NABEEL QURASHI
13 september 2006, 15:15
Has the Bible been corrupted?
I challenged David, stating that no reasonable person could trust the Bible.
As a Muslim, I knew that the Qur'an was the uncorrupted word of God
transmitted from God Himself, through the Prophet of Islam. And although the
Qur'an says that the Gospels (al-Injeel) were given by God, they had been
irretrievably modified and corrupted in the centuries after Jesus. Why else
would there be so many versions of the Bible throughout history, with
constant editions and revisions even today? I advocated the position that
Christ never claimed to be God, but rather that Christians had forged all
verses that would indicate such a claim. And without a divinely inspired
book worth trusting, Christians have no ground to stand on. False ideas were
introduced into Christianity by power-hungry followers such as Paul, a
self-proclaimed "apostle," and others like him.
Unbeknownst to me, David was not just a Bible-reading Christian, but a
Christian with every intention of becoming a devoted apologist. So when he
heard this argument, he wasn't overcome by its logic (as I had assumed) but
instead was shocked that I had decided to enter into such a discussion
without any prodding of his own. And so began our series of informal debates
about the truth of Islam versus Christianity, as well as my intellectual
journey towards the throne of Christ.
David's response to my argument ran as follows. First, while there are
indeed many variations of the Bible obtained from more than 5,000 Greek
manuscripts, there is such a large amount of early manuscript evidence and
such a concordance between those manuscripts that we can reconstruct the
Bible and be certain of about 95% of the original content. Second, no
doctrine of the Bible is in jeopardy by any of the variations. Third, there
are so many quotations of and references to the New Testament from the
ancient world that we can reconstruct practically all of it from early
quotations alone. Fourth, there are multiple fragments of manuscripts that
can be dated to within a couple of centuries after Christ's death which we
have in our possession even now (the earliest dating to less than 100 years
after Christ, 125 AD). Fifth, he claimed that whole copies of the Bible are
available from around three centuries after Christ's death. Finally, the
previously mentioned estimate of 95% accuracy was a conservative one; in
actuality it is closer to 98 or 99%.
Blown away by the overwhelmingly convincing argument he provided, I
determined that he had made it all up, and I decided to investigate the
issue myself. The result of my investigation was that there is no evidential
reason to believe that the modern editions of the New Testament are in any
way substantially different from the original autographs themselves. To
challenge the scriptural integrity of the New Testament after sincere
investigation is to reflect a bias against it.
I challenged David, stating that no reasonable person could trust the Bible.
As a Muslim, I knew that the Qur'an was the uncorrupted word of God
transmitted from God Himself, through the Prophet of Islam. And although the
Qur'an says that the Gospels (al-Injeel) were given by God, they had been
irretrievably modified and corrupted in the centuries after Jesus. Why else
would there be so many versions of the Bible throughout history, with
constant editions and revisions even today? I advocated the position that
Christ never claimed to be God, but rather that Christians had forged all
verses that would indicate such a claim. And without a divinely inspired
book worth trusting, Christians have no ground to stand on. False ideas were
introduced into Christianity by power-hungry followers such as Paul, a
self-proclaimed "apostle," and others like him.
Unbeknownst to me, David was not just a Bible-reading Christian, but a
Christian with every intention of becoming a devoted apologist. So when he
heard this argument, he wasn't overcome by its logic (as I had assumed) but
instead was shocked that I had decided to enter into such a discussion
without any prodding of his own. And so began our series of informal debates
about the truth of Islam versus Christianity, as well as my intellectual
journey towards the throne of Christ.
David's response to my argument ran as follows. First, while there are
indeed many variations of the Bible obtained from more than 5,000 Greek
manuscripts, there is such a large amount of early manuscript evidence and
such a concordance between those manuscripts that we can reconstruct the
Bible and be certain of about 95% of the original content. Second, no
doctrine of the Bible is in jeopardy by any of the variations. Third, there
are so many quotations of and references to the New Testament from the
ancient world that we can reconstruct practically all of it from early
quotations alone. Fourth, there are multiple fragments of manuscripts that
can be dated to within a couple of centuries after Christ's death which we
have in our possession even now (the earliest dating to less than 100 years
after Christ, 125 AD). Fifth, he claimed that whole copies of the Bible are
available from around three centuries after Christ's death. Finally, the
previously mentioned estimate of 95% accuracy was a conservative one; in
actuality it is closer to 98 or 99%.
Blown away by the overwhelmingly convincing argument he provided, I
determined that he had made it all up, and I decided to investigate the
issue myself. The result of my investigation was that there is no evidential
reason to believe that the modern editions of the New Testament are in any
way substantially different from the original autographs themselves. To
challenge the scriptural integrity of the New Testament after sincere
investigation is to reflect a bias against it.