Introduction to the Study of The Holy Quran — Page 18
18 Jewish and Christian Cultures As the world has advanced, it has made effort after effort to approach this ideal. Moses gave to Israel both a religion and a civilisation. But his teaching proved too rigid to answer to that variety of urges of which human nature is capable. As soon as the people of Israel began to think along new channels and to entertain new ideals and objectives and to break new ground, the teaching which Moses had left for them began to fail. Moses did not succeed in making good citizens out of the new generations of Israel. True, they continued to attach themselves to this teaching but they became either rebels or hypocrites. Christianity, therefore, could not but proclaim that the Law was a curse. Christianity was compelled to proclaim this, because it saw that the utterly rigid Law of Moses had made human beings either rebels or hypocrites. The Message of Jesus, however, was delivered many centuries after Moses. The Mosaic Law was like a coat made to the size of a child, which no longer fitted adult Israel. Jesus saw the futility of grown-up and able-bodied adults trying to put on frocks made for little children. The spirit of Jesus rebelled against this. We should rather say that from the depth of Jesus’ heart came the voice of God to say: "This people has gone far ahead of the time when they received their teaching from Moses. This teaching was enough for them as long as they remained in their earlier condition. But now they need a new teaching, a new coat to fit their increased size. " But the new teaching which Jesus proposed for Israel or, to be exact, the teaching which Christians coming centuries after Jesus attributed to him, may be summed up in the phrase, "The Law is a curse. " There is no doubt that food which is above the digestive capacity of a person is a blight, not a blessing; but it would be wrong to conclude from this that the food as such is a blight and not a blessing. A small coat would seem strange on an able-bodied adult. So would a large coat on the body of a child. A small coat on the body of an adult and a large coat on the body of a child seem strange, but it cannot be said that the coat as such is funny. It seems to us, therefore, that to attribute to Jesus the teaching that "The Law is a curse" is cruel. All that Jesus must have said and meant was that the version of the Mosaic teaching current in the time of Jesus had become a curse for the people of that time. If he meant this, it was but truth. But the followers of Jesus have mutilated this piece of wisdom into something preposterous. In any case, whether Jesus said what we think he said or what Christians mistakenly think he said, there can be no doubt that in his time the human mind had advanced far from what it was in the time of Moses. It needed now a new guidance, a new ethics, a new civilisation and a new culture. But while Israelite Teachers had tied man to a narrowly conceived teaching, Christian Teachers released man from all moral and religious obligations. Mosaic teaching restrained the mind of Israel from advancing beyond Moses’ time, unless it was in the form of rebellion or hypocrisy. Christian teaching made man free from all obligations and induced the belief that the Law of God cannot raise man to any moral height. Man took over from