The color of Jesus
I remember once, I was in a shop, in Paris. It was called Darty, the underground level. There was a man, tall with a black beard and slightly long black hairs. He had a black coat and he was there with his wife, he was carrying a little girl. The picture was surprising, this man could have be Jesus. Same face, same eyes, same posture, you know, standing, talking slowly, moving slowly, somehow different from the other people. He was not white. He could have be a Jew, he looked like a Jew, he was dressed black, his hairs were black, his skin was tanned brown.
Colors did not really matter. It was the look in his face, the way he was carrying this little girl, the way she was silent, the way his wife was silent. They seemed very happy, shopping around for a new washing machine or some stuff for the house. They seemed to agree without talking, the vendors did not have to argue, they knew what they were looking for. The life is so different when you know what you are looking for.
I am reading a book, I have not finished but I have decided to share it here. The book is in French. It was written by H.J. BIEGELAAR on 1894, five years after the end of the construction of the Eiffel Tower. I must read this book slowly, because it's full of words, I don't know how to consider. The title of the book is "Quelque chose pour tout le monde - L'Eglise Catholique Apostolique Romaine et l'esclavage - Coup d'oeil historique contre le trafic des esclaves en Afrique". The translation would be " Something for everyone - The Apostolic Roman Catholic Church and slavery - history glance against the slave trade in Africa". I am now page 95.
The book explains the creation of the church, the historical context, the choices the church had to make, the evolution. I shall sum up saying that before the church, there were many slaved owned by people that believed in many Gods to who the people had to offer many sacrifices. Animal and human sacrifices were a regular practice. Infanticide was allowed. Rome add conquer the Middle East and has been very attracted by the monotheism religion, its rules on the people. It was not a spontaneous attraction, but some priests have argued that only one God would solve more problems than many Gods. Jesus was the last sacrifice given to the one God and his sacrifice is shown with the Catholic cross to not have any more other horrible practices.
When the Christian Church started to spread all around the world, there were different practices, but to worship the Christian religion, people could not worship God only. They also had to worship Jesus who was the teacher of the Catholic church. During the fourth century, the first divisions appeared with the raise of the Arianism. From Wikipedia, "Arianism is a nontrinitarian belief that asserts that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but is entirely distinct from and subordinate to the God the Father.(...) The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by—and is therefore distinct from—God the Father. This belief is grounded in the Gospel of John (14:28) passage: "You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I."
The Christian Church as it is today is not a monotheist religion, because it calls Jesus a God. As it is said in the book of H.L BIEGELAAR, he is a God of charity. The question making Jesus as a God has probably arose when the people were asking why being Christian. Why not to being Jew? The answer given by the church was to say that Jesus was of the same substance, and that Jesus was God himself. That was a way to deny everything before Jesus, because the last word was the word of God.
Arianism has spread to the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia (page 91 of the book of H.J. BIEGELAAR), and Muhammad was probably influenced by the Arianism belief. When Arianism was rejected by the Christian church, the followers of this religion remained alone with their own belief, and the next Prophet for those people, would be that man who would carry its own revival independently from the church. Muhammad was an orphan, raised by an uncle in Mecca. The Mecca was a sanctuary for many Gods as Rome was before it became Christian. Muhammad was born in the Quraysh tribe who controlled Mecca. His clan was the Banu Hashim clan.
Muhammad meets the monk Bahira. FromJami' al-Tawarikh ("The Universal History") c. 1315 - Source : Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia : "Bahira or "Sergius the Monk" to the Latin West, was a Syriac or Arab Gnostic Manichean Nasorean or Nestorian Christian (or Arian) monk who, according to tradition, foretold to the adolescent Muhammad his future prophetic career. His name derives from the Syriac bḥīrā, meaning “tested (by God) and approved”.
"The story of Muhammad's encounter with Bahira is found in the works of the early Muslim historians Ibn Hisham, Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi, and Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, whose versions differ in some details. When Muhammad was either nine or twelve years old, he met Bahira in the town of Bosra in Syria during his travel with a Meccan caravan, accompanying his uncle Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib. When the caravan was passing by his cell, the monk invited the merchants to a feast. They accepted the invitation, leaving the boy to guard the camel. Bahira, however, insisted that everyone in the caravan should come to him. Then a miraculous occurrence indicated to the monk that Muhammad was to become a prophet.
It was a miraculous movement of a cloud that kept shadowing Muhammad regardless of the time of the day. The monk revealed his visions of Muhammad's future to the boy's uncle (Abu Talib), warning him to preserve the child from the Jews (in Ibn Sa'd's version) or from the Byzantines (in al-Tabari's version). Both Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari write that Bahira found the announcement of the coming of Muhammad in the original, unadulterated gospels, which he possessed; the standard Islamic view is that Christians corrupted the gospels, in part by erasing any references to Muhammad."
"In the Christian tradition Bahira became a heretical monk, whose errant views inspired the Qur'an. Bahira is at the center of the Apocalypse of Bahira, which exists in Syriac and Arabic which makes the case for an origin of the Qur'an from Christian apocrypha. Certain Arabist authors maintain that Bahira's works formed the basis of those parts of the Qur'an that conform to the principles of Christianity, while the rest was introduced either by subsequent compilers such as Uthman Ibn Affan or contemporary Jews and Arabs. The names and religious affiliations of the monk vary in different Christian sources. For example, John of Damascus (d.749), a Christian writer, states that Muhammad "having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy."
"For Abd-al-Masih al-Kindi, who calls him Sergius and writes that he later called himself Nestorius, Bahira was a Nasorean, a group usually conflated with the Nestorians. After the 9th century, Byzantine polemicists refer to him as Baeira or Pakhyras, both being derivatives of the name Bahira, and describe him as an iconoclast. Sometimes Bahira is called a Jacobite or an Arian. The early Christian polemical biographies of Muhammad share in claiming that any supposed illiteracy of Muhammad did not imply that he received religious instruction solely from the angel Gabriel, and often identified Bahira as a secret, religious teacher to Muhammad."
"In a later development of the story Muhammad and Sergius get drunk. While they are sleeping in a stupor a Jew (or in some versions a soldier) takes Muhammad's sword and kills Sergius with it. When he awakes Muhammad sees his bloody sword and is convinced that he killed Sergius in a drunken rage. In shame he bans the use of alcohol among his followers."
Muhammad and the Monk Sergius, engraving of 1508 by Lucas van Leyden (The soldier takes Muhammad's sword. see text) - Source : Wikipedia.
We can imagine the scenery, merchants who meet a monk, that monk being reject by the church, still believing that there is only one God and that men cannot be any God. He could have be a philosopher or even a wise man, telling the little Muhammad that him too, could become a prophet. He would have talked like a Christian priest saying that people are a creature of God. The monk with his belief and the merchants with their own belief taking the words for granted that Muhammad would grow different.
Muhammad met many other non-Muslim people and met with the Christian community of Najran. Najran was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia. From Wikipedia : "The Christians of Najran were divided into two sects. One drew on a variety of Nestorianism, which a local merchant had acquired during a sojourn in al-Hira, and took back to Najran sometime during the reign of the Sassanid ruler Yazdegerd II (last Iranian Empire before the raise of Islam). The other was a form of anti-Chalcedonianism (Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, etc...), had suffered an earlier, but brief, stint of persecution with the advent of the new dynasty under the Himyarite ruler Shurihbi'īl Yakkuf (c.468-480). The Jewish faith had strong roots within the Himyarite kingdom when Dhu Nuwas rose to power, and not only in Zafar but Najran also, it seems that several synagogues had been built."
Men and women relation with God has many roots and many branches, but the social context is the trunk that the religion can't change, because a social community is made with fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, neighbors and people that count. This is "social cohesion". According to Wikiprogress "its constituent elements include concerns about social inclusion, social capital and social mobility."
From Wikipedia: "According to Arabic history books, the Quraysh tribe was a branch of the Banu Kinanah tribe, which descended from the Mudhar. For several generations they were spread about among other tribal groupings. About five generations before Muhammad the situation was changed by Qusai ibn Kilab. By war and diplomacy he assembled an alliance that delivered to him the keys of the Kaaba, an important pagan shrine which brought revenues to Mecca because of the multitude of pilgrims that it attracted. He then gathered his fellow tribesmen to settle at Mecca, where he enjoyed such adulation from his kin that they adjudged him their de facto king, a position that was enjoyed by no other descendant of his. Different responsibilities were apportioned between different clans. There were some rivalries among the clans, and these became especially pronounced during Muhammad's lifetime."
"Abū Ṭālib was a brother of Muhammad's father, 'Abdullāh ibn Abdul-Muttalib, who had died before Muhammad's birth. After the death of Muhammad's mother Āminah bint Wahb, Muhammad as a child was taken into the care of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib. When Muhammad reached eight years of age, 'Abdul-Muttalib died. One of Muhammad's uncles was to take him in. The oldest, Al-Harith was not wealthy enough to take him in. Al-'Abbas was the wealthiest but he was not welcoming. Abu Talib, despite his poverty, took in Muhammad because of his generosity. Although, it is confusing that Abu Talib was responsible for Siqaya & Rifada (Food & Beverages) of Hajj pilgrims, yet he was poor."
Miniature from Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's Jami al-Tawarikh, c. 1315, illustrating the story of Muhammad's role in re-setting the Black Stone in 605. (Ilkhanate period) - Source : Wikipedia.
A depiction of Muhammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. From the manuscript Jami' al-tawarikh by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, 1307, Ilkhanate period - Source: Wikipedia.
The social cohesion of Muhammad entourage was settled with the resort activities. Pilgrim, food, beverage and probably hostelling. Islam has given this community a different social status that probably motivated the conversions to Islam. The Mecca became Muslim probably because the many perspectives of the religion were linked to business. Muslim foreign people saw the diversity gathering in Mecca. Local Saudi people had different considerations that Wahhabism enlarge nowadays (see this article). The Sunni and Shia branches of Islam made their own divisions over the grave of Muhammad without any universal message. Over the 27 kingdoms of the world, 9 are Muslim and 3 of them are absolute.
The only universal message comes from the Christian roots of Islam, but Muhammad (or the church) has cut the tree himself when saying "The best of the people are my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them." (source: Wikipedia). The young generation was preaching and teaching the old one. This was a social parricide that shapes modern Islam.
Was the raise of Islam a mistake from the Christian church ? This is an easy question to ask on 2015, but would the mistake happen today ? I believe yes. Monotheism is a concept that people only believe with the many proves of God. Making Jesus the same substance of God, there is no place for the Prophets. And among the history of the humanity, the prophets were many. Muhammad was one prophet who made his own battle, and his clan made the battle a universal pilgrimage, despite faith and despite the meaning of a religion. Islam prohibited the representation of Muhammad around the XVIth century and probably for the same reasons as Christian call Jesus a God, to make theirs the message of God, the books and their interpretation.
A depiction of Muhammad (with veiled face) advancing on Mecca from Siyer-i Nebi, a 16th-century Ottomanmanuscript. The angels Gabriel, Michael, Israfil and Azrail, are also shown- Source: Wikipedia.
The Christian Church calls Jesus a God, but the people may draw Jesus, while there is no other representation of God than the lights, the music, the knowledge and the emotion. This is a paradox, but Muslim people call a prophet someone they cannot draw, they cannot see and they cannot imagine. Islam makes a parallel of Muhammad with God which becomes polytheism, while the human face of the prophet disappears.
To teach the Gospel, Jesus is always white, but the children may choose their own colors. Brown, pink, black, yellow whatever. Their knowledge come from the color they add and the recognition they see of the man he was. The church may have made him a God among the people, but in the children heart, he is always a man who would have the same color as theirs.
The conversion of Rome among the early Christian time was made on slavery. The slaves who would convert to Christian would be freed from slavery. They could gain a social status that local laws did not give them and this practice has spread all over the world to Africa, South America, and southern states of the United-States. The conversion to the Christian religion gave a human face to the people because they could live on the same basis and the same human values. Black little children may draw Jesus with a black skin, a white beard and white cloth. Each one, in his belief, may chose his own color.
Still, the world is changing and must face many challenges. Would the church learn from the spread of Islam ? I believe not because the church still be wealthy, growing and managing its own power. Geneva is a financial branch of the Christian church and the roots are many. Among the many challenges is the answer to the Muslim Jihad and I believe that only the church can be an answer, because only the church may know why this branch has broken and why the violence of Jihad is calling the name of God.
