The Holy War — Page 134
134 Then, after this, let us look whether the Jews were involved in any way in fabricating this God. The Jews were the first to inherit the Torah, and prophecies of their Old Testament are presented in support of this belief due to sheer misunderstanding. Did they—who used to recite their books daily, pondering over them, while Jesus, the Messiah, had also testified in their favour that they understood these books very well and that his followers should heed their statements— ever agree with even one of the many prophecies presented, saying that yes this prophecy informs us that Jesus, the Promised Messiah, was indeed God, and that the Messiah who was to come would not be a man but would, in fact, be God ? When we look, we do not find any such thing. Every wise person can contemplate that if at all any meanness or prejudice would have developed in the Jews towards the Messiah, it would have arisen after his arrival. Before his advent, they used to look at those prophecies with great affection, interest, justice, and freedom and used to recite the verses from these books daily and used to write commentaries [in their explanation]. How strange it is then, that these meanings remained totally hid- den from them. Dr. sahib says that manifestly clear prophecies about the Divinity of the Messiah were present in the Old Testament. Now we are wonderstruck and astonished! If there had been only one prophecy that the Jews did not understand, they could have been excused, but how is it possible that despite there being hundreds of prophecies, even then they did not understand a single one? And at no time did they ever hold the belief that the Messiah would appear into this world as God. There were among them Prophets and rabbis and sincere worshippers of God, but no one from among them wrote, by way of explanation that, yes, a God is also to come in the garb of a man. You must know this, that it is impossible that an entire people such as this, who held under its sway every single aspect of the Torah, should so unanimously commit the same error. Were all of them