Are the enemies of the prophet Homemade it?

All of us have the so -called problems with relatives - first of all, probably with parents, although the world's first fatal quarrel, according to the Book of Genesis, still took place between the brothers. The intensity of passions accompanying family conflicts sometimes reaches the scale of the epic even in our lives; Now imagine how much more difficult everything should be for those who, for one reason or another, decided to break with the tradition of their ancestors and proclaim a new teaching, sometimes becoming involuntarily, the founder of the new religion.

What were the relations of these people with the father and mother, brothers and sisters, did they have wives and children? And how are the circumstances of these intra -family relations reflected - sometimes I want to say “distorted” - in various religious traditions? As we will see, the rule is absent here: five examples chosen by us demonstrate completely different models of family relations from each other.

Of course, the present essay can hardly claim any completeness, since whole libraries of literature are written for each of the questions raised in it-this is rather a semi-articular sketch on a discussed topic.

Rejection

We cannot say almost nothing reliable about the life of the Prophet Zarathushtra: almost everything that is known about him is a later tradition. However, the meager information that we have is very sad in history. It is known that he, like his father Poroshasp, was an aturvan (priest), brought bloody sacrifices to the gods and sang sacred hymns, mantras. However, when at the age of thirty he survived the revelation and began his preaching, of all his fellow tribesmen, only his brother perceived her. After the first failure, Zarathushtra went on exile and did not soon find a grateful listener for himself. Although in Persian literature in the language of Pahlyvi, numerous signs revealed by the father and mother of the Prophet are described before and after his birth, in reality, his parents probably did not understand him: and how could his father, who served the old gods, suddenly recognize them with evil spirits? The Prophet was married three times, had many children and, according to legend, was killed by his father’s colleague - karapan, that is, a malicious sorcerer, the priest of the former faith.

Misunderstanding

Siddhartha Gautam (Buddha Shakyamuni) was also forced to leave his house. He was born in a noble Kshatrian family, but at the same age he chose the life of a poor ascetic at the same age. His mother, Queen Mahamai, who died shortly after childbirth, did not find his departure. According to legend, after death, her son rose to her and taught her a new truth, which she accepted easily and with joy. Another thing is his father, King of Shudddodan, who survived his sudden escape very hard, as well as his wife and son, whom he simply abandoned. Here, I must say, Siddhartha did not act quite beautifully - unlike, for example, from his contemporary Gina Mahavira (founder of Jainism), who went to the monastery only two years after the death of his parents, and even then having previously asked permission from his older brother.

In the poem "Life of the Buddha" of the Indian poet Ashvaghoshi, the meeting of the Buddha with his father, which happened after long sixteen years after his departure, is touching. At first, Sudddrodana sends nine delegations to him with a request to come, but they all join the number of his followers. When two months later, his son deigned to appear, old Raja met him with royal honors, went out to meet him, but did not know what to say: his son felt nothing more, his face was more like a mask. Shudddrodana felt like a man of a dry stream dying of thirst. At this very time, the Buddha was dispassionately and insensibly tonsured into the monks of the former wife and son, so the king also lost his grandson. As a result, he reluctantly becomes a worldly follower of Buddhism and dies in the arms of his son; Soon after, his kingdom ceases to exist, having lost the ruler and Pav under the onslaught of enemies.

Crisis

The situation in the Jesus family of Nazareth, how much it can be reconstructed at least according to the materials of only the canonical gospels, looks like a perfect drama. The story that his mother before marriage served in the Jerusalem Temple and that Joseph was very old and only guarded her virginity - most likely, a late pious fiction. However, the marriage of these poor young people was marked by an unpleasant conflict: even before his conclusion, it turned out that Maria was pregnant (Matthew 1:18). The groom wanted to break the engagement, but for some reason did not. Therefore, although Jesus was often called the son of Joseph (Luke 3:23, John 1:45), he was just as often reproached with the fact that he was born from anyway (John 8:41). He himself often refused to consider the artisan to his father and, like some Jewish righteous, called himself the son of the Father of Heaven. Formally, however, he was considered the first -born Joseph and Mary, who, in addition to him, had at least four more sons and several daughters - his native brothers and sisters of Jesus.

Joseph died young when Jesus was still a young man; He learned from him a craft and, probably, until a certain age, worked by profession, providing his family - as we would say now, large and low -income. However, shortly after the adoption of a ritual ablution at the local prophet John and the began his relations with his relatives became more than tense. They themselves decided that Jesus lost his mind, and wanted to hide him away from the people (MK 3: 20–21), and he rejected them in favor of listeners and students ( "... here is my mother and my brothers", Matthew 12:49). According to how frequent are bitter maxims in his sermons on family topics, it can be assumed that he generally adhered to the opinion that the preservation of family ties impedes spiritual development. Jesus not only knew very well what it means “... enemies to man - his home” ( Mich 7: 6 , Matthew 10:36), but also perfectly understood that the adoption of his teachings was fraught with the destruction of family ties. Therefore, he said that he did not come to bring the world, but the sword and to separate his father and his son and mother and daughter. The person who was ready to follow him, but wanted to bury his father before, Jesus said: “Let the dead bite his dead” (Matthew 8: 21–22).

Finally, how many we know about the families of the apostles? (Except for the wife and mother -in -law of Peter, MK 1: 30–31.) All of them, according to the Jewish custom, had to have wives and children, but at the same time it is quite possible that the majority had to neglect their loved ones.

After the execution of her son, there are no reliable information about the fate of Maria. The later Christian legend tells that the apostles took care of the teacher’s mother, since it is assumed that she had no other children. Apparently, one of her sons, James, which is mentioned in the Gospels among the Brothers of the Lord , after the execution of Jesus believed in his mission and headed the Jerusalem Church.

The difficult relations of Jesus with relatives of all Christian communities of the first centuries were well understood by the Gnostics who considered his body exceptionally spiritual, illusory, and his birth was nothing more than a trick designed to deceive the prince of this world. Representatives of other communities could also relate to the relatives of Jesus more or less ambiguously: the theologian of the III century BC. e. Tertullian in his essay “On the Flesh of Christ” claims that Jesus rejected his mother and brothers rightfully, for he was engaged in a much more important matter at that time, namely, “dispelled the darkness of the former century”. Symbolically, he identifies his mother with the synagogue, and the brothers with the Jews, from whom Christians at that time finally distance themselves.

Saint Epiphanius Cyprus writes that Mary should respect, but should not worship her - and this is in the 4th century BC. e., when the Mother of God cultural cult began to form.

Appeal

The story of the birth of the founder of the Manichaeism of Suraik Patik, nicknamed Mani (spirit), from the point of view of human motivations seems so mysterious that you want to compare it with the “cruiser sonata” of Tolstoy.

His father Patik belonged to the royal family of Arshakids, most of his time lived in Hamadan, the capital of Medes (in the west of modern Iran), was rich and married to a woman with the Judeo-Christian name Mariam, but he was unhappy and passionate about spiritual searches. Shortly after the conception of his son, he threw his wife, moved to the city of Ctesiphon in Seleucia and there he began to eagerly visit a certain “Temple of Divine images”; What is it to the end is not clear, but most likely-some kind of Buddhist sanctuary. Here, according to legend, he heard a marvelous voice, commanding him to abandon meat, wine and women, let him into his heart and entered some Gnostic community with an ascetic bias -and all this away from his wife, who at that time gave birth to his son. He took his son to educate him, so since then we have not heard anything about the mother of the Prophet. At twelve and twenty-four, Mani visited his spiritual double, calling himself a living paraklet (from other Greek παράκλητος-defender; comforter; according to the concepts of theologians, one of the names of the Holy Spirit in the gospels). He handed him the teachings of the light, the father of the Prophet became his first student and even left him from the community - having stayed in it, by the way, a whole quarter of a century!

The appeal of the noble and the great connections of older relatives was the first success of Manichaeism, but later played a cruel joke with its founder: Mani was so well “accepted” at the Sasanid Tsarist Courtyard that he fell victim to a related resentment. When Bahram I entered the throne, who loved the war and hunt more than anything and, probably, was bitterly watching how his father and brother showered Mani with good deeds, he first arranged a kind of family scene, under the curtain of which the prophet abandoned the king: “You can do anything with me.” Tsar Bach-Ram was pleased to score him in several pairs of pads, hold about a month in imprisonment, hunger or execute (the versions diverge on this).

Love

With the parents of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), everything is a thousand times easier: firstly, they died long before the start of his preaching, and secondly, since the Prophet is not considered the owner of any supernatural status, there were no questions in Islam either with his conception, or with the attitude to his relatives.

The poor merchant Abdullah, the father of Muhammad, died during a business trip far from his pregnant wife Amina, who was fourteen at that time. Six years later, she also died, so that his grandfather, then his uncle took to patronize the prophet. However, in the Islamic tradition, there is no consensus about what faith the parents of Muhammad were and whether they are now in hell or in paradise: one version says that they adhered to the religion of Ibrahim (Abraham), they were resurrected, confirmed the teachings of their son and entered his community, the other - that they died in unbelief and, now, now burning in a fiery dar. The Prophet itself, probably, with sadness in the heart, was inclined to the latter.

In his case, something else is more interesting: of all the founders of religions, he is almost the only one who was happy - at least for some time - a family man, a loving husband and father. His first and beloved wife Hadija was a rich widow of his fifteen years older than him. Once he was in her service and conducted her affairs, but then she invited him to get married, and he agreed - out of completely selfish motives, which later turned out to be amazing affection. After her death, he took other wives for himself, but did not love anyone like her.

However, the real tragedy of the family life of the Prophet is that he could not leave the heir behind: all three of his sons died in infancy. Of the four daughters, Fatima alone, the wife of the righteous caliph Ali, survived her father, and even then for just a few months. It is her Shiites who honor as a mistress of women in the world and as their spiritual mother: many Shiite hadiths are devoted to the miracles that Allah created through her.

Therefore, it was she who sometimes becomes a character in curious theological concepts: for example, Blessed John Bereslavsky, who founded the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God of the Mother of God and has since even managed to become a prophet of the Croatian Bogomils, generally identifies her with the Virgin on the basis that the mother of Jesus in 1917 appeared to three children in the Portuguese city of Fatima.

So…

Are the enemies of his home? As we see, far from always. The tradition is usually trying to retroactively attract relatives of its founder to their side - regardless of what relations between them were in reality. This fact, of course, obscures, but does not finally erase those deeply personal, private family tragedies that accompanied the great spiritual revolutions.

What to read:

• Boys M. Zoroastrian. Beliefs and customs. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Oriental Studies, 1994.
• Agvaghosha. The life of the Buddha. Kalidas. Drama. M.: Fiction, 1990.
• Hinduism. Jainism. Sikhism: Dictionary. M.: Republic, 1996.
• Smagina E. B. Manichaeism by early sources. M.: Eastern literature, 2011.
• ZHABEBOV G. G. Who was Jesus for Nazareth? M.: Exmo, 2008.
• Frikke V. Who condemned Jesus? The point of view of a lawyer. M.: Terevinf, 2006.
• Müller A. History of Islam: from the pre -Islamic history of the Arabs to the fall of the Abbasid dynasty. M.: Astrel, 2004.