In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Matt26:20-30,Mark14:17-25,Luke22:14-23 all agree that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, a set of rituals occuring on the first night of Passover Lev23:5-8. Jewish days begin at sunset (not at midnight or even at dawn) and end at sunset. Thus anyone "preparing" for Passover during daylight would celebrate it from sunset.
Jesus was crucified on the next day of the Passover Seder. This would have to be the 15th day of Nissan. John's unknown author contradicts this by stating Jesus was crucified on the eve of Passover, or the 14th day of Nissan Jn19:14-16. He terms it “preperation day” in Koine Greek, an expression alien to Jewish scriptures. No preparation work may be performed on a Festival day. If a Festival falls on a Friday for example, any preparations for Shabbat must be made earlier than friday, before the Festival begins. Thus, the Thursday would have to be what the Greek author refers to as "preperation day" for BOTH the passover seder AND for Shabbat.
But the passover never begins on a Thursday night in recent times, and hardly ever did, even in Talmudic times. Neither did Passover begin on thursday night between 26 CE and 40 CE, the various times thought to surround Jesus' death. As a side note these variations are due to the NT confusing Jesus' basic timeline.
For example Jesus is said to have been born when Herod was King of Judea Lk1:5, Quirinius was Governor of Syria Lk2:2 and Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome Lk2:1. Yet those three occurrences never overlap historically so it is impossible to say if Jesus supposedly died in the 20s or 30s of the 1st century. Anyway, the reason for passover not occuring on Thursdays is that the Rabbis who originally constructed the calendar deemed it an unacceptable burden on the community for there to be two consecutive days on which any food preparation is forbidden.
This important discrepency of the so called 2Tim3:16"God-breathed" scriptures, cannot be explained throught the typical "different perspectives of the Gospel writers" argument. Jesus simply could not have been crucified on both days. John's account of the Last Supper, in accordance with the rabbinical perspective stated earlier, in Jn13 does not include the rites of a Passover Seder as the drinking of wine, or eating matzo/unleavened bread and herbs as we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John's author was aware that the passover lamb had to be sacrificed on the afternoon on Nisan 14, so that it could be eaten after sunset (now Nisan 15), along with the matzo, herbs etc. Lev23:5-8. The author of John had good reason to change the crucifixion day from the 15th of Nisan to the 14th of Nisan. Also, this Gospel was one of the last books written in the NT, around the 2nd century CE when the church had already become predominantly Gentile, so the author of John was appealing to their pagan influences, hence the "lamb".
This animal is exclusively used in John, the pagan notion that a lamb was to be worshipped as a god, something that was widely practiced in the Roman Empire. He integrated that idea with elements of Judaism - in this case, the command in the Torah to slaughter the Paschal lamb on the eve of Passover or on the 14th day of Nissan Ex12:6,Lev23:6.
As an interesting side note, Matt26:17,Mk14:1,12,Lk22:1,7,Acts12:3,20:6,1Cor5:7,8 all quote Jesus in the last supper using "artos" for bread, meaning leavened bread (unless it has the azumos in front of it). In Judaism this is a sin because it is UNleavened bread/azumos artos (or matzo in Hebrew) that must be eaten on a Seder.
Also, according to John, when Judas Iscariot leaves the Last Supper with the moneybag, the disciples immediately presume that he is taking money to purchase food for the festival meal Jn13:29. In the other Gospels, they had just eaten it. Again in Jn18:28 the Jews who were handing Jesus over to Pontius Pilate to be crucified on the morning of the crucifixion did not enter the headquarter
"so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover".
Yet in the 3 other Gospels they had already eaten it because the Passover Seder took place the previous night. This is why Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not mention the fear the Jews had of entering the home of Pilate.
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Besides failing on a historical level for lack of external evidence, the crucifixion story as depicted in the Greek Christian writings fails on an internal, theological level. According to habakkuk1, the everlasting God "will never die". The Quran equally states
25:58"And rely upon the Ever-Living who does not die, and exalt [Allah] with His praise".
Humans have a dual nature, the body and the spirit. Lets call that human being John. John has thus a human body and a spiritual essence. John gets nailed on a cross and dies. His body expires while his spirit transitions to the hereafter. To say that John did not die on the cross because his spiritual essence survived would be false. Similarily God, according to the trinity doctrine has both a human body and a spiritual essence. God gets nailed on a cross and dies. His human nature expires while his spiritual essence transitions. To say that God did not die because his spiritual essence survived would then be as false as in John's case.
Yet even from a materialistic standpoint, death is the end of life. In religion, death ends life in the present world and begins life in the hereafter. How does the ever-living, eternal God cease living in anyway shape or form? Assuming God did not die when he was crucified. This would then undermine the notion of atoning sacrifice. Death and loss is what validates the atonement. If God did not die, losing nothing in the process, then what did He sacrifice on the cross? Habakkuk1 is a general statement. It excludes death in any way. It doesnt say God's spirit cannot die while his body can. This is an example of what an explicit statement, closed to any misinterpretations, is. It is what is referred to in religious terminology, a firm verse, or as the Quran says, muhkam. A religion based on solid explicit tenets, does not seek ambiguous verses and try to derive isolated meanings upon which to build an entire belief system. Whenever confronted to ambiguous verses, that are open to several contradicting interpretations, we consider the context, the words used and cross reference them with other similar verses. More importantly, whatever the conclusion we come up with, the interpretation may never contradict the explicit, firm, decisive verses. But that is not how Pauline christianity works. In order to circumvent the statement that God "will never die" and make it fit the belief of divine sacrifice, it is said that this sacrificing Christian god didnt really die. Assuming God did not die when he was crucified. This would then undermine the notion of atoning sacrifice. Death and loss is what validates the atonement. If God did not die, losing nothing in the process, then what did He sacrifice on the cross?
Further, why would God go as far as killing his son (or self) to prove his trustworthiness and capacity to truly forgive, and how is it a proof of love? Only an unjust, deluded criminal, unworthy to be the judge of mankind would think that murder is a proof of love. Why would anyone trust an entity, divine or else, willing to commit suicide (or even worse, kill its own progeny) to prove its love? One would instead try helping such entity out of its delusion. One would not want in anyway to be associated with such demonstration of "passionate love".
God, since times immemorial has been demonstrating His love through the prophets, sending promises of mercy and forgiveness before that mythological Greek drama was invented. Believers have always known and trusted this fact attested in scriptures over and over again, which God made contingent on repentance and obedience to His commandements. Nobody thought God would fail His promise, or was incapable of forgiving the servants that wholeheartedly turn to Him. The Quran treats such hopelessness in God as a mark of disbelief
39:53-4"Say, "O My servants who have transgressed against themselves [by sinning], do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful. And return [in repentance] to your Lord and submit to Him before the punishment comes upon you; then you will not be helped" 15:56"And who despairs of the mercy of his Lord except for those astray?".
That attribute of mercy is in fact the only one described in the Quran as "written upon" God 6:12,54. Christians on the other hand do not expect God to be merciful, to the point they need him to prove his capacity to forgive by murdering his own self/son. Furthermore, a judge that forgives someone because of the actions of another, Jesus' sacrifice in this case, isnt a merciful judge. Forgiveness wasnt triggered by the mercy of the judge, rather by the price paid by another. So although Christians do believe in their God's absolute mercy, in reality their concept of the divine is far removed from it. The profound difference in relation to that theological aspect between Islam and Christianity goes back to the story of the garden. While in the Quran, the story ends with hope and forgiveness, in Christianity it is misconstrued in a way the Jews who read the same scriptures before them, vehemently dispute.
In the Quran Adam is sent away from the garden with the message that whenever guidance is recognized and acted upon, then mankind "shall not go astray nor be unhappy". There is therefore in the Quranic account of creation no place for unconditional, senseless and indiscriminate condemnation. On the contrary, the incident is concluded with forgiveness and spiritual guidance. The Christian belief on the other hand is that there was no forgiveness, sin became ingrained in human nature and transmitted to Adam's progeny. On top of that, God, instead of sending the solution to that "problem" in the shape of Christ's atoning death, establishes a long line of prophethood and laws to be followed. This divinely decreed deceptive crooked system was bound to fail in the face of human depravity, for several thousands of years, until the issue of salvation was finally resolved with the crucifixion. This theology appeals to people who have despaired of life, themselves and God. It is toxic, as it crushes the person's self esteem, making him yield to dark thoughts of hopelessness in oneself, and it is satanic as it discourages the building of a relationship with a merciless, unloving God. Hope is therefore found elsewhere, neither in God nor man, but in an intercessor that fixes the defects of both so as to reconcile them. He is a sinless man and a merciful, loving God, both in one since the divine cancels sinfulness and the human cancels mercilessness and unlovingness. His divine nature makes this man capable of perfect deeds thus pleasing God and restoring His (God's) hope in man, while his human nature makes this God capable of dying, and through this self-sacrifice, capable of showing love and mercy, thus pleasing man and restoring his hope in God.
That is why the Quran quotes Jesus himself, emphatically denying the man-made, unscriptural notion of sin atonement as understood by those that deified him
5:72"and the messiah said; ...serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Surely whoever associates with Him, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the Fire; and there shall be no helpers for the unjust".
In this short statement, Jesus nullifies everything Trinitarian Christianity stands for, the idea of a divine entity other than God being the means by which one's eternal felicity and freedom from sins depends.
In another place, Jesus, instead of taking upon himself the sins of mankind, denies even the sins of his own followers that began deifying him. He washes his hands from their deviations and submits to God's justice, leaving the entire prerogative of salvation in God's hands
5:116-118"If You should chastise them, then surely they are Your servants; and if You Should forgive them, then surely You are the Mighty, the Wise".
In the monotheistic faith, the prominence of God's attribute of mercy does not mean it comes freely. It is earned, through concrete, repeated, steadfast actions proving one's sincere penitent resolve. This however is only beneficial in relation to God's rights. But if a sin includes infringing on other people's rights then the divine law has declared it an injustice to deprive a victim of its due rights. In that case it is upon the victim to either benevolently forgive and turn away, or demand restitution for the harm done. No human sacrifice was needed before Jesus for people to known and trust in those things which the prophets said. It is ironic that in the book of Isaiah, the one most appealed to and distorted to prove the abhorrent notion of human sacrifice as the only prerequisite for sin atonement, God says
Isa55"my ways are different from yours".
This comes right after the reassuring statement that God is near and hearer of prayers so
"Let the wicked leave their way of life and change their way of thinking. Let them turn to the LORD, our God; He is merciful and quick to forgive".
God's nature is contrary to human's who need and ask their debt to be settled in case of foul play. There are no debts between men and God, He doesnt lose anything from people transgressing His commands neither does He gain from their worship. His glory remains unchanged in both cases. That is why he does not need to be propitiated.
For His mercy to be released, the sinner does not need to act in relation to God but to his own self, through repentance and mending of ways. This deed is one that has no effect on God but on the sinner, cleansing his own soul. It is as a result of the person taking action to cleanse his self, that God releases His mercy, blotting out the sin completely and forgives Isa43. This is the main, among many other avenues for forgiveness which the HB gives besides blood atonement.
The concept of atoning sacrifice is nowhere to be found in Jesus' words anyway. He nowhere speaks of his own death as an atonement for sin. He is instead depicted as talking of his life as being a ransom Mk10:45, but in a clear context of dedication and humility. He is dedicating his life for the sake of others, like all selfless people should. It is Paul who connected these words with expiation for sins in 1Tim2. This spin caused intense debates and disagreements throughout the ages among all branches of Christianity; ranging from the notion of Jesus' life being the ransom paid back to Satan who held humanity in hostage, to the idea that God the Father was the one to receive the payment, and many other nuances in between. The inherent problems to every proposition, the contradictions each of them create with various Christian doctrines such as God literally ransoming himself to himself, is what led the Roman Catholic Church to describe the ransom theory as a "mystery of universal redemption".
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Jn1:1"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".
The verse first of all says nothing about Jesus physically preexisting with God. And if "the word", Jesus' shape prior to his physical existence, was an entity appart from God, then it conflicts with
Mal3:6"I the Lord do not change".
The same shape He always had is the same one He always will have. God's word is no more a distinct person from himself than your word/purpose is a distinct person from yourself. When God created light with his word in Genesis, light became the manifestation of His will through the word "BE", not a manifestation of Himself.
In Prov8:23 just like the word was with God, wisdom is with God from eternity. It is common in Hebrew writings to personify concepts such as these. No Jew reading Prov8:23 would ever believe wisdom was a person seperate from God and present on his side from eternity. Job says in 12:13
"with God are wisdom and might".
Jews would often speak of God's attributes being "with" God as if they were persons. In the Targums(aramaic translations of the OT) the word(logos) of God is a common expression meaning the manifestation of God's wisdom and action (Targum Onkelos Gen39:2,Ex19:17,Job42:9,Ps2:4,106:12). I
ts clear from Isa44:24 confirmed by Jesus in Matt19:4,Mk10:6 that God created all things alone, no one was on his side, with no God before or after Him Isa43:10.
Philo a Hellenized Jew, much influenced both by Greek philosophy and Egyptian religious ideas, introduced this expression found in Jn1:1.
The Logos was present in the Egyptian pantheon, identified with the god Horus/Serapis, and similarly, in Stoic philosophy which held that the Logos made itself manifest through various gods – Zeus, Hermes, etc. When he was writing, and when the Greeks who penned the Gospels were writing, in a language loaded with Hellenistic theological baggage, the rules of mythological thinking continued to be in force, as far as images were concerned. They took these symbolisms for granted, unlike the "unsymbolic" later mindframe of those that approached such expressions.
Philo wrote hundreds of philosophical and religious essays during the first half of the first century and his primary purpose was to merge Mosaic Judaism with Pythagorean philosophy as noted by early Christian theologians such as Clement of Alexandria (c.150 - 215). For example he said that it was God who begat Isaac, through the "virgin" Sarah, although He/God made sure that Isaac closely resembled Abraham so as to not create any "ambiguity". Philo was highly allegorical and aggressively promoted the allegorical interpretation of scripture. In his idea, logos expressed all ways by which God makes His word/logic known to man for ex. his speech (which he called logos) was his Revelations, his reason (which he also called logos) was his Design.
Other "emanations" through which God made himself known to the world, in addition to the Logos were Sophia/Wisdom, Nous/Mind, Phronesis/Judgement, and Dynamis/Power. Thus the supreme God’s will, justice, power, etc., made its presence felt through these "emanations", which might take various forms.
Philo also describes Moses as the “empsychosis” of God’s divine thought, i.e. as the personalization of the Divine Plan (Life of Moses, I, 28). John's author understood the metaphor quite well, this is why he writes in Jn1:17 "the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ". Both of them are an expression of God's plan, neither of them are gods nor preexisted physically at God's side.
Philo's "logos" has clearly been misapplied to promote trinitarianism by the likes of Justin Martyr, the 2nd century Church Father who proposed this idea of the son of God/Jesus preexisting with God, instead of the word/logos. Philo also wrote that God exists outside of time and space, that He has no human attributes or emotions. He even says God has no attributes at all, not even a name, and cannot be perceived by man. He insists that God doesn't change, is completely self-sufficient and thus in no need of "co-partners". He is eternal and doesnt die. Philo is not even by inference saying that the “word” can become “flesh.” This is a pagan concept as epitomized by gods such as Hermes and Prometheus.
Logos never meant a person as seen in 1Jn1:1-3 where the word/logos is "That" not "he" and manifested, personified through Jesus. Logos appears 100s of times in the NT but only capitalized less than 10 times depending on bible versions and has a wide range of meanings for ex. "question" in Matt21:24 (NIV),"account" in Matt12:36,"command" in Gal5:14,"message" in Luke4:32,etc.
What is translated as "God" in the end of the verse "and the Word was God" is actually the Greek "theos" used to refer to the Father as well as others such as the Devil 2Cor4:4, lesser gods 1Cor8:5 or men with great authority Ex7:1,Jn10:34,35,Acts12:22. So it is the context that decides.
In addition almost every time the NT uses theos for the Father, it is preceded in the Greek by a definite article "Ho" and this contrast appears clearly in Jn1:1 where the Greek says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with "THE theos" and the Word was "theos". The definite article is missing from the second "theos" clearly to mark a sharp distinction, so it becomes an adjective qualifying the logos, ie "and the word was divine". In conclusion, the true meaning of Jn1:1 is
"In the beginning was the Word (the wisdom, plan or purpose of God), and the Word was with God, and the Word was divine".
A final thing to note, So this preincarnate Jesus was in a non human form. Jesus was "something minus the soul". Once that "something" assumed human form, the soul was added. After his resurrection and ascencion, the soul remained attached to him. He became in heaven a God with an additional part he did not have before. Jesus started as a God minus soul to God plus soul. God increases in nature?
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Its unequivocal. As shown previously, Jesus' prophecy of imminent return failed and the NT writers have succesfully depicted him as a false prophet according to the criteria laid down in Deut18:21-22. It is worthwhile to note the reason why these unknown writers came up with the "second coming" theory. They knew very well, as any reader of the HB knows, that the Jewish Messiah foretold in the HB is supposed to perform specific tasks in his lifetime by which he will be identifiable, without being overcome by death or defeat Isa42:4.
But Jesus performed none of those tasks, hence the excuse that he will come back later to accomplish them. Of course, there isnt a single prophecy saying the Messiah would come, die, be resurrected, and then return thousands of years later to BEGIN his mission.
As subsequent Christians were faced with yet another problem, that of the failure of Jesus' return, like every subsequent apocalyptic cult that has boldly proclaimed the End Time and embarrassingly survived into a new era, they tried and still do, to prolongue the timing of the prophecy put in Jesus' mouth.
It is also worthwile noting that the exact same problem is found throughout the Hebrew scriptures themselves that are full of prophecies of glad tidings, re-establishement and superiority of the Jews as a nation and religion over every other people. These utopian prophecies beome like a mantra, repeated following each of their destructions and exiles. But again, these prophecies never occured as predicted, in the specific contexts of their liberations from the yoke of their enemies. The biblical scholars are again forced to postpone these predictions to the undetermined long term, to be ushered at the "Messianic age". See Micah5 or Zeph3 for example.
Islam on the other hand is devoid of the short sighted apocalyptic cult mentality. It focuses on justice, which is why God gave mankind guidance in the organization and administration of religious, civic and secular life - in which justice is a necessary element. Islam focuses on justice because unlike early Christians, we did not expect the world to end in a few weeks and understood that life must go on until it does not. But in early Christanity, the emphasis on Jesus' imminent return motivated withdrawal from society, leaving sinful, "fallen" men to their own devices, without guidance to run the affairs of their communities.
As Jesus failed returning in a timely manner people realized life had to continue; inevitably leading to papacy, and then secularism, because Laws must necessarily exist to maintain order and ensure people can live in peace and security. Today Christian members of Congress are still debating whether or not two men can get married, Christian employees in the Pentagon are developing weapons that can kill more effectively and Christian bankers are devising interest-bearing schemes to get around government regulations to make people who have more than enough money even richer.
This is how "delivrance from sin and death" translates in today's Christian societies, a civilization in which sin and death is forcibly exported around the globe.
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Another side issue which i'll address, related to the failed resurrection is The second coming, also referred to as the Second Advent, the Parousia, and the Last Coming (the Rapture being the capture in the air of the Christians prior to Jesus' descent, some other denominations speculate the rapture will happen after Jesus' descent and destruction of all non-believers).
It should firstly be noted that the Christian count is off. What they refer to as the 2nd coming in reference to Jesus' return at the end of times actually is a 3rd coming. The 1st coming covers the period prior to Jesus' death and the second coming spans the period from his alleged resurrection to his alleged ascension.
In Mk13:3-30,Matt16:28,24:3-34,Luke21:32 Jesus addresses his disciples "privately" and lists the tribulations that will occur before their generation passes away. The Son of Man will descent from the clouds at some point prior to the generation of disciples passing away. He will be accompanied by angels while cataclysms are destroying the Earth, so as to usher the end of times. Mk9,13 adds that although the disciples will be persecuted and killed before the ushering of the end of time, some of them would survive and be present to witness it. They will live to see the establishement of the kingdom of God on Earth.
However, the signs preceding Jesus' grandiose return followed by his descent from Heaven never occured as prophecied, neither in the days of the disciples nor before the last of their generation died out.
The fig tree is a metaphore, the writer uses the image of the tree blossoming as a sign of summer and parallels this with all related signs of the 2nd coming which is expected soon. This setting of a time limit for the prophecy to occur is embarrassing so the word "genea" which is always "generation" in the NT is reinterpreted. It appears 14 times in the Gospels and always applies to Jesus' contemporaries. In the midst of growing criticism, the unknown author of 2peter3's attempts to stretch the timing of the failed prophecy by using Ps90:4 referring to the relativity of human time to God's time. But Jesus' promise to return was recorded in accordance with human determination of time (this generation) not God's and must, therefore, come as specified by those human terms. Today's Christians also offer the excuse, using
2Peter3"The Lord...is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance".
The implicit meaning is that the delay in Jesus' second coming is a sign of divine mercy. However, this feeble argument doesnt change Jesus' promise to his contemporaries. Jesus never made his speedy return contingent on God's patience in awaiting the sinners repentance.
Paul's frustrations also reflects how the prophecy was understood by the NT writers. He was awaiting the arrival imminently as seen in Heb10:37 and in 1Cor7:29-31 where he tells those who are married to live as if they were not because "time is short" or as said in
1Thess4:15-18"we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord".
Seeing the delay growing longer and longer, Paul starts entertaining the idea of going himself to find his Christ, wherever he might be
Phil1:20-23"torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far".
And Jn21:23 makes an excuse as to why Jesus failed his promise to come before John's death. It is also important to put back the words put into Jesus' mouth by the Greek writers, in their historical context. Contemporary Jews were expecting the end of the world and the destruction of the Romans in their lifetime, just as John the Baptist was preaching, telling the people to be ready for judgement.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are filled with this apocalyptic kind of thinking, like Jesus’s own followers and later Paul who definitely feels that Jesus is coming back right away as a cosmic judge.
There is a reason why Jesus in these writings never instaures commemorative feasts, he thought the end was definitelyy near. To his followers however, whose expectations to see Jesus returning in their lifetime faded away, they had to institute such festivals like the Eucharist to fill the gap. The event is narrated in Luke22:19 whose writer wasnt even an eyewitness of Jesus' last supper but a disciple of Paul. Yet Paul himself in 1Cor11:23-6 claims that knowledge came to him not through Jesus' direct disciples who actually were at the event of the last supper but by direct revelation from Jesus.
The almost canonical 1 Clement urges observance of a Eucharist but does so without mentioning its institution by Jesus. Paul claims this ceremony to be the symbolic continuation of the Israelites' spiritual sustenance during their desert wandering 1cor10:1-17. This in itself is not problematic and in line with monotheism but the ritual was polluted with the pagan practices of those that converted to the Christian religion, with the symbolic ingestion of the gods
"And he (Jesus) took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me”.
There is a reason why Paul had to warn the "weak" in faith for seeing a parallel between the Christian practices and those of the pagans 1Cor8:10,10:21,11:29-30. The Quran sheds light on the issue, clearing it from the manner in which it was later disfigured, both in context and meaning. The pious followers of Jesus desired a sign to comfort their hearts. Being Jews, these close followers of Jesus knew that the performance of miracles by an individual, athough impressive, are no indication of the truthfulness of his prophethood. This is clear from their own scriptures. So, they wanted a sign from God Himself, which was indicative of Him being the God of their forefathers, the One that fed them with heavenly food during their desert wandering, the Ultimate provider to His creatures
5:112-115".. O Allah, our Lord! send down to us food from heaven which should be to us an ever-recurring happiness, to the first of us and to the last of us, and a sign from Thee, and grant us means of subsistence, and Thou art the best of the Providers. Allah said; surely I will send it down to you, but whoever shall disbelieve afterwards from among you, surely I will chastize him with a chastisement with which I will not chastise, anyone among the nations".
The verse contains a stern warning, despite Jesus' beautiful wording and humble request. The warning was addressed to those that demanded the sign firstly, because when a miracle is brought down at the request of a people then the people are severely punished in case of rejection. The warning then extended to those that will come after Jesus and his followers, and who shall dare distort and disbelieve in that miracle. Linguisticly, ma'ida stems from M-Ya-D. The root word point to a moving or dangling object. It is used in the context of a feast to picture the movement of food, coming and being served, then taken by the guests. So the event in the Quran has nothing to do with Jesus' body and the pagan symbolisms of the ingestion of the gods. The Christian story tellers were writing and interpreting Jesus' life events with their paradigms in mind, including ritual cannibalism, which implied acquiring the dead person's powers, and human sacrifice. The Quran restaures it is an occasion of joyful gathering and eating, so as to remember the Sustainer making the provisions of life available upon His creatures.
Prophets knew the signs of the end of times, and have described to their nation and posterity how to recognize it when it comes, but none knows when will that happen. For example in Mk13,Matt24 Jesus explains to his disciples how to recognize, before their generation passes away, the end times by observing specific signs that will occur before his second coming.
Other attempts to prolongue "this generation" is that Matt24:15's "abomination of desolation" hasn't happened yet while this prophecy of Daniel was fullfilled in 167 BCE when Antiochus Epiphanes opposed the daily sacrifices and desecrated the Temple. The NAB footnotes on Daniel 8 attest to that.
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
The Codex Sinaiticus, besides exposing the fact that the resurrection was an unknown story in the earliest Gospel, also contains two New Testament books that arent part of the current canon: the Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd Century and the Epistle of Barnabas, which is more blatant than the current Gospels on explicitly blaming Jesus' alleged murder on the Jews. As to the Old testament part of the Codex, it contains Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus b. Sirach, I Maccabees and IV Maccabees that are all absent from Protestant Bibles.
The Didache, composed anywhere between the mid 1st century and the 3rd century, by an early Christian sect which focused on Torah observance while leaving the door open to gentile converts, makes no mention of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and its Eucharist celebration makes no connection of the meal with the body and blood of Christ, nor does it speak of some of the most basic tenets of Pauline thought such as original sin or faith without works
"Since the writings which now constitute the New Testament were for long not agreed to be sacred, they were repeatedly edited revised and elaborated. The story of Jesus and his sayings was changed according to the context and interests of successive believers. So different sets of believers read and transmitted variant texts… Some additions, revisions and deletions to early Christian writings were on a much grander scale. The intrusion of seven spurious letters into the Pauline corpus, the helpfully compression of two of Paul’s letters to make 2 Corinthians, and the clumsy addition of revised endings to the gospels of Mark (16:9-20) and John (21) – both destined to include extra post-resurrectional appearances of Jesus to the disciples – all illustrate the fluidity and porosity of these texts before they became canonical… The easy alterability of the earliest writings about Jesus, by addition, omission or redaction, indicate that for all the sacredness of their subject, the gospels themselves were not regarded as sacrosanct. Or put another way, for a century or more after Jesus’ death, Christian groups existed, and flourished, without the New Testament. The existence of the gospel of Mark, probably the earliest of the canonical gospels, did not present Matthew and Luke from changing what Mark had written , or from writing their own gospels…"(Keith Hopkins – Professor Cambridge).
Similarly, the Q Gospel, believed to be the source out of which the 4 canonic Gospels expand upon, knows nothing of Jesus’ death and his resurrection. It is inconceivable that its compilers knew of such things, particularly the resurrection, and neglected or chose not to mention them.
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
This youtuber then speaks of manuscripts supposedly supporting the resurrection.
The Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest known manuscript of the NT and in the gospel of Mark, it doesnt mention anything about the resurrection. In that manuscript, the gospel of Mark stops at verse 16:8. Nothing, whether in the wording used or the context indicates that this ending was unintended. The author simply knew nothing of the resurrection tale. The story ends right after the discovery of the empty tomb and after the 3 women leave the tomb. These women, according to Mark, feared telling anyone of what the angel reported, despite the angel's instructions to tell the disciples. And yet, if the women told no one, how could Mark be telling his story?
The last 12 verses describing Jesus' resurrection and his appearance to the disciples were added later, as part of the overall retrospective re-write of Jesus' story. Mark is regarded as the earliest Gospel and the other Gospels, namely Luke and Matthew seem to be an effort to develop upon Mark's account.
Eusebius and Jerome explicitly state that almost all the Greek MSS available to them end at verse 8:
Eusebius Ad Marinum 1 - "How is it that in Matthew the Savior, after having been raised, appears 'late on the Sabbath' but in Mark 'Early on the first day of the week'? The Solution to this might be twofold. For, on the one hand, the one who rejects the passage itself, namely the pericope which says this, might say that it does not appear in all the copies of the Gospel according to Mark. At any rate, the accurate ones of the copies define the end of the history according to Mark with the words of the young man who appeared to the women and said to them, 'Do not fear. You are seeking Jesus the Nazarene' and the words that follow. In addition to these it says, 'And having heard this they fled and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.' For in this way the ending of the Gospel according to Mark is defined in nearly all the copies."
Also, Eusebius, in his Church History (3.39.) notes the role that a presbyter named Aristion had in the transmission of Mark's gospel. We also read in Peake's Commentary, p818 that
"A 10th century Armenian MS ascribes the passage to Aristion, the presbyter mentioned by Papias."
Jerome 120 to Hedybia Concerning Twelve Questions 3 -
"The solution to the question [of why the endings of Mark and Matthew contradict one another] is twofold. Either we do not receive the testimony of Mark, which appears scarsely in copies of the gospel, while almost all books in Greek do not have this pericope at the end..."
These 2 men are writing in the 4-5th century and testifying that even by their time, the longer ending is absent from the vast, if not all original Greek manuscripts available to them. The most revealing admission is that Mark, the disciple to whom the Gospel is ascribed, might not have been the one testifying to the events and whose words were canonized in their days. In the 2nd century, Church figures such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Tatian paraphrase or thematicaly allude to the contents of this omitted passage. This simply shows the evolving nature of Christianity's 2Tim3:16"God-breathed" scriptures, the progressive inclusion of oral legends into the text. Besides the lack of physical evidence, there are also obvious stylistic and thematic differences between that passage and the rest of Mark's Gospel.
In Contra Celsus, Origen's famous work addressing the objections of the pagan thinker Celsus, Origen tries (unsuccessfully) to defend the assertions of Christianity, including the most important, that Jesus resurrected. He quotes detail citations from Matthew, Luke and John to support the resurrection as he was specifically challenged to produce post-resurrection evidence yet he doesnt mention anything beyond Mark16:8. This despite ORigen being the most outstanding Christian manuscript expert of his time, using all scriptural means at his disposal to support the post-resurrection story against the charges of the sceptics.
Modern scholars contend that
"At least nine versions of the ending of Mark can be found among the 1,700 surviving ancient Greek manuscripts and early translations of the gospel".
The NIV bible also comments
"The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20"
Another ending, called the Shorter Ending is found in an Old Latin manuscript of Mark. Six 7 to 10th century Greek manuscripts and some Syriac, Sahidic, Bohairic and Ethiopic manuscripts have this shorter ending either in the margin or between 16:8 and 16:9, with minor variations. One Bohairic manuscript, made in 1174, accompanies Mark 16:9-20 with the note,
"This is the chapter expelled from the Greek."
Codex Vaticanus (mid-4th century), Syriacus (5th century translation), Bobiensis (4th-5thcentury Latin), approximately 100 early Armenian translations, and the two oldest Georgian translations are all early manuscripts that exclude the resurrection.
As a side note, Codex Vaticanus (mid-4th century) omits 1-2 Timothy, Titus, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Revelation as well as everything after Hebrews 9:14.
Codex Bezae (5th-6th century) has the gospels (lots of omissions) and the Acts (missing from 29:22 onwards).
Roman Catholics are not required to believe that Mark wrote this longer ending. The NAB translation includes the footnote:
"[9-20] This passage, termed the Longer Ending to the Marcan gospel by comparison with a much briefer conclusion found in some less important manuscripts, has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent. Early citations of it by the Fathers indicate that it was composed by the second century, although vocabulary and style indicate that it was written by someone other than Mark. It is a general resume of the material concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus, reflecting, in particular, traditions found in Luke 24 and John 20."
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Other problems arise when analyzing the conflicting testimonies of the evangelists as regards the resurrection in Matt28:1-10,Mk16:1-20,Lk24:1-12,Jn20:1-18. These testimonies are so unreliable, they would not stand up to critical cross-examination in any court of law.
"One of the first exercises students of the Gospels do is to consult a parallel version of them, allowing an examination in four columns of the ways in which they relate to each other… As one notices the parallels and differences, a host of questions flood in and one thing above all becomes clear: no single, agreed picture of Jesus is likely to be possible on this evidence." (David F. Ford – Professor Cambridge).
Matthew and Luke's unknown authors dont claim being eye witnesses. John's unknown author vaguely refers to John in the 3rd person during the resurection account, and doesnt claim to be a witness to the event. Paul's 500 witnesses to the risen Jesus 1Cor15 isnt reported by the gospels, the Jewish historian Josephus, Roman historians, and early Christian writers. In his account, 25 years after the alleged event, Paul doesnt give a geographic location where these
"upwards of five hundred brethren"
had simultaneously seen the resurrected Jesus, neither does he say whether he was among them, or whether he had heard of it through "inspiration" or from other Christians. None of those 500 witnesses ever came forward to give testimony to what they saw. Paul further says Jesus apeared to the 12 while Judas had comitted suicide before the event. In fact, there is virtually not one detail of the crucifixion and resurrection narratives upon which all four Gospel authors agree. Yet, it is upon this story that the entire Christian religion stands or falls?
Even the date of the crucifixion is an issue of contention among the four Gospels.
Here are a few specific examples. In Matt28,Mk16 the 2 Marys are greeted by an angel who shows them the empty tomb where Jesus laid, informs them of his resurrection and instructs them that they are to tell the disciples that Jesus had gone "before them" to the Galilee to meet them. Both Marys then unexpectedly meet the resurrected Jesus, who repeats the angel's instructions to them, then sends them to the disciples to tell them they are to meet him in the Galilee. However, Lk24:13 shows him first appearing in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where the disciples are according to both Luke and Acts yet Mark, Matthew and John, say the disciples meet him in Galilee.
In John20, when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, there is no angel there to greet her with information about Jesus' whereabouts or instructions about a rendezvous in the Galilee. She thus concludes that someone had removed the body from the grave, runs back to Peter and an unnamed disciple and reports,
"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!".
Thats an entirely different version. Also, John's story lacks the Roman guards whom Matthew places at the tomb. Only Matthew speaks of that guard placed there to prevent anyone from removing Jesus' body. How could John's Mary have thought that someone removed the body, when according to Matthew, Roman soldiers were placed at the tomb for the specific purpose of preventing just such an occurrence?
The Gospel of Matthew later makes use of these guards as an argument against the "stolen body" objection. Instead it is as a conspiracy started by the Jewish priests to whom the guards reported the events (why would Roman guards report anything to Jewish authorities anyway?) and who covered it up by corrupting the guards with money, thus beginning the rumor that
Matt28:11-15"His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep".
Continuing with John's version of the events, Mary magdalene, after reporting about the missing corps to Peter, she returns a second time to the tomb, and finds 2 angels sitting inside it. They say nothing about any resurrection. So she inquires as to whether the angels have removed Jesus' body, turns around only to see Jesus standing before her. She doesnt recognize him at first, only after talking to him, desires to touch his wounds (that apparently failed to regenerate after the resurrection) but is told not to, yet just a few verses down Jesus asks Thomas the skeptic to do just that!
Another issue with John's writer is that he mixes up the chronological appearances of the risen Jesus. He says the Galilean appearance was the 3rd in Jn21:14 yet he had already stated the 1st was to Mary Magdalene 20:4, the 2nd to the disciples without Thomas 20:19, the 3rd eight days later to the disciples with Thomas 20:26. This leads John's writer to also mix up the chronology of miracles, because the fishing miracle that was a pre-resurrection miracle in Lk5:1-11 becomes post-resurrection apparition in Jn21:1-13.
In Luke24 we have yet another variant resurrection tale. Several women accompanied Mary Magdalene on her visit to the tomb making a total of 4+. They find it empty then suddenly see two men (instead of 1 as in the other gospels) with shining garments who inform them of the resurrection. The women then go to the male disciples and tell them what happened at the tomb. They dont believe them, but Peter goes to the tomb anyway, finds it empty, and then leaves. Thus, in this gospel's account, nobody sees Jesus during the initial visits to the tomb contrary to Matthew and John's accounts.
Two witnesses, not from his disciples since the "eleven" appear later in the same story, one named Cleopas and one unindentified, inadvertently come accross the risen Jesus in Jerusalem's vicinity without recognizing him at first. As they declare their disbelief in the one whom they thought dead and defeated, Jesus scolds them for not recognizing his fulfillement of scriptures. Jesus remains with them and joins them for dinner then vanishes as soon as they recognize him. Luke says nothing about Jesus appearing first to the women.
In 1Cor15, the most celebrated creed of the resurrection, Paul states that among the disciples, Peter (aka Cephas, Simon) saw the risen Jesus first while Lk24:33 states he was with "the eleven" gathered in Jerusalem. That is why in Matthew and John's accounts he appears to the disciples together. Paul does not speak of Jesus' appearance to the women, in fact he dismisses their testimony entirely as if it never happenned. The Gospels on the other hand, despite disagreeing which of the women saw Jesus first, all agree the first testimony was that of a female. Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary Matt28:9 or to Mary Magdalene alone Mk16:9,Jn20:18. In his missionary zeal, Paul needed weighty arguments (the words of women certainly werent!) and the reference to Jesus' inner circle of disciples was more appropriate.
The apologetic argument that these and many other differences are due to eyewitnesses recounting the same story through different angles doesnt hold. Besides these differences being so blatant that no objective enquirer can accept this defence, we have the very basic fact that those after whom the Gospels are named were not even eyewitnesses. They didnt even write their accounts of the story until at least 40 to 70 years after it allegedly took place, as they heard it from unidentified sources. How did these authors interview their sources of information? What criteria did they use to determine the reliability of the people that told them the details of the stories that they wrote? There is a reason why the resurrected Jesus only appeared to his already devoted followers, who are our only source of the story, instead of his opponents to whom he allegedly pledged will show them proof of his resurrection Matt12:39.
Despite these facts, and basing themselves on the assumption that the resurrection(s) story, or rather stories, are actually true, Christians ask why did the Roman and Jewish opponents of Jesus not dig up the body of Jesus in order to disprove the claims made exclusively by his devoted followers? The true question should be, still assuming the story to be true, how could we know that his opponents did NOT dig up his body in order to disprove the resurrection story? And if they succesfully did, how would we hear about it today considering the centuries of Catholic censorship and fabrications that started very early on in Christian history? Also the decayed body displayed by the authorities could have easily been dismissed as not Jesus' by his devoted followers.
Although today's apologists love to suggest a "tradition" of early visitors to the tomb of Jesus (without a shred of evidence), nothing can disguise the fact that until the 4th century Christians got along just fine without a Jesus tomb and had no special reverence for the place of his supposed execution. The Christians' difficulty in finding all the hallmarks sites of the NT, sometimes even having the same hallmark in different locations where different sects reside, is often blamed on a conspiracy by Emperor Hadrian who had supposedly deliberately built his pagan sanctuaries over their sacred sites.
The same excuse is used for the confusion on the location of Jesus' tomb (the current one is unmarked and without a shred of evidence to connect it to Jesus). Far from being concerned with early Christianity, at that time just a cluster of cults among many others, and virtually unknown in the Roman world, in reality, the emperor Hadrian sited his temple and forum complex precisely where it would be found in most other Roman cities – at the intersection of the major east-west and north-south roads.
An interesting question to ask is, where was Jesus between his crucifixion and resurrection? Was he in heaven, in accordance with his promise to the crucified thief that
Lk23:43"today you shall be with me in paradise?
If so, how can we account for his post-resurrection statement to Mary Magdalene
Jn20:17"touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to the Father"?
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
As Paul candidly admits,
1Corin15:17"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins".
In essence, the validity of Christianity stands or falls on this claim. Yet the admittedly crucial nature of that event is contrasted by the scarcity of material related to it within the Gospels. Barely 5 people witnessed the risen Jesus, and when analyzed critically, these testimonies are contradictory and inconsistent. In Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus' message is centred not on the resurrection, but on the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, a metonym in those days for God's rule of justice and restauration of JEwish glory among the nations, with the defeat of the Romans.
It is only with the development of Christology with John's Gospel and Paul's writings, as well as the Greek Church fathers, their rich Hellenistic background of mythologies and legends of deified leaders, that supplied the fertile ground for the short story of Jesus' resurrection, his interpolated deification. This Hellenistic perspective however isnt on par with the Jewish background which the writers and early Christian scholars claim provide proof for their beliefs on Jesus. In Jewish understanding, the resurrection of the dead is a common theme that has already occured in the past and that shall happen again in the messianic era, without any divine connotation or connection with atonement for sins.
These men were formulating their ideas, interpreting inherited traditions while still infused with stories of demigods, Achilles, Dionysus or Heracles to name but a few. By the time they expressed their thoughts and the Gospels were put to writing, the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed in 70CE, and the centers of Christian thought were spread around the Mediterranean. This opened the way for non-Jews and foreigners to Jesus' socio/cultural/religious background to take the reigns of power in the early church.
When challenged by the Pharisees to display a miracle, Jesus promised them his resurrection after being dead for 3 days Matt12:39. Once he is supposedly resurrected, he doesnt appear to those who specifically asked him for the sign and to whom he said he will reappear. Instead, Jesus' followers come to the Pharisees, claiming that the sign had occured. Neither is there any claim that the risen Jesus ever appeared to anyone but believers. There is only the word of a mere handful of "witnesses" whose stories vary from person to person, and we dont even know who transmitted those biased accounts until they were eventually put to writing by scribes whom nobody knows.
Matt12:40"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth".
Here are the verses from the book of Jonah
1:17,2:1,2"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly. And said, l cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest, my voice".
In Jn19:42 it says Jesus was crucified on friday or "good friday". All Gospels agree he was burried the same day and resurrected 3 days later on Sunday Lk9:22,18:33,24:45-46,Matt16,Mk8:31,10:34,Jn20:1. Yet according to Matt28:1,Mk16:2,Lk24:1 the various characters found the tomb empty in the early hours of sunday morning meaning he spent a maximum of 3days and 2nights in the ground; friday afternoon (1day), friday night (1night), all of saturday (1day/1night), sunday morning (1day). Also, contrary to the other Gospels, Jn20:1 states Jesus rose before the dawn of sunday meaning he was buried for maximum 2 days and 2 nights; friday afternoon (1day), friday night (1night), all of saturday (1day/1night).
Besides this discrepancy between John and the other Gospels, if there is one thing all Gospels agree on is that Jesus' alleged prophecy was never fulfilled. Neither did he appear to those opponents to whom he pledged that he would, neither did he perform the miracle in the manner promised. It is interesting to note that in the Quran, one of the marks by which to recognize a false deity is inability and ignorance to control the process of resurrection
16:20-1"Those beings that some people invoke beside God cannot create anything; they themselves are created. They are dead, not living, and they do not know when they will be raised back to life".
Christians often disregard the first difficulty, that Jesus failed appearing to the Pharisees, focusing instead on the problem of not agreeing with the sign of Jonah due to the difference between a Jewish and regular day. The difference between a Jewish day and a regular day is the time when the day starts and ends. Jewish people considered the start and end of a day at sunset, whereas now we consider midnight to be the start and end of a day. There is no difference in the length of the day, and accepting the Jewish day would only make things worse as far as the sign of Jonah goes. And while it is true that according to Jewish law part of the day is equivalent to a full day, in Matt12:40 Jesus promised to be buried for 3 days and 3 nights meaning his time in the earth must include either all 3 days/3 nights, or can be deficient in only parts of a day or night, **but never of a full segment of day or night**.
In other words although he did not have to be buried for the entire 72hours, Jesus had at least to be burried on parts of 3days/3nights, which he failed according to all Gospels.
In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
The NT is supposed to be an account of Jesus' teachings. But his words constitute less than 10% of the whole book, written by people who werent even witnesses to the climactic events of his life and death. It would be impossible to find a single word from Jesus in his original language which was either Aramaic, Syriac or Hebrew according to scholarship, but certainly not Greek in which the NT was compiled. It is important to understand that the ancient Greek, besides being a totally different language than those potentially spoken by Jesus, was loaded with alien cultural and religious concepts of the pagan Graeco-Roman world. To discover the authentic teaching of Jesus, and what others believed about him, it is therefore necessary to be alert to any changes or developments in meaning arising from the transmission of ideas through the channel of Hellenistic culture. That is why it is crucial to have as reference, the language in which Jesus expressed his religious thoughts among his small group of followers. Then one can always resort to that original language whenever confusion arises in translations, which is bound to happen. In the Quran's case, one can easily refer to the language of the prophet himself, in which it was revealed, whenever there is a misunderstanding on the meaning of a translated word. Christians do not have that option and are entirely reliant on a translation of Jesus' language for reference. Of course Jews became helenized around Jesus' time. The pagan culture had infiltrated the language (with its theological baggage) culture and interpretation of scriptures. And that is the whole reason behind the messianic rebellions that tried warding off that influence. That is also why orthodox Jews never quoted or used the Septuagint, which Paul was fond of and repeatedly misused. The point is not whether Jews or Jesus could speak other languages than Hebrew or Aramaic. But whether Jesus was a helenized jew, as his anonymous biographers in the Gospels were, if not simply gentiles, or if he was a traditional Jew who would shun anything representing the pagan Greek culture. Especially the Septuagint. If he was a Pharisee, as is depicted in the NT, then he would not use Greek when quoting the HB (available in Hebrew in his time) nor speak a word of Greek when talking anything that had to do with religion. The people involved in every step of the compilation of the Quran, are all well known, together with their personal strengths and weaknesses. They were native speakers of the language of the primary source of revelation, the prophet Muhammad. Nothing could have been "lost in translation" in the process of compilation. One may grant that the Quran too quotes non-Arabian prophets like Jesus or Moses in a language other than their own. However the comparison here is misplaced as the Quranic message does not depend on the quotes of these prophets in Arabic, but on what the Arab compilers have preserved from the Arabian prophet. The New Testament message on the other hand depends on anonymous reporters whose language and culture are widely different than the semitic background of Jesus, whose marginal sayings are translated, interpreted, and expounded upon.
There are about 24000 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek but hardly a fraction of this base is deemed important by textual critics for the reconstruction of the NT text, because they are themselves copies of lost documents. These MSS arent even identical nor self-consistent. The most important translations of the Greek New Testament are in Latin, Syriac and Coptic (after these come the Armenian, Ethiopic and the Georgian versions) but their original Greek are extremely difficult to reconstitute and are thus used on occasions with much caution, simply as indirect witnesses and in a secondary and supportive capacity. Defective translations from the Greek were because anyone judging himself capable of translating a Greek mss he would come across, would individually endeavor in doing so, thus explaining the widely different Latin renditions. This prompted the pope Damasus to commission Jerome in standardizing the Latin translation, called the Vulgate.
However the 1000s of copies lacked uniformity, either due to careless transcription or sometimes by deliberate conflation with copies of the Old Latin versions. Later medieval efforts to restore Jerome's version were met with further textual corruption through mixture of the several types of Vulgate. The other problem translators were confronted with was that certain features of Greek (conceptual or grammatical) cannot be translated directly into some other languages.
Christianity today is not even able to produce a single Greek New Testament Codex according to the limit and order as stated by Athanasius until the Mt. Athos manuscript dated 1116 CE. The word "bible" doesnt even exist in any bible canon. It is a compilation of books whose numbers vary between Christian sects, such as the Protestants and the Catholics. There are books that are believed by the Catholics to be inspired whereas the Protestants do not agree.
P52 (130 - 160 CE) is the oldest NT fragment, written on papyrus, size of a credit card written front and back. The front has John 18:31-33 and the back, John 18:37,38. Papyrus Bodmer II or P66 has been dated to about 200CE. It contains the first 14 chapters of John (but with 22 missing verses) and some parts of chapters 16 to 21. The earliest complete copies of John do not date back beyond the middle of the 4th century. What is also interesting is that early Christian writers made no reference to such a gospel, later writers of the 2nd half of the 2nd century did. At that time, Christianity was fighting an internal struggle between competing beliefs, and it is argued that John's gospel was written as a rebuttal against the Valentinians, Ebionites, the Nicolaites, and the followers of Cerinthus.
There are no full papyri of the NT dating earlier than about the 16th century CE. Out of 5366 fragments, in the Greek language alone ranging from the 2nd to the 16th century, 90% are from beyond the 9th century. Except for the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike. What is further disturbing and unexpected for a well established Graeco-Roman written civilization is that none of the available manuscripts pre date the 2nd century. At that time, inter-Christian hatred was rampant and different groups accused one another of tampering with the text to fit their ideas. Even on the mainstream level, Jews and Christians accused one another of physical manipulation of scriptures especially in messianic passages. Among many contemporary writings attesting to the phenomenon is the dialogue between Justin Martyr and Trypho the Jew.
Another papyri known as P75 whose dating is disputed misses Luke 22:43-44.
This means that nothing dates to the time of Jesus, much less his apostles, nor do the first copies of those originals. Although most discrepancies fall in the category of careless scribal errors that are of little to no theological significance, the fact is that there are known and documented deliberate textual changes to advance a certain theological position.
The most glaring and consistent changes relate to the trinitarian inclination of the text. As technological advances were made, scholars were able to get fairly close to reconstructing the common original by sifting through the discrepancies of the 1000s of manuscripts. In the process, they have discarded the obvious scribal changes. This includes 100s of alterations the likes of Mk3:11 where
"You are the Son of God”
was altered to read
“You are God, the Son of God”
to help support the Trinitarian position.
This type of blatant corruption to the text could not be denied by modern biblical scholarship, even the most conservative trinitarian scholars. These trinitarian alterations have been discarded from the Greek text produced by the United Bible Society and the one produced by the Institute for New Testament Research in Germany. But since there is nothing remotely close to a complete original or first copy of the original NT text, it is impossible to know how much theological corruption of that type was successfully introduced into the later copies upon which scholars have based their comparisons to reconstruct something close to the original NT text.
The languages of the bible are effectively dead anyway, whether they are ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek or Aramaic. Contrast this with millions of people who have a very strong grasp of the Arabic of the Quran. Not only that, but very effective and strong and vast tools to help them understand it whether the vocabulary, usage, grammar and also secondary explanation through Hadeeth. The other particularity of Arabic is it became the centralizing force of the whole empire. People started to learn Arabic to communicate, both on the level of the common man, as well as the scholars. Kufa and Basra were part of the Persian Empire, but they became centers of learning as far as the nuances of Arabic were concerned. Many of the contributors to the development of Arabic grammar were Persians, meaning the Arabic language was the defining feature of this new civilization, irrespective of the cultural shift. Egyptians speak Arabic, the Syrians speak Arabic, the Jordanians, the Iraqis, besides the whole Gulf Region for a reason. Somalians and Sudanese and other cultures speak Arabic as a common language. There was no vaccum between now and then, as far as Arabic is concerned.
Even the intricacies of the language that were common to the poets have been preserved through the scholarship. All books of lexicons and linguistics on Arabic were produced while the language was alive and spread throughout contrary to other ancient languages whose lexicons were produced in a vacuum, when they essentially became dead, by an elite and only for that elite. The Catholic Church kept the language of the Bible locked for a 1000 year in a Latin language which was far beyond the comprehension fo the vast majority of the people, prohibiting its translation.
As said earlier, this Latin is itself translated from a dead Greek language that wasnt even the language of Jesus and his followers, and that was the vehicle of sophisticated pagan thought. In the case of the Quran, the blueprint of its ancient language, expressions and words used in pre-islamic and early post-islamic literature is available for anyone learning classical Arabic today. And this, despite the evolution of Arabic through the centuries and countries it spread to, or the changing conditions that burdened many words with new, sometimes introducing completely opposite meanings than originally intended.
All these linguistic tools however have been understood as secondary when approaching the Quranic. The primary approach by the great commentators in understanding the language of the Quran was to compare it by the way the Quran itself makes use of it. That is why it is humorous when people speak of grammatical errors of the Quran. Especially when such critics have no grasp of the Quranic language and much less the grammar of later classical Arabic which itself relies on the Quran. There isnt even a contemporaneous written text to the Quran that we know of from which the Quran could possibly deviate. The Quran in fact is the first ever Arabic book, the first writing that marked the transition of the Arabs from an oral to written culture. Therefore, from the onset, to assert grammatical errors in the Quran is untenable.
The Quran simply spoke in the dialect of the Quraish tribe with all their peculiarities and standards of language
"And We did not send any messenger but with the language of his people, so that he might explain to them clearly"
"Indeed, we have revealed this as an Arabic Quran so that you may understand".
The only real standard of comparison would be another writing, form of literature, grammar rules from the Quraish tribe contemporaneous with the Quran. Also, many languages today provide exceptions to their standard grammatical usages. Today's classical grammar 'rules' can be at variance with the Quran on which it has heavily relied on as a source, but to suggest the Quran is at variance with the grammar known to us today is illogical.
The 400 years following Jesus' death produced numerous canons of the bible each combining different gospels, rejecting and adding things from the HB and adding to the NT. For example the Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac churches boast their different bibles as God's Word.
According to some estimates, early Christians wrote at least twenty gospels that weren't included in the bible. The apocryphal Gospels were rejected because of many reasons including doubtful authorship yet the canonized scriptures arent that much more authentic. Some books are considered apocrypha by the western church and scripture by the eastern church. When comparing the canonical and apocryphal writings, it isnt a case of first-hand versus second-hand information. It is merely a choice between doctrinal points of view, with the choice being made by men with a doctrinal bias. Some have been partially preserved such as the Gospel of Thomas. It is different than the infancy gospel of Thomas, and lacks any mention of crucifixion or resurrection. It is considered by some scholars to be the or one of the initial documents out of which developed the other more elaborate gospels. This Gospel of Thomas was for the first 2 centuries considered holy scriptures. The same with the gospels of Matthaias or "The Twelve", Acts of Andrew or Acts of John, Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas. The last 2 books were still included in the codex sinaiticus, which is the earliest complete copy of the NT that is dated to around the year 350. There is also the Didache and the Apocalypse of Peter.
On the other hand rejected by the early church fathers were Paul’s letter to Philemon, the 2nd and 3rd letters of John, the 2nd letter of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude, all part of the canon after Christianity became the state religion. Nobody ever found the books from which the writers of the NT are sometimes quoting, as in Jn7:38,Lk11:49 or James4:5,Jude1:14-15.
The Book of Revelations was considered apocrypha for the first 200 years of the Christian Church until it became God-inspired. However even as late as the 4th-century, many Christians either rejected it in favor of the Apocalypse of Peter, or believed that they should both be included in the canon.
The Epistle of St James was ignored for centuries until the Council of Trent put it in the canon in 1563. That book received a cool reception, obviously as it appeals greatly to Jewish scriptures, rejects the Pauline concept of "faith alone".
In the 2nd century, Marcion who claimed to have known Paul, composed the first NT, calling it "Evangelicon" which he attributed to Paul himself, and appended ten of Paul's epistles to it. He rejected all of Jewish scriptures, based on YHWH's cruelty versus Paul's loving god. One can argue he was right in a sense, nothing could be further in terms of similarities than the Gods and their plan for creation than the Gods of the HB and the NT.
In answer to the video "How does an Embryo develop according to Islam? - Scientific Miracles of the Quran Ep17"
23:14"[We] then formed the drop into a clot and formed the clot into a lump and formed the lump into bones and clothed the bones in flesh; and then brought him into being as another creature..."
This embryology verse, read without any preconceived notions and with the correct understanding of each Arabic word is very straightforward. It all starts with a nutfa, or drop. This singular nutfa is connected in 76:2 to the plural "amshajin" denoting it being a blend of components.
So until now, we know from the verse that embryonic life necessitates, not only the drop, ie the sperm, but the drop to be mixed with other components. This wasnt revealing to the primary Arab addressees anything they didnt already know in terms of knowledge of nature. They obviously understood that complex life could not simply spring from a drop of sperm, they understood they needed to impregnate a woman. They also knew that impregnation wasnt sometimes enough as women could be infertile. So they knew, just as the verse is saying, that the sperm needs to be mixed with the appropriate female components for the first stages of life to be possible. Hence the statement attributed to the prophet
"man is created from a man's nutfa and a woman's nutfa".
The verse continues, after the "drop" stage, comes the clot. The word used is ALAQA, meaning something that sticks, or attaches to another. The famous poems hanged on the Kaaba in pre-islamic times were called mu-allaqaat. In abstract, it expresses one's emotional attachement. The early embryo shares many concrete features with the alaqa. A blood clot, because it is sticky, is called ALAQA but the term is by no means used exclusively for it. After the "sticky thing" stage comes the mudghata which means a lump of flesh. That lump is elsewhere described with an expression denoting its very primitive state
22:5"formed and unformed".
This evokes the image of the small aggregate of embryonic cells before their complete differentiation. Within this lump, bones are formed and are covered with flesh. At this point the verse doesnt say whether that flesh was shaped before, after or together with the bones. All the passage speaks of is the COVERING of the bones with flesh, not the making of this flesh itself. The particle used to link every stage is called FA isti'nafiya which simply connects 2 statements without indicating sequential order. And even if for argument's sake we take the particle as denoting sequence, it remains irrelevant to the contention that this covering flesh was formed after the bones. This is because, as already noted, the FORMATION of the flesh is nowhere mentionned. This silence does not warrant the arbitrary conclusion that it must have formed after the bones. For that conclusion to be justified one would need an absolute assertion "ALL the lump was made into bones". Also one expects the formation of the flesh to be listed, just as it lists the previous relevant stages in the verse.
Finally, to justify the "flesh after bones" theory, no statement elsewhere in the Quran should allow the possibility that something other than bones could be formed in that lump. But the Quran neither uses absolute terms (all), nor does it list the formation of the flesh among the stages of the fetus. That omission, and the flexible use of words are both highly relevant, testifying to the Quran's surgical precision and internal consistency. Because in fact, there is in 22:5 a statement allowing for the bones and flesh to have formed within the lump, which is a stage prior to the "covering" of the bones with flesh. It says the completed human being is made from the mudgha/lump. This of course includes his bones, flesh and every particle making up his body. At most, what a critic could try arguing is that first the bones were formed, then they were covered with flesh. Obviously, a non-existent entity cannot be covered with flesh. Bones need to first exist or begin their formation for them to be covered with flesh.
Galen spoke of 4 embryonic stages, just as the Quran only mentions 4;
First an unformed white substance like the semen. This doesnt parallel with the mixed drop in the Quran. This white substance then mixes with menstrual blood to shape a fetus lacking certain organs. This doesnt parallel with the alaqa, the entity that clinges. Then the organs are mostly completed, the limbs almost shaped. This doesnt parallel with the lump of formed/unformed flesh. Then finally the 4th stage where all organs are formed and the joints freely movable. This doesnt parallel with the covering of bones with flesh.
Neither are there oral and written report suggesting that the 7th century Arabs were aware of Galenic embryology, nor is that they practiced Hellenic medicine.
In answer to the video "The Egg Shaped Earth - Scientific Miracles of the Quran Ep.16"
When one spreads out a carpet for a guest, it is meant to honor them. The imagery also plays off another aspect, and that is how carpets are colorful and have beautiful patterns, just like the landscape of the earth. When the verse about "spreading out the earth" is made, it is followed by man being served with all sorts of sustenance and the inescapable accountability resulting from such favors. The concept of "spreading the earth" is related to the honoring of man by God.
Such concept is also repeated eslewhere for example when speaking of the animals fit for slaughter in 6:142 the Quran uses the term "farsh" from Farasha meaning to spread on the floor, ie these animals are thrown down on the ground for slaughter. Also beds and mats are made from their skins and wool.
Spreading the earth has nothing to do with flattening it, sheets can be spread over non-flat objects, including a ball. The Hebrew Bible speaks of the arrangement of the earth with similar terms Isa42:5,44:24; although it adds the information that the earth has "corners", "boundaries" or "ends" Job38:13,Ps74:17 just like the heaven above it has four corners Zech2:10, and is established upon water Ps24:2, held afloat by pillars.
In the Quran, Dahaha 79:30 means "he spread/expanded it". It is used for example to describe the expansion of the ostrich nest, which is a pit that the animal widens with its legs. There is no flattening linked to the meaning of the word. Sutihat 88:20 carries the same meaning, it stems from s-t-h meaning to spread or expand.
Another synonym of spreading, expanding, used for the earth's arrangement is MADD 15:19 or mihadan/evened out 78:6-7. See also 51:48,71:19,20:53,13:3,2:22 for similar expressions. The word "ard" in Arabic, as any speaker of the language knows, isnt strictly used for the planet as a whole and is many times used for the immidiate visible plain land, or the earth's crust, and this is in fact very clear if one looks at these aforementioned verses about the arangement of the earth, meaning the land.
The implication of the statement is that it has been made suitable for many aspects of human life and more particularly travel. For example in the places where the earth/ard is in the sense of land, it is in contrast to other elements of the landscape, like mountains. If the earth as a whole was implied, the contrast with the mountains would be inappropriate. From a purely scientific perspective, the "spreading" of the earth's crust is an ongoing phenomenon, crucial for the maintenance of life at the surface. Up to 95% of it is composed of solidified magmatic material, continously spread and solidified directly at the surface or within the crust. Even after solidification, sometimes when continents collide, the crust can rise to 100km but subsides and spreads soon after. The thickness of the crust varies from around 50km above seas to less than 1km at seafloor. Some have even suggested that in our earth's earliest phases, that "spreading" mechanism was happening on a more widespread, violent scale as the earth's outter layer was entirely covered in liquid magma before solidifying.
In 2:22, God states that He has made the earth a couch for man. Elsewhere it is referred to as a cradle 20:53,78:6. This is not making a physical description of the land upon which people walk. The Quran's addressees knew what couches, beds and cradles looked like. The obvious import is that it has been made hospitable for life and a resting place/qarar 27:61,40:64. IT is the receptacle allowing the cyclic recurrence of birth, growth, decay and death in all organic creation 77:25.
Similarily, the analogy of the sky with a roof stresses one of the roof's aspects; its protective nature. The imagery of the comfortable nature of the earth, by the Honorable Host, is again stressed when God tells His creatures to go about this smoothed earth, enjoy its sustenance for a given time and walk upon its 67:15"manakibaha", meaning "shoulders". Again, those who heard this knew what shouders look like and it never crossed their minds that the Quran was making a physical description of their landscape or of the planet. Rather, this verse shows the earth as not only made comfortable like a bed or cradle of life, but also supporting and carrying man on its "shoulders". It is again a metaphor for God providing mankind with comfort, support, security and sustenance.
The Quran is not trying to demonstrate scientific realities, but that life would be futile without the idea of a Day of Judgement. It gives these metaphors to show the ingratitude of those who reject God when he has been the best host. The message of the imagery was to play on the idea of the honor of the Arabs, who held in utmost respect those that were generous hosts. The Quran is full of such imagery. For example, Allah states that he *carried* the Israelites across the water, and the picture painted is not Moses leading them, but God himself. How could the Israelites forget that, and take to worshipping the calf almost immediately? Allah likens the hypocrites to an unfaithful bride, who thinks that she is deceiving her husband, but ultimately plays games that lead to her own downfall. She is ultimately exposed and further, humiliated. When a person is surrounded by waves of water like mountains in the sea 10:22-23, and he calls out God to help, God paints a picture of ingratitude when that person has been saved. It is as if that person doesn't acknowledge God's favor, and simply walks away as if he never called out for help in the first place 16:53-55.
The fact the Quran plays on the theme of honor and ingratitude to make the people heed for a day of accountability is reinforced when it is used in sura Naba. Sura Mursalat just before it substantiates the Day of Judgement through evidence in the world around man, through historical events and through the signs of power and wisdom of the Almighty in the creation of man, then sura Naba validates this claim, in particular, through various manifestations of Allah’s providence in the world around man.
Here is some eloquent imagery though, that does hint to the roundness of the earth.
In 37:5,70:40 the Quran speaks of the mashaariq/places of sunrise (plural), and maghaarib/places of sunset (plural). It also speaks of the maghribayn/mashriqayn, the two places of sunset/two places of sunrise 43:38,55:17 obviously refering to the fact that when the sun sets on one hemisphere, it rises on the other, hence hinting to the roundness of the Earth. Another interesting fact is that the Quran speaks of the darkening of the stars, sun and the moon, on a single day, the Day of Resurrection 81:1-2,75:8,77:8. Besides happening on the same day, the Quran says it will come unexpectedly 7:187.
The stars, the sun and the moon cannot all be seen at the same time which means that certain people will witness the Day of Resurrection in daytime while others are living it simultaneously in nighttime. This negates the flat earth position, implying that there are people simultaneously living on the dark side, as well as the bright side of the earth.
The Quran speaks of day and night as a phenomena independant from the sun's movement. 79:29 says the sky itself is what brightens (indicating presence of atmosphere) and 91:3-4 says daylight exposes the sun. This is because the reflection of sunlight on the atmosphere dims the lights of all other celestial objects, until they are relatively insignificant to the sun, thus "revealing" it. On the moon, due to the absence of atmosphere, the Sun is not "revealed" as one would say when viewed from the earth. Other celestial objects are seen shining next to it, including the earth that may appear even more evidently than the Sun.
What causes nighttime is the obstruction of the sun. That is where the notion of "veiling" is important 7:54. The word is very well suited to the situation because it is the sun's veiling by the earth itself that causes darkness to fall on the opposite side of the earth. Without a "veil" nighttime would not occur on earth. One could try saying that this doesnt negate geocentricism, with the sun travelling beneath the earth so as to cause nighttime on the opposite side. However 7:54 disconnects the subservience of the sun to that phenomenon. What is further remarkable is that it doesnt say the day veils the night, but the opposite. This reinforces what has been said about the appropriateness of comparing veiling/obstructing. Nighttime is the absence of direct sunlight, which would be impossible without veiling/obstructing since the sun does not orbit the earth. Somewhere else it uses the image of daylight being skinned off, revealing the darkness of night. Skinning is done with force. The sun is mentioned in the same passage without any hint at it being the cause. Rather it is an imperceptible force caused by Allah and which we now know is the movement of the earth
36:37"We withdraw/peel off from it the day".
Another interesting statement is that Allah upholds al samawat/the entities above, including the sky without any visible supports 13:2,31:10. In the flat earth model, the dome shaped sky rests on the earth's edges, which are visible supports. But according to the verses, the entities above the earth must encompass and circle it, enclosing the earth within a larger sphere.
From a spiritual perspective, this statement highlights the necessity of Allah's might and mercy, maintaining the complex order of things above at all times without relying on any supports. Scientifically, as in all verses putting God at the forefront in natural processes, one may understand it as God doing so through His decreed laws of nature. None of these processes function by themselves and need constant sustaining by the One who decreed them 32:5,65:12 making both heavens and earth to subsist by His command 30:25, these laws through which He prevents both heaven and earth from ceasing to function
22:65,35:41"upholds the heavens and the earth lest they come to naught".
Allah therefore upholds/yumsik both heavens and earth, not only the heavens or what is above the earth. This gives an additional dimension to the word "upholding", giving it the sense of "sustaining" as well.
This passage also demonstrates the delicate balance the Quran makes in its use of general but appropriate words, so as to not confirm nor deny the views of nature of its reader, focusing instead on the spiritual message. By upholding both heavens and earth, the Quran does not depict the earth as "the bottom" of the universe for just as the heavens are upheld, the earth too is upheld by Allah. If one wishes to find "indications" on whether the earth is stationary or not, then one can as well reflect the Quranic depiction of the general motion of all celestial bodies floating in their independent trajectories, as applying to the earth too which is floating in space. A modern reader could then also assume, since this upholding is done without any visible supports, then it must be done through God establishing an equilibrium between the repelling and attractive forces at play in the universe. These forces by the way are known to be on the thinnest of razor edges, where the slightest variation will throw the entire system into disarray
54:49"Surely We have created everything according to a measure"
Finally 35:13,39:5,3:27 explain that the phenomena of night and day are perpetually merging, as if flowing into one another. This imagery only makes sense in a round earth model, where daytime still exists when nighttime arrives and viceversa, as related in the hadith on 3:133 further below. In a flat-earth model the entire earth is either plunged into darkness or lit up in daytime. We understand today that the roundness of the earth, together with its revolution around its axis and orbit around the sun, are what allow this continuous flowing phenomenon of night into day and day into night.
In a narration, the prophet was asked to comment on
3:133"a Garden, the extensiveness of which is (as) the heavens and the earth, it is prepared for those who guard (against evil)".
A man asked him
"So where is the Fire?" the prophet replied "Have you seen when night comes, it overtakes everything. So where is the day?" the man said "where Allah wants it to be" and the prophet said "likewise with the Fire".
So although daylight overtakes everything and yet nighttime is a phenomenon that keeps existing, even if it is beyond perception, so does hellfire exist beyond perception although the vastness of paradise overtakes everything. The Quran makes it clear that both heaven and hell exists currently in the unseen and encompass us. Grammatically, the WAW used in 3:133 is that of inclusion, making the earth included within the more encompassing entity of the heavens. Had the Quran applied a strict modern perspective of astronomy and said that the vastness of paradise is as wide as the heavens, without mentionning the earth, the statement would have remained incomplete to its addressees who understood heaven and earth as seperate entities. It would have seemed that paradise is limited, which is against the verse's intent. On the other hand, had it specified that heaven encompasses the earth, then followed by describing the vastness of paradise, it would have deviated its audience's attention into trivial matters from a spiritual viewpoint. The Quran thus uses a grammatical construction that neither affirms nor denies its addressees' understanding of nature, as it does in many places, so as to keep the focus on its intended message.
