Religious Sources

Twenty-first in a Series

The last several articles discussed topics related to God and man. Before that we reviewed Muhammad’s life and teachings, and Islam’s history as currently written. We finish out this part of the series looking at Islam’s and Christianity’s primary texts—the Qur’an and Bible. After this article we move into all the preceding material’s applications to society; such as governance, rights and law, and freedom. As we go through this next material, we’ll also look at some common arguments advanced by Islam against Christianity. These are extensions from this series earlier material. This is a large topic, and with current events an important one to understand.

The Qur’an and the Bible

The Qur’an and Bible are foundational sources for Islam and Christianity respectively. Pete Seda asserts a common claim within Islam that “Muslims believe in all the previous revealed books.”[1] Specifically this relates to the revelations given to both the Jewish people and Christians. However, “Muslims do not consider the scriptures revealed before the Qur’an, which are presently in circulation in various editions and versions, to be an accurate representation of their original revealed form. According to the Qur’an, people have distorted these scriptures for their own worldly gain.”[2] Further, “the final means by which they [Muslims] judge different matters and seek ultimate guidance is sought through the Qur’an.”[3]

This article looks at the preceding claims. Have the Torah and Bible contents been corrupted? What specifically does the Qur’an say about earlier revelations? It sticks to historical facts. We need nothing else. This article does not address the teachings within either the Qur’an or Bible, but instead the development of these two sources themselves and the above claims related to them.

The Qur’an

Its Origination

Tradition says the Qur’an contains Allah’s revelations transmitted through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad. It is written in first person with Allah as the sayer. The word Qur’an literally means the reading or the recital. It was originally memorized and transmitted orally, and likely was never intended to be in written form. No written Qur’an existed during Muhammad’s life.

There are several stories about the initial collection and writing down of its verses. One is that after the Battle of Yamamah, occurring within a year of Muhammad’s death, many of his original followers were dead. The Qur’an was in danger of being lost, and the scribe Zayd commissioned to collect all its verses.

Its Language

Pete Seda states, “The Qur’an is regarded, not just by Muslims but also by historians of religion, as the most authentic religious text among the world’s religions. None of the other revealed books have reached us in their original form or language.”[4] “The Qur’an is for all people and is available to us in its original, living language, Arabic.”[5] This and the next section take a moment to examine these claims.

The language of the original Qur’an codices is an earlier form of Arabic. This earlier form, not used today, was a Semitic language without the pointing and diacritical marks used today to denote short vowels and distinguish between different consonants. Those markings did not exist in Muhammad’s day. Placing different markings in different places within the earlier unmarked text created multiple different variant readings.

Early Codices

Tradition says different people created different codices and began using them. The meaning of the Qur’an was again in danger of being lost. The third caliph, Uthman, ordered the Medinan codex used and all others burnt. Tradition also says Uthman selected this codex as it was in Muhammad’s native dialect. However, the number of variant readings increased during the Umayyad Dynasty and into the Abbasid, over a century after Muhammad’s death into the eighth century.

In the words of Charles Adams from The Encyclopedia of Religion:

“It must be emphasized that far from there being a single text passed down inviolate from the time of Uthman’s commission, literally thousands of variant readings of particular verses were known. … The variants affected even the Uthmanic codex, making it difficult to know what its true original form may have been.”[6]

“Although Muslims of the present time generally have forgotten the very existence of these variant versions of the Qur’an … Arthur Jefferies has listed fifteen primary codices (i.e., from the Companions) and a large number of secondary ones.”[7]

Early Arabic Language Interpretation

For this original form of Arabic, there were only three ways to interpret the unpointed text. First, you could be present and hear what was actually said and understand the context. Second, a trusted source needed to relay the words spoken, along with any context. This is the concept of isnad used in compiling the hadith. Third, you had to interpret the meaning from the text itself.

There was an awakening of religious interest with the rise of the Abbasid Dynasty. However, that dynasty did not begin until about 750 AD, over one hundred years after Muhammad’s death. At this point in time, there was no longer anyone left alive who had heard Muhammad speak. The number of variant readings and differences in codices made it impossible to determine which variants were true and which were not. This left only the third option of interpreting the meaning from the text itself, which is what the Islamic scholars began to do and where we turn next.

Its Development

The Mu’tazalites within Islam brought Hellenistic thought into Islam during the latter Umayyad period (mid-eighth century); two of their main tenets were divine justice and the unity of God. Their rationalistic thought brought them into conflict with their day’s established belief. For much of the first half of the 9th century, the caliphs supported their views. This was the time of the Mihnah, the Islamic Inquisition. Their intolerance and doctrine resulted in the rejection of their beliefs, but they still had a lasting influence through the Aristotelian rationalism they brought to Islam.[8] They supplied the reasoning used to reach consensus among the Islamic scholars.

Reason and Consensus Applied

Cleric consensus created rules limiting the number of variant readings from the unmarked codex text. A first effort occurred during the early Abbasid Dynasty, which began about 750 AD. However, the number of variant readings continued to increase. It was not until the 10th century, about 300 years after Muhammad’s death, under Islamic scholars led by Ibn Mujahid canonized a single system of consonants and placed limits on vowel insertion.

Please Support the Virginia Christian Alliance Website and Community Center

We would appreciate your donation.

This resulted in the system of the seven. Seven readers, each with two transmitters, for a total of 21 Qur’ans. Al-Jzari selected another three readers in the fifteenth century, under the Ottoman, also each with two transmitters. This added another nine Qur’ans for a total of thirty. In 1924, a committee selected the Hafs recitation as the primary standard. Ninety percent of Muslims today use the Hafs reading, written during the late eighth century.

From Charles Adams again:

“What appears to have happened in this instance is that the community, being unable to agree on a single reading, accepted diversity as the norm and proclaimed all seven (or ten or fourteen) to be correct.”[9]

The Bible

Its Origination

The Bible is the revealed word of God through the prophets starting with Moses, and ending with the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. Written by Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament form the Jewish Torah. The Torah, along with the Nevi’im (books of the prophets) and the literary books of the Kethuvim (Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, etc.) make up the Jewish Tanakh – the Christian Old Testament. The Tanakh documents the history of the Jewish people and God’s revelations to them.

There is a period of about 400 years between the last books of the Old Testament and New Testament events. The New Testament chronicles events fulfilling the Messianic Old Testament prophecies and Christ’s teachings.

Its Language

Bible manuscripts use several languages. Old Testament manuscripts contain Hebrew and some Aramaic writing. The Septuagint is an Old Testament translation into Greek in Egypt during the third century BC. Until the mid-twentieth century, the earliest Old Testament manuscripts dated to about the ninth century. However, finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century gave us text from many of the Old Testament books dating to the first and second century BC – over two thousand years ago, in their original Hebrew. The Dead Sea Scroll contents confirm the previous Old Testament manuscripts underlying both Jewish and Christian scriptures.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest known documents from the ancient world. Many of the names, places, and events mentioned within the Old Testament have also been found by archeologists. There is no doubt as to its text’s accuracy.

The New Testament manuscripts are primarily written in Greek, and there are over 5,300 of them. Most writings from the ancient world have no more than a couple dozen copies and date no earlier than the ninth century. The earliest New Testament manuscript is a scrap from the book of John written about 114 AD, within a generation of the events they describe. Archeologists discover new manuscripts almost every year.

Manuscript Errors

These documents are amazingly accurate. Records say these manuscripts contain a large number of variants, but most are due to how errors are defined. Any stray mark on a manuscript is an error. If a particular mark were missing from 2,000 of the 5,300 manuscripts, it is not recorded as a single error but 2,000 errors instead. In essence, the large number of New Testament manuscripts alone drives the number of cited errors.

In the nineteenth century, Philip Schaff addressed this issue. He calculated that “only about 400 of the 100,000 or 150,000 [New Testament] variations materially affect the sense. Of these, again not more than about fifty are really important for some reason or other; and even of these fifty not one affects an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching.”[10] There is no other book from the ancient world that is as well documented or its text as accurate as the Bible. There is no basis for Islam’s claim of text corruption for either the Old or New Testament, because these manuscripts existed before Muhammad was born.

Its Development

We have manuscripts dating from before Christ’s life for much of the Old Testament. These confirm the Old Testament citations contained in the New Testament, and tell us those passages come from the Greek Septuagint – and not the Hebrew manuscripts.

As to the New Testament writers, Matthew, John and Peter were Christ’s disciples. One of Peter’s disciples wrote the Gospel of Mark. Luke and Paul were contemporaries of Christ, and Paul was a witness to the resurrection. Finally, we have manuscripts for much of the New Testament dating to within 150 years of the events they describe, and the entire New Testament within 300 years – dating to the fourth century, over 200 years before Muhammad’s birth.

Finally, if we have doubts as to a translation in one of the modern translations, we have inter-linear Bibles containing copies of the original manuscript text – along with both a literal translation of each word and definitions of the Hebrew and Greek meaning for words used in the text.

We do have accurate manuscripts with the original meaning in our possession. To say otherwise is to deny reality.

Differences

However, the Qur’an is unlike the Bible and Torah in several respects. First, there is no sense of chronology or history within the Qur’an, or even within the Surah’s themselves. Instead, the longest Surah’s come first and the shortest ones last. Many of the longer revelations occurred in Medina. Therefore, many later Surah appear earlier in the Qur’an. Second, there is little context around the passages within each Surah. The Hadith, Sunnah, and Sirat provide that context.

Hadith, Sunnah, and Sirat

The Hadith and Sunnah are similar as they both describe situations and events in Muhammad’s life. They sketch what he said, who heard it, the context, who transmitted it, etc. The two are similar but distinct. The Hadith are oral communications given by Muhammad, whereas the Sunnah comprise the traditions and customs used to model how one is to live. The Sunnah is also the source of shari’a based upon Muhammad’s actions, approval, and statements. The earliest Hadith appears almost two hundred and fifty years after Muhammad’s death.

The Hadith were collections compiled by scholars who read and evaluated all of the ahadith they could find. Al-Burkhari spent sixteen years compiling his work, reviewing close to a hundred thousand ahadith in completing his final work containing 3,295. These compilations were necessary as the number of sayings attributed to Muhammad increased in the centuries after his death. These compilations brought some consistency and structure to the accepted sayings. The Sirat are the biographies of Muhammad’s life. Tradition says these first appeared between one hundred and twenty and two hundred and seventy five years after Muhammad’s death. The earliest of these is one attributed to Ibn Ishaq.

Verse Abrogation

There is one final difference that bears mentioning. The Qur’an contains some inconsistent verses. Over time some of the revelations spoken by Muhammad changed, to the point where some of his followers questioned his authority. In response, he recited “Such of Our revelations as We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring (in place) one better or the like. Do not you know that Allah is Able to do all things?” (S 2, 106) [11] Abrogation resulted in the meaning of some earlier passages within the Qur’an either changing or replaced entirely by a later passage.

The Qur’an on Other Revelations

We’ll close with some Qur’an verses about the Torah and Bible containing truth, and God’s revelations in general.

God’s Truth

Several brief points on this topic before we close. First, the truth comes from God. From surah 2.136:

“Say: We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto Us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael and Isaac, and Jacob, and that tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the Prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered.”

Second, God revealed the Torah and Bible and both are truth. From surah 5:

“Lo! We did reveal the Torah, wherein is guidance and a light, by which the prophets who surrendered (unto Allah) judged the Jews, and the rabbis and the priests (judged) by such of Allah’s Scripture as they were bidden to observe, and thereunto were they witnesses. So fear not mankind, but fear Me. And barter not My revelations for a little gain. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are disbelievers.” (5.044)

“And We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, confirming that which was (revealed) before him in the Torah, and We bestowed on him the Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah – a guidance and an admonition unto those who ward off (evil).” (5.046)

“Say O People of the Scripture! Ye have naught (of guidance) till ye observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto you from your Lord. That which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them. But grieve not for the disbelieving folk.” (5.068)

Revelations

Third, God’s word is incorruptible as He protects it.

“Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian.” (15.009)

Finally, if Muhammad doubts a received revelation, then he is to ask those receiving God’s revelations before him.

“And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee. Verily the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee. So be not thou of the waverers.” (10.094)

For the last revelation above to be true, the Torah and Bible existing in his day must have been true. But those are the same manuscripts used today. You cannot have it both ways. A further question that must be asked is if the first two sets of revelations had become corrupted (the Tanakh and Gospel), how is it that producing a third set of revelations would protect that set alone from corruption? Either God is capable of protecting His revelations or not. Again you cannot have it both ways.

We must discern the truth, and that requires educating oneself, at least on the arguments advanced by Islam against Christianity. We will not get that information from our corrupted academic institutions, media, or political leaders. Most of them simply do not know themselves, or choose not to know. We will return to this topic again later in the series.