Steefen said
Omar:

 Yeshua bar Yosef is not the subject of the Koran at all. ‘Isa bin Maryam, peace be upon him, is.

What book have you written, if I may ask?

Steefen:

So you do not think they are stepbrothers.

You would find my youtube video informative.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

The closest thing I have to what you’re saying about Yeshua vs. Isa is that there was a man who was a son of a holy woman: Izates, son of Queen Helena. Is Isa Izates? That is interesting and intriguing.

 

The name of my book is The Greatest Bible Study in Historical Accuracy by Steefen. It goes from Adam and Eve to Moses to King David to Jesus.

Here is the 9 minute Adam and Eve section of the book:

** you do not have permission to see this link **

No, I do not think they were stepbrothers. Far from it; it may turn out, as my investigation proceeds, that John the Baptist and Yeshua bar Yosef were followers of ‘Isa, peace be upon him; this is suggested to me by the fact that a South Arabian religious movement arose, concerning ‘Isa, peace be upon him, in the oasis town of Najran; this latter movement was called Nasraniyya, and its followers were called Nasara, (from the word meaning “to help” or “to give victory”) and who I believe were mentioned by Epiphanius as a pre-Christian Jewish heresy called the Nasaraioi. But nothing really hangs on it.

Thanks for the links; looking forward to hearing them. I will share more of my thoughts later on, as I get time.

Steefen said

Omar6741 said
My view is that the Quranic prophet ‘Isa son of Maryam, peace be upon him, was a different person than the Galilean holy man Yeshua son of Yosef.

A good resource for this theory is the fourth chapter of the book “Who Was Jesus?” by the Christian Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi; while I don’t take seriously many of the hypotheses he advances in that book, that fourth chapter, called “The Koranic Testimony” is very insightful.

Well, well, well, we are back on track with posts of some value to me. I’m intrigued by your suggestion of Salibi’s book after reading the first two amazon.com reviews. Here’s part of the second:

 

** you do not have permission to see this link **
By ** you do not have permission to see this link ** on June 7, 2012

Format: Paperback

 

[The author] nails a whole host of inconsistencies, falsehoods and the like in Acts and the Gospels but his explantion of how these accounts, including Paul’s, came about are rivetingly authentic. His own reconstruction is worthy of Conan Doyle. While Gnosticism barely gets a mention, Salibi’s reliance on the Koranic version of the Jesus story is highly illuminating. The tone throughout is modest and the author writes as a Christian. The last 2 pages, dwelling on the subject of religious belief, myth and historiography, are a model of eloquence and humanity.

~ ~ ~

 

So, you think there were two, separate, great Jesuses, a Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of the Koran. None of the Jews and early Christians knew about this second Jesus?

     The “Jesus” mentioned in the Quran is ‘Isa son of Maryam, peace be upon him. I believe he lived much earlier than Yeshua bar Yosef, probably in the Exilic period before the Second Temple was even built. And yes, there were people who knew about him, though they generally called him “Christ” rather than using his first name, perhaps just out of respect and perhaps to indicate his authority. I will describe one example below.

      In chapter IX of his book “Refutation of All Heresies”, the third century Roman presbyter Hippolytus describes and attacks the preaching of one of his contemporaries, a certain Alcibiades from the town of Apamea in Syria; we are told that Alcibiades had come to Rome as a missionary, proclaiming a new baptism for the remission of mortal sins; and we are told that this new baptism was claimed to have been communicated to a righteous man named ‘Elchasai’ much earlier, during the reign of Trajan, through a heavenly book delivered by two angels. Hippolytus goes on to mock a number of intriguing ideas drawn from this book and from the preaching of Alcibiades; these ideas include a description of the huge size of the two revealing angels, and a doctrine of Christ as a heavenly being who has been repeatedly incarnated in different human bodies over the centuries.

        I want to draw attention to one specific, surprising passage from Hippolytus’ account. In this line Alcibiades says, in describing the repeated earthly incarnations of the heavenly power Christ, that “This is not the first time he has been born of a virgin.” 

         Since Alcibiades was in Rome when he said this, he must have heard from them that Yeshua bar Yosef, the first century Galilean who was crucified by the Romans, was born of a virgin. His response was that this is not the first time that Christ has been born of a virgin; so he believed there was a time prior to the first century when Christ was incarnated by being born of a virgin. And this means he had received traditions about someone more ancient than Yeshua who had been born of a virgin. My hypothesis can explain this easily.

spiker said

Wow, gotten over it!?  Was it that big a spat that you needed to recuperate?  

Hmmmm….apparently, big enough that it could attract your attention after everyone else had forgotten. 😉

Steefen said
If you have a scholar as opposed to an independent researcher writing about this South Arabian religious movement, that would be interesting.

Back to Isa and Izas/Izates, Izates does not seem to have been crucified. The Koran says Isa was not crucified. Izates and his mother Helena took 7 year vows of holiness (probably Nazarene). I’m thinking this is more Jewish rather than South Arabian. Throw some clarity on this, if you can contribute more.

Kamal Salibi’s book needs a scholarly companion book that goes into the South Arabian religious movement. If you have a name of a good companion book to read along with the Salibi book, I’d appreciate it.  

I had not heard of Izates before this. It does not sound as though he had much to do with the prophet ‘Isa, peace be upon him.

The idea of the South Arabian religious movement is derived from statements of ancient Arabian historians who clearly state that the religion Nasraniyya came from the oasis city of Najran; because people identify Christianity with Nasraniyya, they interpret it to mean that it took root in Najran. I prefer to take the statement of these historians at face value, and to suggest that Nasraniyya was an earlier movement that influenced Christianity, rather than being identical to it.

Salibi was a professional historian himself; I have a good general history of Arabia by him.

Steefen said
Omar:

I had not heard of Izates before this. It does not sound as though he had much to do with the prophet ‘Isa, peace be upon him.

Steefen:

To have a holy mother who took intensive sacred vow for 7 years for holiness as the God of Moses would define it does not have much to do Isa.

In fact, to be above repute, this Mary, Queen Helena, did the vow for 14 years.

Jesus fed 5,000.

Isa/Izates fed 5,000 multiple times when famine struck the Jerusalem area.

I would have to go back to The Koran to see if Isa’s birth involved a blessed embryo, but the Christian Jesus and Izates had fathers who were told through visions that the embryo would be blessed.  

Chapter 4 of Salibi’s book has a good summary of the Quran’s teaching about ‘Isa, peace be upon him.

Steefen said

Izates’ father, King Monobazus spoke of storing treasures in Heaven.

When You say Jesus was a follower of Isa, I can agree to the extent that Jesus taught what Izates’ father taught by example.

~ ~ ~

Now, you’re saying Isa lived between 590 and 550 BCE. Tell us about the historical evidence of that. Is there even sacred scripture before the Koran, what(?), a thousand years later–sacred scripture of Isa?

If there were no following of Isa that generated sacred scripture, you probably do not have a valid case.

With what authorities did he interact or have conflicts? Jesus interacted with the Sanhedrin and the governor of Jerusalem.  

Actually, I think that the followers of ‘Isa, peace be upon him, were probably the fore-runners of the Essenes. The Greek word “Essaioi” can be derived from the Arabic “Isawi”, meaning “follower of ‘Isa”.

The evidence is indirect, and needs to be built up by combining a number of clues. For example, I can point out strong correlations between what is attributed to ‘Isa, peace be upon him, in the Quran and in pre-Islamic tradition, on the one hand, and passages in Second Isaiah, which is now dated to the Exilic period (before 539BCE), on the other. These correlations are best explained by supposing that ‘Isa, peace be upon him was alive before then, and so in the Exilic period.

By interpreting the Quran’s historical picture, I can conclude that ‘Isa, peace be upon him, was born before the Temple was destroyed; at the same time, he is said to have begun his prophethood after those of other prophets, such as Ezekiel, peace be upon him, who received his prophetic call in 592BCE. Since ‘Isa, peace be upon him, was a prophet since birth, a reasonable conclusion is that he was born around 590BCE.

It is a complicated argument, though the end result is a hypothesis that explains a lot of diverse phenomena.