophet Jesus himself never claimed to be the Prophet alluded to. Even his disciples were of the same opinion: they looked to the second coming of Jesus for the fulfillment of the prophecy. So far it is undisputed that the first coming of Jesus was not the advent of the "prophet like unto thee," and his second advent can hardly fulfill the words. Jesus, as is believed by his Church, will appear as a Judge and not as a law-giver; but the promised one has to come with a "fiery law" in "his right hand."

In ascertaining the personality of the promised prophet the other prophecy of Moses is, however, very helpful where it speaks of the shining forth of God from Paran, the mountain of Mecca. The words in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxxiii. verse 2, run as follows: "The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints; from his right hand went a fiery law for them."
In these words the Lord has been compared with the sun. He comes from Sinai, he rises from Seir, but he shines in his full glory from Paran, where he had to appear with ten thousands of saints with a fiery law in his right hand. None of the Israelites, including Jesus, had anything to do with Paran. Hagar, with her son Ishmael, wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba, who afterwards dwelt in the wilder- ness of Paran (Gen. xxi. 21). He married an Egyptian woman, and through his first-born, Kedar, gave descent to the Arabs who from that time till now are the dwellers of the wilderness of Paran. And if Prophet Muhammad admittedly on all hands traces his descent to Ishmael through Kedar and he appeared as a prophet in the wilderness of Paran and re- entered Mecca with ten thousand saints and gave a fiery law to his people, is not the prophecy above-mentioned fulfilled to its very letter?

The words of the prophecy in Habakkuk are especially noteworthy. His (the Holy One from Paran) glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise. The word "praise" is very significant, as the very name Muhammad literally means "the praised one." Besides the Arabs, the inhabitants of the wilderness of Paran had also been promised a Revelation: "Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare His praise in the islands. The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war, he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies" (Isaiah).

In connection with it there are two other prophecies worthy of note where references have been made to Kedar. The one runs thus in chapter 1x. of Isaiah: "Arise, shine for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee ... The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come.. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory" (1-7). The other prophecy is again in Isaiah "The burden upon Arabia. In the forest in Arabia shall ye lodge, O ye travelling companies of Dedanim. The inhabitants of the land of Tema brought water to him that was thirsty, they prevented with their bread him that fled. For they fled from the swords and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Within a year, according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail: And the residue of the number of archers, the mighty of the children of Kedar, shall be diminished" Read these prophecies in Isaiah in the light of one in Deutero- nomy which speaks of the shining forth of God from Paran. If Ishmael inhabited the wilderness of Paran, where he gave birth to Kedar, who is the ancestor of the Arabs; and if the sons of Kedar had to receive revelation from God; if the flocks of Kedar had to come up with acceptance to a Divine altar to glorify "the house of my glory" where the darkness had to cover the earth for some centuries, and then that very land had to receive light from God; and if all the glory of Kedar had to fail and the number of archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, had to diminish within a year after the one fled from the swords and from the bent bows - the Holy One from Paran (Habakkuk iii 3 ) is no one else than Prophet Muhammad. Prophet Muhammad is the holy offspring of Ishmael through Kedar, who settled in the wilderness of Paran. Muhammad is the only Prophet through whom the Arabs received revelation at the time when the darkness had covered the earth. Through him God shone from Paran, and Mecca is the only place where the House of God is glorified and the flocks of Kedar come with acceptance on its altar. Prophet Muhammad was persecuted by his people and had to leave Mecca. He was thirsty and fled from the drawn sword and the bent bow, and within a year after his flight the descen- dants of Kedar meet him at Badr, the place of the first battle between the Meccans and the Prophet, the children of Kedar and their number of archers diminish and all the glory of Kedar fails. If the Holy Prophet is not to be accepted as the fulfillment of all these prophecies they will still remain unfulfilled. "The house of my glory" referred to in Isaiah lX is the house of God in Mecca and not the Church of Christ as thought by Christian commentators. The flocks of Kedar, as mentioned in verse 7, have never come to the Church of Christ; and it is a fact that the villages of Kedar and their inhabitants are the only people in the whole world who have remained impenetrable to any influence of the Church of Christ. Again, the mention of 10,000 saints in Deutero- nomy xxx 3 is very significant. He (God) shined forth from Paran, and he came with 10,000 of saints. Read the whole history of the wilderness of Paran and you will find no other event but when Mecca was conquered by the Prophet. He comes with 10,000 followers from Medina and re-enters "the house of my glory." He gives the fiery law to the world, which reduced to ashes all other laws. The Comforter - the Spirit of Truth - spoken of by Prophet Jesus was no other than Prophet Muhammad himself. It cannot be taken as the Holy Ghost, as the Church theology says. "It is expedient for you that I go away," says Jesus, "for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I will send him unto you." The words clearly show that the Comforter had to come after the departure of Jesus, and was not with him when he uttered these words. Are we to pre- sume that Jesus was devoid of the Holy Ghost if his coming was conditional on the going of Jesus: besides, the way in which Jesus describes him makes him a human being, not a ghost. "He shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that he shall speak." Should we presume that the Holy Ghost and God are two distinct entities and that the Holy Ghost speaks of himself and also what he hears from God? The words of Jesus clearly refer to some messenger from God. He calls him the Spirit of Truth, and so the Qur'an speaks of Prophet Muhammad, "No, indeed, he has brought the truth, and confirmed the Messengers." Ch.37:37