Le christianisme au miroir de l'islam dans le Nazarenus de John Toland

Abstract

Pierre Lurbe : John Toland's Nazarenus. Toland's Nazarenus (1718) needs to be understood in the context of the dispute concerning the status of Islam in relation to Christianity. Taking as his starting-point the supposed discovery of the apocryphal gospel of Barnabus in Amsterdam in 1709, Toland tries to demonstrate that the work, which originated in Judeo-Christian or Nazarean circles, was also the source of the religion of the Moslems. And since the Nazareans were Christ's contemporaries and first disciples, then their teaching on both Christ and the Church must correspond to the truth. To the extent that these doctrines were adopted by Islam, it is therefore not absurd to recognise the Moslems as the direct heirs of authentic original Christianity.