One of the doctrines that separate Christianity and Islam is the deity of Jesus Christ. In this post, I will discuss the details of why I decided not to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ after several years of discussing the topic with Christians.
OT: Old Testament
NT: New Testament
Canonical gospels: The gospels that were chosen to be in the NT.
Synoptic gospels: Similar gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
Hadith: a narration of a saying attributed to prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) or his companions.
I acknowledge there are Christian denominations that believe Jesus was a prophet and a servant of the one God, I’m not addressing that belief because of two main reasons; first, the NT, barring the 4 gospels, leans towards deifying Jesus than humanizing him. Second, those denominations have been regarded as heretics by the most established Christian denominations today who believe that Jesus is God (Trinitarianism).
Before all, there's an important clarification of what this apology is not trying to prove that the NT presents Jesus as a prophet the same way Islam does, or that the crucifixion event never happened.
Let me start with the logical argument from Jesus’ perspective, we will look at the words that Jesus allegedly said. Many of the points I’m making here were inspired by other scholars that I happened to listen to alongside my research.
Christians believe that Jesus is 100% human and 100% God in the same person; holding two contradictory natures is incoherent because a human is limited but God is by necessity is limitless. This creed is contradictory as logically you cannot be fully you and fully not you at the same time. Any analogy you could come up with will, most likely, be a form of Modalism or another heresy. Christians, and almost all who believe that Jesus existed, acknowledge that Jesus was a human. So to believe that Jesus is fully God as well, is a paradox. According to the statements attributed to Jesus, the argument falls short as he didn’t declare divinity as the one God.
It has been constantly iterated by Ahmed Deedat and Dr. Zakir Naik that Jesus never verbally said “I am God” or “worship me,” I’m not going to rely on Jesus saying the exact words, I feel it’s a waste of time when the answer is already established. What I say is, show me where Jesus indicated that he is God even without using the phrases “I am God”or “worship me.” To be clear, if the belief in Jesus as God is the core of Christianity and that Jesus came to teach that, I would still wonder why he didn’t clearly state that. It’s strange that if Jesus is God that ruled since the beginning of time, he would follow the same way of the Old Testament, God clearly stated that he is God countless times in the OT so why it’s a different case when Jesus the God came?
To the contrary, Jesus clearly said that he worshipped God his Lord,
Even Paul himself indicated that Jesus has a God Superior to him.
This is a clear-text saying that the author did consider Jesus not only as inferior to God, but stressed the Father is the one God. And no, when he says “Spirit” he doesn’t refer to the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. If there is one God, the Father, and Jesus is God's subordinate Son/Lord, in what sense can Jesus nevertheless be included within the identity of the one God?
What did Jesus think of himself? According to the canonical gospels, Jesus thought that he was a human, a prophet, and the awaited Messiah. John was the only gospel where the author recorded that Jesus said things indicating that he knew of his divinity. Jesus expressed numerous times a distinction between him and God, places where you would think that Jesus would take advantage to express his true nature. Who is a prophet? You might ask, we will see some of the definitions from reputable sources:
From the definitions above, you can see that Jesus fulfilled all of them. When you read the synoptic gospels without the preconceived notion that Jesus is God, it’s obvious that Jesus believed he was a prophet. A prophet is someone approved by God to reveal a message; If God came down to earth as Jesus, Jesus would be God, not a prophet of God.
There’s another one when one of the scribes asked Jesus about the greatest commandment, Jesus said that it’s the Oneness of God, then the scribe confirmed that Jesus said the truth. But then Jesus confessed that the Jewish scribe who didn’t believe in Jesus’ deity is close to the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t say “No, you should believe that I am God and I will be crucified for your sins” maybe, just maybe, because he didn’t believe in that doctrine.
What did other people think of Jesus? How about his community? When they were surveyed by Jesus’ disciples, no one said that Jesus is God, rather they said that he’s John the Baptist or Elijah or some other prophet. If Jesus was God and no one knew his actual identity, wouldn’t that mean Jesus did not succeed in conveying his message? Why did some people think that Jesus was John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah? I would argue that they saw a human being preaching the word of God just like prophets did before him.
Even if Jesus said he’s the son of God, it wouldn’t make him any different kind of son than the peacemakers and many others who are also sons of God, I would like to examine the evidence for any distinction between the types of Sonship, let’s say (for argument sake) that Jesus is the son of God, how does that coincide with him being God himself? That’s a different topic to discuss later.
And don’t Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah? How would Jesus be God himself when the OT indicated that the Messiah would be a human, The OT described the Messiah as a man of God, but a human nonetheless.
God is omniscient, but Jesus isn’t, or at least this is what the authors of Matthew and Mark believed, Jesus said that no one knows when is the time (the hour), not even him, except the Father which is his God, according to Paul.
Father is God and knows about the hour, Jesus is the same God but doesn’t know about the hour?
Coming to the more interesting part, it was mentioned in the OT that God is not a human to lie, changes his mind, says something but doesn’t do it, or breaks a promise. Let’s take a look at one attribute at a time.
Jesus told his disciples that if they truly believe, they could do what is physically impossible, Jesus told them that they could physically move mountains if they had faith. If you had the power to move mountains, you would have the power to change the entire world. If the Pope had reached the utmost level of Christian piety, according to Roman Catholics, why would he travel around the world to seek peace while he could do whatever he wanted using faith? With a single prayer, he could’ve changed everything. Forget about the Pope, did anyone exist in the entire Christian history who possessed a decent level of faith to prove the passage? I would love to know.
With that much of exaggeration, Jesus does appear to lie according to the author.
Jesus did appear to have changed his mind several times in the gospels, perhaps the most obvious one is his alleged mission to sacrifice himself. According to Christianity, Jesus came down with the plan to die on the cross to atone the human sin, and that’s what John says, but Matthew suggests otherwise, he mentioned that Jesus prayed to God (himself?) to take away the cup of death.
This prayer revealed a lot about Jesus’ personality according to what the author said. Jesus made a clear distinction between his will and God’s, and that his will is subject to God’s. That drastically differs from John which became the doctrine that Christians believe. The other passage says:
If God said that he doesn’t change his mind (because his decisions are always correct) why did Jesus (God) change his mind?
The Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign so they would believe him, he replied by scolding them first then he said that they won’t be shown any sign save for the sign of prophet Jonah; Jesus continued that as Jonah was inside the whale for 3 days and 3 nights, so as he would be in the heart of the earth for 3 days and 3 nights. Let’s examine what’s required from Jesus. After his crucifixion, he should be buried for 3 days and 3 nights to fulfill the sign of Jonah.
Christians and Jews alike believe that Jonah was alive in the belly of the whale. If Jesus was to match that, he would’ve at least been alive underground, but Christians would say that he was dead for 3 days. Jesus did break his promise in that regard, and we haven’t even discussed the number of days and nights.
Most biblical scholars agree that Jesus died on Friday afternoon, and he was allegedly resurrected from his tomb on Sunday morning. If we are to count the days and nights:
Friday afternoon (Died)
Friday night (0 days 1 night)
Saturday morning (1 day 1 night)
Saturday night (1 day 2 nights)
Sunday morning (Resurrected)
Wait! That's all?! I thought there are more. Jesus died for approximately 1 and a half days only to weaken the Christian belief once again. Christians might try to dodge the question using the Hebrew reckoning argument; dying in the afternoon of Friday is considered a full day and night, and remaining dead during the day and night of Saturday, then resurrecting on Sunday morning to count another full day and night. Even with that stretch the gospel of John says that he was resurrected so soon that it was still dark. The funny thing is that Christians reject the Jewish law unless it's supporting their belief.
Why did Jesus stress the number of days and nights? Whatever you use, you cannot make it a systematic 3 days and nights. Yet again the NT failed to support the deity of Jesus by failing to accommodate the attributes of Jesus to the attributes of God. Failing on all 3 criteria makes it a considerable argument against the divinity of Jesus.
Throughout the gospels, we can be pretty certain that the scribes and Pharisees didn’t like Jesus and they tried to find any way possible to get him into trouble, later they could convince enough people and Pilate to crucify him. With all this hate, I cannot imagine why wouldn’t they intentionally misinterpret whatever Jesus says. With all the sayings in John that Christians argue with, and Bart Ehrman of all people says that’s clear evidence of Jesus claiming divinity, if Jesus did claim divinity, the Jews would have had more than enough argument to crucify him a lot sooner.
When Jesus said “I and the Father are one”, Jews were about to stone him, but Jesus defended himself and explain what he meant. Jesus said that God himself labeled Jews as “gods”as the word of God was sent to them, so he didn’t commit blasphemy. Here Jesus made a distinction between what the Jews believed (that Jesus meant he is the one God) and what he meant.
You can understand from the answer that Jesus was sent to the world by God. Jesus could’ve said that he’s God himself and end the confusion, but he insisted that Jews misunderstood him. He didn’t fear being stoned, did he? As fear isn’t a godly attribute.
If you have a look at the verses before the famous “I and the Father are one”you’ll get the actual meaning of it. Jesus said that no one can snatch his followers from his hand, referring to their belief, he continues that the Father is greater than all (including Jesus) and no one can snatch them from his hand either. After that, he said the famous phrase, which entails that Jesus and the Father have some commonality in that context. I’m not going to talk about the Greek word for it or the original manuscripts, I will leave that to you.
Christians claim that Jesus quoted multiple times the name of God of Exodus 3:14 that is אֶהְיֶה (eh-yeh) or as Christians prefer to say “Yahweh”. We have to take a step back and examine each situation at a time. Exodus mentions the story of how Moses received the prophethood; Moses was herding the sheep of his father-in-law when he saw a burning bush that its flames were not consuming the branches. Then God spoke to Moses in the language that Moses understood, which was Hebrew. God told him that He wants to save the Israelites from Pharoah. Moses asked God about His name, and God answered him that his name is “I AM”or “I WILL BE”.
Jesus spoke Aramaic and likely Hebrew as he was knowledgeable of Torah. And the author of John’s gospel wrote his gospel in Greek. John was written more than 60 years after Jesus. In John 8 the author mentions that Jesus had a long debate with the Pharisees after he saved the adulterous woman. Allegedly Jesus was making exalted statements about himself and the Jews didn’t like it to say the least. Jesus said that Abraham was “rejoiced” to see the day when Jesus came, then Jesus said “Before Abraham was, I AM” immediately after that, they picked up stones to kill him.
There are a few things that we must keep in mind before concluding; Jesus didn’t speak Greek, and he was preaching to the Jews in Jerusalem, so he was likely speaking in Hebrew all the time. What did Jesus say in John 8:58? Whatever Jesus said, we don’t have it. If the author of John wrote his original gospel in Greek, how did he know that Jesus was quoting the name of God in Exodus? John doesn’t mention that, nor does he claim that Jesus was quoting it. The words for “I AM” that John wrote are “ego eimi,” which means “I am ..” as in “I am Christian” or could mean “It’s me!” There is no evidence that the Greek “ego eimi”is the same that God used in Exodus 3:14.
Christian Bibles such as the ESV would make you think that in Exodus God said, “I AM WHO I AM”, but the correct translation from the Septuagint is different. The Septuagint, which is the Greek OT, translates the Hebrew ”אהיה אשר אהיה ”to the Greek ”εγώ ειμι ο ων ”which translates to English as “I am the one.” Even though Hebrew translates as “I will be who I will be”, which suggests that the writers of the Septuagint had a different understanding of both Hebrew and Greek.
Let us assume for a moment that God did use the Greek “ego eimi,” was Jesus quoting the name of God? From the reaction of the Jews, we can conclude that they heard a greatly exalted statement that they considered blasphemous. I have argued that the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus anyway that they would render anything he says as blasphemy. On the other hand, the word “ego eimi”was not used to refer to God throughout the NT; it was used by other people in the gospels themselves. The blind man who Jesus cured in John 9 kept saying, “I am the man!” when people started questioning if he was the same person.
One of the commonly used verses to aid the divinity of Jesus is the passage where Jesus tells Philip that whoever has seen him, he has seen the Father as well,
But in the same gospel Jesus stated the contrary, he clearly stated that his followers didn’t hear his sound nor see him,
What I see is that the verse in John 14 is a clear metaphor that whoever witnessed Jesus, has witnessed what the Father wants and it would be enough for everyone there. If Christians want to interpret John 14: 9 as Jesus meant it literally, and John 5:37 metaphorically, then that’s just cherry-picking and they have to prove why did they interpret it like that.
If the teachings of Jesus lead to the belief in his divinity, why were his followers allowed to preach in synagogues? Why didn’t the Jews treat them as they were instructed in the OT?
The followers were allowed to preach there because they didn’t call to worship Jesus as the one God or the son of God, or that Jesus died on the cross to save humanity. As we read in the book of Acts,
What is the eternal life that Jesus came to preach about? Jesus answers us that the Father is the “only” true God and that Jesus was his messenger, reminds me of the Shahada or the testimony of faith that's the first pillar of Islam.
Jesus also said that his teachings aren’t his own, he stated that the teachings are from the one who sent him. If Jesus is God, why he didn’t have personal teachings? If the teachings were sent by God the Father, wouldn’t that make Jesus the sender as well?
The main reason why I decided to include the historical record here is to show how the gospels are all over the place when it comes to what each author believes what actually happened. Muslims don't just accept whatever was narrated to be what prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) had actually said, we scrutinize each narration rigorously to reach the highest level of certainty regarding each hadith. The NT fails our tests from the very beginning, and the fact that the NT has a substantial history of forgeries that we already found, and we don't know how many we still don't know, leave a lot to be desired.
The NT has been ordered to start with the gospel of Matthew then Mark, Luke, and John respectively. But according to the consensus of NT scholars, Matthew was not the first account of Jesus existed. According to the NT, Jesus died around the year 30–33 CE. The gospel of Mark was the first to emerge around the year 70 CE. This is a problem because there was a solid 40 years gap between Jesus and the earliest account. As far as we know, no one ever recorded the whereabouts of Jesus before Mark; meaning the stories were circulated orally for 40 years until someone decided to write them down. This raises a concern that the eyewitness testimonies have turned into anecdotes, into fables, into legends.
As a historical book written in the year 70 CE, it wasn’t easy to do mass publishing as every single copy had to be handwritten from its source. What is more interesting is that the earliest manuscript of Mark is from the year 200 CE, a solid 130 years after the agreed date of writing, 130 years of handwriting every single copy of Mark. This entails human errors that accumulated over a long period. The scribes attempted to correct the mistakes without knowing if their correction was actually correct. Keeping in mind that when scribes went to correct some mistakes, they could correct under the influence of their pre-conceived belief. The process of mistakes and blind correction went on and on for over a century.
What about Matthew, Luke or John? According to historians, the gospel of John was written around the year 90 CE, and the other two gospels, Matthew and Luke, were written, respectively, between Mark and John. There’s a strong consensus among NT scholars that both Matthew and Luke based the majority of their accounts on Mark. If you read the three synoptic gospels side by side you’ll notice that in most of the events during Jesus’ life.
The problem that comes with different sources of history, is that you will invariably face some incoherences and maybe contradictions, but with the four gospels, you find numerous contradictions and discrepancies that you cannot simply ignore. Pick up any story that exists in all four gospels and compare the details in each, they often have irreconcilable differences. We will examine some of them here, the ones that were significant to me.
Mark, Matthew, and Luke say that Jesus had the Passover meal with his disciples then was caught by the Romans, spent the night under arrest, then he was crucified the next morning. John said that Jesus was arrested and crucified the afternoon before the Passover. He couldn't have been crucified twice.
Mark and Matthew both say that Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and laid him in a tomb while Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were watching. Luke, says that one woman saw the event. John says that Nicodemus helped Joseph with the burial but no other witness. The fact that all gospels seemed to diverge noticeably right before Jesus was aprehended makes me believe even more that the authors didn't have any half-decent sources especially relating to this stage.
Matthew mentioned that the Pharisees asked Pilate to secure the tomb else Jesus’ disciples might steal the body and claim the resurrection, but none of the others mentioned that.
Mark said that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb. Matthew mentioned that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb. Luke indicates that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and two women went to the tomb. John says that Mary Magdalene went alone to the tomb.
Mark, Luke, and John said that when the women arrived at the tomb, the rock had already been rolled out. Matthew indicated that when the women arrived, an angel rolled the rock in front of the guards.
Mark said that the women saw one man in the tomb (not Jesus). Matthew doesn’t mention anyone but the angel. Luke mentioned that they saw two men. John, however, said that when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, she just fled.
Mark said that the man asked them to tell the disciples that Jesus went before them to Galilee, so did the angel in Matthew. Surprisingly, the two men in Luke didn’t instruct to go anywhere.
The earliest manuscripts of Mark ended at 16:8 when the women ran away and didn’t tell anyone. Matthew mentioned that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene first before meeting the disciples in Galilee. In Luke “Jesus appears to Cleopas and an unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus, to Peter (reported by the other apostles), and to the eleven remaining disciples at a meeting with others“. John mentioned that Jesus appeared to the disciples and Mary Magdalene a couple of times before meeting them at Galilee.
As we mentioned before, NT historians agree that the gospel of Mark was the first canonical gospel to be written around the year 70 CE. What you might have guessed from the discrepancies section is that the stories in Matthew and Luke are oddly similar, sometimes to the word. There is a consensus among scholars that Matthew and Luke have based their accounts on Mark.
This becomes clear when the gospel of Mark abruptly ended in 16:8 as both Matthew and Luke part ways significantly, this can be seen in the story of resurrection. Scholars say that Matthew and Luke referenced other sources but they are unknown to this moment, so scholars refer to them as “Q”. I called it “plagiarism” because the correlation is obvious but they didn’t credit the source.
Christians claim that the authors of the four gospels based their records on eyewitness testimonies; this is crucial for them because the books are proven to be written decades after Jesus. If you read the gospels carefully, you would recognize that none of the books mention where did they get their information. Luke does say that many have written about the things that happened in the past during Jesus’ time, and he did his research, but nowhere did he mention that he interviewed eyewitnesses, especially when he wrote the book 50 years after Jesus.
There are many places in the gospels that record some events where there’s an obvious scarcity of eyewitnesses. Some events are witnessed by the bad guys only, so who transmitted what really happened? Back to the section titled “The Pharisees vs Jesus” Jews who hated Jesus for death were the only witnesses to some of the events, mainly the judgment scenes. Here are scenes to consider:
Jesus went with his disciples to Gethsemane to pray that God would save him from getting crucified. He took the disciples but before beginning to pray, he went aside and took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. Then he withdrew about a “stone throw”and prayed. When he came back, he found them sleeping.
Two things to consider; Matthew and Mark are almost identical in this story, but Luke mentions that an angel descended on Jesus; this is from the “L” source. This difference in the narrative might have happened because either Luke’s source was an eyewitness who is not one of Jesus’ disciples because they would see the same event. Or the event, Angel descending, didn’t happen and Luke’s source fabricated the detail for dramatic purposes, or someone tampered with Luke’s gospel and fabricated the event.
Were there any eyewitnesses to the event? Peter and Zebedee’s sons were sleeping, and none of the synoptic gospels mention any other witness. And the fact that Jesus was away from them makes it almost impossible to hear everything that Jesus said even if they were awake and focused, let alone seeing an angel.
After Jesus was "crucified," Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked him if he could take Jesus’ body and bury him. All four gospels mention that Pilat approved his request. Joseph took Jesus from the cross and buried him. The point I want to emphasize exist only in Matthew. He mentioned that Joseph took Jesus’ body, laid it in a tomb and sealed it. The next day, Pharisees came to Pilate and asked him to send guards to the tomb lest Jesus’ followers steal his body and claim the resurrection.
My question is, how did the guards know where is the tomb? There is no mention that Pilate went and asked Joseph about the location of the tomb, not would Joseph be compliant to give them the information after he did what’s against the Jewish Law (giving a proper burial to a blasphemous and a cursed man).
The gospel of John is the only gospel that portrays Jesus as a deity, not God himself, but a subordinate deity to God. All synoptic gospels disagree with John as they portray Jesus as a prophet of God and a Messiah. If you read the synoptic gospels and leave out John, you would never think that Jesus might be a deity, let alone God himself. There's no clear and non-contradictory way that Jesus could be equal to God the Father and still differ in everything that could make them equal.
I also believe that the historical record shows great inconsistencies among all canonical gospels that raise numerous questions regarding the reliability of conveying the historical events and the truthfulness of how gospel authors interpret the major events. 40 to 60 years after Jesus is enough to gather followers and ingrain the Christian belief to influence NT scribes. The canonical gospels are likely written by someone who believed that Jesus was (Son of) God.
If you read the gospels in chronological order, meaning that you read Mark then Matthew, Luke then John, you’ll definitely notice the perception of Jesus changes gradually from a human Messiah to a deity. You will notice how the story developed from a man delivering God’s message, to a deity coming down to sacrifice himself. And if you take out Matthew and Luke from the NT and read Mark then John, you will question if both are talking about the same person; Matthew and Luke create a smooth transition in the persona of Jesus that hides the huge contrast between Mark and John.
That was long, wasn't it? I hope that I was successful in presenting my research and argument, I’m not planning on convincing everyone, if you think I was harsh, I apologize as the intention of this article is anything but to alienate or deride Christians.
