Dear readers, here is a new series of original texts entitled: « The Nazarene could tell you this.

It is a literary production whose process is audacious and original.

It is by trying to immerse myself in the teaching of Jesus, without regard for dogmas, that I conceived this series which features an uncompromising Jesus who produces a harsh and sometimes cutting discourse, which it will be up to the reader to decide if it could have as its transmitter, this man who frequented people of bad life and who one day declared:

« Let the Dead Bury Their Dead »

The sources used by the author in an attempt to understand the personality and teaching of Jesus can be summed up in the following four Gospels and three books:

Amazon.fr – Life and Destiny of Jesus of Nazareth – Marguerat, Daniel – Books

Amazon.fr – The Teaching of Ieschoua of Nazareth – Claude Tresmontant – Books

Life of Jesus – Ernest Renan – Book Purchase | Fnac

EPISODE 2: ON THE DEVIL

Truly, I tell you, it was to a humanity in gestation, incomplete and in a hurry to be born, that the image of the devil was given.

Don’t get me wrong! There were times and places when the intellect of Man, little inclined to abstract reasoning, remained anchored in concreteness.

That is why my Father, the Almighty and the All-Knowing, considering the mental limitations of the peoples of the earth, sent as their first teachers men who could adapt their teaching to the intelligence of the peoples from whom they came.

Truly, I tell you, for the men who preceded you, it was easier to imagine that they were struggling against a real being than against an abstract idea or an unconscious impulse. Therefore, evil called the devil, the devil became the enemy, and healing called for combat. And in order to recognize the evil in order to cure it, it was necessary for the spirit to create the devil in order to designate the enemy and engage in combat.

Understand! The men to whom the prophets addressed themselves were ignorant of the concepts of neurosis and the unconscious, for the depths of the human soul remained unexplored.

Thus, as the stammering consciousness struggled to identify its inner demons, it was inconceivable for men of past time to struggle against an emanation of self. This is the reason why inspired men created the idea of the devil.

Let those who have ears to hear, hear! For thousands of years, projection has been at work. And long ago, inner representations of man that produced evil were artificially expelled from the self and then projected [4] onto an imaginary being designated as an enemy of the self and perceived as eager to overwhelm it and take control of it. The devil then became the execrable invader, the emanation of evil and the enemy to be fought.

Thus, the figure of the devil was useful to the sons of Man. For it was by attributing to an external principle the evil thoughts manufactured by his own heart that man finally decided to combat them.

Understand! The men of tradition used the same method when, refusing to admit Ahmad’s weakness,[5] they decided to attribute to the devil verses spoken by their prophet.[6]

For when the Quraysh exclaimed: « Are we going to give up our gods for a mad poet »[8]), it was indeed an inner propensity for compromise that prompted Muhammad to justify the worship of the goddesses Allat, al-‘Uzza and Manat.

Listen! There was no need to pretend that the devil himself laid these verses on the tongue of Muhammad. For there was no need to save the image of Muhammad, for this man, himself became aware of his error and reformed himself to the great delight of his Lord.

Understand! The neurotic tendencies and the unconscious springs of unfinished humanity generate misrepresentations. And misrepresentations produce evil.

Verily, I say unto you, the devil is none other than an entity devoid of existence upon which all the evil manufactured by the heart of man was projected.

[1]. Shaytân in arabic.

[2] The greater part of human psychic activity does not reach the threshold of consciousness. For Freud, « any behavior of the ego that satisfies at the same time the requirements of the id (our drives), the superego (the sum of internalized prohibitions) and reality, » and that succeeds in this reconciliation, is correct.

[3]. This is a mechanism of personification.

[4] Projection is a powerful defense mechanism by which a person attributes to a thing, a person or an entity, elements of his psychic space, so as to expel from his consciousness the link that unites this element to his representation of the ego.

[5] This is one of the names used to refer to Muhammad (Muhammad). It means « praiseworthy. »

[6] According to a tradition reported by Al-Tabari, known as the « Story of the Cranes », the verses following verses 19 and 20 of Sura 53 are authentic verses, originally incorporated into the Qur’an, but extracted from it.

Even though these verses no longer appear in current editions of the Qur’an, Régis Blachère incorporates them into its French version and translates them as follows: « They are the sublime goddesses / and their intercession is certainly desired. »

Verse 52 of Surah 22, which is metatextual in nature, most likely refers to these so-called « satanic » verses: « We did not send any Messenger or Prophet before you who did not recite [what was revealed to him] without the Devil trying to intervene [to sow doubt in the hearts of the people about] his recitation. Allah abrogates what the Devil suggests, and Allah reinforces His verses. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. »

[7] This is the most powerful Meccan tribe who, at the beginning of Muhammad’s preaching, refused to follow his call and forced him to leave Mecca and go into exile in Medina.

[8] Qur’an 37v36.

[9] The dogmatic stakes are very high. Indeed, to suggest that Muhammad could have failed, even if he was able to pull himself together, undermines the principle of the infallibility of the prophet invented by tradition, which is the foundation of the Sharia.

Another disturbing consequence is the idea that Muhammad himself is the author of certain verses. If Muhammad is the creator of certain verses, how can we distinguish the word of God from the word of a man? Aware of this theological catastrophe, the tradition was very embarrassed and, at first, it invented the idea that the devil had insidiously inspired Muhammad before definitively extracting these verses from the Qur’an.

[10]. Verse 23 of Sura 53 is later. He attributes to Muhammad the exact opposite view, namely that the three goddesses would not exist (« Allah has not sent down any evidence about them »). Some verses thus neutralize other verses by resorting to metalanguage and self-referential dogmatic defense.