September 26: Hadith on Jesus the mystic / Parables

David Vishanoff

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Assignment

In Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus, read sayings #79-303 (pp. 95-218). Focus on the sayings themselves, not the references or the translator’s comments.

• What changes do you see in how Jesus is depicted here, compared to the hadith we read for the previous class?
• Which specific sayings do you recognize as reflecting, reinterpreting, or distorting specific sayings of Jesus from the canonical Gospels?
• Can you imagine how the Middle Eastern context in which these sayings circulated might have affected how Jesus was portrayed?
• What might the motivations for this portrait of Jesus be?
• Is this reimagining of Jesus reasonable, given the Muslim authors’ context, assumptions, and motivations? Is it in any way unethical?
• Are this portrayal of Jesus so different from that in the canonical Gospels that it isn’t really talking about the same person, but is just imagining an essentially different Jesus to fit Muslim conceptions?

Then write and post a first draft of your own gospel’s version of a parable, with comments explaining your choices and comparing them to choices made by the Talmud and/or the Muslim authors. You could rework one or more specific parables from the canonical Gospels, or a saying from The Muslim Jesus, or have Jesus employ a different kind of teaching that takes the place of parables. Please take some time to comment on what others have posted as well.

In class today I will also ask everyone about the steps they’ve taken toward figuring out life after college.

Notes from class

We reached some solid conclusions about this collective Muslim portrait of Jesus:

• Unlike the Qur’an, it is not defending Jesus against Jewish accusations or polemicizing against Christians (although it does assume some Qur’anic notions like the virgin birth and Jesus’ humanity).
• Unlike the Qur’an, it is not presenting Jesus as a prophet but as a holy man, a Sufi teacher who lives a life of asceticism and devotional piety and goes about dispensing wisdom and spiritual advice. He isn’t the best holy man, either; he makes mistakes, and John the Baptist and other holy men come off as superior to him.
• It alludes to numerous specific passages from the text of the canonical Gospels, but it does not rewrite them to counter them, as the Talmud did. Instead it just highlights the otherworldly and ascetic dimensions of the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus, and interprets other dimensions of the Gospels to fit that ascetic Sufi teacher portrait. For example, miracles serve as teachable moments rather than as proofs of his prophethood or divine power.
• So the Jesus they present is not a polemical counter-Christian Jesus, but just an alternative Jesus. It is not the same Jesus: although the Gospels do have Jesus say some otherworldly things, we don’t think they present Jesus as advocating a life of “asceticism and pious exertion.”
• So this image of Jesus wasn’t constructed with the goal of understanding or arguing with Christians; it was constructed for strictly internal purposes: Jesus is used to argue against the authors’ Muslim opponents, including especially worldly scholars.