The Quran says that the Scriptures were not corrupted because
Muhammad instructed Christians to judge the Quran by the Gospel! Why would
Muhammad instruct Christians to judge by a corrupted Gospel?
Sura 5:47 Let the people of the Gospel judge
by what Allah hath revealed therein.
Sura 5:68 Say: "O People
of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law,
the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord."
Many
say that our Bible that we Christians have in our possession is corrupted and
the original scriptures that they were based upon are lost. Therefore, many
also state that what we Christians have is a product of men’s interpretation
and implication of what Christians believe. According to the Quran they are wrong because
Muhammad said 400 years after the Bible was completely complied, copied
accurately and distributed by the millions throughout the known world in the 7th
century:
Sura 80:13-16 (It is) in Books
held (greatly) in honour, Exalted (in dignity), kept pure and holy, (Written)
by the hands of scribes- Honourable and Pious and Just.
(There were no Islamic books at the time of this Sura 80
"revelation" from Mohammed's early Mecca days.)
By Muhammad saying
these ayats in Sura 80, he completely exonerates the producers of the Bible as
well as the Bible itself. It clears them of tampering with the original texts.
Who did he clear of any tampering? The Jews and the Christians who are the
producers of the Holy books of God. So what does the Quran say about those who
turn people away from God’s holy books?
Sura
4:136 O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and the scripture
which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those
before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and
the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.
At the time Muhammad
said this Ayat in Sura 4, there was no Quran written. So he was not speaking about the Quran or
else he would have said “His Book ” not “His Books”. In saying “His” denotes that the books were
personally designated to Allah. Allah is
the Arabic word for God. The only books
that were in existence in Muhammad’s day that were considered God’s Holy Books
was the Bible, both Old Testament (Torah in Hebrew or Tuarat in Arabic) and New
Testament (Injil in Arabic). Funny, the
very same books that many people today cause many other people to turn from
believing in, under the unprovable claim of corruption, is acting contrary to
the instruction of the Quran! According
to Muhammad and the Quran, They that practice such activity have strayed very
far away from God.
Now, someone will say
that all those ayats were abrogated.
Really? Then how can anyone believe that which was abrogated? The word “abrogated” is defined as completely
wiping something completely out of existence or has no legal authority anymore. The question is can you believe in something that
no longer exists or has no legal power over you? No you cannot, for that which
has been eliminated cannot be any longer believed upon. For once it is removed from the recognition and
memory of mankind it is impossible to ever retrieve it. It no longer exists. So
the question is, what were those abrogated ayats superseded by? Furthermore, why
recite it and commit to the memory of it if it is abrogated? It appears that the Islam that is here in
America, is a religion that produces unbelief in the words of the very book
they believe in as well as the Bible.
By my observations and
in my experience, the Quran abrogated ayats are superseded by the adherent’s
level of understanding of the life of Muhammad in the 7th century and
Islamic Law as it relates to his life today, centuries later. The reason I
state this is because many adherents of Islam state that you cannot effectively
interpret the Quran without studying the life of Muhammad. Ok, Many have done
so and have found, in the studying the life of Muhammad through the testimony
of his companions many disturbing things. Such offensive things which are not
the point of this article and out of respect for our Muslim friends will not be
addressed here. Just suffice it to say
that in the view of many who has honestly researched the life of Muhammad have found that he falls
woefully short of his own standards, much less the standards of the great
prophets of scripture which in the Quran, he associates himself with. The point
is Muhammad is not a good example for Muslims or anyone to use to prove the
inspiration or validity of the Quran. I
remember reading about the curse of death Muhammad placed upon himself in order
to prove what he was saying was true from one the hadiths. It was not that he predicted that he would
live, he predicted rather that those who opposed him would die, if he was
speaking the truth or he would die, if he was not speaking the truth. He said in so many words, let their curse of
death be his my head if he is not
speaking the truth or something to that effect.
Consequently Muhammad died thereafter in 632 AD.
It also has been said
that the Quran only appeared because some error that needed to be corrected
that was being made concerning the scriptures. Really? Since we have read that the Quran proclaimed
that the Bible is pure and holy, what needed to be corrected? What Muslims deemed the part of the scriptures
that needed correction is not the Holy Books in particular, but rather the interpretation
of the scriptures that leads people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God,
who died for their sins and rose from the dead.
The problem with this argument is that if anyone reads the pure and holy
books of God (the Bible), that is exactly you come away believing about Jesus
and his ministerial work on the earth. However,
many Muslims insist that Christians in the 4th Century, in 325 AD,
at the Council of Nicea inserted the interpretation that Jesus is the Son of
God into the original scriptures. That before that, many believers did not
believe that Jesus was the Son of God.
The truth of the matter is that at the Council of Nicea there were two
camps of believers. One influenced by
the Marcionites of the second century, who believed that Jesus could not be
God, or the son of God and be Jesus of Nazareth at the same time and the other
camp was influenced by the Syrian Christian Church which believed that Jesus
was the Son of God, thus making him fully God at the same time as he was fully
a man. There were also two Bibles at
that Council, each supporting the beliefs of each camp. After much debate and
consideration to the pre-existing written testimonies of the Apostles
and their disciples, a vote was taken and the camp influenced by the Marcionite
theology and bible they used to support their view of Jesus lost by a land side. Now the important point here is that the
Council of Nicea did not make up the idea that Jesus is the Son of God, rather
they used existing written and oral testimonies of the church fathers as well
as the pre-existing written testimony of the Apostles which were the Gospels
and associated letters to make their decision.
The Council of Nicea was convened to confirm what already was believed
by Christians concerning Jesus, the Christ, expose heretical teachings thereby
and to unify the church. It was not the
council’s intent or will to insert, change anything that was already establish
by verifiable written and oral testimony. So the Muslim suggestion that council
was responsible for the corruption of the scriptures through the interpretation
that Jesus is the Son of God is wrong.
Also as I have pointed out that the Quran agrees that the original
scriptures were not corrupted, 300 years after the Council of Nicea. If the Bible was not corrupted before Islam
came into existence and was not corrupted during Muhammad’s life, then what
does that make the Muslim argument of scriptural corruption in the first 3 centuries of the church? It makes it a lie and a false accusation.
If it be true that the Bible was not corrupted in the first 3 centuries of the church existence, then the Bible could
not be lost, now could it? This argument that the original scriptures of the Bible are lost is also
a joint claim that many Muslims make about the original scriptures being corrupted which is
only partly true. Which part you
ask? The part of that the original
scriptures were lost. They just don’t know how they were lost or when they were lost. The original scriptures were lost to decay,
not from scriptural tampering as they have suggested. Decay is normal for
written texts to experience when exposed to air for a long time. It is known quite well that written texts turn
to dust over time, which is why it is needed to make accurate written copies to
replace them. This means that the original
scriptures were lost to decay, but it also means that they were replaced by accurate copies of
them. So the original scriptures that
were written on the earliest forms of paper vanished because of decay, but
before they disappeared millions of accurate copies were reproduced and sent all over the
world. Ah ha! Some Muslims state that is
when the bible was corrupted and the idea that Jesus is the son of God was
inserted into the Biblical text. Wait
now, see how hard it is for Muslims to admit that they were wrong: First they said that the council of Nicea did
the corruption of the original scriptures, that did not prove to be true. They now run to the scribes who have copied
the scriptures and accused them of proliferating the idea that Jesus is the Son
of God in the replicas of the original scriptures. That is also impossible as well
as an insult. Here is the reason
why. Back then they did not have
printers, copiers and any other modern device to reproduce an accurate copy of a
manuscript. They had though was a pen and paper and
a strict adherence to accuracy, particularly when it came to the Holy
scriptures which we now know that Muhammad cleared them of doing any tampering of
the scriptures. If a book or a letter of the Gospel was not
written correctly, it was destroyed and a new copy was made to take its place.
This process of preservation of the Holy Books of God was adopted from the
Jews. The first Christians were Jews,
remember? So it is an insult to imply
that the Christians and Jews who has dedicated themselves to the preservation
of the Holy Books of God were the ones who inserted the interpretation that
Jesus is the Son of God. They not only
insult Christians and Jews but they insult Muhammad who proclaimed that the
Holy books of God are pure and holy and those who produce them as honest and
pious. Now the Bible since that time has survived because believers took great care
in its preservation, accurately making copies of it so its message would not be
lost. So yes, the original scriptures were
lost, but not the copies of the original scriptures. Since then, we have discovered so many old
copies suffering the same fate as the original scriptures, they were also
vanishing due to decay. Therefore, many of
the copies of the original scriptures were discovered with missing portions in
different places, but believers dedicated to the restoration and preservation
of the scriptures have complied and blended the relative pieces of the copies of the original scriptures together
to form an accurate replica of the original scriptures. So accurate was the
replica they created that when another very old Bible was discovered, its
contents matched that of the replica, what many believers have today in their
hands is based upon that accurate replica of the original scriptures. Another reason that it was impossible to
create a fraudulent copy of the scriptures is because if one was created, and
many have been created and exposed as fraudulent copies, it would stick out
like a sore thumb from the rest of the scriptures. I can name you a few Bible translations that
are not the genuine scriptural copies of the original scriptures, but that
would take a whole lot of time. I have
wrote another article entitled “New Testament corrupted?” that covers why it is
impossible for the New Testament to be corrupted. Besides, there is a simpler way to tell the
difference between a fake Bible version and the True Bible version that based
upon the original scriptures. I share that later in this article.
So what Muslims do believing
that the Bible is lost, which it isn’t; believing that the bible has been
tampered with, which it hasn’t? They go about interjecting concepts into the
pure and holy text of the Bible in order to prove to people to how they believe
the scriptures is correct. Now, I have in every instance where a Muslim has
insisted that a word was rendered incorrectly or translated incorrectly in the
Bible, after I have investigated their “proof”, I found that every one of them was incorrect time after time. In fact, in my investigations of their "proofs", I
have discovered that what the Muslims accuse of Christians of doing to their
sacred texts, Muslims were guilty of the very same thing. I found that they
did the same sort of thing to their own sacred text, the Quran. It is a
recorded fact that Muslims long ago destroyed the original texts of the Quran
and produced another based upon what people remembered Muhammad saying 100
years after his death. Muslims today are
divided over the Uthman Quran and thereby produced 20 different versions of the
Uthman Quran of which only 3 are allowed into the United States. (So there is
no such thing as one authoritative Arabic Quran) They also have divided into
several different groups (So there is no such thing as an universal Islamic
brotherhood) that constantly fight with each other. The kicker about this issue
is that Muhammad’s appointed top 4 teachers and reciters did not approve of the Uthman Quran,
citing missing Ayats and whole Suras. They were also not asked to assist in the written compilation of it,
100 years after Muhammad died, in fact they took offense to not being asked to assist in its compilation. Those 4 famed reciters and teachers of the
Quran died or was killed because they would not surrender the words of the
Quran that they learned from the lips of Muhammad. Their written versions of
the Quran were confiscated and destroyed.
Think of it, the original words of Muhammad lost forever and in its
place, words that people remembered that they heard or believed that they heard
from the lips of Muhammad 100 years
later than when he actually said it. That is either the most amazing feat ever accomplished
or the most impossible feat ever accomplished, to have accurately remembered
what one man has said for 100 years without the aid of modern recording devices. Muslims claimed that this feat was
accomplished and proves that the Quran is Muhammad’s standing miracle, which verifies
him to be a prophet of God. The problem
is that Muhammad told his followers that
the Quran can be recited ( remember during Muhammad’s lifetime there were no
written Qurans) 7 different ways. This
has become problematic for Islamic translators as they wrestle about what is
meant by an archaic Islamic word that only appears in one version of all the
Arabic Qurans that exist in the world. One Arabic word in the Quran expressed 7 different ways can and has changed the meaning of the text within it in all the
Arabic versions in the world, forcing many Muslims to embrace the Uthman Quran
which makes it one of the most popular Qurans today, a book whose words of
origin are questionable at best. What is worst is that the Oldest Quran that was discovered
in Yehmen, a country on the southeastern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and
instead of the contents of that Old Quran verifying the accuracy of the Uthman and the other 20
Arabic Qurans, it reads completely different from all of them! What a mess! Conversely, the
New Testament was compiled and completed by AD 90, Jesus died in AD 33, a
difference of only 57 years! Of the
Gospel portion of the New Testament, the first Gospel written, Mark, was dated
as being composed 25 years or earlier, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, that
means the earliest copy we know of was composed in AD 58 but remember it is a copy of the original
version, so this means that the original, the first one written, was really composed earlier than AD 58
and the last Gospel written, the
earliest copy we have in our possession dates back to AD 70, but it is clear
that it was written before the death of John, the Apostle which was a few years before
that year bringing the actual year of composition closer to AD 58. The point is, the Gospels were composed more
closer to the death of Christ in comparison to the written compilation of the
Quran after the death of Muhammad. Also the resources from which the Gospel was
composed are of a better quality than those who submitted the ayats for the compilation
of the Quran. No one who lived 100 years after Muhammad died who submitted an Ayat
(verse) to be included into the Quran ever seen Muhammad say those words. They were only repeating what they were told
that Muhammad said from someone else’s memory. Their source of information is
from someone else who claimed that is what Muhammad said. Thus these words we read in the written versions of the Quran can not be authenticated. Conversely the Gospels were written by first
and second hand eyewitnesses. What is meant by first hand witnesses is that
they actually saw Jesus say the words he spoke. What is meant by second hand
witnesses, even though they did not see Jesus say the words they recorded in
their Gospel record themselves, they documented the words of another eyewitness
that actually saw the words Jesus spoke. You cannot get any better idea of what
Jesus actually said from these eyewitnesses, than that except for being there
yourself. The Apostle John states
in the Gospel that bears his name:
“But these are written,
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing
ye might have life through his name.” –John 20:31
So let’s review:
1.
The claim that the Bible was corrupted
by the Council of Nicea, by inserting the
interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God is not correct because:
a. The Church council of Nicea convened to
confirm EXISTING testimony about the status of Jesus, the Christ, repudiate
FALSE teachings about Jesus, the Christ and unify the Church.
b. Muhammad
himself said 500 years after the Bible was compiled, accurately copied and
widely distributed in the known world, in the Quran, that the Bible,
representing God’s Holy Books, were keep pure and Holy by the scribes who
produced them, which were the Christian and the Jews who dedicated themselves
to the preservation of the holy scriptures.
Now for some this is
not enough proof of the Bible being tampered with, for they point to the many
and various versions of English Bible Translations, claiming that it where the
corruption is. Now what I have say about
that is this: It is not surprising to
find phony and fake bibles being circulated around as though they were legit
copies of the scriptures. Remember the
Christian Church have been fighting against heresies from false doctrines and
false Bibles ever since the first Church council was formed. Even back then there were false bibles like
the Nestorian Bible which was the Bible
with the first harmonized Gospel record.
The problem with it was that the Gospel
record within it denied the deity of Jesus, the Christ. The church attempted to correct the problem
by confiscating as many of these false bibles and replacing them with the true
bibles, but some believers hid those false bibles, believing them to be the
truth and circulated them throughout the Arabian peninsula all the way to
western China. It is believed that
Muhammad befriended a Nestorian Christian monk and had him read his false Bible to
him. This is why possibly that Muhammad
incorrectly proclaimed that Jesus was not the son of God, but rather the Son
of Mary who did not really die on the
cross, but was raised to God in heaven.
Imagine what would have happened if Muhammad had gotten a hold of the
true bible? Looking at this issue
another way, consider that if fake bibles are being circulated, what are they
based upon? The true one, of course, for
you cannot have a fake if you don’t have the real thing to make a fake one
from. This means a true Bible version
has to embrace what has been established by the church councils concerning Jesus,
the Christ, meaning that any Bible version that does not embrace the
interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God is a fake bible.
What separates Muslims
from Christians is the view of who and what Jesus, the Christ is. The Quran states many things about Jesus that
is truly amazing. Then again we are looking at a testimony built on questionable
resources. Some of the things one finds
in the Quran about Jesus is that he was born of the virgin Mary, but not as God’s
son, that he performed miracles empowered by God and made a bird out of clay,
that as an infant, he spoke from the cradle and prophesied about his own death.
In the Quran he was acknowledged as Christ
and was a part of the line of the prophets of God, who was joined and assisted in
the ministry by the disciples (who produced the Gospel records), who themselves
testified that they were Muslims. That he taught people to adhere to the Law
and supplied believers with the Gospel message. That he did not die on the cross, but was
taken back alive by God to heaven. Now Christians
have no problem with most of these representations of Jesus in the Quran,
except for Jesus not dying on the cross and he not being born the Son of God. Again we must consider that the quality of
the sources of this Islamic testimony of Christ to be questionable because of
the quality of the witnesses of what Muhammad said. It is not that Muslims are
lying about Jesus, it is just the view of Christ they received from the Quran
is the only Jesus they know about. They
are just speaking about what they know, even though the quality of their
information is poor.
Now the Quran also says
that it comes as a guardian over the Holy Books which God has sent down to men
confirming that which was said before.
The Quran certainly confirms as far as Christianity is concerned that
Jesus was born of a virgin, but it also does not confirm that Jesus is the son
of God. But we know now that if the original
scriptures was not lost and testifies to the fact that Jesus is the son of God.
Therefore, the Quran is disqualified as a confirmer of the scriptures that came
before it. To confirm something is to
support and verify it, but doing so also disconfirms whatever is not supported
and verified. The problem here is that
the Quran complied by questionable testimony and the Bible is verified by
eyewitnesses and authentic copies. Which
one would you believe? Furthermore, does the Bible need confirmation from the
Quran? If the Bible is pure and holy as Muhammad said it was, then the answer
is no. The Bible does not need the Quran
to give validity to it. The Bible can and has stood on its own, because of God’s
design and will. The Quran however needs
the Bible and by claiming to be its guardian implies that its purpose is to
protect the Bible from people who wants to corrupt it to their own means, but
the Quran is guilty of the very thing it is supposed to protect the Bible from. How does the Quran need the Bible? There are many Quran passages that refer back
to many biblical events, but they are revised, or changed. Isn’t this the corruption of the pure and
holy books of God by the Quran? Of course it is, now consider the idea that the
Bible is corrupted and the origin Bible is lost, what you have left is the
Quran which made of the questionable testimony of men as the lone record of God’s
dealing with mankind. But without the
Bible how would anyone know what the Quran says is true? No one would know for sure what the Quran
says is true. They would have to believe the Quran blindly that it is true
without any collaborating evidence. Or
tear out every biblical reference mentioned in it, because if the Bible is
corrupted the Quran is also corrupted. The Bible has no reference implying the coming
of the Quran, not one prophecy. Also the Bible does not need the Quran to prove
what it says is true, it is the true and pure word of God. One only has to read
its contents and its divine nature and character comes shining through, because
it is written by eyewitnesses, its creditability is well founded and unquestionable. It is no wonder that Muhammad told Christians
and Jews to judge what he says by the Holy books of God they possessed, because
he knew that those holy books creditability was unquestionable and they were
the only written Holy and pure books of God at the time he said those
instructions. He felt that he was
continuing the message of God that was given to previous prophets and supplying
it to the people of Arabia, but he received the wrong gospel and thereby led
millions, possibly billions away from their salvation by it.
