Читать книгу Getting Jesus Right: How Muslims Get Jesus and Islam Wrong - James A Beverley - Страница 29

In the previous chapter, it is argued that the belief that Jesus was divine originated in what Jesus said and did. His resurrection provided confirmation. The Jesus movement concurred on this vital point, but the movement did disagree over some matters, especially when it came to aspects of Jewish Law and custom, and expectations with regard to Gentile converts.¹ Some differences of opinion had the potential of being very divisive. Other differences may largely reside in the imagination of modern writers.

Some critics have claimed that James and Paul did not see eye to eye, that in fact they held to two very different understandings of the Christian message, the gospel (or “good news”). For this reason, some even go so far as to claim that Paul is the true founder of the Christian Church, since his theology was markedly different from the theology of Jesus and that of his brother James.² This idea comes to vivid expression in Reza Aslan’s recent book, when he asserts that “Paul’s Christ had long obliterated any last trace of the Jewish Messiah in Jesus…[Paul’s] conception of Jesus as Christ would have been shocking and plainly heretical, which is why…James and the apostles demand that Paul come to Jerusalem to answer for his deviant teachings.”³ Contrary to this remarkable assertion, we shall see that when their respective arguments are fully understood, Paul and James are not at odds with one another in any significant way.