Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

118 Jesus, Prophet of Islam

Paul is the most controversial figure in Christianity.

He was considered to be a traitor to [esus's thought by

the latter's family and by the apostles who had stayed

in Jerusalem in the circle around James. Paul created

Christianity at the expense of those whom Jesus had

gathered around him to spread his teachings. He had

not known Jesus during his lifetime and he proved the

legitimacy of his mission by declaring that Jesus, raised

from the dead, had appeared to him on the road to Da­

mascus. It is quite reasonable to ask what Christianity

might have been without Paul and one could no doubt

construct all sorts of hypotheses on this subject. As far

as the Gospels are concerned however, it is almost cer­

tain that if this atmosphere of struggle between com­

munities had not existed, we would not have had the

writings we possess today. They appeared at a time of

Herce struggle between the two communities. These

'combat writings', as Father Kannengiesser calls them,

emerged from the multitude of writings on Jesus. These

occurred at the time when Paul's style of Christianity

won through definitively, and created its own collec­

tion of official texts. These texts constituted the 'Canon'

which condemned and excluded as unorthodox any

other documents that were not suited to the line adopted

by the Church.

The [udeo-Christians have now disappearedas a corn­

munity with any influence, but one still hears people

talkingaboutthemunderthegeneralterm of'[udaistic'.

This is how Cardinal Daniélou describes their disappear­

ance:

'When they were eut off from the Great Church, that

gradually freed itself from its [ewish attachments, they

petered out very quickly in the West. In the East how­

ever it is possible to find traces of them in the Third and

Fourth centuries AD, especially in Palestine, Arabia,

Transjordania, Syria and Mesopotamia. Others joined

in the orthodoxy of the Great Church, at the same time

preserving traces of Semitic culture; sorne of these still

persist in the Churches of Ethiopia and Chaldea,' 1

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