Many Christians try to claim that Jesus is the ‘prince of peace’ and that killing people would have negated his status of being not only a prophet of God but also his son. They mention this in particular to try to argue that Muhammad (saw) is not a prophet because he participated in wars.
This is obviously an absurd argument because we can just mention the “fatally violent acts” of OT prophets. In addition to this , christians claim Jesus is God, and therefore Jesus is ordering people in the OT to rip open the bellies of pregannt women(Hosea 13:16) which further debunks the claim that Jesus does not promote violent acts. However in this post, I will show in particular that Jesus is killing boys as a child.
Now before I get into the account, let me defend the Gospel of Thomas. In short the Gospel of Thomas, is just as authentic as the Bible we have today :p. You can take that statement however you want, because I am sure most people already know that I have a very low opinion of the authenticity of the Bible. A more articulated form of what I said, is echoed by a PhD candidate who is studying the Gospel of Thomas:
“I think that the fact that we are dealing with written records of orally transmitted eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ ministry and teaching means that we have no accurate way of making empirical decisions about what is and isn’t authentic Jesus tradition”
Now that we have settled any issues brought about the authencity of the Gospel of Thomas, let us get into the text.
The Gospel of Infancy Thomas
as translated by Harold Attridge & Ronald F. Hock in the book
The Complete Gospels, Harper Collins, ©1992
Boyhood deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ
1 I, Thomas the Israelite, am reporting to you, all my non-Jewish brothers and sisters, to make known the extraordinary childhood deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ – what he did after his birth in my region. This is how it all started:
2 When this boy, Jesus, was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream. (2) He was collecting the flowing water into ponds and made the water instantly pure. He did this with a single
command. (3) He then made soft clay and shaped it into twelve sparrows. He did this on the sabbath day, and many other boys were playing with him.
(4)But when a Jew saw what Jesus was doing while playing on the sabbath day, he immediately went off and told Joseph, Jesus’ father: “See here, your boy is at the ford and has taken mud and fashioned twelve birds with it, and so has violated the sabbath.”
(5)So Joseph went there, and as soon as he spotted him he shouted, “Why are you doing what’s not permitted on the sabbath?”
(6)But Jesus simply clapped his hands and shouted to the sparrows: “Be off, fly away, and remembe’ me, you who are now alive!” And the sparrows took off and flew away noisily.
(7)The Jews watched with amazement, then left the scene to report to their leaders what they had seen Jesus doing.
3 The son of Annas the scholar, standing there with Jesus, took a willow branch and drained the water Jesus had collected. (2)Jesus, however, saw what had happened and became angry, saying to him, “Damn you, you irreverent fool! What harm did the ponds of water do to you? From this moment you, too, will dry up like a tree, and you’ll never produce leaves or root or bear fruit.”
(3) In an instant the boy had completely withered away. Then Jesus departed and left for the house of Joseph. (4)The parents of the boy who had withered away picked him up and were carrying him out, sad because he was so young. And they came to Joseph and accused him: “It’s your fault – your boy did this.”
4 Later he was going through the village again when a boy ran and bumped him on the shoulder. Jesus got angry and said to him, “You won’t continue your journey.” (2)And all of a sudden, he fell down and died.
(3)Some people saw what had happened and said, “Where has this boy come from? Everything he says happens instantly!”
(4)The parents of the dead boy came to Joseph and blamed him saying, “Because you have such a boy, you can’t live with us in the village, or else teach him to bless and not curse. He’s killing our children!“
June 25, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Thanks for linking to my blog. I haven’t had time to read through what you have written, but would just like to point out that The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is to which I am referring on my blog. They are two different documents and there are no Christians who would accept The Infancy Gospel as being anywhere near authentic. Very few would accept Thomas, either. That’s not why it’s studied.
You should also be aware that what I was saying was that we cannot prove by empirical methods that any part of Christian Scripture is authentic, any more than Muslims can prove that any part of the Qu’ran is authentic. Christians believe that their Scripture is authentic because it was divinely inspired. I think that Muslims believe more or less the same thing about the Qu’ran.
June 25, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Judy Redman: your argument regarding Quran and Bible’s authenticity is pre-supposing that Bible and Quran are similar. But you, yourself, said it that Bible is “inspired word” of God for Christians while Quran is literal word of God for Muslims. To be able to support the Divine authenticity of Quran, the objective arguments look at its stylistic, literary, compositional and scientific accuracy and mastery. Quran is authentic because its challenge to imitate it has never been met and can never be met. You might say that its a subjective challenge but that only serves to show your ignorance in Arabic language and the reality of the Quranic challenge. It is as objective as it gets. You can read more on http://www.theinimitablequran.com
June 26, 2009 at 12:16 am
1- “As a literary monument the Koran thus stands by itself, a production unique to the Arabic literature, having
neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom. Muslims of all ages are united in proclaiming the
inimitability not only of its contents but also of its style….. and in forcing the High Arabic idiom into the
expression of new ranges of thought the Koran develops a bold and strikingly effective rhetorical prose1 in which
all the resources of syntactical modulation are exploited with great freedom and originality.”2
This statement coming from the well known Arab Grammarian Hammilton Gibb, is an apt description of the
Qur’ans use of literary and linguistic elements.
2- Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
who was a notable British Orientalist and translator states:
“…and that though several attempts have been made to produce a work equal to it as far as elegant writing is
concerned, none has as yet succeeded.”
June 26, 2009 at 12:29 am
To end and conclude,
Professor of Religion Bruce Lawrence at Duke University, states:
“As tangible signs Qur’anic verses are expressive of an inexhaustible truth. They signify meaning layered with
meaning, light upon light, miracle after miracle.”
Which academically sound scholar has said similar words regarding Bible?
June 26, 2009 at 10:09 am
One of the issues raised when the Qur’an is discussed is its reliability. Check out the article I wrote on this http://unveiling-christianity.com/2009/06/04/preservation-and-reliability-of-the-quran/
Btw..nice quotes…you should also quote Arthur Jeffrey wo basically says the Qur’an is supernatural
June 26, 2009 at 5:01 am
I like the Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the infancy Gospel of Thomas). However this is not a very good case to show Jesus killed people. If one is a trinitarian Twistian one is confronted with 2 possible problems.
1.) Jesus is God and therefore Jesus killed people in the Old Testament. See Genesis 19
2.)Jesus is the Angel of the LORD in the Old Testament(many trinitarians hold that the angel of the LORD was the pre-incarnate Christ) and he also killed.
Although to me, such things are polytheistic nonsense Jesus WILL slay many in his return, after all Jesus said he did not come in peace but by the sword.
P.S. women have no place in religion therefore to avoid the chagrin of being wrong I would be careful as to cite a woman in the matter of religion. They are emotional creatures void of logic and easily deceived. There God ordained place is to give military like submission to the males over them.
June 26, 2009 at 10:25 am
What brother Ibn Saad has pesented in his article is the infancy Gospel of Thomas as opposed to the Coptic Gospel of Thomas which is the one that some scholars believe whose words are closer to what Jesus actually said as prof. Bart Ehrman states in his introductory notes on the gospel in Lost Scriptures, page 20. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is believed to have been circulated in the first half of the second century and as the earliest from the ‘infancy gospels’.