Rebuttal to Mohammed Fareeduddin Siddique's The Sword of the Intellect Book 2 - Saint Paul the Master of Christaindom
September 2004 version

One can summarize this whole chapter by saying Fareed thinks Paul founded Christianity. He thinks Paul went against what Jesus taught and the major Christian doctrines came from Paul. By the way, Hebrews is not said to be by Paul. A few Christians thought it might be, but the differences in style suggest it was not by Paul. It is actually quite easy to show the key doctrines of Christianity without once quoting Paul, or even Luke. Major doctrines are:

God is a Father

Jesus is fully God and fully man.

All should honor Jesus just as they honor the Father.

Jesus died as the atoning sacrifice for our sins

Jesus actually died on the cross.

Jesus bodily rose from the dead.

Jesus is our Lord.

There is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus.

Jesus is the coming again on the clouds of heaven.

So far from Fareed claiming that Paul nullified what Jesus taught or practiced, it is Mohammed that nullified what Jesus taught or practiced.

The Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran were all stored in jars prior to the Romans capturing Qumran in 68 A.D. They contain much of the Old Testament. Also, Philo the Jew, who died about 30 A.D., wrote much about the Law which we have preserved today. We know that the Torah (Law) says.

Paul did meet Jesus face to face, miraculously on the road to Damascus.

Jesus superseded (similar to abrogated) many things in the Law of Moses. If Fareed says it was wrong for Paul (or the teaching we have of Jesus) to "destroy" the law of Moses, then Fareed's argument goes equally against Mohammed, that he was wrong to "destroy" the law of Moses.

As a simple example, not only does the Old Testament prohibit the eating of camel meat, but Mohammed knew the Old Testament prohibited the eating of camel meat, and yet Mohammed allowed it.

Mohammed taught that a group of lost Israelites were cursed and changed into rats. As proof that these rats used to be Jews, if you put camel milk in front of a rat the rat will not drink it, but a rat will drink sheep's milk. Bukhari vol.4 book 54 no.524 p.333. Mohammed knew the Israelites could not drink camel's milk.

So if Fareed himself truly believed that the Old Testament Law was not abrogated, and that Christians were wrong to say it was not binding today, then by the same argument, Muslims are equally wrong to not follow the Old Testament Law.

Fareed mentions not trusting in someone who had a "vision" that nullified previous commandments we should not believe them. I had to re-read this twice to see whether he was talking more about Paul or about Mohammed!

Fareed, you might want to consider how your writing reflects on Mohammed before criticizing Paul.

Finally, when Fareed writes, "As we have seen in here, Christian scholars today agree that the very first Christians, including the apostle of Jesus (pbuh) were all Unitarians who followed the religion of Moses, and that the Trinity was not introduced until around the beginning of the second century." He lies about religion.

Outside of the New Testament, The earliest reference we have to Jesus being called "God" is by Ignatius, a disciple of the apostle John. The earliest use of the word "Trinity" was by Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, around 168 A.D., and he uses it like the readers already are familiar with the word.

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