Page 218 - Demo

214of the Prophet of Nazareth would have preserved their purity and integrity until the appearance of the Periqlit- Ahmad. However, such was not the case. Each writer took a different view about the Master and his religion, and described him in his book -which he named Gospel or Epistle- according to his own imagination. The highsoaring flight of thought concerning the Word; the prophecy about the Periqlit; the inexplicable discourse of Jesus(pbuh) upon hisflash and blood; and a series ofseveral miracles, events, and sayings recorded in the Fourth Gospel were unknown to the Synoptics and consequently to a great majority of the Christians who had not seen it at least for a couple of centuries.The Fourth Gospel, too, like every other book ofthe New Testament, was written in Greek and not in Aramaic, which was the mother tongue of Jesus(pbuh) and his disciples. Consequently, we are again confronted with the same difficulty which we met with when we were discussing the “Eudokia” of St. Luke, [1] namely: What word or name was it that Jesus (pbuh) used in his native tongue to express that which the Fourth Gospel has translated as “theParaclete” andwhich has been converted into “comforter” in all the versions of thatGospel?Before discussing the etymology and the true signification of this unclassical or rather corrupt form of the Paraclete, it is necessary to make a brief observation upon one particular feature of St. John’s Gospel. Theauthorship and authenticity of this Gospel are questions, which concern the Higher Biblical Criticism; but it is impossible to believe that the Apostle could have written this book as we have it in its present shape and contents. The author, whether Yohannan john) the son of Zebedee, or someone else under that name, seems to be familiar with the doctrine of the celebrated Jewish[1] Vide Islamic Review for January 1930.