And [on account of] theirsaying: "We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of
Mary, Messenger of God."They did not kill him andthey did not crucify
him, but it was made to seemso to them. Those who argue about him are
in doubt about it. They have no real knowledge of it, just conjecture.
But they certainly did not killhim. (Qur'an, 4:157)
The expression, "they did not kill him and they did not crucify him"
reveals that Jesus was not killed and crucified. The next statement
also contains very important information: the person crucified was not
Jesus, but somebody else, although those who performed the crucifixion
believed that he was Jesus. That was because this person resembled
Jesus, or was made to looklike him. (Only God knows for certain.)
This information in the Qur'an has been the subject of debate
betweenChristians and Muslims for hundreds of years. Christians say
that Jesus was crucified before hundreds of witnesses, that the
gospels and otherChristian authors are agreed on this, and that this
is a certain and attested truth believed in by millions over hundreds
of years.
The fact is, however, that some Christians have also accepted the fact
that Jesus was not crucified.
Christians Who Have Not Believed in the Crucifixion
Christians have provided different answers to the question of who it
was who was crucified. These possessed a belief regarded as
"heretical"
according to Catholic doctrine. That movement is known as "Docetism."
The most important information about Docetism comes from the document
Adversus Haereses (Against Herecies)written by the priest Irenaeus
(115-202) at the end of the second century CE. Irenaeus refers to one
Basilides, one of the representatives of this movement.
According to Irenaeus, Basilides, a historian from Alexandria,
insisted in his writings between 130 and150 CE that Jesus had not been
crucified. He maintained that somebody else, one Simonof Cyrene, had
been crucified and that God had miraculously altered Simon's
appearance to resemble that of Jesus, and that the Jews and Romans
thus thought theywere crucifying Jesus himself. Basilides even wrote
that Jesus watched as Simon of Cyrene was being crucified, and that he
then moved away and was raised alive into the presence of God.
(William Smith, D., A Dictionary of Christian Biography , Volume 1, p.
768)
Where might this information have reached Basilides from? According to
the writings of a 3rd century Christian theologian, Clement of
Alexandria (150-215), Basilides claimed to have received secret
information. According to his account, an individual called Glaucius,
who had acted as interpreter for Simon Peter, one of Jesus' disciples,
learned this secret from Peter, and Basilides heard it from him.
Basilides wrote a new"Bible," in which the gospels were corrected in
the light of the information he had received from Glaucius.
Basilides was not the only Docetist to support this claim. In addition
to him, various individuals or sectsregarded as "heretics" by the
Church also supported the view that Jesus was not crucified, but was
replaced by someone bearing a resemblance to him. In Was Christ Really
Crucified? The Christian writer Faris al-Qayrawani writes:
In the year A.D. 185 a sect of the descendant of the priests of Thebes
who embraced Christianity claimed that "God forbids that Christ should
be crucified. He was safely lifted up to heaven." Also in the year
A.D. 370 a hermetic Gnostic sect that denied the crucifixion of Jesus
taught that He "was not crucified but it seemedso to the spectators
who crucified Him." Again, in the year A.D. 520 Severus, bishop of
Syria, fled to Alexandria where he encountered a group of philosophers
teaching thatJesus Christ was not crucified but that it only appeared
so to the people who nailed Him on the cross. About A.D. 610 Bishop
John, son of the governor of Cyprus, began to proclaim that Christ
wasnot crucified but that it only seemed so to the spectators who
crucified Him. (Faris al-Qayrawani, Was Christ Really Crucified? ,
Villach: Light of Life, 1994, p. 23)
As of the 4 th century, however, when the absolute dominion of the
Catholic Church was established, Docetists gradually disappeared
justlike the other movements regarded as "heretical." The teaching
that Jesus was crucified confirmed itsplace as a fundamental dogma of
the Christian world by being imposed by the Church./
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