ok ill give you this one, ill respond...will still put you on ignore (im running out of patience) but i gotta make this point.
1) you shouldnt say 'the quran' only to go and talk about ibn kathir.
ibn kathir was just a random muslim...ok not totally random, he was a student of ibn tahmiyya who is the inspiration behind the wahabi movement. As a result, he has obv been pushed...a totally artificial authority via google seo.
i'd love to telly ou how diverse islam is..or used to be, but that was when there was no monopoly on the flow of information. in the post-modern era with book printing and then digital content, ibn kathir's tafseer has hit the bigtime.
eg
Tafsir Ibn Kathir is the most renowned and accepted explanation of the Quran in the entire world. In it one finds the best presentation of Ahadith (stories), history, and scholarly commentary. Muslims consider it to be the best source based on Quran and Sunnah. .
cringe to the nth degree, this is total bollocks..i mean it's probably true that the ave muslim who googles their tafseer is obv reading ibn kathir's tafseer..but it has zero actual credibility with anyone with an ounce of intelligence.
ibn kathir's tafsir's refer to 'quotes' attribured to ibn abbas..that's what gives them their apparent weight. ibn abbas was the cousin of prophet Mohammad.
ibn kathir is from the 14th century..over 700 yrs after ibn abbas. In his lifetime, a new magical source materialised conveniently..
en.wikipedia.org
The other usp of ibn kathir was that he deliberately designed his tafsir, to DIFFER from the judeo-christian sources..and he was unique in that at the time.
i dont need to tell you why that was blatantly wrong, but in fact...it was the equivalent of pissing on the Quran.
2) the ONLY thing written is this.
But Allah raised him up unto Himself. And Allah is Ever All-Powerful, All-Wise.
(سورة النساء, An-Nisaa, Chapter #4, Verse #158)
that is in no way confusing on it's own...it just refers to his ascension, the end. He said himself 'i am going to The Father'.
obv when it comes to metaphysics i have an entire grand explanation for it, but it isnt necessary here, for the sake of simplicity, this is no different than what is in the NT
however just to give you an example of how it's done...this is how the actual translation is worded
(2) But Allah raised him ['Îsa (jesus)] up (with his body and soul) unto Himself (and he عليه السلام is in the heavens). And Allah is Ever All-Powerful, All-Wise.
(سورة النساء, An-Nisaa, Chapter #4, Verse #158)
derp
you know what THIS is?
this is literally 'writing the Quran with their own hands'
ie when the Quran referred to the people of the book
'writing the book with their own hands' it wasn't literally referring to THE book, but to the interpretations..hence going back to Jeremiah 8 where it says
'the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely'
the same problem persists amongst muslims.
isnt is so convenient one of the biggest bser's ibn kathir, wanted to 'leave out the israeliyat'?
that's satanically devious.
3) just another example of muslim david wood-esque type logic
the famous substitute theory or whatever it is called..
what happened there was some david wood esque muslim read gnostic material eg the gnostic apocalypse of peter.
where in the GAOP it refers to the 'substitute' as the physical body of Jesus...
this person/these people took it as
'so you mean...it was someone else who died and not jesus? hah.....we got them xtians now'
and it was shoved down everyones throats with blatantly false style of translations that once again was
'writing the book with their own hands'
And because of their saying (in boast), "We killed Messiah 'Îsa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary), the Messenger of Allah," - but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so to them [the resemblance of 'Îsa (Jesus) was put over another man (and they killed that man)], and those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely; they killed him not [i.e. 'Îsa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary) عليهما السلام]:
(سورة النساء, An-Nisaa, Chapter #4, Verse #157)
even though ive done this a thousand times over
it's quite basic...
-in islam, in the Quran itself, we're told the slain are not DEAD..they are living..
And do not speak of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead; nay, (they are) alive, but you do not perceive.
(سورة البقرة, Al-Baqara, Chapter #2, Verse #154)
the idea is that our carnal nature and it's attachments cause the soul to become 'bound' to sheol/barzakh/hades
that is DEATH.
The idea is that if you KILL your carnal attachments, you experience
'death before passing away', fana...which sufi islam explans in depth. Martyrs are an example of people who leave their wordly attachments in the cause of Allah and as a result 'die to the world' and hence do not experience 'death' in barzakh, but are living.
do you understand this?
then you talk about Jesus in this context, whilst also remembering who he is, the Word of God...
and keep in mind here, what when i say 'Word of God' i actually mean the logos, the universal consciousness, the primordial waters.
YET how did many muslims in the past, interpret this term 'the Word/Kalam of Allah'?
they first wrongly interpreted it to mean 'the Divine scriptorium/the Quran' (the divine scriptorium is a post-causal record, the book of destiny, the akashic records, whatever you want to call them..which is the foundation of the Quran..similarly in judaism they say the same for the Torah, they call it 'the original torah'). After that when faced with the idea of 'the Eternal Word' they were stumped
one side said 'that means da quran is eternal doe'
and the other side said 'vell it cant be eternal doe cuz it's created, post-causal etc doe'
and so, they got lost...and they were influential muslims too, guys like al ghazali.
although sufism does go in depth on the whole universal consciousness theme, it is entirely divorced from biblical contexts and on it's own, with some overlapping of hindu vedanta ideas (i mean they're kind of shared, vedanta philosophy came in the muslim era anyway, they kind of evolved together without directly acknowledging each other).
the only reason im sharing this stuff with a guy who places value on David wood...is because i had to...cuz there was so much ignorance in what you said.