A quick note. Almost every New Testament scholar accepts the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles and its version of how the Church was established. This seems utterly amazing to me given the fact that the various single gospel traditions in Christianity (the Marcionites, the followers of Tatian etc.) rejected the text as spurious.Shouldn't our use of the material in Acts at least have a cautionary note that says something like 'this a DISPUTED understanding of how Christianity developed'?
In any event as I have noted in my last post, it is worth noting that with regards to Irenaeus' supernatural claims regarding the story of the establishment of the fourfold gospel we do have a clear sense of what the other side thought. They said the Roman government falsified the original Aramaic gospel, 'encouraging' agents within the Church to develop the text into its present fourfold form.
Whenever I mention this fact to New Testament scholars they scoff saying that this is a self-serving argument put out by Muslims. Yet I am amazed at this line of reasoning.
Breathing air is self-serving but also necessary to carry out the functions of life. So is eating, sleeping, drinking water. The list goes on and on.
The point is that just because an argument is 'self-serving' or useful doesn't mean it has to be discounted. There is no doubt among the scholars who study the early Arabic historians of Christianity that this was a 'real' tradition in the Middle East BEFORE the emergence of Islam. So what's the problem with 'Abd al-Jabbar's testimony?
Indeed if people want to eliminate 'self-serving' arguments how about the one that runs through the Acts of the Apostles and much of the reworked material in the books of the canon - i.e. that 'God' rejected the Jews and passed on 'the promise' to the Gentiles.
This ISN'T deemed to be 'self-serving'?
But there it is as the cornerstone to OUR understanding of religious history. Oh, I forgot ... God likes the mzungus better than everyone else. The mzungus are also the only honest people in the history of the world, the only 'reasonable' people in the history of the world, the only 'fair' and 'just' people in the world too.
Sorry, I forgot. Must have slipped my mind while I watching what is going on the world today. Back to the accepted principles of Biblical scholarship.
