The Jewish priests felt this child Jesus was dangerous, for they felt that the people would turn
their worship to Allah the Almighty Alone, displacing the existing Jewish tenets.
Consequently, they would lose their authority over the people. Therefore, they kept the miracle of Jesus’s speech in infancy as a secret and accused Mary of a great misdeed.
Jesus’s Ability to Debate
As Jesus (pbuh) grew, the signs of prophethood began to increase. He could tell his friends what
kind of supper waited for them at home and what they had hidden and where. When he was
twelve years old, he accompanied his mother to Jerusalem.
There he wandered into the temple and joined a crowd listening to the lecture of the Rabbis (Jewish priests). The audience were all adults, but he was not afraid to sit with them. After listening intently, he asked questions and expressed his opinion.
The learned rabbis were disturbed by the boy’s boldness and puzzled by the questions he asked, for they were unable to answer him. They tried to silence him, but he ignored their attempts and continued to express his views. Jesus became so involved in this exchange that he forgot he as expected back home.
In the meantime, his mother went home, thinking that he might have gone back with relatives or
friends. When she arrived, she discovered that he was not there, so she returned to the city to
look for him. At last she found him in the temple, sitting among the learned, conversing with
them.
He appeared to be quite at east, as if he had been doing this all his life. Mary got angry with
him for causing her worry. He tried to assure her that all the arguing and debating with the
learned had made him forgot the time.
Jesus Does Not Observe the Sabbath
Jesus grew up to manhood. It was Sabbath, a day of complete rest: no fire could be lit or
extinguished nor could females plait their hair. Moses (pbuh) had commanded that Saturday be
dedicated to the worship of Allah.
However, the wisdom behind the Sabbath and its spirit had gone, and only the letter remained in the Jews’ hearts. Also, they thought that Sabbath was kept in heaven, and that the People of Israel had been chosen by Allah only to observe the Sabbath.
They made a hundred things unlawful on Saturday even self-defense or calling a doctor to save a
patient who was in bad condition. This is how their life was branded by such hypocrisy. Although
the Pharisees were guardians of the law, they were ready to sell it when their interests were
involved so as to obtain personal gains.
There was, for example, a rule which prohibited a journey of more than one thousand yards on the Sabbath day.
What do we expect of the Pharisees in this case? The day before, they transferred their food and drink from their homes two thousand yards away and erected a temporary house so that from they could travel a further thousand yards on the Sabbath day.
Jesus was on his way to the temple. Although it was the Sabbath, he reached out his hand to pick
two pieces of fruit to feed a hungry child. This was considered to be a violation of the Sabbath
law. He made a fire for the old women to keep themselves warm from the freezing air.
Another violation. He went to the temple and looked around. There were twenty thousand Jewish priests
registered there who earned their living from the temple. The rooms of he temple were full of them.
Jesus Receives His Prophethood
Jesus observed that the visitors were much fewer than the priests. Yet the temple was full of
sheep and doves which were sold to the people to be offered as sacrifices. Every step in the
temple cost the visitor money.
They worshipped nothing but money.
In the temple,
the Pharisees and Sadducees acted as if it were a market place, and these two groups always disagreed on everything. Jesus followed the scene with his eyes and observed that the poor people who could
not afford the price of the sheep or dove were swept away like flies by the Pharisees and
Saducees. Jesus was astonished.
Why did the priests burn a lot of offerings inside the temple, while thousands of poor people were hungry outside it?
On this blessed night, the two noble prophets John (pbuh) and Zakariyah (pbuh) died, killed by
the ruling authority. On the same night, the revelation descended upon Jesus (pbuh). Allah the
Exalted commanded him to begin his call to the children of Israel. To Jesus, the life of ease was
closed, and the page of worship and struggled was opened.
Jesus’s Message
Like an opposing force, the message of Jesus came to denounce the practices of the Pharisees and
to reinforce the Law of Moses. In the face of a materialistic age of luxury and worship of gold,
Jesus called his people to a nobler life by word and deed.
This exemplary life was the only way out of the wretchedness and diseases of his age. Jesus’s call, from the beginning, was marked by its complete uprightness and piety. It appealed to the soul, the inner being, and not be a closed system of rules laid down by society.
Jesus continued inviting the people to Almighty Allah. His call was based on the principle that
there is no mediation between the Creator and His creatures. However, Jesus was in conflict with
the Jews’ superficial interpretation of the Torah.
He said that he did not come to abrogate the Torah, but to complete it by going to the spirit of its substance to arrive at its essence.
He made the Jews understand that the Ten Commandments have more value than they imagined.
For instance, the fifth commandment does not only prohibit physical killing, but all forms of
killing; physical, psychological, or spiritual.
And the sixth commandment does not prohibit adultery only in the sense of unlawful physical contact between a man and a woman, but also prohibits all forms of unlawful relations or acts that might lead to adultery. The eye commits adultery when it looks at anything with passion.
Jesus Denounces Materialism
Jesus was therefore in confrontation with the materialistic people. He told them to desist from
hypocrisy, show and false praise. There was no need to hoard wealth in this life.
They should not preoccupy themselves with the goods of this passing world; rather they must preoccupy
themselves with the affairs of the coming world because it would be everlasting.
Jesus told them that caring for this world is a sin, not fit for pious worshippers.
The disbelievers care for it because they do not know a better way. As for the believers, they know that their sustenance is with Allah, so they trust in Him and scorn this world.
Jesus continued to invite people to worship the Only Lord, Who is without partner, just as he
invited them to purify the heart and soul.
Jewish Priests Try to Embarrass Jesus
His teaching annoyed the priests, for every word of Jesus was a threat to them and their position,
exposing their misdeeds.
The Roman occupiers had, at first, no intention of being involved in this religious discord of the
Jews because it was an internal affair, and they saw that this dispute would distract the Jews from
the question of the occupation.
However, the priests started to plot against Jesus. They wanted to embarrass him and to prove
that he had come to destroy the Mosaic Law.
The Mosaic Law provides that an adulteress be stoned to death.
They brought him a Jewish adulteress and
asked Jesus: “Does not the law stipulate the stoning of the adulteress?”
Jesus answered: “Yes.”
They said: “This woman is an adulteress.”
Jesus looked at the woman and then at the priests.
He knew that they were more sinful than she.
They agreed that she should be killed according to Mosaic Law, and they understood that if he was going to apply Mosaic Law, he would be destroying his own rules of forgiveness and mercy.
Jesus understood their plan.
He smiled and assented: “Whoever among you is sinless can stone her.”
His voice rose in the middle of the Temple, making a new law on adultery, for the sinless to judge sin.
There was none eligible; no mortal can judge sin, only Allah the Most Merciful. As Jesus left the temple, the woman followed him.
She took out a bottle of perfume from her garments, knelt before his feet and washed them with perfume and tears, and then dried his feet with her hair.
Jesus turned to the woman and told her to stand up, adding: “O Lord, forgive her sins.”
He let the priests understand that those who call people to Almighty Allah are not
executioners.
His call was based on mercy for the people, the aim of all divine calls.
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