Jesus the Prophet

by Dennis Green

Jesus figures prominently in the Koran, is the subject of many verses, and he is one of the major Prophets acknowledged by Mohammed. In the Koran, he was born of a virgin, under a palm tree in Palestine, and was never crucified but was rescued from that fate by God, when he complained, “My God, My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” And then Yahweh/Allah relented, and spared his life.

In Islam, God is not a person, and it is in fact idolatry to try and describe him in human terms, such as “Father” or “Old Man with a Beard,” or anything not ineffable and numinous. And to posit a “Holy Trinity” or imagine Jesus as the Son of God and a deity of equal significance — that is heresy. They may be onto something.

Jesus is just one of many Prophets, from Abraham to Ishmael to Isaac to Moses, David, and the last Prophet is Mohammed. Many Christians are ignorant of other religions, as they are discouraged from taking an interest in any faith but their own, and probably no religion is more hidden to the average Christian than Islam.

But they are often, also, ignorant about their own religion. They don’t seem to understand, or appreciate, that at the very heart of their belief system, their theology, is human sacrifice. “Jesus Paid It All.” Indeed. His crucifixion is regarded as a propitiation, a satisfaction in abstentia, for the sins of us all, a Way for the anger of Yahweh to be appeased.

Likewise, when we are told that the communion wine represents His Blood, and the communion wafer represents His Flesh, (“Take, eat, drink, do this in remembrance of me!”), we are practicing a cannibalistic ritual as primitive and as ancient as any tribe on earth. Plain and simple.

But all these facts of cultural anthropology are glossed over in modern times. Whole congregations revere human sacrifice and practice a form of symbolic cannibalism without even giving it any thought. Religion is like that. Especially on Christmas day.

Prayer, ritual, sacrifice — these ancient traditions are alive with us today. But the Catholic Popes, and all those Spanish conquistadores and missionaries did their best to stamp out so-called “Pagan” religions because they couldn’t stand the competition. Mother Church is a lot like Microsoft.

Meanwhile, divination, Nature Worship, alternative medicine and healing, meditation, chanting, animal totems, human and animal sacrifice, the eating of the flesh, the drinking of the blood, all persist. The hunger for a spiritual life is eternal, and if the old religions become calcified and un-fulfilling, new ways will be found, or even older ways will be resurrected.

There is something so primal, so compelling about human sacrifice and propitiation that it has been practiced in Christendom for more than 20 centuries. Only in the Koran is Jesus regarded as so loved by God that, like Ishmael, by his father Abraham, he is spared.

©2009 Dennis Green