A Muslim friend asks that if thousands of followers witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion (which he says was a hoax), why did they not try to save him? Did they have no guts?

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Dr. John Oakes wrote in Church History, General, History, Other Religions, Q & A.

Questions:

My Muslim friend says: The Major and Minor Prophets echoed the words of pagans i.e. God has wife, God has sons & daughters. The New Testament authors followed them and create God’s-Son in the form of Jesus to attract Roman public. Also, if thousands of people witnessed his crucifixion (which is a hoax) and believed him, they would have tried to save him from the Romans. Did these “thousands of people” have no guts/nuts to save their Messiah? Fact is: just few believed in Jesus and they were also persecuted after Jesus’ ascension, so they hid away. Where did Mary (Jesus’ mother) go? Nobody knows. What’s the Christian response to this?

Answers:

These statements are so disingenuous, misinformed and biased, honestly, to hardly deserve a response. History does not allow these statements to be true, and an honest reading of the Bible does not allow this to be true either. I struggle to fully respond to these disingenuous charges. But, I will.

On the first part, this must be a hot-trending Muslim critique, as I just answered this about two days ago. Here is my response to the first blatantly biased criticism:

Question:

Muslims says: God does not beget nor he has wife nor he has bodily form but prophetic books contains polytheistic concepts about God for e.g. 1. God has bodily form (Dan. 7:9) 2. God has sons & daughters (Isa. 43:6) 3. God treats Jerusalem/Israel as Wife (Isa. 54:5, Hos. 2:2). What’s your response?

Answer:

Muslims say a lot of things, and many (but not all!) of them are said from a very dishonest and unfair perspective. Let us not behave as these biased, unfair and disrespectful Muslims do–for example in this case. Here, the Muslim critic is obviously being disingenuous. Even this critic knows that the criticism is not a fair one.

First of all, not only does the Bible use anthropomorphisms, the Qur’an does as well. No one really believes that God has a hand or hair or even male or female genitalia. Any attempt by a Muslim to paint the Old Testament this way is dishonest. Of course, these are metaphors in the Bible, including anthropocentric ones. God reaches down his hand to lift us up, but he does so metaphorically. Sure, God allowed Daniel to have a vision of God in Daniel 7:9, but we all know that this is a symbol-laden vision. God does not have a physical body. To say that the Bible says that he does is clearly to deal dishonestly with the Scripture. For example, in the Qur’an sura 48 ayat 10 there is a passage about the hand of Allah. Of course, Muslims say that this is an anthropomorphism, and that Allah does not have a literal hand. Well, Christians say the same thing about their scriptures. What is good for one is good for another, but for a Muslim to find such passages in the Bible, when there are the same sort of passages in the Qur’an is hypocritical and evidence of simply trying to cast dishonest criticism. There are dozens of Scriptures in the Qur’an which ascribe human traits to Allah and many hundreds in the Hadith. There is an entire area of study in Islam to explain these anthropomorphisms, yet this Muslim person criticized the Old Testament for having these same things.

And by the way, The same can be said for these other passages as well. Of course, God does not have actual, physical sons and daughters. God the Father does not even have a body, and he is neither male nor female. He does not have a Y chromosome. To quote Isaiah 43:6 as evidence of this is really evidence of the dishonest spirit of this Muslim person. Just read the passage and you will see that the parenthood here is metaphorical, not literal. To claim differently, really, is to lie. Here, God says, “bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.” Here, clearly (and the Muslim critic know this, and thus the hypocrisy!), that this is talking about the followers of God, not actual physical children. Seriously!!!

God does treat Israel as a wife in some sense, by loving her and wanting a close spiritual relationship with her. What a beautiful metaphor! But is this Muslim person implying that the Bible says God wants to have sex with Israel? Really? Please, this is so disingenuous and, really, so dishonest and unfair, that the person who throws out this charge ought to be really embarrassed for their dishonesty.

God of the Bible does not have a bodily form, he does not have genetic, physical children and he does not have sex with people. Shame on this Muslim person for implying differently, and for willfully taking these passages out of context!!! Would he/she want us to do the same with the Qur’an (which is an easy thing to do). No.

John Oakes

On the second part, it was probably more like several hundred who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, but it might have been more than a thousand. We do not know. Again, this charge that the believers had no guts (nuts? A vulgar reference! Hmmm…) is outrageous. First of all, it was a Jewish crowd, and clearly the majority in Jerusalem had asked Jesus to be killed. The disciples feared for their lives from both the crowd and the Romans, and for good reason. What were they supposed to do? There was a large Roman guard. Does this Muslim propose that the disciples of Jesus, who were taught by him to turn the other cheek, supposed to attack dozens of heavily armed guards, with the crowd behind them? This would have been insanity for a couple of hundred close followers, with no weapons, and no large backing to attack the much larger Jewish crowd and the soldiers. This would not be bravery but stupidity. What is this person talking about???? Besides, their leader Jesus told them that he would be killed in Jerusalem. When Peter defended Jesus from his captors in the garden, Jesus demanded Peter to not defend him. Is there any chance Jesus would have wanted them to start an insurrection to “save” him. This is quite ridiculous and shows the desperation (or perhaps the ignorance) of the Muslim who makes this outrageous criticism.

Also, he claims that the crucifixion was a hoax. With what evidence? Pontius Pilate obviously reported having crucified Jesus. Josephus, a non-believing Jew agrees, as does the Roman historian Tacitus, as do all reputable historians. The Christian church, including the two Marys, John and others who were at the scene say Jesus was crucified, and would die for that belief. Yet this Muslim person calls it a hoax with zero evidence. This claim should be completely rejected and repudiated as irresponsible and even ridiculous.

I am not sure if the last couple of statements are coming from the Muslim critic or from you, but these claims are true. Jesus had only a few hundred hard-core followers at the time of his crucifixion, and many were probably not there in Jerusalem. They were fearful for their lives before his resurrection. This statement is true. Seven weeks later, after word of his resurrection got out,this changed dramatically, as the witnesses, including Josephus tell us. There were three thousand followers in Jerusalem (and probably a small but significant number more who were not in Jerusalem at Pentecost). Even then, this represented a fairly small proportion of the Jews at that time. Yes, the church started fairly small, but because of the resurrection of Jesus and his appearing to the disciples, the church rapidly became bold and began to grow rapidly. These historical facts support both the belief that Jesus was indeed crucified and that he was indeed resurrected. The claim that they “hid away” after the resurrection is certainly proved wrong by the facts of history, as the church grew rapidly from there, becoming tens of thousands by AD 40 and continuing to grow rapidly from there. These statements (other than the one that the early group of followers was quite small and, initially quite afraid, which is true) are all demonstrably false. This criticism should be rejected as historically proven false and as clearly coming from a person with an anti-Christian bias. This person is a Muslim who is supposed to believe Jesus is a prophet of God (as witnessed in the Qur’an), yet he refuses to believe what Jesus said. Very sad.

By the way, as a small side-note, the New Testament does not tell us what happened to Mary after her son ascended to heaven. We are not sure why this is, but presumably, she did not play a large role in the early church. It is even possible she died shortly thereafter, but we simply do not know. This person says that Mary is gone and no one knows where. That is true, but I fail to see how this has any relevance to the truth-claims of the Bible. There are an infinite number of things that we do not know from the Bible, including the latter part of Mary’s life. What is the point of this fact? I know of no point to be made from this.

John Oakes