This site, over hundreds of posts and from every angle (with AI input), has outlined the basic complex of core themes/archetypes that drive people to keep embracing the same old bad ideas that incite the same old bad impulses and behaviors. And similarly, this site has outlined the liberating alternatives that energize our exodus out of our animal past and ongoing progress toward mature humanity in liberal democracy civilization.
Then note Bob Brinsmead below on the influence of the Ebionite priest on Muhammad, i.e. was it a pre-revelation shaping of Muhammad’s thinking or a post-revelation affirmation of his revelations as argued by Islamic theologians? I prompted AI on that and Bob responded also. Bob further adds a good summary of the open God of Process theology.
Once again its time for the “Suck it up, buttercups” attitude in the defense of freedom. And that is playing on the unfair stereotype of the newer generations perceived as being softer than ‘oldie goldie’ past generations (i.e. the WW2 crop of toughies referenced as “the greatest generation”). Contrary to that stereotype, commentators have noted that, for example, in the Israeli situation post-Oct.7, what was assumed to be a softer generation, overnight exhibited the same toughness as any generation before in taking on the defense of their country and willingness to pay the ultimate price to fight for their freedom and safety from unending assaults by others who are committed, under divine mandate, to the extermination of Jews and all unbelievers to their religion.
Newer generations of young people are facing the same old battle of last century’s generation between freedom in liberal democracy society and the totalitarianism of Marxist collectivism where “you will own nothing and you will be happy” because the enlightened elites demand that you do so and they will eventually and inevitably coerce you to do so. Private property was Marx’s number one evil to “liberate” humanity from and thereby unleash “the essential communalist self” or essential communist nature of oppressed peoples (i.e. the restoration of original “noble savages” in primitive communal societies of hunter-gatherers).
Be certain that in contemporary versions of collectivism (i.e. Marxism, socialism, Robert Owen’s communalism, liberal democracy/democratic socialism, Woke Progressivism, etc.) you are getting a “profoundly religious crusade” for the re-establishment of just another bout of elite domination of commoners. And like most previous such crusades across history they are fundamentally shaped by the same old complex of “salvation through destruction” ideas/beliefs/themes. What historians like Richard Landes have uncovered as “apocalyptic millennial” movements after the archetype of Paul’s apocalyptic millennial Christology that is the mother of such crusades in Western civilization.
Historian Richard Landes was right that the early Marxists believed that their collectivist crusade was the fulfillment of “the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution”, that they were the rightful successors of the French Revolution.
But as Landes, along with others has detailed, “rather than having abandoned millennial beliefs, ‘modern’ industrial society invented a new, secular variant”. The Marxists were actually just another “medieval sect of obscure believers”, just another “cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movement”.
Source: “Totalitarian Millennialism ch.11” in his book “Heaven On Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience”.
Quotes from Landes’ book:
“The self-image of modern secular societies insists that they have achieved their unique and uniquely powerful configurations precisely by rejecting all forms of religious superstition, especially the raving fantasies, the Schwarmerei, of millennial prophets. Nothing, it would seem, could be further from modernity than millennialism.
“And yet, if one sticks to the definition of millennialism- perfect and just society on earth (however defined), and thereby, collective salvation for its inhabitants- and if one looks at the dynamics of apocalyptic time- from enthusiastic take-off to cognitively dissonant disappointment, to re-entry into normal time- it seems justified to argue that, rather than having abandoned millennial beliefs, ‘modern’ industrial society invented a new, secular variant…”
Speaking of the Twentieth century intellectuals in thrall to Marxist ideology and its collectivist approach, Richard Landes says this- “Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused. In this case, very emotionally seated aspirations and hopes of young or older intellectuals are at stake. Everybody who dares to take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution…
“If you see it in this sense, say the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect, you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers.”
He adds, “Among the historical issues of the twentieth century nothing poses greater problems to scholars than the similarities and differences between the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian systems, both of which (by the definitions of this study) were active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements”. (End of Landes’ quotes)
The project here is to understand what incites, energizes, and validates bad human behavior such as the tribal exclusion of differing others, the impulse to domination of others, and then the unleashing of too often destructive violence toward others. What are some of the main contributing factors to such bad human behavior?
Looking back across human history, an undeniable factor grabs attention- i.e. a notable complex of bad ideas/beliefs reappears again and again in prominent human narratives, bad beliefs that incite and validate bad behavior among people. The obvious complex has become undeniable.
And most concerning is that these bad ideas are embedded at the core of the great religious traditions and in the very God of these religions, what is rightly defined as “evil cloaked as good, as religious ideals and the divine nature”. Adherents of these traditions will fight to the death to defend the ideas and deity of their tradition and that sparks the need to understand the psychology behind that defensiveness and zealotry to defend such evil in religion. The AI, responding to prompts, have helped in explaining such psychology as posted in varied sections below on this site.
Insert (for those in the generations following us Baby Boomers):
Now you all get to see what embracing the mental deformity of the “salvation through destruction” narrative, that drives Marxism and Islamic theocracy, actually looks and feels like in the madness now sweeping a country like France. Welcome to your future if you continue to side with such insanity as in the embrace of its milder preparatory forms like the ‘socialism lite’ of leftist woke progressivism. Beware the deceptive allure of the suicidal empathy in the mix of this most destructive and violent idea in history- i.e. “salvation through destruction”, or its formal categorization by historians as “apocalyptic millennialism”.
Yes, the same core themes shape the belief systems of Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism, Islamic theocracy, and woke progressivism, among other variants. (Soon to follow- The strange bedfellow cooperation of Marxists with Islamic theocrats, what is termed the “Red/Green alliance”. A cooperation of convenience where the victors then eliminate their partners that they view as the “useful idiots” that assisted them in the overthrow of western liberal democracies.)
Kristian Niemietz summed up social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on one element in the psychology of why so many still embrace bad ideas to frame their personal worldviews/narratives:
“Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
Further, as repeated often on this site, in the modern-era the core themes of the same bad religious beliefs have been embraced by the dominant secular ideologies of Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism, as well as contemporary theocracy crusades. Moderns now frame the themes in secular, even “scientific” contexts but they are still the same old, same old complex of bad ideas at core.
Most insidious in the mix is that the worst of bad ideas have been mixed and merged with the highest of human ideals in both religious and secular/ideological contexts- i.e. the animal elements of tribalism, domination, and violent destruction presented in contexts that claim they are exhibitions of love and grace, presented as ultimate good and justice, as fundamental characteristics of God, etc.
This from Christian psychologist Harold Ellens who has helped immensely in understanding the psychology behind people embracing bad ideas that result in harm to themselves and others (in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”):
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”. (End of Ellens quotes)
The above mixing/merging of entire opposites requires careful parsing of actual good from evil in such mixtures, with no mix/merger more egregious than the merger of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christ myth that overwhelms and undermines the central themes in Jesus, rendering his theology and message the very opposite of what he advocated and died for.
Insert note on France riots:
WHO’S WHO: Inside France’s ‘Chaos Inc’ franchise of communist groups, labor unions and global activists: Fox News Digital investigation identifies 54 groups behind France’s unrest as communists prepare a November youth strike, Oct. 19, 2026″, By Asra Q. Nomani
Then this from Bob Brinsmead
A discussion group member posted this:
“I know I have offered this criticism before. We can talk a lot about the love of God. Robert, you said recently God is always where love is. I hope that is an accurate statement. I wish God was always where the underserved tragedies are. Where is God when earthquakes, volcanoes, the tsunamis – the large destructive waves, that kill thousands of innocent children and adults. More than 7 million have died from Covid 19. WHERE IS YOUR APOLOGIA ?
Bob’s response:
____, you once encouraged me in the 1990’s to start reading some of the Jesus Seminar authors. That enriched my understanding enormously, and I still gratefully build on those gains.
I recommend that you start to think through a theodicy in the light of some of the best Process Theology authors who see God present in all of humanity as “the suffering companion,” – just as one Biblical passage states it, saying, “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.”
When God created mankind, God became incarnated in humanity as the only special revelation of the image and likeness of God (Genesis l:26) available. By this creative act, God henceforth became the unceasing Servant of humanity in the ultimate expression of God’s unceasing service of human compassion.
The cross of Jesus was the revelation of how God would be with mankind in all our suffering and affliction – not as a domineering Monarch but as mankind’s Suffering Servant. Have you ever wondered who was this mysterious Suffering Servant of Dutro-Isaiah who endured the Babylonish captivity?
Freedom being the oxygen of love, the everywhere Spirit whom we call God is always present in every human experience to entice and persuade the best possible choice, but never to override or enforce what Calvin erroneously called God’s demand of “ perfect obedience to every decree to the utmost degree.” Contrary to standing aloof to perfectionist demands, God was present in the human suffering of the Holocaust even when the Jews at Auschwitz judged that God was guilty of not stopping it. God suffered there as he suffered with Jesus when he was crucified – without planning it and without in any sense causing that event anymore than it was the divine will to cause the Holocaust event.
According to Process thought, it would be unthinkable that God planned the crucifixion event to be his great act of retaliatory justice on account of human transgressions, especially given that Jesus preached that we should reject any pay-back retaliation just as the Father of all mankind is unconditionally merciful to all (Matthew 5 and Luke 6).
Jesus praised the faith of some pagan people he encountered as superior to anything he had seen in Israel. This was possible only because God is equally and fully present to all of humanity. This is why Thomas Jefferson and the other founders of an open and free Liberal Democracy were right in concluding that all men were created equal. “In him we live and move and have our being” that we may “seek after him and find him because he is not far from (meaning, very near) to every one of us.” God is present and active in every human life, accepting where he finds people, religiously or otherwise, influencing them as much as much as possible in every free decision made, without making unilateral outcomes or doing miracles against his own unchanging laws of the universe to offset human decisions.
Contrary to orthodox theology, God is not impassable and unaffected by things outside of himself. He is a fellow sufferer, not able to determine every outcome except knowing his eternal outcome.
This is a rough outline of my kind of Process Theology or Panentheism, with polar images of God as unchangeably transcendent as the eternal Carer, and also the One who is affected by being immanent in every human life as the fellow Sufferer to create faith, that in every occasion the mysterious Spirit of love is present to create the best possible outcome. This is why there are people of faith, as Jesus found, who were considered as outsiders when in reality there are no outsiders with God. (End of Brinsmead comments)
Bob then responds to my comments on Islam having trouble moderating in modern era (see further below). Is that struggle to moderate because Muhammad did not include the wisdom sayings of Jesus in his scriptures?
From my site section titled: “Remembrance of past horror. How we get to never again’.” Posted on October 9, 2026 by Wendell Krossa
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=16859#more-16859
Bob’s response:
I refer you to my quote of Jack Miles in that compilation of papers in the Destructive Power of Religion: namely, that the historical Jesus in the Q that is carried into the Matthew 5 and Luke 6 discourse of Jesus is actually a “drastic revision of the divine identity.” That was what the historical Jesus was all about. But what we have in the New Testament, including Paul, is a religious interpretation of the historical Jesus, and that is about as far from the real event as the Old Testament version of the Exodus which is full of unbelievable exaggerations, miracles that don’t happen in normal life or history and material that would not be the real Moses about whom so little is known.
The problem is that the early Church which was corrupted by a mythical Hellenism painted the entire Bible of OT and NT with a mythical view of inspiration. What was written by “lying scribes (or priests)” was said to be as inspired as the message of the prophets. So the sublime wisdom in the teachings of the historical Jesus was corrupted by the threat theology added by a later generation of elite churchmen such as the writer called Matthew. He could now allow the pure teaching of Jesus which renounced all tribalism, dominion of others or retaliatory justice not to qualified by threat theology which destroyed the teaching of Jesus.
It is no secret that Mohammed drew his obsession with the eternal torments of Hell straight from the book of Matthew as this was the teaching of Jesus as much as what is said in those vital versus of merciful justice in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. What Matthew did in Matthew 23 and other places undid all that Jesus taught in his revision of the divine identity.
Marcion could see that one could not harmonize Jesus’ revision of the divine identity, with the many passages condoning divine violence in the OT, nor could the brutality of the OT be harmonized with Jesus’ ethic and life of non-violence. The only the first great heretic Marcion could deal with the disparity between the violence in the OT and the non-violence of Jesus was to claim that the OT, like the creation of this world, was the work of the Demiurge – an inferior OT god. This challenge of Marcion was the first great heresy that challenged the very existence of the Christian Church in around 130 CE. To answer Marcion, the church produced 2 Peter and the Pastoral Epistles of Paul.
For the first time these fake writings included Paul’s writings as inspired scripture (which Paul never claimed, nor did any other NT authors claim they were writing inspired scripture). In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul emphatically claimed that the New Testament was not a writing at all but the Spirit’s work of writing in human hearts that could never become a written document. But ignoring all this, the fathers of the church in the 2nd century devised a theory that both OT and NT writings were imbued with the one kind of inspiration, adding that it was not a matter of private interpretation but by church authority only.
Thus the Church did the contrary to what was promised in the real new covenant (testament) promised by Jeremiah, “They shall more everyman teach his neighbour saying, ‘Know the Lord’, because they shall all know me from the least to the greatest…”
How was it that the churchmen, imitating the OT priests, set up an elite order of doorkeepers as it always is with religion? What happens is no different in principle to what Wendell writes about with the early shaman and other recipients of heavenly visions. They too had messages of God’s grace, only that someone like themselves always had to be the doorkeepers of that grace, and this gave the “benefactors” room to lever their dominion over the rest of mankind according to the way it is in the animal kingdom of dominion of one over the others.
It just seems so logical and natural to create an order called religion to hold the keys to the kingdom of heaven determining the conditions of access to God’s grace. There has to be an order called the church “out of which no one can be saved” which can define the conditions of entry to the banquet. Matthew tells us that Jesus said so, huh? That is what religion does. It sets the conditions. It determines who are the doorkeepers. Matthew lays it out: “Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”
Then, further from Bob...
Wendell, there are other links between the Ebionites and Mohammad which I simply list here:
The Ebionites prayed facing Jerusalem – so did Mohammad at Mecca (approx.. first ten years of his public ministry before moving to Medina when he introduced praying toward Mecca).
The Ebionites insisted on circumcision and the refusal to eat pork. That was incorporated into the teaching of Mohammed.
The Ebionites did not drink wine etc. We know that neither did John the Baptist or James the brother of Jesus. Jesus was known as the Nazarene. Scholars now say that this term was not reference to a geographical place (Nazareth) but to a way of life. Was Jesus like the other two of the trio of John and James? When the Ebionites celebrated the last supper of Jesus they used water instead of wine. The Ebionite influence of Mohammad was evident in Islam’s aversion to wine and alcohol.
The Ebionites believed Jesus was an anointed prophet. So believed Mohammad. Some minor group of Ebionites believed Jesus was born of a virgin miraculously, although not divine or pre-existent. Ditto Mohammad. He derived his teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus from this sect of Ebionites.
Ebionites were a term denoting the poor ones. A ministry to the poor was a central tenet of their teaching. So it was with the Kadijah, the wife of Mohammad, a relatively wealthy woman whose ministry to the poor was legendary. This became an important feature of the teachings of Mohammad.
There is an element of truth in saying that just as the Gentile church at Antioch morphed into the Roman Catholicism of Western Christianity so Jewish Christianity which moved eastward morphed into Islam, although if one takes the broader view of Jeffrey J. Butz, the most important strand of Jewish Christianity was passed from James to the Founding Fathers of America such as Thomas Jefferson who were motived by the historical Jesus to write the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. Jefferson had a Jewish Christian view of Jesus as fully human and non-divine Now that is an ending if Jewish Christianity (so-called) to be proud of. (See The Secret Legacy of Jesus). Butz could have made a much stronger case for his thesis if he was really in tune with the teachings of the historical Jesus that began to be uncovered with Jefferson and then onto the great Search for the Historical Jesus which began about 200 hundred years ago. rdb
Another from Bob:
Another point re the historical links to Mohammad: it seems there is a strong and unreasonable insistence to minimize the very naturally human and naturally historical links to the thinking of Mohammed which is as foolish as ignoring the OT prophetic and other links to the historical Jesus.
Two of the most memorable sayings of Jesus (the Golden Rule saying and the saying about the Sabbath being made for man rather than the religious reverse) were directly derived from the teachings of Hillel the Elder who died when Jesus was a teenager.
Mohammed was the child of a human culture, but his main biographers want to treat him as miraculously taught by divine sources only, much as Paul insisted he was taught without human influence which is completely egotistical and without historical support. The Hellenists who fled to Antioch were teaching the basics of Christian Hellenism before Paul was converted to the teachings of Stephen and Philip who were the first Jewish Hellenist preachers who were teaching that Christ died for our sins. Paul resisted this teaching violently for the psychologically identified trait of violently resisting what appealed to him. For sure, he gave this Jewish Hellenism a broad, even a brilliantly constructed apocalyptic/cosmic setting which enhanced this Christian Hellenism. He never, however, originated his basic teaching as he claimed, and that teaching had broader roots than what he got from Antioch.
As Ellens explains, Paul picked up the teaching of the Zadokite priests about the sacrifices paying for sins, and he picked up the teaching of 4 Maccabees (written during the first century) that the death of the martyrs during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes in the 160’s BCE was an atonement for the sins of Israel. Paul was a child of his times, a child of a history going back for centuries, and his claims of being taught by an ecstatic flight to heaven was of the same stuff us Mohammad’s legendary flight on a miraculous white horse to Jerusalem. Nothing is more certain than Paul and Mohammed being the products of a very long history which preceded them.
Paul was reluctant to admit even how much he owed to men such as Stephen at whose execution he was present and to the Christians who were so-called at Antioch who preceded him. He was just like some Christians who will tell you they derived their theology of the Nicene Creed and Chalcedon which took 400 years to develop all from own their study of the Bible alone without any human influence whatsoever. None of us are as original as we think.
This reminds me of an elder brother saying to younger brother, “You came out of your mother’s tummy.” To which the younger brother snorted indignantly, “I came out of my own tummy.” I laugh about this because this incident not only actually happened, but keep happening every time someone claims his ideas originated totally in his “own tummy.” rdb
Another Bob response:
Your thought re the OT prophets is well said, namely, that whilst they expressed a kinder and more forgiving justice than the priestly religion, they never made a complete break from a hoping for what Isaiah 61 calls “the day of vengeance of our God.” Nor did they make a complete break from the common human lust for the day of our vindication and the humiliation of others – such as waiting for the day when the enemies of Israel will confess at their feet that God is with them, licking the dust and subjecting themselves to their new masters. These passages are somewhat embarrassing in the clearer light of the breakthrough of the Nazarene Jesus. The old prophetic hopes only prove that what was in them is also in us, because all human beings are inevitably a mixture of good and evil, while God pledges that God will not let what is good perish.
One more from Bob:
The other point I venture to make re your comments comparing Islam and Christianity, is that prior to the human Enlightenment, Christianity was not better than Islam in negotiating a more humane civilization. It is a great pity that people who have a religious tradition don’t seem to regard that the work of the Enlightenment was a divine manifestation as much as the Reformation and no less because it came in a secular image. It did far more than the Reformation for the reason that it discarded an appeal to religion that would have undone its gains. The Enlightenment was an enormous challenge and resulted in an enormous revision of religious claims. It is for some good reason that Bernstein (The Birth of Plenty) claims that the triumph of scientific rationalism over religious superstition in the Enlightenment was one of the four great things that opened up the world, led by the West, to the enormous improvement of the human condition.
Prior to the Enlightenment Christian civilization probably shed more blood than Islam ever shed, and the Christian armies of the Crusades treated multi-religious cities in the Middle East worse than Islam by butchering people who belonged to Christianity, Islam and Judaism in cities of the Middle East where people of the three religions were living together in more freedom granted under Islamic rule than was granted under Christian rule. Islam never ran an Inquisition and invented such diabolical human tortures as the Christian religion. So there is no grounds to suggest that Christians were moderated in their shedding of blood by the teachings of Jesus, but despite having the teachings of Jesus.
Islam has never been swept by the Enlightenment like the Christian West has been swept by allowing its religious traditions and sacred books examined with such candid scrutiny, nor has Islam been able to produce a movement akin to Christianity’s Search for the Historical Jesus. Look what happened to Rushdie! A like rationalism as fostered by the Enlightenment within Islam would trigger an enormously and dangerous resistance to having Mohammed searched like the historical Jesus has been searched – or Islamic literature searched for all its historical inputs. Who would even dare to do it?
Yet Islamic civilization will never be intellectually as free as Western civilization unless it opens its doors to be swept by a human Enlightenment which lays out three basic principles of determining what is true: (1) The Truth of a matter does not depend on who said it, (2) how many said it, or (3) by what authority said it- expressed in Latin by argumentum ad hominem, argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundium (if my spelling and memory is correct?).
I have said a lot of things sympathetic to the life and ministry of Mohammad, but if it to be swept by an Enlightenment which shook Christianity, the real work has to be done by Muslims themselves rather than by critics from the outside, just as the bulk of the Search for the Historical Jesus had to be initiated and done by Christians themselves. rdb
And this rabbit hole I went into with AI (W. Krossa):
Not for all to read, only if interested you can peruse, skim, or delete as you choose. I wanted to take a “deep dive” with AI into why Christianity appears to have done a better job at moderating its past violence whereas Islam is still struggling. I am not affirming the responses of AI below but offer them as their take on this.
My prompt to AI:
I have a sort of theoretical/speculative hypothesis on why Islam is having a difficult time moderating in the modern era. Christianity has by and large done better in moderating the violence of its past history, as has Judaism. See the Old Testament accounts of the violent past history of the Hebrews for a contrast with the majority of those affiliating with that religion today.
I make a separation between the general moderation in the modern Israeli population (its liberal democracy state) and the necessary requirement of its government to protect its citizens from threats that emanate from the theocratic radicals in Iran and through its proxies- i.e. Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, etc. All committed to the extermination of Jews, as well as other unbelievers. It is the fundamental commitment that is demanded by the Islamic God to purify the world and spread an Islamic caliphate across the world. Too many Muslims take that demand seriously and literally. Hence, too many engaging jihad not as something “spiritual” but as actual physical war.
Hence, it is “just war” to actively protect your citizens from such threats of violence that cannot be resolved through negotiations/ceasefires as has been the repeated experience of Israel over past decades. This is not a blanket affirmation of all that the Israeli state does in eliminating such threats. But it is unrealistic to demand the Israeli government just sit back and continue to suffer repeated assaults on its citizens, assaults that no other government would tolerate.
And it is admirable that the Israeli military generally follows guidelines that few other militaries have had to follow in notifying enemy citizens to evacuate in the event of bombings, of supplying enemy population with massive amounts of food and other supplies, etc. Again, this is not full affirmation of how the Israel military has conducted itself in all its operations. Just as on the Islamic side, there is too much motivation stirred in the Israeli military that is shaped by “eye for eye” retaliation that is promoted by the Israeli leadership.
“We will crush them with an iron fist” (Israeli political and military leaders). That is not the best of incentives for soldiers. But again, this has been moderated by many other admirable principles that guide and moderate the Israeli assaults against their violent attackers.
The root of the problem of violence throughout the Mid-East: “It’s the theology, stupid”.
All three western religions- i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam- share the same basically Zoroastrian God, a God of cosmic tribal dualism who demands that all people must join his true religion to defeat and dominate his enemies, those people who refuse to submit and believe his righteous cause. His true believers are obligated to defeat, destroy, and eliminate unbelievers who corrupt and defile the world with their presence.
These are the worst of bad ideas to have ever infected human minds and they are prominent beliefs in all three Western religions.
But along the route of descending human history, other contrary views of deity emerged from free spirits with curious and creative minds who intuitively sensed that the Ultimate Reality/God was something more humane than the beliefs that they had inherited from the dominant mythologies and religions of their era.
Examples of these alternative views:
Judaism had the prophetic stream of ideas alongside the priestly tradition- where contrary to the priesthood theology and beliefs the prophets suggested a kinder and gentler theology of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness in God. But they never quite made the complete break with the older theologies of angry, retaliating, punishing, and destroying God. It was centuries later that Jesus would make the complete break with the traditional Jewish theology of an angry, retaliatory, and destroying deity who demanded eye for eye justice, the God who demanded appeasement through violent sacrifice.
The priestly tradition continued to define the essential nature of deity in their views of the threat theology continued to dominantly frame their narratives.
Taking cues from the prophetic elements of mercy and kindness in God and rejection of sacrifice (Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), Jesus took those elements to the ultimate reach of unconditional love. He initiated the complete rejection of retaliatory, punitive, destroying God and replaced that theology with no conditions love. It was his stunning new theology that changed everything.
Unfortunately, Paul then reversed that new theology, notably in his Romans 12:17-20 statement of his theology where he retreated to the myth of angry, destroying deity that then dominated his religion of Christ-ianity. His embrace of the archetypes of traditional threat theology then incited and affirmed the religious violence and terrorism of the next two millennia. His theology played a significant contributing role in guiding and affirming the modern-era “secular ideological” movements of Marxist revolutions, Nazi violence and mass murder, and contemporary environmental alarmism.
Fortunately for Christianity, the inclusion of the Jesus’ diamonds in the Christian New Testament acted as a potent moderating influence for the many modern-era Christians who learned to focus more on Q Wisdom Sayings of Jesus and to downplay, ignore, and dismiss outright the nasty elements of Paul’s Christology. A common practise in contemporary Christianity is to view the harsher strains in their holy book as “metaphorical”, not to be taken literally.
Unfortunately, the archetypes of even the “metaphorical” material still incite and energize the worst impulses in some true believers to tribalism, domination, and violent destruction as again has been noted in Marxist violence and environmental alarmism, etc.
Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy were right that the diamonds of Jesus are yet buried in the darker stuff of Paul’s dominant Christ- his overwhelming emphasis on tribalism, domination, destruction. Those weaken the Jesus material, undermine, override.
Now Islam- What happened?
The Ebionite faction in early Christianity, that had emerged circa 70 CE, was eventually condemned by Pauline Christianity as heretical and persecuted. The Ebionites then scattered with some migrating to the Arabian Peninsula (Medina?) where they were led by an Ebionite priest named Waraqa around 600 CE, who was the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife Kadijah.
I have some questions about the tendency of AI to dismiss the influence of Ebionism on Muhammad.
I put this to Gemini:
AI Overview response:
The connection you outlined represents a prominent hypothesis in modern revisionist and secular Islamic studies, but it relies on a blend of verified historical facts and unproven academic speculation.
Here is how your statement breaks down into what is historically supported versus what remains a theory:
1. The Ebionites in Early Christianity (Historically Supported)
• Origins and Theology: The Ebionites were an early Jewish-Christian sect that emerged post-70 CE. They maintained strict adherence to the Mosaic Law (Torah), rejected the Apostle Paul as an apostate, and denied the orthodox Pauline/Nicene concepts of Jesus’s divinity, viewing him instead as a human prophet and the Messiah.
• Persecution and Demise: They were indeed condemned as heretical by proto-orthodox (Pauline) Christianity. Mainstream scholarship notes that they largely disappeared or faded into total obscurity between the 4th and 5th centuries CE, primarily remaining in regions around Syria and the Transjordan.
2. Waraqa ibn Nawfal and Khadijah (Historically Supported)
• According to early Islamic tradition (such as the Sahih al-Bukhari and Sirat Rasul Allah), Waraqa ibn Nawfal was indeed the paternal cousin of Khadijah (Prophet Muhammad’s first wife).
• Traditional texts record that Waraqa lived in Mecca (not Medina). He was an elderly, blind scholar who rejected Arabian paganism, embraced a form of monotheistic Christianity, and could read and write Hebrew and Arabic scriptures. When Muhammad received his first revelation in 610 CE, Khadijah brought him to Waraqa, who authenticated his prophethood before dying shortly after.
3. Was Waraqa an Ebionite Priest? (The Academic Hypothesis)
The direct link between the Ebionites and Waraqa is not a proven historical fact, but rather a theory popularized by certain secular historians and religious polemicists.
(End of AI Overview.)
Here is the Grok take on the same prompting above:
The Ebionite–Waraqa–Muhammad chain is a real scholarly hypothesis, not a settled fact, and the gaps in it are larger than the continuities. Direct institutional survival of the Ebionites into seventh-century Hijaz is not demonstrated; thematic overlaps with early Islam are clearer and have been noted for centuries.
Ebionites (and related Jewish-Christian groups such as Nazarenes) appear in patristic sources from the late first through fourth centuries. They kept Torah observance, rejected Paul, treated Jesus as a human messiah or prophet rather than pre-existent God, and used a Hebrew or Aramaic gospel tradition. By the fifth century they are no longer attested as organized communities; the last clear references are in Epiphanius and Jerome. What survived in the Near East were scattered Jewish-Christian ideas, not a continuous Ebionite church that can be traced to Medina.
Waraqa ibn Nawfal is better attested inside the Islamic tradition itself. Ibn Ishaq’s sīra (via Ibn Hisham) describes him as Khadija’s cousin, a man who “had become a Christian and read the scriptures,” wrote the Gospel in Arabic, and, on hearing Muhammad’s first revelation, identified it with the nāmūs that had come to Moses. He dies shortly afterward. Later compilers repeat the story with minor variations. Nothing in those early reports calls him an Ebionite, names an Ebionite community in the Hijaz, or places him in Medina as its leader. “Priest” is a later gloss; the Arabic sources use terms closer to “Christian scholar” or ḥanīf. Arabian Christianity in the sixth–seventh centuries was predominantly Miaphysite or Dyophysite (influenced from Syria, Ethiopia, and Najran), not a preserved Ebionite enclave. Jewish communities in Yathrib/Medina are well documented; a distinct Ebionite priesthood is not.
The doctrinal parallels are nonetheless substantial and were already remarked by John of Damascus in the eighth century, who classed the new movement as a Christian heresy:
• Strict unitarian monotheism and rejection of the Trinity and of Jesus’ divinity.
• Jesus as messenger/messiah born of a virgin, not crucified in the ordinary sense (or, in some readings, only apparently).
• Continuity with Abrahamic law, food rules, and circumcision (later modified).
• Polemic against Pauline Christianity and against Jewish rejection of Jesus.
These overlaps can be explained without a living Ebionite cadre: contact with Jews in Medina, with non-Chalcedonian Christians via trade and Khadija’s family, and with the broader ḥanīf monotheist milieu already present in the Hijaz. Revisionist or source-critical writers (sometimes drawing on the late Patricia Crone or on earlier Jewish-Christian hypotheses) press the Ebionite link harder; most specialists in early Islamic history treat it as possible background influence rather than a documented migration of a named sect under Waraqa. Primary evidence remains thin either way—the Qur’an and sīra do not cite Ebionite texts, and no contemporary non-Muslim source records an Ebionite colony in Medina around 600.
On the bias point: some popular and model-generated summaries do minimize pre-Islamic Jewish-Christian substrates when discussing Islamic origins, often by insisting on a sharp “pagan to pure monotheism” rupture or by treating any genetic account as inherently hostile. That is a presentational choice, not a requirement of the evidence. The same sources that preserve Waraqa’s recognition of Muhammad also preserve the existence of scriptural monotheists in Mecca before the revelations; acknowledging them does not require accepting every later polemical reconstruction. The historical question is empirical—what communities and texts were actually available in the Hijaz—and remains under-determined by the surviving record.
Let me (W Krossa) insert some arguments here before continuing…
Yes, as noted by Gemini, there was the monotheism in the larger environment of Mecca before the revelations. My point is the more specific Ebionite beliefs and practises that appear to have strong correlations to Muhammad’s later revelations. Here I will present some of these:
When the Ebionite priest Waraqa mentored Muhammad, he used the gospel to the Hebrews, an early version of Matthew’s gospel, as well as using Matthew itself. I would suggest that Muhammad would have absorbed the theology of those gospels of an angry, destroying God.
However, to my larger question of why Islam has had a larger struggle with moderating as Christianity has generally been able to do, is that Muhammad neglected to also borrow and include the Jesus teaching in his Quran material. Hence, the Quran has no moderating element of the stunning new non-retaliatory theology of Jesus, what I would expand to his “unconditional love theology”. Muhammad included only the themes of angry deity sending unbelievers to hell, and that dominant narrative, as Harold Ellens explains (i.e. “Cruel God theology”) incites the worst impulses of extremist true believers to tribalism, defeat and domination, and even violent destruction of unbelievers. There is no hint of the unconditional God of Jesus in the Quran. And that element was present as the diamonds in the Matthew gospel.
Insert caveat: Even so, admirably many Muslims have learned moderate themselves despite the overwhelming presence of the threat theology material in their holy book. Moderation of religion should be praised wherever it occurs. I suggest that is the common human spirit triumphing over the animal inheritance (i.e. the human self conquering the animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others).
Another insert note: I am aware that Islamic theologians dismiss the influence of Waraqa as something of post-revelation affirmation of Muhammad’s teaching. I would suggest that Waraqa’s influence is a pre-revelation influence because, for example, note in Matthew the pattern of those who reject the message (i.e. the hamlets of Chorazin, Capernaum, Bethsaida, etc.) are threatened with damnation (Matt 11). So also in the Quran there are many statements that those who refuse the message and the messenger are damned to hell. An exact copy of Matthew’s threat template. That points to Waraqa’s pre-revelation influence on Muhammad. That is more specific than some general monotheistic influence from the larger culture at that time.
Other similar evidence of an Ebionite/Waraqa/Muhammad correlation? Evidence of Muhammad borrowing from Waraqa and his Ebionite religion? What about water purification beliefs and rites in Ebionism is also evident in the similar Islamic practise? Many of us have followed the practise of taking off our shoes and washing feet before entering mosques.
Add also the view of Jesus as an honored prophet of God but not God himself. An Ebionite and Islamic view of Jesus.
And yes, the main themes of angry, threatening, punishing, destroying God, of God as tribal, dominating, and demanding submission, and ultimate destruction in hell may have all been in the larger monotheism Gemini pointed to. But that is also scattered throughout Matthew’s gospel.
That theology incites, energizes, and validates the same impulses in followers who take it seriously. We see the historical result in true believer zealots who initiate crusades to defeat and dominate unbelievers, demanding submission to their “lording over all” deity. True believers who will behave according to their beliefs, becoming just like the God they believe in, as evident in raping and murdering unbelievers, all the while screaming “God is great”. Basing behavior on God. Just as Christinas have also done across history and as Jews did in the Old Testament accounts of invading, subjugating, and destroying their enemies.
As psychologist Harold Ellens said so well, if your God uses violence to solve problems then so may you.
Fortunately, we have the alternative to solve all this madness- i.e. those Jesus diamonds. Unfortunately, Muhammad did not include those in his holy book and religion. He did not grasp the stunning new theology of Jesus that was available in Matthew’s gospel and it appears Waraqa was no help on that issue.
None of the historically new movements/traditions start fresh with direct revelations from God. All traditions inherit and borrow very basic themes from the past. All founders have those inherited archetypes in their subconscious that influence them to recreate the same old template of basic ideas and beliefs as all before them. There is nothing new under the sun till we get to Jesus.
The greater point in this- General Nagata was right that until we “defeat the idea” behind such religious violence we will continue to get further eruptions of such violence. My argument is that the “idea” at the core is a theological idea of a God who is tribal, dominating and demanding submission and obedience, and who demands true believers to engage the cosmic dualism crusade to destroy unbelieving enemies as the required purging of the world before he will descend to install whatever version of a utopian kingdom has been promised.
Grok, do you get my points on the apparent correlations between Ebionism and Muhammad’s beliefs that are more than just some general monotheism in the larger zeitgeist of Muhammad’s time? What I see as a pre-revelation influence and not just post-revelation affirmation that Islamic theologians argue for.
Also, do your suggestions to Explore the main Ebionite doctrines and Investigate the Ebionite Gospel of Matthew.
Grok reply:
The specific correlations you list are worth separating into what the sources actually support and what remains inferential. I will check the Ebionite textual record and the Waraqa reports against the claims.
Thought
The correlations you flag are real at the level of doctrine and rhetoric; the transmission story that ties them specifically to an Ebionite Waraqa mentoring Muhammad from the Gospel of the Hebrews before the revelations is not established by the sources.
Main Ebionite doctrines, as reported by Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius, were these. Jesus was a fully human prophet and messiah, the biological son of Joseph and Mary in the stricter accounts, or virgin-born in some later ones, but not pre-existent and not divine. Sonship was conferred at baptism (adoptionism): a power or spirit descended on him. Paul was rejected as an apostate from the Law. Circumcision, Sabbath, and food rules remained binding. Animal sacrifice was often repudiated after 70 CE. Their scripture, alongside the Hebrew Bible, was a Hebrew or Aramaic Matthew, or a revised form of it. Frequent ritual washings for purification continued Jewish and Essene practice; Epiphanius and later notices link them to hemerobaptist-style immersions, distinct from one-time initiatory baptism.
The Gospel of the Ebionites survives only as short quotations in Epiphanius’s Panarion (chiefly section 30). It is a Greek gospel harmony, not an intact early Matthew. It omits the genealogy and nativity, begins near the baptism, alters John’s diet from locusts to honey cakes (vegetarian tendency), and has Jesus say he came to abolish the sacrifices. Christology is adoptionist: the spirit descends and Jesus is then called Son. It is conventionally distinguished from the Gospel of the Hebrews (quoted by Clement, Origen, Jerome), which includes a resurrection appearance to James and more speculative material about the Spirit as mother. Neither text is extant beyond fragments. Patristic writers already treat these as truncated or rewritten Matthews, not as the canonical gospel used unchanged.
Waraqa ibn Nawfal, in Bukhari and Ibn Ishaq/Ibn Hisham, is a Meccan Christian (or ḥanīf who settled on Christianity) who “wrote the Gospel in Arabic” (one Bukhari strand says Hebrew). After Khadija brings Muhammad to him following the first revelation, he identifies the experience with the nāmūs that came to Moses and predicts expulsion by Quraysh. He dies soon afterward. The sīra places the meeting after the cave experience, not as a long pre-revelation tutelage. No early report calls him an Ebionite, locates an Ebionite community under him in Medina, or says he taught from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Orientalist arguments that he supplied substantial content exist; traditional replies note the thinness of contact evidence beyond that single affirmation. Arabian Christianity of the period was mainly Miaphysite or Dyophysite via Syrian, Ethiopian, and Najran channels.
Specific parallels, assessed against that record:
Jesus as honored prophet but not God is the clearest overlap. Quranic ʿĪsā is virgin-born, a word from God, messenger, and messiah, yet not divine and not son in the Christian sense. That matches the range of Ebionite (and broader Jewish-Christian) Christology more closely than Nicene orthodoxy. It does not require Waraqa as the sole conduit; the same profile appears in other late-antique Jewish-Christian currents, and the Quran also draws on apocryphal infancy material.
Ritual washing is shared but not diagnostic. Islamic wuḍūʾ (and removal of footwear in sacred space) continues broader Jewish purification practice (mikvaot, hand and foot washing before prayer or temple entry). Ebionites practiced repeated immersions; so did Essenes and other baptist groups. The mosque custom is therefore consistent with a Jewish-Christian substrate, not proof of a named Ebionite rite transmitted by one priest.
Judgment oracles are likewise shared rather than copied. Matthew 11:20–24 threatens Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum with a worse fate than Tyre, Sidon, or Sodom for rejecting the works done in them. The Quran repeatedly warns that those who deny the messenger and the signs face hell. The rhetorical pattern—rejection of the envoy brings destruction—is older than both (Deuteronomic history, prophetic books). It appears in Matthew’s judgment material and in Quranic material; it does not demonstrate that Waraqa dictated the template from an Ebionite Matthew before 610. Matthew also contains the enemy-love and non-retaliation sayings (5:38–48). The Quran contains repeated mercy formulae (the basmala, passages on Allah as raḥmān and raḥīm) alongside hell threats, fighting verses, and submission language. Selective absorption of only the “angry” strand is a possible reading of the outcome, not a documented editorial choice by Waraqa.
On moderation: both canons contain judgment and combat material that have been used to authorize violence, and both contain restraining material that communities have used to limit it. Christian moderation after the confessional wars tracks legal, philosophical, and political changes as much as the presence of the Sermon on the Mount, which was available throughout the Crusades. Islamic moderating traditions (certain fiqh restraints on jihad, Sufi emphases, modern reform) likewise exist despite the judgment verses. Harold Ellens’s point—that a violent problem-solving deity licenses violent problem-solving by devotees—is a psychological observation applicable to any tradition whose authoritative texts include divine violence; it does not single out one scripture as uniquely lacking counterweights.
The broader claim that every founder reworks inherited archetypes is sound. The narrower claim of a pre-revelation Ebionite curriculum under Waraqa producing an “exact copy” of Matthew’s threat pattern, while excluding its love sayings, goes beyond what Ibn Ishaq, Bukhari, or the patristic fragments record. The Christological and legal-purification overlaps remain the strongest part of the case; the biographical chain does not.
My next prompt:
Ok, then, how about the quantitative prominence of threat theology in the Quran compared to the strands on God as merciful, etc.? And compared, for example, to the clear statements of historical Jesus on unconditional theology in Matthew 5:38-48 and Luke 6:27-36? There is nothing of comparable clarity and force in the Quran. That is what I was getting at in suggesting there is no similar moderating influence in Islam compared to Christianity.
Grok reply:
A quantitative comparison is possible in rough terms, and it does not support the claim that the Quran lacks a mercy strand of comparable textual weight. What it does show is a difference in kind and in rhetorical force on the specific topic of enemy-love.
Thought
Raw counts do not show threat language swamping mercy language in the Quran. The sharper difference is the one you name: there is no passage of comparable clarity and force to Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36.
On quantity, the mercy root r-ḥ-m occurs about 339 times. Raḥma (“mercy”) appears 114 times, al-Raḥmān 57 times, and al-Raḥīm about 116 times. The basmala opens 113 of the 114 surahs. Forgiveness titles (Ghafūr, Ghaffār, and related forms) occur on the order of 98 times. Jahannam itself appears roughly 77 times; broader punishment vocabulary (nār, ʿadhāb, and similar) is larger, running into the low hundreds of verses depending on how the net is cast. One full-text coding study counted roughly 2,150 verses weighted toward mercy and about 1,980 toward violence or punishment out of 6,236, with overlap in both directions. That method is broad and contestable, but it lines up with the lexical pattern: mercy titles are among the most repeated divine attributes, while hell and chastisement are also recurrent. A hadith widely cited in the tradition has God say that mercy prevails over wrath. So the claim that threat theology is quantitatively dominant over mercy language does not hold.
The qualitative gap is real. Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36 are direct, second-person commands: do not resist the evildoer, love enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you, lend expecting nothing back, because God sends sun and rain on the evil and the good and is kind to the ungrateful. The standard is imitation of that impartial goodness. Nothing in the Quran matches that formulation in scope or insistence.
Closest Quranic material is narrower. 41:34 says to repel evil with what is better so that an enemy may become a close friend, and limits the capacity for this to the steadfast. 60:8 allows kindness and justice toward those who have not fought you over religion or driven you out. 3:159 praises lenience. Against that stand explicit fighting and subjugation verses (9:5, 9:29, 2:190–193, 9:123) that set conditions under which force continues until repentance, payment, or submission. Mercy in the Quran is primarily God’s attribute—extended especially to those who repent and believe—rather than a standing command that disciples imitate non-retaliation toward hostile outsiders without remainder. Classical exegesis often reads the milder verses as situational (Meccan, or limited to non-combatants) and the sword verses as later and more decisive for relations with resistant unbelievers.
That difference in ethical maxim is what your contrast isolates. It does not erase the mercy lexicon, and it does not by itself explain later historical trajectories: both canons contain combat and judgment texts that have licensed violence, and both have been read by restraining traditions. The Sermon on the Mount was available throughout periods of Christian religious warfare; its presence did not mechanically produce moderation. The absence of an equivalent enemy-love command in the Quran is still a genuine asymmetry in the normative material each community has had to work with.
My next prompt:
Let’s do your suggestion: How does this affect the claim that Christianity has a moderating influence.
Grok reply:
The textual asymmetry does not, by itself, establish that Christianity possesses a reliable moderating influence that Islam lacks. It identifies one real difference in normative material; the historical record shows that difference has not operated as a consistent brake.
Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36 are unusually direct commands to non-retaliation and enemy-love, grounded in imitation of God’s impartial goodness. The Quran has no parallel of equal scope or insistence. Its nearest verses (such as 41:34 on repelling evil with something better, or 60:8 on kindness toward those who have not fought Muslims over religion) are narrower, often read as situational, and sit alongside explicit commands to fight certain categories of unbelievers until they submit, pay the jizya, or are subdued. Mercy language in the Quran is frequent and theologically central as a divine attribute, especially toward the repentant, but it is not framed as an unqualified ethical maxim for disciples facing hostile outsiders. That is a genuine difference in the resources each tradition’s canon supplies.
It does not follow that the Christian texts have functioned as a moderating influence in the strong sense the claim requires. Those same passages were part of the received New Testament throughout the periods of Christian religious warfare. Crusading theology, the Albigensian Crusade, the Thirty Years’ War, and colonial conquests conducted under Christian auspices all occurred in societies that possessed the Sermon on the Mount. Interpreters reconciled the enemy-love sayings with just-war arguments, with distinctions between private and public vengeance, or with the claim that the sayings applied only to personal injury rather than to defense of the church or the political order. The texts constrained some individuals and some movements (certain pacifist sects, later liberal Protestant ethics); they did not prevent large-scale religiously sanctioned violence for more than a millennium after they were canonized.
Conversely, Islamic history is not a uniform record of unmoderated threat theology. Classical fiqhting developed rules limiting targets, requiring declaration, and distinguishing combatants; Sufi traditions emphasized interior struggle and, in some orders, tolerance; various empires practiced pragmatic coexistence for long stretches. Those restraints drew on Quranic mercy language, on hadith, and on political calculation. They were real, and they were also repeatedly overridden by actors who cited the fighting verses. The same pattern—selective emphasis—appears on both sides.
Later moderation in historically Christian societies tracks additional changes more closely than the mere presence of the enemy-love pericopes: the fragmentation of ecclesiastical power after the wars of religion, the rise of states that monopolized legitimate violence, Enlightenment critiques of revealed religion, and the eventual cultural prestige of secular norms. Societies with Islamic majorities have undergone some parallel shifts where state authority, education, and economic integration weakened the political salience of the fighting verses, and have not where those conditions were absent. The textual difference remains; it is not sufficient to explain the divergence in outcomes.
My next prompt:
My argument is that I can selectively pull out the Jesus diamonds, not as some required authority alone, but as illustrative to buttress my point that unconditional deity is how we defeat the core idea that General Nagata was fishing around to isolate. Hence, I offer my views on this stunning new unconditional theology as how we defeat those deeply embedded archetypes that continue to incite our animal inheritance, defeat them wherever they are found in religious or other traditions, defeat them by going directly to the foundational archetypes of threat theology.
Grok reply:
The selective use changes the claim. You are no longer arguing that Christianity, as a historical tradition, supplied a moderating influence Islam lacked. You are extracting one strand of Synoptic teaching—the enemy-love and non-retaliation sayings—as an illustrative counter to what you call threat theology, and offering that counter as a way to undercut the archetype wherever it appears.
That extraction is available. Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36 do state an ethic of non-retaliation, blessing cursers, and love of enemies, justified by appeal to a God who sends sun and rain on the evil and the good and is kind to the ungrateful. Read in isolation, they supply a picture of impartial beneficence rather than tribal reciprocity. If the operative idea behind religiously licensed violence is “the deity solves problems by defeating and destroying the out-group, therefore devotees may do likewise,” then a maxim that forbids mirroring that pattern removes one common warrant. Ellens’s observation that believers tend to imitate the problem-solving style they ascribe to their god is a psychological claim about authorization, not a historical law; a counter-image of the deity can, in principle, withdraw that authorization for people who accept the counter-image.
Two limits sit inside the same sources. The Synoptics that contain those sayings also contain judgment oracles, woes on unrepentant towns, and language of outer darkness and exclusion. The unconditional reading is produced by privileging one set of pericopes over another, exactly as you describe doing. It is not the only coherent arrangement of the material, and communities that retained both sets have repeatedly treated the enemy-love sayings as binding for private injury while leaving public or eschatological coercion intact. The archetype is therefore not defeated merely by the existence of the sayings; it is defeated only where the sayings are given interpretive priority over the threat material that accompanies them.
The same maneuver is not unique to those verses. Stoic impartiality, some Buddhist formulations of non-harm, and certain philosophical accounts of equal moral status have been used to the same end: deny that group membership or divine command licenses domination. What the Jesus sayings add is a theological framing—imitation of a non-retaliatory deity—rather than a purely ethical one. That framing works against threat theology only for audiences that still locate moral authority in a deity. For audiences that do not, the archetype is addressed more directly by rejecting the premise that any agent’s violence is justified by cosmic dualism or promised utopia, religious or secular.
Nagata’s point, as you invoke it, was that kinetic defeat of a militant group leaves the authorizing idea available for the next group. Targeting the idea means contesting the claim that purging unbelievers or subordinating outsiders is what the highest reality requires. The enemy-love sayings are one historically available instrument for that contest. They are not a complete one, because the traditions that carry them also carry the opposing instrument, and because the archetype also appears in non-theistic forms that those sayings do not reach.
My next prompt:
Let’s do your suggestion- “What is the best way to frame that argument”
Grok reply:
Frame it as a contest over authorizing images, not as a verdict on two religions.
The core claim is narrow: certain forms of political and religious violence draw part of their warrant from an archetype in which the highest reality solves conflict by defeating, subordinating, or destroying the out-group, and in which devotees are licensed to imitate that pattern. A counter-image—in which the highest reality extends benefit without regard to group loyalty or prior merit—withdraws that particular warrant for anyone who accepts the counter-image. The Synoptic enemy-love sayings (Matthew 5:38–48, Luke 6:27–36) are one historically compact statement of such a counter-image. They are useful because they are explicit, because they ground the ethic in imitation of the deity rather than in prudence alone, and because they sit inside a canon that also contains the threat material they are meant to oppose. Their value for the argument is illustrative, not proprietary.
Three constraints keep the frame from overreaching. First, the sayings are a selection. The same gospels contain judgment oracles and exclusion language; priority given to the enemy-love strand is an interpretive decision, not a neutral summary of the text. State that decision openly. Second, presence of the sayings has not been a sufficient historical brake. Communities that preserved them also produced crusade theology, confessional war, and colonial violence by confining the sayings to private conduct or by subordinating them to other warrants. The claim is about the logic of authorization, not about automatic institutional effects. Third, the archetype is not confined to theistic traditions. Secular versions appear wherever a projected utopia or historical necessity is said to require purging an enemy class. A theological counter-image reaches only audiences that still treat a deity as moral authority; elsewhere the same work has to be done by denying that any agent’s violence is justified by cosmic dualism or by a promised end-state.
Nagata’s point fits this frame cleanly if it is kept operational: kinetic defeat of a militant group leaves the authorizing idea available for reuse. Contesting the idea means denying that the highest reality, or the highest political good, requires the destruction or humiliation of outsiders as a condition of order. The enemy-love sayings are one instrument for that denial. They are not the only one, and they do not settle which communities have in practice limited violence. The argument is strongest when it offers the counter-image as a test—does this picture of reality still license domination?—rather than as proof that one tradition already passed the test.
My next prompt:
Thank you for your feedback Grok. Its not so much about establishing who influenced who in some historical situation but ultimately its those archetypes, the mythology that shaped them (i.e. threat theology, tribal/dominating/destroying deity, the complex of bad religious ideas related to the threatening God as in salvation through destruction systems, etc.). And the counter to that in selectively pulling out the Jesus’s diamonds to formulate an alternative theology and complex of alternative ideas in support of a better theology.
Grok reply:
That reframing is cleaner, and it drops the part of the earlier argument that the sources do not carry.
The object is no longer a transmission chain from Ebionite circles through Waraqa into the Quran. It is a recurring authorizing pattern: a highest reality pictured as tribal, dominating, and punitive, whose order arrives by the defeat or destruction of outsiders, and whose devotees are thereby licensed to imitate that pattern. Ellens’s point and Nagata’s point both sit inside that description. One concerns psychological imitation of the deity’s problem-solving style; the other concerns the persistence of the authorizing idea after any particular militant group is broken. Neither depends on proving who borrowed which verse in seventh-century Arabia.
The counter you want is also narrower than a claim about Christianity as a tradition. It is a constructed alternative complex, assembled by giving priority to the enemy-love and non-retaliation sayings and to the picture of impartial divine benefit that those sayings use as their ground. That complex can be stated without requiring the rest of Matthew, Luke, or later Christian doctrine: reality is not ordered by purging the out-group; benefit is not scaled to prior loyalty; imitation of the highest good does not mean mirroring domination. Used that way, the sayings function as a compact counter-myth rather than as proof texts for an existing church.
The limits that remain are internal to the method, not objections to the goal. The counter-complex is produced by selection; the same narrative sources also contain threat and exclusion material, so the alternative is an arrangement, not a plain reading. It withdraws the warrant only for people who accept the counter-image as authoritative. And the same archetype appears in non-theistic form—historical necessity, racial destiny, class purification—where a theological counter-image does not reach and the denial has to be made in other terms. Within those bounds, the project is coherent: identify the authorizing myth, refuse it at the level of the picture of reality, and offer a rival picture whose ethic does not license the destruction of outsiders as the price of order.
Then the above was presented to Chat-
Chat, could you please summarize the arguments and points in the above material and present it in an easily understandable way:
Chat’s response:
Yes. The material is essentially developing one large argument in several stages, and the later exchanges with Gemini/Grok gradually sharpen that argument. The most important thing is to distinguish your central philosophical thesis from the historical hypothesis about Ebionism and Muhammad, because the former is much stronger and more important to your overall project than the latter.
The argument in simple terms
At its deepest level, I understand your argument to be:
The recurring source of religiously justified violence is not simply “religion,” nor even particular groups of people, but a particular image of Ultimate Reality: a God who is tribal, threatening, punitive, dominating, and willing to destroy outsiders in order to establish a purified or righteous world.
When human beings believe that this is what God is like, they can come to understand violence against God’s supposed enemies as participation in God’s own purposes.
Therefore, defeating violent movements militarily is insufficient. We also have to defeat the underlying mythology—the authorizing idea—that makes violence appear sacred or morally necessary.
That is the heart of the argument. Your discussion of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Ebionism, Waraqa, Muhammad, Israel, etc., is largely material surrounding that central thesis.
Your own text explicitly moves toward this formulation when you say that the problem is the idea of a God who is “tribal, dominating and demanding submission,” who requires believers to participate in a cosmic struggle against unbelieving enemies.
1. The starting observation: religious violence keeps recurring
You begin with a historical observation.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all contain ancient traditions involving:
• God’s chosen people;
• insiders versus outsiders;
• divine judgment;
• punishment of enemies;
• submission to God;
• destruction of those who oppose God’s purposes;
• a cosmic struggle between good and evil;
• the eventual establishment of a righteous or purified order.
You characterize this as “threat theology.”
The problem, in your view, is not merely that ancient people once behaved violently.
It is that the mythological picture of God itself can authorize violence.
The reasoning is approximately:
If God defeats His enemies → believers should defeat God’s enemies.
If God destroys those who oppose Him → believers can regard destroying God’s enemies as righteous.
If God requires submission → believers may regard forcing submission as legitimate.
If history is a cosmic war between God’s people and God’s enemies → compromise can become betrayal.
This is the psychological mechanism behind what you call the tribal/dominating/destroying deity.
2. Your argument about Israel is actually a qualification, not your main thesis
Your discussion of Israel is sometimes liable to distract from your larger argument.
You are not simply arguing: “Israel is violent.”
You make a distinction between two things.
A. Legitimate protection of a population
You argue that a government has a responsibility to protect its citizens against organizations that threaten them with continuing violence.
You therefore regard military action against such threats as potentially falling within a just-war framework, while explicitly saying that this does not amount to approval of everything the Israeli government or military does.
B. Retaliatory theology
At the same time, you are critical of the mentality represented by “crush with an iron fist” and “eye for an eye” retaliation.
Your point is that even legitimate defense can become contaminated by the same threat-theology psychology.
So your argument is not: “One side is good and the other side is evil.”
It is closer to:
Violent threats sometimes have to be physically stopped, but stopping violent people does not necessarily eliminate the mythology that produced or justified their violence.
That distinction becomes very important later.
3. “It’s the theology, stupid”
This is your provocative shorthand for the central hypothesis.
You are suggesting that we have concentrated too much on:
• political organizations;
• military capabilities;
• individual terrorists;
• particular wars;
• political grievances;
• territorial disputes.
Those things matter, but you propose going one level deeper.
Ask: What idea makes the violence appear morally or cosmically justified?
Your answer is: threat theology.
In your formulation, threat theology contains a cluster of ideas:
1. God has a uniquely true people.
2. Other people are God’s enemies.
3. God demands submission.
4. The world is divided into opposing cosmic camps.
5. God’s enemies corrupt or defile the world.
6. God’s people have a responsibility to defeat them.
7. Destruction of the enemy contributes to God’s ultimate victory.
8. A purified or utopian order will eventually emerge from that victory.
That entire package is what you want to challenge.
4. Your interpretation of the three Western religions
You argue that Judaism, Christianity and Islam inherited versions of this older theological structure.
You trace it ultimately into an ancient cosmic-dualistic mythology, which you associate with Zoroastrian and earlier religious patterns.
The important point for your argument isn’t really the precise historical genealogy.
It is the archetype:
Reality is understood as a cosmic struggle between the righteous and the unrighteous, and God solves the problem by defeating the unrighteous.
You then argue that this archetype appears in different forms within Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
5. But you also see a counter-tradition within Judaism
This is an important part of your argument.
You don’t portray Judaism as simply a religion of violence.
You identify a prophetic stream within Judaism emphasizing:
• mercy;
• kindness;
• forgiveness;
• rejection of sacrifice;
• concern for ethical behavior.
You see figures such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and Hosea as moving toward a gentler conception of God.
So you see a struggle within religious traditions themselves:
Threat theology
God is angry → God punishes → God destroys → God’s people imitate God.
versus
Mercy theology
God is compassionate → God forgives → God’s people imitate that compassion.
This internal tension becomes crucial to your later argument.
6. Jesus becomes the pivotal example
This is where your argument becomes distinctive.
You interpret Jesus as taking the prophetic movement toward mercy and carrying it to its logical conclusion:
God is unconditional love, and therefore human beings should abandon retaliation and domination.
Your preferred examples are particularly:
Matthew 5:38–48
and
Luke 6:27–36.
The crucial principle is:
Love your enemies.
But you understand the statement as much more than an ethical instruction.
You see it as a new theory of God.
Jesus’ reasoning, in your interpretation, is essentially:
God does not distribute goodness according to tribal loyalty.
God gives sun and rain to both good and evil.
Therefore, God’s children should imitate that unconditional generosity.
That is why you call these teachings the “Jesus diamonds.”
They aren’t merely nice moral teachings.
They represent, in your interpretation, a radically different theology of Ultimate Reality.
7. The revolutionary idea is therefore not simply “be nice”
This is perhaps the most important clarification.
Your thesis isn’t:
“Jesus taught people to be nicer.”
It is:
Jesus changed the image of God that underlies morality.
If God is fundamentally:
tribal + punitive + retaliatory + dominating
then people who imitate God can justify:
tribalism + punishment + retaliation + domination.
But if Ultimate Reality is understood as:
unconditional love + impartial beneficence + non-retaliation
then imitation of God points in the opposite direction.
So your proposed solution operates at the level of the underlying archetype rather than merely at the level of rules.
8. Then comes Paul
You argue that Paul partially reversed this development.
You particularly point to Romans 12:17–20 and interpret Paul as reintroducing the older image of an angry, retaliating, punishing God.
In your interpretation:
Jesus → unconditional love
but
Paul → restoration of threat theology
and therefore Christianity contains an internal conflict between two theological archetypes.
You aren’t saying Christianity simply became violent because Paul personally caused every later violent movement.
Rather, your argument is that Pauline Christianity preserved and reinforced the older threat archetype, leaving Christianity with both:
The Jesus diamond
unconditional love / enemy-love / non-retaliation
and
The threat theology
judgment / punishment / exclusion / divine retaliation.
Your text explicitly describes the Jesus teachings as being embedded within the darker Pauline material.
9. Why, in your hypothesis, Christianity nevertheless had a moderating resource
This is where your argument became more refined during the AI discussion.
Initially, your argument sounded like: Christianity moderated better than Islam because Christianity possesses Jesus’ teachings.
Grok pushed back against that, correctly pointing out that Christian societies possessing the Sermon on the Mount also produced crusades, religious wars and other violence.
You then clarified your position.
You don’t need to prove that Christianity historically moderated violence better because of Jesus.
Instead, you are saying: The Jesus material provides humanity with a particularly clear conceptual tool for defeating threat theology.
That’s a much more defensible and philosophically interesting claim.
10. Islam enters the argument differently
Your original hypothesis was that Islam may have had greater difficulty moderating because, in your interpretation, Muhammad inherited much of the threat-theological structure but did not incorporate an equivalent of the radical enemy-love theology you find in Jesus.
You therefore contrast:
Jesus
Love enemies.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Give without expecting return.
with what you regard as the Quran’s much more limited counterbalance.
The AI discussion correctly identified the important distinction:
The Quran contains extensive mercy language.
So your argument cannot reasonably be: “Islam has no concept of mercy.”
The material explicitly acknowledges that Quranic mercy language is substantial. The cited discussion notes the frequent use of raḥma, al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm, forgiveness language, etc.
Your more precise argument is: Islam contains substantial divine mercy language, but lacks a passage comparable in clarity, scope and force to Jesus’ explicit command to love enemies and imitate an impartial, non-retaliating God.
That is a much stronger formulation of your actual point.
11. The Ebionite/Waraqa hypothesis is a secondary argument
This is where I think your overall argument becomes considerably easier to understand.
You originally spend considerable attention on:
Ebionites → Waraqa → Muhammad → Quran
and ask whether Ebionite Christianity may have influenced Muhammad before his revelations.
There are interesting parallels.
The material identifies several:
• Jesus understood as human Messiah/prophet rather than God;
• rejection of Pauline Christianity;
• continuity with Abrahamic law;
• purification practices;
• possible Jewish-Christian theological connections.
But the historical chain remains uncertain.
The material itself emphasizes that:
• Waraqa is described as a Christian;
• he is associated with Khadijah;
• he recognized Muhammad’s revelation;
• but early sources do not identify him explicitly as an Ebionite;
• they don’t establish an Ebionite community in Medina;
• they don’t establish that he taught Muhammad from an Ebionite Gospel of Matthew.
Therefore:
Stronger claim
There are significant theological similarities between some Jewish-Christian traditions and early Islam.
Weaker claim
Waraqa was an Ebionite priest who directly transmitted Ebionite theology to Muhammad before the revelations. The latter remains speculative.
12. And this is where your argument eventually makes an important escape
You ultimately say: I don’t actually need to prove the historical transmission chain.
That is a major conceptual improvement.
Because your real question is not: “Did Waraqa teach Muhammad?”
It is: “What kind of mythology makes human beings believe that violence against outsiders is sacred?”
The Ebionite material can therefore remain illustrative historical evidence, rather than becoming the foundation upon which the whole thesis depends.
This is exactly what the final Grok response recognized when it said that the object becomes a “recurring authorizing pattern” rather than a transmission chain.
13. Your deepest concept: the “authorizing image”
I think this is actually the clearest way to express your entire project.
You are investigating the relationship: IMAGE OF GOD → HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY → MORAL AUTHORIZATION → BEHAVIOR
For example:
Threat theology
God
↓
tribal, angry, punitive, dominating
↓
Reality
is a cosmic struggle between God’s people and God’s enemies
↓
Moral conclusion
God’s enemies must be defeated
↓
Human psychology
“I am doing God’s work.”
↓
Behavior
violence becomes morally permissible—or even sacred.
14. The Jesus counter-model
Your proposed alternative reverses the chain.
Unconditional theology
Ultimate Reality
↓
unconditional love / impartial goodness
↓
Reality
does not require the destruction of an out-group
↓
Moral conclusion
love cannot be conditional upon group membership
↓
Human psychology
“I must not become like the enemy I oppose.”
↓
Behavior
non-retaliation, forgiveness, enemy-love, generosity.
That is the conceptual experiment you are proposing.
And this is why you don’t need to claim: “Christianity is better than Islam.”
Your argument can instead ask: Which conception of Ultimate Reality is capable of depriving violence of its sacred authorization? That’s a much broader question.
15. General Nagata’s contribution
You bring General Nagata into the argument because of the idea that defeating the organization isn’t enough if the idea survives.
Your interpretation is: You can destroy one terrorist organization, but if the mythology that authorizes the organization remains intact, another organization can eventually emerge.
So there are two different battles:
Physical battle
Defeat the violent organization.
Ideational battle
Defeat the mythology that makes violence appear righteous.
Your argument is principally about the second.
This is why you describe the goal as needing to “defeat the idea.”
16. You then broaden the argument beyond religion
This is another very important development.
You don’t believe threat theology is exclusively Islamic, Christian or Jewish.
You see the same archetype appearing in secular ideologies.
Instead of: God demands destruction of the unbelievers the secular version becomes: History demands destruction of the reactionaries.
or:
The nation must be purified of its enemies.
or:
The revolution requires eliminating the enemy class.
or:
Humanity must be saved through the destruction of those obstructing the utopian future.
Thus the religious language disappears but the mythological structure remains.
The archetype becomes: A perfect future requires the destruction of an enemy class.
That is why you bring Marxist revolutionary violence and Nazi violence into the discussion. Your broader claim is that the problem isn’t ultimately “religion.” It is sacralized dualism.
17. The deepest formulation of your theory
I would reduce your entire argument to this:
The fundamental problem is not belief in God. The fundamental problem is a conception of Ultimate Reality in which order is achieved through the defeat, domination, purification, or destruction of an out-group.
That idea can appear in:
• religion;
• nationalism;
• revolutionary ideology;
• racial ideology;
• political extremism;
• apocalyptic movements.
The religious version simply gives the archetype a divine authority.
18. And your proposed solution
Your proposed solution is not merely: “Teach people not to be violent.”
You are proposing something more ambitious:
Step 1 — Identify the archetype
Expose the hidden mythology:
“My group is righteous; the other group is evil; Ultimate Reality demands their defeat.”
Step 2 — Expose the psychological mechanism
Ask:
“If I believe my God solves problems through destruction, why wouldn’t I imitate that God?”
This is where the Ellens insight becomes useful.
Step 3 — Replace the image of Ultimate Reality
Introduce an alternative:
Ultimate Reality does not require the destruction of outsiders.
Step 4 — Make the ethical consequence explicit
If God/Ultimate Reality is unconditional love, then:
I cannot claim to imitate God while treating an entire out-group as something that must be destroyed.
Step 5 — Apply the principle universally
It must apply to:
• Muslims;
• Christians;
• Jews;
• atheists;
• nationalists;
• revolutionaries;
• environmental extremists;
• political movements;
• everyone.
That universality is essential to your argument.
19. One particularly important refinement
I think the strongest version of your argument should not say:
“The Quran contains threat theology whereas Christianity contains Jesus’ unconditional love.”
That is too binary, because the Quran clearly contains mercy, forgiveness and compassion, while the New Testament also contains judgment and punishment material. The material itself recognizes this problem.
Instead say:
Both traditions contain competing theological archetypes. My argument is that Jesus’ enemy-love teachings provide an unusually explicit and powerful counter-archetype to threat theology. I am deliberately elevating that counter-archetype and asking whether it can be generalized beyond Christianity as a way of defeating the psychological and mythological foundations of sacred violence.
That is much harder to dismiss.
20. Your argument in one diagram
I think the whole project can be understood through this sequence:
THREAT MYTHOLOGY
↓
God is tribal
God is punitive
God demands submission
God has enemies
God defeats/destroys enemies
God’s people must participate
↓
COSMIC DUALISM
“We are God’s people.
They are God’s enemies.”
↓
MORAL AUTHORIZATION
Violence becomes righteous.
↓
HUMAN IMITATION
“God solves problems this way; therefore I may solve problems this way.”
↓
RELIGIOUS / POLITICAL VIOLENCE
↓
MILITARY DEFEAT OF THE MOVEMENT
may stop the immediate violence
↓
BUT THE MYTH SURVIVES
↓
another movement can emerge.
Therefore:
DEFEAT THE AUTHORIZING MYTH
↓
Replace:
tribal / dominating / punitive Ultimate Reality
with:
unconditional / impartial / non-retaliatory Ultimate Reality
↓
Jesus’ “diamonds” become one historical example of that counter-theology.
Post this
The argument in a single paragraph
Your overall thesis is that recurrent religious and ideological violence is rooted less in the mere existence of religion than in a recurring threat-theological archetype: the belief that Ultimate Reality is tribal, dominating, punitive and engaged in a cosmic struggle against an evil out-group, so that true believers are authorized—or even required—to defeat, subordinate or destroy that out-group in order to establish a purified or utopian order. You see versions of this archetype in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also in secular ideologies. Against it, you identify what you regard as the extraordinary theological innovation of Jesus’ enemy-love teachings: a conception of God as unconditionally beneficent, whose goodness is not restricted to the righteous and whose followers therefore must not imitate divine violence through retaliation and domination. You do not need to establish that Christianity historically succeeded in eliminating violence, nor do you need to prove the speculative Ebionite-Waraqa-Muhammad transmission chain to make the larger argument. Rather, the Jesus teachings can be selectively extracted as a counter-archetype—a historically available alternative image of Ultimate Reality—and used to ask the deeper question: Can we defeat violent movements permanently unless we also defeat the mythology that makes destruction of the outsider appear morally or cosmically necessary?
In its shortest possible form
Your argument is ultimately not “Christianity good, Islam bad.” It is: “Threat theology is bad wherever it occurs, because the image of a violent, dominating God can authorize human beings to become violent, dominating agents themselves. The Jesus diamonds offer a particularly clear counter-image: an Ultimate Reality whose goodness is unconditional and therefore cannot be invoked to sanctify the destruction of outsiders.”
I think that is the intellectual core of what you are trying to say. The Ebionite/Waraqa material is potentially interesting supporting evidence, but it should not carry the weight of the argument; the archetype/counter-archetype thesis is where your larger philosophical contribution lies.
I can also turn this into a clear visual flowchart of “Threat Theology → Sacred Violence → Defeat the Idea → Unconditional Theology” if that would help.