*William Haines (researcher)
**Dr Rebecca Masterton (academic, author)
***Dr Imranali Panjwani (Lecturer in Law)
The divine scriptures have been a source of knowledge and moral guidance to the majority of the earth’s population for many centuries. In the Christian faith: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. For Muslims the beginning was the divine command to Mohammad: Read. These are the foundations of the holy scriptures which, in their original forms, are the absolute truth. How can people relate to them? What is their position within the human society today? Are divine scriptures the beginning or the end of knowledge? How divine are the holy books of the main Abrahamic religions? Since they are at the heart of mankind, their sanctity must be preserved and respected.
Insulting them is an abhorrent act against their followers.
Monday 13th February 2023
William Haines: The Christians and I think also the Muslims believe that Jesus is the messiah. The early Christian church was regarded as a Jewish sect. There are Jews who believe that Jesus was a messiah while most Jews do not believe that Jesus was a messiah. So they are always arguing with each other: the Jews who believed that Jesus was a messiah and the ones who do not believe that he was a messiah. The Hebrew bible was their source of authority and their scripture.
Later on the letters of some of the apostles like Paul or Peter which were collected together and as the apostles started to die and people realised we need to write down and record the life of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus. And you get what is now known as the New Testament.
But within the early Christian church there was a movement called Gnosticism and the Gnostic view was that God of the Old Testament was a vengeful God. They did not read the Old Testament because the god of the Old Testament is a vengeful God, and angry God, not a loving God. We do not believe that. It is complete misrepresentation of how God is within the Old Testament.
They just wanted to have the gospel of Marcia which is pretty much just the gospel of Mark. So the early church rejected that. At the end of the day Jesus was a Jew. There is nothing that Jesus taught which is different to what you find in the Hebrew bible. And so that is why they decided it is important to keep the Hebrew bible and we will attach the New Testament onto the back of the Hebrew bible. The New Testament was written by Jews who believe in Jesus and that became the New Testament.
Because Jesus is a Jew it is impossible to understand Jesus without accepting and acknowledging and accepting the Hebrew bible. There is a conversation between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is impossible to understand the teachings of Jesus without understanding the fact that he was a Jew.
The Christian view is complicated about the word of God. They say that Jesus was the word of God. It was not that he was given the gospel in the way that Mohammed received thee Quran. Christians believe that Jesus himself was the word of God. So when he spoke he was expressing God’s word because he himself was the incarnation of the word of God. So there is a different understanding of what is going on there.
I find this myself very helpful. The divine principle and the teachings of Sun Young Moon acknowledge the authenticity of other religious scriptures I have read the Quran but I realised that I can’t understand the Quran without also understanding the Hebrew bible and the New Testament.
*William Haines is a pastor with the Federation for World Peace and Unification Studies. He graduated from the Unification Theological Seminary. He is author of several text books on character education that are taught at schools in the Russian Federation. William also lectures on topics related to theology.
**Dr Rebecca Masterton is a lecturer in Islamic Studies and is currently Director of Online Shi‘a Studies, having taught at Birkbeck College and the Islamic College. She converted to Islam in 1999 and obtained her doctorate in francophone and Islamic literature of West Africa from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2006. Her articles are available on Academia.edu and she has published two books: Shi’i spirituality for the 21st century and: Passing Through the Dream. She has been an anchor presenter for various media including Sahar TV, Hadi TV, Press TV and Ahlulbayt TV.
***Dr Imranali Panjwani has lived, studied and worked in the UK, Middle East and Australia as an academic, lawyer, chaplain and community worker. He is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Anglia Ruskin University and the Head of Diverse Legal Consulting. He researches Islamic and Western Law focusing on the subject of the law, interpretation of scripture, moral development and access to justice and human rights for minority communities. His country expert reports for asylum seekers and refugees have been commented upon by judges and lawyers and draw upon his diverse legal, cultural and religious experiences.
