I\u2019m the founder and editor-in-chief of Brigham Young University\u2019s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which produces bilingual editions of books (mostly Islamic, but also sometimes Eastern Christian and Jewish) from the classical Islamic world.\u00a0 (My colleague and former student Dr. D. Morgan Davis does all the work, but I\u2019m still allowed to have a cool title.)\u00a0 The books are printed at Brigham Young University Press, and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n
Anyway, one of our recent volumes features the best line that we\u2019ve ever published or are ever likely to publish.<\/p>\n
Al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b (d. AD 1111), who was one of the most significant figures in the history of Islamic thought, a legendarily brilliant philosophical theologian and legal thinker who spent most of his life in Iran and Iraq but also sojourned for a significant period in Jerusalem, is talking about extremely poor students, and, in that context, attributes the following remark to Jesus:<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I managed to raise the dead, I have never been able to cure an idiot!\u201d <\/p>\n
(See al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b, \u201cO Son!,\u201d trans. David C. Reisman, in Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought<\/i>, ed. Bradley J. Cook [Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2010], 103.)<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019ll admit that my first inclination was to say that this alleged statement can\u2019t possibly be authentic.\u00a0 And that\u2019s still probably correct.\u00a0 But al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b is entirely serious, and plainly regards the statement as genuine.\u00a0 Furthermore, his citation of it takes us back fully a thousand years or more, halfway to the time of Jesus.\u00a0 So . . .<\/p>\n
I have to confess that I rather like the idea that the Savior might have said such a thing.\u00a0 It humanizes him a bit.\u00a0 Surely, with all those long walks from Nazareth to Capernaum, and from Capernaum to Jericho, and from Jericho to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem back up to Capernaum or Nazareth, it can\u2019t all have been immortal sermons and solemn earnestness.\u00a0 (Can it?\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m just not fit for heaven.)\u00a0 There must have been some small talk.\u00a0 And the image of Jesus, trudging along with the disciples down those dusty paths and confiding at the end of a tough day, \u201cYou know, Peter?\u00a0 I can raise the dead, but I just can\u2019t cure idiots\u201d is oddly appealing to me.<\/p>\n
Still, alas, it\u2019s probably bogus.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m the founder and editor-in-chief of Brigham Young University\u2019s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which produces bilingual editions of books (mostly Islamic, but also sometimes Eastern Christian and Jewish) from the classical Islamic world.\u00a0 (My colleague and former student Dr. D. Morgan Davis does all the work, but I\u2019m still allowed to have a cool title.)\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n