Children of Abraham:: Jesus and Mohammed

By Michael S. Pendergast III

It all began with Abraham, and with his son Isaac and his older brother Ishmael.

The question in dispute today is where it all ends or should end. Does history lead us to a particular descendent of Ishmael, Mohammed of Mecca and the religion he founded? Or does it lead instead to a descendent of Isaac, Jesus of Nazareth and a competing religion Christianity? Is there any hope of discovering which of the alternatives is the true path that we should embrace and follow?

There is! For the Holy Book of one religion sets out a test consistency and then fails to pass it in a spectacular fashion. The Scriptures of the other religion, however, sets out a different test meeting prophecy and then stuns us by flawlessly passing not only it, but other books test as well.

Step inside this short manuscript and we will journey through history, examining the lives of Abraham, Mohammed, and Jesus, and the religion each was intimately associated with. As we do so, we will make some amazing discoveries that may perhaps change forever your ideas about who Jesus and Mohammed were and what Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477205266

Michael S. Pendergast III

Michael Pendergast is a retired B-52 aircraft commander and acquisition engineer, as well as a former instructor of philosophy at a well-known Mid-western Christian university, where he taught logic, introductory philosophy, and ethics. A philosopher and theologian, Major Pendergast holds degrees in engineering (with a minor in astrophysics), administration, philosophy, and international affairs. Widowed with three grown children, and now remarried, this graduate of Cornell University, Siena College, and the Air War University lives and works in Maine, where he devotes much of his time to writing. The method to his writing is to establish a gestalt to understand that science, philosophy, and theology are ultimately one -- with the goal of finding the real meaning of life.

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© 2012 by Michael S. Pendergast III. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/16/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0528-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0527-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0526-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012908263

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Part One       Abraham, the Hero of Faith

Part Two       Mohammed, the Hero Who Lost Faith

Part Three       Jesus, the King of Faith

Part Four    The Conclusion: Jesus and Mohammed

Maps

Bibliography

Endnotes

Books By Michael S. Pendergast III

FICTION

The Creation Trilogy:

The Beginning of a Beginning

The Chosen Peoples

(in work)

The Assault Trilogy:

Assault on America

The Assault Continues

(forthcoming)

PHILOSOPHY

The Philosophy of the Human Soul

The Philosophy of Love

THEOLOGY

The Lord of the Impossible

Abraham’s Children: Jesus and Mohammed

POETRY

(under the pseudonym Michael Mann)

The Boat Rocker

Dedicatory Challenge

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As I say in the second manuscript that looked at the human soul, trying to understand who we really are, paraphrasing the words of Kreeft and Tacelli, I say again:

All my brother asks for, at first, is honesty. He has only gentle words for honest skeptics and doubters, but horribly hard words for all those who caused the little ones who once believed in him to stumble—something about millstones—and I know it is not a safe bet to suppose that he has become more mature, nuanced, and sophisticated today—something about never changing. He has arranged it so that the heart and will and love, rather than cold intellect [or the heat of revolutionary jihad], is what ultimately decides our destiny . . . and this is as it should be, for . . . the choice to seek after the truth is a free choice that is uniquely ours . . . and all who seek the truth find it.

We therefore throw down the gauntlet to all, especially those of you who are Jews, Christians, or Muslims . . . be a seeker of Truth.

Introduction

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It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.

Aristotle

When it comes to science, the common man assumes that all scientists—including those in the social sciences, such as anthropology or history—dispassionately pursue truth for its own sake and go just as far as the evidence will take them. And no further.

The current debacles over evolution and design theory, global warming, and many others indicates that this ideal, though perhaps once true, is now nothing more than a myth. In the 1970s, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman became publicly critical of so-called social sciences . . . pseudo-science, bereft of basic honesty and experimental controls, yet having researchers who ostensibly go through the motions of scientific rituals, even wearing lab coats, but without actually doing science. Since then the hard sciences have followed this route and now science, for many, is no longer about seeking to understand and control our world, but about activism and controlling our neighbors . . . Objective truth is not a major concern of post-normal scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration on mere power, has been the result (Wanliss).

Post-normal science has ceased to be real science and become instead a form of political philosophy. And when it comes to philosophy, the common man generally rolls his eyes and assumes that it is little more than a superficial, even fanciful, reflection on the world, rather than a serious inquiry . . . hardly distinguishable from a religious attitude. It is, to a great many, primarily a matter of personal taste (Reichman, 1-2). Yet, whether the common man knows it or not, every man not only has a philosophy, but that philosophy plays an important role in guiding him throughout his life. Why? Because a man’s values and emotions are determined by his fundamental view of life, that is, his philosophy (Rand, 7).

A man’s philosophy can, however, be acquired in one of two ways: accidentally through osmosis, absorbing bits and pieces of whatever is in the cultural sea he swims in (which is dangerous, since much of what he is now inundated with are politically correct truths drawn from pernicious philosophies) or deliberately, through study in defense of truth, justice, freedom, and any other value worth holding dear (Rand, 8).

Finally, when it comes to theology and religious attitudes, the common man, taught as he has been in this cultural sea of pernicious philosophies, now generally assumes that all religions are equally good—or equally bad. As a result religion is often banished to Sunday mornings (or just Easter and Christmas . . . or Passover and Yom Kippur if he is Jewish)—or banished totally. After all, if Jesus is just a good and wise teacher—like the Buddha or Gandhi or Confucius—well, don’t we already know right from wrong? And if so, what real need do we have for religion anymore?

Or, on the other hand, the common man may become excessive, reading into his chosen religion much more than the scriptures allow. This is the claim presently being made against the fundamentalist Muslims who are pursuing jihad—the claim that they have perverted Islam, the religion of peace, and so transformed it into something it was never meant to be.

Now with all due respect to the Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Confucians and all the other religions in the world, right now—in this present technological age, with all its technological terrors—the life or death of the civilized world seems to hang on one simply question. That question is . . . Judeo-Christianity or Islam?

That being the case, it would seem that before a rational decision can be made, we must necessarily take a very close look at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

That is the purpose of this manuscript.

Herein I intend to take a deep philosophical look at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, using the best scientific and historical methods that are available to me. Furthermore, in doing this I will examine the lives of three men—Abraham of Ur, Jesus bar Joseph, and Mohammed ibn Abdallah—who many religious textbooks credit as the founders of these three great monotheistic religions. The premise here is simple. Look at the founders of the religions in question to understand the essence of those religions—without the dross, the additions (or deletions), that have varnished each of the three.

In that way I do not have to contend with juggling Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or Hasidic Jewish doctrines, comparing and contrasting them to each other, in order to figure out what just what Judaism really is. Neither do I have to contend with the various doctrines of Catholicism (whether Roman, Greek Orthodox, etc.) and those of any of the Protestant denominations—especially the fringe Christian sects or cults—in order to understand Christianity or at the doctrines of either Shiites or the Sunnis—or any other Islamic sect or cult—to understand what Islam really is.

Now, before I go any further, it is necessary for my readers to know and understand several of my beliefs and qualifications by placing them in plain view.

I am an engineer and scientist by education and training. I am a philosopher (and perhaps even a theologian), also because of the education and training that I have submitted to.

I am also a Christian—and quite unrepentant about being so. I see no contradiction between my faith and the secular occupations I have prepared for and practiced. I will not say specifically which denomination I belong to and worship in—that is irrelevant.

What is relevant is the fact that what I now believe about Christianity (and Judaism and Islam, and the other religions and philosophies), after researching and writing this manuscript, is not the same as what I believed prior engaging in this exercise. The examination of them changed me in subtle and not so subtle ways. (In a similar manner, at an earlier time, my beliefs about God and man changed after researching and writing my dissertation, The Philosophy of the Human Soul: A Radical Postmodern View of Corporeal and Incorporeal Substances.)

The point is this—I am not writing this manuscript in order to defend or promote some preconceived theological doctrines (for this exercise has changed the doctrines I now espouse), but rather to champion what I discern to be the principles of knowledge and as much of the unvarnished truth (however much that may disturb some people) that we can obtain from employing those principles. I have thus done as Gilbert Ryle and Anthony Flew have counseled, and obeyed the command that Plato attributes to Socrates in the Republic: We must follow the argument wherever it leads. (Flew, 22)

In this manuscript, what we shall see is that the religion of Abraham is a superior religion, for it was more morally sound than any of the religions it contended with in the Land of Promise all those thousands of years ago.

What we shall also see is that Jesus is not precisely the founder of Christianity, for properly speaking what the Christ preached was not a new religion, an off-shoot of Judaism, but rather an annunciation of what Judaism itself was always meant to be. This means that Christianity ought to be recognized as Judaism recovered from the legalism and trivialities imposed and overwritten upon it by generations of scribes and Pharisees. (That Christianity is not so recognized is, in large part, because so many sects of Christianity have themselves become corrupted by legalism and traditions which have no Scriptural basis.)

On the other hand, because the revivified Jewish ideals so caught the attention of the Gentile masses that large numbers of non-Jews embraced this new religion, despite persecution, in a sense it is actually no longer merely the religion of the tribe of Judah (Judaism). In a very real way, then, it is right to call the Judaism that the Christ recovered from the dust-heap of history, cleaned-up, and held high, Christianity, for it is now the religion of all those—first the Jew and then the Gentile—that the Christ called out to Himself. It is indeed the religion of all those disciples who truly and voluntarily place themselves under the authority of the Christ, and thus under His Father, the Almighty God.

Finally, on the third hand (if you will), we shall see that Mohammed is not precisely the founder of Islam, the third of the world’s great monotheistic religions, for he actually founded two religions. What is confusing is that both bear the same name, and so are entwined to such a degree that most people fail to see this truth.

The first—the real Islam, Muslimism—developed from an amalgamation or synthesis of Jewish, Christian, and other mid-Eastern monotheistic religions that properly saw and understood that there is only one the God. This first version of Islam was born of the assumption that all those religions talked about the same single the God. And it is, just as Mohammed first preached and claimed, a religion of peace.

The second version of Islam, however, became so distorted and twisted by all the legalism and trivialities (Sharia) of a scribe and Pharisee, and so bereft of almost every vestige of love and tolerance, that it deserves to be recognized as a distinct religion—Mohammedanism. I name this false version of Islam Mohammedanism because it was not overwritten upon the religion of peace and imposed by some external conqueror or some later Muslim caliph, but rather by Mohammad himself.

He did this in Medina, acting not as a prophet, but as a secular leader and warlord who was looking not to God, but at the world through his own depressed frustrations following the personal losses he’d suffered and the failing political situation that he faced—especially the fact that Jews and Christians (and his own tribesmen in Mecca, that he’d fled from) still refused to convert.

At the present time, for many Muslims of conscience, the real Islam still exists in their heart of hearts. For the most part, however, and for a great many so-called Muslims, only a much distorted—and thus aborted—form (which cannot truly be called Islam, submission to the God of peace) exists. This religion of jihad that has supplanted and taken the place of Islam thus justly deserves to be called Mohammedanism, for in it Al-Lah, the God, the One who Mohammed proclaimed to be without an associate, seems to have acquired an associate—Mohammed himself. And he seems to have become as perfect, revered, and worshiped by Mohammedans as Al-Lah.

The final conclusion of this manuscript is that the religions that sprang from Mohammed are inferior. One, the early and true form of Islam, does not go the distance. Because of Mohammed’s false pride, it halted (and still halts) short of embracing Judaism (just as traditional Judaism halts short of embracing Christianity). The other more virulent form falsely called Islam—Mohammedanism, a grand corruption of Islam—is worse. It doesn’t just halt but flees from the truth, suspends itself in Sharia (religious law), and then marches back in hate and jihad to war against the Truth. And it does so because of the frustration, the material greed, and the lust for revenge and blood on the part of Mohammed first, and then a long line of successors that have followed him—right up to the present time.

On the other hand, though the religion that sprang from I Am Who I Am was corrupted by men, it was subsequently recovered from the dust by Jesus the Christ, His Son. The Christianity that truly follows the Christ leads away from rites and legalism towards love and peace. And it is in every way a—the—most superior means to be united to the God and live a good, holy, and righteous life (however much it too has subsequently been re-corrupted at times and in places by new outbreaks of rites (form being substituted for substance) and legalism).

Or, as Flew so simply put it, the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected . . . . [for] the claim concerning the resurrection is more impressive than any by the other religious competition. (Flew, 185, 187)

Part One

Abraham, the Hero of Faith

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Therefore they that are of faith shall be justified with faithful Abraham.

Galatians, iii

Abraham (meaning Father of Multitudes) was the first of the Patriarchs, the first physical and spiritual ancestor of the religion founded upon him by the God of Abraham. According to Jewish tradition derived from the written Torah, the Talmud, the Midrash, and other sources, Abraham was born under the name Abram in the city of Ur in Babylonia in the year 1948 from Creation (circa 1800 BCE) (Rich). Other sources and computations suggest an earlier date of birth, in 2161 BC (Unger, 13).

The son of an idol merchant, Terach, tradition has Abraham questioning the faith of his father from his early childhood and seeking truth. Eventually Abraham came to believe that the universe and the beings that inhabited it had to be the work of a single Creator God. Now, apparently,

Abram tried to convince his father, Terach, of the folly of idol worship. One day, when Abram was left alone to mind the store, he took a hammer and smashed all of the idols except the largest one. He placed the hammer in the hand of the largest idol. When his father returned and asked what happened, Abram said, The idols got into a fight, and the big one smashed all the other ones. His father said, Don’t be ridiculous. These idols have no life or power. They can’t do anything. Abram replied, Then why do you worship them? (Rich)

The Old Testament History

The history of Abraham is contained in the first book of the Hebrew Bible (the Pentateuch), Genesis, which, appropriately enough means origin, source, or begetting. This Greek-English translation, and its meanings, derive from the Hebrew name for this book ber’eshîth (in (the) beginning), which is the first word of both that book and the Bible.

The authorship of Genesis is traditionally and generally attributed to Moses. As the introductory gloss of one Bible notes:

It would be difficult to find a man in all the range of Israel’s life that was better qualified to write this history. Trained in the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22), Moses was providentially prepared to understand available records, manuscripts, and oral narratives. As a prophet to whom was granted the unusual privilege of unhurried hours of communication with God on Sinai, he was well equipped to record for all generations the Lord’s portrayal of his activity through the ages" (Holy Bible, 1).

Some may object, right from the beginning, that all Moses had to go on were oral records, and that, given the more than 400 year lapse between Abraham and Moses, these cannot be trusted. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the story has been corrupted, even if it was passed down orally from Abraham to Isaac and Jacob, and then eventually to Moses.

Though we in the West now struggle with memorization, and often find history tedious, a strong oral tradition then existed (and still exists) in the Middle East.

Today’s form critics "imagine a free-flowing situation . . . that allowed and even encouraged the easy invention of stories . . . . However, such a picture is totally contrary to the Middle Eastern and Jewish environment out of which these stories come. In the book Memory and Manuscript Birger Gerhardsson thoroughly documents the importance of memorization for the Jewish mentality.

The good Jewish student was not to lose a drop from the cistern of the master’s teaching . . . . (For a contemporary novel illustrating this phenomenon, read The Chosen by Chaim Potok.) No one was encouraged to play fast and loose with the formal tradition. You were not allowed creative freedom. You must recite word for word; you would be immediately corrected if a single word was wrong . . . .

. . . the formal tradition of a teacher is passed on verbatim and the informal stories . . . with extreme care . . . It [the corruption of histories] might have happened in some other time and place, but not in Israel or in the Middle East . . . . The evidence is that the people . . . meticulously preserved the exact words and accurately passed on the stories . . . (Lindsley, 74 and 76)

The history of Abraham that has been passed down and made available to us in the Bible is this: that Abraham was a human being, beset with all the doubts and fears that all human beings normally possess. True, he was a man of faith like his forefathers—Seth, Enoch, Noah, and Shem (Unger, 12)—but he did not come into his great faith in the God instantly or easily. Despite the tradition that he came at a young age to believe the universe and the men in it were the work of the single Creator God, belief is less than faith. Belief is a matter of the mind, but faith is a matter of the heart and soul, a willingness and choice to hang one’s whole body on a particular belief, even unto death.

This sort of faith, the faith Abraham is remembered for, took the better part of a life time to learn. It developed in starts and fits, and fallings-away, and returns, exactly as most human beings experience any development of true faith.

Merrill F. Unger divides Abraham’s life into four periods, each of which could be described as different stages in the development of his faith. In each period we see some growth, as Abraham learns to trust the commands that the God lays upon him. In none of the earlier three periods is Abraham’s faith complete. Rather it is a work-in-progress, as Abraham trust the God a little, but not fully. He always keeps a little something back, hedging his bet, so to speak.

The First Period

The first period began long after his childhood, when Abraham was already 70 years old. This era of Abraham’s live was initiated when the God of glory appeared to him in Chaldea, in Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) with a strange command: Depart from your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you (Acts 7:2-3).

Ultimately this command would change an old shopkeeper who dwelt in a city into a nomadic shepherd. More important, however, you must realize that what Abraham was being asked to do was to give up a known existence for an unknown one. This ‘old dog’ was being asked to learn new tricks, precisely at a time when most men would have been set in their ways and looking forward to a measure of comfort in their declining years. Imagine a rather successful 45 year old salesclerk of today, someone who has been working for a Sears in Boston or a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles since he was 18 (and is, presumably, looking forward to a relatively pleasant, not too distant retirement in an urban center that offers everything he could want), suddenly being asked to volunteer to homestead a rough, parched piece of desert in the Australian outback that seems to offer nothing but trials and hardship.

Yet Abraham does volunteer—with reservations. Yes, he does leave Chaldea. But rather than leaving his family, he brings with him not just his wife Sarah, but also his father, Terah, and his brother Nahor’s family, and the son of a second brother, Aran (Howlett), a nephew by the name of Lot, and his family too. And Abraham does not actually emigrate all they way to the land of promise, Canaan, but rather stops his band at Haran (Gen. 11:27-31; Unger 12)

Abraham stayed in Haran until the death of his father. With the death of Terah, the call of the God of glory was repeated: Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you (Gen. 12:1; Unger 12). And again Abraham obeys—with reservations. He leaves Haran and his father’s house, his brother Nahor’s family, but, with his wife and all his substance, he still takes his nephew Lot (and his family) with him, probably because he regards Lot as his heir, for he and Sarah are childless (Josephus, Antiquities 1.7.1; Unger 12).

In this state of partial obedience, Abraham set out, still not knowing where he was going.

At first the name of the country was not revealed to him. It is designated simply as a land which I will show you (Gen. 12:1). But even if the name Canaan had been mentioned at the onset, it might still be true that he went forth not knowing where he was going. For, in those days of slow transit, imperfect communication, and meager geographical knowledge, the mere name of a country several hundred miles distant would convey almost no idea of the country itself (Haley). (Unger, 12)

This time, however, Abraham does indeed journey to the land of Canaan, where he establishes his first encampment beside the oak of Moreh, between the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim.

Here, because of the faith he has shown (however incomplete in nature), God rewards Abraham with a great promise: that his children will possess this land. In response Abraham built an altar unto the LORD who appeared unto him (Gen. 12:6-7). Then, probably because of the jealousy of the Canaanites (Unger, 12), Abraham moved his encampment east of Bethel, where he built another altar and called upon the name of the LORD, before journeying still further south (Gen. 12:8-9).

Abraham was now in the land that the God of glory had shown him, the land that had been promised to his children and his children’s children. And a famine struck that land and was grievous. What did Abraham, the man of faith, do? He promptly (and quite faithlessly) abandoned the land of promise, taking his still extended family into famine-free Egypt.

And what did he do there? Seeing the covetous looks that the Egyptians cast upon his beautiful wife, he said to her:

Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee. (Gen. 12:11-13)

Now what Abraham asked of his wife was to tell a partial truth, but not the full truth, for Sarah was his half sister, having the same father, but a different mother (Gen. 20:12).

This prophesy did, in fact, come to pass. The princes of Egypt, seeing that Sarah was very fair, recommended her to Pharaoh. And he took her into his house, paying Abraham a dowry of sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and manservants and maidservants, and she asses, and camels (Gen. 12:14-16). Abraham became wealthy in Egypt—but he had not kept faith with God in leaving Canaan, nor had he kept faith with his wife in selling her into an adulterous marriage to save his own skin.

Perhaps this should have been the end of the story, but the God of glory had made a promise to Abraham which would have been broken had Abraham been left wealthy, but childless, in Egypt. The God thus intervened, striking Pharaoh and his house with great plagues which Pharaoh eventually learned was a punishment for taking Abraham’s wife as his own.

Pharaoh could have responded by slaying Abraham and Sarah and the rest, but, realizing that he had sinned, the Pharaoh was more faithful to God’s will than Abraham’s had been in response to famine and the fears Egypt brought him. Thus, instead of violence, Pharaoh indignantly rebuked Abraham for his subterfuge (Unger, 12), saying:

What