The following is taken from 4^th century Christian apologist and theologian Epiphanius of Salamis, and highlights the importance of sacred tradition in the early Church:

6,4 However, none of the sacred words need an allegorical interpretation of their meaning; they need examination, and the perception to understand the force of each proposition. (5) But tradition must be used too, for not everything is available from the sacred scripture. Thus the holy apostles handed some things down in scriptures but some in traditions, as St. Paul says, “As I delivered the tradition to you,”²³ and elsewhere, “So I teach, and so I have delivered the tradition in the churches,”²⁴ and, “If ye keep the tradition in memory, unless ye have believed in vain.”²⁵ (6) God’s holy apostles, then, gave God’s holy church the tradition that it is sinful to change one’s mind and marry after vowing virginity. And yet the apostle wrote, “If the virgin marry she hath not sinned.”²⁶ (7)²⁷ How can the one agree with the other? By that virgin he does not mean the one who had made a vow to God, but < the one on whom* >virginity has been forced by the scarcity, at that particular time, of men who believe in Christ.

²⁴ Cf. 1 Cor 11:2; 7:17.

²⁵ 1 Cor 15:2.

²⁶ Cf. 1 Cor 7:36. (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies: The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Books II and III. De Fide, translated by Frank Williams [Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, Second, revised edition], Volume 79, 61. Against Apostolics, p. 121 https://archive.org/details/EpiphaniusPanarionBksIIIII1; bold emphasis)

FURTHER READING

EPIPHANIUS ON THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY

According to the allegedly sound hadiths attributed to Muhammad, Adam was created in the likeness of Allah’s shape and height:

I. Initiating the Greeting

5873. Hammam related from Abu Hurayra that the Prophet said, “Allah created Adam on HIS FORM and HIS HEIGHT was sixty cubits. When He created him, He said, ‘Go and greet that group angels and listen to how they greet you. It will be your greeting and the greeting of your descendants.’ He said, ‘Peace be upon you,’ and they said, ‘Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah,’ and they added, ‘and the mercy of Allah.’ Everyone who enters the Garden will be in form of Adam. People have been getting shorter until now.” (Aisha Bewley, The Sahih Collection of al-Bukhari, Chapter 82. Book of Asking Permission to Enter; emphasis mine)

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger as saying: Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created Adam in HIS OWN image with HIS LENGTH of sixty cubits, and as HE created him HE told him to greet that group, and that was a party of angels sitting there, and listen to the response that they give him, for it would form his greeting and that of his offspring. He then went away and said: Peace be upon you! They (the angels) said: May there be peace upon you and the Mercy of Allah, and they made an addition of “Mercy of Allah.” So he who would get into Paradise would get in the form of Adam, his length being sixty cubits, then the people who followed him continued to diminish in size up to this day. (Sahih Muslim, Book 040, Number 6809 https://sunnah.com/muslim:2841; *; emphasis mine)

Since Adam was created sixty cubits or ninety feet tall, this means that Allah himself is actually ninety feet tall!

The following somewhat lengthy excerpt is taken from a prominent Salafi website, which provides the massive amount of evidence that Adam was created in the form/image of Allah. All emphasis will be mine:

Ibn Abi ‘Asim narrated in al-Sunnah (517) that Ibn ‘Umar said: The Messenger of Allah said: “Do not say ‘May Allah deform your face’ [a form of cursing in Arabic], for the son of Adam was created IN THE IMAGE OF THE MOST MERCIFUL.” Shaykh ‘Abd-Allah ibn al-Ghunayman said: “This Hadith is authentic and was classed as such by the imams and by Imam Ahmad and Ishaq ibn Rahawayh. Those who classed it as inauthentic have no evidence, except for the view of Ibn Khuzaymah, but those who classed it as authentic are more knowledgeable than him.

Ibn Abi ‘Asim also narrated (516) that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allah said: “When any one of you fights let him avoid the face, for Allah created Adam in the image of His Face.” Shaykh al-Albani said: “Its chain of narration is authentic.”

These two Hadith indicate that the pronoun in the phrase “in His image” refers to Allah.

At-Tirmidhi (3234) narrated from Ibn `Abbas that the Prophet said: “My Lord came to me in the most beautiful image and said, `O Muhammad.’ I said, `Here I am at Your service, my Lord.’ He said, `What are the chiefs (angels) on high disputing about…’” (Classed as authentic by Al-Albani in Sahih At-Tirmidhi) 

According to the lengthy Hadith about intercession, it says, “… then the Compeller (Al-Jabbar) will come to them in an image different than the image in which they saw Him the first time…” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari, 7440 and Muslim, 182)

From these Hadiths we learn that IT IS PROVEN THAT ALLAH HAS AN IMAGE (Surah in Arabic), in a manner that befits Him. His image is one of His attributes which cannot be likened to the attributes of created beings, just as His essence cannot be likened to their essence.

Shaykh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah said: “The word Surah (image) in this Hadith is like all the other names and attributes narrated (in the texts) where the words used may also be applied to created beings, in a limited manner. When these words are applied to Allah, they carry a unique meaning, such as Al-`Alim (All Knowing), Al-Qadir (All-Powerful), Ar-Rahim (Most Merciful), As-Sami` (All Hearing), Al-Basir (All-Seeing), and such as His creating with His hands, rising above the Throne, etc.” (End quote from Naqd At-Ta’sis, 3/396) 

Everything that exists must inevitably have a form or image. Shaykh Al-Islam said: “Just as everything that exists must have attributes, so too everything that exists by itself must have a form or image. It is impossible for something that exists by itself not to have a form or image.” 

And he said: “There was no dispute among the salaf of the first three generations that the pronoun in the Hadith refers to Allah, and it is narrated through many chains of narration from many Companions. The contexts of the Hadiths all indicate that… But when al-Jahamiyyah became widespread in the third century AH, a group began to say that the pronoun refers to something other than Allah, and this was transmitted from a group of scholars who are known to have knowledge and to follow the Sunnah in most of their affairs, such as Abu Thawr, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abu’l-Shaykh al-Asfahani and others. Hence they were denounced by the imams of Islam and other Sunni scholars.” (End quote from Naqd At-Ta’sis, 3/202)

Ibn Qutaybah said: “That Allah should have an image is no stranger than His having two hands, fingers or eyes. Rather, those are readily accepted because they are mentioned in the Quran, but this idea (image or form) is regarded as strange because it is not mentioned in the Quran. But we believe in them all, but we do not discuss how any of them are.” (End quote from Ta’wil Mukhtalif Al-Hadith, p. 221) 

Shaykh Al-Ghunayman said: “Thus it is clear that the form or image is like all the other divine attributes. Any attribute which Allah has affirmed in the Revelation, we must affirm it and believe in it.” (End quote from Sharh Kitab At-Tawhid min Sahih Al-Bukhari, 2/41) 

Shaykh Ibn Baz was asked: There is a Hadith narrated from the Prophet in which he forbids saying “May Allah deform your face”, and says that Allah created Adam in His image. What is the correct belief with regard to this Hadith? 

He replied: 

“This Hadith is proven from the Prophet, in which he said: ‘If any one of you strikes (another), let him avoid the face, for Allah created Adam in His image.’ According to another version: ‘In the image of the Most Merciful.’ This does not imply resemblance or likeness. 

“What is meant, according to the scholars, is that Allah created Adam with the ability to hear and see, and to speak when he wants. These are also attributes of Allah, for He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He has a Face, may He be Glorified and Exalted. 

“But it does not mean that there is any resemblance or likeness. Rather the image of Allah is different from that of created beings. What is meant is that He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He created Adam also able to hear and see, with a face and hands and feet. But man’s hearing is not like Allah’s hearing, his seeing is not like Allah’s seeing, his speaking is not like Allah’s speaking. Rather Allah has attributes that befit His majesty and might, and man has attributes that befit him, attributes that are finite and imperfect, whereas the attributes of Allah are perfect, with no shortcomings, infinite and without end. Hence Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): 

{There is nothing like Him, and He is the All-Hearer, the All-Seer} [Ash-Shura 42:11] 

{And there is none co-equal or comparable unto Him} [Al-Ikhlas 112:4]

“So it is not permissible to strike the face or say ‘May Allah deform your face.’” (End quote from Majmu` Fatawa Ash-Shaykh, 4/226) 

Another thing that will help to explain the meaning of this Hadith is the words of the Prophet: “The first group to enter Paradise will be in the image of the moon ” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari, 3245 and Muslim, 2834) What the Prophet meant here is that the first group will be in human form, but because of their purity, beauty and brightness of face they will look like the moon, so they are likened to the moon, but without resembling it. So just because a thing is said to be in the image of a thing it does not mean that it is like it in all aspects. 

The Prophet’s words, “Adam was created in His image” means that Allah created Adam in His image, for He has a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot, and Adam had a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot. but that does not mean that these things are exactly the same. There is some similarity, but it is not exactly the same. Similarly the first group to enter Paradise are likened to the moon, but they are not exactly the same. This confirms the view of Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamaa’ah, who say that none of the attributes of Allah can be likened to the attributes of created beings, without distorting or misinterpreting, or discussing how or likening Him to His creation. (End quote from Sharh Al-`Aqidah Al-Wasitah by Shaykh Muhammad ibn `Uthaymin, 1/107, 293) (Islam Question & Answer, How Did Allah Create Adam in His Image? )

What the foregoing statements imply is that Allah’s shape and height differ only from that of Adam in the sense that the latter’s body is physical, made of the clay or mud of the earth, whereas the Muslim deity’s body is not physical. Allah’s body is composed of some other kind of substance, which is supposedly unlike anything found in the rest of creation.

FURTHER READING

MUHAMMAD’S GOD: A YOUNG CURLY HAIRED, BEARDLESS BOY!

Islam Portrays Allah as a Finite, Limited, Temporal Embodied Soul

FOR ALLAH SO LOVED THE UMMA THAT HE GAVE UP ONE OF HIS FEET!

ALLAH’S AMAZEMENT AND LAUGHTER

Allah – An Immaterial Entity or an Invisible Man?

The Annihilation of Allah

Allah: An Exalted Woman? Examining the Issue of Allah’s Veil

Revisiting the Face of Allah

Revisiting the Irrationality of Salafi Anthropomorphism

The Re-Formers of Islam: The Mas’ud Questions

UNDRESSING ALLAH’S GARMENTS

This post is taken from Bart D. Ehrman’s blog: Did Jesus Pray “Father Forgive Them” from the Cross?.

March 24, 2019

I recently received an important question about a highly significant textual variant in Luke 23:34, the one and only place in the NT where Jesus prays for those responsible for his death “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”  The verse is not found in the other Gospels, and interestingly, it is also not found in some of the important manuscripts even of Luke.  And so the question: is it a verse that some scribes inserted into Luke?  Or is it a verse that other scribes decided to take out?  It’s one or the other!

When I received the question I was sure I had dealt with it on the blog before.  But I’ve checked.  Nope.  Never have.  But I was even more sure I had written about it somewhere.  It took me a long time to track it down, but I’ve uncovered it in an article that I wrote called “The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second Century,” now found in a collection of my more scholarly essays on textual criticism called Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (published in 2006; the paper was originally written for a conference in 1993).

The paper was written for fellow scholars, but I’ve decided to go ahead and include it here verbatim.  BUT, I have added several explanatory comments in italics for technical terms and ideas that are not the sort of thing you hear your neighbor saying when raking the leaves.  Well, OK, you’re not going to be hearing any of this from your neighbor, but still….

Here’s the portion of the chapter on the verse.

If our literary sources are any guide at all (which is an ongoing and serious question, but at least among the literary elite—such as our anonymous scribes—they are surely of some significance), the end of the second century was a time of vitriolic polemic by Christians against the Jews and all they stood for. This was an age when literary attacks by Christians against Jews qua Jews had become de rigeur, when authors like “Barnabas” could claim that the Jews had professed a religion of error from the days of Moses, that they had always misinterpreted their own Scriptures and so had misconstrued their relationship with God, that the Old Testament was in fact not a Jewish book at all, but a Christian one; when polemicists like Justin could argue that circumcision was a sign not that God had chosen the Jews as his own people, but that he had set them apart for special punishment; and when preachers like Melito could devote entire sermons to inveighing against the Jews as killers of Christ, implicating them with the murder of God.

It was not, by and large, a happy time for Jewish-Christian relations. And the impact of the polemics made itself felt on the transcription of the early Christian texts.  The famous Codex Bezae (designated as manuscript D; even though it is from around 400 CE, it appears to embody a form of the text from at least the second century) is one of our earliest manuscripts to omit the prayer of Jesus from the cross in Luke 23:34: “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” There are indeed compelling reasons for thinking that the verse was original to Luke and that its exclusion came as a result of second-century polemic against Jews (the shorter text is already found in the early third-century P⁷⁵). The verse (found only in Luke) coincides perfectly with Luke’s own portrayal of Jesus as calm and in control in the face of his death, more concerned with the fate of others than himself;[i] it shows Jesus in prayer, a distinctive emphasis of Luke, long recognized; the prayer itself embodies the motif of “ignorance”, a notion used throughout Luke-Acts to account for Jesus’ unlawful execution.[ii] (This preceding argument is meant to show that it is likely that Luke himself wrote the verse, that it did not originate with a scribe inserting it into the text.)

Moreover, when one moves from intrinsic to transcriptional arguments, it becomes quite clear that here there is a nice coalescence of probabilities.  (Ah, this would take a bit of time to unpack.  Basic story: an “intrinsic probability” asks if a verse was likely or not to have been written by the author himself, based on its theology, vocabulary and style: I’ve just answer the question as YES.  So that means it is likely it comes from Luke, not a later scribe.  Possibly.   The next issue is transcriptional probability, which asks – independently of the question of whether an author is likely to have written it – is it more likely to have been *inserted*  or *omitted* by a scribe?  There you are looking to see what scribes would probably have wanted to do to the text.  If the evidence of both intrinsic and transcriptional probabilities point in the same direction, then you have a strong argument)  The question to be asked, of course, is whether the verse would have been more likely to be added or omitted by scribes of the third Gospel. Those who would argue for an addition might point to Acts 7:60 as a clue (this is where the first martyr Stephen prays to God for his executioners to be pardoned.  Since scribes would possibly not want Stephen to be more forgiving than Jesus himself, could scribes have inserted the verse into Luke in order to show that Jesus too prayed for forgiveness for his executioners?). Could not the verse have been interpolated by scribes wanting to provide a closer parallel between Jesus and Stephen, the first of his followers to be martyred for his sake?

This position has the appearance of plausibility, but it should be pointed out that Luke himself has gone out of his way to create parallels between Jesus in Luke and the apostles in Acts, as any careful literary analysis will show (i.e., the same author wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts; and he himself creates numerous literary parallels between what happens to Jesus in the Gospel and what happens to his followers in Acts).   Indeed, the remarkable similarities between Jesus and Stephen are themselves from Luke’s pen. What is particularly striking in this connection, and telling for the textual problem of Luke 23, is that when Luke creates parallels between Jesus in the Gospel and his apostles in Acts, he does so obliquely, without drawing undue attention to it (that is to say, he doesn’t simply repeat in Acts, verbatim, what he had already said about Jesus in the Gospels; he always states the literary parallels in different words). Contrast this with how scribes are known to work. Scribal harmonizations are rarely (ever?) oblique; they involve word for word, verbal agreements. The prayer in Luke 23:34, however, is no such thing. If a scribe created the text to harmonize it more closely with Acts 7:60, would not the correspondence be verbal?

If it is difficult to imagine the verse being invented by second-century scribes, can we posit reasons for them wanting to omit it? In its Lukan context, the prayer appears to refer (not to the Roman soldiers who have just done the deed but) to the Jewish leaders who in their ignorance have caused Jesus to be crucified.[iii] But the original meaning of the verse is of little importance for understanding the activities of scribes; the transcriptional question involves not what the text meant for Luke, but what it meant for the scribes who tampered with the text. And here we are on even better grounds. For we know from patristic discussions that the verse was normally taken to be Jesus’ prayer for the Jews. At least it is understood that way in the earliest accounts of its exposition that we have, already at the beginning of the third century by Origen and the author of the Didascalia.[iv]

Many Christians in the second century were convinced, however, that God had not forgiven the Jews for what they did to Jesus. This is evident, for instance, not only in the polemic of Melito mentioned above, but also in the widespread notion that the destruction of Jerusalem some forty years after Jesus’ death was a manifestation of God’s anger against them: the Jews’ rejection of Jesus led to their own rejection by God.[v] For scribes who shared this opinion, one can well imagine the puzzlement created by Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34. How could the Savior have possibly asked God to forgive the Jews? And if he had, why was he not heard? Much better to excise the verse—as Christian scribes appear to have done, beginning at least at the end of the second century.

[i] Cf. the portrayal of Jesus on the way to the cross in 23:28-31, and his words to the penitent robber soon thereafter (23:39-43).

[ii] Cf. Acts 3:17; 13:27-28. On this, see especially Eldon Jay Epp, “The Ignorance Motif in Acts and Anti-Judaic Tendencies in Codex Bezae”, HTR 55 (1962), 51-62.

[iii] Given the use of the ignorance motif throughout Acts. See Epp, “Ignorance Motif”.

[iv] I owe this information to my graduate student, Kim Haines-Eitzen. Origen, Peri Pascha 43. 33-36; Didascalia, ch. VI and especially ch. XV. See further, David Daube, “For They Know Not What They Do: Luke 23, 34”, Studia Patristica 4 (1961), 58-70.

[v] See, for example, Origen, Contra Celsum IV, 22.

FURTHER READING

A renowned NT textual scholar and critic of Christianity’s defense of the veracity of Luke 23:34

Patristic Evidence for Luke 23:34

Did Jesus pray, “Father, forgive them”?

Luke 23:34a – Answering the Apologists (Part 1), (Part 2)

The following is taken from Denny Burk’s post: Did Jesus pray, “Father, forgive them”?.

January 24, 2011

Luke 23:34 is one of the most famous sayings of the Bible because it is one of the seven last words of Christ from the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” This is a beloved text of scripture, and for good reason. Here Jesus models for us what he in fact commands all of his disciples to do. Even as his enemies torture and kill him, Jesus loves his enemies and prays for them.

I delivered a sermon at my church yesterday on this text. But when I began preparing for the message last week, I wrestled with a significant textual difficulty that occurs precisely at this point of the text.

[Warning: This rest of this post is going to be unusually technical, not the kind of thing that I would normally do here on the blog. Nevertheless, in my sermon preparation I spent an unusual amount of time on this problem, so I thought it might be useful to other pastors as well.]

The problem is this. Some of our earliest and best Greek manuscripts do not contain these words. There is no prayer at all in these early witnesses. This omission has led the editors of both the UBS and Nestle Aland texts to place the words in double brackets. Here is how the verse appears in NA²⁷:

The double brackets enclose all of Jesus’ prayer and indicate that the prayer is a later addition to the text that is not from the pen of Luke. The editors of the UBS text give the omission a grade of “A”—which means that they think that it is absolutely certain that these words did not come from Luke. Some other scribe added them later. Here’s how the evidence shakes out in the apparatus:

P⁷⁵ is an ancient papyrus that goes back to at least the early 3rd century. This is the oldest Greek manuscript that we know of containing this verse, and the prayer is not in it. In his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger cites two main arguments against the authenticity of this saying of Jesus: (1) that early witnesses like P⁷⁵ omit it and (2) the improbability of later scribes omitting such words (p. 154).

So is this the end of the story? Are we really to conclude that this prayer is a non-canonical addition to the text of the New Testament? I don’t think so. In fact, I feel confident that Bruce Metzger and the editors of the UBS text have gotten this one wrong.

The early manuscripts that omit the verse are not as conclusive as it might seem. Joël Delobel has shown that the text’s appearance in Tatian’s Diatessaron (late 2nd century) predates the earliest Greek witness P⁷⁵ (3rd century) that omits it (Joël Delobel, “Luke 23:34a: A Perpetual Text-Critical Crux?,” in Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda, Supplements to Novum Testamentum [Leiden: Brill, 1997], 28-29.). Even though the evidence from the Diatessaron is indirect (all that survives is a commentary on this book), we should not dismiss this important, early testimony that the saying is from Luke.

The supposition that later scribes would not have omitted these words is also suspect. Bart Ehrman argues that in fact some scribes might very well have been motivated by an anti-semitic bias to drop the reading (Bart D. Ehrman, “The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second Century,” in Codex Bezae: Studies from the Lunel Colloquium, June 1994, New Testament Tools and Studies [Leiden; New York: Brill, 1996], 111-13). But this idea is not new with Ehrman. Without calling it anti-semitism, Leon Morris argued in his 1974 commentary on Luke that “Early copyists may have been tempted to omit the words by the reflection that perhaps God had not forgiven the guilty [Jewish] nation” (p. 356).

So if you are reading the UBS Greek New Testament, don’t let the “A” grade in favor of the omission throw you for a loop. There are good reasons for regarding this saying as authentic to Luke. It would be a shame for pastors and teachers to pass over this text simply because of the “A” grade from the editors. There are solid reasons to preach it as an authentic, canonical saying of Jesus.

FURTHER READING

Patristic Evidence for Luke 23:34

Luke 23:34a – Answering the Apologists (Part 1), (Part 2)

A renowned NT textual scholar and critic of Christianity’s defense of the veracity of Luke 23:34