One phrase tanti-Ahmadis love repeating is 'new prophet, new religion', meaning Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad cannot be a Muslim because he is a new prophet. That's a short and punchy piece of rhetoric, but rather than exposing Ahmadiyya all it really does is expose the ignorance of the anti-Ahmadis. Anyhow, we recently came across an article posted on The Huffington Post. The article is about Jesus and will help shed light on this issue. Discussing how for centuries the church prohibited the translation of the Bible (until very recently), the author (Bernard Starr, a psychologist, college professor, journalist and author of Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew) on Huff Post explains why:
...While I was writing my book "Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew," it became increasingly clear to me that there was another more potent motive for keeping the New Testament out of reach for Christians: to conceal the Jewish foundation of Christianity and Jesus' lifelong dedication to Judaism and Jewish practices.
Would the newly established Church want converts to know that Christianity began as a Jewish sect and that Jesus was a thoroughly dedicated practicing Jew who never suggested the launch of a new religion? Would the Church want it revealed that Jesus lived and died a dedicated Jew, as observed by Christian writer Jean Guitton in his book "Great Heresies and Church Councils"?
Wouldn't Church officials also want to conceal that the disciples, led by James, the brother of Jesus, and Peter, continued to maintain their Jewish identities but made Rabbi Jesus the centerpiece of their Jewish practices (Acts of the Apostles). Later, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, initiated a rift between his brand of Jewish Christianity and the teachings of the Jerusalem-based disciples of Jesus. That divide eventually drifted toward increasing separation of Christianity and Judaism. But Jewish converts to the new Jewish Christianity continued to worship in synagogues, a practice that was still proliferating as late as the fourth century. The vicious "Homilies Against the Jews" by Saint John of Chrysostom (386-387 C.E.) make that clear. Why would the Bishop of Antioch, and later Archbishop of Constantinople, spend so much time and energy excoriating Christians for continuing to attend synagogues and participating in Jewish practices? The Church was clearly stepping up its attack on Judaism to enhance and expedite a total break with Judaism. To accelerate that process the charge of "Christ Killers" against Jews was stepped up as well. The "blood libels" -- the accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christian children to extract blood for religious practices -- is evidence of the intensification of attacks against the Jews.
But there was that pesky New Testament, a thoroughly Jewish document, as Anglican priest Bruce Chilton has noted: "It became clear to me that everything Jesus did was as a Jew, for Jews, and about Jews."
If Christians had access to the Bible in its entirety, not only the limited editions that the clergy presented, they might have noticed what leaped out at me: The word "Jew" appears 202 times in the New Testament, with 82 of these citations in the Gospels. The term "Christian" never appears in the Gospels at all, for the obvious reason that there was no Christianity during the life of Jesus - only Judaism, in which he and his family, disciples and followers were immersed. Readers of the Gospels might also have noted that when Jesus wasn't addressing the "multitudes" (of Jews) he was teaching in synagogues and was attending Jewish holy day celebrations. And his disciples called him rabbi. Since the Gospel writers couldn't keep Judaism out of Jesus' life story and ministry - without the Judaism there would be no story - they invoked the ban on the Bible while Christianizing Jesus with selective and edited stories that they conveyed to the public.
The Christianizing process, along with erasing Jesus' Jewish identity, continued throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods. It is dramatically illustrated in classical artworks, in which Jesus and his family show no trace of a connection to Judaism. In this ethnic cleansing of Judaism they are pictured as fair-skinned Northern Europeans living in palatial Romanesque settings surrounded by later-day Christian saints and Christian artifacts and practices - images completely alien to their actual Jewish lives in a rural village in Galilee.
But today, in a new era of reconciliation, Christians and Jews are recognizing the strong connection between the two religions. Some Christians are adopting Jewish practices like the Passover Seder and the Jewish marriage ceremony under the chuppah (canopy), and couples are signing the ancient Jewish ketuba (marriage contract). Others are visiting synagogues to relive the experience of Jesus.
Several years ago 170 Jewish scholars and leaders from all four branches of Judaism issued a statement calling on Jews "to relinquish their fear and mistrust of Christianity and to acknowledge Church efforts in the decades since the Holocaust to amend Christian teaching about Judaism."
When Timothy Dolan returned from the Vatican after his elevation to cardinal in 2012, he appeared on the popular TV show "The View." Barbara Walters, one of the hosts, playfully said to the affable Cardinal, "I'm crazy about you. I'm thinking of converting. Do you take Jewish girls?" Dolan responded, "My favorite girl of all time was Jewish." "Who is that?" Walters asked with a surprised look. "Mary" Cardinal Dolan answered softly. His casual remark suggests that the celebration of common ground can trump doctrinal differences.
Jesus did not mean to found a new religion. In his historical humanity, Jesus was a devout Israelite, practicing the law to the full, from circumcision to Pesach, paying the half-shekel for the Temple. Jerusalem, the capital of his nation, was the city he loved: Jesus wept over it. Jesus had spiritually realized the germinal aspiration of his people, which was to raise the God of Israel...
Huff Post's conclusions are exactly in accordance with those of both the Quran and Bible which repeatedly and explicitly confirm Jesus was a Jewish prophet who followed the Jewish law as revealed to Moses in the Torah (Old Testament of the Bible):
She said: "My Lord, how shall I have a son, when no man has touched me?" He said: "Such is the way of Allah. He creates what He pleases. When He decrees a thing He says to it 'Be' and it is and He will teach him the book and the wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel and will send him as a messenger to the children of Israel" (Quran 3:47-50)
I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. (Bible Matthew 15)
The fact is, the first Messiah Jesus was a new prophet but brought no new religion. Instead, he followed the religion, laws and teachings of Moses. Therefore, it is most natural that the second messiah, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, should also bring no new religion but instead follow the laws and teachings of the Holy Prophet s.a.w. The people who make these allegations clearly have no knowledge of Jewish or Christian history and presumably have not read the Quran, otherwise these things would already be clear to them.
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